It’s a very hot Saturday and an even hotter Sunday is to follow! Today I decided to have a cycle ride up to Kerridge and then on to Rainow a small village about four miles from home and nestling in the foot of the Peak District National park. It is a very enchanted little place at times as is Kerridge and both seem to embody a genuine spirit of rural living with more than a hint of folkloric shenanigans. Today Rainow was gearing up for a curious annual ritual where the whole village is bedecked with home made mannequins in a range of guises and sometimes set into thematic tableau’s. They are called “scarecrows” no doubt a homage to the art of making artificial human figures. Each “scarecrow” or tableau has a number and label attached some proclaiming a thematic title and no doubt to aid a judging process. Figures made of straw clamber up walls and sit on fences. A character dressed in teenage ice hockey gear sits on a garage roof and round every corner and on every verge is some strange little figure representing a situation or person from real life such as a resting cross country runner. The whole thing has more than a hint of transmogrified pagan ritual to it and no doubt would appear to be a rather creepy concept to many urban folks. The earnest collective effort and anthropomorphic mimetics sometimes evoke a hint of the Wicker Man.
I have gone into something of a substantial retro mode with music tastes at the moment, a temporary rest from the “cutting edge” though cutting edge as in the old Mike Chadwick show on JFM is where most of this current retro interest was fostered. Its never a bad idea to delve into the genuine creativity of the old school and proper musos playing real interments with panache. The
reformed Floyd at Live 8 certainly showed most of the current generation of bands how it really is done and they still blew away most of the competition in my mind. Right now, I am after something of an old classic in the Jazz/Funk mode. Lenny White’s Venusian Summer album from 75 has been on my want list ever since I heard the Mating Drive track on JFM years ago. It was a bit of a hackneyed genre (fusion) even then, but never the less this album by the legendary jazz rock drummer is set off by a pure mind blowing exposition of guitar playing with incomprehensible fret work the like of which you just don’t hear now adays. Also, thought about getting that old CSN&Y potboiler Déjà vu if only for the hauntingly melodic and psychedelic title track.
On the road to Rainow. Total mileage as of today and since Jan 2003: 4,468.5 Miles. That’s 850.8 miles since Dec 2004..Poor show!