Tim Buckley
Anthology

I am contemplating buying an ipod. Post-xmas stocks are down but I’m going to strike – and I wondered today, might I give in to shuffling? But then again, it has taken me over a year and I’m still only up to Tim Buckley…maybe the ipod will speed me up a little – I blame the MSc and nuclear proliferation.

Tim Buckley is one of the musical souvenirs I hold from my relationship with Dan – I remember talking to Adam about Bob Dylan recently, he is steadfast that my warning systems set against the man relate to the learning curve to wall-to-wall Dylan instilled by the poisonous academic, and that if I could get out of the context of that, I’d really understand Dylan. I do understand Dylan, and truthfully, subterranean thingy is enough for me, although I did always like the clothes line saga. I know enough to join in with the hmnas when the red wine evenings turn that way.

Tim Buckley ticks all those troubadour boxes I should despise and sneer at. I think it’s his voice that trembles me elsewhere, I much prefer it to Jeff Buckley, and I hear again the icons of different generations jostling in my head. On the live at Sin-e EP I bought for Dan with the amazing version of The Way Young Lovers Do, you could hear the ghost of Tim Buckley crowing through the upper register of young Jeff as he warbled in those late 80s coffee shops. I drew diagrams about why I preferred Tim Buckley to Jeff Buckley, but I couldn’t describe them now. I do know the diagram appears in my drawing diary from 2004, and the other picture I drew that day related to when I went to pick up my new reading glasses, and outside a computer shop somewhere in the backstreets of Morningside was a notice next to a dog saying “Please walk me”, I went in the shop to check if they were joking, and no, they were stuck with dog-sitting and were all too busy so put the sign up and hoped for honest dog walkers to pass by. I was listening to the new David Byrne album and was listening to the bizarre brass-band hymn thing about post 9-11 Imperialism and walked in late Spring with a novel-borrowed dog by my side as I went to Spec savers and back. Around my picture of myself with this dog is a series of dots and dashes which (I remember now) related to Tim and Jeff Buckley, something related to just the words, and the extraneous, Baroque-kinda flourishes. I think my musical and literary brains fight together sometimes, and I have little patience with the padding many vocalists go for. Although beautiful, and truly the ending of Jeff Buckley’s version of Alleluia is incredible, I want to know the thrust and the jist of the song.

I know most of these songs by their shape rather than their content. Not enough to identify them outside of Blue Melody or Song to the Siren – but looking again at the titles I recognise Sally go round the roses, Moulin rouge. I remember this one too, the dramatic piano, “Pleasant Street” and the guitar stabs I love so well myself. Wow. I have been reading Slouching to Bethlehem by Joan Didion recently, and this makes me think of all those alarming stories, five-year olds an acid, wearing white lipstick, but presenting as a typical five-year-old. Was she really on acid? It sounds too frightening. It must be said there are elements of the self-conscious time-signature changes that annoy me. Hallucinations, it’s almost too narrative, and in the same way I get annoyed with the Oooh yeahs that fill in spaces in the music, I can only take so much of the music being forced to hop skip and jump nervously to accommodate the skittering and fussy words.

There is something so sunny about this music. I think of his young man asking “Will you ever remember me?” and I want to tell him that those yellow sunny afternoons weather well, and even in the pain of memory the idea of keeping your head above the storm and seeing the whole view (am reading JB Priestly again) renders it benevolence rather than decay. I will remember you, but remembrance alone is no guarantee of anything (check every November). The piano in the next song is incredible. Morning Glory. Angels. I can’t come in, it’s too high a climb. I loved the sloppy choirs in that last song, but here in Goodbye and Hello I can hear it becoming proggy, and I don’t like it…folk-prog is a prog too far…I wave goodbye to speed and smile hello to a rose…reminds me too much of Hair, the age of Aquarius…hippy prog does me no good, I want the digital end of this. It’s fucking regressive, this urge to de-evolve back to mud huts and medievalism. The way the music stops and starts and stops and starts (I wave goodbye to Mammon and smile hello to a stream…wonder how many units that little couplet shifted…?) speaks of episodic desperation. There is nothing helpful written about this huge song in the useful booklet. The song feels like a manifesto of sub-Tolkien daisy-woven masturbation. His voice remains amazing though. I’m hanging tighter onto those amazing tones and waiting for the song to creak itself to an end.

