An Aside – My “History of Music” Project: Part X

A 70-odd page “History of Music” would not be complete without a closing reference to Welsh rock giants, Man, would it?

However, I do think the comment about Pink Floyd’s new concept album “Dark Side of the Moon” – considering the subsequent success and ubiquity of their 1975 opus – makes me appear to be something of a musical visionary.

The teacher’s mark and comment seem to somehow undermine the page. How come I can write neatly on the lined paper, but Trotter seems unable to do the same?

As I said at the start of this wee posting ‘marathon’, this project was an important turning point in my teenage life, opening my mind – and ears – to all kinds of different music. I did learn a lot – especially (as I recall) the origins of Rock’n’Roll (Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, etc) – all of which would put me in good stead for my later career. In the meantime however, I suspect I became something of a smug git for getting full marks (“10“) in return for all the hard work I did.

We will now return you to your regular schedule of programming.

(Hard luck!)

An Aside – My “History of Music” Project: Part IX

My fascination for Dutch yodelling/guitar/hammond organ combos knows no bounds, stating that Focus were the first continental group to make a lasting impact. If only Holland was a ‘continent’ eh?

Having recently listed to a Mahavishnu Orchestra album again, I have NO CLUE as to why I would have referred to them as “magic”… unless it included a disappearing act?

A personal nod for Faust too. I had/have no shame.

An Aside – My “History of Music” Project: Part VIII

 There’s a ‘taste of my American future’ with my spelling of “realised“, duly marked as incorrect – and quite rightly too – by the teacher.

Shame he didn’t also notice my spelling of philosophy.

That “wild man of borneo” comment could almost be considered racist these days. Maybe it was back then too, and I just didn’t know better?

An Aside – My “History of Music” Project: Part VII

Here’s my piece about “Mod”. Having just read this again, I now wonder if researching this in 1975 gave me my interest  in the genre, or it was solely the responsibility of The Who’s “Quadrophenia” album a few years later?

Admittedly it did take a couple of decades to fully appreciate the Small Faces, even longer to really like Ray Davies’ songwriting. Don’t get me wrong, I adored almost all the Kinks singles they released, but most of their albums left me cold. Then, on a long train journey just 8 or 9 years ago I REALLY got into their “Village Green Preservation Society” album (from 1968) and a little (belated) love affair kicked off.

In classic “build them up then knock them down” journalistic fashion – which actually didn’t become fashionable until the early 80s’ (The Sun newspaper a master of the art), I end this nice piece on Mod with a strange reference to comedian Ken Dodd.

An Aside – My “History of Music” Project: Part VI

Here’s one of the photo pages I compiled from cuttings culled from various music mags.

In case you can’t read the caption under the bottom right photo, I have written “We are supposed to be living in the permissive age now, but look at what was going on in 1956. And they said Woodstock was an orgy”

I also can’t spell Lonnie Donegan. Maybe my chewing gum had lost its flavour on the bedpost overnight?

An Aside – My “History of Music” Project: Part V

Yes, it’s yellow paper. No it hasn’t yellowed over the years. It was yellow form the start, from a large box of foolscap-sized paper by Dad bought for 5 shillings (25p/35¢) from British Rail some 6 or 7 years previous.

Please note gratuitous introduction of Emerson, Lake & Palmer… plus a ludicrous remark commenting that Man were “the most promising name in rock today”. To coin a phrase… LOL!!

An Aside – My “History of Music” Project: Part IV

Here’s my own piece about Classical music, which upon close reading is little more than ‘lists’ in many places. It looks like my writing style was quite assured nonetheless, even if spelling wasn’t totally on the button. However, please remember that this was hand-typed! There was no desktop publishing with a built in spill-chicken option in 1973.

There’s a slew of grammar errors that I’m surprised they weren’t commented on by our teacher – especially as he managed to ‘deface’ several other pages with pretty inane remarks.

I’ve just remembered that our History teacher was named Mr Trotter. He was a hippy.

An Aside – My “History of Music” Project: Part III

 

Here’s a sample page from Dick’s major contribution to the project. As I said before, I think he wrote everything straight from his head, without recourse (like me) to masses of research.

Here’s the final page of his contribution, complete with our History teacher’s mark and comment.

The teacher was right about jazz and reggae – whilst it wasn’t in Dick’s realm of knowledge, I do believe that I left the genres out of mine too… pretty scandalous considering both became firm favourites of mine later in life.