It's been a slog, for a variety of reasons, but finally it's here. Happy to announce that Pat Keene's photobook 'Buskers - from the streets to the Royal Albert Hall 1968-9' has been published. An A4 glossy remix of the black and white photos Pat took years ago of old and young buskers on the streets of London's West End and at Don Partridge's Albert Hall Buskers' Concert in early 1969. New material included: colour photos from the Albert Hall gig that Pat only found recently! A couple of which I will preview soon...
More info: here...
I could offer excuses... but it has been too long since I blogged here... busy with a book/music/ and ping-ponging off illness/fatigue (there go the excuses). But it's 2013, I have a new music label to promote very soon, plus a book - the sequel, as it were to 'Don Partridge And Company,' 'Buskers' - a glossy photobook featuring Pat Keene's material from the aforesaid tome plus some added colour photos that he only found recently (!) - and I have to decide what to do with this blog. I think I'll keep it rolling for a while.
Happy New Year... Back very soon...
You get older and by
the nature of the game, people fall around you, go before. It doesn't mitigate the shock and the loss, of
course. Given my rackety health (no doubt mainly a consequence of:
'Drinking and gambling, night-sporting and rambling,' to quote the
words of one of my favourite songs, 'The Banks of the Bann,'), it is
an ongoing source of amazement that I have out-lived so many friends,
bloodbrothers and sisters. But it still hits hard when another close
one goes, very close, almost the same age and as far as I knew a damn
site fitter than this old boy. But we are taken... this is the
nature of things and we deal with it according to our various
beliefs. I was in Liverpool a few days ago, having booked a very
cheap hotel deal way back when I saw that the Tate were putting on
their triple wham: 'Turner, Monet and Twombly.' Late paintings by
these three, the latter of whom is a big favourite so I had decided to
go up north for a gander. Liverpool is a place I don't know very
well but had good times in on a previous trek to see the mighty
fire jazz saxophonist Charles Gayle a couple of years back. The exhibition was very good
and I could see how they yoked it all together to grab late works by
these three painters into the frame, as it were. But another story.
Later, I was in a pub checking my emails and flicked onto Facebook,
saw some odd posts about my old friend John, caught a message from
his eldest son to put up my phone number. Rang my daughter for her
to check what I suspected. Which was that he had died the day
before. Later I spoke to his youngest son and then his wife who was
obviously distraught. The rest is private stuff. But it was a
fucking shock.
John Ware and I go
back, as they say. I met him over forty years ago, early 70s, when I
was ensconced busking in London and he arrived in town. We met and got talking - he was stuck for a kip
so Barbara and I put him up. Oddly, we hit it off straight away, as
it has to be said that in those days John could rile people, because
of his speed of thought, his intensity and his manner. Interesting
people have grit which can rub the wrong way for the unwary (no pun
intended). We started playing together and at this distance of
years, after all the many musicians I have worked with, I can still
say that there was something very special between us. I loved
playing with him, really enjoyed his music and we managed to pull
together an act very quickly. By that time, the London busking scene
was getting overcrowded and many of us had already developed other
circuits. So we played in the declining years of that phase –
which I would measure from Don Partridge's Busker's Concert in 1969
as the high watermark – everything started to fall off after that.
A few months after the Albert Hall gig, for example, I was travelling
around Europe, in 1970 I went to Dublin for the first time and
subsequently visited it frequently, at some point taking John over
with me, a year or so after we met. He moved there eventually and
even though he travelled extensively on the continent as all buskers
did, Dublin became his base. Mine too for a few years but when I
moved on at the end of the 70s John was happy to stay, especially as
he had met his wife to be by then. They stayed together through all
the vicissitudes and craziness that will come down on relationships
with musicians and buskers especially. The road can be merciless and
John had his demons, as did many of us. His courage in facing them
down a long time ago now and choosing a life with a family - three
boys, now men, a strong and beautiful wife - over cheap and easy
thrills, has always impressed not just me but all who had the fortune
to know him.
