Posted by Mike Butler
on Monday, 12 December 2011
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Every ghost from Charles Mingus to Glenn Miller faces the same problem. Can it ever be the same when you’re dead and gone? If the Sun Ra Arkestra fare better than most ghost bands, it’s because creative, exploratory music was part of the brief, and musical director Marshall Allen is Ra’s ideal representative on earth, having faithfully served in the Arkestra since 1958.
Practically, every foray into outer space - where dissonance and freeform structures are permitted, even encouraged - or a genuine mind-stretcher, like the Allen original Care Free II, was followed by an eccentric version of a jazz standard (The Stars Fell on Alabama) or a romping blues of reassuring stability. The bitter pill of advanced music was sweetened by flamboyant showmanship, and esoteric philosophy was sneaked through the door as pop culture. Sun Ra’s modus operandi was honoured to the letter.
Leader Marshall Allen’s form is frail but his intensity is undimmed. His way of channelling energy into concentrated staccato outbursts on alto saxophone is possibly unique. And this generation of free jazzers - like alto saxophonist Knoel Scott (who joined the Arkestra in 1979) and tenor saxophonist Charles Davis (an alumni from the class of 1955) are heroes of the age. But what process makes veteran radicals revert to the hot swing of their youth? A wild Dreams Come True did strange things to the course of jazz history; a rollicking treatment, balanced midway between satire and affection, the avant-garde turned into new traditionalism in front of our eyes.
There was charisma aplenty from toastmaster Michael Ray (a youngblood when he joined in 1978), who sparred energetically with fellow trumpeter Cecil Brooks, and new pianist Farid Barron is a true virtuoso who whips Afro-American forms into a focused vortex of sound.
The Arkestra score high on entertainment and innovation. They kindle an ecstasy that must find release in the massed chant, “Space is the Place”. Both sets culminated in a parade through the audience; a time-honoured ritual perhaps, but an unfailing delight. In short, they’re everything a Sun Ra ghost band ought to be, but no more. This is the cruel limitation of the best ghost bands.
Posted by Mike Butler
on Wednesday, 6 July 2011
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A transient city. Pic by Louise Butler
Thursday, June 23
Say what you like, Glastonbury is a phenomenon! A medium-sized city - larger than the entire populace of South Yorkshire - springs up in the fields of Somerset for one week a year. It rises out of mud and returns to mud, and just a few short weeks after, it’s as if it were never there. Abandoned tents, latrines and the accumulated detritus of 180,000 thrill-seekers are cleared up. Only the sight of cows grazing in the shade of a pyramid hints that this is no ordinary English pastorale.
It’s a city of eternal youth, and a testament to the resilience, stamina and optimism of youth. On the Thursday before Glastonbury is properly underway, the ambience is more fairground than music festival. The background music is predominantly techno and the decor is distinctly Mad Max. Amiable anarchy prevails. Authority is largely confined to patrolling the perimeter fences. Indeed, like any other fair-sized city, there are genteel suburbs (the Healing Field, Kidz Field, Cinema and The Acoustic Stage) and shady no-go areas (the ironically named Shangri-La). Block 9, situated between Arcadia and Shangri-La, relocates an urban post-apocalyptic scene in the English countryside. It was here that I witnessed the single-most distressing spectacle of the Festival: a heavily pregnant girl, stoned out of her mind with headphones on, wading helplessly in the mud, clutching her stomach, dazed and beyond help.
Marijuana is flouted openly (there aren’t enough cells in Somerset to implement zero tolerance), but within my circle at least, the drug of choice is pear cider. The hit of this first, pre-concert evening is Ken Fox’s Wall of Death on The Common, with bikes and go-karts racing vertically around an eighteen-foot high cylindrical wall, pumping out noxious fumes to thrilled spectators. Brother Ant was so impressed he bought a t-shirt.
The Wall of Death. Pic by Louise Butler
The ultimate Glastonbury act, I muse, on this preliminary evening, before the music has even begun, must be Roy Harper, that madcap prophet and scourge of straight society. Glastonbury, indeed, might be Roy Harper’s dream made flesh. He treated of the subject on Glasto, from his 2000 album, The Green Man. It makes a great anthem: “Let’s go to Glasto and have us a blasto…” I don’t know why Michael Eavis doesn’t make Roy Harper an honorary patron and let him close the Festival every year. He is the exemplar of the rebellious crazed subversive, and the living embodiment of the adage that the path of excess leads to wisdom. In addition, Stackridge should open every Festival.
Friday, June 24
The God of Hellfire
And the other ultimate Glastonbury act is Arthur Brown, making only his second appearance in his own right, forty years after he stole the second Glastonbury Festival in 1971 (as documented in the Nicolas Roeg and Peter Neal film, Glastonbury Fayre). He wryly tells the crowd that, at this rate, he’ll be 109 at his next Glastonbury appearance. Brother Ant, however, maintains that Brown appeared at Glastonbury 2010 as the guest of Spatial AKA Orchestra, Jerry Dammers ‘ Sun Ra tribute band.
Brown actually put me mind of the great Sun Ra even before Ant vouchsafed this information. Rather, a cross between Sun Ra and William Blake. It’s the way arcane cosmology is placed at the service of a message of humanity. Imagination becomes a means of liberating the human spirit. So Sun Ra claimed to come from outer space, and William Blake saw the ghost of a flea and angels sitting in top branches of trees. That very morning, so Arthur told us, he saw an angel in a tree of the garden of his B&B in Pilton.
