ANGLES & REFLECTIONS: MUSIC WHEREVER WE GO

Just The Three Of Us

Air-lute in Avignon

Lisa always travels with a colourful supply of outfit-co-ordinated rings to adorn her fingers, but unlike the ‘fine lady’ in the nursery rhyme Ride A Cock Horse To Banbury Cross, she hasn’t yet got round to having ‘bells on her toes’. She does, however, ‘always have music wherever she goes’ because we now make it a rule to only set forth when our iPod (official name: Poddington Beer) is safely tucked away in the case. This miraculous little mobile library of music, which contains over 17,000 tracks (and counting), now accompanies us even on short breaks.

We have learnt from experience that we miss having our own music when away from home – on a trip to France a few years ago, we left Pod behind and endured a cold, grey week, too much of which was spent in our less than spacious studio accommodation with only a local radio station to keep us company. It rarely played French music – which we happen to like – and seemed to be obsessed with ‘80s pop and especially Phil Collins. Not an experience we’d want to repeat.

Lisa in a music-themed
Edinburgh pub.

On longer trips, Pod becomes even more fundamental to the logistics of our holiday packing, but before I give the impression that all we do is hang around the apartment waiting to hear what the iPod Shuffle is going to play next, let me say that once sundown is underway and we’ve left the beach or returned from excursions, we’re on the lookout for live music once we’ve eaten. This is easier said than done sometimes, but by the end of the holiday, we’ve usually found at least one new place – or a couple of old ones – to add to our ever-growing list of favourite bars abroad. More often than not, these pubs and tavernas will feat music of sureome sort or another.

Leicester and Liverpool

In Leicester, our hometown, live music has been less of an option over the last twenty years or so. This is because the biggest venue here, The De Montfort Hall has been dwarfed by larger concert developments in other Midlands cities. That – and an ongoing conservatism and lack of imagination as regards booking acts at the DMH. Whenever we look down the latest calendar of events, it’s the same old procession of comedians, classical concerts, musicals, tribute shows and, of course, the pantomime. Nothing wrong with all that, of course, providing they’re still attracting ‘name’ contemporary artists, but most of them swing by Leicester on their way to bigger, cooler gigs in Birmingham and Nottingham.

From a music fan’s point of view, it makes Leicester’s recent (failed) application to become ‘UK City Of Culture’ look rather feeble. When you consider the size of the city – with well over 300,000 inhabitants and another half-million in its overall urban area – you’d think there would be more than just the DMH and the new Leicester O2 (in reality, a tarted up version of the old Queens Hall Students Union venue in Leicester University). The O2 is a good venue, but mainly puts on shows to draw a student crowd.

It was not ever thus. During the sixties through to the eighties, all of the top acts played Leicester. The DMH, the Granby Halls (now demolished) and various Uni and Poly gigs provided consistent attractions through what might be called the golden years of Rock. In addition, there were a number of small clubs and pubs, most notably the Princess Charlotte (now defunct) which staged shows by name bands on the way up – or down – as well as worthy acts from the lower divisions. Now, however, there are only really two well established pubs, The Musician and The Donkey which cater for genuine musos.

City slickers, String Fever
(courtesy Google Images).

Most of the buskers in Leicester perform in front of or near to the Clock Tower. We generally hurry past the religious groups drawn there – especially the Krishnas with their irritatingly clinky finger-cymbals and numbingly boring chant (you know the one – it seems to be the only one – which goes something like this: ‘Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Krishna, Krishna, Hare Rama’ over and over again to the same snatch of a tune ad nauseum). Occasionally, a more professional outfit will appear like String Fever, a band of four brothers in sharp suits with fashionably colourful, hollowed-out violins, viola and cello, playing versions of classics and pops. You’ve probably seen them in your town, when they’re not actually playing proper venues and cruise ships.

Casual crooner, Don Partridge
(courtesy Google Images).

