Ms Perfect

 

I never saw Christine McVie with Fleetwood Mac. I only saw Fleetwood Mac when Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer and Danny Kirwan were fronting the band.

But I did see Christine Perfect (as she was before marrying John McVie) several times with Chicken Shack on the same 1960s club circuit.

My unforgettable memory is the way she used to walk unassumingly on stage with her handbag, put it down by the side of the piano and then start playing the blues.

Shack's lead guitarist Stan Webb was mostly the one in the limelight, but the showstopping moment tended to be when Perfect took over and sang – beautifully – I'd Rather Go Blind, an old slow blues standard that she made her own.

Everyone seems to be remembering Christine McVie from the huge musical soap opera that Fleetwood Mac became after the Peter Green era... I'm happy to remember Christine Perfect. She really was something...

Oh, Suzahn...

 

A visit to the Night Owl bar in Finsbury Park, north London, is always interesting – but it was particularly so at a recent jazz jam session where I was introduced to Nashville singer/songwriter Suzahn Fiering, dropping in on her way from the US to Portugal.

Charming and talented in equal measures, Suzahn also whipped out a guitar that was quite amazing. She'd just picked it up from Snap Dragon, a company that specialises in fold-up guitars and which she endorses.

The picture above shows what her latest acquisition is like when it's unfolded (compact and cool) and below you can see what it's like when it's folded up – even more compact and ready to be put in a smart little carrying case and taken wherever a guitarist needs to go.

You can find out more about Suzahn Fiering at www.suzahn.com and about Snap Dragon at snap-dragon-guitars.com.

Circles of Life

 

By chance, I wandered into London's Serpentine South gallery and was instantly taken with Kamala Ibrahim Ishag's State of Oneness exhibition there.

Her art is weird but wonderful... and her recent work has explored what she sees as "interchangeability and metamorphosis" between plants and humans (and women in particular).

She says: "I believe vegetation and humans are one and the same. We eat plants for sustenance, we die and are buried. We become sustenance for the plants."

It all sounds a bit Lion King but actually, to me, it makes perfect sense. Life is eternal – not our own lives, but life – in all its inextricable manifestations.

And Kamala Ibrahim Ishag's paintings do a rather good job of putting us in our place.

State of Oneness continues at Serpentine South, Hyde Park, until 23 January 2023.

Abba Fabba Do!

I've been away... I'm back.

As the world falls apart, at least we have music. There seems to be great live music everywhere now in this post-ish-pandemic period.

But of all the gigs I've been to recently – and that includes seeing Bob Dylan's resumed and wonderful Never Ending Tour at Le Grand Rex theatre in Paris – the most mindblowing, back in London, featured ABBA. Or at least the Other Fab Four's 3D avatars.

Performing alongside a live 10-piece band and with a light show and visuals worthy of a Pink Floyd wet dream, they left me and my companions speechless – which is quite an achievement.

There had been endless hype about how groundbreaking this show was going to be. But it didn't live up to that hype – it went far, far beyond it.

The music – 90 non-stop minutes of it – is just about all of ABBA's finest moments, with the dial turned up way past 11. The only pauses are for some genuinely funny and poignant comments from Benny, Bjorn, Agnetha and Anni-Frid – via their avatars but, like the whole extravaganza, full of warmth and humanity.

It's expensive but worth every pound. Just go!

Boundless Unenthusiasm

I mentioned The Boundless Sea on this blog back in 2021 – and wasn't too complimentary about it, since I felt it didn't quite live up to the over-the-top plaudits published on its cover.

At that point I was only 200 pages in... but now I've finished the other 700...

It was a close run thing, since David Abulafia's water-based great tale is distinctly, er, dry.

It's a remarkable – if ultimately rather dull – book. But it does do a good job of chronicling humanity's greed, violence and selfishness – all, sadly, the drivers of so much of the nautical exploration and adventures catalogued here.

Abulafia often speeds through complex and momentous events, but for some reason he always finds a little time to rubbish Thor Heyerdahl. He discounts the Norwegian adventurer's theories about westward migration across the Pacific from the Americas – and then dismisses him as a "self-publicist".

I know only a few things about Heyerdahl. But they include the fact that he put his life on the line more than once to test his theories... and he was a bloody good writer...

And Heyerdahl's books have all the passion that The Boundless Sea lacks.

The Goat Man's Tale

 

I've been away... I'm back... A lot of work and a lot of music has kept me from blogging for a while... But the surprise appearance of a wonderful new book has kicked me into writing something about it.

In all my travels over the decades and among all the amazing people I've encountered, one has to stand out... Tommy DiMaggio (aka the Goat Man).

Having hiked across the Arizona desert with him and his pack goats, I knew he was a master of many things. But I didn't realise he was such a damn fine writer.

Maybe that's because he has such great stories to tell... but it's also because he has a no-nonsense, cut-to-the-chase way of telling them. In fact, he writes like he speaks...