He possesses superhuman energy and is very sprightly for his age, dancing and capering and going through more costume changes than Beyonce (see below). The collective age of this edition of The Crazy World probably equals that of Brown alone, and they play with brio and virtuosity, and a full working knowledge of the tropes of psychedelia. Brother Ant recognised Time Captives from his old Kingdom Come album. And Fire Poem, the build-up to the inevitable Fire, was manically, deliriously freaky. Arthur endured a slight hitch - a roadie faltered during the lighting of his flaming helmet - with a gentle shrug that made him seem vulnerable. Then, within moments, the greatest showman of the psychedelic age had been transformed into THE GOD OF HELLFIRE. We were all going to burn, and we loved it!
The preceding act on the Spirit of ’71 Stage had been Edgar Broughton and his son, Luke, who demonstrated that the freak rock of those old Edgar Broughton Band albums concealed many good songs. Not a hint of Beefheart mannerisms (was that Steve Broughton?) and, to brother Ant’s disappointment, Apache Drop Out was nowhere in the programme. Indeed, the songs were overwhelmingly sombre and politically concerned, and disproved the notion that age inevitably brings a swing to the right. The full band belatedly joined Edgar and Luke for Out Demons Out, an exorcism targeted specifically at politicians and other creatures of the night.
Earlier, BB King looked very frail as he delivered his greatest hits (3 O’Clock Blues, The Thrill is Gone, etc.) from a sitting position. It was an act of reverence on the part of the Pyramid Stage audience, made poignant by the awareness that this was, in all likelihood, the very last chance to see a true blues legend. The same thought occurred to King, who revived Blind Lemon Jefferson’s One Kind Favour (“…please see that my grave is kept clean”) for the occasion.
The low-point of the day was young Sam Duckworth, whose radicalism seemed callow and self-satisfied compared to the old school anarchism of Edgar Broughton). One suspected that, like his comrades in the sessions in the Left Field tent organised by Billy Bragg, he was there principally to make the compere look good.
My Glastonbury actually started with verbals. That morning, as part of the self-styled Free University of Glastonbury (at HMS Sweet Charity, in The Park) ) Jon Ronson, was holding forth about psychopaths in that self-deprecating, ingratiatingly geeky way he has. Following Ronson, Mark Thomas explained why he didn’t want to be remembered as the man who sent Nelson Mandela back to jail. Thomas could give Bragg a lesson in mixing polemic with wit. Between Ronson and Thomas, I stepped out and saw Dylan Le Blanc’s band perform a credible Shape I’m In.
And that was my first full day at Glastonbury. I might add that a piss, a falafel and a pear cider can work wonders in restoring life to flagging flesh. I missed U2 but managed to see two or three songs from Cee-Lo Green. Horrible R&B cliches pumped up with horrible Black Sabbath riffs. I suppose every generation gets the ‘soul voice’ it deserves.
Saturday, June 25
Unka and niece. That is, Mike and fraulein Katherine with Lisa. Pic by Louise Butler
Today was a day of discovery. I discovered what Marcus Brigstock looks like in person, allowing for a Victorian handlebar moustache (grown to play Mr Perks in a production of The Railway Children); I discovered that today was Phil Juputus’ birthday (both insights gleaned from a casual visit to the Cabaret tent); I discovered that, whereas pear cider was freely available, apple cider was virtually unknown at Glastonbury; I discovered that Lau, who gave a stunning performance in the Avalon tent, are the best folk group in the world (Modern Division). Inflections from modern systems music were better assimilated and more rousingly delivered than, say, The Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble, who we had just left on the West Holts Stage. I discovered, or rather, had my suspicion confirmed, that Pentangle are the best folk group in the world (Sixties to Present Division). Honestly, they conjured magic in the Acoustic Tent. Their distinct weave of MJQ-style chamber jazz and English traditional folk has never been surpassed for grace, melody and delicate swing- what a tasteful drummer Terry Cox is! - with Danny Thompson as the wild card, and McShee and Renbourn as envoys for a much older and mysterious tradition. What a blessing they’re all still with us, in a week that saw the death of Mike Waterson (Billy Bragg had earlier dedicated Hard Times of Old England to him). True, they didn’t break new ground, confining themselves to old favourites like A Maid That’s Deep in Love, Cruel Sister, Light Flight, Wedding Dress etc, but the music they produce is perfection: entire, fully achieved and sui generis.
I discovered what it felt like to lose oneself in a crowd of thousands, and share collective waves of euphoria, squishiness and abandonment (this was entirely novel to me, as a non-football supporter). This, when the mighty Elbow essayed the finest stadium rock yet devised by Man(cunuan), managing the trick of being simultaneously rousing and sensitive.
Further, I discovered that a set by Murray L. Young doesn’t bear repetition and that Spliff Richard is a poet I can rely on to express unarticulated thoughts about social cohesion, the war and tribute bands. I discovered that souk music goes down very well with souk food: I visited the Moorish food stall for the second consecutive day (‘Moorism’, was it?) as the strains of Omar Souleyman came drifting over from the West Holts Stage (“aaaaaaaAAAAAAAA!”).