In the 1980s, the most famous busker of them all, one-man band Don Partridge was based in Leicestershire and could be seen around the town centre with his guitar, harmonica, kazoo, bass drum and cymbal set-up. Partridge, who probably never wore a sharp suit in his life, nevertheless had a couple of good folk-pop Top 5 hits in 1968 with ‘Rosie’ and ‘Blue Eyes’ before eventually deciding the music industry wasn’t for him and going back to the streets. He lived on a barge for a while out in the county and would play pub gigs. I saw him once or twice and he had a nice, relaxed act and was an approachable character.

We have been regular visitors to Liverpool over the year and have gone to The Beatles Convention at the Adelphi Hotel many times. Tickets for the event, which is always held on the last Sunday in August are, at about £15 each, an absolute bargain. Apart from the huge flea market of books, memorabilia and records, there are interviews, films and bands playing from around midday to midnight. These bands hail from all over the world and many of them are better than The Bootleg Beatles, who have maintained a lucrative career playing concert halls for about the last twenty years (they play the DMH every year without fail). Sometimes the day is organised around a rota with different bands playing Beatles albums in sequence. The best Beatles tribute band we’ve ever seen is Fab Faux, a group of top-class American session musicians, some of whom have even worked with various Beatles.

The Bank Holiday Monday after the convention sees the streets of Liverpool given over to the Mathew Street Festival, with a number of open-air stages played by various other tribute acts. In a couple of hours you could wander around and see The Rolling Stones, The Jimi Hendrix Experience Dusty Springfield and Blondie – or the next best thing. The Festival is incredibly popular and the city is flooded with hundreds of thousands of people. There never seems to be any trouble and the sun always seems to shine.

Could be the mid C20th
but actually it's the
early C21st at The Cavern.

The Cavern on Mathew Street is a replica of the original club that was demolished in the 1970s and is a fantastically atmospheric place just a few steps down the street from where the real place stood. As well as Liverpool and Beatles related acts, the club has all sorts of bands playing its two stages. Visitors – including Lisa and I - from all over the world have signed their names on thousands of the bricks, many of them from the original building.

Lisa with Johnny
& The Silver Beetles
at Strawberry Field.

Liverpool is a great city – even if you’re not particularly into music. It’s full of imposing civic architecture, museums and galleries, opulent pubs and the Albert Dock waterside development, not to mention its two beautiful cathedrals. There are also many other interesting places which lay within a half-hour’s train journey from the city. Over the years, we’ve explored Chester, Port Sunlight, Crosby, New Brighton, Southport, Formby and West Kirby. Cavern City Tours have organised many trips to Beatles-related places too – we’ve been to music events at Strawberry Fields, seen The Quarrymen play in the grounds of John Lennon’s old school, Quarrybank, and have pressed into the renovated Casbah, the tiny cellar club set up by Pete Best’s mother in the family home and which provided an early venue for John, Paul and George and er, Pete in the late 1950s.

Occasionally, we’ve travelled by train to London and other places to see concerts and ‘make a weekend of it’, as well as seeking out live music in pubs on our various UK ‘city breaks’, but travelling simply for the purpose of attending gigs doesn’t have much appeal to us. Neither do big arena concerts (or open-air festivals as we don’t seem to possess a camping gene between us).

Practising in the park, Beziers.

Time now, though, to travel further afield and revisit some of our favourite music experiences abroad (we don’t, by the way, do long-haul travel and still have far too many places that we haven’t
yet visited in Europe).

Mini-Mariachi, Narbonne.

Skiathos

This beautiful Greek island was our honeymoon destination in 1998 and we’ve been back several times since, usually to mark significant anniversaries. Live music is not really much of a feature on the island, but in the wonderfully vibrant Skiathos Town, we soon found a little oasis called The Kazbar where a singer called Colin with straggly fair hair, a twelve-string guitar and a foghorn voice kept the revellers entertained. It’s gone now, but over a period of some ten years and several visits, we found The Kazbar to be a great place to meet people and sing along to Colin’s rock-based sets. Colin had a nice line in banter and quite a wide repertoire, although I could never quite get my head round his sincere contention that Oasis were not only influenced by, but actually better than The Beatles. The place was run by a lovely lady called Babs who assembled what we called a ‘dream team’ behind the bar who kept the Mythos and Ouzo running. A trip to the loo would always put a smile on your face as the walls were covered in an ever-changing graffiti of near to the knuckle and down to the marrowbone jokes.

