Steady as she goes, Sunny Jim

Here are two interesting quotes from the 16th June 2008 edition of BBC Radio Four’s 1968 Day by Day series. As well as offering insights into the generational shifts of the time, they are also excellent examples of the distinctive rhetorical style of James Callaghan.

The then Home Secretary spoke (using what Anthony Howard once described beautifully as his ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ mode) to The World This Weekend about the ongoing student protests in Britain and abroad. The first quote could (as so often with Callaghan) be described as ‘avuncular’. I’m undecided about the adjective which best describes the second:

“I think some of the student leaders are thoughtful, idealistic people who have something to contribute to society…I think they’re all more self-confident these days than we used to be. They’re more self-confident perhaps because they’ve got greater financial independence than we used to have. But although more self-confident I doubt whether they’re any more mature.”

“I think Mr Tariq Ali is a spoiled, rich playboy who the medium of mass communication has elevated to a distinction that a squalid nuisance doesn’t really command.”

‘Tis Mr. Hendrix’ “quintessential psychedelic track”, my liege

The blogosphere thanks Gladys Hinton for solving the riddle of the BBC’s Medieval Purple Haze. The brilliant arrangement is the work of Tam Nightingale. You can read more about it and download it here.

I’ve been trying to figure out which musical form Jimi’s opus now most closely resembles (such are the kinds of questions that keep me awake at night). My best guess is that it has been turned into something that could almost be called a Rigaudon. It can’t be a Galliard, Gigue or Saltarello because it is in duple (ie, 4/4) time, and it can’t be a Gavotte or Bourree because it starts on the first beat of the bar, not with an anacrusis (i.e., on the up-beat or in the middle of the bar). But then, it could almost be a Tambourin because the Tef is so prominent (I’d never heard of a Tef either, but the BBC link explains). I’m racking my brain for the catch-all Medieval/early-Baroque term for ‘dance’ (form unspecified), in the same way that ayre/air can simply mean ‘tune’. Any musicologists out there?

If all of this has turned you on to shawms and rebecs, here’s a site which will enlighten you further. Bladder Pipe, anyone? I’m off to put my Virginals through a wah-wah.

In the air

I’m pleased that the Broadway opening of Hair at the Biltmore Theatre on 29th April has been noted in Radio 4’s 1968: Day by Day. According to John Tusa, ‘Broadway’s defences crumble[d]‘ as the ‘first Rock Musical’ arrived after playing Off-Broadway for six months. (Not only that, Sir John: Hair was the first theatre piece ever to transfer from Off- to On-Broadway.) However, while it’s great to hear a burst of Nina Simone, the rather clumsy statement ‘at [Hair's] heart: Nina Simone’s classic - Ain’t Got No…I Got Life‘ could give the erroneous impression that she wrote the song. It was Gerome Ragni, James Rado and Galt MacDermot’s ‘classic’ before it was ‘hers’.

Forty years and one day later, Albert Hoffman, the man who invented LSD, died. He was 102. He must have been doing something right.

Forty years and two days later, the city formerly known as ‘Swinging’ London seems inclined, on May Day, to elect as its Mayor a man who does a very convincing impersonation of an imbecile - which, of course, he can’t be because he was ‘educated’ at Eton and Balliol. And it just doesn’t get any better than that, does it? If, forty years on, so many caps can still willingly be doffed at a pig’s bladder on a stick, did 1968 change anything…?

Privacy - and Greatest Hits

The mixed blessings of online life. Due to rather odd patterns of hits I have decided to password-protect the ‘PhD Thesis’ pages which are linked to this blog. If you would like to read them, simply leave a comment on any post and I’ll be happy to email you the password.

Everything else remains open to public searching and viewing. So here are a few links to my current ‘Greatest Hits’ posts. Smashing the Window is, apparently, a popular destination for people looking for variations on these search terms:

‘Hair, London, 1968, Nude Scene’: try here, here, and here, for starters.

‘Grunwick Dispute’ (which I’m very pleased about): click on the category in the right-hand side bar to see all my posts on Grunwick.

‘BBC, Medieval, Purple Haze’: voila. Groovy, forsooth.

And for some time, to my great amusement, I’ve been very popular with people in need of ‘Austin Powers Dialogue’. Click here, love!.