from The Spectator 2 July 1988 – subscribers can click through to the archive and read the whole article.
I don’t recall it seeming like a disaster. I do recall it feeling more like being at a rock concert than at a theatrical production. I think we had good seats but were still at some distance from the action. It was big, bold and in truth not really me.
I don’t think this one was really Bobbie either – she might remember how she felt about it.
Now I’m not one to point the finger or anything like that, but my guess is that it was primarily Bobbie’s idea to give opera a go, not least because so many of her law reporting pals were into opera.
I’m pretty sure my previous experience of opera would have been Carmen in the early 1970s; a semi-professional production by the Putney Operatic Society who chose to typecast me and several of my primary school mates as urchins.
But I digress.
Roll the clock forward some 15 years and, like buses, it’s not one but two that come along at more or less the same time – i.e. two opera visits during June 1988. That’s quite a lot of opera just a few week’s before my Accountancy finals. The Magic Flute was the first of them.
Jeremy Sams directed it – I have seen a great deal of his work in the theatre of course. Nicholas Hytner produced it – I’ve seen a lot of his theatre stuff too. The production was sort-of revived many years later and the trailer for the revival is embedded below, so that should give you a feel for it.
We went midweek – on a Tuesday – which will have been quite a late night. I was on study leave by then I think, so I suppose I felt that I was master of my own time management.
In truth I don’t remember all that much about this production, other than lots going on and rather liking the music because it’s Mozart and I rather like Mozart.
Bobbie might have more profound memories of it than me. I’ll ask her.
Sometimes people like me have a pivotal moment in their self-education about music. I discovered this week (writing in February 2018) that mine was on 31 October 1987.
You’ll need to roll with this one, dear reader, it is a somewhat convoluted tale but in the end it is riddled with strange coincidences twixt 2018 and 1987. I hope this piece has some interesting general insights too.
…and spotted that the William Byrd specific concert would include “Though Amaryllis Dance In Green”. I remembered that song fondly as one of the first Tudor period songs I had heard and liked. I could even recall the tune and many of the words. I sought and found a simplified transcription of the music for lute on-line and decided that it would be a good example for me to work on with Ian Pittaway to further transcribe for solo voice and Tudor guitar.
On the day of the Gresham lecture, my mind began to wander (during the journey home after work I hasten to add, not during the lecture or work) about that song. I knew I still had a recording of it and would have kept notes on who was performing it.
It is extraordinary what memory can do. My mind latched on to that late 1980’s period and I was pretty sure I heard the music while I was getting ready for some professional exams.
I enjoyed a Saturday morning Radio 3 programme back then which played new releases and gave some interesting background on the recordings. But I also wanted to get my homework out of the way, so I tended to spool the radio show onto the trusty reel-to-reel and listen to it later in the day.
One week there had been a morning dedicated to early music and I remembered that some of the music had blown me away…
…to such an extent that I had edited that spool and preserved the recordings…
…then digitised it some 20 years or more later.
In fact, the recording that had really blown me away from that morning’s show was Josquin Des Prez and my records tell me that it was the Hilliard Ensemble.
…and as I am promoting the material so flagrantly for the Hilliards…and have of course now bought a copy of the album for myself, assuaging my guilt for the home taping…I’ll guess they won’t mind that I have uploaded my rather worn-sounding track – the one that blew me away – Ave Maria:
It really is a lovely recording of the piece. I have heard several others since and (perhaps it’s me) but that Hilliard recording of it is something very special.
When I got home to find all this out, there was a really nice message waiting for me (us) on Facebook from Ros Elliot, an old friend of Janie’s who now lives in Turkey. I recalled that Ros’s brother Paul used to sing with the Hillard Ensemble and of course, it transpired with a little e-digging, is indeed singing on that very album of Josquin music.
Also on that same old tape of mine, as I expected, was Though Amaryllis…which was also a recording by the Hilliard Ensemble. The Byrd was released the same year as the Josquin; 1987. Now available as part of a double-album of Byrd and Dowland…yes of course I procured this one too. Only available in CD form for now – click here or below:
So, given that the Hilliards got a sale and an advert out of me for this album too, I’m going to guess that they’ll be OK with the worn-sounding Though Amaryllis file going up for you to sample:
So then all I needed was my diary and the trusty BBC Genome project to resolve exactly when this introduction to Early Music happened.