Kazbabes Lisa (L) & friend Lesley (R)
on The Kazbar with Foghorn Colin.

Another bar we’d recommend in the town is The Admiral Benbow which is a little emporium of pop music memorabilia, with old 45s arranged under the glass-topped tables and a vast array of photographs, posters, instruments and other bric-a-brac around the walls. The landlord plays a consistently interesting range of music through his iPod system – a rare thing, we find, with far too many pubs resorting to the predictable and downright bleedin’ obvious.

Lisa & Zorba

One summer in Skiathos, we found ourselves in the apartment next door to a classical guitarist who used to practise diligently every day. This was an unusual delight and we discovered from conversations on the balcony from the virtuoso’s husband, who spoke a little English, that his wife was an actual concert musician who performed with orchestras.

Occasionally, the hotels would advertise a ‘Traditional Greek Night’ which usually involved a small company of suitably garbed dancers trying to get the tourists involved in a continental knees-up. These could be fairly diverting, but disappointingly tended to revolve around backing tapes rather than live musicians. One memorable night though , a dashing young male lead took a fancy to Lisa and whisked her onto his shoulders whilst performing the steps to ‘Zorba’s Dance’. Fortunately, she’s never asked me to provide her with an encore…

Santorini

An even more beautiful Greek island than Skiathos, Santorini has two memorable towns, Oia and Fira, both of which sprawl along the upper slopes of the coastal cliff-tops. We loved both of them, but didn’t find much in the way of live music there. We were based at Kamari, however, where all along the sea front, an itinerant duo called Illie & Ollie, would ply their trade most nights of the week. So popular were they, that a crowd of fans would follow them from bar to bar. A bunch of teenagers, who were either teetotal or broke, would sometimes sit on the pavement outside just to listen.

The N' Rock album: 'Cool - yeah?'

The duo played guitars and sang rock songs, displaying a particular bent for improvisation, especially on their epic quarter-hour renditions of Pink Floyd staples like ‘Wish You Were Here’ and ‘Another Brick In The Wall’. Illie, lead guitar and vocals, was a diminutive character in his twenties with a piratical mane, whiskers and grin, and a roll-up usually smoking from end of a string amid the machine heads of his guitar. Ollie, a more clean-cut, smiley hunk on rhythm guitar and backing vocals, was a bit older. Together they made an exciting and very musical noise, singing mainly in English, but sometimes throwing in some European material. They were good enough to carry off Jimi Hendrix songs as well as more poppy stuff and watching some of Illie’s flamenco flourishes, I wondered whether he was familiar with any of the distinctive soundtrack work of the great Italian composer, Ennio Morricone. Alas, like so many musicians I’ve spoken to, they appear to be too busy making music to take in many films.

We bought their CD which was puzzlingly titled N’ Rock. When I asked what it stood for, I was told by the enthusiastic, rakishly beaming Illie, that ‘eet mean natheeng – eet jas soun’ cool - yeah?’. Bless him. Maybe it does in Greek.

Croatia

Frano Gryc with constant
companions: shades, fag, guitar.

After Venice, Dubrovnik would probably be our choice for most beautiful city visited. Both times we went there, we caught a boat out to the isle of Lockrum, about a quarter of an hour’s trip out to sea. It’s a lovely little place which, characteristic of Croatia, is covered in pine trees and surrounded by flat, white rock beaches carved out of the shorelines. After some sunbathing and a sylvan ramble through the woods, we discovered an alfresco café, frequented by a company of peacocks that used to elegantly forage for morsels amongst the tables. At first a little unnerving, this soon became very charming as the birds proved very courteous and unobtrusive scavengers.

Gradually we became aware of music rippling around the café and assumed it was recorded until we spotted a black-clad character playing an acoustic classical guitar with an electric pick-up. This, it turned out was one Frano Gryc – which we learned translated as ‘Frankie Grace’ – a poker-faced chain-smoker of few words, but many melodies. Lisa noticed him first when she recognised an unusual arrangement of The Beatles’ ‘All My Loving’ wafting around us as we snacked on beer and toasties. Frano was a remarkable player and his repertoire of classical, jazz, standards, pop and original material was always tastefully and individually conveyed.

