BLOOM: BLOOMSDAY

I may be six weeks or so early, or, then again, actually I guess I'm really six weeks shy of a century late. 06/06/1922, a date that scans both, coveniently, to both UK and US readers. The 6th of June is the momentous day that spirals out in James Joyce's sprawling Ulysses. Whether the day was actually in 1922 is uncertain*, but, given it that the year the book was first published, that is the shorthand I am applying, and one, no doubt, that will be used when that date comes around this year. So who's read it?

No, I confess, me neither, but it is on a perpetual longlist of books I must get around to in due course. As is War and Peace, I guess, and a number of others that somehow always have me picking up something, um, easier, as I go to the book shop. Because it has this reputation, those knowing aficionados nodding sagely, as the lightweights like me admit their reticence.

Molly Bloom is the main female character in Joyce's book, the free spirited wife of the main protagonist, Leopold Bloom. I bet you didn't know she was based the character of Penelope, in Homer's Odyssey, wife to Odysseus, or Ulysses, in the Roman iteration. With one core difference, in that Penelope was unfailingly faithful to her errant spouse, Molly is unfailingly promiscuous, or, at least, unprepared to accept sexlessness within a stagnating marriage, as she conducts an affair with Hugh "Blazes" Boylan. (Reading that character's name, so wilful is the sheer Irishness of it, becomes one yet further nail in the decison-making coffin about reading the tome.) The final section of the book is famous for being a free-form and unpunctuated stream of consciousness: Molly's soliloquy. One of the eight sentences contains what used to be the largest number of words in any one literary sense, 4,391 words. (What would Blogger dashboard make of that, I wonder, as it automatically critiques my own bizarre constructions?)

She has provoked a number of songs and tunes over the years, or should I say inspired. The first is an instrumental written by Alan Munde, the banjoist, sometime Flying Burrito Brother and member of Country Gazette. It is a delightfully brisk construction, best shown by the dual guitar play of Norman Blake and Tony Rice, although his own version also has merit.

Tom Paxton, the venerable folk singer, around and influential forever, included a paean to her in his 1970 Tom Paxton 6, a joyous blast of strummed banjo and kazoos, the lyric concentrating on her potty mouth, the irresistible lure of a sweary woman something of no small wonder.

But the main song here today comes from Kate Bush, the by now near recluse, living out her life quietly in the country, rarely breaking out into the limelight, despite the clamours of her never more loyal fanbase. The song The Sensual World, from the album of the same name, was released in 1989. Bush fills the album with a plethora of world music influences, from the uillean pipes of Davy Spillane to the exotic open throated vocals of Trio Bulgarka. A wonderful record, I remember buying it, it being the moment I finally "got" the artist, and, I confess, also, the last moment I found myself in that moment, give or take her wondrous play on Sexual Healing. 

What I hadn't then realised was how this title track was based on Molly's soliloquy, her manager possibly talking her out of her original plan, to use only words from Molly's mouth in the words of the song, perhaps fearing an assault from Joyce's estate. So, 22 years later, in 2011, on her Director's Cut revision, rewritings and remixes album, it was a treat to hear it as originally planned, lyrics all Joyce, the re-recorded vocal also benefitting from the more lived in and world weary timbre of her vocals.

Finally, I guess i should get back to the main theme of this piece, as in Bloomsday, the international day of recognition and remembrance for James Joyce and this most celebrated of his works. Biggest, understandably, in Ireland and the U.S., it has taken on legs across the world. I actuall took part in one such celebration, in about 2003, as a then member of Birmingham's Buckland Club, so named after Frank Buckland, a 19th century surgeon, zoologist and naturalist, who had the aspiration and ambition to eat his way through the entire plant and animal kingdoms. The club celebrated Bloomsday that year by a peripatetic feast, each course at separate venues across the city. Much as I would like to give a bite by bite account, I fear I am unable, possibly as much as a result of the necessary imbibing as to the food. But, what I do recall is the kidney starter, included as a celebration of Joyce's exquisite description of how the offal should be best served:

“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.”

I discover that there are two songs also around this important date, each by giants of the Irish rock aristocracy, so I leave you with each, U2 and then Fontaines D.C.

The book of the songs.....

* Date unknown? What tosh, the "original" Bloomsday was in 1904, the date Leopold Bloom is reminiscing about during Joyce's 1922. Which makes it highly likely my Buckland Club jolly was in 2004, not 2003.

Bloom: When The Apple Blossoms Bloom In The Windmills Of Your Mind I’ll Be Your Valentine

ELP: When The Apple Blossoms Bloom In The Windmills Of Your Mind I’ll Be Your Valentine
[purchase] 

You might have noticed that I’ve long been a fan of prog rock and have often filled this space with discussions of it. You also might have noticed that I’ve never written about one of the most well-known prog bands, Emerson, Lake & Palmer (although, I have mentioned their bassist/vocalist Greg Lake, mostly in the context of his work with King Crimson, which I have written about probably too many times). And that’s because I was never that big a fan of ELP. Although there are a handful or so of their songs that I’ve liked, and I appreciated their musical virtuosity, I don’t think that I have ever bought a full ELP album in any format. There was always something about their music that left me a little cold, while I think that the more emotional music of their contemporaries Genesis and Yes appealed to me more. 

