Don't Think Twice, It's All Right (featuring the actual song!)

We did actually have think twice because the previous film went up without sound.

Reprising our Joan'n'Bob act ( see Diamonds and Rust Gareth-calway – Diamonds-and-rust) with a return fixture, Bob's trademark protest song against one of his early women. His second album but the first to feature a more or less complete sweep of his own songs, unlike the first which mainly showcased him as a performer of other people's. In other words, the real Dylan. Who was the discarded lover? Some internal evidence suggests this may even be pre-New York with its rustic setting of roosters and dark roads and sense of setting out and travelling' on in which case it might be a memory of some Mid Western affair rather than Suzi Rotolo but who knows. "You just kinda wasted my precious time" is pretty damning but mild compared to some of his later accusations and restless attacks on whoever was upsetting him at the time. We both bought this album about 8 years after it came out probably on the strength of Blowing in the Wind as one of those must have vinyl classic albums from one of the masters of folk rock and Americana and fellow architect of the 60s (with the Beatles) first heard as children but now understood as teenagers and were sent back to it recently by the brilliant film about Dylan's early years (up to 1966) 'A Complete Unknown' which ends with him roaring away from Pete Seeger type folk on a rocknroll motorbike. Around the time of Hendrix there was a rumour that Dylan couldn't really play guitar but made up for it with a unique dramatising voice and the poetry of the lyrics but one listen to the original will banish that thought: his guitar picking (honed by all those folk club performances) is astonishingly good and drives the song.. And contrary to most people's recall, this is not a solo track but has a band behind him playing drums, two bass guitars, piano and a second guitarist. Our version concentrates on the heart-yearning pretty tune. We have a female lead vocal, bass, percussion and add some vocal layers. On the liner notes Dylan protests that it isn't a (slow and easy going) love song. And so of course that's exactly the way we do it.

All You Need Is The Pancakes You Make A Shrove Tuesday Special from Mag...

The New Humanity (Love versus Great Forces of Destruction)

The snow-capped mountains, ice-capped seas, The rivers, forests, bees; Fjords and deserts, tropics and poles, The herds and flocks and shoals; Hear greed-is-God merchants of death At limits of all breath, Trump, “Follow Me Me to the end of the world! Come down into The Flood.” ("State of the Ark" © Gareth Calway 2024) The first tune we sing to is a medieval church scale melody in the Phrygian mode composed by Thomas Tallis, originally as a setting for Psalm 2, arr Peacock's Tale. Lead vocal, Echo Strum Acoustic guitar - Maz Lead vocal, voice, Alien Waves Bass, Drums, Harmonium, Recorder, field recordings - Gaz. The second part with the voice over is a Greensleeves rhythm section of acoustic guitar, drums, recorders, harmonium and bass The voice over is extracts from the writings of Meher Baba, a spiritual Master of of Persian ancestry born in Poona, India, a discourse he called "The New Humanity." We feel both parts of this track - the fear and foreboding for the planet and our species of "State of The Ark" and the sublime optimism of the Meher Baba discourse. As he puts it "Great forces of destruction ARE afoot and SEEM to be dominate at the moment." (our emphasis). The image is Hokusai's "In the Well of the Great Wave of Kanagawa" which seems to illustrate both the impending doom and the ultimate faith in humanity to overcome it.

The New Album in 360 seconds

The New Album in 360 seconds  Each track has a dedicated film, lyrics, full track notes, info etc etc.

• This is an album we've made to celebrate our Sapphire Wedding. The concert of British folk and Americana we'd invite you all to if we were 45 years younger! If you have any questions or comments about the music, you can submit them as you listen and we'll get back to you at the end. Or please feel free just to listen, let the music do the talking and enjoy. 
  FEEL FREE TO LISTEN TO ANY OR ALL OF THE ALBUM AND WATCH THE FILMS BEFORE DECEMBER 1ST but we do hope you will also join our get together for the Listening Party on the day itself. All welcome. The more the merrier!

   

• Streaming + Download 

  Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
  Download available in 16-bit/44.1kHz. 

