John McCartney – the animated bassist. Part Two

Gig Shop days...

About a year or so after I started working for Uxbridge Music the company that owned it announced that they were closing the shop down. I suddenly found myself about to be unemployed but by this time I was living with my girlfriend (who was later to become Mrs Voltarol) and we had bought a flat together so I needed to do something, and I needed to do it quickly. I was certain that Uxbridge Music had gone under because it wasn’t carrying the right stock and I was equally certain that I could get my own business off the ground  - although not in Uxbridge Music’s premises because the overheads were too high. That shop was located at the end of an arcade and was quite large, but there were a number of smaller units in the arcade and one had just become vacant. I scraped together enough money for the first month’s rent, negotiated a couple of trade accounts with some musical instrument suppliers and opened my own shop.

Voltarol behind the counter of Pete's Gig Shop Mark I

Initially, the stock was pretty basic. I had a good range of guitar stings and accessories, a few amplifiers and a couple of guitars. Then I came to an arrangement with the then recently established (but now defunct) ‘Gigsville’ company who were distributing Aria guitars in the UK. I would buy their ‘seconds’ and damaged guitars at a discount and have them repaired and improved by my old friend from the Jugular Vein, Richard Bartram, who was then based in Hayes and rapidly establishing himself as a first-rate luthier and guitar repair man. Within a short time I found myself in need of an extra pair of hands in the shop. John McCartney was a frequent visitor as he was not currently working during the day, so it seemed logical that I should employ him on a casual labour basis. This was an arrangement that suited both of us because I did not yet need – and could not afford – a full time employee, and John did not want the commitment of a full time job, being in the same position that I had been in with the Jugular Vein some ten years previously.

It soon became apparent that John was not best suited to shop work – or at least, not Music shop work – because he was all too easily distracted from the customers by the opportunity to practice the bass. He would sit himself down on an amplifier and hunch over a bass guitar, running endless scales, bits of Bach, funky riffs, chorded runs, harmonic flurries and the bass lines to innumerable jazz standards. He never bothered to plug the instrument in but instead would rest his chin on the ‘horn’ of the instrument’s body – just below the strap button – and listen to himself via bone conduction. The result was that the rest of the world would just fade out for him as he became more and more absorbed in what he was doing, and despite the fact that the shop was little more than sixteen feet long by about ten feet wide, a customer could stand there for ten minutes at a time before being noticed.

Despite this I liked having John around. He wasn’t a skiver: he was just easily distracted, so with a modicum of tactful management I could get him to do the occasional useful things around the premises. Unfortunately, even when his body was involved in the job in hand, his brain often wasn’t. The length of one wall of the shop had been battened off and covered in pegboard to facilitate the display of guitars on hangers. One day whilst I was out getting some lunch, John enthusiastically took down all the instruments that were on display, cleaned and polished them, and re-hung them on the wall, giving the bass guitars priority on the top row and relegating the electric and acoustic guitars to the bottom one. Unfortunately he had failed to take into consideration such factors as the weight difference between said instruments, and the potentially disastrous consequences of the cantilever effect when applied to the top of the peg board. I returned to the shop just in time to see John watching, fascinated, as a complete sheet of pegboard peeled itself off the wall and deposited my entire guitar stock in a heap on the floor. There was a moment of silence as the dust settled and then John opened his mouth, worked his jaw mutely for maybe twenty seconds and  said “Bugger”. He picked up couple of guitars and inspected them for damage. Finding nothing major, but several chips and ‘dings’ to the finishes he looked at me hopefully and said “Discount Sale?”

Regardless of occasional incidents like this I continued to employ John whenever I needed someone to help out. He could field phone calls in a civilised manner, deal with basic sales of things like strings and plectrums, and his playing impressed the hell out of most of the would-be ‘musos’ that found their way into Pete’s Gig Shop’, as my little business was called. But most of all he was just fun to have around. We could make each other laugh all too easily and frequently devised elaborate practical jokes which we perpetrated on the customers. One such was the ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’ pedal.