All My Employees Are Animals is part-autobiography, part-cookery book and all heart. There is laughter – and food – on just about every page as Tommy takes us from a warm but gritty childhood along the somewhat crazy road to his development as a cook and an extraordinary character.

I had just been re-reading The Real Frank Zappa Book when All My Employees Are Animals arrived unexpectedly. And I have to say there are some similarities on the page between Frank and Tommy... They are both honest American voices telling it like it is... 

Sadly, Tommy's book doesn't get as far as his Arizona goatpacking days... so surely there has to be another volume... or two?

All My Employees Are Animals is available here. 

Naples in Perspective

A last word from me on Naples – for the time being – can be found in the latest ssue of the excellent magazine Perspective...

https://perspectivemag.co.uk/letter-from-elsewhere-naples/

Ithaca In Words – and Pictures

Jane Cochrane oversees her paintings being displayed

Preparations are under way for the official launch of Walking In The Footsteps Of Odysseus, the new guidebook to Ithaca by Jane Cochrane in which I played a bit part as walk-checker and sub-editor.

A capacity audience is expected to be at Paddington Library for the event on 28 April when Jane will be in conversation with me, talking about the genesis of the book and her love affair with the island so closely linked to Homer's Odyssey.

Whether or not you are going to the launch, you are now able to see some of Jane's beautiful Ithaca paintings on show at the library – for as well as being a meticulous researcher and writer, she is also a talented artist.

More information at www.janeocochrane.co.uk.

Amsterdam Nuisance

 

When is a guidebook not a guidebook? Possibly when it's called Secret Amsterdam.

My recent series of blogs, See Naples and Live, owed a good deal to some great travel and history books, not least the excellent Secret Naples by Valerio Ceva Grimaldi and Maria Franchini, published by Jonglez.

Naively I bought the Amsterdam volume in the same series, from Stanfords, just before going to spend a few days in the city, thinking that it would unlock delights similar to those I had been led to in my favourite Italian city.

It was not to be. 

A visit to the French garden of the Institut Francais sounded enticing... until it turned out that the Institut Francais was no more. The building was empty and, thanks to a local shopkeeper who ushered us through her store, we were able to see that the garden had long been derelict – it didn't even have any decent weeds.

The hi-tech spaceship-like interior of the ultra-fashionable Shoebaloo footwear store sounded like something out of this world... and so it proved to be, since its designer interior had been stripped out and got rid of, to be replaced with something that could only be described as a fairly ordinary shoe shop.

The Boutique of the Little Ladies, a 19th-century association dedicated to giving women financial independence, sounded well worth a visit... but the address at Leidseplein 33 didn't appear to correspond to any building in or around this square.

Having become a little wary, we checked, the evening before, the information that the entry to the Garden of the Geelvinck Hinlopen House Museum was indeed via the rear at Keizersgracht 633... to find that address clearly disused. We didn't go back...

I suppose in the end all this was my fault for not reading the small print on the final page of the book and the publication date of 2012. But should guidebooks be on sale that long after their use-by date? In a charity shop, maybe... surely not in a mainstream store?

You Too Can Follow Odysseus

Jane Cochrane's brilliant new Ithacan guidebook, Walking in the Footsteps of Odysseus, is now available to order online – details at www.janeocochrane.co.uk.

And she will be in conversation (with me) for an official launch on the evening of 28 April at Paddington Library, London W2. If you want to be there, you will need to book at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-in-the-footsteps-of-odysseus-tickets-269509499167?aff=ebdssbdestsearch.

In the Footsteps of Telemachus

If there is anyone out there who hasn't had enough of reading my blogs on An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague and An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague, I have an article in The Guardian this week about literally one of the high points... Click here

See Naples and Live – 25: The End of Another Odyssey

©Nigel Summerley

When I saw this reproduction head in an antiques shop window in Naples, it was like meeting an old friend.

It's Odysseus of course – a very old friend. I had last encountered this depiction of him during my 2020 trip when I visited Sperlonga on Italy's Odyssean Coast [see this blog An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague – 12: 22-28 September 2020].

As I've mentioned before, there is a big connection between the travels of Odysseus and the west coast of Italy, but it was still a lovely surprise to find him here in the heart of Naples.

And the slow train that finally took me from Naples back to Rome a few days later afforded me a glimpse of one of the most magical places from my own odyssey in 2020 – and from that of Odysseus many, many centuries before.

It was Monte Circeo... once an isle where the sorceress Circe was said to have roamed, but now a promontory, even though it still looks like an island [see this blog An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Islands, 9 January 2021].

Glimpsed from a train window... Monte Circeo,
the isle of Circe  ©Nigel Summerley

After that, I rode the train into the sunset... and my wonderful adventures in Naples came to an end...

©Nigel Summerley

See Naples and Live – 24: Buona Notte

 

©Nigel Summerley

I love Naples. It's as simple as that. New York, London, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam... they're all amazing in their way. But they have nothing on Napoli.

