Pete Brown – the forgotten hero of Cream.

Posted on by Opher

Pete Brown

A band is only as good as the material it plays. If the songs are poor quality then no matter how good they are the band will be mediocre.

Cream were exceptional.

Not only did they bring together three outstanding musicians in Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker but they operated with a clear philosophy. They knew the sound they wanted to capture and they did. Together they produced ground-breaking music that fired up the likes of Hendrix and raised the bar. None of them ever got close to the level they were at when they were together. Their brand of power-blues with Jazz improvisations and extended solos was unique at the time and startlingly brilliant. It has never been bettered. They were the ultimate power trio.

What is not so well documented or commented on is that it was Pete Brown who brought the power of his words to bear to create masterpieces such as Politician and Sunshine of Your Love. The collaboration between the Beat inspired poetry of Pete Brown and the musicianship of Jack Bruce created the backbone of Cream’s original work.

Pete’s lyrics were flowing with imagery and poetic nuance. They added that piquancy that took them that extra yard.

Pete needs to be lavished with praise for his contribution.

The 16 Top American/Canadian Singer/Songwriters of all time.

Posted on by Opher

Well once again I was focussing on the quality of the lyrics. I like my lyrics poetic and with a social impact. I like them to say something, communicate something and be full of passion. That made it easier.

  1. Bob Dylan – That was easy – the greatest song-writer ever. The number of brilliant songs he has produced dwarfs everyone else. Nobody else has said as much so well. There has also been a fair bit of crap though. But with To Ramona, It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding’, Subterranean Homesick Blues, Masters of War, Blowing in the Wing, Ballad of Hollis Brown, Only a Pawn in Their Game, Chimes of Freedom, All Along the Watchtower, Gates of Eden, Most Likely You go Your Way I’ll Go Mine, Tombstone Blues, Positively Fourth Street, Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowland, and thousands more, he raised the consciousness of my generation, high-lighted civil rights, anti-war and the social significance of poetry. No one else, apart from Roy Harper, comes near.
  2. Joni Mitchell – Simply the best female songwriter of all time. Her musicianship and song-writing skills shine. My favourites are Little Green, Blue, Woodstock, Sex Kills, and Big Yellow Taxi.
  3. Woody Guthrie – The father of the topical protest song. A man of integrity who said it as it was, eloquently, in everyday speech. He roamed America and stood up for what is right and wrote some of the best songs ever heard – Vigilante Man, Tom Joad, Rolling Colombia, This Land is Your Land (with the other verses), Dust Pneumonia Blues, Hard Travellin, Pastures of Plenty and Do Re Mi.
  4. Bruce Springsteen – When I heard Independence Day and the River I knew that Bruce had reached that level. Born in the USA confirmed it and 57 Channels, Murder Incorporated, Badlands, Adam Raised a Cain and Promised Land were great but his later work hasn’t always lived up to the same standard.
  5. Leonard Cohen – Leonard is a poet and wordsmith who has produced a huge body of quality work. Right from his first album where he put his poetry to music up until the present day the quality shines – Hallelujah, Bird on a Wire, Suzanne, Famous Blue Raincoat, The Future, First We Take Manhattan, Everybody Knows, I’m Your Man, The Teacher, Who by Fire?, So Long Marianne, Tower of Song and Hey That’s No Way To Say Goodbye. I love his humour and the fact that no subjects are off limits.
  6. Jimi Hendrix – The guitar phenomenon was also a brilliant song writer. You only have to look at Little Wing, The Wind Cries Mary, One Rainy Wish, Bold as Love, Voodoo Chile, Purple Haze and Spanish Castle Magic.
  7. Willie Dixon – The brains in song writing behind the Chess Label’s fifties Blues. He wrote the songs for Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley, Sonny Boy Williamson and Muddy Waters to regale us with. Spoonful, Backdoor Man, You Can’t Judge a Book, Built for Comfort, Diddy Wah Diddy, Spoonful, Do the Do, Bring it on Home, I Just Wanna Make Love to You, I’m Ready, Little Red Rooster, Pretty Thing, Wang Dang Doodle, My Babe, Shake for Me, I’m a Natural Born Lover, I Got My Brand on You, and hundreds more. He was prolific, consistent and largely unnoticed – a genius. Without him the Stones, Pretty Things and British Blues Boom might not have happened. He wrote half the stuff they copied.
  8. Jim Morrison – The Doors were phenomenal. Jim’s poetry took them to another level. Unknown Soldier, Five to One, The End, Celebration of the Lizard, Soft Parade, Love me Two Times, Break on Through, When the Music’s Over and all the rest propelled them to the heights. Of Course the musicianship of Manzarek, Densmore and Krieger had something to do with it. But those songs were epic.
  9. Don Van Vliet – Captain Beefheart – there has never been a poet like him. He did pictures and sounds with words that nobody else has managed. That music has not been copied or rivalled. Those lyrics are unparalleled. Abba Zabba, Electricity, Big Eyed Beans From Venus, Moonlight on Vermont, Floppy Boot Stomp, Smithsonian Institute Blues, Spotlight Kid, Clear Spot, and loads more – sheer genius.
  10. Buffy St Marie – Buffy brought a different perspective to music – her Native American Indian Culture. She put the voice of the American Native Indians into mainstream with My Country It is of Thy People, Soldier Blue, Universal Soldier and Now That the Buffalo’s Gone. And she’s still doing it. Her new album is great.
  11. Robert Johnson – Only a young man when poisoned to death. Robert only had a few recording sessions in a hotel room to get down some of his music. It was brilliant. Sweet Home Chicago, Crossroads, Come on in My Kitchen, Terraplane Blues, Hellhound on my trail, Love in Vain and Ramblin’ On My Mind. One wonders what other gems died in that brain of his along with him on that day.
  12. Phil Ochs – Phil Ochs was the best protest singer apart from Bob Dylan. He produced a whole series of brilliant songs – Power & the Glory, Links on the Chain, Changes, Here’s To the State of Mississippi, Santo Domingo, There But for Fortune, I Ain’t Marching Anymore, Crucifixion, When I’m Gone and I’m Gonna Say it now.
  13. Arthur Lee – Love didn’t produce one of the best albums ever by chance. It was the quality of the songs that did it and Authur Lee was the major force behind that. Alone Again Or, Seven and Seven is, Everybody’s got to Live, You Set the Scene, and Stephanie Knows were brilliant.
  14. Hank Williams – Hank took Country to a new level. His song writing was brilliant – Move it on Over, Lost Highway, You Win Again, Lonesome Whistle Blow. Brilliance.
  15. Tom Waits – I love Tom with his gravelly voice, drunk persona and Beat sensibilities – Romeo is Bleeding, Tom Trauberts Blues, Rain Dogs, Cold Cold Ground, Downtown Train, Heart of Saturday Night, Gunstreet Girl, Clap Hands and Heart Attack and Vine – he was the link to the Beats.
  16. Frank Zappa – The Mothers of Invention were ground -breaking – Help I’m A Rock, What’s the Ugliest Part of Your Body, Cosmik Debris, Titties and Beer. It’s endless.