There is a breed of electric guitarist that believes that the purchase of a new effects pedal was the equivalent of six months of guitar practice. One such -  a bus driver who I shall call ‘Jon Lee’ – was a regular visitor to the shop and was for ever ‘evaluating’ the worth of the latest effects pedals, although rarely buying much beyond the occasional plectrum or spare string. He could bore for England but wasn’t a bad chap, so although we would shudder inwardly when he came into the shop, he was nevertheless treated politely at all times and would even qualify for the occasional cup of coffee. He was totally convinced of his own superior musical and technical worth despite the evidence of his own ears which should have told him all that he needed to know every time he picked up a guitar and played it. In that respect he was a bit like the character ‘Dave Lister’ in Red Dwarf.

John and I had mocked up a display box and had arranged for one of our more electronically gifted customers to create a fake foot pedal for us, which was in effect simply a connecting box. In the manner of all guitar foot-pedals it had an ‘on-off’ foot switch on the top and a jack-socket at either end labelled ‘in’ and ‘out’, but was otherwise blank. The use of this unit achieved absolutely nothing. The outer box was labelled ‘Prototype - JNSQ.’ We put it on the pedals shelf and waited for a victim. It was rare that a day went by without a visit from Jon Lee and we did not have to wait long for his arrival.

“Afternoon, Men.” he said. (He affected a ‘huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’’ type of persona – all hearty and with dropped ‘g’ endings – “Anythin’ new and excitin’?” (This was a standard opening gambit). We said that there was nothing much – well not really…and I saw that he was eying the pedal shelf carefully.

“What’s that then, that prototype thingy?” he enquired. We informed him that it was nothing much - well, it was and it wasn’t…more of a professional tool for the studio really that we were trying out for the manufacturers…The bait was taken.

“Sounds interestin’” he said. “What does it do exactly?” We said that it was hard to explain but that it just gave your sound that little extra…something…that je ne sais quoi ...it was just so subtle that you needed really good ears to detect the effect. “Look,” we said, “we’ll show you”.

Jon Lee chose the most expensive guitar in stock and lifted it down from the wall – this was his standard practice – and then took the proffered jack lead from me and connected it to the guitar. John took the other end of the lead and plugged it into the ‘in’ socket on the JNSQ and then connected another lead between the ‘out’ socket and a guitar amplifier, switched on the amp and said ‘There you go. Try that” to Jon Lee. Mr Lee adjusted the guitar sound and the amp sound to his liking (a procedure that involved much ‘umming’ and ‘aahing’ combined with theatrical tweaks to the various controls involved, but invariably resulted in everything being set at ‘10’ with the exception of the volume control on the amp) then strummed his first chord. There was so much overdrive from the amp that the guitar made a noise like a sheet of steel being thrown through a plate glass window onto a circular saw. Jon Lee nodded his approval and then depressed the footswitch on the pedal and strummed again. The same horrendous sound emanated from the amplifier. Another nod from Mr Lee and the footswitch was depressed again, and again the atmosphere was rent apart by the banshee wail.

“Very nice!” said Jon Lee, “It’s subtle but it’s excellent.”

“They don’t come much subtler than that” said John, with a perfectly straight face, “We’ll report your findings to the designers. Why don’t you put it through its paces?” He turned to me and gave me his most evil leer. “I’m sure Pete will take some notes for you. Unfortunately I have to leave early as I have a gig tonight.” He grabbed his windcheater from behind the counter and fled through the door, barely able to suppress his sniggers, and in his best Shakespearean voice declaimed “I give you Good Day!” before disappeared from view, laughing like a drain. It was at least a week before I forgave him for that


To be continued....

John McCartney – the animated bassist

Several times over the past few years I have announced my intention of writing more about the late - and many would say - great John McCartney. I finally got round to starting this task but very soon realised that this story would take more than one posting to do it any kind of justice. Here, therefore, is part one of the story of my friendship with him.

