Art – Greywolf's Lair

The Summer of Love, 50 Years On: Part Three: Sunshine Superman 1

GreywolfJanuary 6, 20171 Comment

Donovan Leitch is a forgotten superhero of ‘60s music, so deeply attuned to the era that when its core messages were abandoned by mass media and fashion in the 1970s, he was abandoned with them. In the late ‘60s, however, he was troubadour to the court of rock royalty, courted by Bob Dylan and friends with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. He also produced some wonderfully innovative music that was ahead of the curve of most musicians of the time. His late 1965 LP, ‘Fairytale,’ contains two tracks, ‘Sunny Goodge Street’ and ‘Candyman,’ that overtly reference cannabis use. His classic single, ‘Sunshine Superman ,’ released in December 1966 though recorded a full year earlier, was still at no. 3 in the UK singles chart in the first week of 1967. Both its sides reference LSD, the B-side being a remarkable, driving slice of prime early psychedelia called simply ‘The Trip.’

The opening lines of ‘Sunshine Superman’ are:

"Sunshine came softly through my window today
Could've tripped out easy but I've changed my ways.”

This is a reminder that Donovan was not only one of the first UK musicians to embrace LSD as a means of spiritual exploration, he was also among the first to publicly abandon it in favour of transcendental meditation.

The last verse of the song references two DC comic book superheroes:

"Superman or Green Lantern ain't got nothin' on me,
I can make like a turtle and dive for your pearls in the sea,
You you you can just sit there a-thinking on your velvet throne,
About all the rainbows that you can have for your own...”

Prior to the mid-’60s, superhero comics had been considered disposable fodder fit only for pre-adolescent boys with juvenile power fantasies. This began to change when comics legends, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, introduced new kinds of superheroes at Marvel Comics. Kirby’s Fantastic Four feuded like a real family, Ditko’s Spider-Man was the kind of geek who might previously have scraped by as a teenage sidekick to a ‘proper’ superhero. Kirby’s Thor was a god of Asgard sent by his father, Odin, to walk the Earth, while Ditko’s Doctor Strange was an astrally projecting, spell-casting magician, a veritable ‘Master of the Mystic Arts.’ The comic book geek in me can’t help but note that Donovan refers to two DC heroes in the song, saying that they “ain’t got nothin’ on me.” This could be a recognition that, in the mid-’60s, the cool kids were all reading Marvel Comics with their more relateable characters and superior art. Incidentally, Kirby's Thor was my introduction to Paganism, while Ditko's Doctor Strange introduced me to many core concepts of ritual magic.

Suddenly comic books were being read and enjoyed by college students. Donovan was, I believe, the first musician to refer to this phenomenon, recognising that, for people in their teens and twenties, these colourfully costumed super-beings with their god-like powers were increasingly taking the place once occupied by the gods of more ancient mythologies. In the last verse of ‘Sunshine Superman,’ he also shows clear recognition of the fact that the popularity of superheroes was largely driven by a feeling that we could become them or, as is the case here, exceed them, by expanding our consciousness. This is the essence of what anthropologists now like to call ‘shamanism.’

Donovan, in common with other musicians of the era, perhaps more than most of them, recognised the power of music to alter perceptions and devoted his art to putting out ‘good vibrations’ into the world. This is why, 50 years on, his music still resonates, still calls on us to excel, to pursue those rainbows for the ones we love, to become the superheroes of our own life stories.

The Summer of Love, 50 Years On: Part Two 1

GreywolfJanuary 4, 20171 Comment

"It was fifty years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught a band to play..."

Today, we're very close to Sgt. Pepper territory. At 7pm on January 4th, 1967, The Beatles returned to Abbey Road studios in London to do more work on a track begun during three sessions in December '66. Work on the track was finally completed on January 17th and it was released in the US and UK not long after. It was called Penny Lane.

The recording technique used on Penny Lane was different from anything the band had done before. Their usual way of working was to play the whole rhythm track through as a group, then, when they had a take they were happy with, they would start instrumental and vocal overdubs. In 1966, however, Paul MacCartney had fallen under the spell of Brian Wilson, the genius behind the Beach Boys and, specifically, behind MacCartney's favourite album of '66, 'Pet Sounds,' sometimes voted the most perfect album of all time. Macca took the album to the studio with him and used to listen to it during breaks. He told producer, George Martin, and the engineers at Abbey Road that he wanted the sound of that album, which he called, "the American sound." He meant a recording on which all of the instruments appear crisply in the mix, without the sort of fuzziness-producing 'bleed' that happened when recording several instruments at the same time. This presented technical difficulties since the tape machines at Abbey Road gave a maximum of four tracks. The answer was to fill those four tracks, then 'bounce them down' onto a single track on another four-track tape, fill the remaining three tracks on tape two, 'bounce down' again onto a single track, and repeat until the track was finished.