It was a day that constantly flirted with disaster, with the ever-present possibility that exhaustion and befuddlement might finally override intelligibility. I’m happy to report that the forces of good prevailed and that Terry Reid got through his set without falling offstage or being attacked by the sound crew. Reid is a garrulous drunk subject to mercurial mood swings - the worry that he might never start a song was followed by the worry that he might never finish one - but the superlungs are just about intact, and no-one else can immerse himself in a performance like Terry Reid. It was a spellbinding, raw, edgy performance.
I discovered that the adage (quoted above) - about the path of excess leading to wisdom - should always be accompanied by a health warning. Mick Farren mixed beat-inspired poetry with impossible proto-punk with The Deviants back in the sixties, and is still ardently champions free love, chemical recreation and political insurrection. As brother Ant said, “Christ, this guy is in worse shape than B.B. King.” Where else could it be but the Spirit of ’71 Stage?
Sunday, June 26
For me, the heart of Glastonbury still resides in hairy-arsed hippy music, and I make no apology for preferring the Spirit of ’71 to the stadium-style Pyramid or supersized Other Stage. I missed seeing Fleet Foxes and Mumford & Sons, but if I had my time over, I would still go to see Edgar Broughton and Arthur Brown instead. But here are alternative impressions of Glastonbury, from my beloved niece Katherine, to do honour to the multiplicity of Glastonbury. There is a different Glastonbury for every person who attends.
The Queens of the Stone Age: “A proper rock band. The laser show was amazing. They haven’t had a record for six or seven years… They really ramped up the build-up by playing part of the Songs For The Deaf album. The place went bananas. The lead singer had a brilliant swagger. Pulp were amazing…” (Pulp were unannounced special guests) “Jarvis Cocker is a proper showman. I was transported back to 1995.”
U2: “Bono, why do you have to be a twat all the time? He had a conversation with a voice in the sky. I thought that was quite twat-like behaviour. Chemical Brothers worked everyone up into a frenzy. They had a trippy backdrop, and every now and then a scary clown face would come up. I mean, people are already going to be out of their boxes. The last thing you want to do is mess with them.”
“It would have been great to do Beyonce with my friends, because that’s how I enjoy her - her music is the soundtrack to my life. But Queens of the Stone Age are a bit more personal.”
Ah yes, Beyonce… but I’m getting ahead of myself. The first indispensable musical offering of the final Sunday of Glastonbury, not counting a pointedly strenuous display of campanology coming from the Pilton Parish Church of St John the Baptist, was Jah Wobble and the Nippon Dub Ensemble on the West Holts Stage. What started as an unlikely melange of King Tubby and Kabuki, with a hint of the Kodo Drummers, gradually turned into a corking set of Lovers’ Rock and toasting, with invaluable contributions from Candice Gabbidon (father Basil was on guitar) and - here’s a welcome return - Ranking Roger! During a euphoric and extended I’m Still In Love With You, the penny dropped: Glastonbury is a glorious celebration of the human spirit. It transcends age, culture, gender: if you can still access that first sense of absolute joy, then Glastonbury will open its arms to you. Negativity of any kind runs counter to the Glastonbury spirit. So, sorry Sam Duckworth; sorry Bono (on Katherine’s behalf), sorry B.B. I’m Still In Love With You was my choice for the unofficial anthem of Glastonbury 2011, beating close competition from One Day Like This by Elbow, and Haitian Fight Song/Goodbye Pork Pie Hat by Pentangle.
Unfortunately this state of bliss didn’t survive a workmanlike set by The Popes. Ron Sexsmith tried valiantly to overcome the unvoiced sentiment of the majority of the Avalon crowd (“we hope you realise we could be watching Paul Simon now”) and, with hindsight, the Avalon people probably made the right decision. Self-effacing, fey and introspective, Sexsmith offers a kind of tenderness that would be impossible to replicate for mass consumption. Indeed, Katherine reported that Simon was lacklustre, and this was later corroborated by an impartial witness who watched the TV broadcast.
However, there was now dissent and full-scale rebellion among the troops. “Your Robyn Hitchcock is shit,” declared brother Ant, returning with a couple of beakers of pear cider. “I was passing the Spirit of ’71 Stage and he was murdering Too Much Time.” (The programme mentioned that Hitchcock would be playing two albums from 1971, so he must have been re-enacting Captain Beefheart’s Clear Spot; Ole Tarantula might have been a better choice.) A splinter-group from our little party went off to find The Vaccines, leaving some of us (me) to stay behind for Show of Hands. This was that rare thing: stadium-rock folk music. I know because people started waving their arms in a spontaneous manner (even Guy Garvey needed to prompt the Pyramid masses). The righteousness of SOH sometimes grates, but passion and sincerity eventually win the day.
By evening, enough good-will had returned for us to join the multitudes gathering for the much anticipated, hotly debated Festival finale: the Glastonbury debut of Beyonce. Brother Ant was game - he had been converted by Jay-Z’s appearance a few years ago. I was curious, willing to sample the opiate of the masses. However, as the minutes dragged on, and Beyonce still didn’t appear (I made excuses on her behalf: being late is the prerogative of the diva). Then, the extravaganza belatedly kicked in - with fireworks, a madly gyrating dance troupe and soul-shrivelling razzmatazz all designed to perpetuate a pre-teen credulity in make-believe and fantasy. With one mind, we hastened to the only competition in town: NY songstress Suzanne Vega in the Acoustic Tent. Actually Vega treats of the same subject matter as Beyonce - the vagaries of feminine desire, I suppose - but does so on a more modest scale and with more recognisable humanity. Would Beyonce know who Carson McCullers was, much less write an off-Broadway musical about her?
