Common Sense Dancing: Epilogue

Three weeks have passed, and we've journeyed through 20 pieces of music covering nearly 100 minutes of audio in the process. I thought that to close, I'd give a little background to the title..

The album's name, as explained on the CD artwork, is drawn from a quote in an essay by Clive James,

Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing.

I first came across the quote attributed to Jon Snow (the UK Channel 4 journalist) as merely "A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing" sometime around 2008/9 and was really drawn to the idea. In 2011 it returned to mind and I sought to find out more about the context of the quote, finding it was actually Clive James from an essay he wrote in 1979 about television. Helpfully, the full text of the writing was available on www.clivejames.com. Sadly, since then the website has been restructured several times and the essay is no longer present (and I can't remember it's name to find it on The Internet Archive!); and even more sadly, Clive died on the 24th November 2019.

As mentioned in the post about Play's Cool, the album is dedicated to the memory of Mr James (as well as that of Mr Cant). Clive brought an underlying humour and understanding to often complicated issues surrounding the media, politics, relationships; and with the structure and form of this album I wanted to echo something of that outlook.

The sequencing of the tracks, when heard as intended on the album rather than the order presented in these posts, was designed to bring light and shade; to lift, inform, ponder, and bring relief; to have tensions and releases. Whether it's successful in that intent, really, is for the listener to decide.

I hope you've enjoyed this stroll through the album. It was very enjoyable to draw together music from the earliest days of my writing in 1989 and more recent pieces, and moreso to work with some fabulous people who brought the words and music alive.

Thank you for coming with me these passed three weeks. I now have three projects of my own starting up, and there is talk of another John Hackett Band album - hope to see you all again as they go public!

Common Sense Dancing: Take Me By The Hand

And so we come to the end of Common Sense Dancing with the last track on disc one of the album, Take Me By The Hand.

It's a simple song that I wrote in around 2016 as a way to end my gigs. Up to that point I had generally finished with a cover of The Moody Blues song, "The Day We Meet Again", and much as I both love the song, and love performing it, I wanted to have something that was

• my own, and
• was imbued with little less melancholia.

So I wrote something about the nervous emotions of the end of a date. And it's proved to be remarkably popular, which is nice! There used to be an open mic night in Sheffield called HOLY ROBOTS, which sadly no longer meets, and the cafe in which it was held has since closed. But at one such evening in the late Autumn of 2017, I recorded all those gathered at HOLY ROBOTS singing the response part of the refrain, and they make up the choir at the end of the song - and what a marvellous sound they made!

The lady's reply is sung by Judith Silver, in whose folk-rock band I played in the mid 90s.

I realise that putting out a song about holding hands in the middle of the Coronavirus Lockdown may not be the greatest bit of marketing I've ever indulged, but it is what it is!

Though the walk through the music has finished, I'll conclude with an epilogue tomorrow, so stay safe, and I'll see you then!

Common Sense Dancing: Mellotron Suite: Long Summer Days

This piece of music was written quite quickly after I realised that I was going to need a third theme in Where Shall We Go, rather than just repeat another variation of what have become called Ambling Excitedly and Caught In The Rain.

I'm very pleased with how it turned out. Quite by accident it seems to evoke exactly what its title suggests. Its mood reminds me of some of the incidental music of my favourite film, Watership Down**.

Extra points if you can smell the dry grass and feel the sun on your face.

Tomorrow we end our journey through Common Sense Dancing - see you then!

** A film that, bizarrely, links Hancock's Half Hour and Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War Of The Worlds..

Common Sense Dancing: Clare's Dance

I was house/cat-sitting for a friend in January 2004. One morning I sat down at their piano while the kettle was on, and my hands fell into the pattern that underpins this tune. I became interested in how small movements of the fingers to adjacent piano keys changed the harmony.

Of course I knew it would, but there was something about the movements of the suggested distant chords/keys that reminded me of an old friend with whom I had lost touch a couple of decades prior.

I ended up naming the piece after her. I thought, were she to hear it, that she would probably like the first half, but probably not the second. While Minimalism appealed to her, Jazz-rock never really floated her boat..

