​“The last quartets of Beethoven are mistakes, absurdities, the reveries of a sick genius. I would burn everything I have composed if someday I wrote anything resembling such chaos.”
 
Being an aficionado of sick genius and musical chaos, I confess I first read these words of George Onslow, the “French Beethoven”, as a compliment. I thought it an honest recognition that everything written before would pale into embarrassing insignificance.
 
Having now heard a piece by Onslow, his string quartet in C minor, Opus 8 No.1, I acknowledge that the world of musicography would not be diminished in any way had Onslow burned everything he had composed.
 
It was a clever juxtaposition by the Consone String Quartet at the Pump Rooms last Friday, as the familiarity of Haydn (Opus 9 No 4) and the banality of the Onslow provided a marked contrast with the sublime complexity of Beethoven’s Opus 131.
 
I first heard the C# minor half a century ago, in a recording by the Amadeus. Since then, I have heard it performed many times – notably by the Petersen, the Emerson and the Lindsays – but the Amadeus has remained my go-to version. Until now.
 
The Consone play instruments with gut strings using early 19th century bows and extracted new (to me at least) sounds without losing the warmth and complexity of the score with its long emotional sweep from opening fugue (beautifully articulated by the Consone) to its charging, dashing, careering finale.
 
Of course, although there are seven movements, the quartet is played without pause. It is seamless, fluid and, ultimately, cathartic. And last Friday, the Consone owned it.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: The Consone has not yet recorded the 131. But on Friday, in the break between the Onslow and the Beethoven, I managed to acquire a CD of Shostakovich’s 4th Symphony by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia. I used to have this on vinyl, and although I’m a Kyril Kondrashin kinda guy when it comes to Dmitri, I have been playing this “essential” re-release and can confirm that it is exactly that: essential.  

Tomorrow, Jewish members of the Warwick and Leamington Constituency Labour Party are organising a vigil outside the Town Hall to support Holocaust Memorial Day. Implicit in this, of course, is support for anti-semitism, anti-islamophobia and anti-racism. It will start at 11am, and I'll see you there.
 
This year, the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, anti-semitism is at the top of the agenda. Or rather, alleged anti-semitism in the Labour Party is at the top of the agenda, with all leadership candidates agreeing to the 10 ‘pledges’ – they are actually demands – put forward by the Board of Deputies.

​You may think, as do I together with Naom Chomsky and Jewish Voice for Labour and Jews Sans Frontières amongst others that there are some issues here. The most succinct rebuttal I have come across is from @blepharon which I circulate here for those who do not follow him on Twitter or read The Canary. 

I am disappointed that our leadership contenders have 'signed up' to these 'pledges'. I am particularly disappointed that a man of the legal calibre of Starmer and the instinctive Labourism of Long-Bailey have kow-towed.

But we understand that this is not to do with an appeal to the Labour membership. It is everything to do with appeasing the liberal elite, who have chosen to use this issue as their focus for attacks on a socialist agenda.

It is a shame that this trivialisation of the issue should be the case. But tomorrow, at 11am, we shall remind ourselves of the real issue.

The holocaust. The six million who died - horribly - under the Third Reich.

My mother, now in her 90s, is one of the last of the generation who was alive when this happened. But we have told our children who will tell our grandchildren who, I hope, will tell their children.

מיר וועלן ניט פאַרגעסן​

Today from the everysmith vaults: I am listening to Bob's shows from 2000 version of the NET. I saw several of these shows in September of that year, but the one that is playing today is from April, in Omaha, Nebraska. It is not solely the acoustic set, but that band is one of the best he has assembled. 

​


Those of you who went to sleep at all on the night of Thursday 12th of December awoke to the news that the country had an unassailable Conservative majority and that even those Tories with whom one could actually have a conversation were no longer in the party or Parliament. All liberal-minded Conservatives had been purged. In the face of this, Labour appeared helpless. Its attempts to bring the country together with a balanced policy was seen as obfuscation. Defeat was inevitable; the scale of that defeat was not. But as Corbyn announced his intention to step down, Labour HQ emails talked of a ‘state of numbness’ and called for a ‘period of reflection’.
 
