Iain Cameron's Diary
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2002-09-11 - 6:57 a.m.

I went to Birmingham for a board meeting. The board was quite stroppy but not in my direction, thank goodness. Birmingham was a lot better than the DTI has been in the last few weeks. Anyway � only another four weeks in DTI � maybe this will accelerate my activity rate. Am I really going to Frankfurt next week?

I looked around Kenilworth and Leamington a bit more as a prelude to finding somewhere to live. Kenilworth has a northern area which includes a fabulous ruined castle and some meadows where there used to be a monastery. A one bedroom flat in the center of Leamington in a period terrace has a rent of �450 per month. I am trying to think through some an argument which runs � for that money you could almost stay for 16 � 17 nights in a B&B somewhere . What are the activities that I would most miss if I was staying in a B&B? So that�s the way to look at the kind of flat I want.

The drive from Leamington to Guildford takes about two hours which is quite tolerable.

Peter Chatterton mailed � about meeting up with Trish Sibbons � the other partner in the website � about meeting the Secretary of the Commonwealth Partnership for technology Management who he knows well � and also about how the Forum is coming along on www.kwase-kwaza.org. I had asked the question about reactions to John Cole�s piece on Sandy Denny. Peter posted saying that he had lost sight of her after Fairports and when he put her name into the search engine he was amazed at how much information was available.

The volumes seem to be going up thanks to the CPTM mailing I would guess.

I put another post onto the Forum about Howard Skempton - his links with Cornelius Cardew and on from CC to Andy Powell and Jon Cole.

Something about the flow of influence between Cage, Stockhausen and Lamont Young around 1960 � in LmY�s view:

DUCKWORTH: The reason I'm curious about Darmstadt is that it seems that immediately after you came back your work made a radical change in the direction of Cage, which I assume would be away from Stockhausen.

YOUNG: It would, except that Stockhausen was so influenced by Cage, and was so much talking about Cage, that it was more he supported that approach and, if anything, pushed me in that direction.

DUCKWORTH: Did your piece Vision come directly out of your Darmstadt experiences?

YOUNG: Yes, Vision was directly out of Darmstadt. It's absolutely, you could say, my assimilation of Darmstadt.

DUCKWORTH: It only has eleven sounds in it, though. How is that an assimilation of Darmstadt?

YOUNG: Well, that's "La Monte Young"; the whole approach to the time framework is "La Monte Young." Eleven sounds in thirteen minutes, and they each have their independent entry and exit, and they're laid out in a contrapuntal texture. It's very much the same type of time structure as the Trio for Strings. But the sound sources, the radical way to play stringed instruments, the various glissandi, and the idea of picking the sounds and the durations out of a hat and tying them together randomly -- that's where Cage comes in, so that it's a combination of the two approaches at that point. Poem for Chairs, Tables, Benches, Etc. gets more in my direction because of the static nature of all these more similar sounds.

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There�s a piece I keep forgetting about � which ended up on the CD to Gilbert. Its called �One Point Two� which is a way of doing the interval of a minor third in whole numbers. In fact it is slightly high on the �well-tempered� interval. The piece uses a similar kind of sound programming to Fifths � but was done a few weeks earlier. But unlike Fifths it has relatively conventional melodic line on the flute. Its one of a series of minimalist influenced flute pieces starting with Baroksambience which is on Serious Music � Horn Under Water on Plundafonix is another. Anyway its on the CD just in case it provokes Gilbert.

I have been thinking a bit more of being stuck in a �preservationist� mentality. One point is that improvsing in a be-bop style is a goal which many people set themselves because its not a competence which most people acquire in a couple of weeks � its more like a craft. I think my �preservationist� phase was probably when I was playing with Hullabaloo, the Sidhana band. I have been trying to track down material about the sidhana in Barcelona without very much success � perhaps the genre really is under threat.

I have just re-read the last bit of yesterday's entry about Conrad's three principles and I was thinking about Steve's vision. Horn kind of collided with Jon Cole's band The White Unicorn and the result was called Wild Oats. Maybe it became the premier student band after a year - or maybe Henry Cow was always that band.

When Paul Bell - Wild Oats drummer - delivered a valedictory speech about Steve at London University he had some really funny things to say about how Steve launched the band. Steve and I played saxes and flutes - sometimes we would play soprano saxes together which is a really hairy sound. Jon played his Gibson 335 into a Marshall 50watt plexi halfstack. The other member was Richard Jones from Climax Chicago Blues Band who had an EB3 - so from a kit point of view it was very UnFender.

On the one hand the centre of gravity of the band was modal improvisation - where Coltrane meets Cream. But everyone wrote - mostly to a high standard - especially Richard who was post Macca in his approach. Jon had a strong pop impetus. Paul Wheeler was half in and half out the band and I think Steve wrote stuff with Nick Totton. I didnt get much of my stuff on the agenda - less than I did with Tintagel in fact. In fact the only song from something like that era which has fought its way through is Stanzas for Music which is on Serious Music - I think I started on the chords for that just as the band was falling apart.

I can't think of any recordings of that band. I have a good recording of the White Hart band - done on a Uher. I had been back for a refresher with Owen Bryce, my original jazz teacher, at the Earnley Heritage which is right at the tip of Selsey Bill. I met a woman who was training to be a radio journalist and she was doing an assignment on busker. I had just returned from a busking holiday in Paris and so I had views. She came down and interviewed and with the rest of the tape caught the band - very much on a typical night - Chris "Go-Go" Scott Francis was sitting in on alto.

I bet Jon Cole has some Tintagel archives - I have some really good Richard Jones demos from around 1971 on reel to reel and I have a Capital Session of the Movies (Jon's later band) with Joan Armatrading - not off air - but directly off the master.

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