Engineer of the Big Huge
“If we can’t describe our reality accurately, we can’t see it.”― Paolo Bacigalupi
Music industry zelig Joe Boyd turned 80 yesterday, with little fanfare marking the date (I heard about it through a post from an old Warner Bros. friend Thane Tierney) which is just wrong given the deep importance and greatness of his work. Boyd is from Boston, something that blew my mind when I found that out. Wasn’t he the guy who produced all of the crazy English folk records of the 60s and early 70s? Fairport Convention? The Incredible String Band? Vashti Bunyan? John Martyn? Sandy Denny? Americans don’t make sounds like that!
I first read about Boyd on the back of the debut Nick Drake record Five Leaves Left, still one of the great records of all. With Drake’s record and with the other folk records he oversaw, he had a knack for creating an atmosphere, a coloring, that organically sculpted a multi-dimensional natural beauty: think forestry green and dark brown tones. He took the music and elevated it to an ethereal plane, full of breath and character, creating a sound that bands have attempted to imitate for decades. Just listen to Day is Done by Nick Drake, Air by the Incredible String Band or Just Another Diamond Day by Vashti Bunyan, each song sweetly opening itself up with calm, fog-covered arrangements and Tolkien sparkles.
But Boyd is so much more than the engineer of the English Folk sound. He was a record executive running the UK wing of Electra and serving time as the head of music for Warner Bros films. He was a concert organizer, bringing greats like Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Muddy Waters to Europe in the mid-60s (helping fuel the blues movement over there) and was behind the soundboard in Newport when Bob Dylan went electric in 1965 (JUDAS!), one of the most important music moments of all time, a moment that still sounds so powerful and rich. He produced an incredible film doc on Jimi Hendrix and more recently, the breathtaking Amazing Grace about Aretha Franklin, and started Hannibal Records, releasing the likes of Richard & Linda Thompson, Joe King Carrasco (ayeee), Bert Jansch, Sandy Denny, Shirley Collins…often reintroducing these now heritage artists to new audiences. And most recently he co-produced the beautiful 2020 release Singer Of Tales by Bosnian musician Damir Imamović, a record that builds on the sound he started back in the Nick Drake days, with an international twist.
Oh, and he produced the first Pink Floyd single, Arnold Layne.
I recently re-dug into Nico’s Dessert Shore LP that Reprise released in 1970. I had forgotten that Boyd had worked on the record, sitting in the crow’s nest at home, listening to side one over and over again, just taken with the minimal yet mystical vibes coming from the grooves. When I finally picked the sleeve up and read that it was Boyd’s handiwork as record producer, it made complete sense: who else makes records that sound like that. Everything he touched, he helped come alive.
Happy 80th birthday Joe Boyd, and thank you for the music.
Ai Weiwei Will Curate London Exhibition of Works Created by Incarcerated People
This sounds incredible: “‘Freedom’ will reflect a diversity of people’s experiences with incarceration, with works created by individuals in prisons, mental health facilities, immigration detainment centers, and youth offender institutions. ‘The vision for the exhibition is inspired by [Ai’s] visit to the Koestler Arts building [in west London], which currently holds over 6,500 works entered into this year’s awards…’”
Conversation between Nathan Salsburg and Todd Harvey, two titan music curators.
I am lucky to know both of these folks, who spend much of their days focusing on bringing lost sounds to our ears, to making accessible stories from our past. Harvey is (a hero) at the Folk Life Center of the Library of Congress and Salsburg works with the Association for Cultural Equity, with the Alan & John Lomax archives. Great conversation.
Chilean writer Isabel Allende also turned 80 a few days ago…ons of the most read authors in the Spanish language. As this interview from last year digs into, she is not only an interesting literary figure…known as the most widely read Spanish language author, but her ties to Chilean politics give her an incredible story to tell. My friend Bob Travis also interviewed her a few years back…worth checking out as well.
Dante's Divine Comedy Herman Melville's heavily annotated copy is for sale
Christies has just listed Melville’s personal copy of The Human Comedy for Auction, filled with notes, underlinings, and other jottings. You can decide if it is worth buying for six figures, but regardless, the description is worth a read, a story to wet the pallet of a potential buyer which includes the date and bookstore where Melville bought the copy, some of what he wrote in the book, and some subjective fodder that is more than intriguing.
'Star Trek: The Original Series' Enterprise Model Warps Back to the National Air and Space Museum
Boldly going…back to the museum.
The Lotos-Eaters
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson
‘Courage!’ he said, and pointed toward the land,
‘This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.’
In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
And like a downward smoke, the slender stream
Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.
A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
And some thro’ wavering lights and shadows broke,
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops,
Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
Stood sunset-flush’d: and, dew’d with showery drops,
Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.
The charmed sunset linger’d low adown
In the red West: thro’ mountain clefts the dale
Was seen far inland, and the yellow down
Border’d with palm, and many a winding vale
And meadow, set with slender galingale;
A land where all things always seem’d the same!
And round about the keel with faces pale,
Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.
Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
To each, but whoso did receive of them,
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
Far far away did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
And deep-asleep he seem’d, yet all awake,
And music in his ears his beating heart did make.
They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
Most weary seem’d the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said, ‘We will return no more’;
And all at once they sang, ‘Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.’
CHORIC SONG
I
There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
Than tir’d eyelids upon tir’d eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And thro’ the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.’
II
Why are we weigh’d upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest: why should we toil alone,
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown:
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings,
Nor steep our brows in slumber’s holy balm;
Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
‘There is no joy but calm!’
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?
III
Lo! in the middle of the wood,
The folded leaf is woo’d from out the bud
With winds upon the branch, and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no care,
Sun-steep’d at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
Falls, and floats adown the air.
Lo! sweeten’d with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
All its allotted length of days
The flower ripens in its place,
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.
IV
Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o’er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.
V
How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,
With half-shut eyes ever to seem
Falling asleep in a half-dream!
To dream and dream, like yonder amber light,
Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;
To hear each other’s whisper’d speech;
Eating the Lotos day by day,
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;
To muse and brood and live again in memory,
With those old faces of our infancy
Heap’d over with a mound of grass,
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!
VI
Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives
And their warm tears: but all hath suffer’d change:
For surely now our household hearths are cold,
Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten years’ war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain.
The Gods are hard to reconcile:
’Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labour unto aged breath,
Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars
And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.
VII
But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly,
How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly)
With half-dropt eyelid still,
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill—
To hear the dewy echoes calling
From cave to cave thro’ the thick-twined vine—
To watch the emerald-colour’d water falling
Thro’ many a wov’n acanthus-wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretch’d out beneath the pine.
VIII
The Lotos blooms below the barren peak:
The Lotos blows by every winding creek:
All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone:
Thro’ every hollow cave and alley lone
Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown.
We have had enough of action, and of motion we,
Roll’d to starboard, roll’d to larboard, when the surge was seething free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl’d
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl’d
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world:
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning tho’ the words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer—some, ’tis whisper’d—down in hell
Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.