Paul wrote the song on piano, with John helping out on the lyrics for the third verse. This was appropriate since John had referred to Abbey Road in a first draft of his song, 'In My Life,' in 1965. Like Lennon's 'Strawberry Fields Forever,' recorded at the end of 1966, 'Penny Lane' was also a nostalgic trip through a Liverpool childhood and youth, full of references to actual places in or near the titular street. Both 'Strawberry Fields...' and 'Penny Lane' were originally planned to be part of the themed LP, 'Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.'

Paul's piano was the first instrument to be recorded at Abbey Road in December, followed by Paul overdubbing another piano part, this time played through a guitar amplifier, then a third piano, played in a lower key and at half speed then sped up to give another different sound quality. High notes from a harmonium were then added, along with some percussion.

During the session on January 4th, John overdubbed yet another piano part, George added some guitar, and Paul recorded his lead vocal. The session concluded at 2.45 am.

Subsequent sessions added one more piano part, this time played by George Martin, Paul's bass, John's rhythm guitar, Ringo's drums and hand bells, and John's congas. George Martin wrote arrangements for flutes, trumpets, piccolo, flugelhorn, oboes, cor Anglais), and bowed double bass, to be played by classical session musicians, as was the signature sound of the track, a solo for piccolo trumpet, played by David Mason of the English Chamber Orchestra. George's arrangements were basically transcribed from parts that MacCartney sang to him.

By the time recording sessions were finished on January 17th, both EMI in the UK and Capitol in the US were putting pressure on The Beatles' managment to come up with a new single. They hadn't released one since 'Yellow Submarine/Eleanor Rigby,' which had topped the charts in both countries in August the previous year. It was therefore decided to pull both 'Penny Lane' and 'Strawberry Fields Forever' from the planned 'Sgt. Pepper' LP. The downside is that these two themed tracks would have fitted really well in the scheme of the album. The upside is that 'Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields...' is widely regarded as one of the finest singles ever produced, perhaps the finest.

The Beatles were only one of many bands at the time competing with each other to be more creative, more imaginative. All were sharing tapes and ideas, all inspiring each other. During the recording of 'Penny Lane,' Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr took time out to go and see The Jimi Hendrix Experience play at the Bag O'Nails club in London. Macca's friend, Donovan, was riding high in the charts with 'Sunshine Superman,' the Kinks with 'Dead End Street,' the Who with 'Happy Jack,' and Cream with 'I Feel Free.' These were heady days, when artistic boundaries were expanding at an unprecedented rate in popular music. This fierce exploration, pushing towards a future that seemed overflowing with possibilities, was mingled with a nostalgia for the personal past and childhood, and for the social and sartorial past, from the late Victorian era through to the 1920s. These trends come together perfectly in The Beatles' paean of praise to the Liverpool of their youth and are perfectly captured in the promotional film (what we would now call a video) they made at the time. Enjoy ...

Blessings of peace, love and inspiration,

Greywolf

The Summer of Love, 50 Years On: Part One 4

GreywolfJanuary 2, 20174 Comments

“It was fifty years ago today, Sergeant Pepper taught a band to play ...”

I was fortunate enough to turn fourteen in April 1967, just in time for what became known as the Summer of Love, the high point of the hippy movement. The central philosophy of that movement is the unarguable one that if people were nice to each other rather than doing each other down or beating each other up, the world would be an enormously better place. This was more pithily summed up in the slogan of the time, ‘Make Love, Not War.’

The other great slogan of the hippy era was ‘Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.’ The message here is to ‘expand your mind through meditation and/or the use of hallucinogens, particularly Cannabis, LSD, Peyote, Mescaline or Psylocibin, allow these to open your mind to layers of reality beyond the physical, then follow the promptings of what you find to step aside from the culture of consumerism and personal greed and create a new society based on shared values of peace, love and understanding.’

Although I would argue that the hyping of hallucinogenic drugs in the late 1960s as a ‘short-cut to God’ was naively optimistic, the rest of the message again holds true and has withstood the test of time.