In later years, after
finely honing his musical craft, he took a sudden turn and started
painting. This was a man with talent and an urge for expression that
now came out in exquisite and unusual watercolours. Some people have
a special gift. He was one of them, whether playing and writing
music (he was an underrated songwriter), or exploring this latest
passion, art. He even founded his own gallery to flog his work –
ever a busker!
The last time I saw him
was at our mutual friend Don Partridge's funeral a couple of years
back. I had been planning on visits over to Dublin to see him and Anne but never made it
due to illness and circumstance. That's the way of it. I am still
coming to terms with the fact that this brilliant, annoying, sparky
and sparkling man is not around on this plane of existence anymore.
He was always vibrant, alive. Now he has moved on.
And in writing this: I
cannot alleviate any of the grief his family will be feeling. But I
can bear witness to someone whom I knew very well and a friendship
that lasted from the first day we met and is still strong in my heart. A small remembrance is the
least I can offer up... My daughter Amelia and I offer our
condolences to Annie and the boys, to all the family.
Blimey - this blog has really been neglected. Part of the problem being that I have been buried working on a new book plus not been going out much hence nothing to review. This might be rectified tomorrow when I will be in London. Hoping to catch the evening sesh of the annual Freedom of the Festival eisteddfod at Cecil Sharp House if I can get across town in time... more later... maybe...
Minus five here when I
got back... but warmed by the musics that I almost avoided through
inertia and the onset of a cold. And a surprisingly good turnout for
the TappedButSettling gig at the Swan in the Rushes, Loughborough
(God's Little Acre), given the weather. But PeteMorton will usually pull a crowd and with
support from Gren Bartley it was always
going to be never less than a good night. I knew I would have
regretted it if I had stayed at home – because both these musicians
are always moving relentlessly forwards and it would be a shame to
miss bearing witness to their latest endeavours. Gren started the
gig with mainly new material, abetted at the end by his friend on
harmonies. Reining back slightly on his complex guitar playing and
leaning more on the songs gave a different balance to a fascinating
set. Then Pete came out of the blocks at terrible speed – his new
material, jamming massive clusters of words into his lines like a rap
artist, then whipping round to bring in a chorus on the old warhorse
'To be a farmer's boy,' his tirade against the falseness of so much
contemporary life cutting a furrow back to simpler days, linking
family and wider community. Blew me away, it has to be said. I
don't entirely subscribe to his ideas but he certainly makes me think
and Pete gets away with it because he isn't some ideologue, rather a
deeply thoughtful musician with a line back to the English
radical/Romantic tradition that is buttressed with much humour. His
tack over the last couple of years seems to be word-crammed songs
plus his new variants on the talking blues that roll out in fast
streams (the rap adoption) then land suddenly on an apposite 'folk'
chorus to provide a link backwards and also to bring in the audience,
wrap them in the surge of his muse. A lot of resonations here –
the cheekiest being that dreadful old McColl song 'Manchester
Rambler' in the only version I've ever heard that I could take
seriously. (My opinion – so, shoot me... ).You have to admire the
chutzpah... saying 'Back at ya!' to the 'Revival/Tradition!'
Second half gave an
opportunity for requests – 'Seven Billion Eccentrics,' 'Shepherd's
Song,' 'Battle of Trafalgar,' 'Further,' and of course 'Another
Train.' All of them celebrate people in the raw – one of the lines
from 'Battle of Trafalgar,' written about a lock-in at a Leicester
pub mentions the punters: 'You couldn't clone people like this in a
million years,' and that is the common humanity in the best sense
that he stands up for. Also rooted deep in an almost mystical
'England,' yet Pete is far from being a petty nationalist.
