Springsteen 2009

One of the most revered and hated figures of the twentieth century was Che Guevara, In any assessment of the man, rather than the myth, it is important to dive his life into four phases: His childhood, education and first travels throughout South America; His participation in the Cuban revolution; His period in the Cuban Government and then what became his last campaign to spread the revolution to the rest of South America and his execution with the help of the U.S.A assassination

He was born ten years before me as was killed in 1967 aged 39, I like what his father said of him The first thing to note is that in my son’s veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels, the Spanish conquistadors and the Argentinean patriots. Evidently Che inherited. There was something in his nature which drew him to distant wanderings, dangerous adventures and new ideas. I know nothing of the father except that Jesuit expression give me a child for seven years and I give you the adult,

Che as be became known through the world had grown up in a left wing and revolutionary household as his father supported Juan Peron and socialism and Spanish republicans visited their home. He learned to play chess at he age of 12, I taught myself about that time with a small pocket board with press in figures, playing lunch times at school with a class mate. And later through a correspondence league and playing for Croydon Local Authority against teams form other local authorities across London for one season until I was dropped after a losing run. We shared some of the authors who interested him, although in my instance most were after I left school including William Faulkner, Andree Gide, Walt Whitman, John Keats,, Jules Verne, Franz Kafka, John Paul Sartre, H G Wells, Robert Frost, Jack London and Bertrand Russell and Sigmund Freud. The fundamental difference between us was his father’s influence and my Catholic fundamentalist childhood brought up by aunts.

We both became missionaries.

Three years after entering University to Study medicine he undertook a year off from studies to embark on a motorcycle trip throughout South America with a friend and witnessed the poverty and oppression of ordinary people throughout the continent, also spending short time at a Leper Colony in Peru. His diary of the trip was made into a film, The Motor Cycle Diaries in 2004 which was one of the film highlights of the year.

With me the defining moments were the decision to read two reports of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, the six month prison experience and the decision to switching to child care after working among exceptionally poor an derived families in Salford Manchester during the summer of 1962 with the Family Service Unit. I was an emotional missionary while he became an intellectual one, never appearing to question or change his belief in revolution through violence and that a Marxist dictatorship was the only alternative to rampant capitalist imperialism

He completed his studies and qualified as a doctor in 1953, He then decided to travel again visiting Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador After six months on the road he reached Guatemala. Here is was introduced to leading members of the left government and also had contacts with Cuban exiles linked to Fidel Castro’s and his attack on a Baptista military barracks on 26 July 1953, Che tried to gain medical work but was advised to leave the country after the CIA sponsored coup following the arrival of Soviet arms into the country. The overthrow of thee government effectively by the USA confirmed his belief in the adverse effects on ordinary people of USA capitalist imperialism in the Southern continent. After taking refuge in the Mexican Embassy he made his way to Mexico. There he met Raul Castro and then Fidel who was plotting to overthrow the corrupt USA crime based regime. As a result of this meeting he decided this was the cause for which he had been looking, Eighty seven Cubans plus Chet set off from Mexico to Cuba in a leaky boat and only 22 survived the landing and of these only twelve were to enter Havana as the revolutionary victors.

As the film Che Part one- The Argentinean accurately portrays he was a ruthless fighting leader as well as caring doctor. Fidel described him as intelligent, daring and an exemplary leader but that he also took too many personal risks. There is nothing in the film to explain his dedication as a doctor and emotionally detached fighter and military leader, except that he and Fidel possessed am earth planet vision and recognised they were only temporary influences. The great part of the film deals with the military role of Che during the revolution, his ongoing work as a doctor, the emphasis providing the poor and illiterate with an education and his initial loyalty to his wife and child in Mexico, and then his growing attachment to a Cuban who offered her services divorcing his wife and marrying her after they entered Havana.

The film ends with his successful battle to take Santa Clara on New Years Eve 1958 and Baptista fleeing on learning that his generals were negotiating a separate peace with the rebel leaders. The ending is distinctly odd, except to indicate that it was only the first part of his life as a revolutionary and that he attempted to maintain his code of appropriate behaviour even in the moment of triumph.