The Summer of Love was followed by 1968’s year of global revolution as what had been the ultimate pacifist movement was infiltrated by promoters of violence, while governments around the world realised that they could force peaceful demonstrators to resort to violence by having the police and the military launch increasingly violent attacks against them. Any hint of resistance from a single protestor could then be used by government forces as an excuse to further increase their own levels of violence. This is a tactic still in use today, enabling increasingly oppressive regimes around the world to maintain control over their populations. While it is common wisdom that the 1968 riots in London, Paris, Tokyo and many other cities came close to toppling several governments, what has been largely buried by history as ‘an inconvenient truth’ is that what really terrified those governments was the global movement for peace that had preceded the riots. Governments understand war and violence and have ample firepower with which to quell riots. What they really don’t understand are peace and love, especially not when, as with the hippy movement, those core values are spread through the arts and with healthy doses of surrealist humour.

A hallmark of the Summer of Love was the ‘Love-In.’ Love-Ins were events that were simply announced rather than organised, on a principle similar to the ‘flash-mobs’ of social media, except coordinated almost entirely by word of mouth and beautiful posters. People would congregate at a chosen venue, normally a public park, musicians would play, dancers dance, painters paint canvases or people’s bodies, and everyone would have a good time. Naturally such events were frowned upon by the authorities, bureaucracies being notoriously incapable of tolerating the idea of people having good times, especially if they didn’t have a license.

Another hallmark of 1967’s Summer of Love was the extraordinary quality of the music of the period. This was the year that saw the release of The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper,’ Pink Floyd’s ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn,’ The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s ‘Are You Experienced?’ and ‘Axis: Bold As Love,’ the self-titled first LP by The Doors and its follow-up, ‘Strange Days,’ Love’s ‘Forever Changes,’ Cream’s ‘Disraeli Gears,’ the Moody Blues’ ‘Days of Future Passed,’ Jefferson Airplane’s ‘Surrealistic Pillow’ and ‘After Bathing at Baxter’s,’ The Who’s ‘Sell-Out,’ ‘The Velvet Underground and Nico,’ The Incredible String Band’s ‘5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion,’ Donovan’s ‘Mellow Yellow’ and ‘A Gift From a Flower to a Garden,’ Otis Redding’s ‘Live in Europe,’ Nirvana’s ‘The Story of Simon Simopath,’ Cat Stevens’ ‘Matthew and Son...’ Well, I could go on, but you get the picture. It really was a golden year for experimentation in popular music the like of which has seldom been seen before or since.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the music of the time is the extent to which it both reflected and drove the global movement for peace. One of the key tracks of the year had actually been recorded over an unprecedented six months during 1966. Released in October '66, it remained high in the US and UK singles charts at the beginning of 1967 and did much to set the tone for the year ahead with its aural complexity and its lyrics that seemed to blend individual with universal love. It remains one of the finest singles ever recorded, a tribute to the extraordinary genius of its composer, Brian Wilson, lyrically assisted by Van Dyke Parks and Mike Love. It is, in case you hadn’t guessed, The Beach Boys’ ‘Good Vibrations’ (see video below). Wilson has stated on many occasions that his aim with all the music of the Beach Boys was to put out good, positive feelings into the world. ‘Good Vibrations’ is the ultimate expression of that aim and still, to my ears, sounds as fresh today as it did half a century ago coming out of the little transistor radio I had permanetly clamped to my left ear. May it be heard again around the world in 2017 and usher in another Summer of Love to counteract the negativity that seemed to characterise so much of the preceding year. As The Beatles sang in the middle of 1967, "All You Need is Love."

So may it be!

Peace, love and all good blessings,

Greywolf /|\

The Art of Drum-Making, A Beginner’s Guide: Part Two: Finding and Curing the Hides 19

