Thursday, April 11th

April 11, 2019 by 5 Comments

This week brought with it the extraordinary last scene of Fleabag, played out to “This Feeling” by Alabama Shakes… “See, I’ve been having me a real hard time / But it feels so nice, to know I’m gonna be alright…” as well as a visit to the thought-provoking David Adjaye: Making Memory, at the Design Museum. If you have any interest in monumental architecture or type or civil rights or, who knows, the making of memorials, then try to see it [on ’til August 5th]. The typographical transcription of Martin Luther King’s last speech, which changes (as you listen and watch) the weight of the typefaces, based on the cadence and volume of King’s voice, is really something.

{STOP PRESS} ROCK ISLAND LINE
Billy Bragg’s documentary, directed by George Scott, is being shown tonight at 9pm on BBC4 (and thereafter on iPlayer). I haven’t seen it, though I helped in sourcing some images, but The Guardian’s preview found it “an admirably clear and unpretentious documentary by Billy Bragg, lauding the British skiffle craze of the 1950s for helping to usher in the pop revolution of the following decade. Bragg explains how one song, captured by US folk archivists and then associated with Lead Belly before being recorded by Lonnie Donegan, energised a new wave of performers for whom fighting racism was a major part of their drive to democratise popular music.”


{ONE} MUSIC OF THE WEEK
Shabaka Hutchings, improvising on the bass clarinet in church, for the Barbican Sessions. From the key drop at around two minutes via the skronking shreiks and the sound of the clarinet’s pads clattering, to the beautiful phrase that he finishes with, it’s totally hypnotic.

{TWO} IT’S ROCKUMENTARY TIME, PART ONE!
Free to Rock on Sky Arts had a terrific line-up of talking heads, including Jimmy Carter, Billy Joel and Mikhail Gorbachev. Best of all were the Russian musicians, all still dressed as if it were 1989. As one T-shirt said, “I’m only wearing black until they make something darker…”

My favourite story was this: “All we had were acoustic guitars, so we needed to make electric guitars. I had a friend who was a sailor who brought a Fender Guitar catalogue with the pictures, and even the factory drawings and dimensions. I saw for first time Fender Stratocaster, and I looked at that and I thought, God, what a beautiful thing… So I decided I’d get a piece of plywood and I carved the body, exactly the shape, but we couldn’t make the neck, so we took the acoustic Russian guitar, took off the neck and screwed it to that body. Then we needed a pickup! The one thing that the public telephone booth had is the magnets – when you talk –and they were perfect little magnets, so you have to break those public telephones, take those magnets, solder them. And it worked!” The deadpan on-screen caption tells us that, “shortly after, most phones in central Moscow were disabled by musicians making electric guitars…”

{THREE} WAYNE’S WORLD
Our friend Wayne’s first book was “Dedicated to…”, subtitled The forgotten friendships, hidden stories and lost loves found in second-hand books, a compilation of inscriptions found in said books. His new work is an even more fascinating concept – “Three Score & Ten: A Literary Journey Through Life” views the passage of time through the prism of literature. So the age of one through to seventy are illustrated by sections from great works, featuring one fictional male and one fictional female for each year, “in order to detail the minuscule changes wrought upon our bodies and minds as consciousness blooms, experiences accrue, hopes rise and fall, options expand and then retract.” An exhibition rather than a book (think of the rights clearances!) it’s at Burley Fisher books on Kingsland Road in Haggerston until May 1. It was so riveting we read every one.

{FOUR} ROOMFUL OF TEETH? ROOMFUL OF TEETH?
“Roomful of Teeth is a kind of lab experiment for the human voice. Its eight singers cover a five-octave range, from grunting lows to dog-whistle highs. Three have perfect pitch, all have classical training, and Wells has brought in a succession of experts to teach them a bewildering range of other techniques: alpine yodelling, Bulgarian belting, Persian Tahrir, and Inuit and Tuvan throat singing, among others. Because the group writes or commissions almost all of its pieces, it can create vocal effects that most singers would never attempt.” [They play Kings Place in May.]