I’m sure you all agree with my choices. Maybe you’d like to add one or two?

Poetry – Magnetic Rain points – a poem for the Beat Generation.

Posted on by Opher

I wrote this as a paean to Allen Ginsberg and his marvellous Howl. It was after a night spent outside under the stars. It always seemed to me that you connect to the cosmos when exposed to the entire panoply of stars. The sky is full.

Inside your home the ceiling gets in the way of the universe! I want to be connected!

Magnetic Rain Points

We are the damned

Risking sanity.

Whose tears roll down the street like magnetic rain

Pointing to the centre of oblivion

Joining with the unknown.

Free.

No terraced employment

With endless ceilings

To mask the shooting stars

That bring luck to eternity.

Giggling and starving

In cold tenement fields

Seeking illumination in daylight.

Who see the pointless farce of religion

And lie of society

Arraigned against the possibility of meaning.

Who have no fear of fun;

For fun is not evil.

Mindlessness is evil

As destruction and bigotry are evil.

For fun can be holy.

As compassion comes from understanding.

Who always avoid the words,

And read between and around the words,

Cry tears for the oppressed

And construct poems to wake us all up;

Who seek holy fun and experience.

Whose security is madness.

Who sacrifice comfort and sanctuary

For wonder, awe

And danger.

Who want to live!

 

Opher 2.5.01

Howl – Allen Ginsberg and the birth of the Beat Generation!

Posted on by Opher

allen_ginsberg_2012_03_20 Allen Ginsberg single-handedly rescued poetry for me.  I had it destroyed for me in Primary School. The teacher’s view of poetry was to get us (nine and ten year olds) to learn a poem by rote each week. We had the delights of Tennyson and Wordsworth to memorise. We would have to stand in turn and recite a verse on request. She would point to you and you would have to comply. If you did not know it then you had to miss PE (Physical Exercise), which we all loved, to stay in and learn it. I spent a number of afternoons peering longingly at the rest of the class outside. It instilled hatred. There was no attempt to look at meaning or appreciation. Poetry was merely a task, a pain, a punishment. In Secondary School all I can remember is the class reciting ‘The Jumblies’. Great though it was it did not fill me with joy. It was only when I read Howl that I really felt I had found something that related to me personally. I felt like that outsider stumbling through the starry night looking for some kindred spirits and a real connection to the universe. I was only fifteen and I felt like an outsider in this conforming society. I wanted reality. I craved reality. I wanted honesty, connection and passion. I hadn’t found it anywhere else. Ginsberg led me to Kerouac and I was away. The Beat Generation rekindled a love of poetry. They were honest!

