A layman’s opinion of “Didn’t it Rain” by Hugh Laurie and The Copper Bottom Band...

In honour of this album being on iTunes best of 2013 list, here's the review I wrote for the fantastic "Didn't It Rain."

A layman’s opinion of “Didn’t it Rain” by Hugh Laurie and The Copper Bottom Band

With the release of Hugh Laurie and The Copper Bottom Band’s second album “Didn’t it Rain” came a rush of excitement.  I had it pre-ordered as soon as that option became available and purchased it through a UK distributor. I wasn’t going to wait the extra four months for it to become available in the States. The entire album is fantastic. With my love of “Let Them Talk” I was apprehensive a bit that perhaps this new album wouldn’t live up to my expectations. On the contrary, it picked up my expectations, folded them into an origami menagerie and then proceeded to make them dance before my ears (yeah, that’s right, before my ears, deal with it.)

As a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, white girl born in the suburbs and raised in country-clubs, I was always the odd man out when it came to music. While my friends were listening to top 40 and going from metal to boy bands to girl pop to techno to arena rock, I was in my own little world learning the chord structure and intros to Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, Dr. John, Lonnie Brooks and James Booker songs. Rushing home from school to grab my guitar, turn on Ray Charles and play along until my fingers ached. When given the chance to introduce a friend to the music that was in my soul and flowing in my blood, I would grab it, exchanging the tape deck back and forth to play songs, stanzas, even small riffs to try to show the heart of the blues. It’s truly something you feel. It is something that breeds within you and multiplies.

Your desire to listen to this music and play it never leaves. It’s with you when you wake and the last thing you want to do before going to sleep...or often, what you stay up all night doing, because you’d rather be playing the blues than sleeping. The blues is joy. It is love. It is the earth. It is soil. It is a reason to keep breathing, keep celebrating and keep trying.  Listening to and playing this music is life. It’s my first passion and my truest calling. It’s religion, it’s faith, it’s science, it’s gravity, it’s romance, it’s sex, it’s birth, it’s death, it’s reality. If I believed in heaven, no doubt this music is what would be playing there.

Laurie’s understanding and undeniable love for this music is refreshing and reassuring. It gives you hope that no matter what else happens in this world, this music will survive. The amount of joy with which he and The Copper Bottom Band play makes my heart smile. When they hit that melodic chord or stick in that certain triplet and it makes me laugh out loud with utter delight.

The first track on the album “The St. Louis Blues” is a look back at W.C. Handy but with an arrangement that seriously has me in a mix of emotions; giddy over the syncopation and tearing up over the woodwinds.

With a body-rattling left hand, Laurie continues to blow anyone’s belief that he isn’t a talented musician out of the water. He plays with the drive of someone meant to be behind the keys.

Vincent Henry on clarinet brought me to tears. With my Grandfather (a jazz musician and sax/clarinet/upright bass player) passing away recently, when I hear a clarinet played well it pulls the ripcord on my heart. It makes me yearn to hear the house filled with Dixieland tunes and to be able to sit and watch and listen to him play again. Vincent Henry’s tone is beautiful. It makes me want to close my eyes and take a trip on every note he plays.

The tempo changes throughout are reminiscent of Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo a la Turk” only more sensual and smooth. For me, a deep love of a song 90% of the time begins with loving the rhythm and the percussion throughout this song and this album is stellar.

Throw in the vocal styling of Sista Jean who emotes with each word and brings your soul happiness with each touch of vibrato and the gentle harmonizing between she and Laurie and you not only end up with a horribly written run-on sentence, but also some of the strongest and most beautiful vocals recorded these days. (Seriously terribly written sentence. I apologise.)

All that said this second album has taken its place on top of my favourite albums list alongside “Let Them Talk.” Adding in the vocal mastery of Gaby Moreno has taken the band to an entirely new level. The harmonies are crisp and exact and the soul is deeper. The pairing between she and Sista Jean is one that leads you to listen to mouth-gaped, mimicking a dumbfounded goldfish. Truly wonderful.

On a side-note, ever since I changed my ringtone to “Wild Honey” I find I answer my phone much less often because I’d rather listen to the song than talk on the phone any day! God I love that song.

·         “Didn’t it Rain” encompassed all of my favourite parts of Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s version and picked up the pieces of The Blind Boys from Alabama’s take and started me clapping while in the car...which I don’t recommend if you’re driving...or on a motorcycle...

·         “Junco Partner”.....I don’t have the words of how to put my happiness and smile down on the page. You did Professor Longhair proud. I’ve loved this song since I first heard it countless years ago. It’s nothing but fun and bliss.

·         “Staggalee” it’s like you took the list of my all-time favourite songs and are just going down the line crossing them off one at a time. Whether it’s Taj Mahal, Lloyd Price or Mississippi John Hurt, I have loved, danced and listened to this song over and over since my Dad first played it for me on the car stereo when I was 5.