The work of artists such as Bill Bruford, Brand X, Weather Report, Quantum Jump, etc. have had a huge influence on me through the years, alongside composers such as Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and Michael Nyman. All these elements get stirred together, and I end up writing things like Clare's Dance.

Flute by John Hackett, ambient and lead guitars by Nick Fletcher.

See you tomorrow!

Common Sense Dancing: My Robot

The last of the pieces with a connexion to KvR monthly competitions. In June 2004 the theme was SciFi Movie Theme, and with most of the entries being fairly bleak dystopian affairs (as was mine, The Amoeba Variations), I wrote this ditty about 'your plastic pal who's fun to be with' as a companion piece for some levity.

I rather like it. And it goes down surprisingly well at gigs with just me, an acoustic guitar, and a glass of water.

Robot voice provided by some text to speech freeware from the early 2000's..!

See you tomorrow for some harmonic adventure!

Common Sense Dancing: Furry Leaves

I've had it in mind to do this for nearly 25 years.. I have had a perpetual fear that someone would get there before me; I have been very careful what I said to other musicians, only talking very vaguely about it to non-musicians.

But now it's done: Beethoven Jazz!

I tried all sorts of ideas for the name, anagrams of Fur Elise and Bagatelle: Fur Elise, and was going to go with just Bagatelle, until Nick Fletcher (who plays the fab guitar solo on the piece) suggested the pun 'Furry Leaves,' and with its link to Autumn Leaves, etc., it was perfect - thanks Nick!

See you tomorrow for a visit to the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation!

Common Sense Dancing: Play's Cool

Even as a teen, I would have nostalgic conversations with friends about the television we watched during our younger years.

Coming from different households there would be common programmes, and fringe shows that only a few watched and none of the rest of us remembered. Taken together, they all brought humour, song, teaching, different ways of telling stories, different styles of presentation - real world, puppets, cartoon or stop-frame animation, mixtures of all of them. They would engender laughter, fear, questions.. But they all left a huge impression on us, and even now as I find myself rather older than the teen I once was, those programmes still live me.

It was another BBC documentary which gave me the idea for this song, one concerned with 'The Golden Age of Children's Television.' It defined this era, for the UK at least, as being from the mid 50s to the late 80s - essentially when the broadcasting companies had their own in-house children's programming departments. And this, rather neatly, included my childhood.

Once I had the chorus, I wrote out all the children's television programmes I remembered, and sought to include as many as had made an impression on me without it seeming just like a list. There needed to be context, a story. Many didn't make it in, for reasons of scansion, song-length, relevance to the emotional mood, etc.

Every so often after gigs it gets suggested that I should do a verse about such-and-such a programme, and I sympathise with the suggestions these people make. But I am happy with what I have written, it works for me, describes my experience, and am pleased that it has resonances for others; and I would be utterly delighted to hear of their songs, poems, stage plays, short stories, paintings, interpretive dances, etc. of their experiences of the art of children's entertainment and broadcast education through their formative years.

There's enough art in the universe for everyone to have a go.

Many thanks to Sarah Sharp for playing violin on this.

I had hoped to get Brian Cant to appear on this tune, speaking where the violin solo comes. Though his agent thought he might have been interested to do it, sadly, he was too ill at the time, so the playful, nostalgic melody that was written as a contingency ended up being a necessity. He died later that year. As well the late Clive James, Common Sense Dancing is also dedicated to the memory of Brian. He brought so much happiness to so many millions of children for many, many years.

So let your eyes mist today, and I'll see you tomorrow for a bit of a change of gear!

Common Sense Dancing: Mellotron Suite: Ambling Excitedly

The three longer pieces of incidental music from Where Shall We Go were simply named Theme 1, Theme 2, Theme 3, until I started doing the artwork for the album and I felt that I couldn't really go to press with such mundane names.. I chose names that partly reflected the position of the music in the play, and partly the feel they created.

The underlying guitar part of this piece, Theme 1 as was, originally came about from me playing around with ideas surrounding an arrangement of Peter Gabriel's Solsbury Hill..

