A huge thank you to Paula Cuccurullo for her brilliant and thorough editing.
I am presently in stage 1 – going through correcting the Capital letters and commas. When that is complete I will move on to a reappraisal of the structure, shape and content.
All looking good at the moment. In a week or two I should have it finished!
Rockin’ the Curriculum
In the late 70s my Rock Club went from strength to strength. I wish I could say the same for our finances. We were floundering.
Then I had this brilliant idea.
I would run a History of Rock music course as an evening class. I approached the college adult education and they were keen. I set about it. I had lots of vinyl albums, I’d lived through it and I’d seen most of the major acts. Easy. I was used to talking about it all with my students. I knew my stuff.
What could go wrong?
I could make some money to help tide us over and I would enjoy myself at the same time. It was a win win.
I produced some flyers, spread the word and set about offering my first class. As far as I could tell nobody had ever run such a course in Britain. I was the pioneer.
I needed twelve good people and true. I attracted ten. The college ummed and aahed and decided to let it run. I was to be paid £15 an hour. That meant I would probably, after tax, clear £18. It wasn’t a huge sum but it would make a bit of difference. We were desperate. It was 1978 and we had three children.
It took a lot more preparation than I had envisaged. I had to organise what we covered in the two hours, select the tracks I was going to play, check and research what I was going to say and produce information sheets. It took hours.
My students were all keen. They had areas of expertise. They expected me to know what I was talking about. I was being paid.
That’s where the reality hit home.
My record collection reflected my tastes, which were pretty wide, but there were holes that needed plugging. The weekends were spent trawling around the second-hand record shops and buying up material to plug the gaps. That was fun too. I started to meet a number of interesting people, some of whom I’m friends with until this day.
However, it was not doing anything for our budget. I was spending more on essential albums than I was bringing in.
My course was running well though. It was the only course in the college to actually increase in numbers. By the time I finished it had gone up to sixteen.
My record club at school was also flourishing. I started taking students along to concerts as far afield as Leeds and Sheffield as part of our unofficial extra-curricular activities.
Later, as a Deputy Head, I managed to convince the Head that Rock Music needed to be on the curriculum. I devised a course for the Sixth Form which was ostensibly Skill Development. I delivered a couple of lessons on a Rock genre or musician and they had to analyse my presentation in terms of verbal skills, body language and materials used. Then they formed in small groups and produced presentations on their choices and we analysed their performances and gave pointers on how to improve. They took it very seriously. I remember one group dressed up in Disco gear and produced a dance routine as part of their presentation. It was a hoot. The confidence the students gained was brilliant. It went through the roof and we all had a good time. The students skills are giving presentations also improved which went straight into interview skills. Every school should do it.
Nick Harper was a great favourite with the kids. Not only did I organise trips to see him play but he came into school quite regularly and did a performance for them. He went up into the Sixth Form room and sat around, playing, talking and showing them how it was done. He came into my PSHE lessons and talked to them about song-writing, life on the road and guitar playing. He gave performances in the main hall. Nick was a star in every sense of the word.
I often think about reviving those courses. I did three of them. They lasted two years each. But it was quite a commitment.
I pulled it all together into a book on the history of Rock Music in a mere four volumes. I called it Rock Strata. It was 1500 pages. A Publisher was very interested but wanted me to hone it down to 200 pages. But that’s another story.
I do not think I have the time now that I’ve retired.
But I’m still rockin’ even if the curriculum isn’t.
One of the aims of my blog was to publicise my writing.
I don’t do a very good job of marketing. I enjoy writing. I love writing novels and other books. I hate editing, marketing and merchandising. It takes up good writing time.
However I can see that it seems fairly pointless writing lots of books if nobody reads them. I see it as the difference between sex and masturbation. But that’s just me.
I naively thought that I’d set up a blog, write about whatever took my fancy, attract in fellow-minded individuals, and they would be turned on enough by my interests, turn of phrase and diverse mental machinations to want to purchase all my books. I would then have an audience.
It hasn’t quite worked that way.
The blog takes up a lot of my time. I write as much on the blog as I do for the books.
The followers are relatively few. The book sales are steady and undramatic and the reviews are verbally brilliant but substantially sparse.
As I am a passionate writer who believes that I have something to say and have an interesting style, some skills and produce very readable, quirky, and original material I live in hope.
If you are interested in what I write and would like to purchase a book I would direct you to Amazon (I know) where my books are all sitting comfortably awaiting new homes. They long to be adopted in either paperback or kindle.
Why not, for a small sum, give a home to an Opher book? You’ll learn to love it.
For those in the UK –
PS – If you are one of those beautiful people who have purchased and enjoyed one of my books – please leave a review on Amazon
This was number 38 on my list of essential albums.