It is noteworthy that President Obama who is attempting the third way revolution has accept the resignation of two of his government nominees following the disclosure that they were federal tax avoiders. The non payment of federal taxes appears to be a long standard activity among government official in the USA. I still remember my sense of shock and horror on being told by a USA government visiting party of top officials and representatives looking at the new British system of Social service local authorities in 1971 how they avoided paying taxes by renting out slums to the poor and others devices. They appeared to have no moral or ethical basis for their work in social welfare.

The film in which Che played by Benicio Del Torro has a documentary feel as the writers and producers attempt to recreate his Memoir Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War. The chronological account of the progress made after meeting with the Castro brothers to making the journey into Havana is intercut from time to time with a black and white recreation of his 1964 interview a Journalist in New York after addressing the UN. The five demands he made to the UN have echo’s of President’s Obama views in 2008.

I continued with my Bruce Springsteen fest throughout the day enjoying two live performance records, Barcelona and then New York.

Atlantic City 7.10 (Everything dies that is a fact perhaps everything that dies comes back); Because the night, The Rising 7.20;7.30 Dancing in the Dark; Youngstown .35; The Ghost of Tom Joad 8.40; Always a Friend 8.50;eth July Asbury Park Sandy 10.25 Turn Turn Turn; Long Walk Home 10.30 Radio nowhere; You will be coming down; Living in the future; Your own worst enemy.... Come to town; Girls in their summer clothes...pass me by; Gypsy Biker11.00; I’ll work for love; Magic; Last to Die; Devil’s Arcade and Terry’s song. Barcelona Live: Empty Sky; Waiting on a Summer’s day. Badlands, Darkness on the edge of Town. Mary’s Place, proving all night, She’s the one; Lonesome Day, The Rising; Worlds Apart and Dancing the Dark listened to again 12-1.130 the Disk 2. Incident on 57th Street; Born in The USA; Land of Hope and Dreams; Counting on a miracle; Thunder Road; Night; Ramrod; and Born to Run;

Thunder Road; Adam Raised Caine; Spirit of the nights; 4th July Ashbury Park; Paradise by the C; I’m on Fire; Growing Up; It’s hard to be a saint in the city; the Backstreets; Rosalita; Raise your Hand; Hungary Heart; Two Hearts, Cadillac Ranch; You can look; Independence Day; Badland’s, Because the Night; Candy’s Room; Darkness at the Edge of Town; Racing in the Street; This land is your land; Nebraska; Johnny 99; Reason to Believe; Born in the USA; Seeds, The River; War; Darlington County; Working on the Highway; The Promised Land; Cover me; I’m on Fire; Bobby Jean, My Hometown; Born to Run; No surrender; Tenth Avenue Freeze; Jersey Girl.

Duffy Joan Byaz Amy McDonald Nina Simone Billy Holliday

The last day of January experienced in several dimensions of time, sound and mind

Sometimes I am very slow in working out the best way to do something or the best use of my time. Sometimes I am very very slow. For several years I have gone to bed or got up in the early hours an played music or watched TV with the sound turned low anxious that would disturb the adjacent neighbours, despite thick walls which deadens the sounds of my neighbours activities, unless there is work or contact directly on the partitioning wall. Yesterday wanting to listen to music loud so that it dominated my sense I decided to try the super headphones I use for my keyboard located in the upstairs work room adjacent to a neighbour’s bedroom. This has a volume control on the connecting lead and on the desk top a link is available at the front for both input microphone and output, and so for the greater part of the day while writing I was able to be overwhelmed with sound.

However I did not make a note of tracks which I am doing now listing to some of the tracks again. I commenced with Duffy whose work and persona has became my new artist for 2008 with her Rockferry Album, Warwick Avenue, Serious, Stepping Stones, Distant Dreams and of course Mercy were all numbers I was looking forward to hearing again after watching her performances on TV over Christmas, other tracks were Syrup and Honey, Hanging on too Long, Delayed Devotion, I’m scared, Rain on our parade, Fool for You Stop, Oh Boy, Please stay, Breaking my own Heart and Enough love.

She replaces my girl of 2007 Amy Winehouse where there is nothing but sadness for what is happening to her. I listened to the Back to Back Album Rehab, You know I ‘m no good, Me and Mr Jones, Just friends, Back to Back, Love is a losing game, Tears dry on their own, Wake up alone, Some unholy war, He can only hold her, and Addicted. Hopefully she will not become a one year phenomenon .