'Shepherd's Song,' his homage to John Clare reaches to a point where
rural England was in the throes of the Industrial Revolution and the
coming modern age, eyed with trepidation by the poet who achieved
brief fame in London before his collapse into madness, but who was
also a musician skilled in the folk musics of his time. This double
link with musical and literary traditions goes further with his
recent forays as a stand up artist in the character of 'Geoff
Chaucer' and Pete skilfully plays off the literary heritage with the
folk music tradition that he comes out of at a diagonal, (via the
initial energies of punk rock and street busking) and helps to
transform and continue. The sharp vignettes of people in crowded day
to day settings yet each unique goes back to the bustle and vibrancy
of Chaucer's time and work. But far from any maddening academic
stiflings and ignobled strifes, Pete is a man drunk
on words and their permutations and resonances, jammed into the
grittiness and possibilities of NOW. He just gets better...
Grab a
taste here...
All hail to Mr Marmion
via TappedButSettling for setting up the gig... More, please...
It's been a while... but I have been buried away working on a new project in between the usual annoying illness/fatigue. I have not been to any gigs recently either - but that changes on Friday incoming - 3d February - when I'll be down at the Swan in the Rushes, in God's Little Acre, for a gig headlined by one of my favourite musicians/writers etc. Pete Morton. Who will be supported by Gren Bartley, in what should prove to be a fascinating mix of acoustic styles. Couple of vids on the TappedButSettling site to give a flavour of both...
Woke up after not much sleep with an appalling hangover but realised that staggering into the hotel breakfast was going to be a good idea... Somewhat refreshed - we talk in relative terms - I scanned the program for the day – and went back to bed. But come 1 pm I was down at the Sallis Benney, determined to bear witness to as much as my knackered-up body could stand. Cat Hawed were first off the blocks – three musicians from Helhesten and Towering Breaker – and played a stunning set, I thought. Starting in chamber music mode, accentuated by the use of clarinet, perhaps, although it was played on the extremes of register, poised and balanced as they tested the day, building to a roar as the form spread to encompass wilder sounds, loosely corralled, as it were, by intelligence.
Bad Orb (Sarah Albury's solo vehicle) – standing stage left to the side of the projections on screen at the ubiquitous rummage sale table holding her electronics, voicing: ur ur ur repeated/recorded into the mike (Ur-Sounds?) to be bounced back and manipulated as source material, backdrop to a film, triangular motif and bird image recurring – superb in the marriage of sight and sound here. My day was off to a good start (no sight of Hugh Metcalfe-ian strategies so far).
Martin Klapper's take on home movies was fascinating, old footage transformed by his bespoke techniques, dragged down slightly by the music which was a trifle cartoony, but the general flow pulled it along beyond annoyance.
Other films that grabbed me: Stuart Pound's 'Breath Dance,' a cool hokey cokey in which the film stops, jumps back, moves on to create a stylised dance of pedestrians in Trafalgar Square. 'I'll raise you like a mother,' by Violaine Bergoin was a disturbing meditation on the trial and execution of the Ceasescu's, live horrific soundtrack placed over images of family life. With Gaddafi's recent televised demise fresh in the mind, it's worth quoting Violaine's remarks about her film:
'This piece is a reconstitution of a precise moment of my life, as a 8 year old, during an everyday family dinner and the broadcasting of the Ceauescu couple being trialled and executed.
When Elena Ceauescu cried for her life, screaming to the guards taking her "I'll raise you all like a mother", which was then dubbed in French, my heart stopped and these words have been haunting me ever since and has been bringing impressions of déjà- vu until now. Today it has become a banality to watch upheavals, wars, famines, executions, genocides at 8 o'clock news within a familial structure. Yet the conflicts in this world may reflect our disabilities to communicate which results in decaying relationships. Maybe wars start within families first and expand to massive proportions.'
Back down to the Old Market for the last leg of the festival. Just in time to catch Ninni Morgia and Silvia Kastel, great wild guitar and howled vocals, processed and chopped about. Abruptly moving into a hard thumping beat as they rocked out – one that got some of the audience idiot dancing.
I missed the beginning of Maja Jantar's set. A slight, slim figure on the side stage who displayed a wide range of vocal techniques – singing in tongues avant scat which segued at one point into a cool version of 'Cry me a river.' And back again. Noticeable for being able to hold a large crowd with nothing but voice .
