Road Songs (Special Edition)

If roads were stick insects, I would not be a driver. Give me a fleshy, curvaceous motorway and I am a happy man, turn it into a size zero paved surface and I will be hanging my car keys forever and ever.

A bend doth a road make. The way this man-made, asphaltic curve winds and wraps itself around the landscape is the reason why I love being behind the wheel so much. It is also the reason why I derive a greater pleasure from driving around the British countryside than in urban London. The streets in my adopted city are too narrow and even broad avenues that arch left or rightwards lack the necessary angular space to enjoy the manouevring around a particular bend.

And the most important element of this peculiar and, possibly, whimsical fancy of mine is the synergy between braking, the bend as such and my hands holding the wheel. The first was analysed in detail here, the second one is the subject of this post tonight and the third one will be discussed in another column very soon.

When you find yourself behind the wheel, steering your car on a long, flat piece of tarmac, at some point your brain begins to beg for a change. That's where bends, chiefly conspicuous ones, come into play. Brake slowly, shift into a lower gear as you go around and let your hands slide on either side of the wheel. Bliss.

In music, too, I love this symbiosis between tempo, musicianship and creativity. And I will use the examples below to illustrate the relationship between road bends and musical ones.

My first clip is by Maestro Astor Piazzolla performing a song that is as rhythmically exquisite as it is curvaceously adorable. Here the bandoneon is the simile to that stretch of road that meanders and zigzags whilst the violin and piano represent the foot on the gas pedal. Touching.



The second clip is by The Beatles and it is also a timeless tune, 'A Day In the Life'. It, too, is my favourite song from their renowned "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album and no, this is not the official video. In fact there's a disclaimer on the author's profile on youtube that reads thus: 'Beatle clips I put together to "A Day in the Life". I made the picture at the end too. I've been noticing that some sites have been using my video and I would like to say that although I like the idea of my video being liked it is not the original.' And you could certainly believe that this clip was the work of John, Paul, George and Ringo, couldn't you? Such a good quality.

'A Day In the Life' is actually two songs in one. Apparently Lennon finished writing the first part and spoke to Paul about finding a filler for the second section. The latter had scribbled another melody and agreed to add it to John's bit. The result is the union of scattered pieces of news and domestic life. John's view can be interpreted as the sum of disparate world and regional events. Paul's is mundaness at its best. And you notice that at 2:17 (clip below) when McCartney's part kicks in. To me it is the equivalent of driving through the Dartford crossing en route to Kent. There's the bend curving seductively upwards and then downwards, the barrier that separates the metropolis from the countryside, order vs freedom. As an addendum, let me tell you that the Dartford crossing is not always that romantic. In fact, it is a nightmare most of the time, but last summer it provided me with one of those priceless moments when, queue-free, I cruised downhill with Nina Simone on the car stereo belting out 'I Put a Spell on You' and if there's a more magical and serendipitous moment, I'd be glad to hear about it. On a postcard, please. And handwritten, nobody writes cards by hand anymore.

But I digress. Sorry. 'A Day in the Life' is a monster of a road song that symbolises bends at their most beautiful and chaotic, like that middle section. Genius.



Last but not least an artist who has been featured four times on this blog in less than three months. Some people might be wondering whether I have suddenly become a Billy Joel freak or if I'm being paid by his record company to upload his music. No, it has all been very fortuitous. There was that link to his song 'The Stranger' because the post in which the track appeared was related to whistling, then there was his song 'Vienna' used as one of my Sunday clips. A couple of weeks ago I confessed to being bowled over by the lyrics of his timeless 'New York State of Mind' and I now I bring you 'Scenes from an Italian Restaurant'. All this has been rather accidental, not intentional. In the song below, the road bend is symbolised by the changes at 1:41 and at 2:44. The first one is a smooth shift from a higher gear to a lower one, as the car effortlessly moves uphill, zigzagging carefully, whereas the second one is akin to going down and around a pretty bend at full speed, window open, wind massaging your temples. And by the way she is having a ball, isn't she? And so is the saxophonist. What do you mean who is 'she'? She, at 2:42; 2:59; 3:57; 4:08 and 5:01. Have you been paying attention? Anyway, what I would like to know is, what were you doing in the summer of '75? Going steady like Brenda and Eddy or driving around and enjoying road bends? Thanks and enjoy.



Copyright 2010

Next Post: 'Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music' to be published on Sunday 17th January at 10am (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." G. K. Chesterton

One of the many misconceptions people have about Cubans living abroad is the political views we hold once we settle in a foreign land. After all, having been born and raised – as in my case – under a totalitarian regime, our default position should be ideally in favour of small government, individuality over collectiveness and little financial regulation. In short, laissez-faire, Latin-style.

What a surprise it is then for some of my British and non-British acquaintances when they find out that there are many Cubans currently living in the UK who could be considered to be moderately centre-of-left, or even leftwing (I know a couple of them) and the way they have come to adopting these positions is not through imposition but through choice. What is also less known is that once this political cat’s out of the bag, the consequences are somewhat dangerous.

The main hazard is that the only reference most westerners have of Cubans abroad is that of the exiles in Miami. This is the blueprint that has been passed down for decades. However, generational confrontations in recent years have shown that even this species is facing extinction, as we know it. Right now there’s a large group of younger Cubans, born and bred in Florida and other cities and states of the US who want an immediate stop to the embargo imposed on the Caribbean nation almost four decades ago. This third generation of Cubans (or Cuban-Americans as they style themselves sometimes) want to have the opportunity to walk the streets and sit in the parks their grandparents and parents walked and sat in decades before. And they are doing their utmost to urge the Obama administration to open up the gates, whilst at the same time attempting to talk their own folks and grandparents into changing their mindset in relation to the Cuban government.

