Highlight of a fine sunny day (yes, at Glastonbury – weird!) is this long-term pensioner who doesn’t actually appear old and is possibly performing at a level higher than he has achieved in his much-acclaimed past. With a very tightly-knit backing band and fine sound quality Leonard Cohen (for it is he) had the audience in his hand and treated us all to a lesson in how you take a massive crowd without shouting at them. He played his hits from the early bed-sit suicidal student years (the listeners rather than him) through to the blatant “he’s having a laugh isn’t he?” songs which encompassed a thundering, crowd-silencing version of Hallelujah. His original recorded version of this has been left way behind following Jeff Buckley’s rightly lauded reappraisal and various other solid improvements (Rufus Wainwright, kd lang) but his performance here reclaimed it as his own and left all other pretenders in a way distant zone. Breathtaking.
And a final mention for the true fan standing right by me (oh, so too close) who insisted on singing along woefully off-key and occasionally well off on the words too (how many times do you need to hear a chorus to identify that you’re version is not the same as Lenny is singing? More than we covered in So Long Marianne on this occasion that’s for sure). But no matter, Leonard was fantastic and all those of you who weren’t there and raged at him for not agreeing to the BBC coverage, sorry, you should have bought a ticket. A contender for event of the year (in any year).
And so to another man who appears infrequently (but not forced out this time because his manager’s legged it with all his money) to mass adulation from fans and critics alike and is keen that his tickets do not appear on ebay either. Thanks to eagle-eyed attentiveness several months in advance, tickets for Tom Waits’s Edinburgh show ( only appearance in the UK, first time in Scotland in 21 years, second in Britain for four years so perhaps not so rare) were procured and travel arrangements duly, well, arranged with dear old easy jet. Which was just as well as passports had to be shown to match the name on the ticket (mine as opposed to Tom Waits, he got in OK without it). So lots of excitement on a July evening in Scotland (i.e. drizzly and no decent beer to be had for miles). The Playhouse is a fun venue, full of stuffing and looking like a music hall venue with a good atmosphere. The vast majority of the crowd were dyed in the wool fans snapping up the memorabilia – programmes, posters etc – before taking their seats in anticipation. Half an hour later (in an attempt to appear youthful? Most older performers seem to turn up bang on time so that they can get their post-show ovaltine and stilll be in bed before news at ten) the man appears to huge acclaim, milking the audience to applaud more – which they do, banging his foot on a massive drum laid out as a stand for him and covered in powder to billow out with every boom. Showmanship for sure but that’s what he is, and a fine one too. Anyway, backed by his small, tight band (featuring his son at one point) he stomped and hollered and played with the audience sounding somewhere not too far from Captain Beefheart (which is certainly a good place to be even if not particularly crowded), directing the band and audience with stunning and rearranged renditions of great chunks of his back catalogue, most of which I couldn’t recognise but it all provoked much discussion after the show amongst fans so I wasn’t alone. An excellent evening’s entertainment for everyone – Tom seemed to be enjoying himself too – which seems all too rare these days (Van Morrison could certainly learn from it). Another surefire contender for show of the year (maybe the award should be split between indoor and outdoor shows).
Friday, 12 December 2008
Friday, 14 November 2008
The onward march of the Old folks - part 1
Now here’s a way to link together various stars of the summer and actually have a legitimate common theme amongst them. This summer, apart from generally being wet, foul and as unlike something imagined by the Beach Boys as you could possibly get, has seen the old folk coming out into the fresh air and, frankly, knocking all sorts of stuffing out of the young pretenders. So, in chronological order (i.e. when I saw them as opposed to their age which, obviously, is personal information that it would not be for me to divulge, here they come.
So first up is the increasingly balding Steve Earle. Taking a break from crashing around with the Dukes he instead performed a largely solo show at the Colston Hall with simply a selection of guitars, mandolin and banjo and the occasional assistance of wife and support act Alison Moorer and/ or Neil on decks and beats. And it was excellent. The venue was intimate (and yes we are talking about the Colston Hall) in comparison to the Cardiff barn experience and it was refreshing to see the songs take centre stage – with reworkings in a number of cases and not always to accommodate the revised instrumentation. Apparently this tour upset a few people who were expecting that he would do what he normally does. But isn’t part of the point of Steve Earle that he doesn’t do that? Personally I would rather he attempted something different and I for one was particularly taken with the decks support – especially on Satellite Radio. So well done Steve, thanks for being consistently different.
