Midweek Miscellany

We frequently see or hear quips about the older generation's fumble-fingered efforts with new (to them) technology - here's a chance for those of us of "a certain age" to have a little snigger at the younger generation:

"Are we supposed to pick up the phone and then do it?' Fun footage shows two teenagers completely baffled by a rotary telephone when given four minutes to make one call:

Teacher wears same dress for 100 days to teach students a lesson

By Hannah Frishberg

Teacher Julia Mooney dressed to impress her earthy beliefs on middle school students.

To prove that you are not what you wear, Mooney, 34, donned the same gray, button-down dress for 100 days in a row, washing it only “as needed.”

She didn’t tell her young charges what she was up to in the beginning — but slowly they caught on that she was rocking the roughly $50 frock “through ceramics projects, blizzards, whatever.”

“I was a little bit fed up with the cultural expectation to go shopping and spend all this money for other people to approve of me,” Mooney told “Good Morning America” back in November, when she launched her minimalist mission. “There is no rule that says I cannot wear the same thing every day if I choose to, so I thought, why not.

Fast-forward to February: By buying into the buzzy “fast fashion” trend, Mooney says we are cultivating what she describes as a “culture of excess” that hurts the environment — and young people.

"This is something they deal with every day as 12- and 13-year-olds,” she tells TreeHugger. “As they try to define themselves, they are often identifying with brands or superficial things like their social media presence. Many seemed excited to have a reason to talk about how silly all of that really is.................“Let’s use our energy to do good instead of looking good,” Mooney advises on her @oneoutfit100days Instagram account, where she posts about the importance of sustainability and the evils of fast fashion.

Do read the full piece (linked at the title) where there's a photograph of Ms Mooney, and the dress.

Cartoon by Mad John Peck (1971) - the idea never gets old!

A movie "coming soon"- actually at the end of June 2019, is said to offer a new slant on Beatlemania, with a spoonful of sci-fi added.

A failing musician finds himself the only person in the world who remembers, after a weird world-wide sci-fi type event, the Beatles and their music. Guess what a failing musician might do next in such circumstances!

If the movie hadn't been written by Richard Curtis (from a story by Jack Barth) I'd probably be very wary of its potential, but Curtis has written such delights as Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Notting Hill (1999), Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), Love Actually (2003)... Yesterday is directed by Danny Boyle.

This coming movie has to be worth a look (keeping disbelief suspended!)

Official trailer:

Music Monday ~ "Pickin' up good vibrations"

We accompanied husband's daughter and son-in-law to see a Beach Boys tribute band perform on Friday evening - Woodie and the Long Boards. The concert was housed in an event/ballroom area rather than the usual theatre setting. Dance enthusiasts were able to enjoy their nostalgia both mentally and physically.

Unsurprisingly, dancers were mostly "of a certain age", but quite adept at swingin' those hips and doing all the cool gestures and....well...whatever. You can probably tell from this that I'm not, and never have been, much of a dancer myself. A bit of square dancing and the odd shuffle to a last waltz has been my lifetime limit. My brain might co-ordinate with my fingers for writing or typing purposes, but it refuses to co-ordinate with my feet for dancing purposes. Anyway...

I realised fairly quickly that The Beach Boys must have written many more songs than I'd ever realised. My knowledge extends to what was played by BBC disc jockeys, back in England in the 1960s and 70s, and later by older disc jockeys suffering from chronic nostalgia.

Good Vibrations is Beach Boys' gold standard, Gold Only Knows, Barbara Ann; my own favourite, not written by the band, but a traditional song of the Bahamas Sloop John B, and all their other hits were played, along with some more obscure to all but dyed in the wool Beach Boy fans.

Glancing at the lyrics of Fun, Fun, Fun this morning I realised why, in spite of their great, well-polished sound, The Beach Boys never managed to outshine The Beatles in the UK (for some, they didn't mange to do so even in the USA) :

Well she got her daddy's car and she cruised through the hamburger stand, now
Seems she forgot all about the library like she told her old man, now
But with the radio blasting goes cruising just as fast as she can now
And she'll have fun, fun, fun till her daddy takes the T-bird away
(fun, fun, fun, 'till her daddy takes the T-bird away)

In the UK, back then, we didn't have T-birds for daddy to take away. We were lucky if we had a bike on which to ride to the railway station to catch a train to school, or to work. We couldn't relate, nor I feel sure could some of the poorer families in the USA at that time. We understood Beatles' lyrics, though, we'd lived'em!

Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up I noticed I was late
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Made my way upstairs and had a smoke
And everybody spoke and I went into a dream...

I read the news today, oh boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall
I'd love to turn you on......

This is not to say that I was a great Beatles' fan back then, but with this amount of hindsight I can see that while The Beach Boys offered the feel of a privileged and slightly exotic lifestyle, The Beatles, for us were like a familiar plate of fish and chips, with just the right amount of salt and vinegar added.

Woodie and the Long Boards entertained the crowd on Friday evening, in spite of a rather dodgy sound system. It was good to hear lots of foot-tappingly familiar music, and to watch some of our near-contemporaries shakin' their thang on the dance floor.

The real thang for Music Monday:

Music & Movie Monday ~ Ear-worm...Once There Was a Way to... SING

Searching for something nice to watch on Netflix - something to take away the nasty taste of Trump-flavoured "fire and fury"; and white supremacist malice, I hit on "Sing", an animated story featuring a singing contest. I'd seen a preview, during a cinema visit, some time ago and quite fancied the idea. I've been a fan of singing talent shows from long before the birth of Pop Idol in Britain (parent of American Idol et al). I suggested "Let's give this one a whirl - how bad can it be?"

We thoroughly enjoyed the movie!

Sing left me with an ear-worm - not an unpleasant one, but an insistent one. The film begins with a phrase from a Beatles song, from their now iconic Abbey Road album: Golden Slumbers.

 Nana Noodleman

The film ends with lines from the same song too, probably giving birth to my ear-worm.

Some good cover versions of well-loved pop-songs are scattered through the film, sung by cast members, some well-known, some less so. In the clip above, that's Jennifer Hudson singing, as Nana Noodleman; Jennifer herself is a product of American Idol - a rather nice tribute to the show which has had its share of sneers and brickbats over the years. Other well-knowns as singing characters include Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johansson and Seth MacFarlane (yeah we knew he could sing - I have his CD to prove it, but am still mysteriously blocked from his Twitter feed.)

A current acting fave of mine, Matthew McConaughey, has a leading, non-singing role as the talent show's presenter.

Back to my ear-worm. I guess that, by now, almost everyone knows that some Golden Slumbers lyrics in Paul McCartney's song were "borrowed" from a centuries old piece of poetry, "Cradle Song" by Thomas Dekker (1572 –1632). I recall Golden Slumbers being known as a lullaby back in my schooldays in England. The first time I heard the Beatles' version, I well remember exclaiming the equivalent of: "WTF Beatles! We sang that in school donkeys' years ago!" We sang it to this tune:



In several online forums members have chewed over the meaning of the Beatles' song, as patch-worked together by Paul McCartney. Theories range around the idea that Paul was grieving over loss of his mother and childhood family life, putting his grief to music; or regretting the upcoming inevitable break-up of the Beatles as a band, another kind of family; or even a general life to death ditty - carrying that weight; or a fit-all soliloquy on how one can never get back to...whatever.

Personally, I love the first bars of the song - the "Once there was a way to get back home(ward)" - I wish Paul had continued with his own words, not those of some long ago writer. And yet... you know... that thought brought forth a theory, a bit left-field perhaps: We've heard and read, often, that the 1960s and early 1970s brought us some of the best popular music ever, and this has been put down to the then ubiquitous use of mind-altering drugs such as LSD.

Well...say the influence of LSD, or similar drug, sends the mind out there, where the buses don't run, but (tin-foil hat time) where everything that has ever been heard on Earth still remains in the ethers. Consider that things heard, albeit unconsciously, during these "flights", out where the buses don't run, might return inadvertently, when the mind is back on all-fours, on Earth. The story goes that Paul read the lyrics of the lullaby Golden Slumbers from among his step-sister's piano music, even so, he didn't copy the music, he didn't know how to read music then. The music he created, to mix with the centuries-old words sounds kind of classical to me. It has been said, too that the music of Eleanor Rigby sounds akin to the Gregorian chant style. And how come famous symphony orchestras can make Beatles' songs sound like classical compositions? Because they have classical DNA collected out where buses don't run? Tin-foil hat country? Possibly, but I enjoy that thought.

