Month: December 2020

A Zoom With Julia Tisdall, Gerry Goddin’s Distant Cousin, 23 December 2020

It’s The Ogblog wot done it.

When I reported on the sad death of Gerry Goddin back in August and then subsequently Gerry’s funeral in October…

Gerry Goddin’s Funeral, Hoop Lane Crematorium, 15 October 2020

…it didn’t occur to me that there might be someone out there looking for the name Goddin for genealogical purposes. Not least because the search for any next of kin for Gerry had been in vain.

But a couple of weeks ago, out of the blue, I received a note from Julia Tisdall, writing to me from Australia, whose great-grandfather was the brother of Gerry’s grandmother.

That makes Julia and Gerry second cousins once removed. (Some of my favourite people are my second cousins once removed).

Forgive the pun, Julia, but a second cousin once removed in the antipodes is a distant cousin in more ways than one.

Anyway, point is, Julia was thrilled and saddened to have found this connection but in such an unfortunate context. Here is an extract from her lovely note:

My great grandfather (Gertrude’s Brother) sailed to New Zealand back in 1913 and settled in Dunedin. 5 years later his sister Gertrude died of the Spanish Flu at only 32 years of age.

I suspect this was when my forebears lost touch with Gertrude’s husband and young son (Gerry’s father) Robert Percy Wilfred Goddin.

I am so grateful to see Gerry in Rainy Day Fellas. What a gem that is.

 It took my breath away, 1 , because it is so beautiful and 2 because the close up of Gerry’s hand strumming looked identical to my grandfather’s hand strumming.

For anyone reading this who hasn’t seen the video of Rainy Day Fellas, one of Gerry’s songs which was recorded a few years ago with Donna Macfadyen singing beautifully and Gerry himself accompanying on guitar:

“Rainy Day Fellas” (Live) from D-Sav on Vimeo.

Julia said that she would like to speak, so, one thing led to another and I managed to persuade Julia, who was until yesterday a “Zoom virgin”, to join a few of us on a Zoom call.

I was really glad that John Random,  Caroline Am Bergris and Graham Robertson were able to join the call. I didn’t feel I knew Gerry all that well; I don’t suppose any of us really knew Gerry well, but between us we knew Gerry from various aspects of his life these past 30 years or so.

Not just the NewsRevue part (although all of us are NewsRevue alums) but also Caroline’s long association with Gerry in the matter of poems and songs. I think/hope we were able to give Julia a fairly rounded picture.

And talking of pictures, John has rescued a few lovely pictures from Gerry’s flat, which I was able to share on the screen. Here are a couple of examples plus a third picture which is a link to a Flickr album with all 11 of the pictures:

GERRY GODDIN HEAD AND SHOULDERS AS A LITTLE BOY

So we were able to share a fair bit of information. Julia informed us that the family were to be found at 1 Ravenhill Road, Upton Park in the 1911 census. Not only did Gerry’s dad lose his mother to Spanish flu as a small boy, but Gerry’s own mum, Mona, died when Gerry was only six. By then they lived in Fairbank Street, Shoreditch, which I think has now been absorbed by the Provost Estate in now trendy Hoxton/Shoreditch.

The highlight of the 80 minute session, for me, was the moment when Julia picked up a guitar and played us a few bars of Rainy Day Fellas, with aplomb.

But actually the whole session was a highlight. I think everyone enjoyed the time together and we hope to have another session in the not too distant future. I know that Caroline, Helen and David are looking at some of Gerry’s other songs and trying to work out what to do with them. Once there is a bit of progress with that, it would be super to regroup with Julia and possibly some other members of her antipodean family.

In these difficult times, a bit of good news like this is something to hold on to. And while our lives comprise far too much Zoom and Teams, with far too little human contact (apart from funerals and queuing outside shops)…

…happenings of this kind make me realise that communications technologies – the Ogblogging, the ability to connect with people through social media, Zoom etc. – does enable many things that wouldn’t have happened otherwise at all.

Which makes me just a little optimistic that the post-pandemic new normal might just be the best of the too-virtual world we inhabit just now and the real world social contacts we crave.

On that positive note, season’s greetings to all readers.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by August Wilson, Netflix Movie, 19 December 2020

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ma_Rainey%27s_Black_Bottom_film_poster.jpg

I had unfinished business with the play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by August Wilson. I had intended to see Howard Davies’s RNT production in late 1989…in fact I think I might even have got tickets and then had to give them up when I chose, instead, to visit the USA that autumn:

My First Visit To The USA Part One: New York, c19 to 22 November 1989

So I was very keen to see this movie when I read about it’s impending launch on Netflix in mid December 2020.

