On one of the hand-not-quite-ful times that I was interviewed in connection with The Book, we got to talking about how objects like CDs and records can be receptacles for memory. It's an idea that I pretty much stole from Alistair Fitchett. My interviewer asked what's left to hold the memories in the age of the digital download. I'm still thinking about that. Meanwhile, I do sometime buy CDs specifically to hold memories, and Love or Infatuation is a case in point.
It was a Friday night, 30 June 2006. Lucy and I were at the end of the first week of a holiday down in Cornwall, and the days had been getting better and better. We'd visited gardens at Carwinion, Trelissick and Heligan. We'd been out on the water on Carrick Roads in an open-top ferry and a Picarooner. We even sunbathed on the beaches at Pentewan and Kynance Cove. We also passed by Falmouth Arts Centre, and I spotted a poster for a performance by Mike and Kate Westbrook (Kate also had a solo show of her paintings in the gallery). It usually happens that the show is the day after the end of our holiday, but this time we could actually go! We even looked into the possibility of arriving by the little fut-fut ferry from Flushing, but the last boat home was too early for this to be possible. I'd been wanting to see the Westbrooks for years (at least since I got Glad Day), yet, though they'd played within a mile of where we lived in London, I missed it because I was too busy being busy. Now, at last, I had no excuse not to see them.
It was a very gentle and civilised evening. Lucy and I seemed to be the youngest people in the room by a decade or two, and also the only people who weren't either on the programme committee that had booked Kate and Mike or close friends of the committee. It was the kind of evening where you could just approach Kate Westbrook in the interval and say, "Look, I hope I'm not speaking out of turn here, and maybe you don't do requests, but… well, if you did, is there any chance you might do one of your William Blake settings?"
It was quite an interval. I was a little annoyed that the dear old programme committee had decided to take us all down to the cinema and show us a film between the two sets. What do we want to do that for — it just means less live music?! But what a film! Oh, wise programme committee! Jazz on a Summer's Day — have you seen it? — apparently one of Scorcese's influences when he made The Last Waltz, but it's much, much better than that film. My favourite live music documentary by a country mile. So many good bits, on and off stage, but the sequence with the Chico Hamilton quintet, when the camera just stays with one musician for several minutes, stays with me most strongly. And then it finishes with Mahalia Jackson taking everyone's breath away.
Kate W sighed at the prospect of having to follow Mahalia, but then introduced a duo performance of Blake's London. Thank you, thank you. The rest of the show revolved around the songs on this CD (which I bought on the night). I'd never heard of Friedrich Hollaender. He's the kind of person who would crop up on Russell Davies' fantastic radio programme, backed up with information and anecdote. The one song everyone knows of his, though, is Falling in Love Again. Is this the first song to have been recorded by four different artists on Music Arcades (Bryan Ferry, Marlene Dietrich, William Burroughs)? I've a feeling I've asked the same question of another, but can't remember which. Anyway, Kate Westbrook's interpretation is by some distance the most challenging. You could say that some of the mannerisms over-egg the pudding a little, undermining the threat and just sounding a bit daft, but you could accuse Patty Waters of the same, and she still gets to be cited as a touchstone for Directing Hand as well as an influence for Yoko Ono, Patti Smith and Diamanda Galás. KW might have retained some of that cult edge had she disappeared for a few decades, not had a higher-profile husband, and not been so approachable at venues like the Falmouth Arts Centre.
So those are some of the memories this CD holds for me, along with the ticket stub (£12; Row C, Seat 8, though I'm pretty sure seats were unallocated on the night). The holiday continued well for a few days after that, taking in the 200th anniversary celebration of Mylor Harbour and a solo walk along the Undercliff all the way from Lyme to Axmouth and back, setting off just after 8am and getting back for a late lunch. We came back to earth with a bump, however — literally at first, when the car came off the road on the way back, and then again on our return to London when I got the publisher's feedback on the draft of the first half of The Book.
Details of this album on the Westbrooks' website Wikipedia entry for this album Rate Your Music entry for this album |
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