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!