27/01/2012

White Chalk



The muddled view of the English countryside has been discussed before, for example in the  For What Is Chatteris column. Sometimes seen as  mystical,  sometimes downright boring, sometimes the backdrop for a picnic or Sunday drive,  more often an arcadia  to escape to  from the dark satanic mills of urban life. Sometimes, though, it has been pointed out that it can be pretty grim and miserable- The Hard Times of Old England -  though I don’t think there is anything  about English rural life that quite matches the Violent Femmes’ Country Death Song in making  a cloud of gloom  descend  on the listener.  (The next track on the album this comes from starts ‘I hear the rain, I hear the rain, I hear the rain, got to feel the pain’)

I grew up in Dorset, one of the most rural of English counties, and my childhood was  spent in  Poole, Portland, Weymouth and around, a mixture of the English seaside and the hills and valleys of the inland countryside. An odd combination in a way – a Donald McGill postcard versus a chocolate box image. Plebeian  fish and chips, candy floss and donkey rides on one hand and the more genteel –superficially at least -  thatched cottages, village churches and County shows on the other. Some of the landscape remains pretty timeless.  Far From the Madding Crowd and The French Lieutenant's Woman were both filmed there and the famous Hovis advert from 1973 was not, as the ad implied, filmed somewhere  in a northern town like Hebden Bridge but the Dorset village of Shaftesbury.
Growing up there, I made little association between pop music and the places I lived then. Those I did have, in fact, could be  very convoluted. At a young and impressionable  age I once spied Dusty Springfield on Weymouth esplanade and asked for her autograph. She, however, declined the request and I became converted to the opinion that actually I liked Lulu better. Like everyone, a snatch of a song can bring back  childhood memories like Proust’s madeleine but that is because I heard the tune in a particular place at a particular time, not because the song was about that place. Songs were meant to be about faraway places with strange sounding names – Capri or Amsterdam, Honolulu or Siam, not Sturminster Newton or Blandford Forum. That would be both unthinkable and risible, as there is something intrinsically not rock and roll about Dorset .In fact, few English counties are. Carolina In My Mind sounds fine, Suffolk In My Mind doesn’t. Sweet Home Alabama –yes, OK. Sweet Home Buckinghamshire –not really. Songs about places like that  were either  the provenance of earnest folk singers in Aran sweaters and a finger in their ear or comedy acts. In fact, English rural life has provided a rich source of musical humour over the years, from Benny Hill’s Gather In the Mushrooms to The Wurzels' Combine Harvester  (a UK Number One in 1976) to The Darkness and English Country Garden. Other than that, there were The Yetties (a kind of Dorset Wurzels)  and Dorset is Beautiful. Oh yes, and Robert Fripp   and Al Stewart both grew up in the market town of Wimborne Minster, though its influence isn’t obvious in the music of either. (The town is best known for a model village, so that you can visit  Wimborne and walk round a set-up of Wimborne in miniature. I am surprised King Crimson didn’t do something to expand on  this theme)
Behind the rolling hills and the bustle of the seaside there was also an insularity. To some on Portland – an ‘almost island’ connected to the mainland by Chesil Beach – Weymouth, about 4 miles away with its fancy slot machine arcades and cinema, was a mixture of Sodom and Gomorrah, Gay Paree and Las Vegas. There were even stories of people who had gone from Weymouth on the steamer to Guernsey and had French food. Why would they do that when they could go and sit on the shingle at Dead Man's Bay with a bag of  Portland dough cakes?  In fact, those who lived on Tophill on Portland even  viewed those from Underhill with suspicion and vice versa.(The Donny and Marie Osmond hit, Morning Side of the Mountain,  comes to mind  here – “There was a girl, there was a boy, if they had met they might have found a world of joy. But he lived on the morning side of the mountain and she on the twilight side of the hill”.  Or if  he lived in Underhill and she lived in Tophill).It was uniformly white. The only black faces to be seen were on the Black and White Minstrel Show on Saturday night TV.
Yet there was also underneath it all at times something else,  a glimpse of  the past, of  the  lost wild gods of England and the distant echoes of  an old and forgotten  way of life. You could sense it on Chalbury Hill, looking out from the ancient  burial mounds across the  hills and hedges  towards the Roman road coming out from  Dorchester,  with the giant hill figure at Cerne Abbas, on the chalk cliffs above the fossils at Lyme  or in the small and eerie ruined churches standing on pagan sites. I once came across such a deserted church while walking as a child along the cliffs above Portland: peeking in the heavy wooden door to feel a sudden chill was the only time I have felt somewhere could really be haunted. Those feelings are captured in the song here, White Chalk from 2007 by P J (Polly) Harvey, originally from Bridport in Dorset. There is something haunting and unsettling about it, as there is about much of her music. On the cover of the album of the same name she is seated in white looking like a figure from a Victorian séance and the voice sounds as if from another dimension.
It is relatively rare that a song captures exactly one’s own feeling about a place, in such a perfect  match that the song and place become the same. For me, Waterloo Sunset does. Scott Walker’s Copenhagen does with a couple of lines-‘Copenhagen , you’re the end, gone and made me child again’  -  and an enchanting fade-out. And so does White Chalk, floating like a dream from a childhood memory : “White chalk sticking to my shoes. White chalk playing as a child with you. White chalk south against time. White chalk cutting down the sea at Lyme .I walk the valleys by the Cerne, on a path cut fifteen hundred years ago”. A memorable song about an English rural county after all and not a single joke about Farmer Giles’ giant marrow or a morris dancer in sight.
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41 comments:

  1. This is such a wonderful column, Geoff! It's so nice to finally get a clear picture of where you come from. It sounds (to an American at least) really idyllic.

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  2. Hey Geoff, love this column and the song you posted! I actually just I just came across this pretty special duo called Face and Heel - blending house with garage and mashing synths with some pretty beautiful vocals, the pair have the perfect formula I think. You can hear their really good cover of PJ Harvey's 'White Chalk' here: http://soundcloud.com/shin-digs/white-chalk-pj-harvey-cover

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  3. I saw PJ Harvey perform in Sydney a few weeks ago, it was very special. PJ herself spent most of the set clutching her antique black auto-harp. It was actually a bit of a surprise when the lighting revealed her wielding a dazzling white ‘Airline’ electric guitar in ‘The Last Living Rose’. She exhibited great dexterity on both.

    However, the thing that really moved the audience into a rapturous unwavering delight was her voice. Versatile and strong and perfectly placed, PJ Harvey delivered each song with lively finesse. She was at times fierce, at others histrionic and meandering and at all points mesmerising; making emotional contact with all of the theatre’s privileged patrons.

    The whole show exuded a feeling of comprehensive alignment. The pieces all seemed to fit and this enabled one to become completely immersed in the moment. We were given entrance into a world of warmth and volatility that was both enamouring and poignant.

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  4. Amazing column Geoff! Sorry for the late posting, this didn't show up in my blogger feed until yesterday for some reason, although you clearly posted it at the weekend as usual.

    Did you like her 2011 album too, Let England Shake? I thought it was a brilliant impassioned rallying cry, bursting forth with ideas and a sense of purpose. Similar to Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea, this record is directly inspired by a place—England—but like all the songs you write about in this blog, this isn’t some Cool Britannia-era celebration of queen and country. Harvey may describe England as beautiful on “The Last Living Rose,” but when she follows it up with “Let me walk through the stinking alleys to the music of drunken beatings,” her motives become a bit less clear. Most of all, though, she uses England's rich military history (often from World War I) to tell stories of death and war. “What is the glorious fruit of our land?” Harvey asks on the call-and-response rally “The Glorious Land.” “The fruit is deformed children,” she hears back. Let England Shake isn’t a fiery anti-war polemic, though. Instead, it addresses its subject in equal parts poem and matter-of-fact narrative, recognizing the sacrifices of soldiers without glamorizing the battles in which they fought. Take for instance “The Colour Of The Earth,” which describes the death of a soldier from a friend’s point of view. It’s so simple and true, that it sounds like an old standard.