It occurred to me, as I sat in my very particular state of physical and emotional numbness, drinking red wine on the Friday lunchtime, that thirty years before I had been lying in a coma in the Midland Centre for Neurosurgery and Neurology, midway between two brain operations. In the course of my period of reflection, I considered two things. The first was whether I would prefer to be still in a comatose state, and thus unaware of the unravelling of British democracy; and secondly, the fact that one of the most sophisticated centres of neurology in Europe is now a housing estate. It was the only specialist facility of its kind outside London, but it fell foul of the Conservative Government’s cost-cutting policies in 1996.
 
The NHS and MCNN (specifically Professor Edward Hitchcock) saved my life in 1989 and 1990, and my post-election musings moved on to consider how, despite the rhetoric, the Tories have always looked to undermine the NHS. Austerity in name was the boast of the Tory/LibDem coalition. But austerity has always been the agenda hidden behind the rhetoric.
 
The carefully structured attack on the NHS – starve it, criticise it, privatise it – was our priority at the last election. Our instincts were sound and they were supported by reams of paperwork concerning the trade talks with the US, articles by senior cabinet ministers, and the facts.
 
But it wasn’t enough to overcome the fatuous and simplistic ‘Get Brexit Done’, a slogan straight out of the Steve Bannon/Donald Trump playbook. You may think, as I do, that when a policy is supported unequivocally by Trump, Putin and Johnson, there is clearly something amiss. A great deal amiss, in fact – and I don’t refer to the great deal allegedly negotiated by Boris Johnson against the odds.
 
Here in Leamington, there was no room for argument. We had as our sitting MP the estimable Matt Western. He is a local candidate, independent-minded, intelligent, personable and trusted across the political divides.
 
Yet he managed a majority of less than a thousand, pushed close by a rich-boy Thatcherite Tory from Windsor who bought a house in Warwick and claimed to be local on the basis of his new home and the fact that he went to university locally.
 
I do not need a period of reflection to know for whom I will vote next time. But if the centrists in the Labour Party are to be believed, many will vote for or against the new leader of the Labour Party. ABC, they say – anyone but Corbyn.
 
I am not a Corbynista nor a Corbynite. But I admire his principles and his  policies even as I am exasperated by his stubbornness and refusal to play the game. A different word here, a an emphasis there, and the likes of Kuenssberg, Peston and the JLM would have no factual grounds for their hysterical headlines, no opportunity for wilful misunderstanding. But that’s Corbyn for you. His strengths are his weaknesses when they are being presented by the daily Mail, Express, Sun, Telegraph, Times and yes, even the Guardian.
 
As Alexei Sale points out, the real difference between Johnson and Corbyn is this: “The only people who like Johnson are those that don’t know him. And, conversely, the only people who like Corbyn are those that know him”.
 
Trouble is, in these days of right wing populism, it’s all about reaching out personally, giving the journalists what they want and avoiding serious questioning. This is why, if the ageing, nativist, nationalist, out-of-touch Tory membership got anything right, it was voting in Johnson as leader.
 
They now have five years to regret that decision, but the cost to the country could be immeasurable.
 
For me, the next five years will be five years of struggle against the privatisation of the NHS, the erosion of our human rights, climate change, racism and the return to free market economics.
 
There is more, a hell of a lot more, but this will do for a start.

Happy New Year!

Today from the everysmith vaults: Bob has graced us with his presence only once this year, but his fall tour in the States has been remarkable. Currently listening to the residency at the Beacon Theatre in New York. The stunning new arrangement of Not Dark Yet is only one of the many highlights.

“He’s got a way with words and I do too” said Bob Dylan, referring to the poet, lyricist and his occasional collaborator Robert Hunter. “We both write a different type of song than what passes today for songwriting.” And Hunter felt the same about Bob.  “He’s the only guy I work with who I give the liberty to change things. After all, he is who he is.”
 
It has taken me some little time to get my (dead)head round the death of Robert Hunter, at the age of 78. Many Deadheads paid minimal or no attention to the lyrics of even the greatest songs in the canon. But I did. And the Dead did.
 
