Eating Proust's Cake

Thanks to Colin in New Zealand I was able to order up a few tracks to my past.

When I was in Swansea University it did not have a full Art or Music department just a single lecturer with help from some specialists in other departments. Most of History of Art lectures came from George Little – a man whose art work I first met as a pupil in an Art for Schools Exhibition in The National Museum of Wales Gallery. The Music Department was run by a long haired gentle person called Keith.

It came as a considerable surprise to find out that gentle Keith was actually a member of a band called ‘Dr Z’ which produced a record of psycho-spiritualist hard rock (or ‘Heavy Prog’ whatever that is) music! This record did not sell very well with only about 100 copies reaching the listening community; the rest of the pressing was trashed by the record company. Jim Ostler (The Man Who Introduced Me to Monteverdi) was doing first year music and he bought a copy which I borrowed. And copied on to a long lost cassette.

Thanks to Colin assuring me that this (and the following quotations were taen from a web site) ‘obscure early 70's English trio’ have had their record re-released as a CD in which the ‘dominant mood of the album ("Three Parts to my Soul") is set by a percussive harpsichord that is alternately majestic and militaristic’ with ‘lyrics, dealing with occultism and the evil of man’ and is something ‘strictly for serious collectors of dark, early 70's curios’ – I could hardly wait to get to the internet and begin searching for a copy!

It eventually arrived and I was able to listen to it on my way to school. I suppose that there are some who might aver that lyrics such as:

“Evil woman’s manly child
Spread earth upon your loins,
Sow the land with greed
Lavish all your envy on the world
Let the Devil free to do his will
And cast about and kill.”

are not the most appropriate sentiments to motivate a man setting off to teach Primary School Children – but this is the twenty-first century and times have changed!

As soon as the music started, even though I have not listened to it for more years than I care to recount, I realised that not only did I remember every note and harmony and percussive beat, but also a whole host of memories came flooding back.

Obscurely (perhaps appropriately given the CD) one of the most powerful memories was of some stylish retro black and red tin mugs that I had in University bought from Habitat. They looked great – the only trouble was that when you filled them with boiling water the temperature of the handle instantly became too hot to handle (so to speak!) Quite why this memory rose to the surface is difficult to say: perhaps it had something to do with the flames surrounding the heart logo of the group on the front of the cover. Who knows?

Names, faces and situations all jostled around in my memory as the music pounded out as the car sped through tunnel after tunnel on my way to work. Scraps of the drama in which I was involved come to the surface of the memory and some were firmly pushed back down again: my American accent in a Wilder play will stay with some people for the rest of their lives! Another dramatic event concerned Peter Thomson (now Emeritus Professor of Drama in Exeter University, then an immensely creative and understanding lecturer in Drama and English in Swansea) creating an evening where (as I remember) Dr Z, W B Yeats and anecdote were all linked in an extravaganza of words and music!

It’s just as well that the drive to school is not too long as I think that my mind would have been filled with happy times in the past and not with necessary awareness to cope with modern driving conditions on Catalan motorways!

If you want to listen to an extract of Dr Z try http://www.progarchives.com/mediaPlayer.asp?bandId=1230

Never let it be said that an educator ever stops trying to increase human enjoyment with new (old) things!