This New Yorker piece was fascinating, and not only for its subject. It used a neat piece of web linking. Over certain phrases was a grey bar with a play arrow (see below) that triggers what is being described as you read it. Wild! I want to see if I can get this to work on 5 Things, but it’s undoubtedly ridiculously cutting-edge and expensive…

{FIVE} EXHIBITION CORNER!
I want to be in New York, now. Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock and Roll has just started at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and, as the blurb says, “it explores the instrumentation of the rock band and how individual artists used their instruments to create their unique sound.”

Some of the ephemera from the show: playful design frames Bob’s head, authentic Southern Soul-styled poster for The Stones; and 60s graphic gorgeousness for a leaping Townsend.

The holy relics include:
Chuck Berry’s Gibson ES-350T from 1957, which he toted as he duckwalked through “Johnny B. Goode”.
Sister Rosetta’s stunning Les Paul Custom (a white-with-three-gold-pickups SG).
James Jamerson’s upright bass, likely used on many early Motown hits.
Keith Emerson’s Hammond L-100 and his Customized Hammond “Tarkus” C3.
Ian McLagan’s lovely Wurlitzer 200.
Ray Manzarak’s Vox Continental with the reversed (Black/white) keys.
Paul Butterfield’s Hohner Trumpet Call harmonicas, as photographed for Better Days’ debut album cover.

Left to right: Paul Bigsby’s Solid-body No. 2 from 1948, an extraordinary, visionary design; The first Fender guitar – body-shape there, headstock not; Jeff Beck’s seriously road-worn Telecaster; and Prince’s Hohner Madcat, a Tele copy bought from a Minneapolis-area gas station for about $30 in the early 1970s, because the guitar’s leopard-patterned pickguard matched his strap and stage outfit.


The list goes on… Don Everly’s Gibson Southern Jumbo, Muddy Waters’ Telecaster, Louis Jordan’s sax, Jerry Lee Lewis’s gold piano, Brian Jones’ Mellotron, Ian Anderson’s flute, beautiful posters for the Fillmore by Bonnie MacLean. The exhibition will also include a sculpture made from what was left of one Pete Townshend’s Gibson SG Specials (set in lucite as if it were a Hirst) after he smashed it during an Annie Leibovitz photo shoot. There’s even a fragment of the “Monterey Pop” Stratocaster of Jimi Hendrix… Whether it can bring these objects alive I don’t know, but if anyone goes, let me know what you think…

{EXTRA} QUOTE OF THE WEEK
The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis on Georgio Moroder at the Symphony Hall, Birmingham. “The highlights come when Moroder’s disco-era hits punch through the cabaret styling on “I Feel Love” and a version of “MacArthur Park” using a taped vocal by the late Donna Summer. Occasionally, Moroder explains their recording: “Donna said she wanted to make a sexy record,” he offers. “Then she did a moaning, and then another moaning”. Alas, the ensuing version of “Love to Love You Baby” that follows is truncated, even bowdlerised. None of the four vocalists are required to do a moaning.”

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Ten Things, Friday, March 15th

March 15, 2019 by 4 Comments

{ONE} NO MORE AUCTION BLOCK FOR ME
Very few guitars owned by Bob Dylan have ever come up for auction – the last one I can find was his 1963 Martin, played from the late 60s to 1977, most notably at the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh. That went for $400,000. This week sees the auction of his Fender XII twelve-string. Sending a press video link to me, Richard points out the hilarious voiceover. For a start, it isn’t a key Dylan guitar at all. Heritage Auctions put up a picture of Dylan playing it in the studio, saying, “the 12-string instrument was used to record the double LP Blonde on Blonde – it is believed to be one of the best albums ever released and may rewrite music history when it crosses the auction block March 16 at Heritage Auctions.” Errr, probably not. Those pictures of Dylan in the studio with the XII are captioned as being from the Highway 61 sessions on Fender’s own website. More important is the fact that no electric 12 string appears on any Dylan tracks from 1965 (unless I just haven’t dug through the 18 CDs of The Cutting Edge forensically enough).

