mike-cooper

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[mike-cooper]

Revelations, reflections and recollections.

The following are some of stories of the inspiration behind some of my records; there is always a story, plus some other travel tales, revelations, reflections and recollections. RAFT ONE - Willam Willis - Age Unlimited. Basement Books in Melbourne. A treasury of second hand books that I visit regularly whenever I am in that city. I head straight for the Travel - Pacific section. My library is stuffed with volumes that I bought in that ‘beach beneath the street’. This particular day I am drawn to a small volume titled The Seven Sisters by William Willis because it has what looks like a raft embossed in the righthand bottom corner of the cover in gold. I had been assigned to read The Kon Tiki Expedition at school in my last few years there. That and The Tempest by William Shakespeare were my English Literature Exam books. Easy, inspiring and obviously impressive to me. Thor Heyerdahl was all I knew about rafting and the Pacific until William Willis came into my hands. Here was a man who had sailed 2,200 miles further than Heyerdah across the Pacific Ocean so how come no one talked about him and why did he not have a million tourists visiting a museum dedicated to him like Heyerdahl’s in Oslo I wondered. In 1954 just seven years after Heyerdahl had drifted with his crew of five across the Pacific from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands Willis drifted as far as Samoa from Callao single handedly!! He was 61 years old at that time and had suffered a hernia the day he left. He continued to be plagued by this throughout the voyage and at one point even had to hang himself upside down with a rope around one ankle suspended from a sail spar to relieve himself of pain and put his intestine back inside. His diet for almost the whole voyage was 50 pounds of Canihua grain, 70 pounds of Barley, 70 pounds of brown sugar, 50 cans of lemon juice, 2 pounds of tea, 50 cans of instant coffee and 120 gallons of fresh water. He claims that he hardly ever even saw fish let alone caught them and that practically the only ones he did eat were flying fish that happened to land on the deck by mistake and that the cat he had taken with him (as well as a parrot) didn’t get to eat first. The cat incidentally completed the whole trip with Willis but the parrot was killed by the cat a couple of days before completion of the voyage. it had taken Willis 115 days to sail the 6,700 miles. Willis left his raft and bequeathed it to the Samoans who built a small museum around it which it seems burnt down at some point. The raft itself was built from seven balsa wood tree trunks and Willis had named it Seven Little Sisters. Ten year later when Willis was 73 he built another raft based on his first and left Callao in Peru on 5th July 1963 with the intention of a complete crossing to Australia. He arrived in Apia where he made a lengthy repair stop before continuing on towards has final goal. After 204 days of rafting he arrived in Tully in northern Queensland on the east coast of Australia, after a treacherous crossing of the Great Barrier Reef. From Tully his raft was towed, with almost disastrous results, down the coast to Sydney where he made a glorious entry under Sydney Harbour Bridge. Rafts do not take kindly to being towed, preferring to take their time under their own motivation. After all his raft was named Age Unlimited. Willis unfortunately came to an inglorious end attempting to cross the Atlantic in May 1968 in a small sailing boat. It was not the first time he had tried this and his boat was found drifting half submerged 400 miles from the Irish coast, but Willis was never found only his journal with a final entry on July 21st 1968. It had been drifting, presumably without Willis for two months. RAFT TWO - Vital Alsar - La Balsa y Las Balsas. Vital: “necessary for the success or continued existence of something; extremely important” Where to begin. Basement books again? The Maritime Museum in Ballina? A dumpster in the street in Valencia. Where to end …..Vera Cruz maybe..or in reverse perhaps, or both beginning and ending? Vera Cruz is famous for the quality of its hot chocolate best consumed maybe at La Parroquia de Veracruz in the port, which is where we went. Worth it if only for the theatre of pouring. In fact there is nothing special about the place at all and it is almost always crowded and you wait to be seated. Which we did. And the pouring is spectacular and very similar to the pouring of cider, or Sidra or Sagardoa, as it is known in the Asturian, Basque and Galician areas of Spain, or Cantabria which is where Vital Alsar was born. Again searching the arcane Pacific section in Basement books in Melbourne where I had discovered William Willis I pull out a volume that has on its spine “La Balsa To Australia - The Longest Raft Voyage In History” by Vital Alsar. This tells me the story of Vital’s