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Humphrey Lyttleton – One Man Went to Blow
From Platinum Series : [emusic]

Louis Armstrong referred to him as “that cat in England who swings his ass off“.

Humphrey Lyttleton led the sort of polymath life that most of us can only dream of: cartoonist, soldier, broadcaster, author, chairman of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue on BBC Radio Four, and one of the greatest jazz musicians to emerge from postwar Britain.

Humph died on Friday, and it’s unlikely the world will see anyone like him again. A member of the minor English nobility, he was schooled at Eton in the 1930s, but avoided a life of privilege by buying a trumpet and developing a deep love of jazz.

In 1943 he landed on the Salerno beaches with a gun in one hand and a trumpet in the other. On V-E day in 1945 he was paraded around in front of Buckingham Palace in a wheelbarrow, playing “Roll Out the Barrel”. After the war, he drew cartoons for the Daily Mail, played and toured with Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong.

In 1956 Humph’s band scored the first “jazz” hit in the UK Billboard charts – Bad Penny Blues reached number 19 and stayed there for 6 weeks: a real achievement when British ears were already picking up the intimations of a new kind of pop, courtesy of Elvis Presley and Bill Haley.

And from 1971 until his death Humph was the chairman of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, one of the longest running panel games on the BBC. A platform for the absurdist and surreal streaks in British humour, nobody had less idea about what was going on during the show than the ringmaster himself, Humphrey Lyttleton.

I hope that Humph is now jamming somewhere with his old friend Louis Armstrong. But I’d like to think that he’s also introducing the angels to the complex and ancient rules of the greatest game of them all, Mornington Crescent:

Mornington Crescent (Napoleon III Variation)
From the 2007 series of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue (BBC Radio 4)

The Independent has a good obituary, and Melvyn Bragg’s excellent 2007 TV documentary on Humph is on YouTube (in 6 parts).

Dave Dobbyn – Lament for the Numb
From Overnight Success: Columbia/Sony [Buy]

NZ soldiers on Chunuk Bair, August 1915

The choice of music for this post is one of my favourite songs by a New Zealand songwriter. Yesterday was ANZAC Day. It’s one of the few occasions that kiwis assert our national identity, so I went to the University’s memorial service, which this year just happened to be in the familiar surroundings of New College Chapel.

As expected the choir did the event proud, singing Stanford‘s evening canticles in Bb and John Ireland‘s anthem Greater Love Hath No Man. The organ postlude was variations on Hyfrydol, a tune which is currently chasing me around the world…

The Vice Chancellor John Hood (a New Zealander, haha we’re taking over) read the lesson, and the President of the Oxford Turkish Society read an extract from Kemal Ataturk‘s speech at Gallipoli in 1932, which concludes:

“…you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land. They have become our sons as well.”

USS West Point, the troop ship that took my grandfather to New Caledonia

Today, we are lucky that war is a remote, abstract concept for most of us in the West- something done by professional soldiers in countries far from our comfortable lives.

It’s hard for us younger people to imagine what life was like for those who lived through the World Wars. Here in Oxford, I’m always aware that this is the town where my English grandparents spent WW2, working for the British Ministry of Food after evacuation from London.

Recently I was sent a transcript of my New Zealand grandmother’s memories of WW2. My grandfather was called up for army service in August 1942, and he learned the news on the day of my mum’s first birthday party. This was my grandmother’s recollection, written in 1960 :

“…the phone rang at Rosemary’s first birthday party in August 1942. It was your father ringing to tell me that he had been called up and was going into the army. He was to report for duty in a week’s time! I felt as though the end of the world had come – my world anyway. All the presents for our little guests were forgotten – a basket full of balloons and sweets and toys. I suppose he just had to tell someone but what an end to a little girl’s first birthday party! You’ve heard about people ‘folding their tents and fading into the night’ – that’s how my friends seemed to go. Our hearts weren’t in the celebration any longer and anyway, the party was nearly over.”

Bourail, New Caledonia, where my grandfather served in WW2 with the 3rd New Zealand Division

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It’s finally happened. On Saturday April 19th one million dollars plays its final gig ever, at 4:20 in Auckland. It’s been a long journey for the band since 2000, a journey in which I was a fellow traveller for about 6 years until Europe shouted louder than the funk.

Saturday 19th will be a great celebration, and I think it’s worth remembering what a groundbreaking band we were. The first kiwi band to break the longstanding taboo on clandestine Brazilian immigrants, the first to play for Bobba Fett’s solo dance party and the only band to ever outnumber the crowd at a gig in Hamilton.

Musically, too, the band pushed boundaries, no better illustrated than in the song Energy State – our first album was called Energy State, but the track itself was never included on the album, because it was too dangerous. Its sheer funky power severely maimed several engineers during mixing and a test version of the album actually had to be removed from a flat in Waterview by a Hazardous Materials Unit from the City Council:

one million dollars – Energy State (Unreleased)

Apart from these tricky moments, being a member of the band was a huge privilege, certainly one of the greatest experiences of my life. Beyond the small achievements of three albums (Energy State, Soup Kitchen and Stand Up for the Shake Down), several music videos, tours around New Zealand, Vanuatu and to Sydney, it was the people who I will never forget. Musicians, engineers, flatmates, friends. They all know who they are, and the problem with a funk band is that there are so damn many of them that if I start thanking them individually I’ll leave someone important out.

