Too Hot to Sleep

I had meant to go along to the launch party of Merton High Street's newly refurbished Nelson Arms (as opposed to the Admiral Nelson of Whitton) yesterday evening, but due to shenanigans from herself - "so no change there" - I couldn't make it on time.

I did manage to turn up at about 9:30 when an "open mike" music session was in progress and actually found it rather charming and engaging even though the odd performer had me daydreaming wistfully of the Antares Auto-Tune 4 Pitch Correcting Plug-In.

Speaking of amateur performances my adagio for string quartet is coming along quite nicely and my teacher suggested that I should try and get a quartet actually to play it.

(She also in the same session said that I had missed my vocation and that I should be writing movie soundtracks .... if I can't blow my own trumpet - or bow my own string here - where can I?)

I still think that the piece needs work. I grant that I want it to be slow and to shimmer, and that the aural interest is intended to be be as much harmonic as melodic but at the moment I think that the viola or cello players would die of boredom before they got to the end of it. One problem is that you can clearly hear the vestigial keyboard upon which I worked it up in the arrangement. I'm over the hump though and I'll definitely finish it ..... but it is difficult to concentrate in this heat.

Robbie Robertson wrote the song that is my soundtrack for this week. He pulls off sultry, while I can't seem to get past sweaty:

Yeah, I can see it now
The distant red neon shivered in the heat
I was feeling like a stranger in a strange land
You know where people play games with the night
God, it was too hot to sleep
I followed the sound of a jukebox coming from up the levee
All of a sudden I could hear somebody whistling
From right behind me
I turned around and she said
"Why do you always end up down at Nick's Cafe?"
I said "I don't know, the wind just kind of pushed me this way."
She said "Hang the rich."

Catch the blue train
To places never been before
Look for me
Somewhere down the crazy river
Somewhere down the crazy river
Catch the blue train
All the way to Kokomo
You can find me
Somewhere down the crazy river
Somewhere down the crazy river

Take a picture of this
The fields are empty, abandoned '59 Chevy
Laying in the back seat listening to Little Willie John
Yea, that's when time stood still
You know, I think I'm gonna go down to Madam X
And let her read my mind
She said "That Voodoo stuff don't do nothing for me."

I'm a man with a clear destination
I'm a man with a broad imagination
You fog the mind, you stir the soul
I can't find, ... no control

Catch the blue train
To places never been before
Look for me
Somewhere down the crazy river
Somewhere down the crazy river
Catch the blue train
All the way to Kokomo
You can find me
Somewhere down the crazy river
Somewhere down the crazy river

Wait, did you hear that
Oh this is sure stirring up some ghosts for me
She said "There's one thing you've got to learn
It's not to be afraid of it."
I said "No, I like it, I like it, it's good."
She said "You like it now
But you'll learn to love it later."

I been spellbound - falling in trances
I been spellbound - falling in trances
You give me shivers - chills and fever
I been spellbound - somewhere down the crazy river