Tuesday 14 February 2012

Some Of Our Records Are Missing

One thing leads to another.

Seeing that mysterious ghost ship trapped in the ice on the Staff Club pond the other day immediately called to mind the ballad "Lord Franklin", as rendered by Pentangle on the album Cruel Sister.  Forty-odd years ago, in that icy winter of 1970/71, that album was probably my favourite, and that track in particular -- with its wistful, understated yearning for an explorer of the heroic age, missing presumed lost among the ice-floes of the Northwest Passage -- embedded itself deep in my psyche.  I learned the chords and the words, and at Easter 1971 -- I had forgotten this -- a friend and I performed it before an audience of 100 or so.

How easy it is to forget our past selves.  Once upon a time, I was possessed by the folk music of the British Isles in the way some are possessed by football or fashion.  The revival of that music by groups like Pentangle was old news by the time my teenage interest was aroused, but its transformation by way of electrification by the likes of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span happened before my very eyes.  For me, the excitement of those first folk-rock albums such as Liege and Lief, and Hark! The Village Wait exceeded even that of acts like Led Zeppelin, exciting as they were.  This was truly my music.

But, we change.  Within a few years, other musics had exercised their charms on me, and those folk albums went to the back of the box, and went unplayed literally for decades.  Even when the mood for nostalgia hit me, it would be Countdown to Ecstasy or Black Market I would reach for.  But that frozen ship in the pond awoke an urge to listen to Pentangle, so I resolved to dig out those albums.

Easier said than done.  For many years, my small collection of vinyl has lived on a shelf at the bottom of a bookcase which is wedged against a wall behind a large oak table.  The only way to access them is to crawl under the table with a torch.  It's dirty and dusty down there, and it is booby-trapped with tangled computer cables, power-plug extensions and stacked boxes of God-knows-what.  But, like Howard Carter penetrating the tomb of Tutankhamun, I crawled through, hoping to discover "wonderful things, wonderful things".




But, it turns out, the tomb had been robbed.  Plenty of LPs remained -- my torch revealed The Rolling Stones, Miles Davis, Bob Marley, Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Steely Dan, even a double album BBC Russian course -- but the folkie gold I was seeking had gone.  Not a single Pentangle album remained.  Both early Steeleye Span albums had gone.  Full House (first pressing with blacked out track listing) was missing.

I have no idea where they are now, but they will have gone missing thirty or more years ago.  I have my suspicions.  I suppose I may have loaned them to someone.  Or I may even have given them away or sold them in the 1980s.  It hardly matters now and, in a way, I rather enjoy not being able to scratch that particular itch: some nostalgic longings are far sweeter unfulfilled.
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
  Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
  Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
  Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
    Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal — yet, do not grieve;
    She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
  For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

And that is exactly the appeal of the story of "Lord Franklin", of course:  "The fate of Franklin no tongue can tell".  It's a tale about all tales without closure, adrift somewhere on the spectrum of mystery between the Marie Celeste and a few missing LPs.  It's an oddly unanchored song, too, neither wholly Lady Franklin's lament nor simply a sailor's dream.

One day (and it may be quite soon) the remains of the real Sir John Franklin, his ship and his crew will turn up, and the yarn will finally be fully told.  Of course, the historic expedition (as opposed to the imagined one) is already exemplary.  That is, exemplary of the magnificent folly of British self-belief.  Britain might have ruled the waves in 1845, but had more of a problem with pack-ice.

Whether the discovery of some cold, gnawed bones, a few buttons and a heap of shivered ship's timbers will capsize the song's appeal remains to be seen, but I doubt it.  It certainly won't make any difference to Lady Jane Franklin, who offered large rewards and sponsored seven expeditions to find news of her husband, refusing to the end to believe the tales of catastrophe and cannibalism that were whispered back from the Arctic wastes. Too late, too late: she died in 1875.

Ten thousand pounds I would freely give
To know on earth, that my Franklin do live.





30 comments:

Bronislaus Janulis / Framewright said...

Nice post Mike.

Folly, though? Recently read a book about Mallory and Everest; the supposition being what had been seen and experienced a few years previously, the so-called "Great War" led them to have a disdain for death.

The horrid way lives have been squandered would seem a greater folly than dangerous explorations.

Guess I'm a sucker for tragic expeditions.

Martin said...

I, too, lost my vinyl copy of 'Hark, the Village Wait'. Have since (ahem) acquired a copy and still love it to bits.

Graham Dew said...

Really nice set of ice pictures Mike (including the Lord Franklin). Your minature ice shelves, icebergs and lost ship say more than photos of the real things themselves would.