Kim had very kindly bought Janie a 6-month trial Netflix package earlier in the lockdown, which Janie switched on in order to see the mini-series around which Kim had designed her gift. After that, our usual reluctance to watch TV had switched in, so we had watched precisely nothing more on Netflix for just shy of six months.

So I knew we only had a few days left to watch this movie on our prepaid package before…horror of horrors…we might have had to actually pay to watch the thing, having not used our trial package for five-and-a-half months.

Anyway…

…watch it we did and extremely impressed with the performances I was.

Here is a link to the IMDb resources on this movie.

All of the performances were very good indeed, but in particular Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis were truly excellent.

Here is the official trailer for the movie:

In truth, it is a somewhat melodramatic play but it holds the attention because it shows an extraordinary moment in the history of music, plus the history of race and gender struggles in the USA, through the lens of a genuine early recording star in decline (Ma Rainey) and a fictional trumpeter whose direct experience of prejudice, racial violence and abuse set him on a tragic path.

Central to the play is the recording of Ma Rainey’s signature song, which you can hear here:

In short, I thought it was a superb movie and well worth seeing. Janie found the accents hard to follow and found the plot a bit basic, but did agree with me that we were watching outstanding performances, beautifully filmed.

Recommended.

Z/Yen’s Virtual Christmas Song Lyric, December 2020

This was written 6/7 December 2020 and performed virtually on 17 December 2020 at Z/Yen’s virtual seasonal event.

Note to self – communal singing doesn’t work by TEAMS or Zoom. It’s a latency thing.

DO THEY KNOW IT’S Z/YEN’S VIRTAL CHRISTMAS?

MICHAEL It’s Christmas time, Z/Yen has gathered virtually;
At Christmas time, enlightenment is on the screen.


MIKE And in our world of webclaves, we can spread a smile of joy;
Webinars around the world, at Christmas time.


LINDA But you recall, when we were in one place;
At Christmas time…


ALEX …we’d all gather face-to face.
There’s a world outside your window, that’s in a Covid wave again;


PETER Where the only liquid flowing, is the Dettol and D10.


JULIET And the Christmas bells that ring out, are the viral chimes of doom,


MORGAN Well tonight thank God it’s Teams, instead of Zoom.


SIMON And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time,
At least they can’t blame climate change down there.


IAN Oooh.


ELISABETH To Lothbury no-one goes, Z/Yen’s door is always closed,
Do they know Z/Yen still exists at all?


IAN INSTRUMENTAL RIFF 1


BIKASH Here’s to you;


BEN Raise a glass for everyone.


MATTHEW Here’s to them;


HUGH In that massive atrium.


JANIE Do they know Z/Yen still exists at all?


IAN: INSTRUMENTAL RIFF 2


IAN: INSTRUMENTAL RIFF 3


CHAOS…CHORUS – ALL: Teams Z/Yen’s chorus
Sing Z/Yen’s Christmas song remotely
Zoom Z/Yen’s chorus
Z/Yen’s not choral, not remotely.


[REPEAT CHAOS…CHORUS AD NAUSEUM]

Here is a link to the riffs.

ThreadCrushes, My Turn To Curate ThreadZoomMash, I Chose The Topic “Crushes”, 16 December 2020

This ThreadZoomMash is dedicated to the late Professor Mike Smith

Part One Introduction: Medieval Crushes

I chose the topic “crushes” by happenstance. Just before lockdown 2.0, while I was pondering my choice of topic, a couple of old friends and acquaintances, out of the blue, unprompted, confided in me about crushes they’d harboured when we were all a lot younger.

The topic of crushes resonated with me as a rich source of story telling.

It also resonated with my love of medieval music. Without going into too much detail as to why and wherefore, most medieval secular love songs are about unrequited love. The story formula is a simple one – as my music teacher Ian Pittaway puts it – “she is perfect…; I am hopelessly in love with her; she doesn’t want me; I am heart-broken”.

Here is a song I am working on at the moment: Puis Que Je Suy Amoureux. A late 14th century song attributed to Richard Loqueville of Cambrai. Allow me to sing you the first verse and then translate it.

Since I am in love
With you, gracious, gentle one,
I never feel pain
I am so blissfully joyful.

