Who’s next?

Greg Lake passed away on Wednesday, the 7th of December, 2016. Leonard Cohen left this world exactly one month before that. Someone from those who are still with us, who is still walking upon this earth and enjoying its benefits, is already destined to be the next. Who is going to be the one?

Whoever he or she will turn out to be, we will grieve when we hear about it, and remember all the things that s/he did for us: music, movies, books, pictures, sayings – they did that all for us and we all remained with all these. They did what they had to and left us. But just look, just think about how are these "nerds" are important for all of us! What would we do without them, dammit!

There was a time when our planet, wartime wounds bleeding and handmade ulcers boiling, was lit by a ray of Universal Grace, and babies started to appear on its surface. They were destined to grow, and to make many millions of people think; they were chosen to bear the happiness and joy into those peoples’ hearts, and to show to the future generations which are yet to stand the hardest life tests not yet seen tests, that life is still beautiful, and something valuable is still going on here.

It is because of those then-newborn-babies we will say after a few decades: "How lucky we are that we were not been born two centuries earlier", or "what will our children's children see in their time?". But let’s not please our vanity thinking that we are luckier than others. Believe me, someone in his time was reading a new novel by Dostoyevsky called “The Idiot” for the first time and was equally happy to feel involved in this era; other was talking to Shakespeare, and another shook Bach’s hand – both then obviously pondered long on this subject and did not immediately feel the greatness of the moment. Someone will happen to dwell in the midst of what we can only dream of today, and they will be happy in their own way....

But, losing our heroes today, can we be sure that a worthy replacement is on its way? A lot of young and talented individuals appear in the fields of arts, cinema and literature, but in the music, I personally do not see anything that would be able to make at least a quarter of the qualitative changes that occurred in the second half of the last century. Old people continue doing what they came into this world for. After completing their mission, they line up in front of the Exit, waiting for their names to be called.

We cannot blame the number 2016 for the fact that it is greater than any integer in the range of 1940 to 1950 by more than 60 or 70, sometimes even more. Bare arithmetic, you know. Biology is also not guilty in the fact that the organisms are subject to its laws. And a high level of Western life does not make some sort of wrongdoing. Everything is subject to some definite laws. We just feel too sorry about the fact that our Pushkins and Shakespeares, our Cervanteses and Mozarts departure and we have to learn about it and to count more and more frequently appearing sad note with the chilling lettering – «R.I.P.». But all these great people are great because of their works. Their main mission – to bring happiness and joy to the people –considered accomplished at some point. By whom? Probably, by those who assigned that mission to them. When the mission is accomplished, they leave us. Someone having already passed the 70th mark, others well below their 30’s, but they all did something to us, something we will be thankful for until the very moment when our names will be called light up in the queue waiting at the “Exit” gate. Who knows, maybe even after that moment the music of David Bowie, George Martin, Keith Emerson and his bandmate Greg Lake will be accompanying us?

Therefore, let the meaning of the question "Who is next?" be changed in the way the meaning of the title of Greg Lake's "C'est La Vie" song has today. Suppose that it means “who’s next to come to Earth with a mission to make the world a better place?”.

Big Hope for My Small Country

I think each of us has an opinion on the contingency of events: someone thinks that the events occurring in the world around us do not depend on anything other than natural influences, and if a rock falls, it is only because there is gravity which has surpassed all the other forces applied to that rock in the moment before the start of its fall, and there is nothing more than this. No chance is involved. According to them, events taking place in the society are subject to certain social laws, and so on. But there are those among us to whom such explanation would not be enough. They try to look taller and dig deeper.

During the two latest performances on the stage of our Small Theatre, I thought a lot (or rather, my brain was working on a subconscious level) about what was happening on stage. No, I'm not talking about the actors’ play, lighting, change of scenery, and other attributes of modern performance. I'm talking about the Magic that occurs regularly on the stage of the Small Theatre. This is the Magic to which myself and the rest of the audience – from young to old – happily entrust our souls’ strings responsible for resonating certain feelings, like joy, pain, pride, admiration, sympathy. I cannot be 100% sure that this is exactly how it happens, but for some reason we are already used to the procedure of placement of spectators right before every performance, whose number always exceeds the number of seats. People come to the theater, and the Word about it – one step ahead of them!

I'm forty-five now, and I am surprised that, up to February this year, I was not aware of the Small Theater that had been operating for thirty-five years by that time, I did not know about the studio, which has been working for two decades already, and have not met in my life these wonderful, beautiful and bright talented people, half my age but without whom I cannot quite imagine myself as a regenerated man. What have kept me away from this meeting all these years? What is "It" knowing exactly when this should happen? What led me here?

