Hurray for the Riff Raff

As yet more proof that America is a bottomless well of home-grown musical talent, here are the gloriously named band Hurray For The Riff Raff. Play that video of them making a joyful noise in what seems to be their own back yard, then check the tour schedule to the right and if they're playing anywhere near you, go see them! There's more on YouTube (be sure to skip the ads), including a 35-minute set apparently attended by a dozen or two people, many of whom seem to spend most of their time coming and going and ignoring the music. This is a larger band than in the back yard video, including a rather fine old-school keyboardist who at times really lifts the band's sound. As for the lead singer - and indeed songwriter and creative force - Alynda Lee Segarra, she is definitely one to watch. Alynda ran away from her home in the Bronx and travelled America by hopping freight trains (yes, it can still be done), ending up eventually in New Orleans, where she formed this band. No Depression magazine said of Look Out Mamma that it 'sounds like something The Band would’ve had playing on a Victrola while making Music From Big Pink in Woodstock.' Quite so. What is it with these roots/Americana/alt country bands that they keep coming up with songs that sound as if they've been around for ever? Continuity, I guess.

95 Today

Today Denis Healey - Baron Healey as he is now - is 95. There are very few politicians for whom I have anything that could be called a soft spot, but he is one of them. Yes, he was, in his prime, a notorious political bruiser (and, in the Thirties, a Communist - there isn't much in his politics that I like), but he had a very good war - North Africa, Sicily, Italian Campaign, could have stayed in as a Lieutenant Colonel - and, unlike so many of today's politicians, he seems a fully rounded human being, with a wide 'hinterland' beyond politics, including, among much else, a love of the works of Samuel Beckett, which can only be a good sign.
  Healey also has a nice turn of phrase, famously likening being attacked by Geoffrey Howe to being 'savaged by a dead sheep'. He originated the First Law of Holes - 'When you're in one, stop digging.' Unsurprisingly he was not keen on Mrs Thatcher, calling her 'Petain in petticoats' and 'La Pasionaria of middle-class privilege' (harsh, harsh). On one occasion, he accused Ian Mikardo of being 'out of his tiny Chinese mind' - a phrase he borrowed from Hermione Gingold, but which the Chinese Embassy took for an insult and accordingly kicked up a fuss. Some things never change...
  Despite his socialism, Healey also enjoys the distinction of being the only Chancellor of the Exchequer in recent decades who actually managed to wrestle public expenditure down - albeit at the behest of the IMF. Happy birthday to him!

About Last Night

Well, compared to the Danny Boyle extravaganza that launched the Olympics, last night's Paralympic opening ceremony was positively restrained, even austere. And it was remarkably coherent. Titled Enlightenment (a bit of a clue there), it was nothing less than a full-on celebration of the Enlightenment Project (at this late stage!), offering a vision of Scientific Inquiry and Human Rights marching in lockstep towards an ever brighter future.
  A curious pairing - Science and Rights. Some might say that the advancement of human rights had rather little to do with scientific inquiry, and rather a lot to do with Judaeo-Christian theology and the vision of all humanity being made in the image of God. No room for that kind of thing, of course, in a vibrant, inclusive, multicultural, secular, go-ahead spectacular like last night's. There was, though, room for Shakespeare again - indeed The Tempest again. While the Boyle extravaganza featured Caliban and his isle full of noises, last night's do foregrounded Prospero, that well known scientist and proponent of universal human rights (played by Ian McKellen in a Harry Potterish robe).
  Ah well, it is part of Shakespeare's greatness that all manner of horrors can be perpetrated in his name and he remains what he is, undiminished and undiminishable. As Matthew Arnold put it, 'Others abide our question. Thou are free.'

Mr Piano

Amazed by how many readers remember Dickie Henderson - and even have tales to tell of him - I'm emboldened to recall another of the strange, faintly troubling showbiz presences of my early years, and another Henderson - Joe 'Mr Piano' Henderson. He's a reminder of how popular a pretty, er, basic style of piano music was with the record buyers - and indeed sheet music buyers (remember sheet music?) - of the Fifties and thereabouts. This was the age of Russ Conway, Winifred Atwell and the ineffable Mrs Mills, when jingly piano solos often rode high in the charts (at the 'sophisticated' end of the spectrum was Horst Jankowski's A Walk in the Black Forest - Number 3 in the UK as late as 1965).
  'Mr Piano' - whose looks, I must say, are not improved by that ill-advised cravat (the ability to carry off a cravat is not given to all) - was for some years Petula Clark's main squeeze and musical collaborator, but apparently he decided he'd sooner be 'Mr Piano' than 'Mr Petula Clark'. My recollection of him is from a slightly later period when he had his own radio show, one of those inescapable programmes that seemed to be always there. And then it was gone, as a new age dawned - the age of Horst Jankowski perhaps?  How long ago it all seems. And is.

