Shakey Graves: 'Are you trick or are you treat?'*

alejandro rose-garcia aka shakey graves

* From 'City in a Bottle'. Links to songs in the titles. For tenuous Kinks connection, see end.

Happy Shakey Graves Day!
Thought I would post this to celebrate.

Random, arbitrary, magical – how we hear new music these days

A musical segment on the TV series Third Watch showcased a distinctive tune and I thought, finally some good new music. However, investigations led to the revelation that this great new band was an old favourite, no other than Fleetwood Mac; the song was ‘Peacekeeper’. You didn’t know it was me who discovered the Mac, did you? Remind anyone just a little of Paul Simon's ‘Kodachrome’?

I first heard Citizen Cope on a trailer for a TV show that I never watched: Sons of Anarchy. Of course it was difficult to find out more about the singer and the song without knowing his name or the title but anything is possible with YouTube and Google so tried various lines from the short snippet I had heard until I identified the song as ‘Son’s Gonna Rise’. Now one album and two gigs later ...

On the plane, watched Boyhood and found myself humming an exquisitely pretty song from it all the way home so tried to remember one line of the lyric so that I could search for it online: ‘Hero’ by Family of the Year. Every time I hear this song, it cheers me up so I wouldn't be without it.

Was there life before YouTube? And why?

I’m not particularly techno-savvy. I haven’t even progressed to being able to download anything and don’t really understand people who go for long country walks while glued to their iPods. Don’t you want to hear the birds, the wind, someone yelling at you that you’re trespassing? But even someone as digitally retarded as me can cope with YouTube and I use it to check out new music although eventually I like to own a physical artefact, something to hold, like a CD/DVD. 

So how did I stumble into Shakey Graves?

I watched a movie and it was complete nonsense (Nora Roberts histrionics) but there was this totally sweet-looking guy in it, outshining the rest of the cast in a cameo as the evil brother. Read my review here. The film was Midnight Bayou. The actor’s name was Alejandro Rose-Garcia.

gotta love someone who looks like this ...

Early Graves (sorry)

I was curious – he didn’t seem to have been in many movies so I checked him out on YouTube; thought this was really cute, ‘Ali, Ali, Julie, Julie’. I realised he had this alter ego or other title: Shakey Graves. I tried to listen to several tracks (emphasis on ‘tried’) but didn’t get it. Some of it was live and occasionally seemed like self-indulgent caterwauling, some supremely lo-fi, soft and understated, that left little impression on me but even though I’m not someone who usually has the patience to acquire a taste, I kept listening (I'd say partly because he’s not exactly hard to look at, but in fact most tracks I liked only had a pic of the CD cover from Roll the Bones. I wasn't ready for Shakey live).

... but uses this on his cd sleeve

These songs were like shy children (and I’ve always had a soft spot for shy children), standing behind me, tugging at my skirt, politely asking for attention, particularly ‘Built to Roam’, with the chorus quietly but increasingly insistently reiterating till it’s almost a threat: ‘Watch out/Cause here I come bored and lazy/Here I come no dignity/So long, sad city of angels/ You ain’t been very good to me’, this compounded with a laden pause (for effect) before the second instance – Shakey really knows how to emphasise a stanza or line with a breath beforehand or a sigh after. Subtly, slowly, they infiltrated my consciousness. They clung to me like teasels, attached themselves via static. I brushed them off but they would regroup and reconnect and so they insidiously crept up on me, spun gossamer strands around me, saved me till later.

some strange enchantment

I was beguiled by the girl-nextdoor prettiness of ‘To Cure What Ails’ (fantastic title, lyrics: ‘I think I’ve grown a little thinner/Without you riding my coat tails/I would trade it all again/For a nice stroll in your skin/Just to cure what ails’), the lilting loveliness of ‘Word of Mouth’ (‘When anybody tries to tell him what to do/He holds his breath until he turns blue’) and the sunny plaint of ‘Proper Fence’ (‘Well she said kiss me/And lord I listened’).

