The great puffers and the music-peeping

I always found intriguing when a musician during a performance or a recording puffs and sighs and sweats and breathes and puffs... the 1976 "The Hermit" by John Renbourn, recorded at Livingstone Studio in High Barnet, North London, by Nic Kinsey shows a John Renbourn so nicely playing at least how the flu and Old Holborne's hand-made fags made his breathing extremely noisy... these so human noises underline the most difficult passages, the pauses and the accents... I couldn't enjoy like I did for about forty years this superb disc WITHOUT the above mentioned "defects".

Yesterday afternoon I had an extremely enjoyable listening session, using both vinyl and disks, and one of the disks impressed me deeply, and let me to - sort-of - remember ALL...

Enters "Chiaroscuro" on ECM, last Ralph Towner and Paolo Fresu's disk, guitar(s) and flugelhorn and trumpet... well, I already was aware how Ralph Towner was accenting, and noisily doing so, his music and playing with body movements, breathing and puffing, BUT yesterday I sort of had the vivid sensation he was in flesh, bone and (guitar) wood just behind the Gotorama's horns!

While Fresu is taking a solo, Ralph's well there, still and standing quietly seated, ready to play... and breathing, changing his mood depending he be playing twelve strings clusters and patterns or hauntingly fingering his classical guitar.

To my surprise, in this VERY disc, Towner is also using a new adding to his guitars and sounds palette - i.e. a Graham Caldersmith's baritone nylon strung guitar, awesomely expressive and giving new colours to the always superb Ralph's music.

He's - while playing this new axe - nervously breathing, like a kid with a new toy... the emotion is palpable, the attention to the fingering and expression huge.

The musician is so "there" you can "feel" him in yr. room...

Strangely, I felt it like, eons ago while still a kid, when I was watching at some dancing girl at the TV, and I get near and near, from the underside of the screen as I was (trying to) peep the naked legs... and beyond, (trying) to look at... the girls panties;-))))

Ill-tinted (pre)sexuality or plain silliness;-)))... same surprise and media mixing with real-life... under-the-gown and behind-the-speakers (virtual-reality) both searching for improved pleasure to an experience, visual or aural.


... and - thinking about my need to find trueness in defects (ambient noises, breathing... why I'm so fond of these?!?!) - mysterious stuff!