'He then put a vibrator up his jumper...'

Here's a story I came across in my local paper. I pass it on because, for various reasons, it made me laugh, and because it seemed such a perfect vignette of (low) life in contemporary Britain...

'A thieving drug addict who stole a £49 sex toy while shopping with his pregnant girlfriend blamed the welfare state for his crime of passion.
  Lee Friend-Huggett, 33, appeared at Croydon Magistrates Court on Monday, charged with the theft of a vibrator from Ann Summers in the town centre.
  The prosecution said: "Mr Friend-Huggett went to Ann Summers with his girlfriend when he proceeded to the vibrator section of the store. He then put a vibrator up his jumper and left the shop with no intention to pay for it.
  He was arrested and told police he wasn't at Ann Summers at the time and was, instead, at a drug rehabilitation programme.
  He then insisted that it was not him that was in the shop, but his twin brother."
  Friend-Huggett, however, pleaded guilty on Monday...'

It's all there, isn't it? The welfare state connection, by the way, is that our friend the thieving drug addict explained that he stole the vibrator because he had not (he claimed) received his benefit money. Shame on us taxpayers for not coughing up punctually to support this fine fellow's lifestyle.

Scott McKenzie again

My old friend, the Sage of Tiverton, surprised me with the sad news that Scott McKenzie died last week. As my birthday post from his 70th attracted a ridiculous number of hits for no obvious reasons, I'll repost it. Poor Scott died of Guillaine-Barre syndrome. There's an obit here.
  I like the image of Scott walking around barefoot in Joshua Tree, talking to plants. Pretty standard behaviour in Joshua Tree, I imagine. Scott also used to talk to, and hang around with, that self-destructive genius Gram Parsons, with whom he wrote songs (never recorded), doodled on the guitar and got drunk.
 In his later years, McKenzie wrote this rather lovely sketch of himself: 'Reclusive septuagenarian. I live with a 15 year old cat named Spider in Silverlake, which is in Los Angeles. I spend lots of time on the internet, mainly researching all sorts of things - I can't recall how I spent my time before Google. I was a professional singer for years, had a 1967 hit called "If You're Going to San Francisco, Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair". I sang at The Monterey Pop Festival. I've lived In New York City; Laurel Canyon; San Francisco; Virginia Beach. I cherish my friends, many of whom have passed on. This trend shows no signs of abating.'

Remembering Dickie H

I see the Scarborough Cricket Festival takes place next week. Ah the memories...
  Back in my boyhood days, I'd often be there, with my brother, neatly clad in our little sports jackets, enjoying the beautiful airy seaside ground, the comings and goings, the old geezers in white coats selling the Pink 'Un, and whatever was going on on the field. Those were Yorkshire's glory days - from the all-conquering Ray Illingworth team to Brian Close and the rise of a young bespectacled chap called Geoffrey Boycott - and the visitors always seemed to be having fun, cutting loose and giving it some welly. I remember seeing even the notoriously stroke-averse Australian Bill Lawry ('the corpse with pads on') whacking the ball all over the ground...
  Sometimes the stars of the summer shows would drop in too. One I remember seeing is Dickie Henderson, a comedian and entertainer who is no doubt forgotten now by everyone but me and my brother (and, I'll warrant, Malty). A short dapper chap, permatanned and nimble on his feet (he was a dancer as well), he was long on easy, not to say oily, charm and somewhat short on comic material. He had a relaxed air and a mid-Atlantic accent that suggested rather more sophistication than he possessed - but at least the accent, unlike the similar drawl affected by his pal and frequent collaborator Bob Monkhouse, was earned. Dickie spent much of his childhood in Hollywood, where his father, rotund singer and dancer Dick Henderson (who made the first British recording of Tiptoe Through the Tulips), was touring in vaudeville. As a child actor, young Dickie appeared in the film of Noel Coward's Cavalcade, and, with Cicely Courtneidge and Max Miller, in Things Are Looking Up. He was being seriously considered for the young David in George Cukor's David Copperfield when his father hauled him back to Blighty. And there he was, a quarter of a century later, topping the bill at the Floral Hall, Scarborough, and enjoying the hospitality at the cricket ground. I may be wrong, but he looked like a man who hadn't often said no to a drink.