Monday Musings...of missing Muso's

I am listening to a classic old Cat Stevens CD - Catch Bull at Four - a personal favourite I heard as a youngster (well 12 actually) which seems so long ago as to be almost unfathomable.

My favourite track is the opening one, Sitting, closely followed by the next song Boy with a Moon and Star. In fact the entire album is fantastic and just underlines why the music world misses him. Granted he has risen from self imposed exile to a degree, re-recording some old classics in accoustic style only as his Islamic faith apparently prevents him from returning to playing such blasphemous musical instruments as the guitar.

I watched a recent documentary he produced as a kind of prelude to his returning to the world of the living, and in it he detailed how the denial of his musical talent was of his own doing, he had decided to take the fundamentalist route which forbade the making of music. To Islam's credit the Cat was strongly urged by a leading Islamic cleric to continue to perform, a great marketing idea everyone thought, except the man himself. He maintained that view until recent times and it may be that a thaw in relations is on the cards as he now attempts to educate the Western world that Islam is not full of zealots and suicide bombers - there's a good title for an album you Gen Yer's. He's got one hell of a job on his hand's if that is his intention.

I remember listening to the track "O Caritas" from the same album, over and over, furiously writing down the words in order to learn the song. Fascinating how the brain retains words to songs you haven't heard for 30 years isn't it. Anthony Robbins, the motivational speaker states it has to do with the emotion that goes with the thought and I know he is right. After all can you remember what you were worrying about 1 year ago today? I seriously doubt it, but you can recall in vivd detail the words and images to your favourite songs.

And it is not just the act of repitition, there must be a strong emotion attached to the activity, I am convinced of that. Think of where you were when JFK was murdered by the two gunmen on the grassy knoll, woops I mean, Lee Harvey Oswald. I remember I was sitting on the side of my bed tying my shoe laces in preparation to catch the bus to work when I heard the King had died in Memphis, and sat stunned for about 5 minutes - and missed the bus. I can recall with annoying clarity the race and events surrounding the death of my Formula One hero Ayrton Senna on May 1 1994, how I spotted his car leave the track instantaneously before my friends who were visiting to watch the race did, and then felt intense anger as one of them shortly after kidded me(jokingly, I know, but it still cut me at the time) about his apparent death. There is the emotion again making it's mark.

Who can't recall with horror the event's of 911. Or the loss of Steve Irwin and appallingly only hours later, the legend Peter Brock. A nation grieved that weekend and none alive at the time will forget that, or the disaster of the Victorian fires last year and the growing anger and dismay at the ever increasing, seemingly unstoppable toll. What an amazing tool the human brain is. I often think I would like to return to earth in 500 years time with my current level of recall and knowledge of this era to see what we have done to the place and how we have progressed, but I know it would be a totally unrecognizable planet Earth to the one we are living on now.

I like to think that if we have people of the calibre of Jean Luc Picard of the Star ship Enterprise in charge, the world will be in fine hands. I choose to take the optimistic view of the human race on this count rather than that of the doomsayers, although if some of the music currently being offered up on commercial radio is any indication, the doomsayers predictions have already come to fruition...We will definitely not recognise their muso's as such, I imagine, but will they still be playing the Beatles as we do Mozart and Beethoven? And what of Yousef Islam?.

But then would the Cat Stevens of the 70's have appealed to those of Roman times or the middle ages? Hmmm.....

Think long & Prosper
Biggles