    It’s grim stuff, I guess, but the record avoids easy doom-and-gloom, going for a sound that’s as nuanced and diverse as the words. Bouncing xylophones score Harvey’s tale of swimming in the “fountain of death” on the title track; wartime bugles call out on “The Glorious Land,” and even a sample of reggae giant Niney the Observer haunts “Written On The Forehead.” Harvey doesn’t completely betray the tough simplicity of her older work, though: “In The Dark Places” and especially the rough-and-tumble “Bitter Branches” provide some contrast from the album’s softer moments. But even at the record’s fiercest and most eclectic, there’s always a dreary, battle-worn murk that unites the album and give the songs the proper tone. Perhaps just as important, Harvey still sings in the atypically high register she did on White Chalk, and it serves the music well, allowing for some charming duet and chants with male vocalists on songs like “The Colour Of The Earth” and the gorgeous ballad “Hanging In The Wire.”

    Anyway, I thought Let England Shake was one of the best records of 2011 and a peak in PJ Harvey’s career. I very much recommend it, if you don't have it already.

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  5. I can’t think of anyone else in the British music business who has so steadfastly followed their own muse as Polly Harvey. Trends come and trends go, but PJ Harvey can always be relied upon to go her own way and she certainly doesn’t repeat herself. Sometimes, as with Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea and To Bring You My Love, her work has been accessible and popular, but many of her other albums are far less immediate, even if they are generally uniformly excellent. White Chalk is a stunning record, but it sounds like nothing else recorded in 2007, that’s for damn sure.

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  6. I love her album covers. Especially how she is made to resemble a Victorian woman with no makeup on, on the cover of White Chalk, with that grim expression, and a dress typical of the time.

    I love the cover to Dry too, where she is equally unglamorous, with her her makeup is smeared and her face smooshed into the camera lens.

    Here are the two images!

    http://covers.a-go.in/max/pj_harvey_-_2007_white_chalk.jpg

    http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y91/Amanda_ataxia/Pj_Harvey_-_Dry-back.jpg

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  7. I love your Blake reference ("dark satanic mills from "Jerusalem")!

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  8. Seeing as you mentioned it, here's Hard Times of Old England! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfyJI5HkRsE

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  9. Why did Dusty Springfield say no to an autograph request from a child???? That seems way meaner than anything I'd expect!

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  10. Poor Geoff, I do think that's mean of Dusty Springfield. When I met Belinda Carlisle once, she said no, too. Whereas once when I waited for a long time to get Ray Davies' autograph, he stayed for ages talking to fans, and showed us how he had learned to write his signature with both hands at once, so that he can sign twice as many autographs in a mob situation where not everyone would otherwise get a prized memento!

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  11. Well, Lulu IS way better:)

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  12. Ha ha, but Geoff, Sturminster Newton and Blandford Forum sound faraway and exotic to ears like mine (American) :)

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  13. 'Blandford Forum' and 'exotic' are not words one often finds in the same sentence!

    You are right about the power of Let England Shske, Chris-especially Hanging in the Wire.

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  14. Geoff, it's amazing to me that you grew up in Dorset - I had you pegged as an urban northerner (Manchester, Newcastle)!

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  15. Ha ha, never was a truer word spoke: "there is something intrinsically not rock and roll about Dorset"!

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  16. I grew up in Dorset too - home of the Trade Union movement!