GreywolfAugust 17, 2014August 19, 201419 Comments

I wanted to make drums with Red Deer hide. I have an affinity with these animals from a variety of angles. For one thing, over the last year or two I've developed a deeper knowledge and respect for one of our native deities, Gwydion ap Don. For a variety of reasons, I've come to recognise him as our local representative of the widespread antlered Lord of the Animals. Also, in 2008, when we started clearing the land on which our roundhouse was to be built, I immediately stubbed my toe on a deer skull hidden in the tangled undergrowth. The skull is now buried in the NE corner of the roundhouse. Above it (left) looms a massive pair of antlers belonging to a great old Red Deer stag called Rufus, who lived in the same valley. A powerful, shape-shifting deer spirit is the protector of the roundhouse, while another potent antlered spirit cares for the whole valley. I have communicated regularly with both for the last seven years. Plus there are few finer natural sights in Britain than a Red Deer stag walking through a forest. And then, of course, there's the fact that I'm a wolf, and wolves certainly do like the strong, gamy taste of venison.
My initial problem was to find deer skins. I read online that the skins and other unwanted parts of many deer farmed for venison are simply thrown away, either burnt or buried, because they are viewed as having no economic value. I asked on facebook if anyone knew of where I could obtain some of these skins. I got a response from Peter Tyldesley, who manages the deer herds at Bradgate Park, Britain's longest continuously operated deer park, dating back to the 14th century. He does make use of hides, antlers, etc., to the greatest extent possible. However, none of his hides had been used for drum-making. Peter gave me a good deal on five hides and they duly arrived. Four of them fitted into my freezer. The fifth didn't. One slightly panicked phone call later, I had arranged to travel to Wild Ways, the woodland retreat centre run by my friends, Elaine and Garth. They had all the space and equipment I would need to treat the hide.
Never having treated a hide before, I resorted to the modern Druidical trick of appealing to the Internet. There I found a number of sites, some decidedly more useful than others. I discovered that a natural subst Washing the Deer Hide in Borle Brook ance that can be used to de-fur a hide is wood ash. It so happens that almost all the heating at Wild Ways is provided by wood-burning stoves. Garth kindly sieved a quantity of ash for me to get out most of the charcoal and other impurities.
The hides as Peter sent them had been well cleaned and salted. The first thing to do was to remove the salt. This was achieved with the aid of the brook that runs through Wild Ways, a tributary of the nearby River Severn, sacred to the native goddess, Sabrina. I tied the hide by its tail to an underwater root, weighted down the hide with stones and left it for a couple of days (left).
In the meantime, I built a frame on which to stretch the hide and tried to find out how much wood ash to use. Eventually, one website gave me the necessary key: you mix wood ash with one gallon of water until a fresh hen's egg floats upright in it with a disc about an inch across showing. Brilliant!
Then it was time for a body-painting weekend, but that's another blog. Wringing out the washed deer hide
Elaine loaned me a plastic dustbin, which I took down to the brook to carry the hide in. I washed the river mud off the hide as best as I could, wrung it out and put it in the bin. A thoroughly soaked hide from an adult Red Deer weighs quite a lot. Elaine helped me carry the bin across the field and lift it over the gate, where we had a wheelbarrow waiting for the rest of the journey through the woods.
The hide was then washed with spray from a hose, then again in clean rain water in the bin. Then I made up the wood ash solution in a bucket, added it to a further four gallons in the bin, stirred it around thoroughly with a stick, then lowered in the hide. NB. As I found when I searched the web, there are many approaches to curing hides for drum-making. I chose the techniques that felt right to me and it's those I outline here. For another, equally valid, approach, see my old friend Corwen's comment below...
The natural tendency of a hide with fur on is to float, so it's necessary to weight it down with a flat rock. This then has to be left for a few days, during which time you take out the rock and stir the mixture with the hide around. The wood ash solution is alkaline. The effect it has is to cause the cellular structure of the hide to expand, loosening the follicles that hold in the fur. Test the fur every now and then. You'll know it's ready when you can run your hand across the hide and the fur just falls off. When this happens, pull out the hide and fully de-fur it. Because hides de-fur unevenly, you will probably need to scrape some of the fur off. A not-too-sharp knife works well for this. Put the hide on a flat surface, hold the knife so that the blade is at a little bit of an angle (as shown in the picture) and pull it towards you in even strokes, being careful not to apply so much pressure that you go through the skin.
Scraping the hide Then you need to flip it over and work on the flesh side (some recommend scraping the flesh side first). This needs to be scraped to remove any remaining bits of flesh and also to take off the layer of membrane covering this side of the hide. The wood ash solution should make this much easier. The worry is in knowing how far to go. Obviously you don't want to go so far that you weaken the skin. The key seems to be to take it down until the flesh side shows clear white. I don't think I'd left this first hide in the wood ash long enough because the flesh side proved something of a challenge. Back it went into the solution and back home I went for a few days while Elaine and Garth went to the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. After which, they gave me a lift back to Wild Ways.