That was my Glastonbury, and it ended on a note of intriguing, kooky NY femme understatement.
The last word goes to John, a merchant seaman who ekes out his retirement far away from the sea at brother Ant’s house in Pilton. John was my benefactor: residents of Pilton are given gratis tickets, and this got me passed the highwire fences and security guards that represent the real-life protectors of the dream city. John was talking about his adventures - he was a captive of Mao in China’s Cultural Revolution - and far-flung travels. He mentioned a trip to Central Mongolia. “I wouldn’t say I actually enjoyed Central Mongolia, but I’m very glad I went,” he said, nailing my own feelings about the past weekend, if you substitute ‘Glastonbury’ for ‘Central Mongolia’.
Posted by Mike Butler
on Thursday, 31 March 2011
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Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, Monday 28 March
Buena Vista Social Club is a cultural phenomenon, a living fairytale - how many long-forgotten musicians are rediscovered and showered with plaudits when they can still benefit from it? - and a treasure trove of Cuban music. Sadly, mortality has caught up with many of the greats who appeared under the Buena Vista banner on one immortal night (July 31) at the same venue in 2000. Tonight’s proceedings evoked bitter-sweet memories of such much-loved performers as singer Ibrahim Ferrer, piano maestro Rubén González and bassist Cachaíto López. The incomparable Omara Portuondo is happily still with us.
Acoustics were unforgiving for the opening tune, but the capacity audience were willing an evening full of nostalgia and ebullience, and the musicians, led by musical director and trombonist Jesús ‘Aguaje’ Ramos, were keen to deliver. Singer Carlos Calunga tried valiantly to evoke the spirit of Ibrahim Ferrer on De Camino A La Vereda, but the old-timers took the honours, particularly Papi Oviedo, with a tres guitar characterised by primitive emotion and rhythmic sureness, and Manuel ‘Guajiro’ Mirabal, whose trumpet is simultaneously eloquent and sharp-cutting. But they weren’t having it all their own way: the boyish-featured Rolando Luna, in a line of prodigious Cuban piano players from Pérez Prado to Roberto Fonseca, tenderly summoned an age before he was born by playing As Time Goes By in danzón-style.
And then came the woman introduced by Ramos as “la más bonita de Cuba”. Omara Portuondo is a true diva, absorbing all the adulation of an ecstatic audience and projecting it back in waves of pure love. She is unsurpassable with a bolero, expressing the full meaning and feeling of a sad love song (like her signature song, Veinte Años). Her way is exquisite anguish, rather than the defiant rage of Chavela Vargas or the self-destructive hubris of Billie Holiday (her immediate peers). Yet there is something twinkling about her timelessly beautiful, animated features. She is the earthiest of divas, hitching her pink skirt gracefully to her calves in acknowledgement of the applause. “Omara la más bonita y la más sexy”, yelled an excited Spanish neighbour.
And even that old show-stopper, Chan Chan, shaped as a duo (or duet) for Oviedo and Mirabal, can’t keep anti-climax at bay when Omara left the stage. An extended Candela is reshaped into a full-fledged descarga (jam), to demonstrate the typically Cuban mix of technical sophistication and physical exuberance, but it takes the return of Omara to restore real emotional depth with a sensitive reading of Dos Gardenias. Spectators are left with a last sight of Omara vigorously waving her arm and repeatedly calling “Ayé”. This goes beyond nostalgia: at eighty, Omara is simply getting better.
Pictures by Eva Navarro
Posted by Mike Butler
on Wednesday, 24 November 2010
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That is, songs which are obviously the product of genius, albeit unknown genius. It may be that the the name on the credit (I’m talking about cover versions here) is unknown, and the song is manifestly immortal. This may occur because a) the writer was (or is) too well-balanced to pursue a conventional career in music, or b) he happened to be Bob Dylan’s best mate, and the magic has retrospectively rubbed off (otherwise known as the Bob Neuwirth Syndrome). There are an awful lot of Great Songs From The Shadows out there, so here are ten to be getting on with.
1. Your Sweet & Shiny Eyes by Nan O’Byrne
An irrepressible song about youth, romance, Mexico, escape, and the escalating pleasures of life. It comes from Home Plate (1975) by Bonnie Raitt, and features a fresh-faced Tom Waits among the chorus. Nan O’Byrne’s name sounds as earthy as the peat and potato mentioned in the lyric, and I would never have guessed (as a quick Google reveals) that the same hand is responsible for ‘You Might Need Somebody’, the Randy Crawford hit.
2. She Sang Hymns Out of Tune by Jesse Lee Kincaid
Wistful and absurd, ‘Hymns’ follows the logic of a nursery rhyme, replete with a touch of brain-fried psychedelia. Nilsson sang it on Pandemonium Puppet Show (1967) but the definitive treatment is on Wheatstraw Suite by The Dillards (1968), complete with church organ and high-rent orchestral backing. Jesse Lee Kincaid was a member of The Rising Sons with Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal (above, Kincaid with Taj Mahal). The sole Rising Sons album was issued in 1992, some 27 years after it was recorded.
