GLASTONBURYOFTHEMIND

The great John Cazale, as quoted speaking in the production press notes of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, 1974.

He continued,

“The process of acting is the process of looking for the person in the character you’re playing. The process is very similar to looking for yourself. I sometimes wonder if the inability to find oneself makes one seek himself in other people, in characters. I’m closer now, having been an actor for a while, than I’ve ever been before to finding myself.”

He was the most gifted. and respected by his peers, actor of his generation, dead 4 years later at the age of 42, by which time fiance Meryl Streep was his constant companion.

So Prince is giving away his album. Good man, he’ll help 2 million find himself, his selves, maybe - what 1.3, 1.4 mill ? more than would have-  had he stayed committed to SonyBmg.

This is the terrifying thought for the record industry.

What if the next generation of moltenly magnificently talented musicians (and I don’t suspect that anyone of us, no matter how aurally deluded, would argue that at at least one, maybe one hundred times, Prince has, in his so sweet way, been just dat) are driven not by a love for a legal tender but a real ego bender.

What if they just decided to put it up and get it out there?

That real good early career stuff?

Hows then is the honeyman going to get the good stuff in his honeypot.

The thing is , the great thing is that in this context , to future generations, recorded music becomes timelessly malleable, free of its constrictions in time or fashion.

You have a suituation where, long after she died Harlem born Gloria Barnes recording of Ed Townsend composed  1971 soul smoulderer OLd Before My Time has a chance to be heard on the same level as every other tune out there.

This ain’t no game any longer decided by Edith Bowman.

Or Gavin Martin. Or any other cunt, this is free and this is easy, this is how things are now.

The secret of music, the hidden stuff its not hidden anymore.

This …

That is technology’s gift for the future.

For those with passion for the good stuff, and Basement Magazine editor David Cole, compiler of the magnificent, gem packed Tears Full Of Soul (Outta Sight Soul Essentials Castle Music) must surely be in their number, this is something to welcome. There is no reason why now that its all out there, on the digital cyber stew, the likes of Jimmy James (yup, he of the Vagabonds) ain’t gonna get recognition from someone, someone’s whose hearts strings zing, down through the mists of time, to his I’m Glad, knowing it was essaying the sort of spacey, disconnected doo wop soul, that, if they pulled it off today, the likes of The Gorillaz would be praised for.

 In this instance the marvellous opening track of Tears Full  remained unreleased for 30 years.

Because the industry couldn’t have found a niche for it?

But if it had been sung and presented by a cuddly hometown (possibly white?) popstar all would have been , err, hunky dory?

Doesn’t matter anymore as B Holly said because in the end they don’t really do it for the money.

They don’t really do it for the fame.

Not the real ones, not the fiery eyed ones.

Not the mad gifted and scientifically Hitchcockly exalted ones.

Not the proud and lonely bullet in the chest ones, are the carry on through the storms of life, til we pound our digits into the wood or grave or bottle or whatever comes first, ones.

Not the illuminated bound and twisted the driven and confused and battered and bruised ones.

NOt the John Cazale filming on through Deer Hunter despite his imminent bone cancer demise ones.

No, they do it for none of that stuff.

They do it because they want to show that they are alive. 

That’s the irony the recording industry can’t work out and Aol’s recent netlive broadcasts aint the way round it. 

How unlive is it when the synch aint right and the screen is there, how much do you feel alive to watch a screen?

Not, I’d wager, that much…

But I been listening to soul music as long as I been able to and, specifically what has emerged, from black America in the 60s and 70s, compilations like this  just underline it would take a lifetime, maybe more than one, to quantify and calibrate all its wonder, peaks and depths. And it sounds as real, more real, alive, now now than it ever did. It is the sound of ever living posterity. The great circular sound of musical history coming back round.

So you know that somewhere at sometime, someone real and palpable, not words on printed page, but voice in  air, captured in a room, felt and lived, real and strong.