Vom Grill was loud, vocal contortions put through the electronic shredder, turning his vocals inside out. (YouTube vid here of a performance in Paris a couple of years back).
Then on to Vinyl Terror and Horror, Camilla Sørensen and Greta Christensen's duo who upturn turntablism as they use records as source material for their manipulations. Breaking open the straight box of DJing to reveal many other worlds inside, which were then explored intensively, their collective intelligence produced some of the best music of the weekend for this old boy. Cracks, crashes, pops, scratches, sudden bursts of trombones, choirs, voices wrenched out of the grooves into new configurations. Superb!
Unfortunately for me, the last act of the weekend. Dog Lady. Mike Collino is from Detroit and I fancifully thought I could hear the ghosts of old machines from the auto assembly plants in the subterranean chunks of sound grinding against each other. Across which he lashes some fragments of violin to be tossed and processed through his electronics rig. Great set - after which reluctantly I had to go...
Final thoughts: a fantastic weekend. Large emphasis this year on sound poetry, hardly any jazz, lots of interesting films and multi-media, Colour out of Space back and firing on all cylinders. The new main venue at the Old Market looks like a winner, the crowds who turned up throughout must surely signal a success. Thanks to all who made it happen. And hopefully it will be on again next year
Another viewpoint here...
complete with ten minute snapshot overview.
Saturday: strolled somewhat
painfully from the hotel to the Sallis Benney (where the whole
festival used to be held) for the afternoon sesh of film and sonics.
Too much walking over the previous couple of days had left me
somewhat hors de combat. I didn't stay for the whole event but
caught Blue Yodel (Fiona Kennedy's solo gig) which cleansed my
synapses suitably. Slew of good films: one that impressed me by its
unsettling weirdness was 'Trypps#6 Malobil' by American Ben Russell.
Catch a glimpse here...http://vimeo.com/6975261
A group of presumably white people in strange costumes come out of a
building in a tropical village, soundtracked by drumming, walk
through the assembled locals as off-camera sharp reports like gunfire
occur sporadically. Some simulated sex. Some collision of cultures
going on. If the A Band ever go on tour to South America, it could
be like this. Ho ho. Apparently shot in the Maroon village of
Malobe in Suriname. One of those films that lodge in your brain and
will rerun over and over. Disturbing in a way it is difficult to
describe.
Jeff Keen's movie was a
psychedelic blast, fast moving streams of collage/images. But one
bummer: never having seen Hugh Metcalfe live, I will never make the
mistake of doing so in the future. The movie of his trip to an
Austrian festival was embarrassing, to say the least. He used to
team up with the late Bob Cobbing but his wanky repeating of phrases
along the lines of: 'I fucking don't give a shit/Shit I fucking don't
give/Give I fucking don't a shit' etc ad nauseam came across as some
bad attempt at sound poetry/was just plain stupid. The barriers were
broken a long way back, old cock. He looked like a middle-aged
geography teacher trying to get down with the kidz. How trangressive it all was. Called his ad hoc group:
'Turd Class.' Says it all, really. Maybe he should start a 'Feral
Choir' (one of my other pet hates). Or as Bruce Sterling once said:
'If you want a
sustained, independent and transgressive community that can’t be
co-opted by society at large, you need to get out of the boho art
scene, and right into organized crime.'
On a weekend bursting
with creativities of all kinds, this was pathetic. But thanks for
the warning...
Evening and back at the
Old Market. Festivals are always over-loaded – it's difficult to
get to every act, even when back to back in one place. Economies of
thirst, urination etc, plus in my case, juggling with fatigue. So
the night became truncated – more by accident in the end, it has to
be said, when I ended up watching the boxing on Sky down the
Conqueror, then became engrossed in conversations/new meetings with
interesting people. But I caught Martin Klapper and Martin Jezek's
set: video backdrop with electronics which were loud and crunchy but
always moving forward, falling almost into conventional rhythms at
times which kept them on track. Again, the performance filled the
time with a logic that manifested through its form. Good stuff –
and a Saturday feel now, hall crowded and buzzing early. This was
going to be a sweaty, uncomfortable night... yet even the mob would
fall silent when impressed, which is the hallmark of this festival.