It never fails to amaze me how many top-class musicians you can see all around the world who have never ‘made it big’, whilst so many chancers and charlatans find success in the music industry. Maybe it’s a lack of ambition and/or luck on their part, but a number of the musicians I describe in this piece utterly outclass so much of what you see in the chart and hear on the radio these days. For all we know, Frano Gryc is still catching the boat with his guitar and amp every afternoon from Dubrovnik and playing for the few euros a session the café pay him. If you ever go to Dubrovnik, you could do a lot worse than sit amongst the peacocks and catch his casual brilliance.

We bought a CD from Frano and – like other musical souvenirs from holidays – it always makes us smile and takes us back when one of his tracks pops up on our iPod shuffle. I took some photographs of him: poker-faced, always behind black shades and constantly smoking: and very cool. One of them, a black and white shot, hangs on an upstairs landing wall with other B/W pictures from our travels.

Recital, Vsar.

We had a very different sort of holiday in Croatia when we went to Koversada, one of the many coastal resorts featuring beaches lined by pine trees and carved and flattened out of white rock. The only outlet for live music on a site populated by a few apartments and bungalows and hundreds of tents was a restaurant bar where a guitarist called Pepe sang along to backing tapes. He seemed to play pretty much the same set every night, but he was popular with the punters who basically just wanted something to dance to (European tourists are often very enthusiastic and accomplished exponents of the terpsichorean arts – not a combination much in evidence with their British counterparts. By a couple of nights in, everyone was looking forward to a particular middle-aged German couple who they knew would be up and down amongst the fray giving it their own amusingly weird take on the light fantastic. Their favourite was Pepe’s version of the Australian one hit wonders, Men At Work, whose ‘Down Under’ provided them with a large canvas on which to spin their bizarre abstractions, cheerfully independent of the song’s beat and rhythm. I say ‘large canvas’ because the other dancers would either fan out or retreat to their seats, the better to view this keenly anticipated nightly performance.

Strictly...

...Croatia.

Another year, we stayed at a beach resort called Baska Voda (or Bash The Vodka, as we rechristened it). There we watched a concert one evening in a small square by the local big band made up mainly of young musicians, who delivered a highly competent programme of popular classics and film themes. Another night, Lisa (who’s a fan of TV’s Strictly Come Dancing) persuaded me to accompany her to a large, rather swish modern bar, raised on boards above the beach and decorated entirely in white where a small troupe performed a spectacular display of styles ranging from ballroom to breakdancing - and all for free! Another evening at the other in the nearby village of Vsar, we went to see a recital by a classical guitarist playing in a small medieval building that had once been a church, but was now an art gallery. The guitarist was impressive although a little staid - and the place was almost stifling, with people flapping fans and programmes throughout in a vain attempt to cool down. But at least there was complimentary wine at the end!

The South of France

Have scooter, will fiddle, Beziers.

We’re still discovering the beautiful medieval towns in the south of France, where even the most common or garden buskers that one mooches past beneath cold, grey English skies can seem transfigured when performing beside an ancient church, gallery or town hall under a hot French sun. In Beziers, we stopped for lunch at a café set amongst the trees behind the great riverside cathedral. A young man then turned up on a motor scooter and proceeded to play an assortment of classical pieces on his violin, before tootling off again, his hat enriched with a few appreciative euros. Later on that day we sheltered beneath those trees from a dramatic midnight downpour, beside the cathedral now lit in a golden electric glow.

In one of the squares of Beziers, we also found a café called Le Cannelle which spilled onto the cobbles for most of the day before being packed away in the evening. It was owned by a middle-aged couple and their teenage son, a chansonnier who looked like a young Jean Paul Belmondo. In between playing instrumentals on trumpet or trombone, he would sing French songs traditional and modern to the accompaniment of backing tapes whilst we sipped from a half-litre carafe of local rose` wine. Occasionally, he would serenade a particular patron and one evening, as we were paying up at the bar, he was changing into a colourful uniform complete with braiding, cap and tasselled epaulettes on his way to play in the town marching band.