To begin with, they seemed like shadows of songs, sort of ethereal. I thought them insubstantial but gradually they began to exercise some strange enchantment on me. The plucking and finger-picking created delicate melodies, intricate patterns, falling like summer rain on ‘Business Lunch’ and ‘Roll the Bones’ (upbeat tune with downbeat message, a spoonful of sugar as Julie Andrews might put it: ‘Yeah so struggle all you like/Yeah put up the good fight/They say some day everybody dies alone’) or generating shades as subtle as a hand-coloured postcard on ‘Bully’s Lament’, sometimes with weirdly distorted vocals, often overlaid with syncopated handclaps, background vocals a nanosecond or so behind the lead.

The lyrics were intriguing, clever, full of allusions and mystery, and new ways of expressing interesting ideas. Take ‘Unlucky Skin’ (favourite line: ‘No monetary value(s) have I’; me neither), ‘Stereotypes of a Blue Collar Male’ (‘Church and stuff church and stuff/I never thought God would call my bluff/But he did/Yes he did/Yes he goddamn did’) or the rowdy live version of ‘City in a Bottle’: ‘If she was six teeth younger and I had half a mind/You know I'd carry her away from that wicked thing outside’. ‘Six teeth younger’! I love it. Atmospheric, sultry horns seem to stagger drunkenly through what is surely the seediest, sleaziest, sexiest swing tune since ‘Mack the Knife’ (Bobby Darin – accept no subsitute).

boy from the backwoods

I can only compare them to those Magic Eye pictures where you have to alter your focus in order to see something in the image, which isn’t immediately apparent, perhaps a completely different picture. But with Shakey, once you’ve altered your focus, you remain in this altered state, you can't go back and you wouldn’t want to. You can't unsee it. Or rather unhear it. It’s always magical to you.

Some songs were on the Roll the Bones album or The Donor Blues ep (only available via download on Shakey Graves Day) but many only exist on YouTube. Waiting for a recording of 'Bully's Lament' (unbelievable right?), ‘Once in a While’, ‘Where a Boy Once Stood’, ‘Word of Mouth’, ‘Late July’ (didn’t even rate this till I heard an astounding live version in Louisville), ‘Tomorrow’, ‘Parliament’ (SG as backwoods boy/hillbilly hobo), ‘Coat of Arms’ (‘When is the last day of school/Today is the first day of class’). I've made a list if anyone's interested ...

 boo and shakey

Vampire slayers

The new songs were a different proposition. Bolder, brasher, bolshier cousins to the earlier ones. They didn’t tap tentatively at the door; they high-kicked it down like vampire slayers. However, I was initially put off by a frantic, scary version of ‘Dearly Departed’, with Esmé Patterson that everyone else loved. I still prefer it when he does this alone or with Boo (Chris Boosahda) and she’s not there (inadvertently continuing the undead theme with this Zombies classic). I love the way Shakey and Boo whip each other up into a frenzy, into a perfect pitch of intensity. Boo adds a certain something to the Shakey experience until ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts'. Compare the 2013 Pickathon version of ‘Where a Boy Once Stood’ (admittedly a different time, place, audience) with this from Stetson Center Stage 2014.

I think it was ‘Hardwired’ (which is on the new CD And the War Came) that did it for me. That was a song and a half. My reservations fell away. This is my favourite version – he doesn’t alter the tempo too much and the song retains its momentum more.

‘Well water was wine/Back on blue mountain time/While I watched your lovin' expire/While I lay close to you/As the lace on the shoe/And that's when I knew/We were hardwired’. The English grad in me loved the interline rhyme of ‘lay close to you’/‘lace on the shoe’. I might be wrong but I think originally the lyrics were: ‘Well I bumbled like bees/While you boiled like the seas’ but now he mostly sings ‘Well you bumbled like bees/And I boiled like the seas’ and he’s altered ‘But you are as you came/Mostly bliss and cocaine/A match just beggin' for fire’ to ‘But you are as you came/Mostly bliss and cocaine/Just a match beggin' for fire’ but I prefer the first version – it not only scans better but alters the stress too, making the girl (we assume it’s a girl) sound even more combustible. Like she can't wait. And the melody was instantly memorable; the backing reminiscent of early Hall and Oates – never a bad thing ('I'll Be By', for instance).

wild card

Next I was mesmerised by the stunning ‘Wild Card’ here from Stetson Centre Stage.Like I say when Christian Kane sings 'Rattlesnake Smile': it should be illegal for anyone to sound this sexy. This epitomises the Shakey/Boo dynamic: organic, symbiotic. The guitar and drum kick straight to my heart. ‘The Perfect Parts’ I wasn’t enamoured of to begin with, thinking it too rocky but now I'm particularly partial to the rowdy version. The way he delivers the line ‘Well I used to take my women on the rocks’ sends a thrill through me. And I love the image ‘The city’s put me through the wash’. Definitely felt like that. 'House of Winston' is irresistible, with sparkling, iridescent guitar work, coupled with the adorable line ‘I wanna waste your time’.