When the Dead was inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, Hunter – who had never performed on-stage with them – was there, as a fully-fledged member of the band. And if there was occasionally a divergence in the visions of Hunter and Garcia – “For Christ’s sake, we’re a dance band. You might at least write something with a beat!” Garcia told him after perusing another bunch of lyrics – it is Hunter’s work, in for example Ripple, Dark Star, Saint Stephen, Terrapin which define the Dead, the latter being imho, a masterful version of Cavafy’s Ithaca.
 
When Jerry died in 1995, Hunter wrote what encyclopaedist Michael Gray called ‘a super-competent’ elegy:
 
Without your melody and taste
to lend an attitude of grace
a lyric is an orphan thing,
a hive with neither honey’s taste
nor power to truly sting.
 
But there is a case to be made for the true elegy being his collaboration with Bob on Together Through Life.
 
It’s a meditation on mortality and immortality, on the end of America. Beyond here lies nothing; life is hard; it’s all good.
 
How much is Bob’s and how much is Hunter’s? I don’t know, not for sure. But I do know that a stanza such as this must surely come individually and collectively from the relationship that both Bob and Hunter had with Jerry:
 
Ever since the day
The day you went away
I felt that emptiness so wide
I don't know what's wrong or right
I just know I need strength to fight
Strength to fight that world outside
 
Yeh, I know. They are not the best lines either of them wrote. But the sincerity and simplicity and authenticity is enough.
 
Both are clever wordsmiths. Both are masters of their craft. Both write a different kind of song.

But sometimes you don’t have to be a smart-arse for the sake of it.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Terrapin Station from March 1990.

​A week in politics is a long time. A year in baseball can be an eternity. 84 wins and 19 games back of the Evil Empire might be ok in Baltimore, but in Boston it’s pretty much a catastrophe. This time last year, the Sox were about to cruise to our fourth World Series championship in 15 years. This year, everyone’s gone home. And I fear that the off-season will be as disappointing as the regular season.
 
The word is that John Henry started planning (or at least considering) the departure of Dombrowski even as the duck boats were parading through central Boston. Maybe he knew that Dombrowski was intending to do nothing at all during the winter. Just as he had done last winter.
 
Sure, Eovaldi and Pearce got new thank-you contracts before they went on the DL. And you can’t blame DD for the dreadful seasons from aces Sale and Price. But you can blame him for going into the season without a closer (Kimbrel) or a set-up man (Kelly).
 
You can blame him for not reading the runes when we went 3-9 for the first 12 games.
 
And you can blame him for Cashner, the one move he did make at the trade deadline.
 
You had one job …
 
Equally, he can take no credit for the season’s highlight, the break-outs of Rafael Devers and Xander Bogaerts, the latter being my vote for MVP. I predicted that from 3000 miles away.
 
But it won’t be Dombrowski putting together the squad that will bear our hopes in 2019. And it won’t be Theo, either.
 
There are noises coming out of Fenway which suggest that the entire role may be restructured, which implies that we may have someone out of left field. I don’t know.
 
I do know that it must be someone capable of working closely with Alex Cora.
 
I like Cora. I like his cockiness. I like that the players like him. I didn’t like his approach to the 2019 season, especially the regime (or lack of regime) in spring training. And did he really play Benintendi at lead-off? Jeez.
 
It’s going to be a long, hard winter and I’m scared. Scared of losing Mookie and JD. Scared of the implications of ownership’s instruction to stay under the luxury tax threshold. Scared of another season like this last, when we could never really engage with our team, when only Rafi and Xander excited us.
 
But come March 26, in Toronto, all this will change and I’ll be predicting the play-offs with a chance at the series.
 
Why? Because that’s what I always do. Go Sox!
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: 38 years ago yesterday, I schlepped to The Rainbow in North London to see the Dead play a great show. I’m listening now to an SBD (thanks to So Many Roads) and it’s a laid-back West Coast kind of show, with the band on top form. Just as I remember it.
 
P.S. I have been remiss in attending to these posts recently. I apologise. ‘Events, dear boy. Events.’