Howl

By Allen Ginsberg 1926–1997 Allen Ginsberg

For Carl Solomon

I
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,
incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,
a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark’s bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts,
who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,
who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses’ rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung-over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open to a room full of steam-heat and opium,
who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blur floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts,
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,
who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury,
who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy,
and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia,
who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,
returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East,
Pilgrim State’s Rockland’s and Greystone’s foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,
with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination—
ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time—
and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipsis catalogue a variable measure and the vibrating plane,
who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death,
and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio
with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.
II
What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smoke-stacks and antennae crown the cities!
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!
Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!
Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky!
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years’ animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!
III
Carl Solomon! I’m with you in Rockland
   where you’re madder than I am
I’m with you in Rockland
   where you must feel very strange
I’m with you in Rockland
   where you imitate the shade of my mother
I’m with you in Rockland
   where you’ve murdered your twelve secretaries
I’m with you in Rockland
   where you laugh at this invisible humor
I’m with you in Rockland
   where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter
I’m with you in Rockland
   where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio
I’m with you in Rockland
   where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses
I’m with you in Rockland
   where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
I’m with you in Rockland
   where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the harpies of the Bronx
I’m with you in Rockland
   where you scream in a straightjacket that you’re losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss
I’m with you in Rockland
   where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse
I’m with you in Rockland
   where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void
I’m with you in Rockland
   where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha
I’m with you in Rockland
   where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tomb
I’m with you in Rockland
   where there are twentyfive thousand mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale
I’m with you in Rockland
   where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won’t let us sleep
I’m with you in Rockland
   where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls’ airplanes roaring over the roof they’ve come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself    imaginary walls collapse    O skinny legions run outside    O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here    O victory forget your underwear we’re free
I’m with you in Rockland
   in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night
San Francisco, 1955—1956
For Carl Solomon

Roy Harper – Opher’s World pays tribute to a genius.

Posted on by Opher

Back in the early days I remember the young Roy Harper as a blond haired hipster on speed. The eyes sparkled with inner electricity, the mind sparked and the tongue spewed and endless stream of ideas. The world was too hot. He leapt from one thought to the next to stop from getting burnt.

The guitar in his hands was a weapon and he sprayed it in all directions. The words were missiles that penetrated the bastions of thought. Civilisation was his target and he hit it again and again.

Roy was never an idealist. He was more of an anarchic nihilist who yearned to be living in a different place at a different time. He felt as if he were stranded on the polluted beach of some evil empire that he wanted no part of. He was surrounded with things that he despised and used his words to shoot them down.

In Roy’s mind he was an American Indian, free and untrammelled by the laws of the land, free to wander and experience the majesty of the universe up close.

When I first met him he had returned from his busking days round Europe where he’d hitched his way round. He’d done his time as a Jazz poet in the Beatnik backwater of Britain and was beginning to meld his invective poetry to music.

It did not take long to create a new type of song. This was not a Dylan inspired music of social importance in the Woody Guthrie tradition. Roy’s songs came straight out of the vagaries of his immense intellect, tinged with Kerouac and Jazz. The music was complex and a thousand miles away from the standard Folk of the British Folk Revival, interspersed with chords picked up from Miles and Teagarden with stream of consciousness from Jack. Roy was not singing about social injustice. His rhetoric was vitriolic and aimed at the whole direction our society was heading, the maniacs who were propelling us forward in search of wealth and power, the motives of greed and selfishness and the overarching control.

That wayward hipster was not for controlling. He was out of control. The sky was his limit. His foot was to the floor and it was flat out into space.

