Barrytown

 “Barry, you're over thirty years old. You owe it to your mum and dad not to sing in a group called Sonic Death Monkey.” - Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

I rather enjoyed 'High Fidelity' the novel, not least because it was located in a time and place of which I had direct personal experience (*). I didn't care for the film version because, in a classic case of cultural appropriation, the producers relocated it somewhere else so that they could make more money. Perhaps enough time has passed for it to be worth re-reading and/or re-watching. From memory alone therefore, the Barry character (**) wants to be in a band, but in the end only gets to be in one because those who invite him have decided that all the members have to be called Barry (***).

The chap singing the music in yesterday's video was Barry Booth. He had quite a career and worked with some very well known names, many of whom are listed on his website, the biography section of which is quite amusing (****). Whilst he sadly never seems to have worked with Gibb, White or Manilow, he has collaborated with a couple of aptly named non-musicians, Barry Cryer (appearing not for the first time here) and Barry Fantoni, which whom he wrote a musical.

A week or so ago I went to see Barry Rutter, another figure to have featured in this blog before, speaking about "Shakespeare's Royals". In between giving the full-throttle, chewing the scenery, performances for which he is known and loved, he told several anecdotes. I was personally very interested in the background to a production I saw some years ago, but perhaps the most amusing concerned a backstage encounter he had in New York once with both Dizzy Gillespie and Rudolf Nureyev. Many years after that, Gillespie and Nureyev both died on the same day. Rutter quoted to us the 'In Memoriam' poem composed for the occasion by E.J Thribb, aged 17 and a half.

"So Farewell then … Dizzy Gillespie
Famous Jazz Trumpeter.
You were known for your Bulging Cheeks.
Rudolf Nureyev,
So were you."

E.J. Thribb was, of course, a penname of Barry Fantoni.

Perhaps the quote to best capture the essence of this whole post comes not from Hornby's original book, but rather from the digested version written by John Crace for the Guardian:

Barry is already at the shop by the time I arrive. "How was your weekend?" he asks. I think about telling him about Laura but then I think we don't really have that kind of relationship so I reply: "I made a list of all the anagrams you could make out of 'Solomon Burke is God'."

"Cool," says Barry. "Did you include 'I'm a sad twat'?"

* For example the 'Harry Lauder' pub they spend a lot of time in is clearly based on the 'Sir George Robey', which will be well known to anyone who ever visited the Rainbow.

** All three of the shop staff are, I would have thought, just meant to represent different aspects of the author's own personality.

*** Should this, as is quite likely, be wrong, please keep it to yourself because it rather undermines the remainder of the post.

**** Be warned though, many of the photos show him with a convicted paedophile. Booth is no longer with us and the website itself is clearly rather old.

I Don't Want To Know About Evil

 I saw more films in January than I saw in the whole of last year. Among them was 'Belfast', which I really enjoyed. My companion for the evening took a different view, complaining of a lack of realism. She even donned a metaphorical anorak and question the accuracy of the way that the buses were portrayed; for the record, I have no reason to believe that she has any particular knowledge of public transport in the Northern Ireland of the 1960s. For me the fact that the film was a view through the eyes of a nine year old meant that one wasn't meant to take certain things entirely literally: the unfeasible good looks of the parents; that a miscast Dame Judi Dench is at least a generation too old for the part; and, OK fair enough, the unlikelihood of the airport bus leaving from the end of their street (*). I also felt that the music of the genius that is Van Morrison added greatly, whereas she felt unable to look beyond the pandemic having led to him completing his journey from curmudgeon to dickhead. 

This dichotomy between the teller and the tale also came up when I recently saw Sarah Jane Morris in concert, as in the first set she concentrated on the songs of John Martyn. Martyn was a sublime practitioner of jazz tinged singer-songwriting; he was also an alcoholic drug-user well known for inflicting physical and mental cruelty, especially against the women in his life. Morris didn't avoid that aspect - she is personally close to some of Martyn's surviving family -  but chose to focus on interpretation of his soulful, and often sad, lyrics.

She was backed by distinguished guitarist Tony Rémy (who has played with Herbie Hancock and Jack Bruce amongst others) and, to my surprise, the wonderful Marcus Bonfanti. I've only come across him before in a blues context - he is a member of the current incarnation of Ten Years After - but he demonstrated that he has the jazz chops as well. In the second set they played a wider variety of music including fine covers of 'Imagine' and 'I Shall Be Released'. The song I think I enjoyed most was 'Piece of My Heart'. Mostly associated these days with Janis Joplin, it was first offered by Bert Berns (who co wrote it with Jerry Ragovoy) to Van Morrison, Berns being Morrison's producer at the time. Morrison declined it, probably grumpily; dickhead. 

Not at all grumpy was Sarah Jane Morris, whose between song monologues about acts she had worked with, activism, and karma added much to the gig,  which I very much enjoyed. In case you are wondering where you have heard that name and voice before, it was her that duetted with Jimmy Somerville on the Communards' 'Don't Leave Me This Way'. Here they are, lip-synching creatively:

Great hat.

* Although, as it happens, in real life the airport bus leaves from directly outside my front door.

Rockit

 Matt Hancock may have been a lousy Health Secretary, but his dad is a top jazz pianist.

I saw him in 1983 or 1984 at the Hammersmith Odeon and my main memory of that night is of the legs from the video above dancing across the stage. 