Next up the ever spry Bruce Springsteen showing no signs of slowing down.
Another trip across the river to Cardiff – this time the Millenium stadium which, for a first visit, is some wonderful thing, especially if your ticket gets you onto the pitch. (Although you do seem to have to be lithe, lissome and young and, ideally, female if you are going to be allowed into the select area immediately front of stage. Which I wasn’t.) Having got over the curiosity of where they put the grass, there was a while to assess the surroundings, observe the Mexican waves going round the auditorium and generally feel impressed. Big screens flanked the stage to make you realise that, actually, you were further away than you realised. Unlike Steve Earle, Bruce was in typical mode – i.e. ably supported by the E Street Band making a thunderous racket - special mention to Nils Lofgren for ability and Miami Steve Van Zandt for looking the part. In fact mostly sufficient noise to prevent the tidal wave of noise echoing back from the far end having any negative impact until they stopped.As ever Bruce thundered and stormed and gave his usual 3000% going back into his older material. As is becoming apparent with the longer-established rock star they are no longer embarrassed about their back catalogue and, if it’s good, then it gets included rather than having to wade through the latest album which, frankly, may not hit the spot quite so accurately – Born To Run was plundered for around four or five tracks and all were damned fine. The River was only lightly hit – with just the title track – but it sent me scurrying out to buy it. So you can’t say better than that, and I won’t.
Coming next, even older people . . .
So first up is the increasingly balding Steve Earle. Taking a break from crashing around with the Dukes he instead performed a largely solo show at the Colston Hall with simply a selection of guitars, mandolin and banjo and the occasional assistance of wife and support act Alison Moorer and/ or Neil on decks and beats. And it was excellent. The venue was intimate (and yes we are talking about the Colston Hall) in comparison to the Cardiff barn experience and it was refreshing to see the songs take centre stage – with reworkings in a number of cases and not always to accommodate the revised instrumentation. Apparently this tour upset a few people who were expecting that he would do what he normally does. But isn’t part of the point of Steve Earle that he doesn’t do that? Personally I would rather he attempted something different and I for one was particularly taken with the decks support – especially on Satellite Radio. So well done Steve, thanks for being consistently different.
Next up the ever spry Bruce Springsteen showing no signs of slowing down.
Another trip across the river to Cardiff – this time the Millenium stadium which, for a first visit, is some wonderful thing, especially if your ticket gets you onto the pitch. (Although you do seem to have to be lithe, lissome and young and, ideally, female if you are going to be allowed into the select area immediately front of stage. Which I wasn’t.) Having got over the curiosity of where they put the grass, there was a while to assess the surroundings, observe the Mexican waves going round the auditorium and generally feel impressed. Big screens flanked the stage to make you realise that, actually, you were further away than you realised. Unlike Steve Earle, Bruce was in typical mode – i.e. ably supported by the E Street Band making a thunderous racket - special mention to Nils Lofgren for ability and Miami Steve Van Zandt for looking the part. In fact mostly sufficient noise to prevent the tidal wave of noise echoing back from the far end having any negative impact until they stopped.As ever Bruce thundered and stormed and gave his usual 3000% going back into his older material. As is becoming apparent with the longer-established rock star they are no longer embarrassed about their back catalogue and, if it’s good, then it gets included rather than having to wade through the latest album which, frankly, may not hit the spot quite so accurately – Born To Run was plundered for around four or five tracks and all were damned fine. The River was only lightly hit – with just the title track – but it sent me scurrying out to buy it. So you can’t say better than that, and I won’t.
Coming next, even older people . . .
Blasting back with vintage reports
Having spent the summer remarkably busy on your account - but also remarkably at leisure on my own account, here's the start of the winter uploads. This one actually dates back to May and has been simmering away for a while. Here we go.