The violin and flute parts were initially going to have leitmotifs to represent the She and He of the play, but other than the first melodic idea heard on the flute which is repeated in various ways across the incidental music, this idea was dropped. However, the interplay between the two top lines was intended to be conversational, mimicking the two as they walked - whether it's successful in that is perhaps not for me to say!

After that excited amble, I'll see you tomorrow for something a little more reflective!

Common Sense Dancing: The Lobster Quadrille

Something a little lighter today after the rather more downbeat feel from yesterday. This was the first proper song I wrote, tho', of course, I had some help from a certain Charles Dodgson (AKA Lewis Carroll) with the words..

Started in 1989, and finished in 1992 once I'd learnt a bit more music theory, an early recording of the song appears on a Marc Catley and the Flaming Methodists CD from 1996, Char.

This version is much better! It features Kim Eames' backing vocals, Sarah Sharp's violin, and Anna Roberts replies to the request.. :-)

See you tomorrow!

Common Sense Dancing: Green Cross Code, Man

When I play this song at gigs, I normally introduce it with

"This song is the ultimate extrapolation of the subtle social programming messages of the Public Information Films of the Green Cross Code Man."

Every country has its own way of producing films for public safety, and in the UK from the mid 60s to mid 80s there were many different ways that children were taught about road safety, from Tufty, to SPLINK (with Jon Pertwee), to cartoon hedgehogs staying alive, to misuse of Grand Master Flash's The Message.

But, perhaps, most iconic was David Prowse (yes, Darth Vader himself) as The Green Cross Code Man, and his sign off

"Always use the Green Cross Code, because I won't be there when you cross the road."

So, in the face of potentially a life-threatening situation, young children in the 70s were being told that they were on their own.

Great.

It's a wonder we all turned out as well as we have!

Incidentally, the playground sounds and scream are from Mellotron special effects tapes, and are the same ones used on Supertramp's 'School.'

It'll be a bit lighter tomorrow - see you then!

Common Sense Dancing: Mellotron Suite: Caught In The Rain

After all that excitement yesterday, we're now on the second half of this tour through Common Sense Dancing, and this piece from the Where Shall We Go Mellotron Suite calms thing down a likkel. It appears during the rain sequence of the play.

Check your weather forecast for today - April showers, and all that..

You can almost see the clouds parting and the blue sky breaking through at the end!

Stay dry, now! See you tomorrow :-)

Common Sense Dancing: Come On! (Put That Hoedown)

As with My Island and Antasia, Come On! (Put That Hoedown) was a product of a KvR monthly contest. The theme that month was 'Hurry Up!'

I chose a dance, a gardening pun - and a tune that just doesn't let up.. There might be the odd touch of Fairpoint Convention or Mike Oldfield in there somewhere.

The violin was jauntily (and nothing short of heroically) played by Clare Lindley (Stackridge, DLM), flute flauted by John Hackett, and lead guitar by the fabulous Nick Fletcher of the John Hackett Band.

Phew! See you tomorrow!

Common Sense Dancing: A Breakthrough In Sound

I had a gig at Cafe#9 in Sheffield a couple of years ago, and, looking for things to talk about between songs, looked up what had happened in history that day, and chanced upon a bizarre event from 1977 - The Southern Television Broadcast Interruption.

Strange things happen in Hampshire..

I was fascinated. This was clearly an inside job by someone who knew what they were doing - but what of those who witnessed it in their living room? So I wrote what could loosely be described as a song about it from the point of view of one such viewer, and played it at that gig. A Breakthrough In Sound is that song.

Arguably, it's recalling documents of interplanetary laughs.

<rollseyes>Sigh</rollseyes>

Other than the guitar and my voice, all the sounds on the track are Mellotron - the tape-based instrument mentioned in previous posts - including all sound effects (and static!), and sometimes heavily processed.

Whilst it has quasi-science-fiction overtones, the message of the song is a simple one of love, peace, scones and jam.

See you tomorrow for a bit of exercise!