I was then in the mood for Billie Holiday selecting from a compilation These foolish things, I’ve got my love to keep me warm, I must have that man, He’s funny that way, You go to my head. The very thought of you, More than you know, Strange fruit,, Night and day, The man I love, Body and Soul, Time on my hands, Solitude,| Lover come back to me, Don’t Explain, Good morning Heartache, and my Man

I also listened to a little Nina Simone from her Tribute to Billie Holiday Album, including Strange love Fine and Mellow, Tell me More, It don’t mean a thing, I love you Porgy and I love to love

A recent discovery has been Amy McDonald and her album This is the life with Mr Rock and Roll, This is the Life, Poison Prince, Youth of Today, Run, Let’s start a band, Barrowland Ballroom. LA, A wish for something more, Footballers Wives which should be played at start of every game at every Premiership game. During

While I wrote, thought and listened I also kept one eye on the soundless telly where first Stoke beat the bottomless bank of moneybags Man City 1.0. And then Boro was held to a draw by Blackburn and stay in the relegation zone while in the evening Man United not only won 1.0 but their goal keeper has not allowed the opposition to score once in the past 12 games, a British Record. Later to day Sunderland visit St James’s Park.

As I wrote I reflected further on Valkyrie, impressed by the extent to which the film followed the actual events and which perhaps some critics felt it was not Hollywood thrilling enough. In my judgement it is not a subject for cheap thrills or entertainment just entertainment. It achieved an excellent balance of chronological unfolding and emotional interest although the outcome was known over sixty years ago.

It was not all the ladies with James Morrison’s Broken Strings and from the Bob Dylan collection Woody, Blowing in the Wind, Masters of War, A hard rains A-gonna fall, The Times they are a Changing, It A’nt me Babe, Like a Rolling Stone, Just Like a woman, It’s all over now Baby Blue. I have never experienced hearing Bob live and also Joan Baez missing both when they came to Newcastle in 2006.

Farewell Angelina is still one of my great album possessions from when it was first released. The album also has Its all over now Baby Blue as the opening number, sung in German Where has all the flowers gone Sagt Mir Wo DieBlumen Sind, Daddy you have been on my mind and Satisfied Mind and A Hard’s Rain’s A-gonna Falling. I left to another day the title song, Colours, Rangers Command, The Wild Mountain thyme and Puavre Ruteboeuf

During the day I listened to a French group Pep’s and their Album Utopies Dans La decors with Melodie, Poterie Des Dieux, Liberta, Dans Ma Tete, J’Te Serre, Utopies Dans le Decors, Fakir, No Indentifie, Ca Va, De Le air, A L’Insouciance, Me Contente De Rein, .... Ca Vient, Liberta live at Lyon with the audience joining in the English chorus, Tristan, J’Te Serre. Liberta - Just want to be free in this way just want to be free in my world Liberta is a top ten song. I also found catchy Dans Ma Tete. I love the sound of the French language even if I only understand a few individual words and wish I could speak although there was a period when with visits and watching French films I was able understand a little more and get by on visits.

I also worked hard to achieve the 3 new sets a day target having settle for this over the greater part of the past year, finishing the task around 7pm and also doing the preparatory work for new volumes of My Space Blogs as I come close to two thirds of the target 101 x10 thus matching what I achieved for AOL now no longer available online, My Space Friends volumes have increased as I come close to matching the number of Blogs with over 600 registered. The speed of the increase over the past three months means that I have not been able to give the attention I would like to the additions but will focus on this later in the year when I am only adding one a day or so. I photographed a completed My Friends volume with 304 photos. I was not in the mood for taking more photographs or scanning slides.

I had a pork chop with apple sauce and baked beans as he main meal and a salad with olives and sardines in tomato sauce. There was the weekend treat of a small pot of caramel mouse and cherries for afters. I had soup and a roll for breakfast and a tea time snack of four crackers topped with pickle

Abba Gold

Music has always played an important role in my life, although always second to the film on the subject of imagination and influence. Music has been by means of emotional expression thus the greater sense of failure that I have been unable to become a musician, from traditional jazz blues in my adolescence to Beethoven wile in prison and the power of Verdi’s Requiem Mass on an early visit to the Royal Albert Hall. I was never into the Beatles and Elvis Presley when they first hit the headlines, but one Group who were and remain a visual delights and who music express great joy, whose lyrics always tell a story and towards their final performing years included some of the realities love, relationships, and its failures, was ABBA.