I already lost count of each of the four performances I’ve seen that are played regularly at the Small Theatre, as well as lost count of the visits I paid to this little place in a small town in this small land. And all this happened (and, fortunately, continues to happen) this year. 2016 – the year when Brexit and Trump started, when Syria and Ukraine continued, and so many great artists of the global importance ended their lifetime – turned out to be a very happy one for me, I would say it was a wonderful year. Somewhere in the beginning of this year, I met someone, a stranger, just like that, on my way home. In the end of our short meeting, I was invited to visit the Small Theatre and watch a new show related to the worldwide commemoration of 400 years since the death of William Shakespeare (the 23^rd of April date is uncertain; therefore, it has been fairly stretched across the whole year). And so, I came to the theater.

Was this meeting accidental, or was it going to happen exactly as it happened? I do not see the point in defining my position on this matter. Here is my story, here I am, carefully attending any (!) show the actors would play, here is the text I am writing after another visit. Writing about this is not easy, because I want to convey a lot of things, but "talking" about this does not work. You cannot dance about architecture, it is pointless to write a song, it is useless to describe the a masterpiece painting.

The performances that I have seen – they are wonderful. So different and deep, so beautiful and heartfelt. They are easy to watch, for they do not last more than an hour, they are accessible, aesthetic and dynamic.

During the 1-hour "SHAKE" – the first performance I’ve ever seen on this stage – we naturally reflect on Shakespearean characters, consider the intertwining of their fates, map the world classics onto the world day-to-day, finally – and that it is quite normal for Shakespeare – we do not find anything new in the revelations and still we wonder just "How could he know so much?". All this is accompanied by the enchanting music, soliloquies and dialogues, read by the famous actors (I would like to specially note that all audio materials are obtained in full compliance with international copyright laws). And finally – the actors!

Then, in February, I returned to public life and began to attend performances at different theaters. Again, Shakespear’s name in the title of another play staged on the scene of another theater, attracted me. I liked "that" show, too, I even went to see it twice. Once I dared to compare the physical fit of the actors (after I attended "SHAKE" for the second time, too). Well, “those” guys were all professional actors, and me – I still was missing something. But here I am attending “SHAKE” for the third time, the fourth, I bring my friends with me, I spread the word about my discovery, fifth, sixth .... It is not boring at all! I watch the show from the fourth row, then from the first row, from the right wing, from the left, from the back rows. Something is happening to me....

Then I had to get used to the idea that the Small Theater is not only about William Shakespeare, but Richard Bach as well. The first viewing of "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" shook me with the same impeccable characteristics, depth and ease of prescription of images and brilliant Director's findings. Only a few actors from "SHAKE" are involved in "Seagull", but apart from them – a dozen of energetic young boys and girls. Here is my second "Seagull", the third, the fourth.... What is happening to me?...

The third performance I was going to watch should have been "Pierrot" after the novel by Guy de Maupassant, beloved and highly acclaimed by many, but due to a force majeure situation we left without the show that evening after waiting outside for one hour and a half. Therefore, the next for me was the "Ne Me Quitte Pas" ("Do not leave me"), based on the famous song by Jacques Brel, translated into two dozen languages (including Armenian), and recorded in even more number of versions. Some of them – different in arrangement and performance, but with a common thematic core – inspired the Director to come up with various scenic solutions so sensitively traced and flawlessly performed by our beloved actors. What is it that is happening to me?!...

And here is the fourth of the performances played at the Small Theatre this year, the long-awaited "Pierrot". Again, a large troupe composed of young boys and girls, each of them being a standalone picture, bright (even if gray) identities with their characters, habits, mannerisms, pros and cons, be that human or animal. And if in "Shakespeare" we are enchanted by the scenes consonant with the visuals of Tarsem Singh and embellished with the music of Trent Reznor, Katie Melua and other famous musicians, in "Livingston" we feel ourselves being a part of the Truth, manifested in gulls’ minds and spoken by them, and in "Do not leave me" people sitting in rows are sobbing and wipe off their tears stealthily when they hear the words "leave "," love", "mother", "home", "family", in "Pierrot" we are laughing unrestrained most of the time, and only for a few minutes become silent, as if ruled by a magic wand, instantly realizing the depth of the tragedy, so naturally shown by these pure personalities – the actors of the Small Theatre. And we are crying. Again and again, even if we know by heart all the lines, spoken by actors.