More info: http://www.myspace.com/jesseleekincaid
3. Icarus by Anne Lister
A paean of praise to glamorous extremism from a dull bystander. The Icarus of the Greek myth is a charismatic who pushes at the boundaries, and is hero-worshipped from afar. The doomed skydiver here is emblematic of all the decadents, addicts burn-outs and madmen who experience life to the full so that we don’t have to. Found on Martin Simpson’s Sad Or High Kicking! (1985) and guaranteed to cause goosebumps. Writer Anne Lister has another song on the album, ‘Moth’, which is a less effective variation on the same theme. More info: http://www.annelister.com/ (which reveals a more extensive discography than I suspected).
4. Jazzman by Ed Holstein
Also celebrating the self-destructive, wilful side of human nature and also on Martin Simpson’s Sad Or High Kicking! (clearly an existential kick), the definitive version of ‘Jazzman’ comes from Steve Goodman on his eponymous debut (1971). It’s distinguished by the contrast between Goodman’s voice - normally warm, but here simmering with controlled frenzy - and the turbulence of the accompaniment (Nashville’s finest, crossing over to the dark side). Bonnie Kolok got to it first on After All This Time (1971), and the song was also recorded by Pure Prairie League and Tom Rush. Ed Holstein, a singer-songwriter from the South Side of Chicago comes from that generation who were fired by Pete Seeger and the Kingston Trio. He co-owned a club, Someone Else’s Troubles, with his folksinger brother Fred and Steve Goodman (Ed is pictured, far right, on the cover of the Goodman album of the same name), and subsequently opened Holstein’s, which closed for business in 1988. Ed survives Goodman (d. 1984) and Fred (d. 2004).
Picture by Richard Wasserman - http://www.flickr.com/photos/richard_wasserman/4750624559/
5. Goodbye Goodbye by Nigel Beresford
An enigmatic, haunting song - from Thank You For… by Bridget St John (on Dandelion Records, 1972), in which something momentous - like the end of a relationship, or the end of the world (the running refrain is “It’s the end of time”) - is held at bay by dreamy composure. The song summons everyday pleasure and everyday melancholia and is inexplicably touching - “Broken down doorway and into the street / Saving my breath for the people I’ll meet…” - in its trust that love will survive the end of time. Who is Nigel Beresford? No idea. A friend of Bridget St John, who delivered ‘Goodbye Goodbye’ bespoke, would be my guess. The line, “Picture the lady who daily flew high” echoes ‘Fly High’, a song from the same album. Beresford also contributed a song to Jumblequeen (‘Last Goodnight’), but that album lacks the charm of Thank You For…, and indeed Ask Me No Questions and Songs For The Gentle Man.
6. Nelson’s Farewell by Joe Dolan
A gleeful account of the blow struck against the English Empire when Nelson’s Pillar in Dublin was blown up by IRA sympathisers. The song appears on The Dubliners’ Finnegan Wakes, a live album recorded in April, 1966. The bombing only took place in March, so songs, like journalism, are history’s first draft. It’s author, ‘Galway’ Joe Dolan, is the ultimate songwriter from the shadows. Possessed of a rich baritone voice, oodles of charisma and songwriting genius, he quit Sweeney’s Men (the group he formed with Johnny Moynihan and Andy Irvine) at the first sign of success, and buried himself away in Connemara, where he pursued a living as a painter. Songs still came at a prolific rate, however, and he would preserve them by singing into a humble cassette recorder in his kitchen. The tapes were later transferred to compact disc, and sold by mail order to a tiny fan-base. Dolan’s version of ‘Nelson’s Farewell’ is on Lost Miles and Broken Strings 3. It’s hard listening - the lo-fi sound matches the austerity of Dolan’s vision - but the songs are wonderful. Dolan, plainly a man wrestling with his own demons, identifies with doomed figures from history. There are songs here about Ernest Shackleton, who died trying to reach the South Pole in 1911 (with a companion piece, Amundsen, about the man who succeeded), hunger striker Bobby Sands and Jack Kerouac. Joe Dolan died on January 7, 2008.
More info: http://martindardis.com/id398.html
And see also http://s112.photobujcket.com/albums/n200/nuages
7. They Don’t Write ‘Em Like That Anymore by Pete Betts
The song casts a rosy glow over a deprived past to relieve an equally deprived present. ‘They Don't Write 'Em Like That Anymore’ celebrates the communal sing-song of old with a communal sing-song of the present. It’s nostalgic twice over: for the time it commemorated (pre-rock and roll), and for the time it was written, which are now equally remote. The song graced Vin Garbutt’s 1978 album Tossin' A Wobbler. Naturally, the album didn’t disturb the charts, nor was the author, Pete Betts, troubled by a nomination at the Ivor Novello Awards. Nevertheless, ‘They Don’t Write ‘Em’ is a folk club standard, and can be relied upon to get any assembly singing along with gusto. Pete Betts? This from www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=17293: “...Pete Betts, a long-time friend of Vin Garbutt’s from the Middlesbrough area. I first saw him at one of Vin’s gigs at Louth Folk Club in 1972. He had driven Vin to the gig but also did a floorspot himself. He was superb and was later booked in his own right” - Captain Swing. (Above, Pete Betts, left, with Vin Garbutt.)
8. Aqaba by Bill Caddick
June Tabor is a great cultivator of songwriters (Dave Goulder, Maggie Holland, Les Barker) but the most consistent and enduring has been Bill Caddick. Indeed, no June Tabor album would be complete without a work of heartbreaking genius by Bill Caddick as its centrepiece (‘Unicorns’ for A Cut Above, ‘She Moves Among Men’ for Abyssinians, ‘The Writing of Tipperary’ for A Quiet Eye). ‘Aqaba’, in which England and Arabia, and victory and defeat, are dissolved in the last moments of the life of T.E. Lawrence, gave its name to a 1989 album by Tabor. It is Caddick and Tabor’s masterpiece. Indeed, the notes of the Always box-set reveal that the song is close to being a co-write.
