Visit the official Doctor Who website

Visit the official Doctor Who website
Look to the future

Asylum seekers...

Asylum seekers...
Refuge of the Daleks

Doctor Who picture resource

Doctor Who picture resource
Roam the space lanes!

Explore the Doctor Who classic series website

Explore the Doctor Who classic series website
Step back in time

Infiltrate The Hub of Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood

Infiltrate The Hub of Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood
Armed and extremely dangerous

Investigate The Sarah Jane Adventures

Investigate The Sarah Jane Adventures
Fearless in the face of adversity

Call on Dani’s House

Call on Dani’s House
Harmer’s a charmer

Intercept the UFO fabsite

Intercept the UFO fabsite
Defending the Earth against alien invaders!

Uncover the secrets of the Dollhouse

Uncover the secrets of the Dollhouse
Programmable agent Echo exposed!

Hell’s belles

Hell’s belles
Naughty but nice

Love Exposure

Love Exposure
Flash photography!

Primeval portal

Primeval portal
Dressed to kill or damsels in distress?

Charmed, to be sure!

Charmed, to be sure!
The witches of San Francisco

Take on t.A.T.u.

Take on t.A.T.u.
All the way from Moscow

Proceed to the Luther website

Proceed to the Luther website
John and Jenny discuss their next move

DCI Banks is on the case

DCI Banks is on the case
You can bet on it!

On The Grid with Spooks

On The Grid with Spooks
Secret agents of Section D

Bridge to Hustle

Bridge to Hustle
Shady characters

Life on Ashes To Ashes

Life on Ashes To Ashes
Coppers with a chequered past

Claire’s no Exile

Claire’s no Exile
Goose steps

Vexed is back on the beat!

Vexed is back on the beat!
Mismatched DI Armstrong and bright fast-tracker Georgina Dixon

Medium, both super and natural

Medium, both super and natural
Open the door to your dreams

Who’s that girl? (350-picture Slideshow)

Friday 12 January 2007

Happy Talk!

Having been tagged by fellow time-traveller Simon, Old Cheeser to all you bloggers out there, I have been summoned to reveal all! Well, not quite all!! Five facts about myself, in fact. Everyone knows of my passion for “Doctor Who” but, around the time of becoming a teen, or perhaps even earlier, emphasis shifted to music; initially pop from which it broadened out to encompass much more. So, I thought I’d try and stick to a musical theme being a qualified composer, but how did I get there?..
The first gig I went to was a revelation. It was at the Cheltenham Town Hall in 1972 and the band was Mott the Hoople. It was shortly after their initial success with “All the Young Dudes”, my all-time favourite single which disappointingly they didn’t perform, but before follow-up hit “Honaloochie Boogie”. It was a wall of sound. If you opened your mouth and spoke it was as though nothing came out. But, I guess that must’ve been when I decided I wanted to play in a rock ‘n’ roll band! What I really wanted to learn in school, thereafter, was how to write music down.
The next revelation was the single “Virginia Plain” by Roxy Music. At the age of 13, it was the weirdest thing I’d ever heard. I can analyse it now. See the mix… of chords with no thirds, descending chromatic bass line, one note synthesiser solo, Ferry’s unusual vocal delivery of his strange lyric, not so much sung as spoken with vibrato, but, back then, the song must have seemed like Stockhausen to me! And that might well be why I went to University to study music and specialise in composition.
A third defining moment was meeting 10cc the very week they were number one for the third and final time. The original line-up had scored number one hits with “Rubber Bullets” and, most famously for six weeks, the spectacularly brilliant “I’m Not in Love”. 10cc mark 2, a 6-piece, reached the top for just one week with “Dreadlock Holiday”, the week I saw them at the Colston Hall, Bristol. The new line-up included one of my keyboard heroes Duncan Mackay whom I’d seen twice before, at the same venue, as part of Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel. I was introduced to him backstage afterwards for a chat, along with founder members of 10cc, Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman.
Another shining beacon from my musical history would have to be seeing Kate Bush in Liverpool on the first date of her one and only tour. She was just two albums into her career and responsible for another of my all-time favourite singles, “The Man with the Child in his Eyes”. I didn’t actually like “Wuthering Heights”, initially, until I saw the sheet music and thought, “Wow, unbelievable”, this looks interesting. Incidentally, as well as Steve Harley’s number one “Make Me Smile”, another all-time favourite, and 10cc’s “Dreadlock”, Duncan Mackay’s other number one was playing keyboards on Kate’s only chart topper.
Life’s so much more complicated than that, of course. Liking a few pop records doesn’t get you into University! A lot of hard work does and it doesn’t stop when you get there. I was very lucky to have a brilliant music teacher at school in Michael Rangeley. He laid all the important musical foundations in me. Students in other fields found it surprising that I could be interested in pop, being classically trained. But having been in a band at home, Boulevard, I formed another at Uni, The Disturbed, as glam made way for punk!
From studying with John Tyrrell and composer Nigel Osborne at Nottingham and Stanley Glasser in London, I got to meet Peter Maxwell Davies, composer on Ken Russell’s movies “The Devils” and “The Boy Friend”, work with John Harle, a brilliant saxophonist and composer of the “Silent Witness” theme, but, best of all, become friends with the late Tim Souster, known to SF fans as the arranger of the theme tune of Douglas Adams’ “Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. As you might have guessed, I never became a rock star. Education made me Captain Sensible!