By the Canal de la Robine which runs through the middle of Narbonne, there were a number of musical diversions, ranging from a less than accomplished duo cheerfully blundering their way through a '60s/70s repertoire to a group of student-types interlocking their guitars around a selection of classical, jazz and pop to a pair of middle-aged Mariachi horn-players. More sedately, there was a smart, mainly senior gathering on a balustraded terrace, twirling elegantly in the cool of the evening to some pre-recorded ballroom tunes.

Belmondoesque, Beziers.

A bit of a shambles in Narbonne.

At the beach resort of Cap D’Agde, our first port of call at night was to find a table on a certain avenue where we could watch the world and his wife promenade past in their spectacular finery. Our preferred position was to perch on two barstools with our wine on an upturned barrel from where we could not only watch the constant parade, but also the people dancing to the music. Usually, the sounds were provided by chanteuses singing French hits and other Euro-pop along with the odd transatlantic tune. Another regular player who we’ve often seen over the years (without ever catching his name) is a virtuoso guitarist playing instrumental versions of rock songs with an emphasis on Santana and Gary Moore.

The Canary Islands

In my previous life during the 1970s, I visited Porto de la Cruz, one of the greener, less commercialised resorts in Tenerife and was impressed with the night life around the tavernas with their local flamenco groups. Over the last few decades, since Lisa and I have been travelling abroad, we’ve been to Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote several times, but only rarely have managed to catch much flamenco. Sometimes we’ve seen a dancer performing to backing tapes, but you can’t beat seeing the frilled skirts swirl in front of a small acoustic group complete with clattering Cuban heels.

There was a pub by the harbour in Porto Del Carmen in Lanzarote called The Scotch Corner where we regularly saw good singers accompanying themselves on acoustic guitars through a string of quality material, but all too often what was available at other places didn’t rise much above some plinkety-plonk merchant on a tinny-sounding keyboard droning out a hackneyed selection of holiday songs like ‘Une Paloma Blanca’ or ‘Viva Espagna’. Worst of all was a small Irish beach bar in the same resort which might have been nice had it not featured an oaf of only rudimentary busking skills whose idea of entertainment was to insult the clientele at length in between assailing them with brief blasts of oirish ballads.

Can you spot the...

...statue at Gran Canaria?

Rather more stylish were the guitarists who play amidst the ‘living statues’ along the promenade wall of Maspalomas on Gran Canaria which curves into the distance where the sun sets. The sweepingly high dunes on the beach at Maspalomas are a sight to behold (and hard work to climb!) but the night-life there was practically non-existent. We’ve only ever been in the spring, so maybe it’s a different story during high season (autumn through winter in the Canaries), but it has been unusually quiet when we’ve been there

Beach bar buskers at Corralejo.

Corralejo in the north of Fuerteventura also has impressive sand dunes to enjoy by day, but provides a vivid contrast at night. Clustered on and around the main road of the town are a number of varied venues offering live music played by some of the most accomplished rock musicians we’ve encountered on our holiday travels. Two of the bigger places are a Hard Rock Café and Corner Rock, both served by resident bands who pump out the likes of ‘Hotel California’ and ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ on a nightly basis. All very polished but rather predictable

Flamenco front and...

Slightly more off the beaten track in more ways than one is Rock Island, a little way down one of the streets off the main drag and signalled by an advertising car stationed on the corner pointing the direction. Smaller than the above venues, Rock island has been designed to look both cosy and exotic with wooden furniture and nooks and crannies, items of music memorabilia lit by lamps, lanterns and candles all of which create a pleasingly bohemian ambience. Oh and before I forget, there’s the front of a VW camper van bursting through one wall, being driven by a cardboard cut-out of Jim Morrison of The Doors…

...back at Corralejo.

A fluid selection of musicians perform solo spots and jam sessions which mix well-known songs with more individual choices and sometimes original material. The couple who run the place include the regular bass player and MC. One night we enquired of his wife where she’d bought a particular lamp that had taken our fancy – and were taken aback when she told us it was from a hippy shop in Leicester from where we’ve purchased various items ourselves. It turned out that the couple actually hailed from Leicester , the landlady being the sister of a terrific singer-songwriter who often plays solo and in bands at the aforementioned Donkey and Musician!