9. A Woman’s Quiet Night by Marty Kuwahara
From Calavera (1998) by Abner Burnett. Abner Burnett and Marty Kuwahara were friends on the fringes of the Texas folk scene. Kuwahara’s repertoire included ‘Child’s Song’ by Murray MacLuachlan and ‘A Woman’s Quiet Night’, which he claims to have stolen, but would never reveal the exact source. The song clearly derives from ‘Heritage’ by Benny Gallagher and Graham Lyle, which Kuwahara may have found on McGuiness Flint (1970), or as the B-side to the Mary Hopkin single, ‘Think About Your Children’ (1970). It’s a simple song, which Kuwahara simplified even further by dropping all the verses and retaining only a modified version of the chorus - “If I could only give you tomorrow / And put it in your eyes / I’d be satisfied.” The context is the same - a message of reassurance to a lover - but Kuwahara stretches the words and the melody into something infinitely more subtle. Marty Kuwahara? A suicide, Abner thinks, although the circumstances are mysterious. This gem of a song, transformed in the act of theft, is his legacy.
10. Annabelle Lee by Bob Neuwirth
Self-loathing and lost love in the cantinas and alleys of Mexico (we’re back where we started). It comes from the album T-Bone Burnett by, ahem, T-Bone Burnett (1986). The author’s own version can be found on Back To The Front (1988). ‘Annabelle Lee’ wouldn’t disgrace Desire by Neuwirth’s old buddy Bob Dylan.
Posted by Mike Butler
on Thursday, 23 September 2010
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Bar Centro, Wednesday September 22, 2010
Words are inadequate for this one. Once in a while you come across a performer of luminescent brilliance. So it is with Myshkin, no longer an urban hillbilly (she's spent the last few years building a house in the wilds of Oregon). She cast a spell with her assured singing and guitar-playing, conferring the intimacy of a living-room to the space downstairs at Bar Centro in central Manchester (actually nice and cosy, with it's wood-panelling and temporary carpet).
Myshkin's songs take unconventional forms and contain unconventional chords, and are strange and marvellous beauties. She sings with gradual crescendo and decrescendo, stressing a word or phrase for emphasis, and then trailing away to a whisper, which is even more compelling, because whispers command attention more than shouts. Very few singers follow the cadences of speech so faithfully. Such deep emotions, however, are only expressible in song. We listeners became like Ancient Greeks participating in the mysteries: passively soaking up profundity, until it came time to applaud: almighty whoops were our chief contribution to the unfolding human drama.
Emotions were complex, rueful, bitter and proud. Songs may be about an ex-neighbour from New Orleans, rebuilding her house after Katrina only for it to be destroyed over by Rita. There was a version of Billie Holiday's Yesterdays, improved and amplified by Myshkin's own moving lyric in the middle section, and the autobiographical Ruby Warbler, a generous and clear-eyed recollection of stormy youth. The songs were mostly new, and there was nothing from the last (Sigh Semaphore: ageing now, from 2006, and with very short running-time, but everything by Myshkin is indispensable). So the signs are that Myshkin's next album is going to be wonderful. For conviction, sensitivity and truth, this was one for the ages. What, despite Myshkin's head-cold and a PA system that turned her into a grunge artist for the night? Yes and yes. Myshkin is the best.
Posted by Mike Butler
on Thursday, 16 September 2010
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All this talk of Victor Brox is very well, but what about his talented daughter?
There is probably no more authentic blues and soul singer in the UK than Kyla Brox. Born in Lancashire in 1980, she was given various instruments by her supportive father, which were mostly taken back and sold. The flute remained, however. She joined the family business in 1992, singing with Victor onstage at Band On The Wall, and joining his regular touring group shortly afterwards. The core of the Kyla Brox Band go back to this remarkable unit, laughingly referred to as 'the child slavery band'. As well as Kyla (13, but could pass for 21), it contained bassist Danny Blomeley (13, but unfortunately he went the other way, and could pass for eight), and drummer Phil Considine (19), both Kyla Brox Band mainstays.
When Blomeley left to travel the world, he eased the blow with the promise to find Victor some Australian dates. The resultant tour, in 2000, introduced a new audience to the Brox blues brand and Kyla, just turned 20, became a full-fledged soul belle. The band travelled the Stuart Highway, entertaining at mining camps in the outback. On the 2001 return tour, Victor and Kyla circumnavigated the continent by the seaboard route, clocking up 38,000 kilometres.
She recorded with her father around this time, mostly lo-fi documents of live shows with minimal packaging, or even unadorned CD burns, cheaply produced to sell at gigs (Victor, prolific but economic, is a discographer's nightmare). The most professional of these is Darwin Night Train, recorded live at Darwin Festival, September 2000, by ABC Radio on the group's maiden Australian tour. Then, back in Manchester, the nucleus of the child slavery band reformed around Kyla. No more Victor and Kyla, or Kyla Jane and Victor with the Brox Gang, or even Victor 'Pur & Dur' & Kyla 'Raving Jane' Brox (her father was the last to drop her middle name). The soul belle was ready to step out on her own. A succession of albums followed.