It’s not dark yet … but it’s getting there. I’m a week into my eighth decade and on borrowed time. I’m not thinking (much) about the inevitable physical and mental decline which kicks in about now and some would say already has. I’m more concerned about the state of my nations, here in the UK and over in New England, the home of the Red Sox Nation.

I will be devoting a column to the fall from grace of the 2018 World Series Champions shortly when I’ve got my head round the sacking of Dombrowski and its timing as well as the underperformance of the team from the start to the probable finish of the season. But right now, with Parliament prorogued, the government in chaos, and the country divided, there can be no doubt about the theme for the week.
 
It is, of course, what Donald Tusk has called “a dog’s brexit”.
 
One of the tangential issues of the ‘debate’ has been the diminishing of language. I am conscious that I have been guilty of this as emotion and anger takes over from reason. But I use this word advisedly: it is a coup: a sudden, illegal, takeover of government.
 
As such, it must be fought by all means.
 
Parliament has made a start. A no deal brexit is illegal. The Court of Sessions has found that prorogation is also unlawful and it is to be hoped that the Supreme Court will, on Tuesday, find similarly. It is worth noting that the English court did not make a ruling about the legality or otherwise of the suspension; like Pilate, it washed its hands of the issue, stating that this was a ‘political’ matter that is the preserve of the ‘politicians’.
 
That is not a judgement. It is not even an error of judgement.
 
It is an avoidance of judgement. It is an evasion of judgement. It is a shirking of judgement.
 
So much for the rule of law.
 
In law, the referendum was advisory. It was not mandatory. The country cannot be held to a promise made by David Cameron a few days before he resigned and retired to his shepherd’s hut to write a book I shall never read but suspect will be exculpatory in the extreme. (And there is a great deal to exculpate, which probably explains the rumoured volume - sheer bulk - of the volume.)
 
In law, the prorogation is unlawful because of its motives and its duration.
 
In law, no-one is exempt from the law. Not even a prime minister.
 
I’m entering this eighth decade with a profound sense of foreboding. But I shall be consoled by the generosity of my family: my Dylan weekend chez Grey and Beattie, our night in the New Forest, my birthday lunch and my life in a cake.
 
Thank you. This decade is on loan from you.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: As the talk turned to Dylan covers – covers of Bob and Bob covers of others – Ms Beattie introduced us to a version of Absolutely Sweet Marie by Jason & The Scorchers. I have played it at least once a day every day since my return to the UK and suspect I will continue to do so throughout the next decade.
 
​

In France, it is the Fête Nationale and traditionally we would be enjoying a communal dinner and feux d’artifice in the market square of St Quentin la Poterie. But, as Bob sang in 1967, I’m not there.
 
In fact, in 2019, Bob is playing in the parks – Hyde London and Nowlan Kilkenny – with Neil Young, and traditionally we would have been upfront, relishing what we always fear will be the last time we see him. But I’m not there.
 
Two of the greatest tennis players of all time are at Wimbledon, where they produced one of the greatest tennis matches of all time. But I’m not there.
 
And at Lords, England and New Zealand are playing out if not the best ever one day game, certainly the game with the most dramatic and nail-biting conclusion ever. But I’m not there.
 
Instead, I am glued to the TV which is showing the cricket live on free-to-air for the first time since 2005. And I am there for every ball.
 
I am not alone in regretting the decision to sell out to Sky, which brought money into the game, but diminished its profile and appeal for a generation. But I do applaud the decision of Sky to make their coverage available to the country as a whole. (BT Sport also gave up their exclusive rights to the Liverpool v Tottenham Champions Final: Respect.)
 
Despite these acts of charity, these exceptions that prove the rule, it is surely wrong that the audience for these great sporting occasions should be restricted to those who can afford the subscriptions to Sky and/or BT.
 
It is the exact opposite in the US, where baseball, for example, is notable not for its absence from American screens but for its ubiquity. Personally, I cannot get too much, but I am sorry for those who, unaccountably, have no interest in the game.
 
It is, however, this very ubiquity, the fact of being everywhere all the time, which makes it not merely a popular game but part of the national consciousness; as American as motherhood and apple pie.
 