    £7 GBP  or more

   

	1.	The Peacock's Tale 03:00 video
	2.	Rosemary Lane 03:20 video
	3.	Crazy Man Michael 03:39 video
	4.	In The Bleak Midwinter 03:22 video
	5.	The Rise of an April Leaf 03:04 video
	6.	Lady Guinevere 03:01 video
	7.	Bring Me To Fring All Saints 04:02video
	8.	Listen Listen 02:43 video
	9.	Blackwaterside 03:02 video
	10.	Tired With All These 02:03 video
	11.	Gwenhwyfar 05:40 video
	12.	Summer Wine 04:37 video
	13.	The Swimming Song 01:58 video
	14.	Walk on the Wild Side 04:52 video
	15.	Diamonds and Rust 04:14 video
	16.	Twenty Years 01:58 video
	17.	Transatlantic Arti 04:29 video

The Song of the Wedding Rings

The idea here was to write about marriage in terms of the actual punishing metallurgical processes by which gold wedding rings are made, from the formation of the minerals in which it is found to the finished pieces of separated jewellery with which the marriage begins. It became quite an effective allegory for the resistance and conflicts invited when two souls embark on the perilous adventure of wedding into one and was a deliberate challenge to the convention that the wedding is the 'happy ending' of something as in romance novels, as any 'married' person knows it's just the start and you aren't really 'married' in that sense for a long long time, if ever. The ego resists it as fiercely as the love invites it. Thus the choice of poetic form, terza rima, is  that chosen by Dante for Paradiso but also for Inferno and Purgatorio. This 'wedding' of the he and she  is hell and purgatory with a vision of heaven. I read it at our best man's wedding as part of the service though for obvious reasons in that context I emphasised the heavenly vision just before the end.

He. 

It's very dark in here. I'm paralysed,

Dorman and dreamless. Feel poles

Of heat and cold unchanged. And neutralise

Them. Don't know what to do with myself, doled

With endless wastes of time to kill. Waiting

For someone to turn me up, an end to hold

Onto. Feel a distant purity but ring

False, hopelessly flawed and dull, when struck. Dumb.

This happen to me. Especially nothing.

I sent a short time somewhere crowded, numb.

About eight million years. There was lots

Of immigrant stuff I'd vaguely become

A art of. It was probably chaos.

I just lay back, let it all not happen.

Then there was a change. The night was a-buzz,

Vibrating. And I - it was quite sudden

I suppose - was in two places at once.

It got - warmer. My molecules loosened,

Got a little excited.... Ages thence,

It registered that the immigrant stuff,

With impossible speed, had vanished, whence

I was more my own thing. Though a good half

(In two different places) was missing,

Cut. But that's neither here nor there. I have

No lost identity. I feel nothing.

She.

Can't move. Can't. Move. Can only steal my grain

Against him, against more change. Petrified.

And what should I? Nothing ever mends. I'm 

Stuck with myself, though God alone knows why.

I never asked to be here.Molten Light's

Delirium conceived me just to lie

Beneath the piled millenniums of Night

In everlasting restlessness. I'd been

Going nowhere. Slowly. Coldly. My bright

Beginning finished soon as it began.

Now I'm in my own way. Too dense to shift

From it. In a life without end... I'm dammed.

The only chance I've got - of real Life -

Is being overcome by Force. Another's.

But afterwards I'd only lie there. Stiff,

As if unmoved. Regardless.Why bother?

He

I want her but won't give a mile, an inch.

She's only a bit of stuff. But, oh, she's

Heaven. If only she'd yield, I'd be so rich!

She

I've done with cast-offs, drossy heels and quartz.

I was bathed in cyanide to free me,

Though a false gleam conceals it, of course.

I hate and despise like poison sweet

These clods, detest their coarsened common feel.

I'm REFINED, (if you even know what it means).

No. Not just 'polished' my so-called 'dear'.  REAL.

He

You needed nerves of steel just to survive

Where I cane from. You were given a scrape

nd crushed from the start. Bent/ All you insides

Exposed. Filed. Drilled into shape.

You needed a tempered will like iron,

Smoothness and flash a hammer couldn't break.

The fault's my background. Not whom it picked on.

She

You want me? Why? Does a certain stable

Fluency attract you to me, blending

My lightness and grace? I'm pliable

If you really try. But I risk nothing,

It's just how I am, it doesn't move me.

To you it;s magnetic. All this straining

To reach me's YOUR problem. YOUR star. Icy.

He

I feel half dead. My other half's somewhere

Else. One day I'll be got back in once piece,

Perhaps. Meanwhile, I've been jolted half-aware

In opposite directions. Once...Or twice...

She

Or not... No amount of chemistry,

No amount of earth, no amount of time

Can touch me. Put your life's current through me

I'll stay switched off. Like lead, for all my shine.