His lyrics are a mischievous mix of humorous and profound. ‘The Pansy Waltz’ always makes me smile: ‘Well I dusted all the bones out in my yard/I fixed the screen door, raised the barn/But still you call me from the moon/Every single afternoon/Tell me all about the astronauts you've come to love/And how the earth looks from above/And how I should've been a better friend to you’. Again, the natural connection between the musicians, their obvious joy in performing together (although illicit substances might be playing a part here) all add to the appeal.

‘It’s sort of a rediscovery on stage. I’ll write a song … you get thrown in a room with a bunch of people, I like to change it.’

the diumvirate

The live versions were always totally different to the studio tracks and I found this offputting at first. I thought he changed the nature (or what I perceived to be the nature) of the songs too much, slowing to a crawl when I thought he should be in the fast lane, yelling when I anticipated a whisper. It felt like he was constantly dismantling them, rearranging them and I didn’t understand why. There are still some I can't listen to. But I mainly heard the newer songs live first and found, with the exception of ‘Only Son’, one of those songs like 'Where a Boy Once Stood’  or ‘Wild Card’ on which he effortlessly ratchets from sublime and tender in the verse to a regular maelstrom in the chorus (Shakey the storm and the calm at the eye of the storm at the same time) – a satisfying contrast, although this live performance from Lagunitas showcases the Shakey/Boo diumvirate (ok, I admit I made that word up); they play as if they were two strands of the same cloth, interwoven to create an elaborate tapestry.

a man possessed

But now I see that a song is not an object set in stone that has to be reproduced as perfectly or accurately as the track on the record.  Grant Hart often alters lyrics for different situations. With Shakey Graves, everything could change; the song is a living thing, endlessly manipulable, and he can play it whichever way he wants, depending on his mood or maybe the mood of an audience. With his crazy musical skills and vocal range and power, he sees limitless possibilities so opts to explore them. He can pare them down or fill them out, purr or roar.

So sometimes the songs are like old friends in different clothes or they appear to be complete strangers who strike you suddenly as a little familiar, just a frisson of déjà vu. There's maybe one mannerism you recall. He continually confounds expectations. It doesn’t always work but it ensures each gig is an exciting experience with songs that sometimes sound brand new.

And I could never doubt his fervour as he howls till the veins cord in his neck, his face reddens and sweat streams, he sings like a man possessed, could never doubt his absolute commitment to performing them with utter focus and intensity. See this ‘Dearly Departed’ for instance or this electrifying, impossibly sexy rendition of ‘Call It Heaven’ from Telluride.

So anyway, I’m hoping that Shakey will come to the UK this year since we travelled all the way to the US last year (having not had a vacation for three years) to try to catch him live two nights in a row but the first attempt was a disaster. Even though we had bought tickets in advance and won tickets in a competition for the same show (what are the odds? didn’t find this out till we got back home), we weren’t allowed in at the Mercy Lounge in Nashville because my sister failed to bring any ID. I had my passport and we’re twins but there was no budging the management and the draconian laws of Tennessee. Did get to see him at the Mercury Ballroom in Louisville and the gig was incendiary but made us even sadder we’d missed him the first night. So just one UK gig please?

'I can be the city boy that I make fun of and I can also be the country boy that will get dip on you.'

Trick or treat, I don’t care. Just get over here.

A poem about Shakey’s version of  ‘I’m on Fire’ (akin to being serenaded by the devil) is here and another fan's perspective on Shakey is here.

Anyone searching for a Kinks connection, there is one. Shakey and some renegades sing a version of 'Dead-End Street' here. You know, given the title of the blog, I should always add one.

Opinion8: Protest Songs

A blog that lists 8 of the best/worst/most common of any example, including songs, movie clichés, movies, best characters and so forth, some with explanation, some needing none.