Welcome back to some favourites and another reliable and exhilarating performance. Yes it's Bellowhead. Multiple award winners for live performance and probably more besides. So not an evening for sitting quietly but one that demanded rhythmic shuffling from the audience as a minimum and possibly leading up to full scale jig mayhem. The venue was the Pavilion in Bath, one of those strange buildings that seem designed for school assemblies but have been transported to a different location. A selection of seating around the edge but the main hall left for twirling, falling over or dancing (or all together of course).
The band – all 11 of them accounted for – proceeded to put on yet another fine display. The edge was slightly taken off by having seen them previously and so the element of surprise was slightly lost but then the edge was put back on because what they play and the way they play it is just so exuberant that you can’t stay still – pity those people hoping to sit through the set. A mix of current (i.e. last album) with a few appetisers from the impending album due some time soon. It should not disappoint.
The support act Babyhead (actually no connection or relation of Bellowhead) played with vigour and enthusiasm with the occasional deranged rant. It was only later that it became apparent that their long set was not eating into Bellowhead’s time but in fact was to enable the headliners to perform their usual set and achieve the Bath Festival organiser’s claim that it was going to end very late (which it just about managed).
A fine time.
Welcome back to some favourites and another reliable and exhilarating performance. Yes it's Bellowhead. Multiple award winners for live performance and probably more besides. So not an evening for sitting quietly but one that demanded rhythmic shuffling from the audience as a minimum and possibly leading up to full scale jig mayhem. The venue was the Pavilion in Bath, one of those strange buildings that seem designed for school assemblies but have been transported to a different location. A selection of seating around the edge but the main hall left for twirling, falling over or dancing (or all together of course).
The band – all 11 of them accounted for – proceeded to put on yet another fine display. The edge was slightly taken off by having seen them previously and so the element of surprise was slightly lost but then the edge was put back on because what they play and the way they play it is just so exuberant that you can’t stay still – pity those people hoping to sit through the set. A mix of current (i.e. last album) with a few appetisers from the impending album due some time soon. It should not disappoint.
The support act Babyhead (actually no connection or relation of Bellowhead) played with vigour and enthusiasm with the occasional deranged rant. It was only later that it became apparent that their long set was not eating into Bellowhead’s time but in fact was to enable the headliners to perform their usual set and achieve the Bath Festival organiser’s claim that it was going to end very late (which it just about managed).
A fine time.
Monday, 2 June 2008
Flaxen-tressed rock lothario in roots music shock
Ah, more rock legends. Some would say that this one stands as tall in the pantheon as Neil Young and has, arguably, moved around his musical styles more frequently and with greater flexibility than the previously experienced wonder. Others might argue that he has a lot to answer for with the increasingly hysterical (how ever you want to interpret that word) rock behemoth Led Zeppelin leading astray all sorts of impressionable youth and other musicians. Yes it’s our old friend Percy aka Robert Plant who has taken to the road in the civilising company of Alison Krauss and T Bone Burnett to perform their blend of roots and old classics to the masses. You will recall that they have a mega selling album out. Which may explain the choice of venues for this tour, most of them soul-less hangar-dromes, which may get the punters in but don’t lend themselves to the sort of music heard on the album. Maybe they were the bookings for the rumoured but so far unrealised Zeppelin reunion.
Anyway, off to the Cardiff International Arena for one of the early nights of the Europe end of their tour. Now the CIA – as it’s known – is a curious building being coloured an imaginative shade of brown on the outside (imaginative in the sense that you have to ask what on earth they were thinking of to paint it such a depressing colour) and being a vast open space on the inside. We were positioned almost level with the side of the stage and were able to appreciate the full enormity of the place.
But enough, onto the music. A brief blast of the support act had us scurrying to the bar until the main act appeared. Unfortunately if you’re playing an enormodome you need to work very hard on getting the acoustics right and particularly so if your line up includes fiddle, banjo and mandolin. Sadly they hadn’t got it fixed. But looked at differently this worked fantastically well on some of the ethereal Alison Krauss solo tracks – Down To The River To Pray was unbelievably haunting and magical as the echo floated around behind the voices. But on the other stuff it sounded less good. The album was all fine, the old Zeppelin tracks even worked well although the tribute to Sandy Denny was handled better on the burst of Matty Groves that materialised out of the ether (there’s those weird acoustics again – but I hold that it hadn’t been specifically set to produce that effect) rather than the specific dedication to Ms Denny.
