The Rambler

This has been a rough few weeks for musicians, with a lot of big names making their final bows. As part of my job (go and find out for yourself what that is…!) I keep an eye out for musician obituaries in the papers. Through Bloglines, I found a great little newsfeed to help with this – Moreover produce a whole bunch of aggregated feeds from all over the place on different subjects, and after a bit of searching around on Bloglines I got hold of one on obituaries. The results of this get dumped into my del.icio.us obituaries feed, and then crop up periodically in the box on the left. The moreover feed is pretty good – particularly for the UK and US press, although there are the inevitable links to ‘Donald Rumsfeld – a Political Obituary’-type of articles, and it’s recently been hijacked by some adverts. The work side of things just means that I need to keep an eye out for any musicians who crop up, but it’s fascinating watching the patterns of who gets obituaries, and how many, and where. And many of the newspapers have particular editorial practices for their obituary pages. The Independent for example is especially for good for musicians, of all disciplines, UK and international. The Chicago Tribune almost exclusively runs obituaries for local individuals: most of whom have led very normal, average lives, but have been granted commemoration in their city’s paper.

One thing that you do feel when reading across all the papers is a curious measure of an individual’s importance, according to the number of obituaries they receive around the world. Obviously Reagan has dominated in the last few days, and Ray Charles has been widely covered too, already. But interestingly Frances Shand Kydd – best known as Princess Di’s mother – who died just over a week ago, has also received almost blanket obituary coverage around the world, for less apparent reasons. By this measure Norris McWhirter was highly regarded too.

I take quite an academic satisfaction into looking into these things: you would be surprised how difficult it can be to ascertain someone’s place and date of death from the newspapers alone. Many papers don’t give a place of death (irritatingly including the Guardian, which is one of the few papers not to require registration to read the things in the first place). Some leave you to calculate the date (eg. ‘ … died last Thursday’) As soon as you start to double-source the facts, things get complicated. Within a few days, it is not unusual to find three or four obituary notices, with two or even three different dates of death between them. This seems to me pretty basic research, and something that newspapers shouldn’t find too hard to record accurately. The Guardian, in my experience, are probably the worst offender in this respect, and regularly print death dates a day or two out from the generally reported consensus. Hugh Bean, the British violinist who died on Boxing Day last year, was remembered in all four of the British broadsheets – but none of them could say where he died.

Do I find any of this morbid? I mean, since opening up Bloglines is one of the first things I do on a working day, it’s not long before I’m up to my elbows in eulogies and death notices. Actually, I don’t. I happen to think that commemoration and memorial, a scratch on a wall, is an essential part of humanity anyway. The most I can usually do is work, in a small way, towards propagating those memorials, and seeing that they get recorded – in at least one place, anyway – right. And there’s nothing like reading dozens of compacted biographies every day to make you marvel at this life we lead.

MP3 blogs, as everyone knows, are everywhere at the moment, but I’m going to make a special mention to The Number One Songs in Heaven: nice design, nice pictures, but most importantly, a whole load of vintage soul and funk sounds. That’s what I’ve looking for! Topical choices too – good show.

RIP Ray Charles.

I’ve been playing around with the BBC’s Score predictor which, while not completely faultless (it puts teams with the same points, but different goals scored, in the wrong order), is at least a good way of seeing how the tournament might pan out.

So, my predictions?

Group A and B (fingers crossed) seem pretty straightforward: England and France and Spain and Portugal will get through, and both England and France have it in them to reach the semis. I think England, after losing 2-1 to France and finishing second in the group, will face Portugal in the quarters (who come out on top with a draw with Spain, and a superior result against Greece). Group D is tough to call, but the least happy have to be the Germans, who have every chance of not making it out of the group stages. A draw with Germany in the last game is enough to see the Czechs into second place in the group, behind Holland.

Group C, for me, is the really interesting one, and not the focus of most of the media build up. Italy are in real trouble here: they’re traditionally slow off the blocks, and I don’t think they’ve necessarily exorcised their World Cup demons (forget iffy referees – you lost because you tried to defend for 70mins). Denmark in their first game will not be a preferred choice, and with Paolo Maldini retired from left back, the lightning fast Danish wingers could cause some real trouble. Italy lose 1-0, and this pretty much sees off their chance of making the quarter finals. Denmark and Sweden get through, and the last game of the group – between the two of them – is a play off to see who gets to face Holland or the Czech Republic. Probably Denmark will face the Czechs, marginally the nicer draw, unless Holland decide this is the time to throw a hissy fit. But even if they decide to play together like nice boys, their match with Sweden will be a draw, and some shocking penalties will gift the game to the Scandinavians.

The Czech Republic may be a game too far for the Danes however, and the Czechs go through in normal time to meet England in the semis. You may draw your own conclusions at this point, but France shouldn’t have any problem getting past Sweden. However, Scandinavians like upsets, and the French are prey to them, so who knows?

How semi-finals pan out is always anyone’s guess, but mark my words, most of the big teams will be gone by this stage – I wouldn’t advise putting any money on Germany, Holland, Italy, Portugal or Spain.

So here’s the plan.

Milady and I are getting married in just over a week (19th June), and then charging off to Italy for ten days to recover. But have no fear, for I will be spending that time hardwired to Blogger keeping you all up to speed with my ramblings on the state of contemporary music, etc.

Or not.

I’m hoping to get a post on Harry Partch’s And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma up before long, but that aside it’s probably going to be a little quiet around here for the next three weeks. Don’t take it personally – you’re my readers, and you’re great, but nothing can compare

This is not a political blog, and I never intend it to be, but reading this piece in today’s Times just now made me choke. Key points:

“An investigation by The Times has discovered that Labour’s General Secretary is urging activists to set up bogus ballot boxes today outside traditional polling stations in all-postal voting areas.

A document issued by Matt Carter, which has been seen by The Times, suggests that the activists should wear red rosettes to maximise the number of last-minute Labour votes collected in the bogus boxes, and to deter supporters of other parties from handing over completed voting slips.”

“A Labour MP has also told The Times that election cheats are collecting postal votes and changing the choice of candidates using Tipp-Ex correction fluid.”

Oh God. I feel sick.

If you do sign up to Summer Burn 2004 (and why wouldn’t you?), be warned: you might get one of my CDs. I’ve been idly coming up with some tracklists here, and at least one of them has a concept. Lummy.

Time for bed, methinks.