So, here are my eight favourite songs with a message, songs that highlight an issue, a condition or a cause.Links to the songs in the titles.

1 Bullet and a Target – Citizen Cope
Vital, immediate, intelligent, heartfelt, you can't beat Citizen Cope. There’s so much going on musically when you listen carefully. I particularly love the syncopated handclaps.

‘Mrs Dalai Lamas/Another sister's shootin' heroin tomorrow/Amputees in Freetown, Sierra Leone's/The church wasn't honest/The state put the youth in a harness/Creatin' hostility among us/Teacher said no college/Still the kid's gonna get a check/With a couple of commas/People wanna bomb us/More people gotta scatter and run from us’

The second to last line quoted I heard as ‘People want Obamas’ which I think is even better.

2 For America – Jackson Browne

Passion and disillusion, a fiery combination. Lights the touchpaper every time. Jimmy Guterman calls it ‘both a prayer and a love song, which damns 'a generation's blank stare.’

‘I have prayed for America/I was made for America/Her shining dream plays in my mind/By the rockets' red glare/A generation's blank stare/We better wake her up this time’

3 Redemption Song – Bob Marley

This version reminds me of how I used to listen to Bob Marley songs, taped off the radio, playing on a small radio cassette recorder I insisted on carrying round everywhere, even on country walks, to my Dad’s dismay. A song that transcends age, gender, class and race with consummate ease, that is as at home on my radio cassette as it is at the ATP Tennis Players’ Party in Monte Carlo.

‘Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery/None but ourselves can free our minds’

4 Sign o’ the Times – Prince

Love the spirit, love the lyrics, love the tone, Prince’s show and tell, with urgent vocals and laidback beat, is totally compelling.

‘In France a skinny man/Died of a big disease with a little name/By chance his girlfriend came across a needle/And soon she did the same/At home there are seventeen-year-old boys/And their idea of fun/Is being in a gang called the Disciples/High on crack, totin’ a machine gun’

5 Streets of London – Ralph McTell

A plea to us all to recognise the suffering of others and stop feeling sorry for ourselves, his gentle strumming and what sounds like a lot of echo on his voice somehow make this even more convincing.

‘In the all-night café/At a quarter past eleven/Same old man sitting there on his own/Looking at the world/Over the rim of his tea-cup/And each tea lasts an hour/And he wanders home alone’

6. What's Going On - Marvin Gaye

Beginning with the ambient sound of a relaxed gathering, to set the scene. They say a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down and Marvin's honey tones and a gorgeous tune do the trick here. It sounds like peace, if peace had a sound.

Mother, mother/There's too many of you crying/Brother, brother, brother/There's far too many of you dying/You know we've got to find a way/To bring some lovin' here today yeah/Father, father/We don't need to escalate/You see, war is not the answer/For only love can conquer hate/You know we've got to find a way/To bring some lovin' here today, oh (oh)

7 Vietnam Song – Country Joe & the Fish

Oh for the days when people used to protest properly, peacefully, over things that actually mattered.

‘Well, come on all of you, big strong men/Uncle Sam needs your help again/He's got himself in a terrible jam/Way down yonder in Vietnam/So put down your books and pick up a gun/We're gonna have a whole lotta fun’

8 Abraham, Martin and John – Marvin Gaye

More of a lament than a message song but simple, melancholic and conducive to contemplation.

‘Has anyone here seen my old friend Martin?/Can you tell me where he's gone?/He freed a lot of people/But it seems the good die young, yeah/I just looked around and he was gone.’