Ultimately I have to resort to ambivalence. The band (fine performances from all but special mentions to T Bone Burnett himself, Buddy Miller and Stuart Duncan), Alison Krauss, even tea-swilling Robert Plant were all great. The venue was as uninvolving as it is possible to be with them on stage and us in our seats and a chill barrier between the two and this all fed back to the stage and you felt they were doing their jobs because they couldn’t feed off anything coming from the crowd and so there was no rapport. If it had been in an intimate – or even something half the size – venue then all this would have been resolved. But they wouldn’t have made as much money.
Anyway, off to the Cardiff International Arena for one of the early nights of the Europe end of their tour. Now the CIA – as it’s known – is a curious building being coloured an imaginative shade of brown on the outside (imaginative in the sense that you have to ask what on earth they were thinking of to paint it such a depressing colour) and being a vast open space on the inside. We were positioned almost level with the side of the stage and were able to appreciate the full enormity of the place.
But enough, onto the music. A brief blast of the support act had us scurrying to the bar until the main act appeared. Unfortunately if you’re playing an enormodome you need to work very hard on getting the acoustics right and particularly so if your line up includes fiddle, banjo and mandolin. Sadly they hadn’t got it fixed. But looked at differently this worked fantastically well on some of the ethereal Alison Krauss solo tracks – Down To The River To Pray was unbelievably haunting and magical as the echo floated around behind the voices. But on the other stuff it sounded less good. The album was all fine, the old Zeppelin tracks even worked well although the tribute to Sandy Denny was handled better on the burst of Matty Groves that materialised out of the ether (there’s those weird acoustics again – but I hold that it hadn’t been specifically set to produce that effect) rather than the specific dedication to Ms Denny.
Ultimately I have to resort to ambivalence. The band (fine performances from all but special mentions to T Bone Burnett himself, Buddy Miller and Stuart Duncan), Alison Krauss, even tea-swilling Robert Plant were all great. The venue was as uninvolving as it is possible to be with them on stage and us in our seats and a chill barrier between the two and this all fed back to the stage and you felt they were doing their jobs because they couldn’t feed off anything coming from the crowd and so there was no rapport. If it had been in an intimate – or even something half the size – venue then all this would have been resolved. But they wouldn’t have made as much money.
Thursday, 17 April 2008
This one’s a big one – in more ways than one
An adventure to London to see a living legend. What do you do when confronted by the possibility of seeing someone perform who has impressed you and the critics and the masses for around 30 years, you’ve bought a stackful of their albums but somehow always missed live? In this case you do whatever it takes to obtain a ticket and then don’t believe that it is actually going to happen until you get inside the theatre and all the signs are that, yes, it is going to happen. At last. (This actually reads like a sub-Mills & Boon teen romance but there you go, it’s all true.) So it was for the trip to Hammersmith to see the mighty Neil Young. And it didn’t disappoint. In fact to make matters better, for those of us who can’t decide whether we like simple acoustic, folksy Neil or blasted out of the aural electric soundscape Neil, he was doing two sets – one of each.
So we started with acoustic Neil (actually not until after we’d had acoustic Pegi – his wife – using most of his band) with our man surrounded by around eight acoustic guitars, a psychedelically-splashed grand piano and a honky tonk upright. Not to mention all sorts of other bizarre stage equipment. Some serious film set size flood lighting, a native American statue (actually looking like an old cowboy film style red Indian in all honesty) stage right, an easel stage left, the stage open to the back so all the guts of the theatrical experience on display.
Anyway, back to the show. Now there are some for whom acoustic Neil is their dreamboat, the keening wail and the gentle strum of an acoustic guitar puts them into heaven. I have a sympathy with this view and have been known to croon along with Only Love Can Break Your Heart; Oh Lonesome Me (oh yes, I know all about heartbroken teenage angst). But I do not sympathise with that competitive school that has to be the first to recognise and applaud the first few notes of whatever he has started to play. And you notice this more in an acoustic setting. That said, the audience were impressively quiet once they’d got this testosterone bout out of the way. But the old man was great, responding to calls from the audience as and when it suited him and changing his mind about what he wanted to play but sometimes going ahead anyway despite his own concerns – generally not shared by the audience, particularly on his foray into a simplistic banjo number.