third, and second successful, trip drifting across the Pacific. He was of course familiar with the Non Tiki expedition, having read it in, of all places, Morocco, when doing military service in the Spanish Army and felt the urge to replicate it. In 1966 he made, in the now established tradition of Pacific rafters, a balsa wood raft which sank after 143 days with Vital and crew member and friend Marc Modena being rescued by a passing ship near the Galapagos Islands. That raft was named Pacifica. In 1970 La Balsa is launched in the Rio Guayas with four men on board and was being towed towards the Gulf Of Guayaquil and the open ocean for the start of what would become the longest non stop journey by raft ever made. William Willis had also achieve this remember, but although he was alone he had made a lengthy repair stop in Apia in Samoa. The two had met at the explorers club in Manhattan prior to Vital’s Pacifica raft excursion where Willis had told Vital it was impossible, but then changed his mind later and said that he thought Vital might make it. Vital and his crew took 161 days to navigate the La Balsa Pacific and arrive in Mooloolaba in Queensland on the East Coast of Australia about 97 kilometres north of Brisbane. Ballina - A mostly retirement town 160 kilometres south of Brisbane on the Richmond River which empties into the Pacific Ocean at Ballina. It has two surf beaches the North Wall and the South Wall. The South Wall is a winter surf beach whereas The North Wall is a summer surf beach and has a permanent shark warning, which does not deter most surfers. Its other claim to fame is the worlds biggest prawn model which used to sit atop a restaurant in former years. The restaurant closed and for may years the Big Prawn was deserted but the actual prawn sat there until a hardware chain, Bunnings, bought the site and rescued the prawn which now sits beside its carpark entrance. Unsettled. Ballina normally has a copious 1,817.9 mm (71.6 in) of rainfall annually, but during my 2017 tour of Australia a cyclone crossed the north eastern coast of Australia and travelled slowly south, eventually ending up in New Zealand causing very extreme flooding. I was due to give an audio visual concert with my colleague Grayson Cooke, who lives in Ballina, at Southern Cross University in Lismore where he works. Lismore was inundated with several metres of floodwater; the university was closed, roads impassable, raging river, floating islands of debris from the hinterlands sailing past the window (his apartment is right on the river) and the concert is cancelled. Instead we decided to do a 'live stream' on social media from Grayson's apartment. I had travelled on this tour with no guitar, my usual instrument and was borrowing one from someone wherever I played. But I had my iPhone with a virtual digital steel guitar app installed, hooked up to my mini Kaos Pad, a long delay pedal, and a Samsung tablet with a John Cage prepared piano app. Grayson screened and manipulated video from his Unsettled audio visual installation (for which I did the music) that was at that time being show in Adelaide at the same time. I released the resulting audio on my Bandcamp page. Prior to the cyclone arriving, or maybe on a previous visit to Ballina, I was admiring pelicans nesting on the top of a lamp post alongside the river when I noticed I was outside a building advertising itself as the Ballina Naval and Martime Museum. Why not enter? Totally surprised to see inside a balsa wood raft, but not just any old balsa wood raft it was THE raft. One of three that in 1973 Vital Alsar had sailed across the Pacific Ocean with 12 comrades from Ecuador to Ballina for the second time. Guayaquil to Ballina. This third voyage in 1972 featuring three rafts reached Ballina on the east coast of Australia after 179 days. One of the three rafts began to break up when the Australian navy attempted to tow it ashore. The other two were moored in the Richmond river for some months until they discovered that they were starting to rot. The raft presently in the Ballina Maritime Museum is a composite of the two. While I was writing this in 2020 Vital died on the 15th September aged 87. His life after the epic raft voyages continued to be dedicated to the sea and sailing. In 1977,he built 3 brigs in Guayaquil navigating the Amazon river and the Atlantic Ocean, 11,000 nautical miles, until reaching Santander in Spain. The brigs can be seen in the Magdalena Palace in Santander as can a replica raft as well. His last expedition was “Zamná”, sailing from the island of Cozumel (Mexico) to Greece, stopping at many American, European and North African ports before returning to Mexico. This last voyage between 2009-2010 aboard the trimaran was built in the port of Alvarado and named Zamná after the Mayan god of knowledge. Aboard was a Mayan boy, his father and twelve other crew members carrying an emotional message of peace - “El Niño, La Mar and La Paz”. Sail on, sail on sailor.

