Going to the gym is enjoyable enough. I try to go at least three times a week to the pleasantly eccentric one at the White Hart Hotel, near to where I live in Lewes, UK. The treadmill run can seem at times like the kind of punishment  once doled out on a prison sentence with hard labour, but, mostly, I enjoy the adrenalin flow you get from pushing yourself that bit further each time and, of course the feeling you get when it’s over. My companion in these adventures is my iPod – already old technology, it seems, but one of my best friends, when I’m travelling or when I’m running.

I always take time to plan what I am going to listen to at the gym each week – usually deciding on one album that I will get to know all the better from these repeat performances. At times it turns the gym into a sacred temple – maybe that is what gyms are in modern times.

Last week my album was the hypnotic and quietly melancholy new album, Pagan, from a young English one-man band known as Palmistry. Palmistry is quintessentially English with his lightly limpid  voice and gentle sensitivity but where he is musically new to my ears is the way he uses and transforms Caribbean traditions into an exquisite hybrid, substituting tightly controlled but delicate rhythms for the more extroverted beat we associate with reggae.

I’ve loved this music. It has helped too when I was reaching exhaustion point at the end of a run.

Over the weekend, I found time to sit in the garden and read the latest issue of The New Yorker, always a pleasure even though the US, just like us here in the UK, is going through a difficult and worrying time in its history. Part of me felt guilty, the bit that wasn’t happy to be soaking up the sun in my small  urban garden. Guilty to be enjoying a lifestyle so different from many of the people described within those pages this week. I have made many enjoyable, stimulating and eye-opening trips to America over the years and, sitting there in my garden, I was taken back specifically to the time I spent in New York City in the 1990s (in my Sony Discman days) when I used to listen to what was a new phenomenon to my ears, American hip-hop.

I have been to the States a lot in my life as a TV producer and I haven’t always been there for its beauty or its excitement. I have seen, and photographed, many things in the USA that showed me that even my favourite countries have their downsides.

1990s rap music now reminds me of some difficult times over there but also the thrill of being out there on the streets where danger and excitement are often edgy companions.

So this week, my album has to be illmatic by the artist knowns as nas. Surely one of the best hip-hop albums ever – well certainly in my experience. I was reading about nas in a previous issue of The New Yorker and just had to dig it out again. It will, I hope, keep me running this week.

So if you want to hear something of what I’ve been talking about, here are two tracks from these two wonderful albums. Enjoy:

The post My friend and companion the iPod keeps me running on that treadmill. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

Wolfie’s lesson of the week: Make sure you always have your keys with you.

Otherwise you will be stranded outside and you will almost inevitably have to wait in the pub until you are rescued. Being rescued can sometimes take a very long time. Don’t believe the writing on the glass. This was not a pint of Fullers but a pint of Lewes’ own Harvey’s Best.

Next week’s resolution: To be careful not to do it again.

Lucky for me that I live just round the corner from the excellent Lewes Arms.

Luckily too that I had some friends to keep me company and, of course, my download of new band Octopuses’ single, Sarcastic on my iPod. (See Wednesday’s blog)

You too can download it on:

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/sar… www.bigsaladrecords.com

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The temperatures were hot for an Englishman and, being car-less, the journey had to be taken on foot but, as I’ve discovered since having to give up driving, it is at walking pace that you really see the countryside in its many details but I tried to keep out of the sun as much as possible by walking on the shadowy side of the paths and roads sheltering under my trusty hat.

I had seen from my roof that there was another beach on the other side of these hills, one that looked a great deal more interesting than the rather tame resort atmosphere of Gabicce Mare. I had decided to find it in this wonderful  part of Italy where vast areas of green open out onto Adriatic blue.

Part of the way was by footpath but I also joined small and mostly empty winding roads where the only people I saw were passing and necessarily fit cyclists.

Now, in gaps between the trees, I could see the Adriatic Sea in the distance looking somehow more blue because of the green.

Then more cyclists who may be challenged by these hills but who usually greeted the straggling English pedestrian with a friendly “salve!” or even the less formal “ciao!”

This road is known as the Strada Panoramico Adriatica and is a great favourite for competitive cyclists and up here in the hills, they were more of them than walkers.

Walking though allowed me to  stop and to admire the wild flowers that were still growing in abundance along the sides of the road. Another advantage of being in Italy on the cusp between Spring and Summer.

The small gardens that I passed showed just how casually cultivated plants grow in these parts too like this cliff top rose garden that gave me my first view of my beach destination at Vallugola Bay.

On another day I was to see the beach from out at sea where I could put it into geographical context and see that it really was far from the madding crowd.

Now, though, I was ready to lie back on one of those sunbeds on a beach that was still remarkably free of tourists considering the perfect weather.

Italy does beaches well and, even though this was a relatively remote spot, civilised comforts were easily hired. Inevitably, as this is Italy and we weren’t near any towns, most of the sun-worshippers had arrived by motorbike.

First though I needed one of those rather smart umbrellas.