And then after the interval we had electric Neil with his grand guitar “Old Black” and a change of outfit from his off-white suit to a black paint-spattered suit. (The significance passed me by but if you can spot it then let’s hear it.)
Having chatted at the rear of the stage with the not-entirely-obvious-what-he-was-for artist with the easels and large canvases, Crazy Horse appeared, he moved to the front of the stage, the artist popped up a painting on the easel stage left which served to tell us what he was playing. (So it did make sense after all.) And he proceeded to play it at blistering volume with all sorts of electronic mayhem. Now, if anyone has stuck with the last year’s ramblings they will know that this strikes me as a damn fine thing. What I want from a live performer is something that I cannot get from sitting on the sofa listening to the albums (no matter how loud I turn them up). And this we got in major style. Starting with The Loner from his first solo album and proceeding to ricochet around his back-catalogue up to the latest Chrome Dreams 11 and then back round again we got a real blitz of just unbelievable force wringing and wrenching and throttling his guitar to play how he wanted it to sound. If you want a comparison then, better than any of his own live albums, the only one I can think of is Jimi Hendrix wrestling with Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock. Really. Wonderful, wonderful stuff. Not easy listening by any stretch and all the better for it. And then amongst the encores we had a beautiful version of Tonight’s the Night before finally ending with something called The Sultan (complete with live on-stage sultan!) which is, apparently, the very first item in his discography, you can’t plunder a back-catalogue much farther than that. So, living legend lives up to expectations. Excellent.
So we started with acoustic Neil (actually not until after we’d had acoustic Pegi – his wife – using most of his band) with our man surrounded by around eight acoustic guitars, a psychedelically-splashed grand piano and a honky tonk upright. Not to mention all sorts of other bizarre stage equipment. Some serious film set size flood lighting, a native American statue (actually looking like an old cowboy film style red Indian in all honesty) stage right, an easel stage left, the stage open to the back so all the guts of the theatrical experience on display.
Anyway, back to the show. Now there are some for whom acoustic Neil is their dreamboat, the keening wail and the gentle strum of an acoustic guitar puts them into heaven. I have a sympathy with this view and have been known to croon along with Only Love Can Break Your Heart; Oh Lonesome Me (oh yes, I know all about heartbroken teenage angst). But I do not sympathise with that competitive school that has to be the first to recognise and applaud the first few notes of whatever he has started to play. And you notice this more in an acoustic setting. That said, the audience were impressively quiet once they’d got this testosterone bout out of the way. But the old man was great, responding to calls from the audience as and when it suited him and changing his mind about what he wanted to play but sometimes going ahead anyway despite his own concerns – generally not shared by the audience, particularly on his foray into a simplistic banjo number.
And then after the interval we had electric Neil with his grand guitar “Old Black” and a change of outfit from his off-white suit to a black paint-spattered suit. (The significance passed me by but if you can spot it then let’s hear it.)
Having chatted at the rear of the stage with the not-entirely-obvious-what-he-was-for artist with the easels and large canvases, Crazy Horse appeared, he moved to the front of the stage, the artist popped up a painting on the easel stage left which served to tell us what he was playing. (So it did make sense after all.) And he proceeded to play it at blistering volume with all sorts of electronic mayhem. Now, if anyone has stuck with the last year’s ramblings they will know that this strikes me as a damn fine thing. What I want from a live performer is something that I cannot get from sitting on the sofa listening to the albums (no matter how loud I turn them up). And this we got in major style. Starting with The Loner from his first solo album and proceeding to ricochet around his back-catalogue up to the latest Chrome Dreams 11 and then back round again we got a real blitz of just unbelievable force wringing and wrenching and throttling his guitar to play how he wanted it to sound. If you want a comparison then, better than any of his own live albums, the only one I can think of is Jimi Hendrix wrestling with Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock. Really. Wonderful, wonderful stuff. Not easy listening by any stretch and all the better for it. And then amongst the encores we had a beautiful version of Tonight’s the Night before finally ending with something called The Sultan (complete with live on-stage sultan!) which is, apparently, the very first item in his discography, you can’t plunder a back-catalogue much farther than that. So, living legend lives up to expectations. Excellent.