I should really post Paul McCartney's original version of my ear-worm song, but I'm not a dyed-in -the-wool Beatles fan. I have, though, come to appreciate much of their music when performed and arranged by others. So, I'll wind up with a YouTube video I particularly enjoyed: a mix of two Beatles' songs, the second is my ear-worm number, sung by The Seattle Ladies Choir :

Arty Farty Sgt. Pepper & Richard Lindner

I landed on the following 2009 Arty Farty post of mine after wondering whether I'd ever written a post about painter Egon Shiele (his date of birth, 12 June 1890, could make him a possibility for this week). Schiele's name appears in the posts's first sentence, with the observation that his work is "too porny and horny for a family blog". Reading on I saw mention of that famous old LP cover illustration from the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album. This album has been in the news (again) recently, heralding another re-mastered version of the recording, released for the occasion of the album's 50th anniversary. The newly re-mastered version has been a project of the late Sir George Martin's son, Giles. George Martin was sometimes referred to as "the fifth Beatle", and was producer of most of the group's classic catalogue - and more.

I shall make that flimsy link my excuse for re-running this post.

There's interesting detailed information about the Sgt. Pepper LP cover illustration and its content at THIS LINK.

Richard Lindner

"Who?" you say. So did I, at first.
(Left:"Hit", by Richard Lindner. 1971)

I settled on writing a few lines about Richard Lindner after considering first Egon Schiele (too porny and horny for a family blog), then Lucian Freud (nudes can get so boring), and finally found something of interest in Mr. Lindner's artwork. Investigating examples via Google Image, his style seemed kind of familiar. It had a general "feel" of The Beatles about it - think of those Yellow Submarine images. Lindner's style is reminiscent of much from the early 70s, even though some of his work was painted well outside that time span - perhaps it provided the inspiration for later artists.

My feeling of a link to the Beatles was triumphantly justified when I happened upon some websites showing the famous cover of their Sgt. Pepper album.




Richard Lindner is one of the numerous faces featured there, the cover was said to be a kind of homage to people they admired.....Lindner's face is behind George Harrison - not immediately behind, but the next one up, and below a female face.


Back to the astrology of artist du jour: Richard Lindner. He was born in Hamburg, Germany on 11 November 1901. His family moved to Nuremburg , later Lindberg studied in Munich but at the rise of Hitler and the Nazis he escaped to Paris, then in 1941 traveled to New York, where he worked as illustrator for various glossy magazines. He became an American citizen in 1948. He later taught at the Pratt Institute and Yale University.

His natal chart is set for 12 noon as no time of birth is available.




It's another of those distinctive-looking charts, with all personal planets clustered within just 3 zodiac signs: Scorpio, Sagittarius and Capricorn. Two outer planets Pluto and Neptune lie roughly opposite. Some astrologers class this type of configuration as a fan or bucket pattern, the "odd" planets form the handle. In this case, because the handle planets are outer, slow-movers which relate to whole age groups, I'm not so sure this applies.

What we can say about his personal planets is that though they are clustered close together, they still present a fairly well-balanced picture, element-wise and mode-wise. In a nutshell Lindner's Sun, and Moon (whatever time of birth) in Scorpio indicate an intense character, one with the ability to see through pretense and get to the core of things. A spot of Sagittarian exaggeration from Mars seeps into all of his art - it's his trademark in fact, along with the bright garish colors, as can be seen below. Venus Jupiter and Saturn all in Capricorn reflect a basically practical, rather than whimsical nature - and perhaps the strange flatness of his paintings comes from the Capricorn and Saturn in his nature, both link to limitation and structure. He lets himself go on color and content but limits himself in depth and perspective.

In this quote his art is described as "erotically drawn" (Scorpio) "highly defined", "mechanistic"(Capricorn/Saturn):

His work has been described by art critics as "mechanistic cubism." Infused with personal imagination, his style has overtones of the "Cabaret-Berlin" culture of the 30's, with flat areas of often garish colors, separated by highly defined edges. His subjects, too, seem to come from that era. His women, archetypal in this respect, are often corseted, erotically drawn in a garish and generic, rather than individuated way. Streetwalkers, continental circus women, and men in uniforms populate the Lindner landscape

Richard Lindner died in 1978.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN



ROCK, ROCK.