…which yielded the next coincidence. The same broadcast had included Christopher Page with Gothic Voices singing, amongst other things, Ian Pittaway’s favorites Westron wynde and Hey nony nonyno. Clearly those didn’t make the cut on my edited tape. Perhaps I missed the start of the show…or perhaps those songs were too alien for my ears at that time.
…but dad did like the secular Josquin tracks very much; and the Byrd. Mum didn’t get early music at all. Chopin, Strauss (the waltz ones) and Tchaikovsky for her.
Momentous stuff in late 1987 – it really was the day that early music found me – and some wonderful coincidences in early 2018 while I found that momentous day again.
Busy day at work – went to piano recital with Jilly in evening at QEH.
This one stumped me as I didn’t keep a programme and had no record of it on my other logs. Not even Gemini could help me, but I guessed correctly that the Queen Elizabeth Hall might advertise concerts through listings and found the atatched detailed one in The Daily Telegraph through my Newspapers.com subscription.
Kate Fricker: “Would you like me to drive, Professor?” Watson Fuller: “No. Why do you ask?”AI actors images provided by DeepAI.
One of my most memorable Keele days, right at the end of my time there. Kate (now Susan) Fricker and I were invited to join the University guest pack at the Lichfield Festival, courtesy of Peter Held of industrial textiles behemoth Marling Industries plc.
Ironically, Marling Industries was best known for seatbelt materials. Ironically, because Kate and I were treated to a rollercoaster ride from Keele to Lichfield with Professor Watson Fuller and Mrs Fuller.
I was very fond of Professor Fuller. And I think he was also fond of us. He’d certainly heaped praise on one of my least challenging pieces of research a few month’s earlier, in his capacity as Chair of Foundation Year Committee:
Professor Fuller was Professor of Physics, so he really should have had a profound grasp of the potential physical effects, were a large object travelling at speed – e.g. a car with four passengers doing 60 mph on a duel carriageway – go out of control and hit something. Yet, he did not seem to have a profound grasp of the steering wheel most of the time, nor did he seem to be paying much attention to the road when, frequently, he turned around to us, waxing lyrical about this, that, or the other.
I suppose, as Fuller was a biophysicist, credited with vital supporting work on X-Ray diffraction with Watson & Crick, that his head was always in far loftier thoughts than mere road safety. Or should I say that driving without paying fuller attention to the road was in Professor Fuller’s DNA.
Mrs Fuller did not look terrified. Perhaps she was used to it. But apparently, on arrival, Kate and I looked a little ruffled. I remember Professor Philip Boden and his good lady taking us aside before the lunchtime concert.
Has Watson offered to take you home after the evening concert? Thought so. Not many people want a second lift from Watson, bless him. Reputation precedes him. Would you like us to rescue you? Thought so. I’ll tell him we’ve invited you back to our place for coffee after the concert. Easiest that we take you back.
We were grateful. And Professor Boden was good to his word, not only giving us a lift home but also providing us with some warm hospitality and enjoyable chat at Chez Boden before taking us home.
To the concerts. First up was a lunchtime concert at St Chad’s Church, Lichfield.
Joseph Haydn – String Quartet No 3, Op 33 (“The Birds”)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – String Quartet in G (K 387)
Very charming it was too. The setting. The fine quartet and the non-challenging nature of the music.
After plenty of hospitality in the afternoon and a migration to the Cathedral, we enjoyed a bigger deal concert in the evening. The Chamber Orchestra of Europe, under George Malcolm, supported by András Schiff, Yuuko Shiokawa and Heinz Holliger.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Wind Serenade in C Minor
Alban Berg – Chamber Concerto for Violin, Piano and Winds
George Frideric Handel – Concerto Grosso, Op 3 No 2 in B flat
George Frideric Handel – Music for the Royal Fireworks
I must confess to have struggled with the Alban Berg. Always have, probably always will. The rest was easy listening by serious music standards.
John White and I quite often did our sixties soul discos when DJ-ing at Keele. Those “happenings” are among our favourite memories of spinning the plates at Keele.