Extract from another blog, bemoaning the lack of ideas in most current chart music. This blog can be found here.
The charts are full of these so-called songs, which consist of one refrain, sung or played over and over ad infinitum, often this refrain being a sample from an older song (so not even an original tune), usually with all the passion or feeling leached out of it, so it sounds as if it’s been sung by an auto-tuned automaton (again the Black-Eyed Peas are a perfect example with their soulless rendition of ‘Time of My Life’) and then some extremely childish rap with clichéd rhymes, for example, ‘it’s the girls on the coast, I like the most’, or words repeated ‘I see my friends, friends, friends’ or mingled with uninsightful lyrics, such as Jlo’s ‘Let me introduce you to my party in the club’. This nonsense spreads like wildfire. It’s infinitely depressing to me to think that this is all anyone wants to hear: songs with the singer boasting about how sexy they are, how they’re going to rock the club, or repeating their own names, etc. There are occasional exceptions, such as Beyoncé’s ‘Halo’ but they really only serve to prove the rule. Sometimes there’s a snatch of a pleasant-enough tune but the mindless drivel of words that accompanies it is like Chinese water torture - it infiltrates everything until it’s ubiquitous and erodes my will to live. Nobody wants to hear real sentiments or ideas any more. Gone are the days of wordsmiths and tunesmiths like Neil Young or Gordon Lightfoot. Or rather gone are the days when writers of such calibre could achieve mainstream recognition while expressing different takes on society or challenging ideas. In the 60s and 70s, it was considered a virtue to write something deep, moving or politically resonant. Now it’s a very difficult climate for intelligence or authenticity. There are musicians out there who are creating worthwhile songs, whose lyrics have integrity, like Citizen Cope, but the market is on the decline.

Other contenders

Ohio – Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
For No One – Barclay James Harvest
What's Going On – Marvin Gaye

Vietnam Cowboys – Ray Davies

Angola (Wrong Side of the Law) – Ray Davies

Give Me Love, Give Me Peace on Earth – George Harrison

Old Empire – Nova Mob

A Gallon of Gas – the Kinks

Dead-End Street – the Kinks
Shipbuilding – Robert Wyatt
Flag Day – the Housemartins
One in Ten – UB40
Get over It – Eagles
Goodnight, Saigon – Billy Joel

Wistful wish-fulfilment
Harvest for the World – Isley Brothers
Give Peace a Chance/Imagine – John Lennon
Earth Song/Heal the World – Michael Jackson

Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered

Writing this while listening to Rufus Wainwright’s version of ‘Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered’. Although I think he’s a terribly interesting character, like something out of a fantasy, I have trouble liking his usually rather whiny and drawled delivery but for some reason, the way he slows this down really works and it seems totally heartfelt.

The lyrics seem to encapsulate his personality and personal trajectory in the same way that ‘Yesterday When I Was Young’ (hmm never thought I would like Charles Aznavour) seems to describe Helmut Berger (surely the ‘German film star’ from the Passions song). And when Frank Sinatra sings this, it’s about the girl rather than Frank but not so with Rufus. When he sings, it’s all about Rufus. Definitely.

The thing is every time I hear it, it makes me want to cry because I quite envy Rufus. His experience, his emotions, his lessons, his tireless charm, his mercurial spirit.

The soft confessional tone of ‘I’ve sinned a lot etc’, the self-awareness and arrogance of ‘But I’m like sweet seventeen a lot’, which he is, make my heart melt.

However, just watched Pal Joey and can't quite believe that they made a film, with Frank Sinatra, with these songs that he delivers like no one else (‘My Funny Valentine’ and ‘Bewitched’ – God bless Rodgers and Hart) and wasted an opportunity to have him sing them. It’s criminal.

For more on Helmut Berger, see this week's passion: helmut berger as konrad in visconti's conversation piece.

'And I hate modern music'*

* From 'Sixteen' by the Buzzcocks (Pete Shelley)

Watched a documentary on Ron Sexsmith on BBC4, featuring many respected musicians (Elvis Costello, Steve Earle) singing his praises and appearing as bemused about his relative lack of success as he seems to be himself. I’m of the opinion (as someone with two Ron Sexsmith albums, who’s seen him in concert three times) that he’s had as much success as his talent warrants these days. And I’m not saying that he’s not talented. He is. But I’d venture to suggest that he’s pretty lucky to have had a TV show made about him. There are hordes of as or more accomplished or inspirational singer-songwriters out there who remain similarly unsung and can only dream of the recognition and respect that Ron has had – Jackie Leven, Grant Hart. It’s not that his talent is limited although I do believe that his songwriting was better in the early days. It’s that its appeal is restricted – because of his idiosyncratic delivery and style. I would not want this to change. It’s a mystery to me how someone like Rufus Wainwright (love him, don’t like his voice), surely as much of an acquired taste vocally as Peter Perrett or Gordon Gano, has been so successful but he’s definitely an exception. The rest of these musicians write, make records, tour (often extensively in Germany) and do it without expecting or receiving any acclaim. Usually everything is done on a shoestring, to get the music out there.