I could go through song by song and tell you why you should listen, and what makes each recording great. For now, just get this album (and the first one), turn the volume up, lean back, close your eyes and allow yourself to escape into the greatest music/songs this country has ever produced.

Thank you Hugh Laurie and The Copper Bottom Band for keeping the blues alive. 

© 2013 Kara Nelson

The Tale of Madam Richmond...

Madam Richmond was a great lady. A lady of many talents. A renaissance lady, if you will. She ran an abattoir by day and a brothel by night. Out of the same building. The front...which was also the ‘front’... for this most ancient of male getaways, was the abattoir. A reputable estate built through the fortitude of many years of high quality goods being offered to the local establishments.

As the days would begin, with the rising of the sun, Madam Richmond would take her rightly place atop the warehouse floor in a distinguished small office of which the periphery was entirely glass. From this vantage, she could watch all that happened in the theatre of necessary tragedy. She ran this house with a gentle hand, a firm mind, and a sort of gallantry that many a diligent businessman would be hard-pressed to attain. The days went on, with little incident preparing the area’s protein.

When night would fall, and the beaters, processors, and meat packers had ferried their way home to their goodly wives and horde of children; the Madam began her true calling. She would trade in her protective wear for a gown of all things frilly, flowy, and gorgeousness. Each night, at half past nine, the doors would open to a different clientele.

Out the back of the butchery, the bustling business of brothelity would begin. The meat eaters who partook of the daily fair would trade in their bibs and knives for button-downs and sheaths.  The bevy of beauties would arrive ready for the night’s work, and the guarantee of next month’s rent. At this, the Madam’s passion for passion would be personified through the procurement of prostitution.

And, all though, the smell was dodgy, and the knowledge of what happened on the other side of the edifice was horrid to imagine, the prices were good. Come around for the ‘Full Ride;' show up for a lively romp, leave with scrumptious roast.

Madam Richmond’s Abattoir and Brothel fed all your greatest needs. If it is true that food is the way to a man’s heart, Madam Richmond’s was where the hardest of men fell in love. 

© 2014 Kara Nelson

In a nation without cricketers...

One of my many passions is sport. In school I was the captain of the volleyball team, point guard on the basketball team, defender in soccer, second base in softball, and always ready for tennis. 

I am a huge...HUGE football fan...and when I say 'football' I mean actual football, what part of the world calls soccer. I am not a fan, at all, of American football. I respect the players for being talented athletes, because they are, it's just not my cup of tea.

I’ve been a Newcastle United fan for as long as I can remember. I know, I know, I hear the suppressed laughter out there, but I love the team. And when you’re a Geordie through and through, you don’t stop supporting a team due to them not having the winning streak, of say, Chelsea.

Apart from football (soccer), I’m fascinated by cricket. I know some...and I stress SOME...of the rules, and watch it whenever I can. Which is hard to do, considering that the odds of a cricket match being aired in the US is slim to none. The main thing I’ve not grasped yet, and haven’t found anyone willing to explain to me, is how it is scored.

I would love to sit down with someone who is truly a fan, grew up watching and/or playing, and have them explain every bit of it. Someone who is passionate about the game and whom it wouldn’t annoy to have to talk about the game.

Cricket, like football, or tennis, is a sport that as soon as I saw it being played I was hooked. It’s a beautiful and poetic game. It is gorgeous and lovely and precious and joyous game. 

© 2014 Kara Nelson

On a serious note..."My Life with Lupus"

So, I’ve been trying to put into words what this disease is to me. What it is like living with this illness and how it has affected my life on a daily basis, mentally, emotionally, relationship wise, and, of course, physically. I will not attempt to explain the medical definition of this disease or what it is technically doing to me. This is what living with it is like. 

I know it has changed me and continues to do so. Living with chronic pain is something only other chronic pain sufferers can truly understand. It’s a misery that makes you hard, angry, mean, and I feel like I come across as unapproachable. Jaded doesn’t even begin to touch on it. You develop such a misanthropic attitude because you truly do not want anyone to be around you and it is so rare that someone genuinely comprehends what you’re going through.

It’s a daily pain. The best way I can find to describe the pain is this: if feels like my skeleton, muscles, tendons, and organs are all on a slow boil inside of me; slowly burning away into nothingness. Meanwhile someone is continuously pressing the entirety of my epidermis onto barbed wire. It feels like I’m being continuously tortured in some sort of medieval way. It’s constant. Constant.  

I want to have energy. I want to go out. I want to be functional. I look completely fine and yet I’m suffering.

Along with the pain comes the intense fear. The fear that at any moment whichever organ is chosen next by your overactive immune system will fail. At any time that could be it. They’ve already removed all of my disposable organs, because, luckily, they were destroyed first. What will be next? And will this pain ever end?