Nobody has ever produced songs like the mighty McGoohan’s Blues – a twenty minute epic of venom and fury and hit you between the eyes with the force of a hurricane. Yet the songs weren’t sufficient. Every concert was full of sharp wpords, rambling explanations, furious anecdotes delivered with tinkling laughs, brutal honesty and complete transparency. There were no filters. Roy unfurled the landscapes in his head for all to see. A concert was no show-biz performance; it was a sharing with friends, an event that engaged the cerebral cortex as well as the heart and ears. Roy was after total communication, connection and empathetic response. He shook his audience and treated the stage as his front room. When you went to a Harper gig you had to prepare for the unexpected

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Because of the poetic prowess and fiery personality the musical innovation is sometimes not fully recognised. Roy has a well deserved reputation as a zany lunatic that often masks the seriousness and sophistication of his compositions. They have depth, complexity and originality. The music is extraordinary. The songs developed into a range and profundity that few came close. When Harvest signed him he had the opportunity and musicianship to take it all to another level. He was also attracting in the cream of British Rock talent to grace his grooves. McGoohan’s Blues was followed with I Hate the Whiteman, Tom Tiddler’s Ground, How Does it Feel, Me and My Woman, One Man Rock and Roll Band, Hors D’Oeuvres, The Game, The Lord’s Prayer and One of Those Days in England in rapid succession. These mammoth epics were interspersed with the most glorious love songs that have ever graced an artist’s repertoire. Gems like Another Day, South Africa, Hallucinating Light, When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease and Francesca.

If he hadn’t have been so cantankerous and uncompromising he would have been enormous. But he regarded the music business as an extension of the wider society he despised and hence berated them at every opportunity, including live radio performances.

Roy went his own way. He has always been his own man. Nothing will ever change that. Nailing him down is like trying to catch a tornado in a net.

Out of his mad journey he had strewn a series of musical gems in his wake. We can only put this melodic debris in our music systems and wonder at the genius that is Roy Harper. It is extraordinary. It works on so many levels – from the complexity of the poetry to the majesty of the music, from the beauty of the melody to the snarling fury of the commentary. Roy has provided us with a number of albums that rate up there with the best anyone has ever produced.

Thank you Roy. Your music and poetry have been a great influence and consoling presence through my life. I never tire of thrilling to the soaring heights you have created. You inspired me and amazed me.

Woody Guthrie – Opher’s World pays tribute to a genius!

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Woody Guthrie was the first singer/songwriter to use music as a vehicle for his social and political stances. He set out to use his music to bring about progressive change and in so doing inspired generations of other singers.

Woody opened up a world of possibility, a lodestone of gems to be mined by all who came after.

Whenever there were singers harnessing poetic honesty with heartfelt convictions one could follow a line that harked back to Woody.

Woody stood for equality and justice and put his body where his mouth was. He lived the life, made the friends, stood on the picket lines and fought for what he believed. He put his heart and soul into supporting the unions, racial harmony and social justice. In so doing he set himself against the capitalist system that produce the small number of winners and large bulk of losers. He was for the oppressed, downtrodden, destitute and disenfranchised.

Woody Guthrie

The hundreds of songs that Woody wrote in the 1940s and 1950s still echo down the decades with undiminished power to inspire.

Without Woody there would have been no Dylan and my mind would have been all the poorer.

Where are the people of Woody’s stature, passion and talent to stand up against the monolithic establishment that is presently destroying the planet?

It is not beyond the wit of man to create a fair system whereby we do not have the terrible deprivation in the third world, the poverty, disease and pollution. We have the Technology, Science and Economic power to create a world of greater equality without such overpopulation, environmental destruction and ravaging of wild-life.

If Woody was alive today his songs would be full of the greed and selfishness that is leading to our demise. He would not have sat quietly by while the bankers, businessmen and politicians sell our future for a quick buck. He would have been singing it from the rooftops!

Help produce a positive zeitgeist! Build on Woody’s legacy and let’s start putting it right!

Rock Music – What makes a great song, band or performer?