Where I was standing by the merch stalls, I thought I had taken a
good vantage point for PeterFengler's segment, but more and
more people pressed in – yet settled down quickly enough to enjoy
the 'show.' Entitled 'Baroque/Non Baroque, I think. Which was as if
Samuel Beckett had scripted a surreal cabaret for Tommy Cooper.
Completely deadpan, based on repetitions of actions, stances and
speech that seemed to inject obscure meanings into banal gestures,
Fengler held this audience, slowly overcoming puzzlement and random chatter.
And he was very funny. Suddenly jumping onto a low table, bending
forward on hands and knees, lifting a leg and holding the pose.
Bouncing a ball on the stage – my OCD took over and I found myself
counting the number of repetitive acts until I stopped myself –
tapping bits of wood. Scrunching a plastic cup while wrenching his
head around in both hands to simulate colliding vertabrae. Again –
difficult to describe why this was entertaining. He stretched
patience to breaking point, then you realised that he was skilfully
and dryly hilarious.
YouTube to the rescue
again gives a flavour of the man...
The next section I
caught was PC Fencott (aided by Robin Fencott), veteran of sound/word experimentation for many
years, another link to the late Bob Cobbing, one of the dominant
spirits in the air this weekend, it seemed.
Playing with some
computer graphics that manipulated words, he presented 'Paradiddle
Rox,' his voice processed into loops and echoes, creating a wild
choir from his solo readings. But his best piece for me was a poem
about the experience of sea-diving off the coast somewhere oop north.
Foregrounding literally the poetics of breath, he simulated the
gulps of air in a diver's mouthpiece in between the lines that
described the experience of submergence and movement under water.
Catching the paradox: freedom and the claustrophobia of being trapped in the
body's need for oxygen, the element of danger in navigating under the
sea. He held the audience rapt – then brought them in to join in
on the last piece which involved singing out lines that echoed
across the hall in overlapping waves. Like folk music almost, but
more interesting... How this generates its own order is ultimately
fascinating and just using the most basic flexible units available –
human voices. Superb.
I moved forward and found a space by a door. The crowd was filling the hall now, with more and more pressing in. Leather jacket off as the heat was rising from the proximity of so many - upon which someone managed to spill beer. An accident, a jogged arm. I realised as more people were struggling to
get in that this venue must be approaching some
danger limit for occupancy. We were waiting for Rainonbashi and Dylan Nyoukis: someone in a blindfold slipped by and crouched briefly as
disembodied noises and voices came through the sound system. Setting
an eery atmosphere... The figure disappeared into the crowd, tracked
by flashes that came from his seemingly randomly taking of digital
photographs. An experiment in unease? I decided to go and left for
the Conqueror and the boxing. A fascinating and potentially
disturbing experience but I don't like crowds when they are jammed so
close and figured with some incipient paranoia that it would just
take one psychedelic voyager in the crush to flip into bad vibesville
and a stampede could have been on.
Not so much seen and
heard, then, but most of it satisfyingly hitting the right spots.
Lots of distractions this week but the remaining two reviews will go up by the weekend (honest). But just stumbled over this via Anthony Donovan out of Dylan Nyoukis. A reminder not so much of all the great stuff I caught but all the good shit I missed...
I
got down to this new main venue for the first evening of 'Colour out of Space,'The Old Market, picked up my ticket and
wristband, checked the schedules, had a drink in the bar and realised
that: a) I don't really like Peroni and b) I would probably spend
more time between acts in the Conqueror just round the corner, a great old-school
boozer with a friendly welcome, which I had scoped out on
psychogeographic reconnaissance the previous evening. (Butcombe
bitter, yum. Double Jack D – cheap. More yum).