Saturday, 9 February 2008
Home, home on the range
And so here we are high up in the Mendip Hills in the pitch January dark trying to look for an unlit village hall that’s set back from the road. So you look for the greatest concentration of lost souls. Yes, it’s folk night. But what a night. In Priddy Village Hall we have (after an impressive instrumental support slot from Tristan from Guildford) Martin Simpson, much acclaimed folk singer/ guitarist, mentioned in the same breath as Ry Cooder by some for his roots work (and we’re not talking teeth or gardening). A strange venue and the swansong of the Old Down Acoustic Club who chose this evening to bow out. Well what a show to go with. And for an aside on them, they have run a fairly amazing series of shows over the years – a Seth Lakeman performance in a pub in Litton stands out as a highlight – and I’m sure Cathy and John deserve a rest but hopefully they will be back to do the things they do.
Despite the slight weirdness of the venue – you half-expected the hall to be surrounded by God-knows-what and that we would have to escape back to civilisation guns blazing – the acoustics were great and Martin Simpson, armed only with a pair of acoustic guitars (am I overdoing this cowboy outlaw angle?) played and played. And also explained what he was up to and where the songs came from in between. Much of the material was from his last – and excellent – album but also thrown in was a Little Feat song that he had learned from a studio demo tape his friend (in California) had found and shipped over – but with an extra verse that didn’t make it to that album. Seasoned readers will know that anyone who knows and likes Lowell George is all right by me but who would think you can discover new stuff on one of California’s finest ever bands from the depths of the Mendip Hills. Cosmic or what?Anyway, it was all taken in the stride of the audience, don’t want to give too much away after all, reserve and all but, underneath it all, we all knew that we had been watching and listening to a fairly stratospheric talent (later confirmed by various awards from Radio 2) matched to deep humanity. What a wonderful man and cracking stuff. Staggering off back into the cold and dark with plenty to think about. Not least, two gigs into the year and they’re going great.
Despite the slight weirdness of the venue – you half-expected the hall to be surrounded by God-knows-what and that we would have to escape back to civilisation guns blazing – the acoustics were great and Martin Simpson, armed only with a pair of acoustic guitars (am I overdoing this cowboy outlaw angle?) played and played. And also explained what he was up to and where the songs came from in between. Much of the material was from his last – and excellent – album but also thrown in was a Little Feat song that he had learned from a studio demo tape his friend (in California) had found and shipped over – but with an extra verse that didn’t make it to that album. Seasoned readers will know that anyone who knows and likes Lowell George is all right by me but who would think you can discover new stuff on one of California’s finest ever bands from the depths of the Mendip Hills. Cosmic or what?Anyway, it was all taken in the stride of the audience, don’t want to give too much away after all, reserve and all but, underneath it all, we all knew that we had been watching and listening to a fairly stratospheric talent (later confirmed by various awards from Radio 2) matched to deep humanity. What a wonderful man and cracking stuff. Staggering off back into the cold and dark with plenty to think about. Not least, two gigs into the year and they’re going great.
British Psych-folk-rock rides again
It’s January, and what happens in January? You can count on Robyn Hitchcock hoving into view and performing at the Fleece. Trust me, you can set your watch by him. After two – or is it three now? – years performing with the Venus Three (you know, the REM set) this was almost a solo appearance, aided by Terry Williams (I think – but not the Terry Williams I thought) on keyboard and trumpet. Although he also had his sisters on occasional backing vocals, Tim Keegan (who had had the support slot) and some old cohorts – Kimberley Rew on frenzied guitar (no wonder he only helped out on a few tracks) and Morris (or “Morris from Gloucester” as he is always welcomed onstage) on percussion – but those last two only came on at the end. This was, essentially, Robyn-night.