Much better.

Then it was really only a matter of self-indulgent relaxation. It took me a long time to discover the pleasures of lulling around on beaches but now it’s become an annual necessity. All I needed was some good coffee, a little shade and my now indispensable Kindle reading machine where daily copies of The Times of London and the The York Times were delivered by clicking a button.

My main reading experience this holiday was the great epic À la recherche du temps perdu – In Search of Lost Time (Remembrance of Things Past) by Marcel Proust (1871-1922) in the English translation by C.K. Scott Monchrieff. A massive novel (or really seven novels) written between 1909 and his death in 1922.

So not very Italian, this great French masterpiece that studies memories involuntarily brought into our conscious state by moments such as the famous incident early in the series when the author tastes a madeleine cake with his tea. When finishing the book, the notoriously nocturnal Proust spent three years mostly lying in bed during daylight hours writing.  I thought it was appropriate enough then to read it lying down even if I was allowing more than a bit of daylight onto my skin.

The morbidly nocturnal Marcel Proust was remarkably unlike the two charmingly lively salvataggi (life guards) at Vallugola beach but reading his languorous, long-limbed prose in such a setting, I could imagine Monsieur Proust lying out there on one of those sunbeds conjuring images of moodily timeless Summer days.

Proust is a good awakener of our senses and it was not long before I was drawn to the pleasures of swimming in warm Southern European waters.

It isn’t really very surprizing that human beings like hanging out on beaches.

Soon I was venturing in, delighted to find that the water had been prepared by some mythical butler to the perfect temperature. If only our sea was like that in England.

Adriatic Sea, I’m missing you already.

So there it was, the sun, the sea, some coffee and my Kindle. What else could I possibly crave? Well, music of course. Luckily I had my iPod with me stocked up with holiday listening.

This year it was the always inspiring Joni Mitchell and, new to me, her powerfully moving and very beautiful album Turbulent Indigo (1994) (my Summer project is my own private Proust and Mitchell festival).  Those of you who know might think I’m dodging “the light like Blanche Dubois” but then, I’m reading Proust so no apologies. Turbulent Indigo will now, in true Proustian style, conjure up images of Italian beaches. I had to have some Italian music with me too though and the exciting Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli came up with the answer just for me when she released her thrilling new recording of what is possibly my favourite opera: Norma (1831) by the Sicilian composer Vincenzo Bellini (1801 -1835).

It might not be perfect (what is?) but Cecilia Bartoli’s version of this glorious music is genuinely thrilling and, also as Proust would expect, Bellini’s aria, Casta Diva,  about the Moon will now always remind me of bright golden sunlight on warm Italian waters. More Italian experiences next week.

Meanwhile, I’m getting into gear for the imminent publication (in October)  of my novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

You can already pre-order the book from the publishers, Ward Wood Publishing:

http://wardwoodpublishing.co.uk/titles-fiction-colin-bell-stephen-dearsleys-summer-of-love.htm 

…or from Book Depository:

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Stephen-Dearsleys-Summer-Love-Colin-Bell/9781908742070

…or from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Stephen%20Dearsley’s%20Summer%20Of%20love

The post Walking cross-country to an Italian Beach with Marcel Proust, Cecilia Bartoli and Joni Mitchell appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

Sometimes life gets too busy for decision-making or maybe it is because I have a Libran personality with that famous reluctance to make decisions or, most likely, I’m just a little bit OCD but recently I’ve taken to playing all the songs on my iPod in alphabetical order starting with A for About A Girl by Nirvana.

Now that is really no order at all – musically it is entirely random and therefore mostly surprizing. Well that is until I started to guess what would be up next. Actually I’m not sure if it says anything about me but it is making interesting listening. You might well hate it.

Here’s what I have been listening to down at the gym recently:

Buggin’   (The Flaming Lips)
Bullet Proof  (Radiohead)
Bummer In The Summer  (Love)
Butterfly  (Weezer)
Bye  (Eliot Smith)
California  (Low)
California  (Joni Mitchell)
Call Me Lightning  (The Who)
Can’t Make A Sound  (Eliot Smith)
Can’t Sleep  (Above & Beyond)
Candela    (Buena Vista Social Club)
Candles In The Rain   (Melanie)
Candy Perfume Girl  (Madonna)
Cannonball  (Damien Rice)
Cannons  (Youth Lagoon)
Caramel  (John Grant)
Carey  (Joni Mitchell)
Carol  (The Rolling Stones)
Carolina On My Mind  (Melanie)
Caroline No  (The Beach Boys)
Carry The Weight   (The Beatles)
A Case Of You  (Joni Mitchell)
Casimir Pulaski Day  (Sufjian Stevens)
Centre of Gravity  (Yo La Tengo)

I bet you can’t guess what will be coming up next –  four more songs are printed below for the music nerds amongst you. Before that here is the last song I’ve been listening to – the sexily laid back and so very mellow Yo La Tengo’s Centre of Gravity:

Chan Chan (Buena Vista Social Club)
Chance Meeting (Roxy Music)
Changes (David Bowie)
Chasing After Deer  (Midlake)

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At the moment I have been playing R.E.M.s mavellously electric guitar based album Monster which I first got to know sitting on a hotel balcony in Richmond Virginia when it first came out. I was using what seemed to me at the time another wonderful piece of gear, my first and only Sony Discman. Now whenever I hear this album, I am transported to a Virginian high summer and an edgy American city which matches the music quite perfectly.