The vibraphones of Buzzin’ Fly are such a relief I may need more coffee. You’re the only one I talk about, the only one I think about. I like so much the way his music stretches and relaxes into jazz, like one of those catching yawns when the extraneous of the party disappear and it’s left to a favoured few and cups of tea and open arms.

As I struggle with trying to install those damn lampshades I bought in July and fail (I give up, I think they’re the wrong shape, or something) Tim Buckley sings his first live concert in “this country” – I can ‘t work out the MC’s accent. Is Tim Buckley English or American? The useful book tells me he was born in Washington DC on Valentine’s Day.

I had intended to do a jaunt up the Gloucester Road, but the rain and the cosiness are keeping me inside with another cup of coffee and the second CD. But since I’ve been looking at photos for the duration of the CD up until track 5, I must confess I haven’t been paying attention, but the music has swept around in a rainy-afternoon-way. I realise it’s Friday evening creeping up and hope therefore that those of my friends who are a) returned post-xmas and b) back at work already may be inspired by the Friday-night for a bit of humorous drinking tonight. This is cosy, corduroy music and I am reacting accordingly. I even ate toast and marmite. It’s incredible to listen to his voice – you forget that half of these tracks are recorded live, and the control and finesse (although that is a stupid word) are staggering…Blue Melody and Moulin Rouge feel like coming home.

I have to stop the dusting and the cleaning because Song to the Siren is on. I remember how I felt when I taught myself the chords, walking round the corner to the Watershed and thinking of the deliciousness of the change from F to F7. I knew the acoustic version first, then this, the electric. I remember Dan saying how he grew to prefer to electric, and Hayley saying the same – wasn’t it in Lost Highway or something? I love to sing this song; when I sing it, swinging around the wide beige living room of Picton Street it seems to open my throat in a way few other songs do. I think of Talking Heads and their interrogations on the back of Stop making Sense. Why a Live Album? I grow annoyed with the change in lyrics on the electric, the line “I’m as puzzled as the oyster” is a jewel I hold in my hand, in my pocket, and need it to remain the same – even though it holds menace for me, walrus and the Carpenter style.

I want to think more about the song, but there are a few more songs in-between, and it seems that the arrangement of this album requires me to hold off for a while…the weird funk-style which typified Tim Buckley’s late career is making its first appearance, I remember so well the tape Jack made for us that had the weirdest, the most unpleasantly sleazy (Get on top of me woman, get on top of Timmy) song I could imagine this beautiful voice singing, and maybe I was informed by one or other that this was Tim Buckley’s get-out from a contract that was increasingly stifling him – to be as terrible as possible. It is a wonderfully comforting thought when confronted by the tail-end of his career. And it is impressively awful. But, I hear in places the kind of lop-sided smirk that I can hear in the wonderful Iffi from time to time when he sings…I wonder where Iffi takes that from…it sounds like nothing I’d expect him to reproduce from hearing him talk, but then little of Iffi’s’ singing puts me in mind of the style of his speech
But, song to the siren reappears, the live version from The Monkees TV show, of all places. There is so much more dignity in this song than all that has gone before. It’s based on…the Greek story of the sirens, dash yourself on these rocks. The helpful book says the lyrics are so close to the original (Tennyson? I have no idea, should read it again, don’t want to stop) it’s almost no difference. I remember an evening in Renatos with Dan and lots of other people (crowded, sit on the floor and it’s fine, everyone will sit with you) talking about this song, and realising with a flash what it is that makes Prufrock so beautiful and sad and links the two together – while Tim Buckley, brown hair crowning him and moving in the wind, he is the figurehead on this boat, doomed no longer, has the lift of the chin enough to challenge the sirens to come to him instead, Prufrock knows, quietly, that he will never even hear the tempting song, much less turn it on its head. I see them both together, Tim Buckley facing off a sunset and Prufrock walking away, and somewhere behind both of them is Dirk Bogarde sweating and dying on his deckchair with the camera framing a blonde boy standing on the seashore. To have never heard temptation, and to have never been able to refuse it.

