A truly brilliant evening

I was privileged to recently see The Unthanks singing the songs of Antony Hegarty (Antony and the Johnsons) and Robert Wyatt.   None of the songs they sang would exactly fall into the Easy Listening category, and in most cases they are as far away from 'Folk' as it's possible to be, but the sisters, and the band, bring them to life in a remarkable way.

The Hegarty songs are largely focused on transgender politics and work unexpectedly well with the sisters' voices: 'You are my sister' had a totally different feel to it when Becky and Rachel shared the vocals, and 'For today I am a boy' was hearbreakingly beautiful.  As part of the between-the-songs chat, Rachel told a story of how, when Becky was little, she believed that as she grew to her elder brother's age, she'd become a boy, and then when she reached Rachel's age she'd turn back into a girl.  As the audence laughed, Adrian - the mastermind behind the project and Rachel's partner, wryly commented: "What you're hearing is the trivialisation of a sensitive man's struggle to come to terms with his sexuality" - even bigger laugh!

The songs of Robert Wyatt were more readily accessible, and when Rachel sang 'Out of the Blue', with it's chorus of "You have planted all your everlasting hatred in my heart", I just wanted every Israeli ever born to be forced to sit in a room and hear it until the message got through.   It describes the reaction of a Palestinian whose house has been destroyed, but it could apply to any conflict where civilians get bombed.  You can hear the original being sung by Wyatt at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOh4VqCc3-Q

Then there was the indescribably beautiful 'Sea Song', which was, apparently. where the project started.  One of my favourite songs, it was even more beautiful when sung by the sisters.

The album is out and is a joy, but should they ever tour these songs again, don't miss it.



The best word is left to Robert Wyatt:
"Quite simply, Antony & The Johnsons and I have been blessed by angels. If I had to take a single summary of what Alfie [ Robert's partner] and I have being doing over the years to the proverbial desert island I wouldn’t take one of our own records. I’d take the crystal clear interpretations of The Unthanks." Robert Wyatt

A surreal evening in Salisbury

Ask me to name my half dozen most favourite tracks of all time, and then what would the odds be about hearing two of them them done by the inestimable June Tabor and the excellent Oyster Band?  That's exactly what happened at Salisbury City Hall on Wednesday evening, and it was wonderful.

I expected to hear them do 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' because it's on their new album, 'Ragged Kingdom', but 'White Rabbit' was a bolt from the blue.  Joy Division's LWTUA is bleak and dark, but Tabor and the Oysters turn it into an altogether different song.  Tabor and John Jones share the vocals and rather than being the bloke bemoaning the end of a relationship, it becomes a couple doing it - it won't replace Joy Division's 3' 18" of desolate perfection in my affections, but it's lovely just the same, and does shed new light on the lyrics.

White Rabbit is a different matter, however.  When Jefferson Airplane recorded it, I though that Grace Slick's vocals were as good as it could get, but June Tabor proved that she isn't just a 'folk' singer, because when she wants to she has a great rock voice.  When Tabor told us that 'the one that mother gives you, don't [sic] do anything at all', she changed the whole the emphasis of the song, and made it more understandable.  I hope that she and the Oysters record it sometime soon.

June Tabor's voice is as enthralling as ever, and John Jones is arguably the best male vocalist in the folk rock scene, and they simply brought the house down.  My worry was that Tabor's vocals, usually heard in the more intimate surroundings of concert halls and Arts Centres with a trio accompanying her, might get drowned out by the Oysters driving rock, but a lot of work (and an excellent sound engineer) had gone into getting it just right.  A word too for 'Chopper' on bass and cello, and the excellent Dil Davies on drums - they hold the whole thing together in exemplary fashion.

Salisbury City Hall is a great venue, and almost everyone that matters has played there over the years - the posters round the walls tell part of its story.  Compared with soulless modern concert halls, like the overpriced Anvil in Basingstoke, it's a gem - akin to some elderly beauty who retains her elegance despite the passing years.  It also has a Wagamama just 100m away, and plentiful parking - I love it.

Nineteen years have elapsed since Tabor and the Oysters recorded the beautiful 'Freedom and Rain', and we have to hope that it's not 2030 before we hear the follow-up to Ragged Kingdom.

Under-appreciated interpretors

It's the singer songwriters who get all the glory, but just because they wrote the words it doesn't mean they are always the best people to communicate the message within the lyrics.  Of course, cover versions are often simply pale imitations of the orginal, but once in a while someone comes along who takes a set of lyrics to a whole new level.  The new June Tabor and Oyster Band CD does that with my favourite song, 'Love Will Tear Us Apart', and last Friday I saw Barb Jungr do the most incredible things with the songs of Bob Dylan.