Around 1977 I was working in a music shop in Uxbridge called – unsurprisingly – Uxbridge Music. It was owned at that time by John Gummer (no, not that John Gummer but the one who had previously been a director of City Organ and Record Centres) and Richard ‘Rick’ Watts (late of Simms Watts Amplification). One morning, a tall, curly haired and well spoken chap came into the shop for some bass strings. I served him with a set of Rotosound  ‘Swing Bass’ Round wound strings and then he asked if he could try out one of the electric basses that we had in stock. I said “yes”, plugged in the second hand Burns Bison bass that had taken his fancy, excused myself and went over to answer the telephone. The next thing I heard was Charlie Parker’s ‘Donna Lee’ being executed superbly. This was only a  year after Jaco Pastorius had burst on to the scene and turned every electric bassist’s world upside down. I had heard many an aspiring bassist try to emulate Jaco’s version of this tune, but I had never heard anyone get beyond the first four bars without stumbling before, and certainly not at the speed of the original performance. This guy had it completely under control and – much to my amazement – wasn’t actually ‘show-boating’ his performance. He had his face to the wall and had turned the volume down on the amp!

That was my first introduction to John McCartney. I tried to engage him in conversation to maybe find out a bit more about him but he politely resisted my gambits and left the shop. The next time he came in I tried again, and the next. It wasn’t until about his fourth visit to the shop that his social defences went down and he accepted the offer of a cup of coffee (a courtesy extended to all regular customers) and stayed for a chat. It soon became obvious that we had quite a lot in common. He was a jazz enthusiast who also enjoyed the funkier end of the music spectrum; he was literate and much given to obscure biblical and Shakespearean quotations and he had a positively evil sense of humour. Over the next few months we became fast friends.

I discovered that John had been a professional animator for the Richard Williams studio but was currently attempting to make a living purely by playing jazz. As any one who has ever tried this knows, no matter how good you are and how much you work it is almost impossible to make a decent living without resorting to day jobs as well. At this time John was pursuing another strand of his life – a love of alcohol – by working as wine salesman during the day. This involved visiting potential clients by pre-arranged appointment and armed with a case of samples, then persuading said potential client to purchase cases of the stuff. The basic salary for this was small but the possible commission was quite good. I offered to become a  client and arranged for a couple of my friends to be present for John’s visit to my flat, thus theoretically expanding his putative earnings.

John arrived at the appointed hour and I introduced him to my friends. The wine glasses were enthusiastically produced and the first bottle was offered up for tasting. John requested a glass for himself as well, so that he could “talk us through them”. There were twelve different bottles and we tried them all over the next two hours, successfully making a very large dent in John’s samples. The fact was that we none of us had sufficient disposable income at that time to buy a whole case of wine each. Never the less, even as John assured us somewhat alcoholically that it was not a problem, our collective guilt kicked in and my friends and I scraped together enough money to buy one case (the cheapest on offer) between us. John never actually said that this was the norm for his sales ventures but soon after that his career as a peripatetic vintner faded quietly away.

To be continued...

Paulo Moura, master musician

The great Brazilian clarinettist and saxophonist Paulo Moura died on July 12^th last year. I’m usually on top of the news from Brazil but this event passed me by and I did not find out about it until a few days ago, when I visited his web site to see if there were any new recordings available. This was the second piece of bad news that I had received from Brazil this month (see my previous posting) and although it concerned the death of only one man as opposed to over 800 people in the floods at the latest figure, I was equally saddened by it.

I first became aware of Paulo Moura on a compilation CD that I bought about 18 years ago called ‘The Sounds of Brazil’ This particular album seems to have disappeared now, although a quick internet search reveals that umpteen different compilations with the same name are currently available. There was nothing that special about this one, except that there was so little Brazilian material available in my part of the world at the time that I would buy anything that I could get my hands on, even if a CD only had one or two tracks of apparent interest to me. Such was the case here. I bought the album for two tracks by Gilberto Gil and one featuring Milton Nascimento.

