This is very sweet: a Norwegian Incredible String Band fan has set up a little virtual 'shrine' to Christina 'Licorice' McKechnie (she was the one with the distinctive high-pitched voice, Robin Williamson's girlfriend and ISB member '68-'72...last seen venturing out across the Arizona desert, and currently on the Missing Persons list in California):
Says her ex-brother-in-law Michael Lambert: "Likki's music always had a magical, elfin quality about it. With good reason. There is a magical, elfin quality about her. I hope she is well."
Nahuel Awka just contacted me from Barcelona to say that he's used some Children of the Drone for the soundtrack of a little videoclip which is embedded in his blog La Guerra Invisible. It's also available via youtube, here:
Nahuel (a.k.a. Jordi Urri) has provided an English translation of the voiceover here.
The actual track is "COTD v. ECC" from Compilation no. 5. The original just featured, me, James T and Keith, but on the segment used, only James and Keith are audible. Works really well, I think.
Syd Barrett's recent death was announced yesterday. There will be enough written about this elsewhere, but here's a picture.
Syd Barrett, late 60's
When I saw the headline yesterday, my immediate feeling was not so much of sorrow but of relief that he'd been released from something. Apparently he died peacefully.
It was just over a year ago that the Waters-Gilmour-Wright-Mason Pink Floyd line-up reunited for the Hyde Park Live8 gig, with Roger Waters dedicating part of the (rather magnificient) performance to Syd. There was something very satisfying about seeing some kind of conflict resolution between the four who were on stage. Then, a few days ago, Nick Mason chose to sit in with Roger Waters for another gig in Hyde Park, further cementing whatever goodwill was there. I just heard, too, that David Gilmour told an Italian magazine that Pink Floyd will be put to rest - he's 60, and it's just too big to take any further. He sounded content with his life, and it seemed a good decision to me. So the whole Pink Floyd thing, which really burst forth from the extraordinary imagination of Syd Barrett, seems to have come to a unexpectedly peaceful, appropriate-feeling conclusion all at once.
It's important to remember that Syd (who returned to being Roger Barrett, his given name) really didn't want to remember the Pink Floyd years for the bulk of the last thirty years. It was nice to read (on Wikipedia) that he was an avid gardener, as well as the fact he got back into painting, which I'd heard. I also found this:
"However, he did go to his sister's house in 2002 to watch the BBC Omnibus documentary made about him – reportedly he found some of it "too noisy", though he's said to have enjoyed hearing "See Emily Play" again."
and this rather curious clip to accompany aforementioned song, filmed by a strangely familiar-looking motorway bridge in Belgium, 1968.
I just watched that clip, and it's funny, because the first thing I did after I heard about his death was to get my instruments and other stuff together to take down to The Phoenix for a Children of the Drone performance which had been arranged some weeks ago as part of the Exeter Summer Fringe Festival (apparently). Part of this involved me pulling people's names randomly out of a bag and "switching them on and off" (getting them to start playing if they weren't, and stop if they were). I did this once before a collaborative thing we did with Melski's Bristol collective at St. Stephens. On that occasion I went around touching people on the head to signal the switch. This time, the stage was too crowded for walking around, so I just had to point. If you watch the 1968 film clip, you see Richard Wright walking around doing something similar with the other three, except he pretends to hit them, rather than touching their heads or pointing!
We started with the original COTD trio - Simon, Keith and I, gradually adding the other six players in the order they got involved with the collective: Henry, Melski, James T, Richard, Brian, Mick. This was a really nice way to warm up and gradually build something. Most of the rest of the (two hour plus) set involved various elements of randomness and conduction to keep things interesting and changing.
left to right: James, Keith, me, Henry, Simon
We dedicated the set to Syd. At the end of the first piece I played a little bit of a distorted microcassette of him singing "Dark Globe" through my vocal mic. "Wouldn't you miss me at all?" It would be nice to think that he would have approved of what we were doing. The creative spirit of Syd Barrett was there in places, I think, although the later Roger Barrett would probably have found some of it "too noisy".
left to right: Brian, Henry, Richard, me
We attempted to do something a bit more interesting than a straightforward 'performance'; the audience were supplied with paper, crayons, coloured pencils and felt tip pens, and encouraged to create art in response to the music we were improvising. Examples of their work can be seen here. Thanks to Claire Evans for her 'facilitation' efforts.
left to right: James T, Melski, Richard
Paul Bull, who did an extraordinarily good job on the mixing desk, despite never having met us or heard our music, deserves to be listed as part of the ensemble on this occasion.
A short video clip by Simon is here (he admits to having got a bit carried away with the psychedelic visual effects). A short clip taken by Vicky is here (thanks to Thomas for the editing), also should be embedded below:
This is probably the oddest, most challenging stuff in my archive. It's also the only music I've recorded which includes a distinctly audible donkey (check the end of the last piece).
I've just uploaded a few tracks to archive.org, recorded here at Oblique House during the last little while. KeithDrone came over on the evening of my birthday (June 11th) and we played some saz and mandola improvisations. Unfortunately, something went wrong with the MiniDisc and I had to send it off to a contact in Sweden to get all but the first track "recovered". Well worth it, I think. The first track ends with me getting a phone call from Stef, Keith winding down the music on his own.
The remaining four tracks are from July 4th when James S (another Droner) came over for a session with his newly-acquired saz - he's got family out in Turkey. I introduced him to my favoured modal G tuning, and changed his high strings for the same 'double-zero' gauge sitar wire which I use. After showing him all the basic triads I've learned to use over the years, we ended up having a bit of a jam. As is usually the case, the first piece felt the most magical, and was the only one that didn't get recorded. Still, what I did record is quite OK, I feel.
