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I came across a website where jazz musos list the top five gigs they have experienced.
I wondered what mine might be – it is a hard ask and there’s the danger that one goes for the most esoteric. But why stop at concerts? And of course next week, the lists would vary.
Stand up and use your ears like a man! Charles Ives[i]
Top 5 gigs
Deep Purple, Colston Hall, Bristol, Feb 1971. My first rock concert and they played from their new album ‘Deep Purple in Rock’ – it was so exciting and I was so dumb - some long haird guys in front of us took a tablet each - I thought it was aspirin and the music hadn't even started!
Steve Reich, ‘Clapping Music’ (1973), Keele University c1975. Discovering how simply wonderful music can be.
Siouxie and the Banshees, February 1978, Exeter? College, Oxford – Elvis Costello was sold out so we went along knowing nothing – it was my first experience of the sheer energy of punk. Punks pogo danced into the security guarding the front of the stage (the rugby team) – some fighting, the oak panelling started coming away from the walls along with oil paintings of the genealogy of deans and professors.
Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited, at a club in a black township, Harare, 1990. The music seemed to go on all night (playing from their wonderfully political and traditionally influenced Chamunorwa).
Andreas Scholl singing Vivaldi’s ‘Stabat Mater’ in a cushion concert, Sydney Town Hall. We were in the front row just feet away, on my birthday, 1999.
(In terms of meaty experience, the first ever Womad at Shepton Mallet, Somerset, July 1982 was a weekend packed with wonderful musical experiences).
Top 5 recorded listening experiences
‘Sergeant Peppers’ heard nearly every night in the dormitory, Ditcham Preparatory School, 1968.
The Who’s ‘Tommy’ in ‘The Room’, Douai School – continually played 1970-72.
Led Zeppelin 1 & 2, headbanging and air guitar in Housemaster’s room, Douai School, 1970-72.
Rock Bottom by Robert Wyatt (would only play it when stoned as a student, Keele University), 1974-77.
Charles Ives, ‘The Unanswered Question’ heard by chance on the radio at dawn while on LSD (at Keele) with crows as a chorus, unforgettable, 1974.
(Music is so important to youth, but I wish I had room for some jazz or Bartok, or Shostakovich)
Top 5 environmental sounds
Mum drying me from the bath as a child in a big soft white fluffy towel singing tunes from the shows, South Pacific, West Side Story, c1959.
Sleeping on the northern beach on Skiathos, and being woken by goats and their bells at dawn, 1974.
Sikh singing and music at The Golden Temple, Amritsar, 1979. Sitting in the gallery above, looking down on the musicians, the blue lake surrounding us - a marvellous day.
Waking in the rainforest at Kuranda, north Queensland, a dawn chorus both deafening and unforgettable, 1983.
Iban Long House, Sarawak. A drunken sing-song (Scotch whiskey that soon gave way to rice wine) beginning with virginal girls singing a pre-marriage song then me being asked to respond, being totally useless, doing Neil Young impersonations long into the night, c1993.
[i] Ives is famously supposed to have retorted to a heckler at a concert of Ruggles, or Cowells or his own music, depending on the source. Cage studied briefly with Henry Cowell in New York City, but returned to California to study with Arnold Schoenberg.
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