Semi-gratuitous pic of Grant Hart

These days the world, the general public, does not recognise the blend of playfulness and erudition in a Grant Hart lyric (on a concept album called The Last Days of Pompeii, referencing Pliny and Herculaneum), or value his effortless, timeless melodies or appreciate the majestic grandeur of Jackie Leven’s voice or respond to the emotion in his delivery. Today if it’s going to be a hit, it has to be about having a party down the club and putting your hands in the air. And preferably the lines are repeated over and over again, for instance, ‘Tonight’s gonna be a good night’ until they make you want to beat your head against the wall.

The charts are full of these so-called songs, which consist of one refrain, sung or played over and over ad infinitum, often this refrain being a sample from an older song (so not even an original tune), usually with all the passion or feeling leached out of it, so it sounds as if it’s been sung by an auto-tuned automaton (again the Black-Eyed Peas are a perfect example with their soulless rendition of ‘Time of My Life’ but I shouldn't leave out the Fugees assassination of 'Killing Me Softly', into which they introduced what the song previously lacked, some idiot going 'One time', 'Two time') and then some extremely childish rap with clichéd rhymes, for example, ‘it’s the girls on the coast, I like the most’, or words repeated ‘I see my friends, friends, friends’ or mingled with uninsightful lyrics, such as JLo’s ‘Let me introduce you to my party in the club’. This nonsense spreads like wildfire. It’s infinitely depressing to me to think that this is all anyone wants to hear: songs with the singer boasting about how sexy they are, how they’re going to rock the club, or repeating their own names, etc. There are occasional exceptions, such as Beyoncé’s ‘Halo’ or 'If I Were a Boy', which has the added distinction of using the future conditional correctly, but they really only serve to prove the rule. Sometimes there’s a snatch of a pleasant-enough tune but the mindless drivel of words that accompanies it is like Chinese water torture – it infiltrates everything until it’s ubiquitous and erodes my will to live. Nobody wants to hear real sentiments or ideas any more. Gone are the days of wordsmiths and tunesmiths like Neil Young or Gordon Lightfoot. Or rather gone are the days when writers of such calibre could achieve mainstream recognition while expressing different takes on society or challenging ideas. In the 60s and 70s, it was considered a virtue to write something deep, moving or politically resonant. Now it’s a very difficult climate for intelligence or authenticity. There are musicians out there who are creating worthwhile songs, whose lyrics have integrity, like Citizen Cope or Shakey Graves or Ciaran Lavery, but the market is on the decline.

It’s all to do with the general dumbing down of everything in society. I would go even further and say that society has started to glorify ignorance, that if you use a multisyllabic word, you’re reprimanded for it. Why is that the contestants on American Idol or The X Factor aren't ashamed that they don’t know any music by the Beatles, for instance, claiming that this is because they’re too young? You don’t have to have been born in the same era as Tchaikovsky or Frank Sinatra in order to appreciate their work – I hesitate to say oeuvre – true talent is timeless.

So what we’re left with is lowest-common-denominator music. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti-hedonism. I’ve nothing against people having a good time but does it always have to be at a party in da club? Don’t they enjoy anything else? Don’t they want to sing about anything else? Doesn’t a grown man find it demeaning to repeat ‘Weeh ooh’ at various points in a Gwen Stefani chorus? Hasn’t he any self-respect? Or is it only about the profit margin? His qualms disappear on the way to the bank. Bands like the Sugababes used to have some meaning in their lyrics, some lyricism even, in the songs they chose to release (‘Ugly’, ‘Too Lost in You’) and some passion in their delivery. But that’s all changed.

While this trend continues (maybe it began with the soulless and anaemic renditions of great songs by fey-sounding women – Eva Cassidy with ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ or more recently Ellie Goulding’s ‘Your Song’ – and I can only see it expanding as there seems to be an endless appetite for it), the niche market is continually contracting and the Ron Sexsmiths of this world, the songwriters who seamlessly meld a gift for words with melodies that seem organic, so natural that it’s like they always existed as they flow from verse to chorus to bridge, have no place in the mind-numbing round of girls, clubs, parties and electronic samples from previously released songs.

Arthur Conan Doyle

'Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself but talent instantly recognizes genius.' Arthur Conan Doyle