Hot Club de Yorkshire

Hello again compadres. I trust you have all been as hard at it as me. Not that any of Epictetus' activities have involved wargaming as such. Indeed the only remotely exciting thing to happen in the annexe has been that I have solved the long-standing problem of how to get the dehumidifier to work in the low temperatures experienced in this part of the world during the winter. I did this by buying a dehumdifier specifically designed to work in the low temperatures experienced in this part of the world during the winter. As so often, your bloggist can't help thinking that there is some sort of learning point arising, if only one could tease it out.

A chap with a beard

There has been one of those occasional wargaming/real life cross overs when my companion for the evening and I bumped into Peter (and Mrs Peter) at Settle, out in the Dales. We were all at the Victoria Hall, oldest music hall in the world still in use, to see Martin Taylor and Martin Simpson. I have mentioned the latter a number of times (most recently here), but didn't know much about the former beyond his being some sort of jazz guitarist. It transpired that he spent some years in Stephane Grapelli's band in the position once held by Django Reinhardt; so a bit more than just another jazz guitarist then. It was an excellent concert and it was a real pleasure to watch people so absolutely on top of their craft. Simpson has recently lost his father-in-law, the political folk singer Roy Bailey, and sang a couple of emotional songs in tribute including one by Robb Johnson. I knew Robb quite well back in the day (the story of the occasion when I was the cause of him not visiting Palestine hereby officially joins the long list of those for which the world must wait a little longer), a fact which I suppose places me a step closer to various of my musical heroes. Taylor's contribution to the name-dropping involved conversations with Scotty Moore, which with all due respect to Robb, is a bit better than mine.

A lot of name-dropping (and the associated game of how many handshakes one is from the greats) is one of the connections with another gig I went to in the unlikely surroundings of a room above a pub in Ilkley, that by veteran bluesman Kent DuChaine; a man who played with, amongst others, Johnny Shines; who was in turn a man who knew and played with Robert Johnson. Another link was that Duchaine played 'St James Infirmary Blues'  on his National Steel Guitar 'Leadbessie' and Martin Simpson didn't, but usually does (which is sufficient for me). The great Catfish Keith also plays such a guitar and the similarities were often apparent, especially when DuChaine played in a Bukka White stylie (it's something to do with the tuning, but beyond that I can't help you). White was (sort of) the cousin of B.B. King and there was an implausible anecdote about King and a golf cart, along with others about Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters. It's implausibility which gives us the last crossover between the two gigs. DuChaine claimed, with a straight face, that his most recent wife (of five?) was an exotic dancer from Settle. All I can say is that if she ever performed in Yorkshire in November then she did it indoors.

Oneirocriticism

I had a strange dream last night. Not on this occasion the one about the harem and the raincoat, but instead one wherein a visitor arrives unexpectedly at my house both to service my 5¼" floppy disk drive (a) and to sing jazz standards in the style of George Melly. This song may or may not qualify as a standard, but the words ring true nevertheless:

(a) not a euphemism

Morale chips in Piquet

No one has asked me to explain my exciting suggestions for the way morale chips are handled in Piquet. Presumably my public's apparent indifference is because they expect me to do so anyway, therefore here, as not requested, is the logic behind my proposals.

In setting up tabletop battles we quite rightly prioritise the aim of making it a good game. This usually means balancing the forces in some way; either the same number of units or perhaps one side having more, but lower quality troops. In Piquet the loss of troops means the loss of morale chips at, with minor exception, the same rate whether they are good, bad or indifferent. The side with the greater number of worse troops therefore needs more morale chips at the beginning because they would expect in the normal course of events to lose more units. A balanced game requires a not too extreme split of morale and that's why there is already a minimum amount defined. To balance it 'properly' would require taking account of not just each side's number of units, but also their quality and the ratio between the two sides' strength and quality. This is too complicated to even consider, so why not simply say that each side needs a morale chip level to start with somewhere between, say, once and one and a half times the number of units. This would contain any imbalance while still leaving the existence as a possibility. Too much morale would simply be swapped for new deck cards/ lower morale in a reversal of the current process.

The major morale mechanism that we play was designed by James, makes perfect sense, is rather longwinded and means one inevitably loses the game if one fails it. I have no problem with the impact if one fails it while having no morale left - although at that point the neatness of the design is paradoxically entirely superfluous - my issue is with failing it earlier in the battle. The morale cost (one chip per command) is simply too high a price to pay for one bad die roll given the overall number of morale chips one is likely to have to start with. I would not charge a chip at all when it drops to commands, or alternatively only charge commands which fail.

The features of Piquet that cause most confusion are shooting - which isn't shooting at all - and reloading - which isn't reloading at all. The shooting is best seen as the point at which the effect of ongoing, continuous fire is resolved, and the timing of this is at the discretion of the player, provided certain criteria are met. By extension I would suggest that we should view morale challenges as the point at which the ongoing, continuous test of nerve of men engaged in ranged combat is resolved and that the timing of it is likewise at the discretion of the player, provided certain criteria are met. The concept is that the firing side believe they have caused hurt and, expecting the enemy to falter in some way, issue the challenge. If the enemy do indeed flinch then that reasonably enough is a morale hit to them. If the enemy don't flinch when expected to then the firer/challenger should take a hit to morale because they have done their best and it didn't have the expected results. I have never understood why the challenging side expends morale having undertaken successful fire which has caused both physical and morale damage to the other side. In any event, and as at present, one would not be allowed to challenge when one didn't have any morale chips left.

Now like all variety artistes I usually finish with a song, but it's difficult to find one on the theme of morale, probably because there aren't many words that rhyme with it. I did think of going down the Billy the Kid route (OK?), but I'm in a musical theatre frame of mind and so here's something from 'Guys and Dolls' that has the word morale in the lyric. You'll just have to trust me on that because this is the instrumental version by Miles Davis.

Nice.