Iain Cameron's Diary
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2004-01-23 - 5:52 a.m.

Difficult weather � too much rain driving to work. In fact I woke very early and did some more research summarising. I tried to shuffle the summaries I had written into an initial narrative. As I drove to work I listened to the first a remastering of the first Velvet Underground album � fresh as a daisy. Can�t wait for Desertshore to arrive.

I wrote up the foray into Formula Student working in the material that we collected from the Warwick students before Christmas. Some definite patterns are beginning to emerge. I also did a flipchart presentation for today�s meeting in Birmingham. I drove into Central Birmingham for a lunchtime meeting, deputising for Stefan who is off doing something really important at the Charing Cross Hotel in London. I spoke to him on the mobile and he said how much he was enjoying watching the trains.

I listened to Peter Jay talking about �coaching� � somewhere between barminess and deep reality � the proliferation of singleness, the overriding importance of self-esteem, regarding oneself as a manageable asset. Instrumentality replacing mutuality.

The coach talked about an outcome which involves widening the context of one�s working life . Peter Jay said that he feels harassed by the balance between working and not-working. The model seems to work by starting a big journey with a small step.The following programme is about the benefits of sleep � no one seems to understand how they are delivered � and then an item about the way that some genes operate via proteins in their immediate environment. Some annual behavioural patterns in animals work in this way � sounds ominous.

Richard Jones (Climax Chicago, Principal Edwards) mailed saying that his current band would be prepared to play on the Lullabyes Concert (30 November 2004, St Martins in the Fields).

I think the first air-synth/dhorn piece is finished. Its related to Track 2 of the Dhorn pieces on Making Music on Music for the Highveld � see top of page.

I have started looking into some of the odd bits of electronic music that first caught my attention. I was always drawn to the origins and after a little investigation I invested in the History of House which really was very early Chicago experiments within the genre. Some time afterwards I was drawn to the idea of acid jazz � and now � with more research I can see why that should be � I just happened to be about twelve years too late � it must be because my daughter was born in the middle of the heyday of the genre.

Although I am working through the styles quite a bit after they first appeared � indeed after they have passed � there is a coherent pattern in terms of what drove those styles in the first place. I was more on the ball when I got interested in the band, Lamb, who come from Leeds. They represent the point at which a jazz related singer-songwriter strand enters electronic dance music. James has run off with the first Lamb CD � much in the same way that I have his P J Harvey collection about mad love in NYC. Until I started to dig I hadn�t realised that Garage was such a long running phenomenon in the UK.

By and large I think Dance music is quite bad at documenting its own history � rather in the way that rock was up to around 1974.

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