Bob’s mint guitar, in the studio with it, and the 1969 Fender catalogue

The hyperbolic narration ends with… “this piece could very well be the ultimate Dylan guitar – it is definitely one of the most important guitars of the 1960s, and popular music history for that matter…” No, no, and no. It’s not the storied Stratocaster he played at Newport in 1965 (the only other guitar of Bob’s that’s come up for auction, going for $965,000, although that authentication was controversial), which maybe fits the bill. His Greenwich Village Gibson, possibly. His small-bodied Blood on the Tracks Martin, again, maybe. But not this, a Fender publicity opportunity gift, that looks to be in unplayed condition, that may not feature on any of Dylan’s released music.

nb. I’ve always liked this eccentric guitar, probably since seeing Tim Buckley play one (I certainly liked the guitar more than I liked Tim Buckley). The Electric XII used the offset Jazzmaster/Jaguar body allied to what became known as “the hockey stick” headstock. Jimmy Page used his 1965 Electric XII on the arpeggiated rhythm guitar parts in “Stairway to Heaven” and as a drone on “When the Levee Breaks.”

{TWO} THE GEORGE MICHAEL AUCTION
Michael tells me that I should see the show before the auction happens, so I hotfoot it to Christies at St James, arriving at the back of the building to see Damien Hirst’s vitrine of a bull’s carcass pierced by lances (Saint Sebastian, Exquisite Pain, 2007). The piece was too heavy to get into the main exhibition space, so had been left in a loading bay with some disco lights and a music player. It is playing Michael’s rather glossy and antiseptic version of Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” Suitably off balance, I head round to the front. This is some show, room after room filled with giant blow-ups of George, video screens and mad outfits from video shoots, and George’s collection of the art of the YBA’s (with other artworks also).

The cover image for Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 is projected onto the staircase

The stages of George’s career are rather portentously spelt out in panels around the main staircase – “So, on 24th November 1994, five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, George Michael chose to publicly declare the beginning of a new era of his own…”

The wildly impressive staging…

It is excessive and fun, but diverting too – his taste leans towards the glib and glossy, very surface-driven, but one man’s art and all that… and I guess if you’re rich, like art and have the wall space then this is what you do.

Giant video screen, prop from video shoot

{THREE} THE GREATEST SIDEMAN
When Hal Blain’s third edition of his life story was published in 2010, it carried the fabulous subtitle, The Story of the World’s Most Recorded Musician. In Art Garfunkle’s words, “If music in the second half of the 20th Century were the Empire State Building, Hal Blaine would be the ground floor.” Blaine was an arranger as much as a drummer, and for a gilded period was on more hits than almost any other musician. The book’s a good read, especially where Phil Spector is concerned…

“Phil had a way of holding me back while the band rehearsed. I felt like a racehorse who wants to run as soon as the gate opens and Phil, the jockey, would rein me in until we were coming around the clubhouse turn, heading for the final stretch. When the right take materialized, he would start his incredible gyrations in the booth, running from one side of the glass to the other, looking at key people during crucial moments like Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic. He would conduct with one hand asking for loudness, while the other hand was directed at another section calling for quiet. Then he would give me that magical look that meant only one thing – Go! And we would both go crazy, me doing fills that were total lunacy. I would do eighth-note and 16th-note fills during a shuffle, and vice versa!”

“We would rehearse for hours and hours, and no one could even go to the toilet for fear of moving a mic. Finally, after endless run-throughs, Phil would call a “ten” and scream, “Don’t touch the mics!” And no one did. I clearly remember how carefully we would all get up, twisting our bodies and moving delicately. Phil had positioned the mics himself, and the placement was sacred. Like ballet dancers, we would step around the mics and over the cords strewn all over Studio A. The heat was incredible. There was no real air-conditioning in those days… we used to say that the flies buzzing around the Gold Star were getting as large and as famous as us musicians!”

{FOUR} THE LAST BLUESMAN
David Remnick writes a fine portrait of Buddy Guy (cool playlist included, too) in the New Yorker. He’s following Buddy around his house while a Gumbo cooks on the stove: “Guy took me around the house to give the flavours, as he said, time to “get acquainted.” There were countless photographs on the walls: all the musicians one could imagine, family photographs from Louisiana, grip-and-grin pictures from when he was awarded the Medal of Honor in the Bush White House and from the Kennedy Center tributes received during the Obama Administration. (Obama has said that, after Air Force One, the greatest perk of office was that “Buddy Guy comes here all the time to my house with his guitar.”)

