Post by bod on Jun 10, 2009 12:54:21 GMT
This might seem an odd post, but bear with me (or don't 
), it is about music, among other things... and I'm feeling strangely moved right now, and felt like sharing with people who might get it...
Having just partly plugged one of the more serious holes in my cd collection with a budget Blind Willie Johnson collection - arrived in the post this morning - I've just heard 'When the War was On' for the first time in what must be rather over twenty years....
All of sudden, I'm back in my best mate of the time's room at his mum's, as we play our way through his (even then long dead) dad's rather fine selection of blues records. It all seems half a lifetime ago, and it almost is, too. One notable summer a crate of his father's home made wine - made about a decade earlier - was unearthed in the tool shed, so we drank that and toasted him well we listened his records.
This all brings to mind things that I haven't thought of in years, like us playing 'When the war was on' or Freddie King's 'Driving Sideways' over and over, putting the needle back to the start of the track just as soon as it finished. Or my feeling seriously awkward and not knowing how to react when Mike's old mum suddenly started talking as if she knew some of these cool people we were listening to - and then being astonished when Mike quietly remarked (out of his mum's earshot), 'It's ok, she's not gone bonkers her and dad used to run a folk and blues club down town, apparently they used to have all sorts of people play there back in the 60s and most of them crashed over! They gave it all up when they discovered I was on the way'.
This was quite a shock to my youthful presuppositions about the relationship between interesting stuff and my elders.... (and a good thing, too)
And then there is the priceless, if embarrassing, moment (which might well be what led up to the above, can't say for sure at this temporal distance), when Dot (Mike's mum) popped in with a tray of teas and asked me if I was enjoying the albums, I said that I was adding what a shame I thought it was was that some kid had scribbled on one of the covers, to be abruptly informed that the artist had been blind and had not had a neat signature.... (to my regret, I cannot recall just whose album it was now, maybe my mate'll remember, either way it'll give me a pretext for ringing an old friend who I've not talked with nearly enough since we started living at opposite ends of the country)
One other reason for mentioning all this here: I figure it is an outside chance, but does anyone here know anything about (or even remember!) the Railway Folk and Blues Club in Portsmouth back when Ed and Dot Wenham used to run it (no later than the mid-sixties, to go from Mike's remark about his then upcoming birth putting an end to that particular party)?
I sometimes forget what an impact they had on my musical taste a good decade and half after they stopped doing the club, let alone what they did for the local scene in the club's heyday... Hats off to 'em (and all relevantly similar others), I say.
Dave
), it is about music, among other things... and I'm feeling strangely moved right now, and felt like sharing with people who might get it... Having just partly plugged one of the more serious holes in my cd collection with a budget Blind Willie Johnson collection - arrived in the post this morning - I've just heard 'When the War was On' for the first time in what must be rather over twenty years....
All of sudden, I'm back in my best mate of the time's room at his mum's, as we play our way through his (even then long dead) dad's rather fine selection of blues records. It all seems half a lifetime ago, and it almost is, too. One notable summer a crate of his father's home made wine - made about a decade earlier - was unearthed in the tool shed, so we drank that and toasted him well we listened his records.
This all brings to mind things that I haven't thought of in years, like us playing 'When the war was on' or Freddie King's 'Driving Sideways' over and over, putting the needle back to the start of the track just as soon as it finished. Or my feeling seriously awkward and not knowing how to react when Mike's old mum suddenly started talking as if she knew some of these cool people we were listening to - and then being astonished when Mike quietly remarked (out of his mum's earshot), 'It's ok, she's not gone bonkers her and dad used to run a folk and blues club down town, apparently they used to have all sorts of people play there back in the 60s and most of them crashed over! They gave it all up when they discovered I was on the way'.
This was quite a shock to my youthful presuppositions about the relationship between interesting stuff and my elders.... (and a good thing, too)
And then there is the priceless, if embarrassing, moment (which might well be what led up to the above, can't say for sure at this temporal distance), when Dot (Mike's mum) popped in with a tray of teas and asked me if I was enjoying the albums, I said that I was adding what a shame I thought it was was that some kid had scribbled on one of the covers, to be abruptly informed that the artist had been blind and had not had a neat signature.... (to my regret, I cannot recall just whose album it was now, maybe my mate'll remember, either way it'll give me a pretext for ringing an old friend who I've not talked with nearly enough since we started living at opposite ends of the country)
One other reason for mentioning all this here: I figure it is an outside chance, but does anyone here know anything about (or even remember!) the Railway Folk and Blues Club in Portsmouth back when Ed and Dot Wenham used to run it (no later than the mid-sixties, to go from Mike's remark about his then upcoming birth putting an end to that particular party)?
I sometimes forget what an impact they had on my musical taste a good decade and half after they stopped doing the club, let alone what they did for the local scene in the club's heyday... Hats off to 'em (and all relevantly similar others), I say.
Dave
