Sad news. Rod Allen, lead singer of The Fortunes, has died of cancer, at the surprisingly young age of 63. To some, they may have been pale imitations of "The Beatles kick", as my father used to call it - but to me, their sound was one of the highlights of my childhood. I recall the first time I pulled out my dad's copy of the Decca LP (he was also a Decca recording artist at the time, a slightly older contemporary of theirs), and played that vinyl, hearing Allen sing "You've Got Your Troubles". I played that song over and over that day, and for many years to come, would play it a few times a week. It remains, mostly a memory now, as one of the most haunting, thrilling, tuneful songs from that era. The Fortunes had three or four top ten hits in the US and UK, then faded from chart glory - but they kept on recording, and touring. They're not a major band, but they are a great part of what made The Sixties not only swinging, but fortunate.
When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se. What do I mean by smart?
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And Yes Album ...with Starship Trooper...?
Best wishes, Davide Trame