I've loved her work for years, but hadn't previously seen her live, and the best word I can come up with describe her performance is visceral.  It helped that were right at the front, no more than ten feet from her, and it was awe-inspiring.  I recall seeing her on BBC Breakfast once and the presenters did the usual 'You're going to sing for us, aren't you?' routine, and got much more than they bargained for.  She didn't get up from the couch, and just started, from cold at 08:30 in the morning, and with awesome power- poor old  Bill didn't know where to put himself as Barb stared into his eyes and sang a love long beautifully.

'Like A Rolling Stone' was imbued with a power and a viciousness that Dylan's voice just doesn't get across, and she finished with 'God On Our Side'.  When she sang the seventh verse...

But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.
...the fact that we were seeing her at the New Greenham Arts Centre, built on the site of Greenham Common, scene of the women's peace camp, and for so many years home to Cruise missiles, meant that a collective shiver ran through the audience.  We were sitting right by where, in 1958, a B-47 bomber was destroyed with a resulting radiation leak!

Her singing was great, and her introductions to the songs, including lots of 'Dylanology' were wonderful -at some times, funny, and at others extremely moving.  Her intro to 'The Man In The Long Black Coat' was excellent, and there wasn't a dry eye in the house when she told the story of the one-man audience at a gig when she first took 'The Songs of Bob Dylan' to New York.

She goes back there next month in triumph for sell-out shows over a week, and then she heads off to Austin, LA and SF.  If you can't get to see her UK gigs, buy the album, but the band that backs her on it, although really good, can't capture the power of seeing her live with only her pianist to accompany her.
 

'She was a woman to whom life had been cruel...'

I was introduced to Frida Kahlo's work by Michael Marra's wonderful song about her imagined visit to Dundee's Tay Bridge Bar, and his song also shaped my view of her 'part-time' husband, Diego Rivera.  Yesterday we went to the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester to see the Kahlo / Rivera exhibition.



Knowing nothing of them, I went in with the sterotypical view of Kahlo as mistreated wife and exceptional talent, and Rivera as philandering bastard who did a bit of painting - as Marra puts it, 'a fat man of the naive school'!  Shame on me for knowing so little. 

I learned that Rivera's was undoubtedly the greater talent, but as a muralist his work isn't seen in galleries but on the walls of his native Mexico and in the States - most critics regard him as the greatest Mexican artist of the 20th century (not being an art connoisseur, I don't know how much above being the greatest ping-pong player in South Wonston that is, but it probably means he was pretty good).   I loved his work, from the portraiture through to the Mexican landscapes with huge cacti, and I'd like to see more of his murals.  There was a lovely book about the murals but at £135 it seemed more than a little bit steep.



Kahlo's work was weird but beautiful.  A huge proportion of her work was self portraits and in them she managed to make herself much less beautiful than she was in real life.  Alongside her work with its somewhat simplistic symbolism, were photographs by her one-time lover, Nicholas Murray.  In the photographs the unibrow is less defined, and what often looks to be not far off a moustache in the paintings simply seems to be shadow. 



I loved the way that the curator had resisted the glib opportunity to put Rivera's and Kahlo's paintings side by side, but had opted for separate rooms.  For example, it would have been too obvious to put their respective paintings of Natasha Gelman together and let the viewer compare their styles - far better to absorb each work in its merits and then reflect on the similarities and differences.  That also does Kahlo a favour, because while her work is the more striking, Rivera's picture of Gelman is the more accomplished piece of work (god, that was a bit of a Brian Sewell moment, wasn't it?)  

The rest of the gallery was a joy too, from the Pop Art through to the photographs of Butlin's at Bognor Regis - and the coffee shop was also good.   The best bit for me - maybe even better than the Kahlo / Rivera exhibition, were the Amberley Panels, or more accurately, Joy Gregory's modern take on them.

http://www.joygregory.co.uk/archive/details.php?proj_id=5

She has taken the nine Amberley Panels - 16th century images of strong women, with inscriptions in latin - and done modern versions.  Her photographs are stunning, and the inscriptions in English - I fell in love with them.  It's odd how the most unlikely pieces of art touch different people in very different ways. 




Pallant House Gallery is a great place for a day out, and Tuesday's are half-price which was an unexpected bonus.  It's well worth a visit.

Next week we'll be seeing the inestimable Michael Marra in concert at the 'Embra' Festival - I'm sure he'll do 'Frida Kahlo's visit to the Tay Bridge Bar', and it's bound to be even more evocative following our day out in Chichester.