In this series of Neapolitan blogs I've hardly mentioned Vesuvius, that looming ever-presence that reminds the city of the thin line between life and death, between today and perhaps no tomorrow.

When my friend Z and I emerged from our Hermann Nitsch experience [see this blog See Naples and Live – 13: Bloody Weird, 18 November 2021], this was the view of the rooftops of Naples that we saw, with shadowy Vesuvius on the horizon and a bright moon glowing through the evening clouds. It was a perfect moment... a marvellous way to take in this perfectly imperfect city... which was so hard to say goodbye to.

See Naples and Live – 23: Personal Drainers

©Nigel Summerley

The worst job you ever had is probably nowhere near as bad as that of those who once laboured in the Neapolitan catacombs of San Gaudioso in the 17th century. 

God knows how, but the monks who ran the place came up with a novel way of preserving the well-off dead for posterity – and making some extra money in the process.

Down beneath the church of the Basilica Santa Maria della Sanita in Naples, I was shown the stone benches where the corpses of the rich used to be sat against the wall and then (with buckets placed beneath them) punctured to drain off all their fluids.

This process took a while apparently, so the body drainers, the schiattamuorti, sometimes had quite a few customers sitting in a row, waiting to be fully desiccated.

It must have been like working in some sort of a cross between a care home and Hell.

There was no fresh air coming into the catacombs – apart from when trap doors above were opened to lower a new corpse into place. The lack of ventilation combined with the noxious effects of exposure to decomposing bodies meant the lives of the schiattamuorti were constantly at risk.

When one of the dead was thoroughly dried out, the body was buried, but what remained of its precious head was stuck in the walls of the catacombs; and then a bizarre portrait of a skeleton wearing the clothes of the deceased was painted beneath it.

This ritual continued for several decades before someone noted how unhygienic – not to mention slightly unhinged – it was and the practice was brought to an end.

All the bones were eventually removed from the catacombs along with the front halves of the skulls on display. As you'll see from these pictures, the remains of the skulls – and the accompanying frescoes – are still very much visitable and visible.

The Catacombs of San Gaudioso present a weirdly wonderful cocktail of life, death and superstition...  just like Naples itself.

©Nigel Summerley

©Nigel Summerley

See Naples and Live – 22: Underground Religion

San Gennaro Catacombs ©Nigel Summerley

I've already touched on some of the history of the unfortunate San Gennaro [see this blog 26 December 2021, See Naples and Live – 20: Bones and Blood] who had his head removed by the Romans in Pozzuoli near Naples in the 4th century because he was a fervent Christian.

His body and his head – and allegedly his blood – all travelled around quite a bit. But in the 5th century most of his remains were brought to Naples and buried in the catacombs that today still bear his name.

Four centuries later those remains were stolen and removed to the town of Benevento which also had a claim on the poor man.

In 1497 the saint's bones were finally returned to Naples – where some of them can still be seen in the Cathedral.

But more atmospheric by far are those Catacombs of San Gennaro – in the Sanita district – where not only he but many of the early Christians were entombed while they waited for their expected resurrection.

The Catacombs are a long way out from the centre of the city and not brilliantly signposted – in fact, not really signposted at all. But don't be put off. The locals are used to confused visitors wandering about and they happily dispense directions, often without being asked. Sometimes they just smile and point...

The remains of Gennaro are no longer here, of course, but you can see the tomb where he was once laid – and the many niches in which his fellow Christians were sealed up – and marvel at this underground cemetery whose structure also served as an atmospheric church.

Some of the intensity of the lives of these followers of Jesus can be picked up from exploring this subterranean sepulchre – but it is nothing to the eerie nature of the Catacombs of San Gaudioso, also in Sanita and also to be featured shortly in this blog.

San Gennaro Catacombs ©Nigel Summerley

See Naples and Live – 21: Breasts or Testicles?

©Nigel Summerley

While I was reading a century-old book relating the story of the Hittite empire, a reference to "Artemis of the Many Breasts" reminded me of one of the most curious sights in Naples' National Archaeological Museum – pictured above.

My first thought on seeing her was certainly that this was a goddess with a profusion of breasts. But when I read the accompanying notice, I was informed that these were in fact bulls' testicles and thus symbols of fertility.

Either way, this was a pretty weird image. But I was sold on the testicles, and stuck to that explanation when showing this photograph to other people.

However, now it doesn't seem to be quite so clear-cut. The breasts explanation held sway for a very long time in the past – so much so that one statue of the goddess had multiple jets of milk-like liquid spurting from every protuberance (not dissimilar to the Naples fountain depicting Parthenope – see this blog 23 November, See Naples and Live – 14: Sirens, Sirens Everywhere...).

One argument for the testicles, though, is that if these were the goddess's breasts, surely they would be coloured dark, to match her face and hands? Their distinctly different colouring suggests that they are indeed testicles detached from their bovine owners to be made into fashion accessories with a religious significance.

Whatever the truth, this stunning statue remains just one of myriad reasons to visit a museum overflowing with marvels.