Can You Imagine?
Don’t Ever Settle
Don’t ever settle for the ordinary, the mundane, the “normal”.
Get out there and pedal- feel the wind, get ‘whirled away’, find ‘something to dance about’, go ‘lie beside the river’- and sleep ‘by African lakes’- LIVE.
After all, ‘if we are not beautiful, who are we?’
The Riddle
Yes of course- this extraordinary album from The Gardening Club, a project from the fertile mind and spirit of Martin Springett and musical friends…
…But also the riddle of ‘how is it so often we DO settle- when life ‘all at once outran us/ one day altered itself beyond belief’, when ‘all we know is the world/ and that the world goes round and round/ and that the world is why we weep’…
…and why we fall head over heels in love, answer each other with ‘yes and always yes/ all the time singing’- when all around us wheels the infinite sky, the ever-expanding Mystery?
So Let’s Just Pause
We get clues from the art-work (Martin’s) which if you deign to carefully SEE it, involves all the magic, fantasy, horror, beauty, extravagant danger, mystery, and color you might care to imbibe with whatever senses you possess.
There are clues to be gathered from the poetry of Cyril McColgan, which Martin & Co. have wrought into lyrics for this amazing musical and visual extravaganza.
Cyril writes with the spiritual soul of a seeker, a doer, a sensitive person on a quest to encounter and experience.
And of course, the Musicians
Take a moment to consider the chance encounters- the kismet, the serendipity- that brought kindred spirits together, the kinds of musicians and capabilities and interests- however divergent they may have once seemed- and welded these into The Gardening Club in the 21st century.
Old friends and new friends, able to create a sparkling, unique musical gift.
So yes, the music
At last we arrive!
The music lies within the setting, within the context of these musings about poetic lyrics, gorgeous art work, miraculous meetings.
It simmers with sophistication, with acoustic guitars and with synthesizers, with intelligent arrangements, with wistful vocals, with fretless bass down beneath, with slide guitars decorating the sound, with meticulously programmed drums, with artful, spritely saxophone, and sometimes with full-bodied band-work using jazz-tinges to reveal the quiet, elegant heart of this project.
The music glides like a ‘soft river flowing’. As we listen, as we absorb it all, ‘no common sense enchanted us/ it was too much like being in love/ making one broken bird of another’.
The music
Don’t ever settle.
Ponder ‘The Riddle’, as you live, as you explore, as you love.
After all, we live in ‘A universe of sound/ the rhythm of the earth/ these are the songs/ the stories of our birth’.
The Gardening Club links: (Martin Springett) Facebook Bandcamp Gonzo Media
Progressive Rock Fanatics link: Facebook
Steve Conrad Music Page link: Facebook
Progressive Rock Fanatics 