And what we were due to get was his concentration on I Often Dream of Trains. This was a bit of a surprise to me, never having heard of the album, but that’s why you go and see these people – to see what else they can do. And what he can do is still be entertaining and great and musical and so it goes from being completely unknown to something you’d like to hear again. (And this and others are pretty much all now re-released as far as I can tell.) But what – I suspect but will have to prove to myself – you don’t get on the album are the entertaining explanations and asides that splatter around in between the songs so making a grand evening of all round entertainment. I can’t help thinking that his continuing presence at the Fleece suggests that he is not as popular as he should be – although the Financial Times no less were featuring his upcoming show at the Royal Festival Hall so maybe it’s just a Bristol low profile. But if you want your winter blues shaken loose and dumped by the wayside (in a bio-degradable style) then this is your man – and in any format that he chooses to turn up. But for this year you’ve missed your chance. My guess is that he’ll be back – ooh, in January probably. If you want to see him in Bristol anyway.
Oh and by the way, Tim Keegan was good and worth checking out too.
And what we were due to get was his concentration on I Often Dream of Trains. This was a bit of a surprise to me, never having heard of the album, but that’s why you go and see these people – to see what else they can do. And what he can do is still be entertaining and great and musical and so it goes from being completely unknown to something you’d like to hear again. (And this and others are pretty much all now re-released as far as I can tell.) But what – I suspect but will have to prove to myself – you don’t get on the album are the entertaining explanations and asides that splatter around in between the songs so making a grand evening of all round entertainment. I can’t help thinking that his continuing presence at the Fleece suggests that he is not as popular as he should be – although the Financial Times no less were featuring his upcoming show at the Royal Festival Hall so maybe it’s just a Bristol low profile. But if you want your winter blues shaken loose and dumped by the wayside (in a bio-degradable style) then this is your man – and in any format that he chooses to turn up. But for this year you’ve missed your chance. My guess is that he’ll be back – ooh, in January probably. If you want to see him in Bristol anyway.
Oh and by the way, Tim Keegan was good and worth checking out too.
And a very merry wassail to you too
Is it the start of the St George’s backlash? Having praised the venue on various occasions in the past might it have come unstuck with its latest guests? The evening was to celebrate songs of winter and Christmas as presented by Waterson Carthy. These are the individually and collectively celebrated Martin Carthy, his wife Norma Waterson and their daughter Eliza Carthy. In addition to their excellent voices they also have their guitar and violin skills. However, with Waterson Carthy you get a fourth member, so we had Saul Rose on melodeon. But then in addition to that we had a further three singers – going under the collective name of the Devil’s Interval. So seven in all, singing individually and in various combinations, accompanied and unaccompanied. And in such an entrancing manner that you want to be up there with them (admittedly probably not a very good idea). And this was the minor issue with St Georges, it was such a fantastic evening it should have been in your local pub keeping out the cold on a winter’s evening with beer or cider glass in hand and singing along. But instead you got the very slightly clinical atmosphere of everyone sitting quietly – albeit appreciatively – and all the work being done onstage. Which may be for the best but it slightly lacked something. Of course what you got in exchange was the excellent acoustics so that you could hear everything with absolute clarity. (Perhaps I should concede at this point that this is not that much of a backlash.)
They were mostly playing material from their new album – Holy Heathens and the Old Green Man – although they featured at least one that they had unfortunately had to leave off a previous album which was made around 30 plus years previously – so there’s nothing wrong with their memories or depth of repertoire. And so good was this new (ish – it came out in 2006) album that it just had to be bought and became the sound of Christmas. And now no Christmas can be complete without rousing versions of various Wassails (Jacobstowe and Sugar) and many of the other songs. I tried it and, after some scepticism, the enjoyment was infectious. So, if you’ve missed them, get the album anyway, turn it up and sing along – you’ll feel infinitely better for the whole experience. And I have every confidence it’s just as good when the sun’s shining.
They were mostly playing material from their new album – Holy Heathens and the Old Green Man – although they featured at least one that they had unfortunately had to leave off a previous album which was made around 30 plus years previously – so there’s nothing wrong with their memories or depth of repertoire. And so good was this new (ish – it came out in 2006) album that it just had to be bought and became the sound of Christmas. And now no Christmas can be complete without rousing versions of various Wassails (Jacobstowe and Sugar) and many of the other songs. I tried it and, after some scepticism, the enjoyment was infectious. So, if you’ve missed them, get the album anyway, turn it up and sing along – you’ll feel infinitely better for the whole experience. And I have every confidence it’s just as good when the sun’s shining.
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