Don't know what happened to my vinyl collection. I'd just like to show the kids how wonderful the albun sleeves could be.

Graham

Mike C. said...

Bron,

I'm about to embark on a minor reading/research spree on the Franklin Expedition, but what I think I already know is that early-to-mid-19th c. Britain sent repeated expeditions to perish in the search for a NW Passage that, it was presumed, would open up like the Red Sea for the new Chosen People... The pursuit of heroic failure, preferably involving extreme weather in unsuitable clothing, and/or combat situations, is what made Britain great!

Martin,

Yes, I remember it being a great album. Hmm, trying to remember if I have ever unexpectedly bumped into you looking shifty, holding a torch and covered in cobwebs...

Graham,

Actually, those much-vaunted LP sleeves are another example of memories best left in the past! Looking at the ones I pulled out in my search, I was surprised at how uniformly DULL and poorly executed they are, in the main. I feel a post coming on...

Mike

Graham Dew said...

Mike,

For a sizeable number of the sixth form in my day, Hipgnosis was what ART was about. Oh yes (Yes), Roger Dean too. I'm feeling embarrasingly nostalgic now...

Graham

Mike C. said...

Graham,

No doubt, but -- be warned -- don't disappoint yourself by digging out some old covers to look at. Production values have changed, for the better, over the last three or four decades...

Martin,

I've been looking at your recent crow images with a more than slightly raised eyebrow... "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" and all that, but I have reason to feel slightly proprietary about that particular "look and feel". Try and think of another way of doing crows, please!

Mike

David Brookes said...

Mike

I think you are wasted as a blogger. This is such a wonderful piece of writing that it deserves a much wider audience.

I do not share your experience of the bands you mention, but I have a great love of English folk song as captured by Cecil Sharp, Ralph Vaughan Williams and others, and as used in the music of Holst, VW et al. I would back such tunes as "Dives and Lazarus" and "High Germany" against anything the world has to offer.

David

Martin said...

Ah, the rooks. As I mentioned in my post, they have come to roost in our lives, in a way that's hard ignore, just now. We have a rookery in the mature oaks to the back of us and the skies are filled to overflowing at first light. Sorry to disappoint, but there has been no conscious effort of my part to emulate 'look and feel'. I just pointed my camera at what I saw from the kitchen window, and got lucky. They do throw some nice shapes, though, don't they?

struan said...

It wasn't just Britain. One of the books that started me on a misbegotten youth of climbing and exploration was Elisha Kent Kane's writings on the Grinnell expeditions, which were USA funded and led.

Wikipedia won't tell you directly, but Kane was one of the first public lecture media superstars. Part of the pre-photographic panorama phenomenon. There's always a link.

Today's Swedish lesson: http://katastrofalaomslag.blogspot.com/

Mike C. said...

David,

Very kind, but hard to imagine what or where that "wider audience" would be, if not here. If I were not (a) 58, (b) gainfully employed, and (c) very lazy, then I might seek more outlets, but then I'm not exactly hiding -- "if you write it they will come!" is the bloggers' creed...

N.B. I am astonished that anyone with an interest in traditional folk would not have listened to Pentangle, Fairport Convention, or Steeleye Span! I can understand an aversion to guitars and drums, but surely the names Martin Carthy, Dave Swarbrick, Maddy Prior, or [he kneels] Sandy Denny are not unknown to you? Their work after the mid-70s is not worth bothering with, imho, but the period 1968-74 is classic.

Martin,

Hmm, I think Messrs. Sue, Grabbit & Runne are very unimpressed by the "no conscious effort" argument.

Check out my "White Crow Telescope" book (merely the tip of an iceberg of such "crows" work, some of which has featured in this blog) and say that again with a straight face!

I'm only bothered because that "look" (which is MINE, I tell you, MINE) has attracted attention, and may yet be an exhibition in the USA, though that does seem less likely at the moment.

Mike

Mike C. said...

Struan,

That link... "Sweden, land of restrained Nordic good taste and, um, Abba".

I'd not heard of Grinnell, probably because he doesn't feature on any British folk-rock album (though I can imagine Steely Dan having dry fun with an all-American heroic failure).

I'm aware that there were many such, though -- I occasionally get sent a booklist by a dealer in used and rare exploration / mountaineering type books (Top of the World Books, I think, or it may be Pinnacle Books) because I once bought a Frank Hurley item from them. It has clearly been a major sub-genre of publishing and collecting for 200 years or more.

Mike

Dave Leeke said...

I think you probably sold them, Mike. After all, you sold me your copy of "North Star Grassman and the Ravens" for £2, I think it was. I've still got it - I still have most of my old vinyl but rarely play it now.