So, that's what is happening to me! I shed tears. The tears of varying specificity. Tears of joy of realizing our greatness; bitter tears of knowing the mistakes – both our own and others'; tears of Love, leading us through darkening corridors of life; tears of laughter born out of subtle jokes and vivid images; tears of memories and losses; unexplained tears caused by vibrations of the soul strings, resonating with the music we've heard, sigh we've noticed, scene we've just seen.

All performances are so different, but they have a special common core: they are beautiful, and they go deep into the soul. And the performances are played by the actors. Or I’d rather said Artists? Or maybe... just people who love what they can do well, who see just how much their work is important to the viewer (I boldly go ahead and say "city", "country", "nation") and who are able to show feelings and invisibly play on the strings of our souls? And maybe all of the above? And we – the audience, continuing visiting those mental therapy sessions, giving standing ovations, looking at each other and seeing smiles on our tear-stained faces – we will no longer do anything wrong on this particular evening and by the end of this day! We won’t be able to, because our souls have already been healed during that evening by these wonderful young people who have just started their career, yet already play such an important role in the life of our society.

Each of us has definite priceless talent, but alas, not all of us feel them, and some of those who do know not how to use them. Sometimes so little is necessary to do – just to open a door and to invite to come in (like it happened in my case when I was invited to attend the performance). And there, inside, in this magical place called Theater, miracles begin to develop. Yes, hardly they will show up by themselves. There must be someone who knows what to do, and how. In the theater, such a man is called the Artistic Director, or Director.

It’s not only me who calls Vahan Badalyan "the magician." Many people agree with me, and, above all, they agree with themselves. After all, if you do not believe in something, then no matter how much you are told about the someone’s point of view – you are not going to accept it! Having felt the effect of what is happening on the stage to the matter of the soul we determine for ourselves the form which we will operate with when telling others about that. I, for example, chose to say "He is a Magician!". I like this option, because it seems to me the most authentic. How else can I call a person, not concentrating public’s attention on the shortcomings (both mental and physical) inherent to all, seeing the talent in the child, understanding how to summon it and to develop, how to bring into the group of many others like him or her, and to the miracle called "Theatre", how to learn to play such roles without affecting their psyche, gently explaining and developing such important concepts as "work", "love", "beauty", "friendship", "happiness". Happiness! Happiness of working and creating, of loving and being loved, of being beautiful in every respect, the most important of which is the spiritual beauty, happiness of being able to say "I have a friend," and to know the price of the friendship, happiness to consider oneself deserving to be happy? How to describe a person reaching the harmony by using "the material not intended for harmony", like our society often speaks about people with disabilities?! Magician – and that's it!

Too much words for today, I think…. The saying goes, "better to see something once than hear about it hundred times". So, trust His Majesty the Chance, select one of the performances of the Small Theatre and attend it. Sit down, listen, look, and maybe you will want to come back to that place. And again. And again. I think this theatre-studio will be the cradle of our common future to some extent. Those children are honoured to carry the charge of happiness and love with them and to illuminate the road not only for themselves, but also for all of us. The Director does not make any experiment. He once again proves that in every person there is a particle of the Light that can guide us through life and illuminate our path.

But is it necessary to prove that at all? Is not this a common truth? Proving, perhaps, not worth it, reminding about it from time to time you can. And since this is done in such a wonderful way, then, I believe, it is even necessary. At least, for me it was at the time when, by happy coincidence, by chance, an important meeting occasionally happened. Maybe I had to wait for this occasion all these years? Or maybe I needed to mature for this? And maybe this was not by chance at all? Then what is it? What is happening to me? Probably, this is a kind of Magic again...

Tribute: In Retrospect

Being overloaded with various tasks and due to certain circumstances, I missed the right moment when I could illuminate the process of completing the work on my tribute album, on which I've been talking for two years. Editing and mixing multi-channel raw material into the final stereo version and applying sound effects, mastering, getting and preparing the necessary paperwork, disc duplicating, developing and printing the artworks – all these important processes were mapped onto two and a half months which have passed since my last publication here in my Journal. It would now be very difficult to me to bring together the expressions from all those time-consuming yet necessary steps, but I will try to finish this essay having left some memories on these pages.

In retrospect, I realize that the title of the album – “Something Deep Inside Me” (a line from one of the songs from Peter Hammill’s first solo album “Fool's Mate” (1971) - I Once Wrote Some Poems, which has been included into my album) – suits it the best. It really contains something that lies somewhere deep inside me (most likely, it was always there). People mentioned on the pages of the booklet also live deep inside me, even if they are not with us already. The songs played, sung and recorded on the disc also came out of the depths to which they were immersing during long years of listening, thinking, performing, and, of course, reliving. Even the artwork design – every part of it! - carries some embedded meaning.