Kyla Brox - Window (2003)
Solo debut, takes its cue from the lo-fi ethic of Victor's last few albums, gathering home recordings with a smattering of live tracks . The songs are evenly divided between soul/blues standards and originals. Of the former, there are nice, unvarnished accounts of Let's Stay Together and I Can't Stand the Rain. Of the latter, here's the first sighting of Candice, a long-time staple of live shows. A balance is struck between the soulful originals - where the tone is summery, bitter-sweet and romantic, sung with the trembling ardour of a young girl - and songs in the risque blues tradition, sung with the delight of a much older woman. This split more or less characterises Kyla's music to this day. Arrangements are stripped down to Danny Blomeley's adept and sympathetic acoustic guitar, Tony Marshall's tasty sax - he sounds like the missing link between King Curtis and John Coltrane - and, sparingly used, Kyla's delicate flute, at once incongruous and perfect.
Kyla Brox - Beware (2003)
This is the Kyla who rocks them in the aisles at Colne Blues Festival. Beware finds the singer trying on the mantle of Ann Peebles (Beware, Feel Like Breaking Up Somebody's Home), Etta James (I Just Want to Make Love to You), Gladys Knight/Marvin Gaye (Heard It Through the Grapevine), Sugar Pie Desanto (Soulful Dress), Betty Lavette (Damn Your Eyes) and Nina Simone (Feeling Good). Perhaps because of her unique background - she was undertaking annual tours of Australian mining settlements with bluesman father Victor at the time of recording - she makes a very good fist of it. No one in her twenty-something generation understood the blues quite as well. Her very name, Kyla, sits naturally besides Etta and Betty, and she moves as seamlessly from the lacerating to the ecstatic. In an act of filial piety, she cuts the definitive version of Sick and Tired by Brox Snr, and offers a universal statement of malcontent of her own, Feel My Pain.
Kyla Brox Band - Coming Home (2004)
This realises the promise of Window by adding an extra ingredient: the groove. it's a groove that comes from constant work with an active working band. Saxophonist Tony Marshall and Marshall Gill, a guitarist from the BB King school of searing sweetness, fulfil most of the solo honours. Bassist Danny Blomeley and drummer Phil Considine are veterans of Victor's 'child slavery band'. And what a tight unit they are, personally and musically (groove triumphs over song on Won't Fit There). Twelve out of the 14 selections are Kyla co-writes or originate from within the Brox circle (Victor is responsible for Working On Your Love; incidentally, brother Sam is producer). Coming Home displays an empathetic Kyla, working out the work/life balance (She Knows) or her issues of self-doubt (Things I'd Change, Guilty), but also a tougher Kyla. This means that all the raunch is concentrated in one song, Do I Move You (a smouldering Nina Simone number), which actually intensifies the impact. The other cover, Don't Change Horses, is a real find. Rescued from the back-catalogue of seventies West Coast funksters Tower of Power, the song is a certified show-stopper, mixing real emotion (a plea for a second chance) with outrageous showmanship ("Giddy up, hi ho Silver…"). And, with the Blomeley/Considine rhythm team piling on the coal, it builds up a fine head of steam. If Don't Change Horses represents the zenith of the Kyla Brox Band, then Working On Your Love demonstrates the latent strength of the Kyla Brox Duo, with Kyla and Danny giving an object lesson in how less is more.
Kyla Brox Band - Live at Matt and Phred's (2006)
Recorded live in Manchester, UK, on 11 March 2006, this captures the Kyla Brox Band in their prime. The opener, Working On Your Love, demonstrates Kyla's mastery of the soul singer's art. She calibrates the performance perfectly, stoking up the heat by degrees. The band's constant roadwork is reflected in the tightness of the playing. The songs are more lived-in and feel comfortable. Dig the way Danny's supple bass lines twine around Tony Marshall's sax on She Knows, and marvel at how Phil piles on the funky counter-rhythm at the climax of Don't Change Horses. Kyla herself is at her expressive best on Today I Sing the Blues. It's an honest document too. The rough and ready sound, complete with electrical hum and audience noise (oh, the weekend crowd at Matt and Phred's!) actually add authenticity. The rousing spirit makes up for any deficiency in fidelity.
Kyla Brox - Gone (2007)
First album entire of Brox/Blomeley originals, with the exception of a single Brox credit (more of that later). When guitarist Marshall Gill was recruited by New Model Army, the old band ceased to be. This is Kyla and Danny's record, with band accompaniment on assorted tracks. Kyla was never averse to putting her feelings on show - that is her stock-in-trade as a soul singer - but in euphoric songs like This Is The Life, we're now getting more of the inner life. The depth of experience of the title song, a moving testament to loss, is new, while More Than Me proves how attractively Brox and Blomeley can write in the orthodox soul idiom. The stand-out cut, however, is the a cappella closer, You Said You'd Be My Sunshine, which is Brox sans Blomeley, and written in bitterness about a lover responsible for "five long years, no ring and no change." The singer stirs up a maelstrom of passion that is beyond assuagement. It had the desired result. Shortly after the recording, Danny bought Kyla the ring.
