WOEBOT

The End of T.W.A.N.B.O.C.

This weblog was dedicated to the memory of my father Andrew Ingram. THAT WAS A NAUGHTY BIT OF CRAP were the words he typed into a lightwriter at a Mendelssohn concert we attended when he was in the late throes of Motor Neurone Disease. That evening was the best time we ever had together.

I didn't know my father very well. In fact no-one knew him very well. He was modest to the point of invisibility. The last 18 months we spent together were a race against the clock for both of us to get to understand eachother a little better. We succeeded.

My dad was a connoisseur of classical music. It was incredibly important to him. His best man recalled at the memorial service that dad was able to identify not just the opera and it's composer from a snippet overheard on the radio, but the singer too. Growing up I was surrounded by his records, as a toddler I would conduct my way through the Brandenburg. The first record he bought himself, aged 10, was Wagner's Ring Cycle. Dad would endlessly record programs off Radio 3 into stacks of green C90 cassettes. Occasionally we would even have the stars of classical music to stay with us, most notably once the tenor Anthony Rolfe-Johnson who was attending the local Three Choirs festival. Throughout my upbringing I was taken to, and struggled through, concerts of Mozart, Brahms and Beethoven.

My dad was also a devout christian. This was indivisible from his love of music. I have a hunch that my brother and my schools were in part selected for their excellent choirs. Dad would enjoy attending our sunday services in consequence. His spiritual home in London, St.Brides of Fleet Street, boasts what is arguably the capital's finest choir. I remember once a few years ago going to hear Handel's Messiah with him. For the first time I experienced a spiritual elation at the the hands of this music, a sweet and gentle feeling of lightness and finally I grasped what it was that attracted him to it.

I've never enjoyed classical music very much. I like some Bach, odd bits and pieces like Scarlatti (as played by Landowska), Bartok's third, some of the late Beethoven string quartets, Debussy's Faun, Stravinsky's piece for two piano players and small doses of Webern. I don't connect with it. It doesn't groove. It doesn't intensify me. My dad on the other hand HATED anything that wasn't classical music. He'd would outright dismiss it, even the most "respectable" Jazz or Indian Classical music. His assumption always was that one day I would grow up and listen to proper music.

As for this blog, well you might be surprised to know that (god bless him) he'd think it was a total waste of time. Doing this as a memorial to him is like Bill Laswell waiting till Fela Kuti was in jail before screwing with the master tapes. Pop Music! The Internet! Music journalism! He wouldn't have looked at it twice. Any rave I got (like Kodwo's for instance) would have to be pinned under his nose for him to take notice. Not that I mind that sort of thing anymore. In spite of all of this it is conceivable that he may have harboured a secret pride. I offer up all the love in my heart to him. I hope he is peaceful and happy.

THAT WAS A NAUGHTY BIT OF CRAP.

"THAT WAS A NAUGHTY BIT OF CRAP" was what my dad typed into his Lightwriter at a Mendelssohn concert we went to together last October. We sat patiently through the second symphony, which to my ears was florid and overwrought without any emotional substance. After the applause had subsided dad set to his Lightwriter, this portable keyboard with it's voice synthesiser. A terrible typist before, now with Motor Neurone Disease wasting his arms, he was more useless than ever. A deeply uncharacteristic comment, it was all the more funny as a result. If he had pushed the SPEAK button it would have issued from the low-lit green LED panel in the machine's ominous, monotonous speak and spell tone.

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(postscript 17th April 2004)

TWANBOC was the name which I called my first Weblog. For a whole range of reasons I it changed WOEBOT in October 2003, chief amongst them was that I didn't want to be saddled with continually writing a memorial. See this entry for the post commemorating my dear Dad.