Nick Harper – Light at the End of the Kennel
Nick is Roy’s son but he is his own man. As a musician, songwriter and singer he is totally different.
Nick is probably the best acoustic guitarist I have ever seen. This was his first album and it is a beauty. It is sparse and cut back just the way I like it. It shows off Nick’s skill, the beauty of the songs and the great lyrics to perfection.
There is intelligence and humour built into these songs.
Nick is a remarkable performer and deserves to be much more greatly recognised than he is. His day will come and this album will be recognised for the genius that went into producing it.
Just listen to ‘A hundred things’ it sings itself. The message is so positive. That guitar with its bending strings. Or ‘Is this really me?’ with its delicate beauty. It all sounds so effortless. ‘Shadowlands’ is another gem. The voice soars, guitar with those crisp chords, delicate runs, chasing around and augmenting the delicacy. This is a rare choux pastry to savour. Then there is ‘Flying dog’ with its incredible finger picking and optimism; ‘Headless’ – a beautiful song of love, a love that puts everything in perspective. The album ends with ‘Riverside’ a haunting instrumental.
The skill of the playing is breath-taking; the song-writing masterly and the end result as beautiful an album as you would ever wish to listen to.
Unfortunately my books are not available yet through retailers. They can be purchased from Amazon.
Here is the UK link for my page.
If you are in the States you have to go to Amazon US. And similar elsewhere in the world!
So why would you want to?
I would suggest that you might find them enjoyable, interesting, stimulating, a good read, inspiring and different.
Nobody else is quite like me (I’m not sure that is good or bad? – I suppose that depends on your perspective!) – I am Opher Goodwin – a one off!
Have fun! Be nice to each other! Save the world!
I actually had to go and have a count up to see how many books I had published. So far I have 27 up on Amazon in both paperback and kindle. Stanzas and Stances will be my 28th.
As I have the Blues Muse, the Nick Harper and Roy Harper books already written that will put me over thirty published books by next April (All being well).
I get very proud when I think of all my ‘babies’ out there in the world.
So far the sales have been a steady trickle – around twenty to thirty a month – certainly nothing spectacular – but the reviews and responses have been brilliant. Thank you so much for the fabulous support! It gives me heart.
Well the reason I have spent today working on my poetry is because I decided to take a day off from editing my Blues Muse book. I needed to clear my head.
The Blues Muse is sitting in first draft. Half has now been edited. I will return to it tomorrow.
The second reason for focussing on poetry was because I wanted to complete my fourth anthology of poems. It is called Stanzas & Stances and is now finished. I will publish it shortly.
My Roy Harper book – Ruminating on Roy Harper – is presently with Roy who told me he’d write a foreword. We’ll see. I will give it another proof-read and edit and it will be ready to publish.
My book on Nick Harper is complete in draft and requires some lyrics and photos sorted. Then a further edit and rewrite. I wanted to clear the decks so that I could give it my full attention. Hopefully it will be ready for publication next April.
I also want to clear some of the projects out of the way so that I can focus a little on marketing and getting a Literary Agent/Publisher on board. It’s a hard slog.
I am also typing up an early Sci-fi book – Zero to Infinity – from a typed manuscript.
What would help greatly is if each one of my now 4600 followers was to purchase just ten of my books each and then write rave reviews on Amazon my life would be transformed.
You’re all going to do that – right?
Here’s the Amazon page:
After a bit of a marathon session I have finally completed edit 5 for the book. I am amazed by how many little things there are to do.
I have just emailed Nick with the last bits needed to tidy it up and get it finished.
I’m excited by it. It is looking and reading really good. Hopefully we can get the bits tidied (song lyrics, a couple of song explanations, final track listings and the photos) and it can be designed and published.
I think Nick is looking to release it in or around March time. Sounds about right to me.
I hope you’re all as excited by the prospect as I am?
It goes in fits and starts. Just recently I noticed there was a big jump in sales. What sparked that? I wonder.
It is really gratifying to receive all the ‘likes’ on the blog, even nicer to get the ‘comments’ and just brilliant when people have faith enough in what I’m saying to go and purchase one of my books. It makes all the effort seem worthwhile and provides me with a great deal of pleasure.
I thank you all. I hope you enjoy them, find them immensely stimulating and enthralling.
I would be even more wonderful if you did enjoy them enough to leave a review on Amazon. That would make my day!
Well worth a visit.
Here’s what Rob Adams of the Glasgow Herald had to say:
‘One more time, then: if you’ve never seen this guy live, you’re missing out on one of the musical phenomemons of our age.’
‘Do Angels have wings? Nick Harper doesn’t, but he can fly – vocally and instrumentally. The singing, songwriting, guitar-playing, force of nature was granted Herald Angel status for his outstanding performances at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe (2003)’.