Soaking the hide in baking soda solution More hide scraping on the flesh side, following which the hide was washed before going into another solution, this time of a handful of baking soda to four gallons of rain water. The idea of the baking soda is that it neutralises the Ph level of the hide after its long alkaline bath. After an overnight soak in the baking soda (right) and some more flesh scraping, the hide was washed again before being placed in four gallons of rainwater to which about a 1/3rd of a pint of clear vinegar had been added and left for about eight hours, stirring occasionally. This has the effect of raising the acidity level of the hide back to something like it was when you started. It also, usefully, takes away some of the strong smell the hide develops while soaking in the wood ash solution.
The stretcher frame Then comes the fun bit, sewing the hide to your beautifully constructed frame. Woohoo! If, like me, you're lucky anough to have a friend with acres of woodland, you can do what I did and find strong saplings to construct your frame. The small cross-pieces on the corners provide extra strength and help stop the frame twisting out of shape too much as the skin dries and applies more tension to the frame. The corners of the frame shown here are lashed with strips of ash bark, which is remarkably strong. While this looks really neat, I admit that most of what's holding the frame together is the screws I put in before the lashing was done. Some modern innovations are extremely useful. If you don't have access to woodland, 8' lengths of 3" x 3" from your local timber yard will do equally well, and that's what I've used for making my second frame at home. You can use pretty much any kind of string or twine to attach the hide to the frame. I used sisal twine because there happened to be a lot of it going spare. A very useful tip I picked up from the Internet is to sew on your hide in four sections, the head end and tail end and both sides. By using separate lengths of cord for each of these you make it much easier to tighten or slacken them off as needed.
Deer hide stretched on frame The frame I made at Wild Ways was about 8 feet high and 4.5 feet across. This looked huge, but proved to be only just big enough. It's called a stretching frame for a reason. The hide will stretch a lot. I'd seen an online video of a guy stitching a hide onto a frame, so I followed his lead, which was to use a small, pointed knife to pierce holes through the hide about a ¼ inch in from the edge of the hide. I was sure the wet skin would tear when I pulled the string tight. I was wrong. This stuff is really strong. Put your holes about five or six inches apart or wherever there's a point of skin sticking out.
I started with the tail end. Having the tail still attached meant that I could tie it to the centre of the frame's bottom with a separate piece of string and use it as my fixed point. I then flipped the frame up the other way and started at the former bottom, now top, right corner of the frame and threaded the twine through each of the already-made holes, looping around the frame as I went. I did the head end next as the already tied tail end gave me something the pull against. Same process. Make your holes first all the way across from one front leg to the other, then stitch and loop. Then I flipped the frame back the other way and did the same for the two sides.
At this point, check the tension on the strings. This is done simply by twanging them with a finger. If they are floppy, they need tightening. If you get a good, resonant twang, they're fine. To tighten, work from one end of your side, top or bottom cord, pulling the cord through each threaded hole in turn as you go. At the far end of each run, undo the cord where you tied it in place, take up all the slack you've just created and tie it again. Do this all round until you're happy that you've got all the strings as tight as you can. Don't be afraid to tug quite hard. This is very tough stuff.
Drum hoop with pentagram 'signature' Then leave it for two or three days to dry, checking the cords every once in a while to make sure they're still tight. You'll probably find they're tighter. After only about a day, my hide was so tight that it was already starting to sound quite drum-like. This is a good sign.
While all this was going on, I'd been finishing off two drum hoops I'd made at Wild Ways some time before. These were looking really good. The timber they are made from is Ash, a beautiful, pale wood. As is my habit, I'd rubbed linseed oil into them. This acts as a preservative, brings out a really nice golden glow in the wood and makes the grain stand out clearly. One of the last parts of my hoop-making process is to drill five small holes and thread rawhide through them in the form of a pentagram. This helps hold the already glued ends of the hoop together and is also my 'signature' (right).
With the hide drying nicely on the stretcher frame, I held the two drum hoops up against them and realised that, with care, I might get two drum skins out of this one hide. Woohoo!
The smaller of the two Ash hoops is kind of egg-shaped and kind of pentagram-shaped. It seems to want to manifest a vision of mine to create a little British sister to The World Drum, a Britannia Drum. The larger of the two fitted beautifully across some strange markings in the hide. It seems to want to be mine. I shall continue listening to what the hide and the hoops want of me during the rest of the making. The next stage is to cut the hide to size and fit it to the hoops. I'm very excited! See you next time at Greywolf's Lair for Part Three: Making the Drums...