Kyla Brox - Grey Sky Blue (2009)
Kyla and Danny in a stripped-down duo setting. Goose-pimples are aroused on the first track, All Breaking Down, and then recur with uncommon frequency. Kyla's torchy vocals and Clive Mellor's harmonica on Since I Fell For You, the token blues standard, accentuate the four-in-the-morning feeling. Elsewhere, the spartan, exquisite atmosphere is the pretext for a high level of creativity. Danny's acoustic guitar is by turns gentle and unrestrained, always inventive, whilst Kyla has never sounded more alluring. The blues quota is satisfied with Get Ready and Shaken & Stirred, executed with ripe self-confidence, but songs like Kasbah and Like The Sky link directly back to that gorgeous first acoustic album, Window, but have the patina of experience (and, it must be admitted, superior technical resources). Rest Assured is deeply felt, with a gravity that goes beyond the youthful ardour of Window. Feel My Pain is reprised with fingerpicking urgency. And here's an answer song: "Remember when you said you'd be my sunshine / And I cried / Because I thought it would never be my time / Well I was wrong / You came through / And turned my grey sky blue." Grey Sky Blue (the album) was recorded when Kyla was pregnant with Sadie. It has a valedictory quality, and is simultaneously a summation and a fresh start.
Posted by Mike Butler
on Wednesday, 11 August 2010
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Friezland Church Hall, Saturday 7 August
There is no more authentic blues and soul singer in the UK than Kyla Brox. Blues and soul, note, because the two forms are indistinguishable when they're played right. The fact that Kyla is still playing such intimate gigs as Friezland Church Hall is almost proof of authenticity. Her raw talent and purity is a shocking thing in an age of conveyor-belt pop idols.
She's so good that she merits two kinds of listening. At home, Brox CDs can honourably share the same shelf as Janis Joplin or Tracey Nelson (she has a better voice than either) or, getting closer to the source, Irma Thomas and Koko Taylor. But there's no substitute for the intensity of the live experience.
The show kicks off with a slow-burning blues. From the go, Kyla demonstrates her mastery of the soul singer's art. She calibrates a performance perfectly, and, like the best soul singers, she takes her time and stokes up the heat by gradual degrees.
Next, Frustration vents some negative feelings about the daily grind. It's an original by Brox and Blomeley (Danny; bassist, life and musical partner). Every serious musician's goal is the search for one's own voice. This becomes even more urgent in a structurally rigid form like the blues. Part of the solution is to write original material, firmly in the vernacular, but with enough individuality to be distinctive. Always Looking At Me is another original, and the scenario overturns blues machismo: it's the girl who takes the initiative.
Kyla does 'sassy' very well, but then, to put such role-playing in broad relief, Gone is about real emotion and real pain: specifically, the bereavement of Kyla's much-loved grandmother. When she sings, "it's unbelievable you won't know my first child", the line acquires extra poignancy from the knowledge that Kyla is the mother of 13-month-old Sadie. But even blues singers can buckle under the weight of pain, and so Shaken And Stirred returns to lusty concerns, with Kyla declaring her women's love rights.
This zig-zag of conflicting emotion is one of the chief characteristics of soul music, which has always blurred the distinction between pleasure and pain to a sadomasochistic degree. It's probably the one thing that damns it the most in our straight, strait-laced, anodyne culture.
How hard is it to be a young woman on the road? There's a famous quote from Janis Joplin: "On stage I make love to twenty-five thousand people, and then I go home alone". In a very tough business, it's necessary to have a support network. First there was dad, of course: Kyla started singing with her father, legendary bluesman Victor Brox, at the age of 12, and is a veteran of two gruelling and very surreal (naturally, for Victor) Australian tours. But bassist Danny Blomeley and drummer Phil Considine have been playing with Kyla since they were all members of Victor's band, the edition laughingly referred to as the "child slavery band". The musical benefits are obvious: the joint co-operativeness, the telepathic understanding. They predict each other's thoughts, and are really inside the music. Whereas many blues drummers are ploddingly four-square, Considine is a delight, with a jazzman's ability to vary the dynamics of a beat. Danny Blomeley is always there, both on-stage - he is self-effacing virtuoso on bass - and off-stage, as helpmate, manager and proud dad.
Don't Change Horses In The Middle of Stream has been a highlight of Brox gigs since 2004, when Kyla rescued it from an old LP by Tower of Power, and made it all her own. It's great. This kind of aggressive soul, which draws on hard rock riffs and is decidedly unsentimental, is under-explored but fabulously potent. Think of I'm Just Not Ready For Love by Erma Franklin, or There's A Break in the Road by Betty Harris. It's natural territory for Kyla, whose blues legacy gives her license to be blisteringly abrasive.
There are unexpected touches, like the flute on Do I Move You. How many other celebrations of raw sex are embellished by pretty tooting from this most pure and elevated of instruments? Marshall Gill is a guitarist from the Peter Green School. spinning single-line arpeggios that cut like razors, driven by melody, so that the attack is concealed and all the more effective. A true guitar hero, Gill is beginning to look disconcertingly like Seasick Steve.
Another Marshall, Tony Marshall, is a saxophonist with a vocalised quality, like King Curtis or Junior Walker (all the best soul saxophonists, in fact). Occasionally, he will venture into Charlie Parker mode, and launch an avalanche. More often, he prefers to be Tony Marshall.
But then Kyla can also turn around and surprise. On the second Nina Simone song of the evening, the crowd-pleasing Feeling Good (reserved for the encore), she sailed into the upper register and achieved operatic purity with some uncustomary high notes. The different registers convey different emotional states: pleading in the upper register, brusque and sassy in the lower. The duality can be unsettling, especially when they alternate in the same line, but it's very, very compelling. Kyla can make the earth move when she sings.