PORTRAIT NUMBER 2



HOMAGE TO A CAT



PILLOW AND ALMOST A CIRCLE



5TH AVENUE



FUN CITY



THE MEETING



TELEPHONE



UNTITLED



MAN WALKING ROOSTER BY A CRESTED MOON

Voting Day Eve

Eve of General election - and it's Music Monday. How can I relate this peculiar American election season to something musical?

Some fellow native Brits of mine, all northerners too, might be of help. I'll stitch together a medley of some of their famous song titles to tell the tale for me.

Here we go:

It has been A Magical Mystery Tour from start to finish. There has been Too Much Monkey Business goin' on throughout. A Paperback Writer would have had difficulty keeping up with the crazy we've experienced.

When I think of my candidate of choice, Senator Bernie Sanders, I think of Yesterday and My Guitar Gently Weeps about loss of his wished for Revolution. He advised his supporters and Clinton's to Come Together - but Clinton gave us a Ticket to Ride - doesn't like us, thinks she doesn't need us.

Choosing between Her Majesty and one who makes as much sense as I Am the Walrus makes for A Hard Day's Night.

It has been a Long and Winding Road to reach this point, though it's just another Day In The Life of wily politicians and media drones.

I've got through it, With a Little Help From My Friends.


BUT...Imagine...

Saturday and Sundries

Occasional commenter "JD" in the UK sent me, as a "wonderful antidote to the general madness all around us", a link to a story about one Justo Gallego (right). He is building a Cathedral in Mejorada del Campo near Madrid.

The Madman & The Cathedral
Also a video. More are available at YouTube.

I noticed, in glancing down Wikipedia's list of people, events, holidays and observances for 24 July a note that the date marks the feast day of Christina the Astonishing (c.1150 – 24 July 1224). Curious to know about this lady's ability to astonish, I read further. Christina
first astonished those gathered at her funeral by waking up and reportedly floating to the rafters. From then on her life seems to have consisted of a long line of astonishments - Wikipedia has details; for a lighter read see Ship of Fools, HERE.

I do wonder about husband's photo, snapped in an antique store somewhere on our travels. Did the store owner deliberately set that clock to quarter to 3? It's quarter to three there's no one in the place except you and me....

Not sure whether I've seen one of these on our travels - maybe not, or I'd surely remember it!
Rescuing America's roadside giantsBy Jasmine Taylor-Coleman.

Anyone making a road trip across America will sooner or later run across a giant statue - a cowboy, an American Indian chief or a lumberjack, perhaps...........

On Summer

“I believe someone made a grievous mistake when summer was created; no novitiate or god in their right mind would make a season akin to hell on purpose. Someone should be fired.” ― Michelle Franklin

When I think of Hillary Clinton (I do try not to) I also think of Eva Perón, and The show Evita. Yeah - I know there are massive differences, but.... For me the ultimate definitive version of the show's music and lyrics is the original concept album, recorded long before any stage show or movie had appeared. Below, from the original concept album singing "High Flying Adored": Julie Covington as Eva and CT Wilkinson as Che - accompanied by some nice high flying photography.

Twitter had an amusing theme one day this week:
#Upper-class Beatles. A few of my favourite entries, with, for any Beatles-challenged readers, translation to the originals:



I want to own your land  (I want to hold your hand)

Lovely Rita, meet the maid  (Lovely Rita meter-maid)

Why don't we do it in the Rolls?  (Why don't we do it in the road?)

Hey, you gotta hide your Chardonnay  (Hey, you gotta hide your love away)

Heir comes the son  (Here comes the sun)

While my gardener gently sweeps  (While my guitar gently weeps)

Lucy in Dubai buying diamonds (Lucy in the sky with diamonds).

Music Monday ~ The Beatles just are.....

Stephen Deusner's piece at Salon last week declared: "The year’s most overrated anniversary: Quit celebrating “I Want to Hold Your Hand”....a good song, but other 1963 singles are just as important - and ignored."
Title and sub-head pretty much explain the piece. I found it difficult to see logic in the point he was making, though I do have some sympathy with the thought that there's too much memorialising going on - in general. But I guess it gives journalists something to write about other than chewing over, and over, dire circumstances of 2013, so perhaps it's not such a bad thing after all.