Another night we were in Rock Island and the band persuaded a rather ordinary looking young bloke who was in with his extraordinarily long-legged girlfriend to get up and sing a song. It turned out he was the man behind The Bodyrockers who’d had an international hit in 2005 with the huskily voiced ‘I Like The Way You Move’ . They tried to get another song out of him but he insisted that he was ‘retired’. We’ve seen lots of fine singers and players on that small stage, cluttered with rugs, instruments, cables, candles and drinks, but perhaps none better than Harry, a diffident soul who accompanies all and sundry with his sensitive and often sensational acoustic guitar playing.

The cosy glow of Rock Island

Harry would sometimes also appear at a place called The Imagine Bar tucked away down another side-street, but which sadly, has since been taken over as a lap-dancing joint. Descending the few steps into Imagine opened up to you an L-shaped room with tables and chairs in the larger part and a bar area round the corner. Subtly lit with candles and lamps, the windows and table-tops were hung with scarlet drapes, whilst the small stage was festooned with dozens of instruments hanging from the wall or stood on the boards. This was the performing habitat of one Eric Sijpestijn (pronounced Syperstein) who, in all my many years of regular gig-going, would rate as one of the best players I’ve ever seen.

Eric in a blur, Corralejo.

Of Dutch and Scottish descent with a correspondingly interesting accent, Eric is a tall, dark and handsome, multi-lingual, multi-talented performer who somehow manages to combine an ego roughly the size of Jupiter with a genuine streak of modesty. Each table in the bar had a booklet listing the 500-odd numbers in his repertoire. The interactive gimmick is to write down the title of your request on a small strip of paper and go attach it to the bicycle-wheel at the side of his stage. After each song – if he remembers – he spins the wheel, plucks out a request and launches into the song (I once told him that we’d seen Elvis Costello do something very similar only with a much bigger, neon-lit wheel when we’d caught his show in Sheffield during his 2013 tour – ‘Ah, yes,’ said Eric, ‘but I did it first!’ – and we can vouchsafe that he did indeed).

From this point on though, the Sijpestijn show gets really interesting because, as he says, he doesn’t ‘do covers’. What he does do, by and large, are deconstructive explorations of well-known songs and downright overplayed classics, amongst more off-the-wall material including pieces of his own. Not only does his repertoire contain songs drawn from pretty much any genre you’d care to mention, but he also confounds his audience’s expectations by playing songs in counter-intuitive styles, often on different instruments to those featured as lead on the original versions. Essentially a guitarist, he will play an assortment of acoustic and electric guitars, along with bass, banjo,timple and ukele; piano and accordion; saxophone, melodica and harmonica; drums, body and balloon – amongst others…ah, yes, dear reader, I hear you murmuring, ‘body and balloon?!’

Corralejo Crescendo!

Well, Mr. Sijpestijn, you see, body-pops his way through a kind of Rap version of a soliloquy from Hamlet and recites various sonnets including Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’ and Wordsworth’s ‘Westminster Bridge whilst accompanying himself on a balloon which he blows up, flicks with his finger and runs along the microphone to evoke windswept landscapes or what another poet called ‘vast deserts of eternity’ (Marvell in ‘To His Coy Mistress’). The effect is spellbinding and Lisa, who is a teacher of English, has successfully used these pieces in her lessons (after Eric kindly provided us with copies on request).

All of which brings me to the Sijpestijn voice, a large and sometimes slightly unwieldy instrument which he pushes to its limits, often sailing a little too close to the wind for its own good. But Eric likes to be out on the edges of his talent – and if that results in the odd bum note or out of tune vocal moment, then he cheerfully takes it in his stride, frequently cursing himself colourfully or letting loose one of his rather alarming volleys of laughter.

Throughout his act, he relates anecdotes, tells jokes, describes some of the songs, wonders out loud, philosophically extemporises, and drinks pints of lager and shots of revivifying Jaegermeister with which he toasts the audience with his trademark ‘Salud!’. Naturally, all of this is not to everyone’s taste, but we’ve caught his act many times in Corralejo and noticed many other people turning up to see him night after night. He often has other guest singers and players whom he accompanies and occasionally we’ve seen perform Flamenco and other types of Spanish music with local musicians and dancers.