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  17. And there is still an annual Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival -
    http://www.tolpuddlemartyrs.org.uk/index.php?page=2012-festival-and-rally

    I found an internet photo of the church I think I peeked in as a child -no wonder I felt a chill!

    http://www.photo4me.com/uploads/4249/84464_m.Jpeg

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  18. Wow Geoff, it's funny to imagine your childhood looking in any way like a Donald Mcgill postcard - http://www.europe-autos.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/saucy-seaside-postcard.jpg

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  19. It does sound like a very unusual combination - the British southern coast: "Plebeian fish and chips, candy floss and donkey rides on one hand and the more genteel –superficially at least - thatched cottages, village churches and County shows on the other." Like a combination of Atlantic City and rural Vermont, two entirely different cultures in the U.S.!

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  20. I'm from the North, and I definitely always though that Hovis ad was from Yorkshire or somewhere!!! Fraud!!

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  21. Wait, according to that Youtube clip you posted, the director of the Hovis ad was Ridley Scott (director of Bladerunner, etc). I guess we all start somewhere!!

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  22. I was the boy in that advert. I was only 13 and they paid me 60 quid. I was the only boy who auditioned who could ride a bike, that's how I got the part! Ridley Scott made us film for two days, I must have walked up that hill at least 50 times.

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  23. Thought you might enjoy this Hovis ad parody:) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cUZ1idKthY

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  24. I like this Hovis ad better - where he runs through British history, seeing the Titanic depart, suffragettes and soldiers, and the Blitz, and the rocking 60s, all the way to the millennium, then contemporary England, still in the North. GENIUS advert, it almost makes me love England! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsD6KZcsoHg

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  25. Ah the Hovis advert! It makes me pine for the days when the simple things in life kept us happy: family life, licorice, a few kippers and some butter!

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  26. Also, in case the licorice, kippers and butters reference was a bit oblique, there was actually a Hovis ad filmed in Lancashire that references these things.

    Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvmU7iR8Tb4

    It was from 1973 and was filmed on Exchange St, Colne, complete with the butcher, Richard Laycock, working outside his own shop. He was our family butcher.

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  27. Geoff, this was your funniest column ever:) "Carolina In My Mind sounds fine, Suffolk In My Mind doesn’t. Sweet Home Alabama –yes, OK. Sweet Home Buckinghamshire –not really". Brilliant! One of my favourites:)

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  28. I had no idea that Far from the Madding Crowd was filmed there - here's a scene that shows lots of landscape - http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/387994/Far-From-The-Madding-Crowd-Movie-Ciip-Since-I-Beheld-You.html - I always thought it was Wales or Yorkshire!

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  29. I didn't know about The French Lieutenant's Woman either! It's harder to find a landscape scene from that, but the woodland looks nice in Dorset! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faqZLeLOdcU

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  30. Hello, Robert (Bob) Fripp here. Greetings from a fellow Dorset man. Wimborne has always had an influence, for me. In many ways, it is still the centre of the universe. When I first left, though, I remember feeling that London moved three times faster than Wimborne. Then I went to New York and saw that moved three times faster than London. So I was having nine Winburnian years in twelve months in New York.

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  31. Thank you for mentioning our famous model town in your blog. Built well over 50 years ago, the magnificent 1/10th scale models continue to surprise and amaze visitors from all over the world with their superb quality and realism. Re-creating the historic market town of Wimborne Minster exactly as it was during the 1950s, you can get really close up and even touch the buildings, checking out every minute detail of over 100 shop window displays. Peer into the Butchers, the Ironmongers, the Bakery and the Fishmongers, not forgetting the stunning interior of the Minster Church. As you begin to explore in more detail, your mind will turn to wondering just how the group of skilled and dedicated model makers achieved such amazing ‘life like’ results – working as they did over six decades ago in a rural England still recovering from the war years.

    We hope to welcome your readers to our model town very soon!