Oh Flower of Scotland, when will we see your like again...

England play Scotland on Sunday in the 118^th Calcutta Cup rugby match.  For England supporters it’s an important match, but for Scots fans it is the match, the only one that really matters.  It’s always been that way, but back in 1990 the game had an extra edge, and it’s all explained in The Grudge by Tom English – simply one of the best sports books I’ve ever read.

For younger readers let me take you back to 1990.  The country was led by That Bloody Woman, as Margaret Thatcher was known north of the border, and she’d decided to use Scotland as the testing ground for the hated poll tax.  Spitting Image caricatured the situation perfectly, with Thatcher saying she needed somewhere to test things out ‘Somewhere – a long way from my house’.  It also contained the line uttered by the George Young puppet ‘And then there’s our new reciprocal fuel experiment.  We take their oil, they take our nuclear waste.  Very successful.’

England’s rugby captain was Will Carling, son of an army officer, public school educated, a City type, and in Scottish minds, a  supporter of Thatcher.  In other words, everything the Scots detested.  There was always an edge to Calcutta Cup encounters, but this time there was genuine hatred.   I don’t mean a bit of a dislike, I mean genuine hatred, with pictures of Carling’s head superimposed on cartoons of Edward 11, the English monarch beaten at Bannockburn, and a journo telling the England captain at a press conference, ‘You know the whole of Scotland detests you.’

Going into the game the situation was simple.  Both teams had won their previous four games, England brilliantly, and Scotland solidly – in the minds of impartial observers there was no doubt about it, the English would win.

Tom English – he’s an Irishman who lives in Scotland – sets the scene beautifully with interviews with all of the key figures involved in the match.  Read the Scottish coach, Jim Telfer’s, pre-match speech and I defy you not to feel a shiver run down your spine.  You’ll laugh out loud at the story of the pregnancy, and wonder that Brian Moore’s views on all things Scottish didn’t start a civil war!   

Come the big day the drama continued, and I remember it as if it was yesterday.  England ran out at Murrayfield, as teams do, but the Scots, led by David Sole, marched out slowly in single file – it was a statement of intent.   The National Anthem was played and was met with the usual Murrayfield mix of indifference and antagonism, but Flower of Scotland was a different matter, and I promise you it was being belted out in living rooms across the whole of Scotland that day.  At the ground it was very, very special: as the England back Simon Halliday remarked afterwards, ‘…their guys knew the words.  That’s when I knew we were in trouble. Previous years they didn’t sing anything.  I had a little look across and they were absolutely screaming it out.  I thought, this all looks a bit different to other years.’

The result is in the history books so revealing it ruins nothing: Scotland won 13-7 and claimed the Grand Slam, and the England team, in the words of the Scottish anthem, were sent ‘homeward, to think again’.

This Sunday’s Calcutta Cup game will hold no such surprises: it’s at Twickenham and the Scots are surely going to get hammered.  However, the miracle is that the scoreline in the 117 matches played so far isn’t more one-sided than it is – it’s 63-39 to England with 15 drawn.  Ten times the population and 25+ times the number of players to choose from, and the Scots still hold their own on many occasions – it illustrates the power of desire and commitment in sport.

Read The Grudge.  If you can, read it before Sunday’s game, and then sit down and enjoy another historic encounter between the Scots and the Auld Enemy.  It will be a very special day – the Calcutta Cup matches always are.

Desert Island Discs

I used to really dislike Desert Island Discs, as it was always old people choosing music that I’ve never heard of, and which I didn’t like.  Now, of course, I’m older than many of the castaways, and they sometimes choose music that I like – I still don’t get Classical music though, as I’ve never heard a piece that couldn’t be improved by some drums, a bass line, and a decent set of lyrics!  Passing the time on a long drive I’ve often wondered which bit of music I would choose, so here goes.  I’ve cheated a little bit and chosen albums rather than single tracks – and the ten are in no particular order.

 

Love – Forever Changes.  Obvious I know, but it’s no coincidence that this has been voted greatest album of all time in so many polls – as time has passed, naturally Forever Changes has slipped down people’s lists, but it still features in almost all of them.  It’s 44 years since it was released but it’s hard to describe just how revolutionary it was. It may be a Love album, but it’s the great, and truly eccentric, Arthur Lee’s masterwork.  I still play it regularly, and it still moves me.  It has influenced so many bands over the years – listen to it and then Belle and Sebastian’s latest!