My diary entries didn’t always mention the style of disco involved, but my diary entry for 11 May 1985 was specific:
Saturday 11 May 1985 – Got up lunchtime and came into office to meet Ashley [Fletcher] etc. Went for walk with Petra [Wilson] in early evening – came to union and did 60’s disco [with John White].
John and I have stayed in touch ever since we left Keele. Indeed, as I write this up 40 years on (23 May 2025), we’ll be seeing each other tomorrow.
These past few weeks we have been liaising over the sounds that we played at those sixties soul discos. People sometimes referred to them as Northern Soul discos, but in truth most of the stuff we liked and played was not quite so rare as Northern Soul purists would like – mostly Motown and Atlantic/Stax. We were somewhat constrained by the content of Keele SU’s impressive but not all that unusual record collection.
Intriguingly (for us), we separately listed the stuff we remembered playing back then before pulling this playlist together – the overlap was extensive.
Anyway, dear readers and listeners. You can decide for yourselves what you think of this three-and-a-half hour marathon sixties soul disco. Janie (my wife) and I have been dancing around the living room to it – no doubt John & Mandy have too.
Comments from people who remember these discos, or from people who wish they had been there, or simply from people who love this kind of music will be most welcome.
While Students’ Union events, gigs and discos were my staple during my sabbatical year, I found myself increasingly listening to classical music on my rare evenings off in my micro-apartment in Horwood K Block.
The place was described as a resident tutor’s flat and I was very lucky to be allowed such space and comfort for my sabbatical year. In truth, the “flat” was two study bedrooms at the end of a corridor cobbled together with a small galley kitchen and a tiny en suite bathroom and toilet utilising the would-be corridor space and some of the would-be study bedrooms.
Still, I had a sitting room in which to eat, relax with friends and (surprisingly frequently) to act as a dossing floor at night for people who lacked the energy or ability to stagger home. John White, who lived off campus, was quite often such a guest.
Returning to the classical music, my tiny personal collection of classical recordings had not moved on since the early to mid 1970s. I have pretty much documented it all in one Ogblog posting – click here or below.
I had no record player at Keele; hence the couple of hundred cassettes I had accumulated during my Keele years.
I consolidated the fancied bits of that tiny classical record collection on to eight cassettes, which I have replicated through the following two YouTube playlists, which you can access despite even if you see off-putting strikethroughs:
Wherever possible I have found the exact same 1960s/1970s recordings for those playlists. I have rather enjoyed listening to them again after so many years. Of course I can hear more modern and technically much better recordings at the press of a button these days, but these are the performances and recordings I remember from back then.
I played bits of those eight cassettes quite a lot in 84/85.
My only sound system until the record player loan…excellent it was too.
While John White and I tended to trawl my far more copious collection of modern music, partly with a view to planning discos and the like…I’ll be writing more on that topic in a future piece…
… Kate (now Susan) Fricker used to like to hear classical music when she visited, while Petra also quite often requested a classical music backdrop on the increasingly frequent occasions that she was at the flat.
Indeed, it was through Petra, or more accurately one of Petra’s friends, I think probably Ruth, that a record player found its way into my flat. Petra’s friend had discovered, like many Keele students before her, that there was not much room for a turntable and stereo system in a study-bedroom.
The record player was lent to us for an unspecified period (I think it ended up at mine for the rest of the academic year), taking pride of place in my so-called living room. It looked rather grand in that setting, but for the inconvenient truth that I had no records at Keele. Not one.
Occasionally someone would come round with a record, and we could play it, but this seemed like underutilisation to me.
All this is a preamble to the one big thing I remember about visiting my old (as in long-term, not elderly) friend Jilly Black in Cardiff that first weekend of March 1985. Here’s all I wrote in the diary about it.
Friday 1 March 1985.– Very busy morning to get all out of way – left Keele early. Went to Cardiff – supper and drink – earlyish night.
Saturday 2 March 1985 – rose quite late – did some work – went to Cardiff Union -> shops -> back – went drink -> Chinese -> back for more drink – pleasant day.
Sunday, 3 March 1985 – got up quite late – had lunch – left Cardiff – long journey – went union – went Petra’s – [she] came over later.
Jilly was studying music at Cardiff. It was Jilly who had introduced me to Claudio Abbado at The Proms some 18 months earlier…
…and I recall that my visit to see her in Cardiff was long overdue.