So, it should not be surprising that some of us choose to move away from this mêlée taking place in the Sunshine State and opt for more viable, democratic and less partisan positions abroad, as it happened to me, once I got over the shock that beans on toast was the staple of the British diet. Besides, with so many political parties, an august – albeit deeply flawed if the current situation is anything to go by – parliament and a judiciary that still applies the law effectively, I personally felt that involvement in politics was less daunting over here than in my country of origin.

And yet a brief look at the political spectrum in the UK nowadays would put that view to shame. Whereas the roles of the three main political parties were better defined, or at least better shaped, when I arrived in London in 1997, it is harder now to tell them apart. And this puts a voter like me, interested in social issues, in limbo. Policies on matters such as: the minimum wage, small/medium enterprises and their role in the economy, minorities’ rights and the rich/poor divide have been part of my everyday work for the last six years and my approach to them has usually been from a liberal point of view. I would like to keep – and increase eventually - the minimum wage that the Labour government brought in straight after they came to power, I favour low taxation on small and medium businesses (and the incentive to create more social enterprises), I lean towards granting more rights to minority group such as: women, gays, blacks, disabled, amongst others - although the fact that women make up roughly half the labour force in Britain contradicts that 'minority' role. And I would like higher taxes to be levied on the rich and using that surplus to level the playing field in employability and job creation for those in pecuniary difficulties. But you would be hard pressed to find a political party whose policies address these issues in a cogent and coherent manner. Labour’s recent conference was all about damage limitation. And their proposed centralisation won’t do. Not whilst the Iraq issue still hangs over the party’s head like the famous sword of Damocles. Not, whilst MPs continue to moan about the money they are being asked to give back. And above all, not, now that the Prince of Darkness, Peter Mandelson, has been allowed back into government: thrown out of parliament twice, bounced back the same number of times.

The Tories, on the other hand, are the party-elect. Theirs is the next general election to lose. Cameron’s suave character has won him many new advocates. But when it comes to walking the talk, his box of magic tricks is empty. His plans to cut spending are too simplistic, to put it mildly, and they risk alienating the same voters who will be rooting for him come May or June 2010. Plus, last time I checked, Cameron was trying to market his party as the ‘compassionate’ option. Fat chance if the likes of Michael Gove have their way once they are in power. Gove recently outraged the dance world when he said that by encouraging young people to take ‘soft subjects, such as A Level Dance, we are damaging their future chances of being accepted at university (Dance UK News, Issue 74, Winter 2009). And did I mention his proposal to recruit ex-army personnel and involve them in the running of schools? Will they distribute berets to students, too, I wonder?

So, Labour on one hand is target-obsessed whilst the Tories on the other hand are happy to let the economy set sail onto unknown waters. What’s a person, who insists on exercising his democratic right to vote, to do? You’ve probably noticed that I did not include the Liberal Democrats. Well, parliamentary fence-sitters have never struck a strong chord with me. And the Greens are a single-issue party.

That's why I have slowly been changing my mind over the last few years and begun to think that maybe, just maybe, this is a sign of our modern political times. Form over content, presentation over substance. Focus groups and marketing strategies in lieu de the great idea. Gone are the days when the combined efforts of Attlee and Bevan gave the UK its rightly cherished NHS. And love it or loathe it, Thatcher's free market approach was fresh at a time when the Keynesian method of the Callaghan government had apparently failed. This blurring of political lines nowadays and the absence of 'The Bold Concept' has turned Westminster into a place for thinktanks to get together as opposed to being the seat of the British government. Suddenly there's no red (Labour) or blue (Tories) anymore. We're all magenta now.

And it is a similar fate that has befallen the Cuban community abroad. No longer are the lines divided between those who hate Castro and those who feel sympathetic to his regime. In Miami, a city I have never visited but where I have a few acquaintances, the climate has been transformed drastically. This third generation of Cubans who are now in their early-to-mid twenties want less of the confrontational language that permeated earlier Cuban immigrants' mindset and a healthier approach to the island. All of a sudden it's OK to say that one is liberal, centre-of-left, or even leftwing, without being called a Chavez stooge of an apologist for Evo Morales's government.

But whereas the Cuban diaspora has benefited greatly from this panoply of political attitudes, the upshot of the absence of clear, audacious and defined social and economic policies in the British parliament is to risk losing voters. And we all know what happens when you lose voters, don't we? C'mon, guys, be brave, give us that Big Idea, we know you have it.



Copyright 2009

Next Post: 'What Makes a Good Writer?' to be published on Tuesday 27th October at 11:59pm (GMT)

Killer Opening Songs (The Beatles-Help!)

I can't believe that Killer Opening Songs has not included any The Beatles track yet in its weekly outing. It is embarrassing really and I intend to make amends straight away. It is with that idea in mind that I have chosen this introductory track which happens to be the title track, too.

'Help!' was released in 1965 at the height of Beatlemania and the only way I can describe this album is pop at its catchiest ever. Not wackiest yet, though. That would come later with the 'Rubber Soul' and 'Sgt Pepper' recordings. The songs are short (the whole LP lasts just over thirty minutes) but their life-affirming ethos is intoxicating. The Killer Opening Song finds John in confessional mood, struggling to open up to others. Whoever said that men were not emotional beings? In addition this K.O.P. was the soundtrack to a spoof James Bond movie.

I shall write no more now for what can one add to what's already been said about 'The Four Fab from Liverpool'?

By the way, what's that funny squabble going on between Paul, George and Ringo, all behind John, competing for the camera?




Copyright 2008