Amadou & Mariam - Dimanche a Bamako.  Released in 2005 by this blind Malian duo, and produced by Manu Chao, it’s the perfect introduction to what is referred to somewhat condescendingly as World Music.  Not a week goes by without me playing an Amadou & Mariam album, and Dimanche a Bamako is top of that list, with Camions Sauvage my all-time favourite World Music track.  I’ve always liked guitarists where their style is so individual that you know it’s them as soon as you hear a few notes, and that’s what you get with Amadou Bagayoko – it’s simply wonderful stuff.

Richard Thompson OBE – Watching The Dark.  I couldn’t get by without a Thompson album - I like my lyrics to be beautifully written, and his are that and as dark as can be.  The master guitarist who first came to prominence with the best Fairport Convention line-up, the next 40 years have produced a string of great and not-so-great albums, but even the latter category always feature some great songs.  I’m cheating with Watching The Dark as it’s a three-CD retrospective, and has my favourite Thompson song, From Galway to Graceland.

Michael Marra – Posted Sober.  Another album where its absence would make life on the island almost intolerable – although I know every word of Marra’s songs so I guess I could sing them loudly to console myself.  Scotland’;s best kept secret, Dr Marra is from Dundee and is a master of his craft – right up there alongside the likes of Richard Thompson.  Posted Sober is simply magnificent with gems such as Frida Kahlo’s visit to the Tay Bridge Bar.  Everyone I’ve introduced to Marra’s music has loved it, and it’s a scandal that he’s so little known outside of Scotland.

John Martyn – Solid Air.  Even when he was bad – which he often was when drunk or stoned – he was still better than most other performers.  When he was on top form he was utterly brilliant, and Solid Air has him at his absolute best.  In my undergraduate days this was the ultimate seduction music – if you heard this playing late at night you could draw your own conclusions!  There isn’t a duff track on the album: Solid Air is s tribute to Nick Drake, and May You Never is just plain wonderful.  My favourite Martyn track is not on Solid Air, it’s Small Hours which is on One World which appeared a few years later.  Almost everything John Martyn did was worth listening to, but Solid Air captures a period in time for me, and it still gets lots of plays – again, it appears on lots of lists of greatest albums, and that’s because it’s timeless.

Orchestra Baobab – Pirates Choice.  Another World Music choice, this time from Senegal.  Pirates Choice was the ultimate ‘slow burner’: recorded in 1982 it was acclaimed by critics and was popular in France, but only really impacted on the UK when it was re-released in 2001.  Originally the house band of the Club Baobab in Dakar, the Orchestra has had many, many personnel changes in its time, but Pirates Choice captures a moment in time perfectly.  A truly great album and a cracking introduction to World Music – even I want to dance when I hear this one!

Van Morrison – Enlightenment.  There will have to be some Van the Man on the island, and from a remarkable back catalogue I’ve chosen Enlightenment.  It’s funny how particular tracks strike a chord with us, and ‘In the days before Rock ‘N’ Roll’ does it for me.  The image of turning the wireless knob through strange names such as Luxembourg, Athlone, and Hilversum is etched deep in my consciousness, as it is for many of my generation.  When Morrison sings about it I go back more years than I care to mention, and it’s not a bad feeling.

Pete Atkin – Driving Through Mythical America.  Everyone knows the polymath Clive James, but fewer know that he considers one of his greatest achievements to be the songs he wrote – and still writes – with singer Pete Atkin.  I first encountered this music through a video (one of the earliest ones) of the title track of this album that was featured on the Old Grey Whistle Test, and I loved it immediately – ‘Four students in the usual light of day, set out to speak their minds about the war’ is simply the best of several songs written about the shootings at Kent State University in Ohio on 04 May 1970.  I’m a sucker for clever lyrics and some of James’ / Atkin’s are almost too clever by half – ‘He couldn’t tell a wah-wah from Akira Kurosawa’ and ‘The powers-that-be will arrange a, pre-release of a Beautiful Stranger’, to mention but two!  It’s clever, witty, touching stuff and I still play their albums a lot.  

The Clash – The Story of The Clash.  I was at university in 1976 – Nottingham was run by the Federation of Conservative Students – lovely campus, great place to study, but as right wing as it came!  You might say that I rebelled against this and the release of The Clash’s eponymous debut album was like a bolt from the blue.  Punk had an energy that was the perfect antidote to the over-blown nonsense of the early 70s, and The Clash were different from a lot of the other Punk bands in that they had real talent.  White Riot, and Police and Thieves were inspiring, but then came London Calling in 1979, and it’s simply one of the greatest ever Rock albums.  The compilation album has 28 tracks and would help me rage against the injustice of being stranded on an island.