Imagine my surprise and delight when one track grabbed my attention far more than the ones I had bought the album for. That track was ‘Chorinho pra Você’ (Chorinho for You – you can read about chorinho -  or choro as it is better known in this country - here) and it was credited to one Paulo Moura. There was no further information but I was hooked by the sound, which was like no other Brazilian music that I had heard at that point. It seemed like some kind of weird hybrid of Latin-American rhythms and New Orleans jazz, but with amazing bass counterpoint runs which were played on what I now know to be a seven string guitar, a six string guitar, and another high, driving, stringed instrument sound that I thought was another kind of mandolin but which turned out to be a cavaquinho. This was magical stuff that combined great ensemble playing with improvisation of the highest order. Paulo Moura’s clarinet was great, and there was also a splendid trombonist with a unique sound and terrific technique. Oh, and the whole thing was powered by a three piece percussion section led by what I eventually discovered to be a pandeiro.

All in all, this one track laid the foundations for the major expansion of my interest in Brazilian music and acted as a stepping-off point to a whole new world of stuff. I made my first trip to Brazil the following year and set out around the São Paulo record shops (the CD format was slow to take off in Brazil and most shops had far more cassettes than CDs at that time) with a list of artists that I was interested in and with the guidance of Alberto, who I met on that first trip and who subsequently became one of my best friends. Paulo Moura was on that list but I didn’t get my hands on ‘Mistura e Manda’ ('Mixed and Sent'. Thanks to my friend Vagner for help with that translation!)* - the album from which ‘Chorinho pra Você’ was taken - until a few years later. By that time I was already pretty certain that the trombonist was the splendid Zé da Velha because I had subsequently recognised his sound on other albums that I had bought, but I now learned that the 7 string guitarist was the extraordinarily talented and now late lamented Rafael Rabello. Another notable musician on the album was the bandolim player Joel Nascimento - also a favourite of mine - and although he didn’t play on that first track that I heard, it does illustrate rather nicely how one discovery can lead on to another.

As I acquired more albums of Brazilian music I began to notice how often Paulo Moura would crop up in the credits, and not just as a choro musician. The 1962 Cannonball Adderley release – ‘Cannonball’s Bossa Nova’ – features the eponymous Mr Adderley with the Bossa Rio Sextet, a group which included Sergio Mendes on piano, Dom um Romão on drums (who would go on to play with Weather Report), and a certain Paulo Moura on alto saxophone. The fact is that Paulo Moura was another of those musicians who transcended genre and just played music. He was as at home in a classical setting as he was in a jazz environment and he brought elements of both to bear when he played choro. One of my favourite albums of his is called ‘Rhapsody in Bossa – Paulo Moura visita Gershwin and Jobim’ (Paulo Moura visits Gershwin and Jobim). It is a live recording from 1998 and features – unsurprisingly – compositions by George Gershwin and Tom Jobim. However, the whole programme is played with a mixture of jazz feeling, Latin rhythms and humour, not to mention a sprinkling of circus band and a touch of Klezmer!

I could continue to enthuse about his various albums at great length but if you’ve read this far then you are probably interested enough to go out and buy one of them. I know that I will be watching closely for any previously unobtainable material that may be issued in the wake of his death. For me at least, I feel sad to think that I will now never get to see him perform live…

This is a version of Chorinho pra Voce which is taken from a great film about Choro and Choro musicians, called 'Brasilerinho'. It's available on DVD and is an absolute joy of a movie. Incidentally, I'm pretty sure that the trombonist on this is Ze da Velha.

Paulo was equally at home with the younger musicians. Here he is with Yamandu Costa in a version of  La Paloma which they recorded together when Yamandu was in his early twenties




Paulo Moura – 1932 - 2010

* updated translation - the phrase is roughly equivalent in meaning to: "chuck it in and see what happens". Thanks to Son of Voltarol for that.