By the way, the design. I really wanted to create a product that would be a pleasure to hold in one’s hands, to open, to read, to look at, and even to unpack. I was well prepared for hearing statements such as "who buys (listens to, collects, etc.) CDs today?" and "Better tell me where can I download the album from?".... Nowhere, unless someone rips it and shares over the net. But in the downloaded files you will not get all of the particles that "are deep inside me" and which constitute my work. Therefore, if you are interested in the album in its full sense, I would recommend to buy the original. You would spend on it some five hundred times less than I did, and you will get 73 minutes and 59 seconds of music, cardboard gatefold cover, one wing of which holds the disc placed in the inner cover with a commemorative photograph (taken during the last hour before my trip to Madrid concert by Peter Hammill in December 2015) and information about the albums on which the submitted songs were published for the first time, and in the other you will find a 12-page booklet with colour photographs of musicians and brief information about them, with introductory essay and notes on each of the fifteen songs represented on the album. "Didn’t you invest too much in the design?", I was recently asked. No, not too much – well enough to proudly offer the diligent work of seven people, done during the last two years. The front cover picture is a slightly modified photograph taken by me in London in 2013. I wanted to capture myself reflected in the window of a passing London red bus, which I finally did not far from Wood Green Tube Station. Trying to find a way to give a hint on “who is the author of the songs” at a first glance at the cover, I replaced the transport logo with the Hammill monogram (of course, with his personal approval). On the back side – those five of us who were in town at the time of the photo session, selflessly conducted by a professional photographer Lilianna Hakhverdyan, with the Northern Avenue recently erected in the heart of my city in the background. On the inside gatefold – London as viewed from the heights of Alexandra Palace. I used a photo taken my eldest daughter for the first page of the booklet, and on the last page I put one of the photographs taken after the Van der Graaf Generator London concert in 2013. If my memory serves me well, the shutter button of my camera was pressed by a beautiful Brazilian female fan… or was that someone from the band or the crew?

Each of the songs carries something that prompted me to include it on the album. I am not going to repeat what is already written in the booklet, but rather refer to the subject discussed on the pages of my Journal earlier: Tribute. How has my Tribute been expressed?

In one of the 1994 interviews Peter Hammill was asked about his attitude towards tributes. Having said that he personally had nothing against it, he presented his personal understanding of "tribute version" and "cover version" concepts. According to it, when one is playing a song in its canonical form to which the listeners are used to, we deal with tribute versions. When doing a cover version, the performer “should mess around with the song and make it sound completely different”, i.e. the song should be performed in an unusual manner for the listener, "reworked" in the good sense of the word, reinvented, reinterpreted, relived. In other words, cover versions should contain the personality of the artist. Following this formula, my album contains both tribute and cover versions, therefore I decided to use the encompassing «homage» for the subtitle.

The first category can be represented by Afterwards, Celebrity Kissing, I Once Wrote Some Poems, Nadir's Big Chance, Happy, Easy to Slip Away, Sitting Targets and The Future Now. They all repeat their original structures and the manner of performance. However, each of them contains something that makes it "new".

In the instrumental part of Afterwards, only the first phrase of the 1969 original piano solo was borrowed, after which the baton is being handed to my electric guitar, Sat Sargsyan’s flute and Rima Mirzoyan’s violin – two charming "classical" musicians and good friends of mine. Celebrity Kissing demonstrates a dialogue between two solo guitars, one of them performed by the main drummer on the album – Ashot Korganyan. I Once Wrote Some Poems is presented here with minimalist acoustic ending, transforming into Nadir's Big Chance with loose 'home' vocal. Happy is introduced by a brief theatrical either introduction or rehearsal, and Easy to Slip Away and Sitting Targets combine elements borrowed from different versions performed during several decades. In addition to this, The Future Now has a small but important time shift.

The songs from the second category deserve more detailed coverage, but again I will hold to a concise form, as much as this will be possible.

My version of The Boat of Millions of Years includes all three verses written by Hammill at the time, but only performed live during the early concerts. The official studio version contains only two of them. Pictures formed by the characters from the Ancient Egypt mythology were being drawn in my mind by some divine voice, soft and powerful at the same time, sounding everywhere and making it impossible to find its source. However fantastical it might sound, Leslie Diaz had brilliantly played this role through just a few takes. Much more had to be done in perception and further implementation of the role of the rhythm section. You say East – OK, let’s do East, so the drum set was replaced with congas, tambourines, toms and cajon, all played by Levon Hakhverdyan, and gong completed the culmination. You say Egypt – OK, let’s do Egypt, so a talented singer, composer, sound designer (and many more) Aidin Davoudi sang in a geographically correct (not the one that we thought of as an appropriate) oriental singing manner, and provided “martial respiration“.

