This morning we held a Seminar at the Gaydon Heritage Centre � which is sign-posted off the M40 � the turn-off after Pro-Drive at Banbury. It was my first visit. Gaydon used to be aerodrome and at one time stationed Vulcan V-bombers. Now it is a large and well set out automotive museum. There are seminar rooms and also a 4WD test track.

I had to wait a while for the Land Rover from the car park up to the main building and so I had a chance to scan the landscape � across to Edge Hill � pretty dramatic too. I enjoyed the seminar � there was one of the best ever presentations I have ever heard on macroeconomics - from an economist from Barclays. Roughly the answer was that its going to keep on being tough for the UK manufacturing sector fort a few years yet. Most of the other presentations were close to that standard and so I think the audience genuinely got some new insights into the business environment. I certainly did.

One of the speakers at the seminar had lived on 10th St between 6th and 7th Avenues in NYC � somehow we got to talking about Hendrix J. Talking of which I happen to have the Isleys doing Whos That Lady? on just this moment

Stefan pointed out that Peter Giles Ian Macdonald and Mel Collins will be playing Bilston on 29 October. I can hardly wait. Peter Chatterton mailed with some suggestions about the editorial and a great proposal for the next contributor.

Richard Jones � Climax Chicago Blue Band, Wild Oats, Principal Edwards Magic Theatre mailed. His current band can be heard at

http://www.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/Meridian/photos.htm

I think his band sounds great � he once had an idea to do a band with Wheeler and myself but we ended up with Frith on bass � strange days.

I read somewhere recently that its OK to like Hall and Oates again � damn I thought that was my idea � I wanted to be their only fan.

Nick Totton mailed about an issue in the philosophy of mind that I raised with him implicit in his article in the book he edited. I started to do some digging. In one sense things were as I expected. There is an outrageous book published in 1997 which builds on the strange fact that Adolf Hitler and Ludwig Wittgenstein were in the same class. The book goes on to explore the idea Wittgenstein adopted a �no-ownership� theory of mind and that in some way this was linked to Nazi metaphysics. I discovered that there certainly was a no ownership theory around in Cambridge in the 1930s and LW may have subscribed to a version of it for a bit. I think the attempt to link this to any kind of Nazi philosophy has to be crazy

Digging reminded me that P F Strawson had dealt with the no-ownership theory in his book on Individuals which I had really liked when I was an undergraduate.The new thing to emerge is a theory which was first articulated 30 years ago and has since got mixed up other strands emerging in the last ten years to support advances in neuroscience. This year�s Reith lectures (parts of which I heard) presented parts of this later theory. Conveniently someone has put up a site to draw these various strands together which is a truly wonderful application of the internet. I mailed Peter Chatterton � as Visiting Professor of E-learning he must have these things at his finger tips. I had better not go into how this relates to the Totton insights � that would be mere speculation!

I have been listening to a live recording of Miles Davis and John Coltrane in Sweden in 1960. Its an amazing historical document. Miles doesn�t want Trane to leave his band.

In 1959 he brought together the truly extraordinary band which made Kind of Blue. Bill Evans was the piano player in this band and he had a major impact on Miles thinking � in particular he made him listen to Ravel. Miles thought the G major Piano Concerto had something down that he really wanted to get for himself. In May, following the Kind of Blue recordings the band did some utterly preposterous recordings including On Green Dolphin Street and Stella By Starlight. I have always loved that first recording and the second was so powerful that George Rochberg quotes from it in his 1965 Music for the Magic Theatre alongside Webern, Varese, Beethoven and Mozart. But this band was so hot it couldn�t hold together.

The 1960 recordings show Trane about to break away and do his own historic thing. He is really truculent and does things like continuing in D minor through the bridge of So What when everyone else shifts up to Eb. Miles is knocked off centre by this towering musical will which is emerging � and so the balance between Miles and Trane which had made the 5tet an epoch defining band isn�t there.

Colin Vallance mailed with some really good material on the brothers.

James writes from Moscow:

�I've just got back from Suzdal, which was excellent; lots of clean country air, open fields, quiet streets and basically everything that isn't present in Moscow.

I'm beginning to understand the dacha culture; it's just so much more pleasant out there! There were loads of walled monastries and churches (all onion domed), some of which were made out of wood and were all extremely well-preserved.

The basic setup of Suzdal is very much like Moscow, with a Kremlin and a kind of central square. However, I think there are certain regulations which have prohibited development there, as well as the fact that the main road is uneconomically far away for any large-scale ugly development. There are virtually no buildings higher than one or two storeys and the whole place is incrediably quiet and rural for its 12,000 population. The best antidote to Moscow.

We also stopped off at Vladimir on the way back, which has an extremely beautiful church but also a very large industrial development and a population of about 320,000 (I think) and was therefore not quite so picturesque or relaxing as Suzdal.

As far as concerts are concerned, I've put myself down for a ticket for the Kremlin Ballet's Romeo and Juliet on Saturday, which sounds like fun.�

No way I could get him to listen to Tchaikovsky � but would I want to? I did take him to hear some Ravel once.