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  32. Ha ha, yes, I grew up in Portland, and Weymouth with its arcades and cinema, certainly seemed to my parents to be a mixture of Sodom and Gomorrah, Gay Paree and Las Vegas. Although of course nothing compared to the HELL that was Bournemouth in their minds - a mixture of Sodom and Gomorrah, Gay Paree, Las Vegas and the era of New York depicted in the film Gangs of New York. Basically, they thought it was like this clip (from 3.30 mins): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJGIi7PC208

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  33. Bournemouth was so remote it might as well have been the dark side of the moon!
    What a wealth of fascinating links and comments here! This clip is the famous scene on the Cobb at Lyme Regis from the French Lieutenants Woman, with Meryl Streep looking like a Scottish Widows advert
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFZPSQKjwwc
    Fascinating to hear about the Hovis ad, Carl-sounds like you earned your money!
    Thanks for writing in about Wimborne, Robert..

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  34. Wow Geoff, that really is a spooky looking church (and graveyard!). And I think I may know the church you are talking about - it is in Church Ope Cove, near Rufus Castle. It is called St Andrew's church. It has been abandoned since the 18th century, because it was too small for the island's population, and is in need of repairs because it has been raided by pirates! I visited it once when on holiday in Dorset, quite a few years ago now. The church has been there since the 13th century, and gravestones of victims of the Black Death can be seen in the graveyard.

    It has been reported that a mysterious cowled figure has been seen passing under this archway!:
    http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_5aEBTlFsBI8/S9xa__vo42I/AAAAAAAAAlE/rI6ld6qZpKs/s1600/P1010324.JPG

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  35. Geoff, your reference to the Black and White Minstrel Show intrigued me, so I tried to find out about it - wow! I can't believe England was showing this on TV until the 1970s!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_and_White_Minstrel_Show - we tend to think of England as way more progressive, but even the U.S. got rid of blackface minstrelsy about 50 years earlier than that!

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  36. Geoff, is Portland still uniformly white? I can't imagine there are any places in England still like that....

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  37. Thank you for mentioning the Tolpuddle Martyrs' festival and rally. I hope you and your readers will consider attending this year (July 13th-15th). We also have the Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum, which is well worth a visit.

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  38. "There were even stories of people who had gone from Weymouth on the steamer to Guernsey and had French food. Why would they do that when they could go and sit on the shingle at Dead Man's Bay with a bag of Portland dough cakes?"

    Ha ha, this made me laugh a lot. But Geoff, did you really spend time doing this as a child? (sitting on the shingle at Dead Man's bay with a bag of Portland Dough cakes?)

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  39. I want to know the jokes about Farmer Giles’ giant marrow and the morris dancer! Especially if there is a joke that involves both the marrow AND the morris dancer!

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  40. It was meant as 2 separate statements, Rosie - a marrow joke and a reference to morris dancers! The 'joke' is in English Country Garden by the Darkness.

    I dont think the oddity of the Black and White Minstrel Show has ever been really explained. It ran on prime time TV for 20 years yet as far as I know the 'minstrel show' was never part of things in the past as it was in the USA.

    I havent been to Portland for years but recent stats show a white population of 97%

    Thanks for the info and photo, Laura-it would be really strange to go back there, I think

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  41. Hi Geoff

    I've just come across your interesting blog and added a link from my own: http://landscapism.blogspot.co.uk

    There are many things to admire in the music and lyrics of Polly Harvey, but I'm particularly interested in how she is shaping up to be one of the most acute observers of the English landscape and sense of place (in its warts and all complexity):
    http://landscapism.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/pj-harvey-let-england-shake-film.html

    I would agree that American music has often had landscape and place - both epic and everyday - as part of its DNA; However, I think the cultural cringe factor only holds water when it comes to British musicians who most closely follow US idioms (so yes, it would be hard to take the Stones seriously singing about the Thames Estuary, even though we happily take in Mick drawling about Mississippi etc); as you have eluded to, music that is more wedded to the British Isles (whether Vaughan Williams, folk ballads, Wicker Man soundtrack, Ray Davies or PJ Harvey's recent offerings) is just as able to evoke sense of place.

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