Week In The Presence Of Beauty – Weeknotes 6

I keep running behind on these weeknotes. A quick catch up from the week before last:

Little Dippers. I dipped the poor lad under water. We hasn’t best pleased. The serious look on the babies’ faces when they are in the water is amazing. They really want to do it right. Back home still with a dash of IBS, so I sat and watched Bowfinger with Arlo on my knee. I love films about the making of things, and this story of making -a-movie-by-stealth is great fun. (I know a few people who don’t like it, but frankly they are the same people who laid me off, so I should have known their judgement was suspect way back then!) I love that their in-film titles are Chubby Rain and Fake Purse Ninjas.

The rest of the week is a bit of a blur. I started to feel a bit better, which is obviously good. I spent time on The Ephemerals’s album, Love Songs From The Feral Park round at Mike’s to have a final listen to the unmastered songs on his two high-end sound systems. We decided that any re-mixing I might have had in mind probably wasn’t going to make much difference, so we drew a line under them. Which is a brave thing to do when you’re a decision-wuss like myself. I put a website together while we listening – http://www.theepemerals.com. It’s a mess at the moment but I’ve got plans for it. Mike’s working on the album cover based on Pete Ashton’s TTV photos. And I’ve arranged for the album to be mastered by Carl Saff in the States. He came recommended by Leon Dufficy from Still Corners and Hush Arbors. Carl can’t do it for a few weeks, but I think it’s worth the wait.

Last.fm week ending 20-03-11

I finished reading Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus by Alex Halberstadt. You’ll know half a dozen songs co-written by Doc Pomus, even if you don’t know you know them. Save the Last Dance for Me, Can’t Get Used To Losing You, Teenager in Love, Suspicion (the Elvis song), Marie’s the Name (Of His Latest Flame), Ray Charles’ Lonely Avenue. He wrote the song that starts Bowfinger, There’s Always One More Time by Johnny Adams. He was a Brill Building stalwart, writing predominantly with Mort Shuman (who went to Paris and helped Jacques Brel reach an international audience). He suffered polio as a child, and always had trouble walking – Save the Last Dance for Me is a message for his wife, from a man who wasn’t able to dance. It’s a great song made all the more tragic when you know the backstory. He reinvented himself as a Blues Singer, playing the black circuit around New York and New Jersey. For a while he played a mixed venue in the Lower East Side, put on by Billy Crystal’s dad, Jack, who put his hand into his own pocket to make sure the musicians got the pay they deserved, money Jack couldn’t afford at the time. Anyway, the book is heartily recommended – well-written, informative, uplifting, tragic.