As for "Hark! The Village Wait" Richard Thompson recently claimed, "The textures on that first album in particular are beautiful, and still actually unexplored." Listening to it recently, I agree - there's an interesting mix of instruments that Fairport and later Steeleye ignored. But maybe the tensions in the band that led to them splitting straight after recording it and never gigging that line up made for a really atmospheric recording.

Anyway, "Lord Franklin" will cost you 69p to download from Amazon.

Mike C. said...

Dave,

Sadly, you're probably right, I always did try to keep my vinyl down to a transportable cubic foot or so.

That album is darkly brilliant -- RT hits it on the head referring to its "textures", particularly vocally. It was an unusual choice of songs, too -- a gritty move away from the Laura Ashley tendency of much "revival" folk.

If I'd gone and downloaded the thing, I wouldn't have such an elegant post, would I?

Mike

eeyorn said...

Hi Mike, TonyC pointed me towards your blog a little while ago but I've only just found it. Nice blog, and it was good to recall those early days of our lives. I too lost most of my vinyl collection following a divorce some years ago....grrr. Will be interesting to hear what else you dig up about Lord Franklin.

cheers, Ian Cropton
ps News of my death some years ago were greatly exaggerated :-)

Mike C. said...

Well I'm damned, Ian Cropton! What an appropriate post for you to make an entrance.

I can see I really am going to have to start an alternative Stevenage Connection blog... Hey, maybe I'll call it The Undercroft...

I'm trying to think when we last met -- Norwich, 1977? You were a lens grinder, I think. Do get in touch for a catch up -- email is best (mic "at" soton.ac.uk).

Welcome aboard -- feel free to comment as and when you feel like it (but do try to back-pedal the "Stevenage chums" bit -- it's tedious for those who don't have the very great honour of a New Town provenance...)

Mike

Martin said...

My own Messrs. Poynt, Chute & Hope have been alerted to the possibility of receiving a communication from your own firm of representatives.

I think the word verification sums up where I'm at in the world of photography. It's oikski.

Gavin McL said...

Mike
I can't help much on the English folk revival, but a good starter for your expedition reading would be Barrows Boys by Fergus Fleming. It was my introduction to the Franklin expeditions. It's the only book on the subject I've read so I don't know how good it is, indeed one of the Amazon reviewers wasn't impressed and recommends 2 other books, but I enjoyed it - it covers desert, Arctic and tropical expeditions sent out by John Barrow the 2nd Secretary at the Admiralty for a large portion of the 19th Century. It puts the Franklin expedition into context and the bibliography might be useful.
I do like the first "Franklin" photograph it reminds me of a stone carving of a ship on a weathered grave.

By the way a big article on melisma on the BBC site today

Mike C. said...

Thanks for the recommendation, Gavin, I'm not intending to go too far down the Franklin road, but a few pointers are always useful.

Yes, I've already been pointed at the "Whitney Houston and Melisma" piece on the BBC -- you read it here first, folks!

Mike

struan said...

No disrespect, but avoid Fergus Fleming. Well I would, on the evidence of his - dreadful - history of alpine climbing. Saints preserve us from well-meaning relatives who haven't heard of Amazon wish lists.

LIkewise Francis Spufford on Antarctic exploration. Ugh.

Go for the originals. There's a lot of material in Google Books for free, including Kane's books and home-grown ones like Scoresby. The RGS library was always a supremely friendly and welcoming place, so a day trip to London would be a better use of funds than tertiary sources in paperback.

Thinking about folk music, I think it's a bit like opera, in that it is better if you don't understand the words.

Mike C. said...

Struan,

I did a two-week work placement in the RGS library in 1980, when I was doing my library qualification. I hope it has changed since those days... Everyone that worked there seemed to be over 80, and I very nearly ran away screaming.

Ah, yes, the words... One of the great services the 60s/70s revival did was to edit songs into singable length and scansion. Life (nowadays) is too short for a forty verse border ballad.

That, and putting the songs into an imaginative space where qualities could emerge that had been suppressed by the Victorian drawing room atmosphere. It's a bit like "faerie" -- toe-curlingly cutesy or gut-wrenchingly weird, depending on which end of the telescope you choose to look through.

To be honest, what interests me in the Franklin story is not whether they all died of lead poisoning or who ate whom, but its resonances as a story (yes, I'm thinking about a photo-sequence ...)

Mike

Mike C. said...

BTW, it's interesting, I'm thinking out loud, to note the high proportion of my regular commenters who have an interest in mountaineering and allied trades.

Hard to know what to make of that!

Mike

LRD said...