Despite a run of popular and well-received (except by the prog-haters) albums in the early 1970s, it seemed that by the middle of the decade, as the genre began to lose favor, ELP also appeared to lose creativity and cohesiveness. Their 1977 album, Works Vol.1 was a double album, with each member of the band getting one side, and the fourth side was collaborative. Although it sold well, it really wasn’t good, although the band’s version of Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare For The Common Man” was fun (and is on my list of ELP songs that I like). Later that year, they released Works, Vol. 2 which was essentially an odds and ends compilation of B-sides and unreleased tracks. Since most of these came from an earlier period when ELP was firing on all creative cylinders, it has more good stuff on it, including our feature song. 

“When The Apple Blossoms Bloom In The Windmills Of Your Mind I’ll Be Your Valentine” is a relatively short song for ELP, clocking in at just under 4 minutes, with a title that takes almost as long as that to say. (but if you want long titles, check out the Red Sparowes). It’s an upbeat and relatively unpretentious (by ELP standards) instrumental that may well have started as a jam. You can hear the musical talent of the three musicians and enjoy their playing on this track. It was recorded during the Brain Salad Surgery sessions and was released as the B-side to the “Jerusalem” single. 

Works, Vol. 2 was less commercially successful than its predecessor, which is probably what economists call a lagging indicator. But it also pretty much the end for ELP. Their next album, the contractually required Love Beach, which features the band members posing with mostly open shirts near a beach, appeared to be an attempt to pivot toward more pop-oriented music, much as Yes and Genesis were doing in this period, but without any real conviction. Moreover, the band was breaking apart even more, with Lake and Palmer recording their parts and fleeing the studio, leaving Emerson to finalize the album. It sold OK, but was not well received by critics, even those who still liked the genre. 

Other than a few live releases, a few partial reunions that included other musicians replacing absent core members, and a brief full reunion in the 90s, that was pretty much it for ELP. Emerson died in 2016 of a self-inflicted gunshot, and Lake died of cancer the same year.

BLOOM: BLOOMERS (DINAH MOE HUM/FRANK ZAPPA)

Us crack team of world weary scribes often have a little virtual chat around the introduction of each new theme. For this one, as the (currently*) token Brit, the newsroom wondered whether I would be taking on bloomers under this portmanteau. As someone who never discusses taking off bloomers, again a British "thing", I somehow have found myself delivering a post about voluminous panties. Well, someone has to!

And you know, I discovered how few songs there are on the subject. Indeed the only one that I could instantly think of, is one I can't stand. Perspective. When I were a lad, inky fingered from addiction to the musical press, I read more about music that had opportunity to listen. Thus, I liked a lot of artists long before I ever heard a note they played, purely on the basis of the enthusiastic coverage in New Musical Express and in Melody Maker. Frank Zappa and his Mothers of Invention were one such, as was his acolyte and erstwhile friend, Captain Beefheart. They looked such outrageous reprobates, not just dirty hippies, but filthy dirty hippies (or so my naive mind wandered). This admiration would take a logical step into afternoons misspent in the record shop, cans on, rifling through the records available. By good luck, it was Hot Rats that I first got my ears around, a record I love to this day, and can whistle still every nuanced guitar solo. It's true, I didn't much like the Beefheart vocals in Willie the Pimp, overly mannered and affected. (It's why my vinyl copy has a deep ridge in the grooves, as I tried, clumsily, always to skip them, as the guitar calisthenics that followed were and remain phenomenal. It sort of went downhill after that. OK, forgive me, I bought Live At The Fillmore, snickering at mud shark misdemeanours and other such low brow schoolboy humour; hell, I was a schoolboy. It has remained unlistenable for years since, bar the lift of Flo and Eddie reprising the Turtles' Happy Together, which I used to add to mixtapes. Showing how long, that too, was. (Of course I knew they were the Turtles before they were Flo and Eddie, should anyone be tempted to pass comment. You might anyway, as it has been so long that any of us had a comment that you could wonder if we write merely for ourselves.)

Fast forward, what, a couple of years, and I was sharing a study with someone with an even more over-attuned sense of hip than I. We shared our admiration of Zappa, and one fine day he unleashed his latest purchase, Overnite Sensation, playing it loud, on rotation, for several hours. I got to know the songs well, the lyrical drift imprinting on my brain like a bad smell. What was this dreck, this drivel? Even as I tried to concentrate on the instruments, all I could get was his insufferable baritone, smirking and smutting. In a crash of lightning it came to me, Zappa was shite, a charlatan. And, Hot Rats aside, there he has remained. I still think that a work of genius, so much so, in fact, as when his son, Dweezil,  recently came over and played the album as the modus operandi of a tour and album, I had to go. And, when he had played the album, consummately, I should add, with his band, again I had to go, as he started the second half by cranking straight up into fecking Dina Moe..... Which meant I was home and tucked up in bed, probably before the encores. (Note, the review is not mine, but the first comment is.)

So, having written off both Zappa, largely, and Beefheart, totally, as pants, SWIDT, what more is there for me to do here? Well, how about the only Beefheart song I can abide.

That his most hardcore fans wrote this late commercial phase as a sellout and a sham probably tells you as much about them as it does about me. Me, I blooming' love it.

Bloom here!

(*currently as in still here, but additional limeys still deemed eminently welcome, as indeed all citrus. Wanna write here? As it says in the top right hand corner: "Star Maker Machine is always open to new bloggers joining our ranks. Send an email to learn more: smmmod2000@gmail.com )