3 comments:

Old Cheeser said...

Thanks for taking up my comment, Tim, well done!

A mine of facts there and you certainly went into lots more detail than me! And a lot less risque!!

Music has obviously formed an important part of your life, that's clear! I am sooo envious of your seeing Kate Bush live, she is one of my icons. Although of course she is now too old (or perhaps "just not inclined" would be a politer way of putting it!) to perform live. A shame as she is a truly original and innovative artiste, still!

I also love The Hitch Hiker's Theme and that's interesting that you were friends with the composer. I also love the work of Paddy Kingsland, who did the incidental music for the TV version and also several Dr Who stories in the early 1980s.

TimeWarden said...

I enjoyed it, found it quite cathartic, having mostly avoided talking about myself when posting over the past couple of years!

I was 20 and at Uni when I saw Kate back in’79. I still have the programme, 28 years on, although the badges have gone a little rusty! It was posters of her and Ferry used to adorn the walls of my student accommodation and I probably still have them too somewhere!! I actually missed meeting her by an hour on Liverpool quayside where she was due for a press call prior to the gig.

Don’t know about Kate being too old; perhaps for the same kind of performance as then but Bowie’s just turned 60 while she is the same age as me. I think, in all honesty, she prefers motherhood. And, when it comes to music, both she and Ferry are perfectionists so it does take a while before they feel a product is ready. I believe Roxy Music are to release their first album since 1982 this year which has been an even longer hiatus than was the case with Kate. A quarter of a century!!!

I think incidental music is crucial to the success of much television drama. I’m not sure even “The Caves of Androzani” would have been as successful without Roger Limb’s score. I can remember thinking the music for “London’s Burning”, for example, completely undermined any dramatic potential. I was disappointed RTD didn’t use composer David Ferguson, from his early-Nineties’ children’s serials, for new “Doctor Who” as this might’ve helped retain that feeling of suspense so prevalent in the original.

Looks like an extra wait until we get our hands on that isolated Paddy Kingsland soundtrack as the release of “Doctor Who: New Beginnings” has been delayed a week until the 29th!

Old Cheeser said...

Glad to hear you enjoyed it! As I was saying to another Blogger we should do something similar some time ... spices up one's blog, as it were!

I know what you mean, it is possible to be very impersonal in your blog, and write about anything but personal subjects! Mine is a bit of a mixture between what's going on in my life and straightforward reviews / critiques.

Good to hear you still have the souvenirs from the Kate gig. I bet it was incredible! I have seen the televised version of that tour and she is amazing (Wow!!), so creative with all her costumes and routines.

I think you're right about her reasons for retiring from the concert scene though. She does seem to relish being a Mum and I'm sure when you have kids it takes over your life with music taking more of a back seat. Lovely that she wrote an ode to "Bertie" on Aerial. And you're right, she does have that perfectionist aspect to her and there were usually gaps of several years between her albums! Peter Gabriel was the same. The "Tortoise Movement" they used to call it.

I look forward to hearing Roxy's comeback. I loved Avalon and they produced some brilliant songs in their time - Virginia Plain, Streetlife, Love Is The Drug and so on.

Yes, incidental music can make or break a programme. I'm not much of a fan of Murray Gold (some of his scores are just too brash and overbearing) although he has done a fairly decent enough job on some episodes. I think I am just hankering after Paddy and his Radiophonic Workshop chums but they are sadly long gone! I am very much looking forward to hearing Paddy's isolated scores but hey! An extra week to wait for the DVD boxset isn't too far off! "Logopolis" and "Castrovalva" are two of my favourite ever Dr Who stories and I am over the moon that they are coming out on DVD. About time.