Too Many of My Yesterdays – my debut as a director. I’m not sure how to call the resulting piece – audio film, sound play, song theatre… The song that is known for thirty years already as one of the Hammill’s classics, has been taken by me out on the stage, where the protagonist whose life was broken once but who hasn’t lost himself finds himself in a telephone booth hoping to reach the woman occupying an important place in his life. In the original – voice and piano, in the cover – voice and bass (or rather a few basses). As you can see, the original concept of "one voice, one instrument, one pass of one pair of hands on the instrument" has been affected slightly, while the form has undergone almost total change. Some musical passages are tightly coupled with sonic patterns of everyday life, the play has its beginning and end. "You're a good director, Mik!", Leslie Diaz told me after the recording. "The recording hour was fantastic, Les!", I say right now. Thanks again!

The Birds is easily played alone, so I did play it quite often before Levon Hakhverdyan said: "Record is on!" But when the piano part was ready for the initially planned canonical version, I asked to keep on the recording, and started playing this wonderful song as I heard it in my head and how my fingers wanted it to be played. And of course – the birds had to be there. Maybe the resulting song is similar to the original, but the testimonials made by those who heard it give me reason to leave it in this category.

Necromancer can also be called a cover because of its theatricality, the materialization of the image of the White Magician fighting against evil, and, in a way, due to the electrification of the sound produced by a few electric guitars and the metal of bass.

Changing of the underlying instrument has been used for creation of my version of The Top of the World Club. Interestingly, when I analyzed the chords of the song, it turned out to be more convenient for me to do it on guitar rather than piano. At some point during the process of creation the international project "All of Us Pilgrims" (double album, produced by members of a Facebook group ‘Top of the World Club’ – I regularly mentioned that project in my publications) I thought it would be nice to offer a version of the song which could be a kind of a symbol of the group. Somehow I wanted to have the accompaniment of only one guitar. But I am not a good guitarist, and if something should be done it must be done conscientiously. So the idea of ​​a studio version was eventually implemented, but with total exclusion of piano and replacing it with sounds of different guitars and very low synthesizer low-ends.

Finally, Tintagel by the Sea – a song written in 1979 for Play Away children's programme on British TV. It was never released officially, so when one of the members of the above-mentioned Facebook group had found, digitized and posted it to the network in the end of July last year, we decided to bring it to our double album, thus remembering the tribute album of XX Century – "Eyewitness – a Tribute to VdGG" (1995), which also contained a surprise – Squid One, a version of ‘Giant Squid’ song from the vinyl version of The Aerosol Grey Machine album, at that time only available in private collections and virtually unknown to the wide audience. During the preparation of the original demo version, synthesizers were overdubbed, vocals remixed, some sound effects added. The demo version would have remained in my personal collection in case if there wouldn’t had left some six minutes of free time after the main assembly of the album material was finished. I thought "Let it live!", as well as its second creator did – Levon Hakhverdyan who was responsible for recording, mixing and mastering of my album (on this track he also played all the drums and percussion). "But let it not affect the overall impression of listening to the album!", added we and put a half-a-minute pause in between. The right solution in such a situation.

I deliberately did not mention Vision – the only one of all the songs, in which nothing was changed. This is my personal tribute to everything clean and bright, to all that keeps us in this troubled life, to all heavenly and eternal like Love, good and bright as Dream. This song was one of the two most beloved VdGG/pH songs of my (now late) friend Jamie Fogg, who played an important role in my life, who together with all other mentioned people lives somewhere deep inside me, where the idea of ​​creating this album was conceived and where my own songs were born and already get their forms to appear on my next album. This will be discussed later, for sure. In the meantime, you get a piece "of something deep inside of me" in the form of a seventy-four minutes of “pure digit”, packed in cardboard and paper, and supplied with all the necessary information.

I think too much has been said, but it was necessary in order to complete the Tribute topic started two years ago. Everything else is there – in the recorded music. Listen to it. I begin to open a new chapter of my musical activity: creation of songs.

P.S. The album was created with kind permission and personal approval of the author of all the songs – Peter Hammill, whom I want to thank once again on this page of my Journal.