my dad — more or less fully bedridden now and unable to work any music device more elaborate than a TV remote — watched pretty much all of the concert for diana; i tried to watch as much as i could with him, because time with him basically means time watching TV with him, but i only managed about 20 minutes
which is not to say there weren’t fascinating oddities even in that little span — nuggets of ultra-coded information that begged to be opened up… as i’d been reading penman’s essay on bryan ferry a few days back, i was idly wondering about the conversation lady di might have had (about roxy music) (or sapphire and steel, i bet she loved that) with ferry’s other more regal fan, and something happened in the music that ground my mind to a halt, the unexpected ambush of a long-known fact i genuinely couldn’t process: ferry was playing blues harp (which of course he’s always done now and then), and just the fact of him not (for once) complicatedly failing to mimick cool lounge-suit sung ease, but puffing away with his cheeks and forehead at this least upperclass of instruments… and it thre something into my head his recent cover-version project totally didn’t, bcz here i was suddenly thinking of lyttle bryan long ago in kitchen-sink land eager actually to BE bob dylan, and practicing practicing practicing till he sounded just the same, the epitome of the opposite of surface grace — which for a bar or so he did