'How easy it is to forget our past selves'. My goodness, how true. The words 'Hark! the village wait' had me scratching my head thinking where had I heard them before and why was it so evocative of something in my past. A quick visit to youTube and I was transported back to my days at the University of Kent in the 1970s and my old tape collection. How could I have possibly forgotten that this was the title of an album whose songs I still hum to my self today?

Bronislaus Janulis / Framewright said...

Interested in mountaineering, but only as an armchair adventurer

Bronislaus Janulis / Framewright said...

PS , the double caption match, or whatever, is very difficult

Gavin McL said...

Struan
Thanks for the advice on Mr Ferguson as I said it's the only book I've read on the subject and it's difficult to get much of an idea of what grasp the author has of his subject. Though I do remember it as very readable.
As for mountaineering - I like the idea of it and I have climbed several peaks in Scotland and managed a traverse of a lightly iced Aonach Eagach once, though I will quite happily admit to being terrified throughout. I much preferred caving, the drops are often similar but you can't see the bottom generally - somehow I find that easier to deal with!
Gavin

struan said...

Gavin, I'm the perfectionist sort who tries to read *everything* and then decide for myself what was good and what not. The F.F. alps book ("Killing Dragons") was correct in its facts, but told a canonical history in a canonical way - missing large chunks of important oddball activity and ending up very suspect on the motivations of the people involved.

I wish I could recommend a good book. Were it me, I'd grab some original expedition accounts and try to fill in around them with general cultural history to put them in context.

If you like Scottish mountains though, I'd recommend the poetry of Norman MacCaig and the short 'Doctor' climbing stories of G.J.F. Dutton.

I'm inverted in my preferences - I can't really enjoy caving. I love the look of caves, but when they get tight I stop having fun. The idea of wriggling for miles through an 18" passage fills me with dread. Each to their own.

Mike, as you know, 'fey' is an recurrent mood in the things I notice and try to photograph. That puts me in some odd company, but the undogmatic ones can be fun to swap terminology with. Sometimes, what mathematicians would call a trivial change of reference frame can reveal important new relationships or symmetries.

Do you have to choose a Polar disaster? One aspect of the national culture I find really annoying is to celebrate well-intentioned failure and regard it almost as a sort of redemption process (Lord Jim, Dunkirk). The successful expeditions of John and James Ross are, naturally, forgotten, although it was their example of surviving for several years before rescue that kept the Franklin hopes alives. They, like Kane and, later, the Norwegians, took the trouble to learn from the Inuit.

Adam Long said...

BTW, it's interesting, I'm thinking out loud, to note the high proportion of my regular commenters who have an interest in mountaineering and allied trades.

Or even mountaineering and folk. As a girl, my wife was once evicted from her bed to the sofa to make way for Bert Jansch. Surprised you're digging under the table to find this stuff though, has no one introduced you to Spotify?

Mike C. said...

Crikey, this is turning into a commentathon...

Gavin,

Caves?? Forget about it!! They put them under the ground for a reason, you know.

Struan,

I'd tell you what I have in mind, but I suffer from the Curse of Telling -- as soon as I describe what I'm thinking of doing, I lose all interest.

Adam,

Yup, I do know about Spotify, but part of my mission was to demonstrate the ancient art of spinning ye blacke plastick diske to my daughter -- she'd never seen a vinyl record being played.

Mike

Martyn Cornell said...

Love that song too: the Pentangle version is great, but Micheal O'Domhnaill's is perhaps my favourite.

The search for Franklin inspired the development of a beer style – Arctic Ale – which expeditions to the Arctic took with them, and which an American home brewer recently revived: you can read about that here.

I wouldn't agree completely about your comments on jazz LP covers: some of the Blue Note LPs had great artwork, eg Cool Struttin' by Sonny Clark.

I've been engaged in a project to digitise my old LPs (which are all up in the loft): takes a feckin' long time. But it does mean listening again to stuff I haven't paid attention to for a decade or more, and realising how fantastic some of it is: Chieftains 3, for example, is perfection.

Mike C. said...

Martyn,

Yes, I've just listened and that is a very good version -- interesting how Martin Carthy's arrangement has become "definitive", though, esp. compared to the original broadside (hi, Struan). Perhaps a teaspoon too much sugar for my taste?

You know who I'd like to hear do a version? Van Morrison... His take on "She Moves Through The Fair" is worth a listen (on the Irish Heartbeat album, which I actually like -- I know a lot of people loathe it).

"She moves.." is one of my favourite Fairport renderings -- Richard Thompson's guitar is exquisite.

True, some jazz covers are very cool, it was a good outlet for some of that Robert Frank era photography.

Mike