It has the same place in the American psyche as cricket used to be here when I was a boy.
 
I understand that the BBC has rights to the forthcoming and bizarre form of the game, The Hundred. I am not sure to what extent I will embrace this format. But it’s a start.
 
Meanwhile, my thanks to Sky for their generosity. Thanks to them, I saw something unprecedented, something thrilling, something rewarding.

​Thanks to them, I was there.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Thrilled by the footage of Bob and Neil playing Will The Circle Be Unbroken in Kilkenny (where I saw a great Bob show back in 2001, with Ronnie Wood), I have delved back into the vaults for the first time Bob and Neil did this song (hymn?) together, at the SNACK Benefit in Kerzan Stadium San Francisco in 1975. A great show – and the Dead were there too!

​We reached .500 last night for the first time since the second game of the season, in Seattle. And it is the Mariners who arrive in Boston as the season, to all intents and purposes, starts again, with most of the ducks in a row, to play a three game series of which two are day games and thus sit happily in the early evening for those of us in Europe.
 
The British back pages this morning are full of the news of Tottenham’s extraordinary comeback from a 3-0 deficit in Amsterdam. And why not? After all, it hasn’t been done for, hell, at least 24 hours. I am delighted that Madrid will host a final between Liverpool and Spurs. Like most football fans, I have affection for both. They are by some measure my favourites of the Premiership big spenders. Both spring from real communities. Both play attractive football. But although my respect for Spurs goes back to the early sixties, Liverpool, of course, have an intimate relationship with the Red Sox with whom it shares community, great play, and ownership.
 
So I’m telling you now that Liverpool will have my support when the two teams meet on 1st June. Kick-off is at 8pm British time. and the game will take me happily into the early hours of Sunday morning when the Sox play in the Bronx.
 
I am beginning to enjoy the 2019 baseball season. I certainly enjoyed the pitching duel last night. Sale’s 7th inning was sublime: 9 pitches, 9 swings, 9 misses, 3 Ks.
 
Just for once, though, that wasn’t the highlight. The highlight came in the 11th inning - a walk-off home run from Baltimore’s Trey Mancini.
 
Except it wasn’t a home run. From nowhere Jackie climbed the wall, reached over into the bullpen and pulled it back into the park.
 
It was a game-changing moment. As Alex Cora said, “Shoot, if he doesn’t make that catch, we don’t win this game.”
 
And, I think, it was also a season-changing moment. An exclamation mark moment. A moment that is not only going to provide the stimulus for a revenge series win against Seattle.
 
I predict that it is going to provide momentum for the remaining 124 games.
 
Go Sox!
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Back to Chris Forsyth, whose new album All Time Present has just been released. He also features in a truly fascinating episode of Brokedown Podcast - listen via iTunes, GooglePlay, Stitcher, and Spotify - in which he lists some of his favourite Dead shows. I commend it and the album to you.
 

When I excused myself briefly from a meeting last night, I confess that it was not – as many may have surmised – the old prostate playing up. I was actually checking on the score in the spring training game between the Sox and the Nationals and thus heard in real time the breaking news that Bryce Harper had signed for the Phillies. €330 million and 10 years was quoted by OB, though it turns out to be 13 years. With no opt-outs!
 
Returning to the meeting room, I found it difficult to focus on preparations for the local elections in my part of Leamington, which is in any case pretty much LibDem Central. I spent the rest of the time working out how this affects the Phillies luxury tax threshold and speculating about the future of Sox closer Kimbrel.
 
The deal with Harper is the biggest single guaranteed contract in baseball.
 
And not merely in baseball. It is the biggest deal in American sports history. In technical terms, it is a shedload of dosh. More even than the previous records – cash and duration - held (briefly) by Stanton at the Yankees and Machado at the Padres.
 
Is Harper worth it?
 
Nah. No-one is. Not even a generational talent like Harper.
 
But that won’t matter to Phillies fans if they win the title. It will, however, matter to Phillies fans if Harper doesn’t do the business. There are one or two Sox players who can tell you what happens to you reputation when a huge contract coincides with diminishing stats. (Where are you now, Carl Crawford?)
 