My enduring memory of that particular visit was purchasing 10 classical records under Jilly’s “tutelage” on the Saturday. The only other things I remember about that visit were:
being reminded that everything in Wales, at that time, shut down ridiculously early on a Friday evening – hence the otherwise out of character “supper drink and early night”;
that Jilly’s “then but soon to be ex” boyfriend did something of a no show, so I didn’t get to meet him and this was a bit of a cloud over an otherwise very enjoyable weekend
an excellent Chinese meal in a restaurant on the Cardiff Riverside which I think might even have been named, suitably, Riverside Cantonese or some such.
But let us examine the 10 classical albums that I bought on the Saturday with Jilly’s help. Where I can identify the album I have added a Discogs link, which, for some obscure reason, tend to look struck through even though you can click them happily:
I vaguely remember a running gag in which Jilly and I imagined sequels with names such as “Sidney in Spain and “Monty in Bournemouth”. Perhaps you had to be there.
If you are reading this article, pining for that fine mini collection of ancient recordings of classics, brilliantly curated by Jilly, pine no more. This YouTube playlist has all but one of them (I have so far failed to trace the particular Vivaldi sonatas and concerti on the album so-named). Here is a link to the YouTube playlist that includes those classic albums. The usual “don’t worry if you see a strike through, you can click happily” rule applies.
I’ll be returning to the topic of Keele discos and playlists for those soon enough.
The Theatre Royal Hanley wanted to encourage Keele University students to attend their theatre. They offered me a pair of free tickets to see any show I fancied over the summer. I was a new Student Union sabbatical and it was a new (or I should say revived) venue. I suppose they thought people like me might have some influence over the “yoof” audience.
I spotted what looked like quite an interesting play – with Tom Conti in it if I’m not mistaken, which I thought Bobbie and I would both enjoy when she was up for a long weekend at the end of August/start of September.
Problem was, I chose the Sunday evening (probably because we were otherwise engaged on both the Friday and Saturday evenings) and failed to check whether the Sunday evening show was the same show as the Monday to Saturday show.
It wasn’t.
You cannot blame the box office – they had been instructed to issue me with comps for whatever evening I chose…and I chose the Sunday evening.
The Life And Music Of Rodgers And Hammerstein. I am 95% sure that the show we saw was Hella Toros and her ensemble. A grande dame by 1984, widow of John McLaren, who had been in the original cast productions of Rodgers and Hammerstein shows in the 1950s…
…here’s how she looked and sounded in 1940, before sadness and illness struck her life for some while:
Correction: it wasn’t Helen Toros’s ensemble, it was the Newcastle Amateur Operatic Chorus. The following clipping from the Evening Sentinel confirms why/how I got the “They’re Playing Our Song” offer (Peta Toppano and Barry Quinn, not Tom Conti) confused with Rodgers and Hammerstein, plus confirms exactly who performed:
It was the most stilted show imaginable. Imagine a heavy European accent dramatically stating
Rodgers and Hammerstein, the most wonderful musicals in the whole world…
…I bet she said that about all the composers of such works in all of her shows…
…Ivor Novello – the most wonderful writer of musical shows in history…Sigmund Romberg, the most exquisite operettas ever written…
Between numbers, Hella gave us bits of her life story tentatively connected to Rodgers and Hammerstein. Her late husband’s involvement in the original stage productions of the musicals was bigged up to the extent that one might have imagined that John and Hella were round Oscar and Richard’s places all the time back in the 1950s.
In short, Bobbie and I had turned up at the theatre expecting to see “our sort of play” and found ourselves instead watching a static recital of songs from musicals, delivered in an exceptionally old-fashioned style.
The audience was almost as stilted as the performances. Not that everyone in the audience was about three times our age. Dear me no. Some of them were at least four times our age.
Bobbie and I didn’t know where to look. Actually we did…not at each other, lest the giggles get the better of us.
To be fair, we mostly won the struggle to keep straight faces for most of the first half of the recital…
…until the rather elderly and minimally mobile grande dame of the show, Hella Toros, attempted to sing Happy Talk with appropriate movements…lifted from the movie…
…our struggle with retaining our composure was lost. For good.