[mike-cooper]

[mike-cooper]

Paris, Ibiza and Reading In Flames 1962.

"Mike and I breakfasted at Popov's every morning on wine, french bread and camembert and went on the tourist trail. Each evening we returned for another 'breakfast' at Popov's, collected our things and transferred over the road to The Storyville Club where the best of French and African jazz was to be heard. Last thing, we retired to the Island in the middle of the Seine and bedded down on the cobbles surrounding the Municipal Gardens under the watchful eye of the Police Headquarters. Sleep was a fleeting occurrence due to the constant stream of the searchlights from the ‘Bateau Mousse' as they paraded their floating guests past this nightly spectacle of hundreds of like minded people, all desperate to get their heads down. There was a regular patrol from the Gendarmerie and, worst, a fluctuation of noisy drunken youths on the look-out for something to steal. Everything had to be tied to the rucksacks and slept on, no matter how uncomfortable. On our second morning we watched as crowds from our 'hotel' dove into the Seine for a tempting swim we were approached by a young Dutchmen who, guessing we were English, launched into a garrulous conversation in our native tongue. Cees [pronounced like a suit 'case'] Kramer was to become one of my closest friends in the few years before his premature death. He joined Mike and me for the remainder of that day returning to his night-time companion, Regine, one of the prostitutes he had met there. Regine had a wooden foot but that didn't seem to perturb either her clients, or Cees. He was a frequent visitor to Paris and knew her well. The following night however we all became exceedingly inebriated both by Cees's company and the wine and beer we consumed in the bars he took us to. So much so that Cees decided to join us on the bank of the Seine. Only, he insisted that there was no need to sleep entirely rough. He showed us the way into the garden that sat at the end of the island like the prow of a boat. We had been followed by two Algerians and, fearing trouble, decide to keep a watch over our belongings. Mike took first watch and Cees and I slept soundly on the grass. It was daylight when we woke. Mike was fast asleep and my guitar had gone. Mike never forgave himself for the sin and, with Cees's help we undertook what turned out to be the most comprehensive tour of the Paris underworld in an unsuccessful search for my guitar among the junk shops and flea markets.” I accompanied Dave on his journey to the south as far as Orleans where I caught a train back to Paris and then on to England as my ‘holiday’ was over. I left a fairly clean cut young man who was working for a timber company called Baynes and returned a bearded long haired beatnik much to my employers dismay, however I was not dismissed but I eventually left of my own choice not long after this.

[mike-cooper]

Listen/purchase: Cumino In Mia Cucina by Mike Cooper / Duck Baker

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#tropicalgothic

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Slide Lady Slide

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New Tropical Gothic vinyl

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Valencia street art

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Will be playing live music with Zai to his film Chronicles Of Amnesia on May 4th/5th at this venue in Singapore

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Reluctant Swimmer/Virtual Surfer vinyl edition on Discrepant.

[mike-cooper]

Clipper Ship Bookstore review of Blue Guitar -

Blue Guitar A New Hardcore Blues Masterpiece from Idea Records ByClipper Ship Book Storeon May 22, 2017 A truly astonishing new album from the always excellent Idea Records. Cooper's gutsy and tough avant-garde blues make this one of the most original albums of the year. Rich, powerful and unlike anything you've heard, these nine remarkable songs will leave you wanting more. My reaction the first time I played it was, "What an amazing album!" A truly wonderful production all around, including the beautiful package design. Don't pass it by.