Bursts of the Musical Muse in Portsoy and Elsewhere

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Bursts of the musical muse – in Portsoy and elsewhere

This short story records the influence of music on the life of a much travelled Portsoy loon from the 1960s till the present.

Buckie beginnings

George (Dod) Gordon Clark (1949- present) took piano and voice lessons from Nancy Merson in Buckie. When he was ten he joined her concert party as a boy soprano in a kilt. He also joined the concert party of the Buckie Optician Tommy Laing. His repertoire included “Kelvin Grove” and “Duncan Gray”.

School days in Portsoy

In 1961 George’s family moved to Portsoy (his mother’s home town) where he joined the Church Choir which at the time was run by Charlie Green (Chemist). Along with Ian Gray, Norman Mackay and Martin Green he got guitar lessons from Dougie McLellan and John Rennie of the Copycats and went on to play with Ishbel Findlay and Sheila Barclay in the youth club band that was encouraged by the Rev. (Monty) Montgomery. He also got piano lessons from Mrs Kerr on Hill Street and his Dad arranged that he could practice on the piano in the Station Hotel.

While at Fordyce Academy he played Samuel the pirate lieutenant in the school production of the Pirates of Penzance alongside Fiona Murray (nee Cameron) as Mabel. While at Banff Academy he was in the school choir (led by Monica Anton) which, amongst other things, performed Edward Elgar’s ‘Dream of Gerontius’ and Benjamin Britten’s ‘Noye’s Fludde’.

Aberdeen and Edinburgh

While at university in Aberdeen most of George’s musical attention was on the folk revival. But he was also a member of the student group “Voldramic” that staged concerts in old folk’s and children’s homes and also in prisons.

Latterly he teamed up with Judy Rose (nee Crighton) who was an Aberdonian singer songwriter. In their early work years they wrote songs and performed together in the folk clubs of Edinburgh and Fife. Some of these songs feature on his two albums (see below).

Jamaica

In 1974 George went to teach Biology in the mountains of Jamaica. Some of the teachers formed a band called ‘El Grupo’ to raise money to support a student trip to Mexico. But the band proved to be a popular concert party and it was kept busy for a couple of years. One of the band was a classically trained Glaswegian musician called Rob Connell. Rob and George were bemused and honored to be called on to play guitar and piano respectively as back up to the official organist for the Anglican, all-island jamboree in the cathedral in Port Maria. The National Anglican Choir were performing a new Caribbean Mass and two Scotsmen were called on to supply the beat! (Note – other members of El Grupo were in the Anglican choir).

George also played at weekends mainly as a duo with Zelda Gahn a Canadian music teacher with the voice of an angel. The venue was Gallaria Theophony in Kingston Jamaica. They would practice on Saturday afternoons and perform in the evening. There were many expatriates in the audience and Irish songs were well appreciated.

Zambia

In the late 1970s George was teaching in rural boarding schools in Zambia. There were few opportunities to play in bands but the school choir was percussion rich and practiced behind the poultry unit. George had the honor of teaching banjo to the choir master, Kelvin Kangongwe. The process took about ten minutes after which Kelvin was teaching George. Amongst other things this raised George’s appreciation of how African polyrhythms are orchestrated.

South Sudan

George was in the South Sudan from 1981-85. It was a busy time work wise and music was on the back burner as a pleasant way of passing time mainly amongst expatriates. George learned a lot of new tunes from a Canadian guitar player Joeanne Coffey who was a leading light in an informal band of ‘Sweaty Bunnies’ – ladies glowing from the heat and with their hair tied up behind their heads.

A minor claim to fame from the Sudan days is that George was asked to write a song in support of UNICEFs expanded program of immunization. A recording was made of the school choir performing the song which was blasted from Ministry of Health landrovers as they approached villages. The song began as follows:

Too many children are dying, they don’t need to be dying,
They can get a protection if they get an injection against –
CHORUS
Tetanus, diphtheria, and against whooping cough,
Poliomyelitis and measles and tuberculosis

Belize

From 1988-92 George was an education advisor in Belize. The country prided itself on being the Caribbean beat in the heart of Central America. George had two main musical experiences:

He was a member, and sometime manager of the Belize Choral Society which was a favorite of the then Prime Minister George Price. The Society had a wide repertoire that included much of the new material written by Dr Colville Young. It was called upon to perform at most state occasions. The Society brought out a couple of cassettes in the time that George was there - one of xmas songs and one of national songs.

George also supplied bass, keyboard and back up guitar and vocals for ‘Brad Pat and Friends’. Brad was a local DJ and collector of traditional songs but he also had a seemingly limitless knowledge of popular music from other traditions. This stood the band in good stead during request time at our once a week residency at the Ramada Inn in Belize City. The audience was made up mainly of Canadians from a regular cruise ship that anchored offshore.

The sound engineer Charles Hallowell made a professional recording of the band which featured one of Brad’s own compositions “Let the feelings go”.

Another minor claim to fame is that George provided bass and backing vocals to a recording of Dr Young (keyboard), and Brad Pat (guitar and vocals) playing some of their own songs. The recording was made in the local TV studio and the program became a regular broadcast at xmas time. Dr Young went on to be Governor General of Belize and Brad moved to California.

Portsoy and the Howling Shed

In the early 1990s George spent a few years in Portsoy contemplating the infinite. But he got involved as a percussionist with the Insch based “Howling Shed”. Most of the band members were formerly with the “Desperate Danz Band” and they included Ian McDonald (singer songwriter and guitar), Louise Mackenzie (fiddle), Ian Rae (guitar), Bob Barrow (bass) and Neil Edelsten (keyboard and trombone). The band played to sell out venues at the Edinburgh Acoustic Music Festival for three years running. (The ‘show’ included the actor Johnny Sangster who wound up the crowd as ‘Pierre’ the obstreperous French waiter.) Otherwise they played for the occasional wedding and did a few hectic tours of West Coast pubs and venues. They disbanded in 1995 without ever making the much talked about recording.