The
venue itself, a converted market hall, is high-ceilinged, a larg-ish space with a few chairs
scattered which geriatrics/the knackered like myself would eagerly pounce on over the next few days. A bit like that kid's game, except
you grab a seat when the music starts... The running order looked as
tight as ever with quick turnarounds – everything was going to happen in the one space but
rotating from the main stage to a small stage situated near the back,
to the side, plus various performances that would take place out in
the open, as it were. Gave a bazaar-like quality to the listening
experience, wandering round from each set. Tonight this would not be
too much of a problem – good crowd but not too oppressive.
First
up: the Eisteddfod kicked off withTobias
Kirsten and John Lunds, a sax/drum duo from Copenhagen. Short
repeated phrases on baritone sax, hammered out in tandem with the
crashing drums. Free jazz meets Steve Reich, if that makes sense –
improvised but hurled into repeating patterns that subtly shift,
driven along by relentless drums. Lunds switches saxes, moving up to
tenor, the lines get longer, freer. An exhilarating start...
Next, Infinite Gaah, Tom
Roberts, a Northampton denizen transplanted to Brighton. I missed
most of this short segment and came in to see the small side stage
surrounded. Didn't have much idea what was going on – seemed like
a good time as the crowd were enjoying it. And there was a lot
of fun over the three days – Colour out of Space has always provides a
large variety of musics but is never too po-faced, unlike, say,
Freedom of the City, which has become somewhat, shall we say,
ponderous. The young crowd help – this is not a congregation of
old gits like myself, sat around scratching their beards in solemn
witness, thank fuck. (Although I wasn't the oldest here).
Anthony
Donovan and Clive Graham followed, on the main stage. I managed to
get a good spot down front, stage left – not that position mattered much in
this hall as the sound was superb throughout. Duo electronics,
sat at the table looking quite serious, they produced an orchestral, busy movement
that did not falter. Which is the test of all these improvising
artists/bands – to fill the time without noodling and to hold the
audience. I know Anthony's work from other areas but this was very
impressive. They fitted together well, not getting in each other's
way.
Back
to the bear pit – getting crowded now. I hovered on the edge of
the crowd, got a few glimpses of Aki Onda in
action, who has a wonderful sense of the theatric/visual to
frame his music. Which comes from manipulating cassette tapes.
With minimal resources he produced amazing sounds, warm and organic, etched with harsher sounds further in.
Starting in pastoral mode, a cuckoo calling, a bell sounding, tapes
looped and crossed. Very calm, meditative, the ritualistic feeling
extended when he proceeded to walk round the edge of the crowd, some
sitting, some standing, all in rapt attention, a small amplifier with
Walkman attached, gently swinging like a censer, wafting sound. Ok,
fanciful – but there seemed a spiritual aspect somewhere. Bringing
in drones now and sharper fragments of song, things shifted into an
edgier area. Nearing the end, he suddenly grabbed hold of a
lightbulb which hung down from the ceiling on a wire and swung it in
a long looping arc just over the heads of the assembled, some ducking
instinctively as it described its swirling movements. Wonder what
Elf and Safety would have said. The light spun round giving an eery
finish to a superb performance. In a weekend when it was difficult
to pick favourites – this came near.
Couple of short observations:
Wreck
and Drool and Smack Music 7 – three piece ensemble. In my notebook
I scrawled 'Brilliant! A BAND!' Vocalised sounds sprung across
electronic movements, the whole being loose in its expansive
possibilities and yet tight because of the artists' concentrations.
Lichen
starts walking round playing his sax, moving over to electronics and
loops that produce LOUD throbbing music. Punchy.
The
last act I caught ( I didn't stay right to the end) was a brilliant
flourish: Crank Sturgeon and
id m theftable. A duo who truly tests one's abilities to
describe them. Vaudeville on acid? was one scrawled note. They were
extremely funny while producing a continuous barrage of intelligent
sound, showcased by their intensely wacky visual éclat
and their ability to engage the audience – such as crazed, bemused
chants repeated over and over by id, echoed back by the crowd in wild call and response mode as
Crank used thick cellotape with a contact mike attached to produce a
battery of sounds as he ran backwards and forwards across the stage,
securing the tape to either side, producing several rows, on which he
hung himself at one point, arms akimbo in an almost parody of the
Crucifixion. Jesus on a washing line... Later, producing a number
of cut-out phalluses which were attached – cocks pegged out in a
row. Some smutty interplay with these of course. Bizarre – and
hilarious.