Thus I wish to continue dreaming
Of serving you according to my design
Since I am in love…

[Love gives to lovers
Hope, sweet and pleasant.
Now my heart is waiting
For your gracious glance,]
Since I am in love…

Translation by Asteria – below I have embedded their delightful, professional rendering of this beautiful song:

Part Two Introduction: Primary Crushes

It was not my intention to write a crush story myself. That is not normally the way with the role of ThreadMash curator. But events since I set the topic of crushes have led me to a memory flash of my very first crush.

Here’s the story of how the memory flash and that primary crush came about.

Very sadly, my friend and work colleague of more than 25 years, Professor Mike Smith, died suddenly and totally unexpectedly on 12 November. It was Mike who, six years ago, encouraged me to start playing the four-string guitar. Janie and I had formed a bond with Mike and his young family over the years.

On the last day of Lockdown 2.0, we went to Mike’s funeral. We learnt for the first time many things about Mike’s earlier life.

I knew that Mike originally came from Montgomery Alabama and I knew that Mike had very strong views against prejudice. But I didn’t know that, in the late 1960s, pint-sized Mike had tackled the racist bullies at Alabama State University, befriending black people and bravely taking on the segregationists.

I also didn’t know that, as a youngster, Mike had liked the song Red River Valley, which the celebrant at the funeral then duly played to the congregation of mourners.

At the sound of that song, I was transported back to the late 1960s myself, to when I was seven; thoughts of my fourth year primary school teacher, Miss Brown.

I loved her and she was clearly very fond of me. I did extremely well that year in school. Miss Brown introduced me to Tudor history, a subject that has fascinated me since. She encouraged my writing.

By the time you get to your fourth year of primary school, you have got used to the idea that you will move on to a different class with a different teacher the next academic year. But Miss Brown dropped a bombshell towards the end of the summer term that year; she was going to be leaving the school altogether.

I was devastated. I wasn’t merely going to be in another class. I wasn’t going to see her again. I felt abandoned.

That year, I had been given as a present a small collection of remaindered records, known as Beano Records. Most of the records are dramatised stories for children with famous English theatrical performers peppered with classical music to provide additional dramatic frisson to the stories. But one of the records, incongruously, is a collection of Cowboy Songs.

One of those cowboy songs is Red River Valley, which had caught my ear around the time I learnt that Miss Brown was to abandon me. I played that song over and over, wallowing in the sentiment of it. I became determined to learn Red River Valley and sing it to Miss Brown on the last day of school.

Eventually I told mum about my plan. Mum gently dissuaded me from that particular idea. I think she encouraged me instead to take a small gift together with a note of thanks and farewell to Miss Brown. I expect mum maintained strict editorial control over the content of the note.

With the benefit of hindsight, that might have been the one occasion in my life when mum’s intervention in my romantic ideals was unquestionably for the best.

There are many versions of Red River Valley, but one of the most charming verses (absent from the rather corny Beano recording, which you can hear through the sound file below)…

Red River Valley, performed by an uncredited “real Texas cowboy”

…is an unrequited love lyric, the third verse of the version I’m about to play. Very similar to the Puis Que Je Suy Amoureux unrequited love lyric, written some 500 years earlier.

It’s 50 years since I learnt, but didn’t sing, Red River Valley for Miss Brown.

It is now time.

It’s easy to play on the four string guitar, which Mike Smith encouraged me to play.

So, this rendition is for Miss Brown and for Mike Smith:

Red River Valley

Oh they say from this valley you’re leaving
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile
And they say that you’re taking the sunshine
That has brightened our pathway a while

Won’t you think of the valley you’re leaving
Oh how lonesome, how sad it will be
And remember the Red River Valley
And the grief that you’re causing to me

For a long time my darling I’ve waited
For the sweet words you never would say
Now at last all my fond hopes have vanished
For they say that you’re going away

Come and sit by my side if you love me
Do not hasten to bid me adieu
Just remember the Red River Valley
And the cowboy that loved you so true

Postscript: The Evening

Ten of us gathered. Eight contributors, me in my capacity as curator/master of ceremonies, plus Rohan Candappa.

The Part One running order was:

  • Jan
  • Adrian
  • Jill
  • Geraldine

The Part Two running order was:

  • Coats Bush (Terry)
  • Auntie Viral (Kay)
  • Fabian Tights (David)
  • Arfur Pig (Ian T)

(The nicknames is a long story. Ask Rohan).

We had a good 30 to 40 minutes after the readings to discuss the contributions and all sorts of other stuff.

From my point of view it was a great evening and I thoroughly enjoyed the role of curator. Not that i would want to curate the evening every time, but my hand is certainly up to curate again.