George found the light and the landscape on the weekly drive from Portsoy to Insch to be musically inspiring. It was the source of many of the 77 Toon loon tunes that he wrote between July 1993 and October 1994.

Lesotho

From 1995-98 George worked in Lesotho as an education advisor during the day and as a recording engineer and musician in the evenings and weekends. His house in Maseru was set up as a home recording studio and felt like a railway station for musicians most of the time.

A band called Inner Harmony was put together to perform the songs of Lawrence (Kaye) Kekeletso a prominent newspaper man. Much of the accompaniment was arranged by multi tracked midi from a keyboard. But for live performances real musicians were called in to humanize the output. The most notable live performance was at the Teyateyataneng Rock Concert where they shared the stage with, amongst others, the South African Legends Brenda Fassie, and Shankimoto

Two collections of Lawrence’s songs were published as cassettes:

“Press Freedom” was sponsored by the NewsShare Foundation, Media Institute of Lesotho, Communications Media Consultancy, Epic Printers and others. Acknowledgements include George Clark – arrangements/engineering; Dyke Sehlooho – assistant engineer; Papali Maqalika-Mokobori – backing vocals; Thabiso J Mochele – guitar; Teboho Mpheteng – piano

For the second cassette “Metsi a Lihlaba” acknowledgements include G Clark – production and engineering; Yvonne O Mphatsoe, Halejoetse Tsehlana, and Rets’elisitsoe Mathibeli – backing vocals.

George also worked regularly with Albert Makaja a salesman for female cosmetics. Albert specialized in using the midi system to create music for Taxis. These were minibuses that carried workers from Lesotho to distant work places in South Africa. The taxis had mega huge sound systems and the music they played was key to attracting customers. Home made copies of Makaja’s tunes were proving popular with the taxis but professional bulking up had not been arranged by the time George left.

Makaja proved to be an adept producer of other people’s work. George worked with him in producing the album ‘Lehlasipa No.1’ by Anatleta Dlamini (a female singer songwriter). Makaja was producer, George was engineer who made the computer do what Makaja wanted, and Jobo Maqacha was the unflappable and brilliant guitarist and accordionist. The master copy of the cassette was sent to South Africa for bulking up but unfortunately, in 1997, the process was low quality.

Freelancing from Portsoy

George left Lesotho in 1998 and became a freelance intellectual and plain language writer. Paid work came in short bursts and this left plenty of time to contemplate the infinite and to tidy up the tunes and songs that he had written over the years. He took most of the home studio equipment back from Lesotho and set it up in his house in Seafield Terrace where it fed a long obsession.

Three websites came of this process:

“Toon Loon Tunes” is a collection of new Scottish music in the traditional style written during a period of inspiration which lasted from July 1993 till October 1994. Each tune is presented in manuscript form with a note about what inspired it and a midi file so that you can hear what it sounds like if you are not so hot at reading the dots. Photocopies of the tunes and stories are available in two volumes: Toon Loon Tunes (July 1994) Volume 1- First Fifty and Toon Loon Tunes (November 1994) Volume 2 – Anithir Seven and Twenty

“The Cure for the Blues” presents two generations of existential soft rock with album notes, lyrics and chords, and mp3 files. There are six songs from the 1970s and six from the 1990s. Here is an extract from the sleeve notes:

“Amazingly this is the first solo album from a musical life beginning in the 1950s as a boy soprano performing for banana sandwiches at Woman's Rural Institute meetings and leading through Church choirs, the Scottish folk revival in the 1960s, choral, calypso and reggae in the Caribbean, an assortment of traditional and contemporary musical attachments in East, Central and Southern Africa and, a few years ago in Scotland, with the late and legendary Howling Shed (sell outs three years running at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival).

He says that this album is just a small sample of his 'wee tunies'. He wrote love songs when younger but these have not been included as, 'They were jist passin fads, nae the real thing'. What we have in this album is the real thing, what the Soul Trader wryly calls 'existential soft rock wi a bit o this and a bit of that thrown in”.

Hard copies of the album notes with lyrics and chords are available

“The Never Ending Highway” presents two generations of existential soft rock with album notes, lyrics, chord blocks and mp3 files. There are seven songs from the 1970s and three from the 1990s. This quote catches the flavor of the album:

“I wrote this song when I was twenty four. My student days were over and I had entered the real world as a school teacher in the slum schools of Edinburgh. I had been playing around with sex, drugs and rock and roll as people did in those days but I had also been sticking my head into Eastern religions in the hope that they might have something to offer other than western style rationality, hedonism and braindeadery.

I was still looking for THE ANSWER with part of my head but there are signs that I was copping on to the insights of the Prajnaparamita where I see the road that never has an end and beyond that to the state where I know there is no highway.

But I lace my boots regardless
And I lift my pack with purpose
As I move along the never ending highway.

It was going to take many years to get to grips with the notion that there is no highway. The songs in this collection record some of the twists and turns along the way.”

Moving on

Having produced the three websites and the sleeve notes George’s interests moved on and music was largely forgotten; although he unwrapped the gear to record and make CDs of the 75 Club choir and the Church Praise Group.

Time and technology wait for no man on the never ending highway. Several of the machines from the Lesotho days no longer work and the computer technology has evolved and there is a steep learning curve required before he could pick up from where he left off.

But other changes follow from George having been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2010. As yet he has no major tremor but he has reduced fine motor control in his hands which means that he can no longer play guitar and keyboard and changes to his voice means that he can no longer sing.

Websites:

Loon Tunes

Cure for the Blues

Never Ending Highway

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