Common Sense Dancing: Ladybird

Ladybird Books are a feature of many a childhood for children in the UK, and indeed, around the world. While the Ladybird name was first used by Leicester based printers Wills And Hepworth shortly before the First World War, the books as we know them were devised by Douglas Keen and appeared in shops in 1948. This song gives a potted history of the books between 1948 and 1971 (when they ceased to be part of Wills And Hepworth, and became a company in their own right.

There were many folk involved in the making of the books over the years - artists, researchers, story tellers, academics, etc - and I felt I could only highlight certain key points and people. Even then, in trying to be brief and non-didactic, it still ended up with eight verses, three versions of the chorus, and the middle eight appearing twice..!

The piece is intended as a celebration of the books, some of the people behind them, the 2oz tome's place in the shared history of many lives, and the joy that they represent.

If any relatives of people who worked on the books hear the song and feel I ought to have included their mother/brother/auntie/uncle/etc, I'm so sorry.. Omission wasn't personal!

Backing vocals ably supplied again by Kim Eames and Jeremy Richardson

See you tomorrow!

Common Sense Dancing: Mellotron Suite: Main Theme

I had a bunch of short ideas that I never thought I would never make in to full guitar pieces, but when the notion of making Where Shall We Go appeared, I felt I could use those ideas as the basis for the music through the play. During the writing stage I new I was going to be arranging for flute and violin so set up those sounds on virtual Mellotrons (using GForce's excellent M-Tron Pro). And got rather used to the sounds!

Once the real instruments had been recorded I felt it would be a shame to have the Mellotron versions of the music lost, and that it would be nice to have some of the music separated off from the play to be pieces in their own right - thus the Mellotron Suite was born.

This piece, however, never appears in the play in this form. The chord structure appears at the start and end of the play, along with a couple of other arrangements popping up here and there, but without these flute/ violin parts. The melodies appear without the context of the guitar (I'll let you work out where, should you wish to know!), but here everything is presented together, united at last..

See you tomorrow :-)

Common Sense Dancing: Cupboard Luv

In the 90s I worked with a chap Marc Catley. We made four albums together and contributed tracks to a variety of compilation albums between 1992 and 1996. Some of the work was released under a bandname Paley's Watch. Only one album was released, November. There was to have been a follow-up, a concept album about Art and The Arts, but it was never made, sadly. Arguably, Common Sense Dancing is now that album.

In preparation for the second Paley's Watch album I asked a friend for a suggestion for 'arty subject matter,' and she suggested sitcom. Much as I liked the idea, I couldn't find a way in to make it work; but with so much sitcom humour relying on farce, I felt I could more easily tackle a song about that - and Cupboard Luv is the result!

It tells the story of some self-aggrandised old ham at a local dramatic society getting his comeuppance during a performance.

Muted trumpet by Hester Russell and female BVs by Kim Eames.

See you tomorrow!

Common Sense Dancing: Family Entertainment

Family Entertainment started with the humming of a riff and singing the title while walking home from work as I'd missed the bus..

It was a number of years later before I revisited the idea, when I was getting this album together. Once I'd decided how the song was going to work, writing the lyrics came fairly quickly - singing them didn't! Rather than completely empty my lungs, the verses are sung in different overlapping takes so I wasn't blue-faced, gasping on the floor by the chorus..

"Is that a.."
Yes! Rather than guitar or synth solo, that's a.. listen and find out!

Backing vocals by Kim Eames and Jeremy Richardson

See you tomorrow <3

Common Sense Dancing: Antasia

Like yesterday's My Island, Antasia also started life as a short piece for a KvR monthly competition.

I had had the opening guitar part knocking around as an idea since the mid 90s, I liked it as it was reminiscent of the work of Genesis co-founder, Anthony Phillips. The atmospheric opening section gives way to a more rock tinged second half, which again drew on my love for Ant's work; I had elements of arrangements from the Private Parts And Pieces Vols II and VIII albums in mind with this section. NB 'Antasia' is, of course, a fantasia for.. well, you can work it out ;-)

The violin is by Sarah Sharp, who often performs under the name 'Tsarzi,' and I was thrilled to have Mick Somerset play saxello.
I had hoped to get Ant himself to play harmonium, but sadly that wasn't to be, and is now played on a Mellotron.