Finally, we have the most perfect 3’18” of pop music ever recorded.  I’d be happy with the single, or even better, a compilation of the original and all of the covers of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ by Joy Division, but in the spirit of the list lets go for:

Joy Division – The Best of Joy Division.  Dark, desperate and beautiful are words that can all be applied to Love Will Tear Us Apart, and on this double album there’s a studio and live version of the song.  If you want to know more about this wonderful band, and their trials and many tribulations, watch ‘Control’, Anton Corbijn’s excellent film about their singer Ian Curtis.

I don’t much fancy a desert island, but give me that box of CDs and it might just be a bit more tolerable!

The 'blessed' Richard Thompson OBE

June Tabor always refers to him in such a way when she introduces one of his songs, and such is the man's pedigree, back catalogue, and reputation, that it's hard to argue.  At Salisbury City Hall he was in typically fine form, touring his most recent album, the Grammy nominated Dream Attic.  Sometimes he comes over here with just his guitar, and on other occasions he brings a band, and that is the case on this latest tour.  It's a matter of personal taste whether you prefer the acoustic or the electric Thompson - I'm in the former camp but that's not to say I dislike the latter.



You get value for money from a Richard Thompson show, and on this occasion he played for not far short of two and a half hours: the first set was Dream Attic, and the second was a greatest hits set, albeit as the man himself said, with a small 'h'!  Dream Attic isn't my favourite Thompson album, or at least it wasn't when I played the band version, but the album contains a second CD of acoustic versions of the songs, and that one's growing on me the more I listen to it.



Such is the depth of the Thompson back catalogue that his selection of 'greatest hits' was very different to what mine would have been, but I'm just an old folkie at heart!  My one complaint about the show - and it's an odd one to make about a guitar hero - was that there was too much guitar!  I love 'Can't Win', and I even love the guitar solos on the recorded versions, but why did the man feel the need to add an interminable solo onto the end of it - far better to have cut it short and played another song.  The multi-talented Pete Zorn is a fixture in most of Thompson's bands and it's hard to be in anything other than awe of the man's playing, but there was too much shrill soprano sax in this show.  The stars in the band were the rhythm section of Michael Jerome on drums, and Taras Prodaniuk on bass - they set a driving beat that carried things along at breakneck pace.

For me the stand-out moment of the evening was 'Sidney Wells' a typically dark Thmpson song about a serial killer.  As he said in the introduction, no evening is complete without a murder ballad!  It was wonderful played by the band, and the acoustic version on the bonus CD is even better.

Richard Thompson's tours are on my list as gigs that I must get to, and this latest concert was excellent, even if it didn't quite live up to the remarkable Mock Tudor, The Old Kit Bag, and Sweet Warrior tours of recent years.  If you get the chance to see him before he heads back to his adopted home in California.

What a disappointment

There's disappointing and then there's desperately disappointing, and the new Bellowhead album 'Hedonism' falls firmly into the latter category.  It does so because it was high on my list of the most eagerly awaited albums of 2011 - after all, their previous efforts showed them taking traditional folk and ballads in a new and innovative direction and they hadn't a bad track to their name.  And then this!




The problem is simple and proves that democracy can be very over-rated.  Bellowhead have 11 members (I think) and they are the best live band I have ever seen, and I've seen plenty of good ones over the years.  The first time I saw them I sat in utter disbelief that something as radical and vibrant could still be done to old tunes.  However the band dress it up, Bellowhead is a vehicle for the extraordinary talents of Winchester's Jon Boden and, to a lesser extent, his colleague John Spiers - they tour as a duo, Spiers and Boden, and are sensational.  The rest of Bellowhead's members are highly talented multi-instrumentalists, but there isn't another Boden amongst them. 

Too often on Hedonism the feeling is left that everyone is being given their calculated share of the action, and sadly it detracts from what should have been a great album.  There are also a couple of total stinkers amongst the tracks on the album: as an example, 'Little Sally Racket' shouldn't ever have been let loose for public consumption.

For the first time I found myself wondering whether Bellowhead has legs as a project, and whether Spiers and Boden backed by a dozen session musicians wouldn't be a better idea.  I still have the earlier Bellowhead albums to fall back on, and there are some bits of Hedonism that do match up to that standard - invariably they are the ones where they stick to what they are excellent at, and bin the experimental side of things.

It won't stop me going to see them live - in fact I am doing precisely that in November when they play Salisbury City Hall - but equally, it won't alleviate my dreadful disappointment at the patchy album they've just released.