Iain Cameron's Diary
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2010-08-22 - 12:28 a.m.

I realised I hadn't been listening to CDs since I co-operated by buying and assembling a CD tower and putting them in it out of reach. The one that came to hand was The Platinum Collection which starts with the original version of Missing off Amplified Heart. It was the album that sucked me in - I bought it in a discount shop for �3 out of curiousity and put it on for a long drive to the East Midlands. It stayed in the CD player all day - I gradually pieced together that it was the usual suspects - JM's bass player, RM arranger etc. I thought it was like early Fairport Convention - a compliment in my world. It was a genius who had the idea of remixing Missing - the song sounds absolutely fine in its unremixed treatment - and that spawned 2 or 3 more brilliant albums each one bleaker than the last. I prefer the solo piano version of Driving to the one on PC - it's much sexier. I have been playing my guitar part to Give Us a Ring a lot - it must be that I'm wondering what PW is up to with Garage Band. - also because the tones on the U2 are so well suited. All this suggests I should stump up for North Marine Drive. I had always thought that Old Friends was by TT but it isn't.

There's a string of 3 or 4 songs on PC that really hit the mark - I Always Was Your Girl/Meet Me In the Morning/We Walk the Same Line. I mentioned this to PW and he said that he was guided into Bton by walking round and hearing I Didn't Know I wasI Looking for Love in various shops. This has the kind of verbal play that he and his friends would put into songs when they were about 20. TT took a first in English.

I followed up with disc 1 of Travelogue and discovered there is a movie on it requiring Quicktime. This is another album which in my driving days I would just leave in the machine. It starts with Otis and Marlene - a point at which we began to part company but it is well suited to the orchestral treatment and she sings it well - also Amelia despite the fact that it originally gets that glorious pared down Hejira treatment. I like the Hammond on Flat Tyres - the late Billy Preston - reminds of those fantastic albums with Jimmy Smith and the big band arranged by Oliver Nelson. I could do with getting some of those - The Monster was the first LP I bought - the band is all reeds, no brass. I learned the organ lines on the flute which didnt seem to do me any harm a few years later. It seems Oliver Nelson's breakthru came with Blues and the Abstract Truth which had Dolphy and esp from Stolen Moments - a tune we would play at the White Hart in Drury Lane on Friday nights in the 70s. When ON moved to LA he did some arrangements for the Temptations - he was only 43 when he died.

The reworking of Woodstock is less to my taste. The original is in Eb minor which makes me think she made up the electric piano part on the black notes. The unworded vocalisations make it for me - that Canadian academic is right when he calls it introverted. On the other hand the big arrangements tend to make more sense of the synth period where her vision of colour didnt really come over to the average listener. I can understand being taken up by synth textures tho. The Sire of Sorrows is an absolute cracker in either treatment. I think I am right in saying that the angel who puts God up to kicking the sh1t out of Job is called Satan. I like the tuba on Trouble Child - the tuba is one of the good patches on SMS - you can switch it on for bass lines part way through tunes. I have lost the 33&athird book on Court and Spark unfortunately - I still have the one on Grace. WS is on form for God Must be a Boogie Man.

Something Dr Z said the other day made me think I should I should give The Emperor's New Clothes another crack. I did OK with it upto the point where Penrose introduced Hamiltonians. I have yet to find anyone else who knows what they are. My XXpatriot friend was lamenting all the maths he had forgotten the other day - enough for a PhD in quantum theory. I got enough out of the bit in ENC about Turing Machines - now there is a topic for OOO. Penrose takes a hard line on Godel's theory in terms of how the mind works. That only works in my view if you think there's a tight fit between logic and the world - and these days this isn't quite the thing - we have turned away from that premise in the interests of being - what with all this technology to cope with.

Gilbert suggested I was a little less conventional so I sent him a short piece that was more Cageian. You have to say that Judy Dyble's Dreamtime is visionary. I need to try harder with Octave One, their pedigree is impecable. Don't Get Me Wrong - I might be great tomorrow but hopeless yesterday. Lisa Shaw is nicely downtempo. Gilbert mailed back that the second piece could be developed. Dr Z mailed a 9/11 archive.

I programmed the first verse of the sonnet setting and like before spent a while wondering about the patch. Tried some Dhorn. I watched the Bourne Identity on ITV1

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