A sad Anniversary

It’s exactly a year since I was in Teresópolis  ( see Back in Brazil again) and I was saddened to discover this morning that it had been badly hit by the floods in Brazil, with over 100 people dead. It’s hard to get one’s head around the fact that torrential rains can flood a place that is 2,800 feet above sea level, even though I’m well aware of the number of rivers in the vicinity and in fact have experienced heavy rainfall and rising rivers in that region first hand.

A few years ago we were travelling back to Rio de Janeiro after a week spent exploring in Minas Gerais. It started to rain and within a few minutes it was falling so heavily that we had to pull off the road and stop, as visibility was down to about ten feet. We sat in the car and watched as great chutes of churning, mud-coloured water began to burst from the banks at the sides of the road and gush down the highway, carrying all manner of detritus before them. Fortunately the rain eased back to a less terrifying level after about twenty minutes, and we were able to proceed – somewhat cautiously – on our way. Never-the-less, the rain continued to fall heavily and steadily for the next three hours and we drove past several rivers whose waters were lapping over their banks, and it became clear to us that we were not likely to make it to Rio that night.

We ended up in the vilest hotel it has ever been my misfortune to stay in, in the town of Petrópolis, which is quite near Teresópolis and has much to recommend it, although the Hotel Girassol definitely does not fall in to that category. But that’s a tale for another day.

For those of you who wish to know more about the floods you can check out the BBC report here.

That was the year that was

Well, another year is done and dusted and it is time for me to reflect briefly on the musical highlights of my year, before I get so drunk celebrating the start of a new one that I can’t even remember typing this sentence…

The whole of my last Brazil trip in January and February was chock-a-block with good musical moments but the highlight of all of those was also my GIG OF THE YEAR. You can (if you so wish and haven’t done so already) read more about the trip generally here, but the gig in question was a concert by Yamandu Costa and Hamilton de Holanda at the marvellous Auditório Ibirapuera, in São Paulo. It was a evening of sublime music played by two virtuoso instrumentalists who obviously have the greatest of respect for one another, performed in a near-perfect acoustic environment. When we left the building after the concert I was still having difficulty in seeing properly because their encore had caused me to quite literally weep with joy!

Here is a clip of them playing ‘Samba do Rafa’ - a Yamandu Costa composition that is a tribute to the great Raphael Rebello - at a concert that they gave at the same venue in 1997.

And here is a clip from the actual 2010 concert. I have included the first clip because they played the tune that night and it is one of my favourites but unfortunately I couldn't find that version on YouTube.
This one is called 'Meiga' ('Sweet') and is another Yamandu composition.

And for good measure here is 'Suite Retratos Numero Quatro' (Portrait Suite Number Four) which was composed by one of Yamandu's big influences - Radamés Gnattali.

My CD of the year is, I suppose unsurprisingly, also Brazilian. It is ‘Noites de Gala Ao Vivo'
 (Gala Nights Live) by Mônica Salmaso and Pau Brasil, 

which actually came out in 2009 but which I bought earlier this year. Monica had this to say about it on her website (I took the liberty of copying it here because I could not create a link to the English version.) - "When we released the DVD of this project, Biscoito Fino had already asked us to release the live CD.