I am having a party on Friday and, to prove that I am no old fogey as far as music is concerned, I will use my iPod for the party music and I will shuffle my way through my albums hoping that Mahler Three doesn’t emerge unexpectedly.

So it is great downloading songs from the internet, playing them on my iPod and disgarding anything that disappoints. Here I am totally at one with the new age but……..

I have been listening to one of my favourite operas, Verdi’s Don Carlo or Don Carlos depending on which language version I happen to be playing. On my chronological progress through the history of classical music, I have reached 1868 but I have stayed stuck in 1866 as far as this opera is concerned.

I have owned and played the great Carlo Maria Giulini recording (EMI 7243 5 56152 2 0 ) on vinyl and on cd and went straight to it as soon as my strict regime allowed it. It was great to discover that I loved it just as much as I always have even after such a long time away. As the project has now been running for twelve years, I am really missing some of my late Nineteenth Century favourites to say nothing about all that exciting music from the beginning of the Twentieth Century.

Now comes the annoying part.

I had been preparing myself for this moment. Reading Julian Budden’s definitive books on the Verdi operas (The Operas of Verdi by Julian Budden, three volumes Published by Clarendon Paperbacks, Reprinted 2002) and the powerful original play by Schiller (Don Carlos by Friedrich Schiller in a new version by Mike Poulton, Nick Hern Books, 2005) and I had also ordered the cds of Verdi’s excellent original French version of the opera in the recording by Antonio Pappano (EMI 7243 5 67401 2 9 ).

Volume Three of the Julian Budden book arrived last week after I had ordered a secondhand copy over the internet. My excitement at the thought of this next installment of Budden’s magisterial account of these great operas was slightly diminished by the discovery that the first seven pages had been ripped out. I kept my patience however, wrote a complaining email and got my money back. Impressed by my own self-control, I looked up those seven pages in the library.

So, as you can see, I was taking this seriously. I have seen several productions of this opera at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden over the years including, most memorably a classic performance by the sensational Russian bass Boris Christoff as the troubled King Philip the Second with the then vocally flawless Gwyneth Jones as Elizabetta.

I have known it and loved it in its five act Italian version for all of my adult life but I had never got round to listening to it in its original French as Verdi first conceived it for its premiere at the Paris Opera in 1866. In one stroke, this Italian genius wrote the greatest of all French grand operas and I have always wanted to hear it.

So this was the time if there ever was to be a moment in life when I could sit down and study this quite amazing piece with its marriage of politics, religion and passion portrayed by some of Verdi’s most psychologically complex characters.

I had ordered the box set of cds from America and they were sitting in my study awaiting this long expected moment.

That time finally arrived last week, so I sat down with my nicely brassy hi-fi system, pressed the remote button and the music began. For all the joys of my iPod, there is nothing quite like sitting back in a room with a good acoustic listening to epic music on an impressively sonorous sound system – call me old-fashioned if you will.

All was well until the end of the first cd when an ominous click turned into a sound jump and then aural chaos. Thanks American CD company – you sent me a bummer! My first attack of hi-fi rage got worse as I tried all known ways of removing the scratches from the surface of the cd. Each time, there was a moment of hope followed by the same disaster. I left the whole thing and walked away.

I went back the other day, thinking passive thoughts about wanting to hear the rest of the opera and at least the other two cds were probably fine.

So I sat down again, carrying on where I had left off and the room filled with sound.

Then there was a bit less sound and then a few crackles and my amplifier decided to have one of its intermittent faults. Usually the odd kick, shake and a bout of cable fiddling does the trick but not that day. Grand Opera on half cock is just not my thing so the hi-fi rage returned with more vengeance than Verdi’s Grand Inquisitor. Fifteen years of this technician-defying fault finally decided me on ruthless action. I would replace my amplifier and not listen to any music until the system was working again. Well, no music apart form R.E.M on my i-Pod that is.

And here it is, my new piece of equipment, it arrived this morning, bought on-line via E-Bay, my new, well secondhand, Kenwood 3020 Second Edition integrated amplifier. It is sitting in the hall but I am not sure if my hi-fi rage has subsided enough for me to risk opening and installing it. What if it doesn’t work? Could I be sure that I would not act like a pampered, drug-crazed rock star, and throw the whole system out of my window onto the street below?

Maybe I should just move on, download it onto my iPod but, no, Verdi’s opera has a powerful draw and it needs that acoustic punch. I think I will go and plug in the new amp, see you all later.

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