Loud,
raucous, rude. Loved it. Some weird area where performance art
crashes into standup comedy, noise and home made electronics (Crank
had a merch stall throughout and was flogging his own custom built
contact mikes. Nearly bought one but I've a drawer full already and
a boy's gotta economise. But check out his web page - they look really good). Crank is a whispy bearded thin prankster, id, big, burly full-bearded with an air of outraged bewilderment at the world. The chemistry between them is superb. Of course, I share religious beliefs with
Crank – also being an ordained minister. (Available for weddings
etc). A side thought: American acts, in the main, always seem to
make an effort to engage. A big difference usually between them and
the Europeans...
I
was tired, run out of steam, left for a brief one in the Conqueror and walked back down
the sea-front, which left me even more tired when I got to the
hotel! Further than I had figured...
Back home in God's Little Acre... oh joy. Had a stroll round the Artist's Quarter and a slow pint in the Unicorn where I had a look at the usual mess of notes I make at festivals. This year's Colour out of Space has prompted even more bizarre scrawls/signs/smears in the old moleskine - given that there was a large theme of sound poetry etc perhaps the ghost of Bob Cobbing crept into my hotel when I was akip and vented his inscribed pleasures on those pages from beyond the beyond... (Stranger things have happened - he was certainly invoked a few times over the weekend). But reviews will follow, honest. Just to say - a big shout out to Dylan and co for another trailblazer of skronk and wahoo loaded with mucho epiphanies, which is as it should be - and hopefully will be again next year. They got the vote out in high numbers. The Old Market a good venue, in tandem with the afternoon stuff at the Sallis Benney. So much was enjoyed and now being mulled over. Fucking cold back here as well after such a brilliant few days...
Later...
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Jeez, am I hungover...i But a great afternoon of film and music at the sallis binney venue.
Bert Jansch is dead and
that is both a very sad loss and a great shock as it had seemed that he
was up and about again, recovered from his initial problem with lung
cancer. There you go... Bert was a big fixture in my younger life,
helping me, (after Bob Dylan) convert to an interest in folk/acoustic
music and an engagement with the Brit folk scene of the sixties which
for a brief few years was actually a cool place to inhabit, mainly
because of Bert and his sidekick John Renbourn and a couple of other
faces from the Soho scene, centred round Les Cousins in Greek Street
but taking in the old Scots Hoose pub at the top of Old Compton
Street where I saw him perform some stunning sets with a nonchalant,
tousled grace. There were bad nights, apparently. Too much booze
and rumours of darker areas, the whole romantic troubadour schtick.
But I don't remember seeing any: the occasional wobble but no more.
Maybe this is selective, but Bert was probably no more or less of a
raker than the rest of us – and we were legion. The music was the
main hit: he had, after all, written the late Buck Polly's epitaph
after he went down to smack – 'Needle of Death,' hardly a
celebration of opiate abuse. But all this was and is irrelevant in
the larger sweep of things...
The music. Bill Broonzy
is always quoted as a big influence but alongside that, I always
wondered if somewhere down the line he had copped an ear to Scrapper
Blackwell's percussive acoustic guitar leads from those classic blues
tracks with Leroy Carr in the twenties and thirties – that snapping
hit on the strings which gave his playing such an edge. Maybe not –
maybe he figured it out for himself. But there was a lot of blues –
and jazz – in his playing. Listen to the seminal
'Bert and John' where Jansch and John Renbourne blend their guitars into a new style that
could go anywhere. Called 'folk baroque' – which always seemed too
pretty and limiting to me, but we need our labels, I suppose. Bert
was also, in my book, an underrated singer who knew how to place a
song over his unique guitar accompaniments, maybe not the most
technical of vocalists, but what is technique? It is there to serve
the song, and Bert had an intuitive feel for whatever he sang, his
slightly gruff delivery giving a vibrato-less edge that cut through
to the essence, the emotional weight balanced just right. Never
over-emoting, which especially suited his renditions of traditional
material, as well as his own material... His voice was a paradox that
mirrored his persona – intimate and yet with a certain distance.