At first, I was against this idea because when the DVD was recorded (March 2008), there had been very few changes in our performance regarding the CD recorded in the studio. We were the same group, playing the same songs with the same arrangements.
I thought that launching a product that was so similar to the one we had launched the year before didn’t make sense.
Between April and November 2008, our dream came true. We went on a tour that covered 21 cities in all regions in Brazil.
I had fulfilled the dream of being able, for the first time, to take the same show with the same technical team and part of the equipment to so many cities for almost a year.
After a 10-year career, I had the opportunity to kind of “map” the audience that has been gradually formed, without a great commercial exposure.  And what surprised me most was the fact that my work had an audience in many cities I had never been to before, formed in a spontaneous way and with great identification. Brazil, such a big country and with difficult communication (beyond the unilateral reach of television), became a little smaller with this tour and I felt, more than ever, like a “countrywide” artist, not only from the southeast region where I was born, live and work most of the time.
When we were on tour, we performed in the most beautiful theaters of each city, historical theaters where both the artist and the audience feel happy for being there.
We visited the cities, met people and got to know places and, the same way as the show, we ourselves had the opportunity to “unify” Brazil by means of those trips. 
When we returned to Fecap Theater in São Paulo on October 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 2008, there had been considerable musical changes in the show. We had performed the show for more than 80 times in several theaters and other nuances, novelties and more musical property were incorporated into the arrangements, besides having included the song FLOR DA IDADE in the repertoire. Like food that is slowly cooked in a wood-burning stove, the show got the same “flavor” of being well done and that only practice and time can provide.
To our luck, the show on October 3 was recorded and, we were even luckier, well recorded without the need of major changes to be made. It was very musical and reflected exactly our feeling that it had gained musicality during the tour, the trips, after the repetitions, with the different audiences and in the various theaters. When I listened to this recorded show, I finally decided to launch it so that the cycle of the project could be completed and we could share this recording and the maturation of the show.
I thank the musicians of the Pau Brasil group for the partnership, all the team that worked seriously and with love for the success of our tour, the local producers, the press in all the cities where we had shows, the sponsors of the tour (Bradesco Prime), Fecap theater for the place we love and for having recorded the show and Biscoito Fino for all support and beautiful projects."

It has to be said that, great though the Yamandu and Hamilton de Holanda gig was, if I’d seen this gig this year then it would have been gig of the year as well. Oh, and there’s a DVD of it as well and I nominate that for DVD of the year! Here is a a promotional clip for the DVD. If you look on YouTube there are a number of clips that have been posted by people who have filmed from the audience but non of them do justice to the sound quality of the original and I therefore do not add them here. Rather, I would urge you to track it down and buy it!!!

Well, that's it for 2010. I trust that it has been a good year for you and that the next one will be an even better one. 

Happy New Year!

Feliz Ano Novo!

Voltarol’s Christmas Cracker

The festivities are upon us once more and who am I to cry “Bah! Humbug!”? Well - a fairly disgruntled senior citizen of the UK, that’s who, but my gruntle is no more dissed than most peoples and I don’t feel inclined to vent my spleen here. There’s plenty of time for that next year.

No – since it is the time when chestnuts are nipping at your toes and Jack Frost is roasting on an open fire (thanks for that line, Denny. I stole it shamelessly), I thought I’d share a few things with you that make me laugh. I shan’t bother to annotate them as they will either entertain you or they won’t and they are all self explanatory. All you need to know is that they are a source of great amusement to me – and if they don’t amuse you well “Bah! Humbug!” anyway…

Cheers!

Danu Fox in Falmouth

Landlord Nick Swan is promoting the first in what he anticipates will be a series of innovative musical evenings in the restaurant area of the Four Winds Inn in Falmouth when he presents Danu Fox and Sorisso on Saturday December 11^th. Danu and Sorisso have put together an evening of music that combines musical influences from both North and South America, combining Latin rhythms with jazz standards and throwing some bossa novas and other Brazilian music into the mix.

Singer Danu Fox is known for her musical eclecticism and is equally at home in the jazz, folk, Latin and World music fields. This original and accomplished singer has been likened to Sarah Vaughan. Her spellbinding voice has been described as ‘the smoothest in Cornwall’.

Sorisso is the latest of a series of musical units featuring Pete Kubryk Townsend and Pete Turner. Whenever these two get together you can be certain of a strong Brazilian slant to things. Pete Kubryk Townsend, whilst better known in Europe as a superb double bass player, is also a fine exponent of the nylon string guitar (or ‘violão’ as it is known in Brazil). It is on this instrument that he joins percussionist Pete Turner (who has honed his skills playing all over Brazil in recent years) for this venture. The trio is completed by double bassist Tim Greenhalgh, an excellent player with some twenty years of professional experience to his credit, who has previously played with both Petes in separate ventures.

p.s.

Any resemblance between Voltarol and Pete Turner is purely coincidental (it says here...)