Gavin Bryars The Sinking of the Titanic/Jesus’ Blood Never Failed me yet

The story of the Titanic held me close to all the panic and unfairness that comes with most tragedies both large-scale and small-scale. I am sure that my faintly obsessive personality (disregarding diagnoses that I variously question and accept on a daily basis) is ingrained and lasting now; I notice how closely they paralleled (and still do) my father’s own obsessions. Once I was in a musical with him, a miniature mini-me Fagin beside him. We sang a lot of duets together, on stage and around the piano as a team. I think that role has stuck with me, for good and bad. He had lots of books etc about this particular maritime disaster. It frightened and appalled me so much, and I kept it fresh in my mind – I see all too clearly these connections; what do you do in those last minutes as life is gasping itself away, and as you need to accept loss? Sirens and icebergs all coming to get you in the night and changing the world irreparably. The dramatic pathos given with all the beautiful and sad stories of bandsmen playing the painful songs they were said to play right up until the last minute as the moon and the earth went down..

This piece by Gavin Bryars is a long and slow death which throws all of those songs “Autumn Leaves, Abide with me, Nearer my God to thee” into the air and they fall and float back and forth while the last recorded voices of those who saw and came back from it all discuss memories of luggage and the cold sea. I never heard this particular piece at York. I studied a module called “text and music” with Roger Marsh, and he played us the second track, Jesus’ Blood Never Failed me yet. Then I found this CD in the James Thins in Edinburgh on the bridges.

I feel seasick listening, I am swaying in my room. This is minimalist, in the technical sense, but it feels so rich with guilt and love it’s painful to listen to. It’s almost too much. I bought this in March in Edinburgh, the first March. Things had started to prove themselves to be going wrong rather than it just being an unnecessary whistling around the back of my ears – mistakes and murders were being set in concrete and the lines were showing the way it was all going to end – I was in love and feeling at least a little in control of the bus routes. That’s not true – I was feeling in control of walking. Bus routes came later. I feel like Alice going down the rabbit hole, with all the descriptions of the furniture rushing up against her, swirling in the air as you descend the slow free-fall. I dreamt about Peter Pan last night, I had to rearrange the chapters into the right order. I read the words and thought how the scanning related to a Symphony. I could hear the relevant music in my head and I remember Cemetery Road where I thought I saw the door to the under-stairs cupboard shaking. George said it was because I was tired. See, memories now rush up against me in no particular order in the same way.

Has this been done live? When Dan and I lived in the white-red-yellow-green flat in East London Street, we tried to listen to a concert on Radio 3 where an orchestra played a variety of Warp-label pieces. A live version of this was attempted, but the reception down there in the basement was so terrible we couldn’t make much sense of it, if any. I copied this CD for my last supervisor on my last placement, as he and I talked as much about Phillip Glass and Gorecki as we did about housing law and mental health. I think he found it too much. The corridor in my flat is dark, Sam is asleep after some debauch last night. Jack is coming over later. Jeanette Winterson talks about the measure of love being loss.

Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet. The long slow arc of becoming and of leaving. I heard this in one of those text and music lectures done by Roger Marsh at York in the spring of my third year, when I was really starting to lay down roots of what I thought I meant about music and myself and people around me. It’s documentary music, I realise now, having made myself survive all those long and horrible strains of Barry Hines and Peter Watkin. You cannot turn away. You can hear voices and footsteps in the background of those who are not caught sitting under a bridge singing to themselves. The old man, who we are to assume is weeks, if not days away from death, sounds so in tune, remains there all the way through the looped and looped and looped singing. Tom Waits recorded a “duet” with the taped man (oh who was he? Does he know?) which I like the idea of, but the reality matched nothing I wanted (I stamped a musical foot in temper in my head, not in appreciation).

