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 My
Top Ten by Robert Wyatt - Let It Rock - January 1975
MY TOP TEN BY ROBERT WYATT
First of all I have to make
the point that I'm 29. I think everybody's stuck in their
own age group to a certain extent, where their taste is
concerned. People that I know tend to believe that the
music of their adolescence is the most inspiring ever,
and find music from before their own generation a bit
boring, and music after it a bit trivial-childish.
Nearly everybody thinks
that, although they rationalise it in other ways. The
other point is I'm choosing ten records I like, but actually
there are fourteen records that I like, so I've had to
leave out four. The third point is that I've lost most
of these records so I might have details of the titles
wrong.
'Goodbye
Pork Pie Hat' by Charlie Mingus is from an album
called Mingus Ah Um on CBS (I think). This isn't
offically a song - I don't know of any words for it - but
it's very singable like a lot of Mingus tunes. However complicated
his tunes are, when you know them, you can sing along with
them. Also I can almost play it as well as sing it because,
like many of Julie Tippet's songs, it's nearly all on the
black notes on the piano. The Improvisations on this, which
are by Shafi Hadi and Booker Ervin on saxophones, respect
the tune - are extensions of the tune. People like Gil Evans
and Mingus stand out from other jazz writers and arrangers
because they integrate the improvisations of their musicians
into their writing.
I should think it's easier for a musician to do that playing
with Mingus than with most people, simply because Mingus
tunes are so beautiful anyway.
Next bit I've chosen is the 'Piano
Quintet' by Shostakovich. The string quartet
part of this quintet, as far as I remember - as it's some
years since I've heard it - play bowed muted strings; a
very haunting sound. I like the idea of a string quartet
anyway; in fact I enjoy the idea of a string quartet more
than I enjoy a lot of string quartet music. In this case,
perhaps, I liked it because the cello is often used rather
in the way the double bass is used in jazz-i.e. not bowed
but plucked; relatively simple rhythmically, as far as I
remember. It's an incredibly melodic piece, which you must
admit is a great achievement for someone who is, after all,
only a brainwashed communist.
'Friday The Thirteenth' by Thelonious
Monk. The particular version I have in mind is
from the Town Hall Concert he did - the first main Town
Hall Concert - where the arrangements were done by someone
called Hal Overton. I think when Monk dies there'll be a
rash of colour supplement potted biographies, little television
programmes-arts programmes and so on, about him. 'The zany
loony of the bebop world' is what they'll call him, no doubt.
They won't do it till he's dead of course, in case he makes
lots of money, which they probably think would be bad for
him. In my opinion he's one of the greatest writers of tunes
that I've ever heard, within my range of appreciation. The
thing about this particular concert is that Hal Overton's
arrangements are really imaginative. He's taken old recordings
of Monk playing these tunes and written them out, including
the solos Monk played, and orchestrated them for a large
band. So you have the spontaneity of the improvised ideas
strengthened by Hal Overton's inspired orchestration. 'Friday
The Thirteenth' I particularly like because its got a secondary
bass line which is sort of out of synch with the tune itself,
and it sort of tilts the whole tune at a strange angle (If
that sounds like Pseuds' Comer, I'm sorry , but that's what
happens when you try and explain what you like about music).
'Epilogue' by Miroslav Vitous,
from the album Infinite Search. Miroslav Vitous is technically
in a class with Barre Philips, Stanley Clarke and Barry
Guy. But as composer of music for the bass he is my favourite
since Charlie Haden. Maybe his slavic origins have something
to do with his particular melodic inclinations. On Infinite
Search, the double bass - an instrument usually used in
a subservient role - is the group's 'lead' instrument. The
group - Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, Jack de Johnette
and Joe Henderson - support Miroslav's lines with the accuracy,
speed and imagination you associate with a first-class tennis
match. Although the individual musicians are accustomed
to working together in a live context, they are also accustomed
to drowning out double-bassists, on the expedient premise
that the loud instruments lead, the quiet follow. The recording
studio can liberate musicians from this 'hierarchy by volume'.
In this case, the effect of such energetic players pulling
their punches to leave space for Miroslav to set the direction
in each piece creates a fine, translucent texture, like
a spider's web. Tennis matches, spider's webs - the whole
world in a song, what more can you ask?
'Blues For Pablo' by Gil Evans
and Miles Davis. This is from an LP originally
called Miles Davis Plus Nineteen, which was Evans' first
attempt to arrange a complete series of inter-related mini-concertos
for Miles, who plays mainly flugelhorn in a bigband context.