It has been an odd choice of music to enjoy over the past few days dominated by news of a devastating tragedy in my extended family but it was a way of holding things together in a way which other more serious and sad music will have been more difficulty.

The DVD, Super Trouper, marking the 5th year of the London Show Mama Mia had come in the New Year, along with In Bruges, and therefore had not been a first choice, but as soon as I commenced watching it touched so many memories that as with In Bruges I held it back to watch again, and did so.

The DVD also marked the occasion when three of the four member of the group appeared together on stage, not to perform, but to mark thirty years since they first became internationally recognised entertainers wining the European Song Contest with Waterloo. The four did come together in their homeland Sweden for the opening of the musical production there and then more recently this year for the opening of the film, both called Mama Mia.

On stage in London they were presented by Pete Waterman with a Los Vegas style elongated plaque with all their Platinum triumphs and not a gold in sight.

(The record industry categorises its awards in each country differently and in the UK a gold record is issued for 100000 albums sales and platinum for 300000 while in the USA the award is for half a million and 1 million and Diamond for 10 million while in some countries an award can be for significantly fewer sales in quantities of for sales in only thousands and tens of thousands. For the traditional single, which these days are often an EP, the awards are for 400000 and 600000 and in the USA half and a million again with no Diamond award. In the USA where digital downloading has become common the same standard is in operation. It also appears that sometimes the industry announces and award based on initial sales and forecast rather than actual sales. Even lists of popular and successful record sales is open to significant manipulation within the industry and should be treated with great caution. It is not as bad though as the scandal of Boxing.)

Abba is general regarded as having sold Albums in their millions and the plaque presented on the London stage mentions some 360 million albums although Wikipedia gives the total of 400 million an increase of over 10% in five years for a group that has not performed together for over twenty five years.

The DVD is structured in a confusing way with film of their career as a group especially the amazing tour of Australia when tens of thousands lines the streets all the way from the airport into the city and the hysteria was such that they became hotel prisoners for whole tour, an experience which happened elsewhere, but to less extent, and which resulted in affecting Agnetha, especially who found the crush overpowering and threatening

The DVD includes individual interviews about their early music lives and contains rare footage as well as of music performances. Is there anyone who does not know that Abba stands for Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny and Anni-Frid, who is known as Frida? Or that they shot to fame by winning the European Song Contest with Waterloo and were the first Continental group to sells records by the millions in the USA, as well Australia, Germany and South Africa as well as in the UK.

Benny was part of a popular Swedish Beatles style Rock group that had hits in Sweden who was mainly a keyboard instrumentalist who started to write for the band. Bjorn was a singer guitarist who was part of a group, the Hootenanny Singers and when both groups found themselves performing at a Folk festival one attended the party of the other and Bjorn and Benny decided to write song together while continuing with their groups.

It was during the Swedish contest of an earlier European Song Competition that Benny Anderson met Anni-Frid and they decided to date and within a month they became a couple. Benny and Bjorn then did an album of work together so the three became linked..

Agnetha the natural blonde, had a separate career where she had a hit record when she was only 17. She met Anna at a TV show and Bjorn at a concert shortly afterwards. Bjorn and Agnetha met again commenced a relationship and married and also got involved with each other’s recordings and then Benny and Anni provided backing vocal for an Agnetha album so the four worked together for the first time. Anni Frid: Freda, was in fact the youngest early performer of the four, starting at the age of 13 with bands playing a jazz cabaret style. She had her group at one point and made records. Thus ABBA was not a music management creation of people with little proven talent and no previous experience of performing and recording. They were individually established and experienced performers where Waterloo could have proven their first and only lasting international success. One f the remarkable aspects of their longevity is that their first language, and their performing language was Swedish.

The four commenced to work together and to perform regularly in 1971. It was not until a couple of years later that they decided recording and performing as individuals was unwieldy and their manager Stig Anderson, who had privately referred to them as ABBA, the name of a Swedish fish canning company, that they needed a group name, and they became known as ABBA .

Their Euro contest winning song Waterloo was an instant chart success reaching first spot in the UK, Germany and Australia and significantly 6th in the Billboard 100 in the USA. There second Honey Honey, featured in the film, (I have not seen the stage show and assume all the songs are the same in both, was not an instant success and it was likely that they and the international music world thought they would they were what so many others have been, a one song or one album success story, never be defeated or surpassed.