So guys, have a great night on Saturday, alongside our old friends The Hot Grits and our devil spawn The Shades. I’ll be thinking of you all, and the great times we spent together. It was worth every minute. Peace.

Live at Fest Napuan, Port Vila, Vanuatu. October 2004

Laura Veirs – Ether Sings
From Carbon Glacier: Nonesuch [Buy] [emusic]

Some of the most memorable books from childhood were Tove Jansson‘s Moomin stories. First read to us by parents, and then by ourselves as we grew older, the books instilled a long-lasting fascination in all things Nordic.

The endless forests of pine trees, weatherboarded fishing houses clustered beside stormy seas and a world covered in ice seemed especially magic and strange to Kiwi kids, reading by torchlight under bedclothes on summer holidays.

It’s a similar magical, snow-streaked landscape that appears in the songs of Laura Veirs. She grew up in Colorado and now lives in the Pacific Northwest (Portland, OR). According to wikipedia Veirs studied Geology at University, and her lyrics tend to dig beneath the scenery around her, filling songs with icy starlight, sea monsters and Pacific swells breaking on lonely beaches.

It all sounds slightly whimisical, but Laura Veirs makes a strength of those flower-child tendencies. Her strong tunes are underpinned by interesting structures (check the 18-bar verse length on Ether Sings), and on her last three albums on Nonesuch (Carbon Glacier, Year of Metors and Saltbreakers), she’s been supported by great arrangements from producer Tucker Martine and some very intelligent musicians in her band Saltbreakers.

Veirs earlier, pre-Nonesuch work (1999-2003) trends towards the “folky”, but is well worth exploring. Bill Frisell even played on Laura’s 2003 album Troubled by Fire on Bella Union records. Like Lewis Taylor, I’m becoming obsessed with Laura Veirs and quite enjoying the sensation of drowning among the icebergs.

Lewis Taylor – New Morning
From The Lost Album [Buy] [emusic]

This weekend marks two years since I arrived in Oxford. So this morning I went out and took a photo of the chapel at Merton College, as I did in April 2006 and April 2007. The unexpected snowfall overnight offered an unusual mantle of peace to the city.

24 months is by far the longest I’ve been away from New Zealand. Europe still suits me as a space for making mistakes, adventure, working and exploring. A permanent move back ‘home’ still seems to sit out somewhere in the middle-to-long-distance.

I’ve been thinking about what I’ve learnt in two years as an “expatriate”. Given how clueless I still am about most things, it’s good to recognise that certain life-truths have become apparent, or at least been reinforced.

1. You’ll never lose your kiwi accent. Somehow I had this crazy notion I’d end up talking like a Thames Valley native. It hasn’t happened yet. Despite living among English people and being bombarded by Radio 4, I still speak Noo Zild, albeit inflected by a few dialect-isms (I catch myself saying “lorry” instead of “truck”; “yawright?” in place of “how are you?” and “hiya” rather than “hi”).

2. I will never understand the English or be one of them. Despite ancestry and a British passport, there are some things about English culture I just can’t track. Social class pervades everything you do here, and much casual conversation seems to be about categorising where you fit on the ladder. This may be why the English talk about the weather so much, because meteorology is class-neutral.

And the English are so reserved in their dealings with acquaintances – kiwis, even at their most diplomatic, come across as being blunt, over-eager and slightly clumsy. Making friends with English people is HARD (or maybe I’m just a nasty person who nobody wants to know).

3. Ale served at room temperature is, in fact, a drink. It took 18 months, but English beer finally makes sense. So it’s my round next time any of you are up in Oxvegas.

Sure, he’s a drummer, but definitely my favourite of the Stones.

Paul Simon – How Can You Live in the Northeast?
From Surprise: Warner [Buy]

Te aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata he tangata he tangata.
What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people.
- Maori proverb

Sometimes a journey takes you completely beyond your regular sphere and put the rest of your life in perspective.

When I booked my flights, a dash across the Atlantic just for the weekend seemed pretty crazy, not to mention ecologically unsound. But a few days in New Hampshire more than compensated for the cost and discomfort of coach class on American Airlines.

It’s really hard to put the journey into words, so laziness dictates some bullet point highlights instead:

• the first time the evil triplets have all been in the same room together
• Rushan becoming a Reverend
• Arushini, Constance, Byron and Will becoming Facebook Friends
• gratuitously large icecream sundaes
• gratuitously large burgers with the archbishop
• gratuitous amounts of Sri Lankan takeaways smuggled overland from Toronto
• gratuitous amounts of energy
• squelching snow, scaring seagulls
• playing jazz with Nick, Charlie and Nate
• sitting in the same pew as Abraham Lincoln
• cowering speechless in the kitchen for half an hour while Sri Lankans enthusiastically greet each other

Now back in England, normal life hits again with a violent bump. I’m confident I don’t need to eat for a week. But, maybe a little like Tash, I’m left longing and yet satisfied.