We felt we owed it to the audience, who were, after all, our elders and betters, to withdraw during the interval, ahead of the second half of the show, rather than inflict the inevitable giggly disturbances on the audience throughout the second half.
The exact nature of the Hanley-based Indian meal we devoured in place of the second half of the show is lost in the mists of time. It was probably quite good food and reasonably priced – there were some decent Indian restaurants in the Potteries by then.
Is it possible that, but for my choice of night/wrong show error, I might have been able to influence the student body to frequent the Theatre Royal Hanley and helped turn around the disaster-prone institution? Unlikely.
On reflection, Bobbie & I probably shouldn’t go to any theatre with “Theatre Royal” in its name…I recall a peculiarly incident-rich visit to the Theatre Royal Haymarket with Bobbie to see Long Day’s Journey Into the Night. There’ll be a link here once I have written that one up.
I absolutely loved this tape back in 1984. I ported most of it onto a couple of cassettes and it really was the sound track of my last few weeks as an undergraduate and graduand at Keele…and then the early part of my time there as a students’ union sabbatical.
Paul’s tapes were always an eclectic mix – this one is uber-eclectic, with new wave, ska, funk, soul-jazz and a heap of psychedelia all mixed in. I have really been enjoying revisiting it and racking up a high quality version of the old tape in digital form.
The playlist is on YouTube Music – click the picture above and enjoy.
I’m new to YouTube Music and the ability to save and share playlists through my premium YouTube subscription. I’d be interested to learn how friends experience it. I’m assuming that those of you who have YouTube Premium will simply be able to click through the image and enjoy the playlist in peace, whereas those of you who do not will receive constant reminders that YouTube Premium is a good idea and possibly be pestered with other ads too. I’d like to know.
I’m hoping this YouTube service is good enough for me to collate other such tapes into playlists and share them with those who like this sort of thing.
For those who like researching old manuscripts, here is the document from which I retrieved the full list. I have made the typed list also a clickable link to the playlist itself, just in case you missed the picture link above.
Dive down that rabbit hole and have a listen – you know you want to.
Thanks again for the tape, Paul. A gift that is still giving 40 years later.
I had been taking an interest in Motown, Stax & Northern Soul music for a few years by the time the iconic BBC Radio series, Hitsville USA: The Story Of Motown, presented by Stuart Grundy, started in January 1984.
The diary is silent on’t, but the cassette recorder was not
The story of how this audio-beauty came into my possession is worthy of a piece in its own right. But in short, Ashley wanted to buy an Amstrad “all in one” thingie and offered me his Grundig RR720 for a ludicrously low price in order to raise the last few quid he needed to secure his purchase. I negotiated the price up for him as I couldn’t in all conscience buy the item for the price he quoted. I think the offer price was £12 and the strike price £20.
I continued to use and get pleasure from the RR720 for some 25 years, until its increasing hiss-noise and obsolete look condemned it around 2007 or 2008.
Anyway…
…my habit, most weeks, was to go into Newcastle shopping after listening to and taping this programme on a Saturday. I think it very unlikely that I got much if any work done before the lunchtime broadcast. I probably ate lunch (or some might argue brunch) while listening.
I note that Episode 5 was when Jilly was visiting at the end of an action-packed week:
I recall “making” Jilly listen to that episode, arranging our tour of Keele around the Motown programme time. Jilly became quite engaged with the subject after 30 minutes in the masterful hands of Stuart Grundy’s documentary and clips. I’m pretty sure that is where the idea of “The Lesson Tapes” that I made for Jilly started, as she confessed knowing next to nothing about that sort of music, classical music student that she was.
I recorded Week 10 at my parents house while decompressing and getting a little bit of work done there late March:
I remember discussing the series with Paul Deacon when I saw him that evening. Were you already working for the BBC Music Library at that time, Paul, or did that come later?
There are far worse things that you could do than listen to them all “in a podcast stylee”, as I think it is as good an audio documentary about Motown has yet to be made.
For me it brings back memories of when I should have been finishing my assignments and revising, but was still fiddling around with music and socialising and grub instead. A process I continued for many weeks after this series ended:
Tom Sutcliffe on Aida Tue, Jun 28, 1988 – 17 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
Arts Diary Aida Sun, Jul 3, 1988 – 39 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
