Iain Cameron's Diary
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2003-05-28 - 12:17 a.m.

Obscure fact from this month�s copy of The Wire � when he was in Paris in the mid 60s Daevid Allen of Soft Machine collaborated with Terry Riley and William Burroughs on tape loop pieces. There is also the obscure judgement � concerning the reissue of Bert Jansch�s Jack Orion that the 12 minute title track stands comparison with A Love Supreme. Now I am a fan of Bert and think he�s still not given his due � but that is a strong claim if ever I heard one.

Talking of great 60s blues guitarists I am just posting some Simon Prager gigs in the news section of www.kwase-kwaza.org.

I got The Wire in the supermarket at Warwick U where I went for an (excellent) meeting with Ewart Keep who is involved in some major research on the economic impact of skills training. He is a historian by discipline and he bought up the question of the standard of Stalin as a man manager � not an issue I can easily resist. Anyway I steered clear of the bookshop. I have finally faced the fact that I have a bit of a backlog.

It seems that Coltrane first heard Elvin Jones in Detroit before he moved to NYC. Visiting Motor City in 1959 he met pianist Alice Macloed who he subsequentlty married, They play her version of a Love Supreme to David Sylvian in the Wire Juke Box feature � he gets it OK.

Started to set up some more forays into the wide world � for my next phase of self presentation. I think I have got a new angle � the old one has been overtaken by events. You can�t beat having a good fresh Powerpoint presentation in your PC if you want to go travelling.

Managed to do some Charlie Parker lines and some Trane stuff this morning � it is such fun on the Buffet � and I can feel virtuous about it too. The Trane line from Countdown really packs a punch on that flute. I also started to work on those 13th chord sequences on the guitar. They began to to get a bit more fluid and I began to see a different set of harmonic relationships from the ones which are salient on the piano � or indeed on the flute. I could keep on working each morning much longer than the available time. But maybe if the time was available it wouldn�t feel like that. Anyway the evenings feel nowhere as creative.

At the moment I am thinking of �alternative� turnaround chords � the little 4 or 5 chord sequences that take the end of a tune back to the beginning. Once you identify that zone its obvious that has suffered from excessive conservatism. The turnarounds that everyone uses now were created once as new progressions � so why not have a crack at some new ones.

I started to put some bass into the version of Time Of No Reply which has survived its first threat of elimination � the talktrack needs a bit of work. Impulsively I revisited some emerging thoughts on Poor Boy � maybe one morning I�ll be half asleep enough to commit that to MD,

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