My First Web Log

Incredibly I have never before attempted to web log as such. Gennaro thought I would duck to water with this. Well I am reluctant. But here goes.

And here is something special. The story of how the Digital Witchdoctor got his name.

Well I blame Douglas Adams. There is an episode of the original Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy BBC radio show that opens with the book describing a planet so backward that the people there still think digital watches are a good idea. I was a student then studying the Anthropology of Religion at Cambridge, this would be I suppose my second year there. I had a room FULL of keyboards and guitars, I played in 5 bands at any one time, because bass guitar players were rare, I even toured with the Cambridge Footlights revue band.

But I had – and still have, an original Hohner Clavinet with white keys on black, with real strings you have to tune, in a wooden casing. This is the same type of keyboard that Stevie Wonder used for his hit Superstition, and it has a very special sound. And on that keyboard and on my guitar I wrote many many songs. One song in particular needed a name. It was very busy, on the keyboard, fingers flying about. Fingers of course are digits, so Digital seemed to be part of the title. I remain a deeply analogue being, and also very into Hegel and dialectics at that time, so I liked the idea of a title that expressed the opposite of what it seemed to be about. I think I was stuck for a while, then was about the settle for Digital Wizard. It was just a song, but there were never any words, and that was unusual for me in those days.

I was learning about Witchcraft Among the Azande in Africa and all that basic social anthropology stuff, and the Digital Watch joke was still on my mind for I always hated the things. They are an offence to all ergodynamics and aesthetics, they do not tell you the time, they ask you to work it out. Clumsy awful things, so wrong.

I was already realising that as an outcast and an outsider, I was the Witchdoctor. Because that is the path of the shaman, to be cast out of the tribe and brought back for special ceremonies only. I never really studied, I just played music at Cambridge. Always hiding in my piano.

So the title for the song just hung there in the air. And it was perfect. From the joke about the digital watch, in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, plus a bit of dodgy Anthropology, I titled that melody Digital Witchdoctor.

And somehow, deep down, I knew it was me, but that would take me many years to really come to terms with that. Only since I met Ra have I dared to say, OK, perhaps, just perhaps, I am a Shaman in some modern new way.

If you want to hear that melody, I recorded it in Luxembourg in 1991, for my unplugged album Sunshine in the Night now digitally re-mastered and available here through this link www.lulu.com/content/149770

When you get to the webpage just click on Preview This Disc...