I Listen to the Wind That Obliterates My Traces
16 January 2012 // Miscellany //Music
I Listen to the Wind That Obliterates My Traces – Music in Vernacular Photographs 1880-1955.
Reviewed by Ian Preece:
I can definitely remember the point, some time in my late twenties/early thirties, when looking back at old family photos suddenly became really sad. 1970s holidays; rainy days in Lincolnshire; caravans and bungalows on the east coast; a day-long game of beach cricket; the wind so strong your nana is sitting in a deckchair wearing a headscarf – even if sunshine is forecast for tomorrow . . . life is all ahead, as opposed to heading downhill . . . These days I even find myself welling up over other people’s old photographs, never more so than when I came across I Listen to the Wind That Obliterates My Traces – Music in Vernacular Photographs 1880-1955 , a terrific collection of mildewed and torn black & white and sepia photographs, bookended by two cds of crackly 78s. The shellac and the photos have both been picked up at yard sales over the years and put together by Steve Roden, a visual and sound artist from Los Angeles, and it’s all published by the ever-reliable Dust to Digital label. (more…)
Here’s A Health to the Hooden Horse!
by Becky Stewart.
This year I got my first taste of a truly traditional Thanet Christmas – A Hoodening! An ancient pagan custom marking the winter solstice that dates back many centuries and whose definitive meaning is so lost in time no one will ever know it’s true origin. Many theories abound. Even at the turn of the 19th Century this was a dying custom but luckily, local historian Percy Maylam recorded an in depth study of it in his book The Kent Hooden Horse which has recently been republished after 100 years of it being out of print. (more…)
George Green (1793-1841): A Miller From Nottingham and Quantum Physicist.
A tribute from Emma Montagu.
I’ve always loved Windmills. I remember the Thornton windmill, near Blackpool, from when I was 3 or 4. It sat back from the high street unloved, dirty and forgotten about. Fenced off. When we went back last year it had been ‘restored’ by building a shopping centre round it and scrubbing all the charm away from it. (more…)
Jeb’s Jukebox
13 January 2012 // Jeb's Jukebox
The first of a new monthly column from Jeb Loy Nichols. Caught by the River supplied the dime:
Train Back To Mama (Broken Dreams)
Turley Richards
Warner Brothers 1971
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“Man, that’s terrible.”
I was sitting with Donnie Fritts, the great southern soul songwriter, and we were discussing some item of news. He shook his head sadly, thought about it, and added, “that’s human.”
In five words Donnie had summed up what it is to be alive. This song, by Turley Richards, manages the same balancing act. It’s all here: regret, loneliness, estrangement, hope; the impossibility of return. (more…)
The Maggot Train
12 January 2012 // Books //On Water
An extract from Jon Berry’s new book, A Train To Catch:
The Wessex rivers owe much to the railways, and may never have flourished without them. Until the final years of Victoria they were ostensibly salmon rivers, but that changed in the 1890s when two fishermen – the Gomm Brothers – used the new railway network to transport Thames barbel to the Dorset Stour and Hampshire Avon. On later journeys the wooden barrels in the freight carriages contained carp and tench and silver fish, all captured from the waters around Staines by rod and line. The extent of their activities is shrouded in some mystery, but there can be little doubt that these two Londoners, working in league with a local hotelier called Newlyn, did much to transform two of the south’s premier salmon rivers in to equally desirable coarse fisheries. (more…)
From Kenython to Kathmandu
Seth Jackson, son of artist, environmental activist and Caught by the River contributor Kurt Jackson, is in Nepal working with the WWF for four months. He’s keeping a blog which I’ve been enjoying reading so I thought I’d pass it on. The post below dates from the start of the blog, August 2011:
From Kenython to Kathmandu:
I wake to dawn over the Admiral Emirates. A fat orange sun hangs over a sea of sand that’s been tortured; it’s been piled up and dug away, scraped and shaped and squared off. Roads and canals slice through it and fences try to divide it. In every direction diggers and cranes scatter the sand-scape relentlessly trying to tame it, but failing. Sand is everywhere, including the runway.
6:30am and the heat hits me in the face as I step off the plane. Sand and dust obscure the horizon, blending land with sky. Abu Dhabi is a strange sandy place, it dulls everything, including the ugly new buildings. The desert is reclaiming this place. The place looks temporary. (more…)
Bill Ryder-Jones
Bill Ryder-Jones – If… (Domino)
reviewed by Rob St. John.
Context is important to how we hear and appreciate music. Knowing the backstory or intention of a record often spurs you to give more it time, attention, and perhaps the benefit of the doubt. Equally, coming afresh to a record opens up the possibility of being surprised by how the music affects you: uninfluenced by any expectations. If… by former Coral guitarist Bill Ryder-Jones is a funny mix of the two: an immediately beautiful and dense record which has seemingly come out of nowhere, yet, to be fully understood, it demands an adventure through a beguiling post-modern novel. (more…)
Short Cuts
From Mathew Clayton:
Jeff – something I think Caught by the River readers will enjoy. It is new series of programmes on Radio 4 made by my friend Nina Garthwaite that collects together lots of strange bits of found sound and little audio documentaries. It is called called Short Cuts. The first episode includes a great piece by Joe Dunthorne.
The Water Boatman’s Song
10 January 2012 // Miscellany //Radio
Nature: Episode Two – The Water Boatman’s Song
Sound recordist Tom Lawrence captures the underwater sounds of Pollardstown Fen in Ireland. Writer and narrator Paul Evans joins Tom for a journey into the Fen to hear these sounds for himself. The programme was produced by Sarah Blunt for the BBC Natural History department.
First broadcast today on BBC Radio 4 and now on the iPlayer.
Shadows & Reflections – Paul Cowlishaw
10 January 2012 // Shadows & Reflections
In which, as the year comes to its end, our friends and collaborators look back and share their moments:
In the spring of 2011 I celebrated my forty-ninth birthday with a glass of champagne that seemed half full, followed by a second that seemed half empty. There was still a year of youthfulness to enjoy before I would reach my half-centenary, but then my wife pointed out that, earlier that morning, my fiftieth year had already started.
Perhaps my view of that second glass hadn’t been helped by my recent reading matter. I had been dipping in and out of Norman MacCaig’s poetry since the start of the year after the wave of publicity marking the centenary of his birth at the end of 2010. I enjoyed his unique perspective on the everyday, his wry observations, the lack of pretence. In his later poems the themes of mortality and human fragility occur more regularly. Although they’re rarely pessimistic, it’s possibly not the kind of subject matter to be dwelling on in the run-up to a middle-aged birthday.
And the hay falls and the dances end.
And the scythe cuts, no matter who’s holding it. (from A man walking through Clachtoll) (more…)