An enormous jukebox in the den offered selections from pop, gospel, rock, soul. “I listen to everything,” Guy said. “I’ll hear a lick and it’ll grab you – not even blues, necessarily. It might even be from a speaking voice or something from a gospel record, and then I hope I can get it on my guitar. No music is unsatisfying to me. It’s all got something in it. It’s like that gumbo that’s in that kitchen there. You know how many tastes and meats are in there? I see my music as a gumbo. When you hear me play, there’s everything in there, everything I ever heard and stole from.”

{FIVE} R.I.P., MR PARALLEL FOURTHS…
One of the finest guitar sessioneers ever died recently, the man responsible for some of the greatest fills in Southern Soul – Reggie Young, guitarist at both Muscle Shoals and American Studios in Memphis. From a 2013 interview:
Do you remember the first time you heard yourself on the radio?
“Well, I was listening to this guitar solo on the radio in ’78, and I said to myself, “I can play a better solo than that guy.” Then I realized it was me!
I decided then that I needed to slow down. I was doing two, three, four sessions a day and I’d stay after the sessions were over and overdub harmonies or whatever had to be done. Then I’d be pushed for time to get to the next session…
Have you had any unusual calls?
Steve Jordan (the session drummer) asked if he could give my number to someone. I said, “Sure,” and a couple of days later Steven Segal called me. He was very nice. He kept saying, “My brother” (laughs). Well, he asked if I was interested in doing a benefit and I said I was, then he said I needed to be in Korea on Tuesday (laughs)! I told him that I couldn’t be there, but I gave him Tony Joe White’s number!”

{SIX} A FILM RECOMMENDATION!
I saw a preview at the end of last year (thanks, Hedda!) of Wild Rose, with Jessie Buckley playing a mouthy, car-crash Glasgow girl desperate to get to Nashville to be discovered. It should be a disaster of cringe-worthiness I know, but it neatly sidesteps most of the pitfalls (except for a cameo by Bob Harris that put one in mind of Graham Hill in Grand Prix). A typically excellent performance by Julie Walters helps, as does the fact that Jessie can really sing. She’s backed by a band of grizzled musos – Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham are there, as is Sam Amidon’s drummer, Chris Vatalaro – some decent songs, and a storyline that dials down the fairytale so as to not overshadow the realism. I loved it.

{SEVEN} BREATHLESS, NOT TOPLESS
That New York Herald Tribune knit shirt worn by Jean Seberg in Breathless? Now available here…

{EIGHT} IF 5 THINGS HAD A RADIO STATION…
It would sound something like this, but probably not as well-compiled and eclectic: Graham Lovatt’s latest incarnation, at Completely Sound, with the excellent tagline, Music from all directions.

{NINE} IS THIS THE GREATEST…
photo in Jazz History? A quiet Sunday night in 1953. The Dodgers had just won the pennant. J.F.K. and Jacqueline Bouvier had just married. And four titans of bebop came together in a dive bar for a rare jam session. Read it at the New York Times.

{TEN} THE RBP PODCAST
The day ended and began with Giorgio Morodor. Doing some homework on Sigue Sigue Sputnik prior to appearing with Barney and Mark I listened to their hit single from 1985, “Love Missile F1-11”, and found that Moroder produced it, a fact I had not known. Their tagline – “We invented the future” – was never destined to last, and their schtick now looks quaint. And they last updated their website in 2015, so not really covering the “future” bit, lads. Part Adam & the Ants, part Sweet, it’s rockabilly strapped to an Autobahn rhythm. Still, it was fun to talk about their journey from Moroder to Stock, Aitken and Waterman, and then I got to quote Greil Marcus on Curtis Mayfield.

Someone described it as “bedroom dancing” which was a perfect description of the joyous quality it had

Afterwards, I headed to the other side of town, to Oslo in Hackney with Tim for The International Teachers of Pop. Such a fine name that I went not having heard a note. I did read an interview, however, and it told me that “Sheffield has a great history of drawing out these awkward, gangly weirdoes that make a very British, nay eccentric, kind of pop music that stews in the underground for a few years then appears seemingly from nowhere fully formed, like a very peculiar butterfly.” Spot on. They were terrific, a kind of reverse Human League with the two girls not as backing singers, but as strutting frontmen, and a drummer who laid into the beat with such ferocity and metronomic time that we assumed it was all done with computers. Dry Sheffield wit, pointedly political lyrics, and as they say, “a bona fide 125bpm cuddle for the masses!”