See you tomorrow :-)

Common Sense Dancing: My Island

My Island is just a silly song written as part of an island-themed monthly competition on a music website, KvR, in 2003.

It was, so far as I know, the first full, properly mixed piece of music recorded using Zynewave Podium while it was still in beta. This re-recorded version, as with the whole album, was made using the same software (just a few versions later!).

I'm not certain of many songs that include the word 'compunction.' Only other one I knowingly know is an old Stackridge tune - Marigold Conjunction. Any one know of any others..?

Thank you John Hackett for your fluting, and Kim Eames for your backing vocals!

See you tomorrow!

Common Sense Dancing: I Could Dance With You

Hope you've got your breath back from all that walking yesterday..

Today we have the album's proper introduction with I Could Dance With You.

It makes heavy use of a tape based keyboard machine from the 60s, the Mellotron. Mellotrons were stock in trade for many, mainly 'progressive' bands in the 70s, but their original design was for being a fairly full musical entertainment device, and as such earlier models had a collection of rhythm/backing tapes which could be played behind a 'lead' voice. I Could Dance With You makes use of the Rhumba rhythm from the MkII Mellotron. The harp rolls, strings and clarinets are all Mellotron too..

From the middle onward there is a part which sounds almost like a Clavioline (think 'Telstar' by the Tornadoes, or read this!), but is in fact layered Mellotron violin and viola played via electric guitar and a MIDI interface..

The was a song written with someone in mind who, it turned out, had no interest in me! So it goes.. But I like the song, and will often start my solo gigs with it.

So go, go get your dancing shoes, and I'll see you tomorrow!

Common Sense Dancing: Where Shall We Go

The lockdown is in place. Being beyond the limits of one's property is limited to essential food or pharmaceutical shopping, or a single act of exercise; with this in mind, we'll start with the half-hour 'radio play,' Where Shall We Go**.

It's based around the idea of a couple (She and He) going for a circular walk around the Peak District from Eyam via Abney. It's a real walk that they follow that can be found on the Dales Trails website (It's a nice walk, I'd recommend it for 2021!). As they walk they end up talking history about Ordnance Survey maps, telephone boxes, and, coincidentally - plague!

Using a BBC Timeshift documentary, and a few other sources, it was originally intended to be 10-15 minutes, but with wanting to include proper pieces of music and have the talking not be overly didactic, it grew to the near half hour it now takes. There are some music references buried in the exchanges - can you spot them..?

'She' was played by Melanie Crawley. The flute was played by John Hackett, violin by Clare Lindley, and horn/trumpet by Ant Clifford, with backing vocals by Kim Eames. The majority of the sound effects were recorded in and around Eyam, tho' the café doorbell came from Wales..

Get a cup of your favourite brew, maybe a biscuit or two, get comfy, and press play :-)

See you tomorrow!

** No, there's so question mark. I am known among my friends as something of a strict grammarian, but I elected here to flount convention. It's art, dahling, art!

Common Sense Dancing: UK Lockdown

It's 24th March 2020, the UK has pretty much been placed in lockdown**.

My most recent album, Common Sense Dancing, was put live on Bandcamp last Friday, ahead of its 'proper' release on the 3rd April. Since the lockdown is due to be 3 weeks and Common Sense Dancing has 20 tracks, I thought I'd highlight a track a day and here and there talk about the story behind it, and hopefully by the end the world will be a better place. Because everyone did sensible things, of course, not because of the healing powers of art!

The tracks will be presented out of order, for no other reason than I can.

There will be a link to the track on Bandcamp, on which it is free to stream - there is no obligation to part with money to hear it. If you would like to play any of the tunes offline, or to see the full album artwork this will involve the movement of currency, but that is, of course, your choice!

Common Sense Dancing is built around themes of the Arts and Nostalgia, has history, humour, and reflection, and incorporates many styles of music. There should be something for all comers over the next three weeks.

So, I look forward to having you along on what might be, perhaps, Corona Sense Dancing, or may be Common Sense Distancing..

** I provide this contextual information for future readers! A bit like the brief exposition sometimes given in radio comedy sketches to set the scene..