Iain Cameron's Diary
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2003-12-13 - 10:37 a.m.

Last night was the works party in central Birmingham. There had also been a meeting a few streets away from 11am to 2pm. So quite a lot of time was spent commuting, I didn�t have a thing to wear and so around 5pm I dashed back to Leamington to do a bit of last minute shopping. The shops started to close before I had got everything I needed and as I scouted around I found the new location for a great CD and book shop which used to be next to Starbucks. So I got a recent biography of Jung and Soft Machine Third for �5 each instead of a pair of shoes.

I listened to the Softs driving back and forth in the evening thinking how much I liked it and wondering why I hadn�t bought it before. Slightly All The Time might almost be one of my desert island discs. Its sounded to me last night as if was out Herbie Hancock�s mid 60s style of writing � complex harmonies and pedals. But it has a larger internal structure than jazz pieces usually do � and more time signatures. I like the way Ratledge uses outboard effects a lot. Indeed overall the soundstage is not at all like the jazz of the time � even Miles� similar releases of the time such as Bitches Brew.

In Jazz Rock, Stuart Nicholson sees the Softs as a precursor of the full-blown form along with KC. Most of the stuff I have read suggests that the Third was their high point and that after that they got stuck while others moved on. Nucleus are the epitome of British jazz rock for many. I just like the mix of sources that Soft Machine were playing with at that point � but I expect that just dates me. The compositions are more than just vehicles for improvisation � I suppose that means there is an overall sense of form. At the same time there is an awareness of contemporary US non-standard music, partly through one of the founder�s earlier association with Terry Riley in Paris � at a point when Riley himself was experimenting with applying radical tape techniques to jazz recordings of classic tracks..

I suppose one could compare the Grateful Dead�s ancestry.

The 4th and 5th are sitting in the back of the car which I expect will provoke a bit more chatter.

The Jung biography suggests that there was a strong mutual regard between himself and Willhelm, the translator of the I Ching. Jung was already familiar with the earlier English translation � but Willhelm�s meticulous translation from Chinese into German intensified Jung�s interest in the early 1920s. I think when that translation was carried across into English after the Second World War, Jung wrote a foreword. This was the point at which Cage picked up the work.

The biography gives a few examples of how the I Ching had impacted on some of his patients in the early 1920s and he refers to a hexagram which I have had myself in quite a marked way � in not dissimilar circumstances.

Jung seems to have thought at first that there was an unconscious influence from the questioner to how the coins or sticks fell to create the link between the question and answer. But gradually he shifted his ideas to a more cosmic hypothesis.

In Birmingham I picked up an assignment to be carried out with someone who may possibly be a relative. Her maiden name is Cameron and her family comes from Glasgow � from Maryhill. My father was born in Maryhill but his father was a professional soldier. We both come from the Catholic branch of the family � the Camerons of Lochiel. Her grandfather was in the shipyards but I have heard my family say that we had a shipyard branch too. Well I never. The assignment is quite interesting too.

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