Mr. Deusner names several songs of 1963 which are never memorialised in comparison to the song which made The Beatles a household name in the USA. This was when he lost me. I vaguely remember some of the songs he mentions, but why would they be memorialised, apart maybe from the Beach Boys' single, In My room ? The Beach Boys have retained a place in public affection in much the same way The Beatles have done, though on a slightly smaller scale. Back in 1963, in the UK, I would have wagered that the Beach Boys with their far more sophisticated sound, would have beaten the Beatles hands down in USA's memorialising stakes.

I was unimpressed by the Beatles first time around. 50 years later, living in the USA, after some education on the subject from my husband and his family, I've discovered the true worth of The Fab Four - as I see it. I've come to the conclusion that their strength was as composers and lyricists, not performers. Oh, they performed well enough to delight millions of young fans. They shook their mop-head hair-dos at the screaming hordes, but sang and played neither better nor worse than many other groups of the time. The key, and the real magician, I've come to realise, was and is their former producer George Martin (a post on him is here). He issued a tribute album called In My Life on which an unlikely selection of performers put their own stamp upon Beatles music. It was from listening to this album that I understood why Beatles' music has become iconic. It has true, lasting quality, and in the hands of a genius like George Martin it blossoms, especially when performed by others. Their songs are timeless, malleable, can be performed in almost any style, by any type of voice or voices. Their music can be orchestrated for the grandest symphony outfit in the land, and has been - and is one of my own favourite ways to listen to Beatles music.

George Martin's Love album, a compilation of Beatles music re-arranged, layered, mixed and re-mixed is another example of the music's quality in the hands of a genius arranger. Again, Martin's skills, allied with Beatles' talent produces yet another perspective and opportunity to understand why the Fab Four's work was so much more than appeared on its surface.

Dozens of famed performers, over the years, have chosen to include Beatles' songs in their repertoires. Sinatra sings, for me, the definitive version of George Harrison's Something . Neil Diamond's version of And I Love Her makes me love the song I'd looked on as nothing but a jingle. Johnny Cash sang In My Life; Sean Connery recited its lyrics on George Martin's tribute album - it's hard to listen to that without lump in throat.

If I had to choose a favourite song, actually as sung by The Beatles, it'd be A Day in the Life. I love the English-ness of it, and that opening line never goes out of season! "I read the news today - Oh boy!"

You know....by now the Beatles don't need more memorialising - they just are, like spring, summer, autumn and winter.

"I read the news today - oh boy!"

I read the news today oh, boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall

And now we'll soon know how many dollars it takes to acquire a signed album containing the song from which that quote comes.

A "pristine" copy of The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album, released in 1967, autographed by John, Paul, George and Ringo on the gatefold above their photographs is to be auctioned this Saturday, 30 March. Dallas (Texas) based Heritage Auctions have said that advance bidding for the album passed $110,000 some days ago, and could surpass $150,000 by the time bidding is closed.
(AP Photo/Heritage Auctions)

Am I the only one who sees this amount of money for such an item as kind of obscene? What would John Lennon think? I'd guess he'd be disgusted unless, of course, the money were going to some charitable cause.

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

Sir George Martin (and his astrologer son)

Today, 3 January, is the birthday of Sir George Martin, the man whose work with The Beatles helped propel their music to the iconic status it will likely retain forever. There's a good article about him at Salon by Frank Houston, from 2000.

"He was the only "fifth Beatle" who really deserved the title -- without him the '60s' greatest group might never have happened."

"With the exception of Phil Spector’s syrupy post-production on the “Let It Be” album, Martin produced every Beatles recording — from the first single (“Love Me Do”) to the last album (“Abbey Road”). Manager Brian Epstein, their most fervid salesman, may have given the scruffy Liverpudlians an initial gloss, but Martin gave them real artistic polish. He supervised the band’s transition from precocious boys to mature artists, harnessing all that wild genius into the most efficient and dazzling hit-making unit in modern pop.

In all he produced more than 700 recordings in a career spanning 50 years and genres as diverse as jazz, rock, classical, comedy and film soundtracks, with an unprecedented 30 No. 1 Beatles and post-Beatles hits to his credit in the U.K. Now Sir George, Martin may be the most influential and prolific record producer in history."