It ruins relationships and makes people think you do not care about them. I have no patience for the unimportant. I don’t have the energy or strength for small talk or the normal dating lifestyle. When it is bad I cannot even be hugged because the pressure on my skin is agony. Cuddling is not something comforting to me. If it isn’t pain that it brings, the heat becomes too much for my body to bear. Often I cannot even stand as much as a sheet covering me because any pressure, touch, etc sends shock waves of pain through my body. Sunlight makes it worse as does florescent lighting.

Then there is the question of whether or not I will ever be able to conceive. I’d love to have children sometime, but then again, do I dare? And with the fact that this disease is hereditary and could easily be passed on to my children, could I do that to them? I wouldn’t wish this disease on anyone. And I don’t think I could handle it if I knew that I had passed this sort of torture onto someone whom I love.

Mentally it is taxing. Without my intelligence I would feel like nothing. My body doesn’t work correctly, it makes me emotionally hardened and unavailable. My brain is my salvation. My brain and music. And more often than not, anymore, it’s only listening to music. When the lupus is really bad I don’t have the strength in my hands to play my guitar. That fact hurts me more than anything else.

Then...let’s talk about not having insurance...they (the docs) were keeping me on a regiment of strong painkillers, steroids, and beta blockers. Now there is nothing. Nothing that even takes the edge off.  Nothing OTC, at least.

It takes your energy, your life force, your happiness, your desire to be happy, your appetite, your patience, your willingness to listen to bullshit, and your ability to sympathize. You turn people away because you know, in the end; you cannot be the person they think you are. You feel like you don’t deserve to be happy, or deserve for anyone to actually care about you or want to be with you.

It’s struggle. It’s misery. It’s pain. It breaks you apart. I know, for I am broken.

It’s hard to remain positive and look forward to the future when each day is a battle.

This was just a practice in self-reflection and some sort of attempt to help people understand what living with lupus is like. Thank you for reading. 

© 2013 Kara Nelson

Regarding the title of this blog...

Some may wonder. Some may not care. Some may not have noticed. 

The title of this little blog is "Blitheringness." It's my own small attempt to send a nod in the direction of one of my favorite writers PG Wodehouse.

As an example from his story Jeeves and the Chump Cyril:

"Well, never mind about him, Jeeves. Read this letter."

He gave it the up-and-down.

"Very disturbing, sir!" was all he could find to say.

"What are we going to do about it?"

"Time may provide a solution, sir."

"On the other hand, it mayn't, what?"

"Extremely true, sir.".

We'd got as far as this, when there was a ring at the door. Jeeves shimmered off, and Cyril blew in, full of good cheer and blitheringness.

"I say, Wooster, old thing," he said, "I want your advice. You know this jolly old part of mine. How ought I to dress it? What I mean is, the first act scene is laid in an hotel of sorts, at about three in the afternoon. What ought I to wear, do you think?"

I wasn't feeling fit for a discussion of gent's suitings.

"You'd better consult Jeeves," I said.

"A hot and by no means unripe idea! Where is he?"

"Gone back to the kitchen, I suppose."

"I'll smite the good old bell, shall I? Yes? No?"

"Right-o!"

Jeeves poured silently in.

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You’ll have to read the story to get more. He was quite a genius of the written word. A conductor of communication, a troubadour of terminology, a director of discourse, an adviser of articulation...if you will. If you won’t, your loss.

Wodehouse had a way of articulating classes to the masses that made you laugh off your asses.

Yeah...just ignore that outburst.

But you really should read some Wodehouse. And then some more Wodehouse. I have many many more writers to recommend, but I will begin with PG. 

© 2013 Kara Nelson

Just getting started...

So...a blog. How does one blog? How is the word blog simultaneously a noun and a verb? It baffles the mind, that. 

Baffle.

That's a fun word.

It seems like it would be an onomatopoeia, but  I don't believe I've ever heard a baffle. Baffle. Baaaaafffffllle. Ba-ful. Ba-fil. Bah? Ba? Is the baffle yet or does the tap need to continue to run? 

I'm a lover of language. Apart from music, it is my deepest love. So expect to read the ramblings of someone obsessed by vocabulary and the manipulation there of. 

I will attempt to entertain in as much as I can, whilst I make some sort of semblance of entries. 

Topics will come randomly. Perhaps I will delve into some storytelling as well. I will have to see where the muse leads me. 

Some will be dark, some will be ridiculous, others will be introspective, while still others will be outrospective and searching the world for knowledge. It should also be known that I make up words to suit my needs. More often than not, you will be able to understand their meanings due to context clues or the construction of the words due to prefix/suffix meanings. 

That's all for now. I may be back later this evening if the mood strikes.

Take care,
K

© 2013 Kara Nelson