He

I can't wake up. Such fatigue. It's so hard

To push through this irresistible dark, Fate's

Immoveable object - myself.... I'm shattered.

Ony once, I was dreaming of a shape

Brilliantly mettled, Primely Moving. It all

Came together, in every place...

She

Oh yes, I've dreamt of a true Golden Age

Where I, the immutable Iron Maid,

Break out at last of that golden cage,

Dim memory melting riveted gaze,

Endure, am accepted in, a world I embrace.

Touch. Know - another being. Feel...

Escape...

                    But - No. Im too rusted in place

In my restlessness. I will play it straight.

Keep a grip. Lie low. Remain poker-faced.

Preserve my goodness, value, glow. And wait.

Sonata in G "Love and Death"

In the classic days of the single this would be the experimental/'progressive' B side of "Bring Me To Fring All Saints." The track explores what, if anything, remains when the body dies? The answer is beyond reason and even the strongest faith can only guess. The only certainty our little duo has on this question is that if the little self we fearfully cling to in the face of death is all we have, then we're not really living anyway. That little self palpably dies whenever we let it go and embrace a larger existence, as for example when we love. 

The lyric is a Petrarchan sonnet repeated with variations. In sonata terms the first theme ( in the tonic key) is "In fear of death and out of love with God" which changes key into "In love with death and fear of God and doubt" and back again, a pattern repeated with word modulations on the same theme as the octave of the sonnet works out (ABBBAABBA.) The second theme (in the dominant key) is "In doughty love with love and life and out" which changes key into "Of fear with death, I hear your heart-strung tune" and back again, this second pattern also repeated with word modulations on the same theme as the sestet of the sonnet works out - (CDEEDC. ) The sonnet is repeated with subtle variations and then the two themes, both verbal and musical, are developed before the recapitulation (beginning "In fear of death and out of love with God/ In love with death and fear of God and doubt") resolves with a repeat of the original dominant sestet in the tonic key.

Thus, the themes of love and death are expositioned, developed and resolved as both sonata and sonnet.

All the vocal and instrumental lines ( bass, harmonium, acoustic guitar, tom, snare) are simple but the overall sonata construction is more complex than anything I've ever tried before so I didn't want to waste the considerable cognitive effort required on a trivial subject. Love and death are certainly not trivial themes. As regards the lyric, the phrases had to be as musical as they are semantic and in constructing a sonnet for this musical programme two things happened. 1. I wrote in a less linear, more cyclical, way than usual and being so preoccupied with the form (and the minting of phrases that resounded and that could be developed in the repetitions and varied as tunes are in a sonata) my mind was so preoccupied it let my deepest feelings about these themes through undistracted and unfiltered.

The sonnet as a poetical form repeats metrical and musical ideas anyway (the form, meter and rhyme in an octave and sestet which pivot around a 'turn' at the end of the eight line ) and the 'thought' of a sonnet goes one way (thesis) and then the other (antithesis) towards its synthesis at the end. In this one, those repetitions, pivots and resolutions are extended through subtle variations of the same sonnet (rather than say a sonnet sequence based on verbal thoughts only) within an overall musical sonata.

music as an actual formal musical sonata with sonnet lyrics. 


peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/track/sonata-in-g-love-and-death for full notes.  

lyrics

In fear of death and out of love with God,
In love with death and fear of God and doubt
Of love and life and All and driven out
Of every In and home and church, a rod 
For my own back, and with my own nails shod,
In fear of life and death of love I shout
My doubtful notes, my beaten heart as stout 
As death, and out of fear I pray to God.

In doughty love with love and life and out
Of fear with death, I hear your heart-strung tune
And let my not-self go, and all in love
All lost like little self in All above,
Self’s little death, my darkness all consumed,
Unshrouding June from ‘I’-cy clouds of doubt.

And half in love with death and fear of God
In fear of All - and all in love with death,
As out of love with life as dying breath
Repeating prayers of lightning to a rod
That doesn’t give a damn, an outed odd
In death with love who never dared to guess
Death’s loving door, a grave, would answer ‘Yes...
And half in love with death and fear of God
In fear of All - and all in love with death,
As out of love with life as dying breath
Repeating prayers for lightning to a rod
That doesn’t give a damn, an outed odd
In death with love who never dared to guess
Death’s loving door, a grave, would answer ‘Yes
Fear’s death will come and fall in love with God.’