Sir George describes his job thus: “The producer is the person who shapes the sound. If you have a talent to work with — a singer together with a song — the producer’s job is to say, right, you need to put a frame around this, it needs a rhythm section to do this or that and so on,” he told the Irish Times in 1999. “He actually decides what the thing should sound like, and then shapes it in the studio. He may also be an arranger, in which case he may write the necessary parts … he shapes the whole lot. It’s like being the director of a firm.”


Beatles Historian Mark Lewisohn affirms that:

"George Martin was the perfect producer for the group -- creative, keen to experiment, willing to listen, an expert about music but nicely inexperienced in pop and rock, and a veteran of comedy-sound effects records." Indeed, George's experience with the Goons (Note: The Goons = British radio show starring stellar comic actors Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine, Martin produced comedy records with Sellers and Milligan) had provided him with a diverse repertoire of recording trickery, which came into play when the Beatles, worn by the pressures of live performance and touring, progressed in the studio to ever more complex tracks.......... Martin's patient nature was invaluable........ it took extraordinary diplomacy, exceptional musical expertise, limitless patience and visionary clarity to bring these ideas to fruition and greatness. Sometimes George's genius was knowing when to jump in and offer musical advice; sometimes it was knowing when to go down to the canteen and have a cup of tea, letting them get on with whatever they were up to."

Sir George's personality is said to be a blend of "giddy enthusiasm with cool intelligence and eloquence" and I'd add it has to include a shrewd business sense, and as highlighted above: patience and intuitive tact. His time of birth isn't available online, so I took a look at a 12 noon chart for his date of birth:

Lots to see here - I'll simply pick out what jumped out to me first, a network:

Ruler of his steady, businesslike Capricorn Sun, Saturn, is in emotional Water sign Scorpio and in harmonious trine to Uranus in Pisces. Uranus in Pisces is semi-sextile (helpful) to Venus, planet of the arts in Aquarius (ruled by Uranus and co-ruled traditionally by Saturn). Venus, planet of the arts, in Aquarius is in opposition (balancing) to Neptune (planet of creativity and ruler of Pisces) in Leo.

Yes....I know that sounded like a huge muddle. It is, but it reflects Sir George's mixed bag of undeniable talent, a linked network of astrological traits: steadiness, patience and business sense from Capricorn and Saturn, emotional intelligence from a Water link Pisces/Scorpio, a certain appreciation of quirkiness and fantasy from Venus in Aquarius, and Uranus in Pisces.

His natal Mercury (mental orientation) in easy-going Sagittarius harmoniously trines creative Neptune in Leo - more evidence of an ability to appreciate fantasy, softening and adding colour to a potentially more staid and rational Capricorn nature.

It's a pity we can't pinpoint his rising sign or natal Moon position, his birth time being unknown. Moon would have been in either Leo or early Virgo. Virgo would fit an obvious urge for perfection in his work; Leo would fit his draw to musical show-biz. Hard to say which is the more likely.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SIR GEORGE!

A SIDELIGHT on Son of Sir George

In the course of preparing this post I noted that Sir George Martin's eldest son from his first marriage, Gregory Paul Martin is, among other things (writer, actor, producer, playboy of the western world), an astrologer. He looks uncannily like his Dad, but apparently they are not very close in anything but looks. From the pieces I've read, Gregory Paul prides himself on being "a bit of a lad", magnet to the fairer sex and all that. Born 21 January 1957 (1.33 AM) in London, England, he has Sun in Aquarius, Scorpio rising. That could be a difficult mix to handle, but his Libra Moon should help! His natal chart is available at Astrodatbank, but curiously they don't mention his work as an astrologer. I wonder why?

I followed a few leads to discover what kind of astrologer his is. His astrology website is ASTROARIA; there's also a video talk by him from February 2012, with Dr. Hildegarde Staninger "In her second hour, Dr. Staninger is joined by Gregory Paul Martin, Astrologer, as they discuss 2012, the Age Of Aquarius and the return Of Divine Feminine/Magdalene energy and why it matters. The eldest son of Beatles producer Sir George Martin, writer/producer Gregory has practiced astrology for 25 years reading privately for colleagues…"