It’s going to be tough. Can one guy make all the difference to a team that was under .500 last year?
 
He’s got 19 games against the club he has grown up with. He’s got the Mets 19 times. And in August, he’s got a couple of games against the Sox. (We get Machado and the Padres immediately after!)
 
But he knows the National League East well and he’s walking into a hitter’s park (though for lefties not so much) - and they are already talking about Trout next year.
 
It’s all talk, of course, with about as much substance as the rumours that he had turned down Philly and was heading for LA. Only the Dodgers fans believed that.
 
And it doesn’t make a huge amount of difference one way or the other to the Red Sox Nation. Philly won’t go for Kimbrel now unless he drops his demands to a year, in which case he might as well stay with us. If we still want him and maybe we don’t.
 
My response to the whole saga is, I’m afraid, dismissive:

​“Hey, it's no big deal!”

                 RIP Nick Cafardo
              and thanks for the lift.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: I was alerted by the excellent Roy Kelly to an article in the New York Times about the Dead and Dark Star, which included a 12 Greatest Dark Stars listing. My need for displacement activity prompted the compilation of my own list, which features (to date) the 20 Greatest. Currently playing is 1970-02-14 at Fillmore East, which eases into St Stephen and The Eleven. So maybe 21 Greatest. 110 to go.

Anyone who has penned a single word about sport will be in awe of Hugh McIlvanney, who died last week. We will miss his insights into and understanding of his subject; but most of all, we will miss his prose. Few writers have managed to articulate so beautifully the cathartic power of, in particular, football and boxing. Fewer still have been able to communicate the exhilaration and despair of those spots of time – memorable moments of triumph or despair which occur in almost every sporting contest.
 
The author Rick Gekoski, no mean sportswriter himself, once wrote that “Sport makes you write, and think, and feel, in exclamation marks”. Which is true for even the most seasoned of us. In 2004, the Boston Globe headlined the Sox World Series victory, their first since 1918, in this way: YES!!! Nothing nuanced: just one word, one syllable, in capitals, with no less than three exclamation marks (or screamers as they are known).
 
I doubt whether McIlvanney would have done this. However tight the deadline, his judgements were as measured as his prose. The emotional sub-text was implicit rather than overt.
 
It is because I lean towards Rick and the Globe in my response to great sporting events that I admired McIlvanney so much. Although he insisted on being known as a ‘reporter’, he was not. One did not turn to his piece to find a blow by blow account of a bout or a goal by goal record of a football match. We valued his writing because it concerned itself with what it meant: to the players, to the coaches, to those who were present as spectators. It is significant that he numbered amongst his closest friends those who were involved totally in the sports about which he wrote. They – Jock Stein, Bill Shankly, Alex Ferguson, Angelo Dundee – knew that he knew and understood as much about their game as they did.
 
In a few weeks, I will be taking part in a round table at the History Department of Warwick University which concerns itself with sportswriting. My fellow panellists – Dave Sternburg, Simon Hart – are stars in the firmament. I am not.
 
Although I am on record with my views about Coventry City Football Club and Warwickshire County Cricket Club, my prime focus is on my beloved Boston Red Sox and the life of a fan based in the baseball desert which is the United Kingdom. (Although judging by the demand for tickets for the Yankees games at the London Stadium this summer, there are more of us in this country than we imagine.)
 
I tend not to engage in a recitation of baseball stats – when I did I was mildly chastised for doing so. Rather, my subject is my very personal and particular experiences of being a fan of a team which plays 3,000 miles away from my home.
 
In many ways, and certainly in the great order of things, it is a trivial pursuit. But almost every night, as I tune in to mlb.tv, I know that I will almost certainly witness something that only sport can provide:
 
In the words of Hugh McIlvanney, “a magnificent triviality”.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: After the fine performance of the Shostakovich String Quartet #2 in A major (actually mostly in A minor) by the Carducci Quartet on Friday evening, I am working my way through their Shostakovich cycle, including an advance copy of their new recordings of #1, #2 and #7. Magnificent and not trivial.

​