Their first tour to West Germany, Austria and Denmark in 1974 was not a great success but their tour of Sweden and Finland in 1975 attracted huge crowds and their further records topped charts in Australia and South Africa. Their third Album included S,O.S and Mama Mia and while they had international success including the USA, they were not regarded as International Superstars until Dancing Queen and their Australian Tour and its film. Fernando written originally in Swedish for Frida and became a hit in 12 countries and remained top in Australia for 14 weeks. Money Money Money followed and Knowing Me, Knowing You But then they produced Dancing Queen in 1977 which became number One in the USA and the rest they ay is history. They then commenced their European tour and 3.5 million mail order requests were received for their two concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, 580 times its capacity. Part of the London Concert was filmed for use as part of the film ABBA the movies based on the tour of Australia.

In 1979 their recording Chiquitita was created for the Unicef Year of the Child with royalties to the charity and became a number 1 in ten countries.

As many people continue to point out ABBA song tell stories of human experience and are complex and difficult to sing. The two girls would be required to spend hours learning and recording them, bearing in mind these were also in English and not their thinking and speaking language this only underlines their professionalism. Benny and Bjorn also used their studio time creatively making stronger and deeper sounds by double tracking voice and instrumentalists and this created problems with some in the live audiences audience who found that the stage performances sounded different from the records. This was so with their first and only tour of the USA and Canada although every concert was sold out. Then they played in 23 sold out concerts in Europe including six nights at Wembley Arena. By 1980 they had produced Super Trouper and more significantly perhaps The Winner Take All and this raises a major issue which has affected all my writing and other work past and resent,

The lyrics of their songs at this time reflected some of the emotions experienced as their young marriages turned into divorce. As I have previously written there is a sorrowful spiritual aspect to the Swedish soul hence their high suicide rates. There is also a frank adult openness which the traditional middle class English have felt uncomfortable about, and the films of Ingmar Bergman reflect this creating a succession of masterpieces and clinically perfect relationship studies of marriage and between parents and children.

I have always found writing the truth about myself, especially my emotional self, difficult to impossible and have always questioned the use by the artist of specific experiences relating to their personal relationships with others. It is not just a question of respecting the rights and interests of others but the using of personal experience in this, for me, takes away something from the actual experience, in music the same way that I often do not take or use my camera with people I know and care about and for my mother’s 100th birthday, I have relied mainly on the photographs taken by others,

What is a different issue and something which applies to ABBA is that personal participation in tragedy and relationship traumas, or involvement in major events such a War or natural disaster does effect the quality of artistic work as well as lives in general. Some artist true genius when their work reflects the deeper emotions, passions and psychological insights without the individual having had direct experience

My reservations and inhibitions mean that my daily writings can be unbalanced because they do not affect the personal emotions experienced in my life which I believe should remain private to those directly concerned. Hopefully something of the full rainbow of emotional experiences during my day is communicated.

The public break up of the second couple within ABBA resulted in the official breaking up the group as stage performers and recording artists in the early 1980’s, that is two and half decades ago and yet in some respects the public love of their music has become stronger, affecting generation after generation.

While they all continues to perform and record or to be involved with writing and music production, some with success, nothing has come close to their collective work as ABBA and is derivatives, the stage musical and now the film.

There was involvement with the production of Chess and the musical Abbacadababra produced in France for TV and for children. Individually they have sometimes included ABBA song in their performances with Benny and Bjorn performing together. However 25 years was to pass before the four met together for the Swedish openings of their work. While attention has focussed on Benny and Bjorn because of their work with the musical and the film, Agnetha and Frida continued with their careers. In 1995 Frida issued a box set of her solo records and a three and half hour DVD of her professional life in which she guides the viewer,

In the 1990 Abba Gold was released, I have a copy of their greatest hits, one of the 26 million sold. This was followed in 1994 by the Thank you for the Music compilation, a four disk set. The opening of the Musical Mama Mia in 1999 ignited international interest and it is true that they were offered 1 million Swedish Kroner £140 million US dollars for a world tour in 2000, although the precise amount is something of legend. There is no sign of public interest in the musical fading and other language versions have been created and opened in different parts of the world. The film Mama Mia is likely to become another chart topping success as has the DVD. While there is a nostalgia aspect the those who took to the group in the 70’s and 80’s new generations have joined in. Their music lives on.