I bought this, full of bubbles and excitement that I had finally found it (the knowledge that all the amazing things I had learned and discovered in York could also be bought on a high street in almost any city, even bad ol’ Edbra). Dan, Chris Heppell and I sat in Susie’s flat listening to it – we were bunny-sitting and Whisky and Murphy flopped fatly around. Was Kirstie there too? I have a photo of her impersonating a rabbit in the same page as Chris and Dan both stroking Murphy, the king of all the rabbits. Intense, said Chris, as the music came to a close. I find myself singing along with sincerity.

I think about Charles Kinbote of Pale Fire by Nabakov and the point and pain of academic analysis coming into diseased context with unhappy memories. I love that book, it’s old and battered now in the way that well-loved paperbacks should be.
I think about Maya Angelou’s comment that when things are going badly, the smallest triumph is accorded to the Lord and Saviour, and when things are going well, the Lord descends the list of contributors remarkably quickly and instead individual pluck and grit are cited. That’s the sadness of the song, Jesus’ blood (oh the old-time-red-wine) clearly has failed him, but it’s an inverse failure (is it?) where consolation is taken as triumph. I want to cackle and crow at the man (whose eyes may be cataract-milky and whose hands are probably shaking) “He doesn’t love you, he never loved you, it’s a trick” and go rocking-horse into the night under the bridge, but I know that the bitterness and pain surrounding that is its own inversion, and the stupid ones are probably the happier. It’s nice to ignore things when they prove problematic and happiness is a dangerous business. Oh, choirs of angels. He is drowning in the music and we are watching him go.

Bruckner
Motets

I have had to skip back – it’s Sunday afternoon, I thought I would take a break from presentation notes (presentation a week on Monday, the fear…) and drink my detox tea, light a candle, eat a wholemeal pita with laughing cow spread (which I am alarmingly addicted to at the moment) and read the newspaper while listening to this. The first track, the one I know the best plays and I was swept away, again. Os Justi was sung by the Bolton Youth Choir a number of times when I was a member, and we all swooned collectively each time we sang it. I don’t know what the words mean, my Latin has survived enough to pick up the odd phrase only. I have sung it as a second soprano and alto. I know which way the lines move inside it and I know the way it is going overall. Caroline and I grabbed each others hands once during a singing when we reached the “ejus in corde” section and found the lines lapping over one another, round and round and the voices climbing. I remember the big cathedral/performance hall thing at Bolton School (private and posh but useful for concerts) and the town hall in Paderborn and many coach journeys where we also sang it. I sang it at York and was so staggered and overjoyed to find I could say “I know this” (I have always loved recognition in this way). I think of John with the beard who died of a blood clot in 1997. I don’t know any other choral piece that affects me the same way. I want to put my head on my knees and sit in a dark room.

I dreamt last night at “Amen” and “Ejus” meant the same thing, that it meant “I am” and in that way, the resounding full stop of Christianity really falls more into the lap of humanism. It was just a dream though.

I know the next one from performances too, Locus iste, but it never got me the same way. I think of the rehearsal room at Dean School where I ran from the room holding some-one’s remarkably exotic mobile phone as I was told unsympathetically that my Dad had had another heart attack. I wonder now if it was panic. There was no sympathy from anyone, anywhere. I found the abstract lines of these motets a comfort at the time.

Today feels heavy in a kind of gold and velvet way…I am wearing a new slightly glamorous purple jumper and burning a delicious caramel-smelling candle. The shops and the newspaper are full of Christmas and my plans are up in the air again. The heady church-like atmosphere clearly fits the music. Apart from the opening two I don’t really know the other pieces, there’s one I’m sure I recognise from singing at York. I know very little about Bruckner… late Romantic. Removed from the Wagner/Berlioz or Tchaikovsky style sparkling Romanticism – I have Bruckner instead with Brahms in my head, who I know even less about, but I did like his violin concerto. I went to hear Bruckner’s 4th Symphony at York but I heard it only the once. It had the same feel to it that these motets did though, all the cellos deep and wonderful. I sat next to Robin and he sat muttering about how it was all “so over-emotional”. I shushed him and tried to lose myself in the music again – what’s wrong with that emotion? I normally admire the lines and structure so much (and so much more now) in “classical” (I hate that I conform to this HMV classification too) in music; Bruckner feels special in this way for alighting the clenched-fist-eyes-shut feelings I usually feel elsewhere.