It's harder to play the flugelhorn than the trumpet, which
tends to make even flugelhorn virtuosi like Clark Terry,
Art Farmer and the great Johnny Coles play more carefully
, thoughtfully than many trumpeters. As the title suggests,
there is a certain similarity between the music of southern
Spain and the early blues of the southern States, which
Gil Evans exploits beautifully without using the obvious
link instrument, the guitar. In fact Gil Evans was, as far
as I know, the first 'jazz' arranger to supplement the traditional
'ethnic' dance band instruments with French horns, flutes
and other instruments usually associated with the European
orchestral tradition. Incidentally 'Blues For Pablo', like
the other tracks on this record, is only a couple of minutes
long, which demonstrates Gil Evans' roots as an arranger
for 'pop' dance bands, and makes each individual piece nice
and tight (if I'd been a radio DJ at the time I'd have pushed
them as worthy competition to Sandy Nelson and Duane Eddy
on the instrumental singles market).
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'Sex Machine' by Sly and the
Family Stone. Sometimes, when I've got nothing
else to do, I sit and speculate about Sly Stone's innovations
in the recording studio. He used to be a disc jockey and
as anyone who admires the work of Kenny Everett knows,
DJs have a unique opportunity to muck around with tape
recorders and create a sort of surreal continuity with
their between-record link pieces - to make a musical entity
out of an otherwise more-or-less random series of records.
Also a successful American DJ has to be fast, slick, tasteless
and dramatic - a great education for a musician. One major
difference between Sly Stone's courageous production stunts
and, say Frank Zappa's, was that the basic band recording
always had the immediacy and excitement of a good live
gig. Larry Graham in particular, is a spectacularly useful
bass-player and singer.
'Flying'
by the Beatles. A lot of people didn't like
the Magical Mystery Tour film because it was amateurish
(the cameras didn't dart in and out ot the lead singer's
nostril's like they do in professionally made music films)
or pretentious (they were actually trying to do something
interesting): or something. Belonging as I do to the gullible
hippy generation whose critical faculties are irredemably
blunted by drugs, sex, and bad PA systems, I thought it
was great. The LP of the same name was even better, because
they filled it out with their recent amazing singles.
The most magical and mysterious piece on the record though,
for me, was Flying' which essentially seems to consist
of a twelve-bar blues, except that all the chords are
major, and the singing 'white'. So white actually, that
it sounds like the 'Volga Boat Song', part two.
The effect is um what can I say oh you know the usual
string of misleading, inadequate adjectives, um, how about
'this record is very nice so I like it'. P.S. I though
the Beatles much more daring and inventive than most of
us 'progressive' groups of the late sixties (apart from
the Pink Floyd). Something to do with endless studio time
replacing endless live gigs, I should think.
'Leaning
On A Lampost' by George Formby. Yet another
Daring, Wacky Northerner Apart from being Daring, Wacky,
and Northern, George Formby was a shit-hot ukulele player,
not half so stodgy as his many imitators - he'd have made
a good rhythm guitarist. Apart from which this is a useful
record to play to anybody who still thinks that Bob Dylan
invented good lyrics. While I'm at it I'd like to mention
Frank Crummil. Ahem, "Frank Crummit". Thank
you.
''Hold On I'm Coming' by Sam and
Dave. I vividly remember as if 'twere yesterday
the day I saw the amazing Stax circus come to town. And
best of all I
remember Sam and Dave striding on stage from either side
and meeting in front of Booker T's gang all hammering
away like it was the encore already-very exciting. Once
again how can mere words convey etc. etc.
Goldie does a version of this song which apparently accentuates
the title's erotic possibilities - more power to her,
er, elbow and everything, I say; but nevertheless I doubt
if her version matches the original in terms of pure musical
excitement. On the other hand, there's probably no such
thing as pure musical excitement-apart from The Old Grey
Whistle Test of course.
The way Stax records were recorded made them perfect for
discotheques rather than posh stereo systems etc, on which,
like many good dance records e.g.
west-Indian dance records, they sound comparatively stark
and dry. Conversely, many so-called "well-produced"
records, when pumped out over a busy dance
floor, are about as helpful to dancers as a carpet of
wet cement. I mention this because it's puzzling trying
to work out why things are or have been popular, if you
don't take into account the original context. I'd like
to continue in this vein and discuss the amphibious life
of the sea lion but I know enough about joumalism to know
that you're supposed to stick to the point. So here's
my last record.
'Get
Out Of My Life Woman' by Lee Dorsey/Allen Toussaint.
These two made a series of great singles, and if anybody's
got a spare copy of the LP of this title they made together,
I'll give anything except perhaps my right arm for it.
I gather Lee Dorsey's not working as a singer any more,
runs a garage or something. Never mind we've still got
John Mayall. Toussaint belongs to the great tradition
of musicians
from New Orleans with names thought up by a French Stanley
Unwin. Some of my favourite of these voodoo-swamped names
include Bechet, 'Slow-drag' Pavageau, Alphonse Picou,
Barney Bigard, Joseph 'Zigaboo' on drums on this particular
record but whoever it is ought to be famous. He saved
my bacon, anyway, by
showing me a way to combine the triplet feel of the earlier
swing bands with the more violent military-band-derived
eighth note feel favoured in moderb rock circles. Now
I hastily leave you to ponder the exact meaning, if any
, of the phrase 'modern rock circles'.
La version française
de cet article est parue dans le N° 8 de la revue
Atem.
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