Down to earth, yet possessing a certain mystique... Returning to his
guitar playing, yeah, sure, no doubt he copped some licks from Davy
Graham, as who didn't? – but he had rapidly developed his own style
and Bert was a much better singer, whose records stand up better as
well, in my opinion. Davy, for all his hubristic wonder, lives on in
my memory as primarily a live performer, erratically brilliant, with one classic album that
he made with Shirley Collins - tellingly, a singer - the rest
unfortunately, for me, coming nowhere near capturing his magic on stage.
Screw the comparisons anyway. They were both unique, as was and is
John Renbourn who came at the music from another angle. Put it all
together and you have a style that flows out of the narrow confines
of 'folk' into something new and vibrant. A fusion that meant
something, as opposed to much of the vacuity performed under that
name when jazz met rock (Miles Davis excepted)...
I loved Bert's solo
sets and his duets with John R. Memories of nights down Les Cousins
mesmerised by the crisscrossing dance they created. But maybe
the band Pentangle took the heights of their influences and originalities and
expanded them to a different level to create a music
that looked back to folk roots without being overtly ridiculous,
irrelevant or twee and forwards to the present and future. We all
have our prejudices – with regard to 'folk' music plus rhythm section and some amplification, I rate Pentangle very highly as the ones who got it best in the U.K. Fairport,
for me, forever lumpy, clumping around like a bunch of cider drunks
at a bad barn dance, only redeemed by the sublime Sandy Denny when
she was with them. Pentangle were almost emblematic of the Les
Cousins cool strain of music that came out of London at that time,
jazzy, subtle, blending the guitar styles into the bass and drums to
take Bert and John's playing to new exploratory spaces. Although by the time
they were coming together, they had moved up the road a bit to the
Horseshoe pub on Tottenham Court Road – probably for spatial reasons as much as anything
else – bass, drums, guitars and singer would have been a crush down
in Les Cousins. And then on to greater glories... But I still
cherish the fading memories of that scruffy old crucible of the new
on Greek Street where I first was enchanted by Bert.
And Pentangle came back
recently, if only for a brief shot, now that one of the points on the
star has disappeared, not as nostalgia but a vital force still, if
the reviews are to be believed. Coupled to Bert's resurgent profile, maybe there is some small consolation in the thought
that he died at the top his game, after several years of refound fame
and recognition. Maybe.
Can't really afford it - but now the book has been published, I feel that I should treat myself. And my favourite festival over the last few years has been the Brighton bash: 'Colour out of Space.' Last year it did not happen due to various reasons and there was deep sadness in my autumn. The previous couple of years - see reviews for 2008 here,here and here/2009 here, here and here - I'd gone down to Brighton for stimulating, exciting, weekends with loads of musics that I really like and some I encountered for the first time at a well run extravaganza, great sound good, great organisation, in a cool location. This year apparently the festival will split between the Sallis Benney theatre (afternoons) and the Old Market, Hove (evenings). Full details out later this week, apparently and you can get an early bird inclusive weekend ticket for a mere £25 (link on festival web site - I'm getting lazy). Been a hermit recently for various reasons so I looking forward to having my ears/brain/eyes stretched.
Finally we got there... 'Don Partridge and Company' has just been published and is available online from my storefront on Lulu/RawMusics
HERE... Links also on the book blog HERE...
Available in either paperback hard copy or digital download pdf.
And here's the guv'nor - The Earl of Mustard - in action, 1968
The proof of the book has printed and is on its way - once I've checked it, I'll do another, just to make sure everything is ok - then we should be able to go ahead and publish on 27th September. In the meantime, another teaser on the book blog, here...
A couple of rare movie clips about the Albert Hall Buskers' Concert of 1969...
