A DANGLING CONVERSATION

A DANGLING CONVERSATION

Norm and Dee Warwick & Larry & Liz Yaskiel

The Café In The Plaza is a Lanzarote venue where nothing and everything happens as one. By that I mean the place has a serenity that belies the fact that there are customers coming and going into the various shops and businesses that line two perimeters of the square. Sometimes the whispering breeze will rise into a roaring wind, flapping the sun-umbrellas and canvassed gazebos. That means that whatever it is that tinkles at the top of the masts of tall yachts moored in the nearby harbour become a full grown tubular bell section of a symphony orchestra, Depending on whichever table you place yourself at you can see suppliers bringing the week´s order to at least one of the shops. You can watch the cars drive down towards the ´millionairs´ harbour´ of Puerto Callero with the paleness of the driver´s face showing you that he doesn´t live there and has no idea where he is going.

Sometimes you can even hear the gasps of admiration of people walking along the harbour wall and realising the size, the beauty and the cost of these yachts that might have taken a thousand mile trip to berth their yacht, often called My Beautiful Wife (some owner´s even insert their wife´s name !).

What is certainly true is that you might arrive with things on your mind, but by the time you have taken your seat, ordered, and sipped the cream off your coffee and seen your fork melt into the chunk of carrot cake the waitress brought with it, you will have assumed the permanent laid back attitude of  Jimmy Buffet, the self appointed Son Of A Son Of A Sailor, looking for Margaritaville but knowing he´ll be enjoying a drink soon, because even on an island as small as Lanzarote its always Five O´ Clock Somewhere.

The Café In The Plaza is our favourite place for meeting up with Larry and Liz Yaskiel who, as regular readers will know, are frequently featured on these pages.

We took the half hour drive from Playa Blanca, north to Puerto Callero last week, to spend an hour in good company over coffee and cake, to enjoy what Paul Simon would have called ´a dangling conversation´, that inevitably wound its way around our shared love of music

It began with Larry telling me he had been watching a music documentary series on Sky Arts about how so many black musicians and writers were paid only a pittance for their catlogues, because of signing contracts that they didn´t realise were offering royalties that were less than one per cent of what recording companies were offering to white musicans.

I then caught up the series a few nights later, and although it was by now a very familiar story, it was no less appalling for being so.

“Even Chuck Berry was treated badly”, said Larry, “and he invented the whole rock and roll thing”!

And that was it,… the dangling conversation was off and running.

Larry reminded us how Keith Richards, early in his Rolling Stones career met Chuck Berry and the two became good friends, with Richards constantly calling out over the years for restitution to Berry and others.

This was early in the era of The Kinks and The Searchers, who Larry had heard playing at the German Night Club where he worked at the time.

Dee mentioned Tamla Motown as the sound of her youth and said that even on that label  there were rumours that artists were often denied artistic control over the sort of music they wanted to play whilst at the same time being placed on payment schemes that were not especially rewarding.

Somehow the conversation twisted round to Tony Bennett and we spoke of some of the surprising duets he recorded on his two albums of collaborations. We figured a British comparison to Bennett might have been Matt Monroe. My dad used to sing songs associated with both these artists, in his local pubs.

Liz moved us on to the next stage of back-catalogues being raided to be used for advertising. We spoke of how the income from advertisers might be shared out with artists like Amanda Lear, who sang Follow Me for Chanel No 5 perfume, and as she told us the story she mimicked Amanda´s deep, throaty voice. Amanda also recorded These Boots Were Made For Walking.

Then came the moment when the thread of the dangling conversation almost snapped: Liz brought up the name of the Canadian writer, Robert Thicke, I racked my brain and associated him with a hit that was quite controversial some fifteen  to twenty years ago. Blurred Lines was in the charts at a time when I had been invited to serve as one of four panelists in a public debate on whether or not music always enhances poetry. The flashpoint of the debate was when a young girl, university student age I guess, from the audience suggested that Blurred Lines proved that even music could not enhance lyrics as obscene as those on Blurred Lines, As this debate was being held as part of a huge literary festival, I felt on safe grounds to question why she thought the lyrics were obscene and who she blamed for that if so. The young lady replied it was the writer´s fault.

I tried to point out that the writer, who was also the singer, was playing the part of a guilty narrator, an increasingly common literarty technique at the the time. This technique allowed the writer to speak in the guise of a person holding views that the more they were proclaimed the nastier and scarier they sounded to be. The lyrics spoke about dating etiquette in the words of a guy claiming his girlfriend was giving him mixed signals (blurred lines) and was leading him on to being rough and forceful.

Of course those attitudes are manipulative, but I argued that these issues needed to be addressed and the song had got a whole generation talking about the issue. Its beat and mix made the record danceable and listenable in a way that a poem might not have been able to do.

Our dangling conversation remarked that we should all walk to the beat of a different drum, which was recorded by Linda Ronstadt who took us right back to Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly with its So Easy To Fall In Love. I remarked on the panorama of Linda´s career, from her early rock career, and move into country music, then into soft soul, across to Spanish language songs, Mexican Mariarch music, broadway shows and eventually opera.

Our chat was still circulating slowly around fair pay for fair play and that of course brought up the question of other payments or beneifits. At a time when my favourite singer writer, John Stewart, was in despair of ever having a hit, he wrote a line in a song that says

“And I believe that even when I´m gone, maybe some lonsesome (guitar) picker might find some healing in my songs.”

We wound down with The Beatles who recorded a version of Chuck Berry´s Roll Over Beethoven, and we played out with Beethoven´s Fur Elise.

It was interesting that daughter Roseanne Cash rather than her father, Johnny, became part of this hanging by a thread conversation, but the most surprising name to cling on for dear life was the late comedian, Freddy Starr.

So, we leave you with a twenty five track playlist to construct if you wish. We´d love to find a way to palce the selection on Spotify (so, if you have any suggestions, dear reader).

Meanwhile

Gonna write a little letter
Gonna mail it to my local DJ
Well, it’s a jumping little record
I want my jockey to play
A-roll over Beethoven
Gotta hear it again today

You know my temperature’s rising
Need a shot of rhythm and blues
Well my heart’s beatin’ a rhythm
A-shakin’ out rhythm and blues, whoo
Roll over Beethoven
Rockin’ in two by two

Sidetracks & Detours

present

A Sounds Collection

DANGLING CONVERSATION

Rock And Roll Muisc        Chuck Berry

I´m Waiting For The Man Keith Richards

You Really Got Me           The Kinks

Wonderboy                        The Kinks

Sweets For My Sweet       The Searchers

Walk In The Room            The Searchers

You Can´t Hurry Love The Supremes

The Happening                  The Supremes

Standing In The Shadows  The Four Tops

Smile               Tony Bennett & Striesand

Body & Soul   Bennett & Amy Winehouse

No Milk Today Herman´s Hermits

Henty v111 I Am herman´s Hermits

Portrait Of My Love         Matt Monroe

Follow Me                         Amanda Lear

These Boots                       Amanda Lear

Blurred Lines                    Robin Thicke

Different Drum                  Linda Rondstadt

Its So Easy                  Linda Rondstadt

Don´t Know Much  Linda & Aaron Neville

Price Of The Fire              John Stewart

Daydream Believer           John Stewart

Runaway Train                  Roseanne Cash

Who Told You?                 Freddie Starr

Baby You´re A Rich Man The Beatles

Roll Over Beethoven        Chuck Berry

Fur Elise                            Beethoven

all songs personally selected by

Some Lonesome Picker

can be found on Spotify