In doughty love with love and life and out
Of fear with death, I hear your heart-strung tune
And let my not-self go, and all in love
All lost like little self in All above,
Self’s little death, my darkness all consumed,
Unshrouding June from ‘I’-cy clouds of doubt.

And half in death and for the love of God
The death of God all in love with death,
As out of love with life as dying breath
Repeating prayers for lightning to a rod
That doesn’t give a damn, an outed odd
In death with love who never dared to guess
Death’s loving door, a grave, would answer Yes
Fear’s death will come and fall in love with God.

In fear of death and out of love with God,
In love with death and fear of God and doubt
Of love and life and All and driven out
Of every In and home and church, a rod 
For my own back, and with my own nails shod,
In fear of life and death of love I shout
My doubtful notes, my beaten heart as stout 
As death, and out of fear I pray to God.

In doughty love with love and life and out
Of fear with death, I hear your heart-strung tune
And let my not-self go, and all in love
All lost like little self in All above,
Self’s little death, my darkness all consumed
Unshrouding June from ‘I’-cy clouds of doubt.

credits

released July 1, 2024
In the film, I'm doing my first play through which remains as the basic bass guitar and vocal track on which everything else was later added (including Maz's guitar).

license

A Love That Involves Evolution

 

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry. (Sonnet 66)

The rap version

Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry,

As, to behold desert a beggar born,

And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,

And purest faith unhappily forsworn,

And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd,

And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,

And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,

And strength by limping sway disabled,

And art made tongue-tied by authority,

And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,

And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,

And captive good attending captain ill.

Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone,

Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

Birth of a Human Being

My snow soul is slowly taking shape,

Falling from heaven to inherit the earth

And the family features of God and ape,

Angel out of my element from birth…

And this is me, this helpless drop of Man,

This perfect mould of bud and mineral,

Crawling, flight, and every earthly thing.

All of it – nothing.

                                          Yet I’ll assert I AM

In time by striving upright endlessly;

Inherit here a kiss, to milk, like grist,

The love that made me, and by which I’m born;

The word that speaks its perfect mind, the fist

That grasps its imaged God; the whole torn

And bleeding womb of human history.

Note: 35 years ago today, in the Queen Elizabeth hospital King's Lynn, I witnessed my wife giving birth to our firstborn, still favourite (and only) child, Emma. Things started mid afternoon at a quiet and in my case traditionally bilious long school term post-Christmas get together with the neighbours at about 3 pm the day before and went on all night and all morning and just into the following afternoon. (I remember noticing that Norwich City won 2-1, wondering how such a remote event could register.) It was horrendous enough witnessing the birth. I am glad I never had to achieve the feat myself. But it was of course the ultimate labour of love and today, incredibly, our daughter is 35 years old. She has since extended the line by marrying our favourite son in law and giving birth at the same hospital (really nice Maternity unit btw) to two children herself, a daughter who will be four in February and a son who will be two in October.

35 years ago about now, I came home, wrung out by the experience, pranged the car reversing into the drive into a discarded dining room table I forgot we'd left there, and - exhausted, relieved, delirious - wrote , no, not this sonnet but a precursor of it called 'Animal'. A few days later, I picked my family up from QE and we started the greatest adventure, most important human activity and worst paid career of child rearing. Providentially it snowed almost as soon as I'd got them home and we were cocooned for a week, a much needed accidental paternity leave in the age before they gave you any. During that week in lieu, I wrote this sonnet.

Happy birthday Emma! XX

Phezant's Tail on BBC Upload

 

Tune in to

@BBCNorfolk

between 6 and 7 pm tonight for our uplifting 15C "The Only Gift (A Lynn Carol)" soaring across Norfolk into your 21C devices (at a safe social distance!)

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Whet your appetite with https://youtu.be/R1xdN1QynoQ 

And check out "Who Killed Cock Robin, the Covid Case" our new double concept murder mystery album released today. https://phezants-tail.bandcamp.com

a prayer for john lennon (d. dec 8 1980)

https://bardonthewire.bandcamp.com/track/a-prayer-for-john-lennon-d-dec-8-1980

i am not

sure that god

speaks

more in the silence

or the age's

talentless violence

but in earshot

of atlantic fury

you fell

silent,

new york exploding

unholy smoke

in your heart

and for a bad moment

dear john

i am lost again.

dec 8 1980