Posted on by Opher

What is quite clear is that it is not all about talent or ability. Some of the best Rock songs have been very basic, not requiring any great virtuosity, such as ‘Louie Louie’ by the Kingsmen.
Some artists, like Joe Satriani, are so incredibly talented and so technically proficient on the guitar that you can marvel at their skill in much the same way as you would any classical musician yet I find them uninspiring.
The best Rock guitarist I have ever seen (and I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Jimmy Page, Peter Green, Keith Cross, Pete Townsend, Eric Clapton, Rory Gallagher, Paul Kossof, Dave Gilmour and Jack White up close) without a doubt is Jimi Hendrix. Nobody come close. The sounds and melody that Jimi could squeeze out of a guitar were extraordinary. He could make it talk with his elbow better than most good guitarists could with their hands. Jimi would weave in feedback, distortion and effects to create new complex melody that was never boring.
Jimi was the consummate Rock guitarist. His limitations were the extent of his imagination. He could conjure up any sound, feeling or rhythm.
An important element of Rock music is the showmanship and ability to create excitement through the power of performance. When a band like Cream, Free, early Pink Floyd, Stiff Little Fingers, Hendrix, Lee Scratch Perry, The Who, Elvis Costello, Led Zeppelin or White Stripes let rip there was a pulse of energy that surged through the audience and created a synergy of excitement.
Some bands did not rely so much on power as the creation of a mesmerising sound that melted you away to get lost in its complexity and melody such as Traffic, Neil Young and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
Sometimes that power of performance is melded with complexity to create something powerful and mesmeric. The best gigs I have ever experienced were Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band and Jimi Hendrix. Both of them merged the power and drive with complexity and skill into an unbeatable magic.
For me the words have always been an important element. When a truly gifted poet, such as Roy Harper, Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, entwine their poetry to music it creates something far greater than the parts. It provides another dimension that engages the intellect as well. That propels the music to greater heights that stimulates the cerebral cortex in a more consuming, and satisfying manner.
I like my Rock having content that makes me think, a social or political thread, a spiritual element, a comment or purpose.
The best acoustic guitarist I have ever seen, from a large field including Davey Graham, Leo Kottke, Bert Jansch, John Fahey, Stefan Grossman and John Renbourn, is undoubtedly Nick Harper. He crafts his incredible guitar skills to varied brilliant songs full of imagery, meaning and love.
Then there are the giants like the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Love who were simply majestic. Or the sheer exuberance of the early Blues of Robert Johnson, Son House, Elmore James, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters and Rock ‘n’ Rollers such as Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis.
I can take my Rock basic and raw or intellectual and profound, depending on my mood, but I like it real, not over-sanitised by the record labels, not reduced to satisfy the lowest common denominator, not processed for mass public consumption, not devoid of content for fear of offending. I want my Rock to challenge. It is not the music of the establishment. It is always the stuff of rebellion. As soon as it is adopted, clichéd or restricted it is dead!

Find out what I think the most essential 537 albums are in my book available on Amazon:

Or read about the story of my life in music:

Or the times when Rock was at its peak in the counter-culture of the sixties:

Rock music has been the backdrop to my life. It has informed my views and philosophy. I am who I am because of it!

Stiff Little Fingers – Brilliant gig at Welly Hull – Photos

Posted on by Opher

Stiff Little Fingers with the original line-up, played a storming set at the Welly in Hull. The power and intensity of their songs was spot on.
The lyrics are the most powerful of any punk band!!
The guys were great – really friendly!!
Loved it! They haven’t lost anything in all those years!
Here’s a few photos:-IMG_9372

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Some more in Blog!!

James Varda – Chance and Time – brilliant album of lyrical and musical beauty in the face of great adversity

Posted on by Opher

I haven’t stopped playing this album. It is so intimate and deeply honest. This feels like a creative man baring his soul as he tries to put his whole life and illness into some positive perspective. It is an artistic achievement that is immense but it is the sheer honesty and integrity that cuts into you. I’ve never heard anything like it. It is a cathartic eulogy for life. Everything is chance yet out of that random element comes beauty.
James has poured every last drop of his talents into this. It has essence about it.
I’ve never heard a tumour being compared to the big bang. All life pours out of it. The world, born of chance, is a chance event producing a paroxysm of incredible wonder.
It sounds, from the colour of this album that James has terminal cancer and this is his response. If that is the case I hope that something wonderful happens and James recovers. It happens. Where there is life there is hope. If that is not to be then this album is great addition to the lexicon of human accomplishment. It captures so many emotions that usually go unspoken and probably unfelt. James articulates them perfectly. This is a wonderful life we are living. The natural world is so incredible. This is an apt legacy.
I feel I am sharing something so personal we rarely get the opportunity.
This is an album about death but it is also a celebration of life and love. We are here for such a short time. It is our duty to live and love and delight in the glory around us in the fleeting moments we are here.
I don’t know what James’ partner feels about this outpouring. The love is raw.
Life should be about love not hatred and violence …….. if only!
There is nothing we can do in the face of chance and time but stand up to it and appreciate the sheer scope of beauty we are living amidst.
We live with what we have, without hope, and drink in the awe and majesty of the moment. There is nothing we can do but appreciate the world around us.
We have a duty to preserve this jewel of a planet and pass it on.
Thank you James. We will pass it on. There is something. We will pass it on……….

Graham Beck – Photos from Arthur Brown Concert in Hessle

Posted on by Opher

Graham gave a great performance!! Very quirky and zany!! Loved it!! Here’s a few photos!!IMG_7321

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Hope you enjoy him as much as I do.