Last year, after we’d left the Brisamar hotel bar, where he is now the resident attraction following the closure of Imagine, we were mugged just outside by a dastardly deft thief, who was pretending to foist leaflets on us (which happens constantly in such resorts where bars and restaurants employ hawkers to advertise their fare with special offers). Eric was unfailingly kind and patient in helping us report the matter to the police and organized the stopping of our debit cards on the hotel computer. Anyway, if you’re ever in Corralejo, Fuerteventura and fancy a helter-skelter ride through Mozart, The Beatles, film themes, Hendrix, Rodrigo, Abba, Jacques Brel, Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen and even ‘Hotel California’ – to name but a few and all of them as you’ve never heard them before - then be sure to seek out the remarkable Mr. Sijpestijn.

Brief Encounters

Plainsong in Avignon.

When walking around historic towns and holiday resorts, it’s always interesting to observe the living statues, street entertainers and buskers in a more relaxed way than one would back in one’s home town where you’re more likely to be striding purposefully past on some errand or other. As I’ve hinted above, we particularly enjoy passing an hour in an outdoor bar or café, perhaps playing a game of Travel-Scrabble, to the accompaniment of some wandering minstrel.

Youthful duo, Avignon.

Churches can also provide unexpected musical moments. Neither of us are religious in any conventional sense, but we do like good architecture and churches are almost always interesting places. One year in Paris, we dropped into an all but empty Sacre Coeur where a nun was singing at the virginals some ineffably beautiful piece. Of course, the acoustics in churches, especially the bigger ones, can be wondrous. In one French cathedral we visited recently, we couldn’t see where the voices that were producing the plainsong that was filling the shadowy spaces were coming from until we spotted an incongruous, tiny white beat box plugged in by the choir. This year, on our travels in France, it seemed that every church had singers, most of them acapella, some with the odd instrument, performing –irrespective of whether there was an audience. The French language is one of the most mellifluous and it certainly lends itself well to spiritual material within the towering spaces of holy places.

Guitar Man, Nimes.

Drummer Girl, Avignon.

Buskers can range from the shambolic to virtuosic and all points between. I would argue though that they always enhance the culture of the town (yeah, OK, even those pesky Krishnas). Interestingly, however, whilst I was finishing this piece, I came across a story in the press about buskers in Bath causing controversy. The Rector of Bath Abbey, describing them as 'offensively loud', accused amplified buskers of 'playing over weddings and funerals'.

Most buskers play acoustically, portability being a key factor, but sometimes they do use a small amp or maybe have backing tracks. There’s a very good clarinettist who regularly plays Leicester with a wide repertoire drifting out of his speaker/amp combo. He does well during the Christmas season unless the ‘Sally Army’ march into his territory with their brassy carolling. Accordions pretty much self-amplify and there are a number of East Europeans wheezing away around Leicester, the most striking of whom is an unfortunate young man who appears to have no legs or hips and perches on some kind of customised skate-board (the first time I saw him, I thought he was standing in a man-hole). Drums are another instrument that make up in natural amplification what they lack in portability. Occasionally you’ll see – and hear from a distance – a full kit set up and a muscular young practitioner bashing the hell out of it. They always draw a crowd, but I was never too keen on drum solos. A new instrument I’ve noticed recently is a single steel drum which can produce the whole range of a full set, albeit at reduced volume but with a subtler, more atmospheric effect. Meanwhile,In the fabulous park, Le Jardin de la Fontaine in Nimes, we wandered upon a man playing a hurdy gurdy - the only time I'd ever seen this venerable whirring, wind-up instrument in action.

Hurdy Gurdy Man, Nimes.

Anyway, I’m wondering how to close this piece – and I think I shall leave it open-ended in order to return to it as and when, adding new descriptions and pictures along the way. Right now though I need to bring it to a temporary close as Lisa requested it as a special commission for her birthday – and it’s a year late, but just in time for her latest birthday.