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Thursday, July 5th

July 5, 2018 by 5 Comments

I’ve been distracted from weekly posting by a project that’s taken up a fair amount of time, but it’s finally come to fruition. Here’s a quick and dirty look back at the last few weeks. So, listening to Frazey Ford’s lovely Indian Ocean, recorded with the Hi Rhythm Section in Memphis (thanks, Tim – I missed this in 2104), here’s Five Things from the last three weeks…

ONE I LOVED SEEING OLD PALS MICRODISNEY
…who had reformed to receive the inaugural IMRO/NCH Trailblazer Award 2018 – an award which celebrates seminal albums, in this case The Clock Comes Down the Stairs, by iconic Irish musicians. Post the Dublin concert they played a show at the Barbican, where their songs were revealed to have real heft, standing the test of time. Thirty years fell away and it was great to see them play to a wildly enthusiastic full house.

5-microdisney.jpgThe highlight for me was “Past”, where Cathal’s keening delivery sounded so good enfolded in the warmth of the band’s sound.

TWO WHY DOES THE BBC HAVE TO BE A CONCERT PROMOTER?
I’m not sure events like the Big Weekender are the best use of their (our) resources. There’s so much music on tv but, while it’s not totally narrowcast, it certainly excludes whole swathes of interesting stuff. There has been pitifully little coverage, for instance, of the extraordinary moment that is happening now in jazz in Britain. They just can’t seem to find a way to document or support it. When we look back and are thrilled that someone recorded Big Joe Williams or Josh White, or Rosetta Tharpe or Thelonius Monk or Jimi Hendrix or Ry Cooder or Talking Heads – where is that coverage now? Does it always have to be put through the funnel of newly hyped acts, Jools Holland or a giant music festival? End of rant.

THREE I LOVED THIS IMPASSIONED PAEAN TO FREE (THE BAND, NOT THE CONCEPT)
Commenting on one of Bob Lefsetz’ extraordinary almost-daily stream-of-consciousness missives [the Lefsetz Letter] from the front line of the music biz, was Hugo (Gang of Four) Burnham.

Subject: Re: Paul Rodgers Podcast. “Yes, that voice… that was so strong and mature, so young, and has stayed that way for decades. “My Brother Jake” is still one of the saddest, loveliest songs ever. Chokes me up every time. They were the second band I ever saw live (and on my own) at The Royal Albert Hall in 1972. I stood transfixed at the lip of the (quite low) stage. Paul wore a red flared-sleeve T-shirt… which took me an age to find to buy – in Kensington Market, eventually. There is SO much more than “Alright Now” – they were still teenagers when they recorded “Fire & Water’, FFS. Free was simply the biggest influence on G4. It killed us that the only damn label who didn’t want to sign us in ’78/’79 was Island Records… We covered “Woman” in the early days; I copied Simon Kirke’s whole sit-up playing style – the master (along with Charlie) of less-is-more playing. I met him at [Jerry] Wexler’s memorial service in NY and shook his hand. (Right after that I shook Bernard Purdie’s hand. What a day!) I still listen to Free all the time. Elemental, wonderful stuff.”

FOUR WORST PHOTO OF THE LAST FEW WEEKS

5-mooch.jpgNot the fault of Christopher Lane, the photographer, but down to the fact that people who don’t play guitars always hold them so awkwardly. This Epiphone in the hands of the Mooch (interviewed by Decca Aitkenhead for The Guardian) still has its label hanging off the head stock, and is poorly signed by OneRepublic. Who? What? I listened so you don’t have to. I didn’t have to listen long. “In creating their third full-length album, OneRepublic travelled to Paris, Greece, London, New York, Seattle and Vancouver to write, record and immerse themselves in elevating and expanding their already-sweeping sound.” Right, that’s me told. They could have tried harder with the signatures, I feel, as could the Mooch with the tongue thing. I assume he’s making like Gene Simmons of Kiss. It figures that Scaramucci’d be thirty years out of date.

FIVE THE PEERLESS AMANDA P ON PAISLEY PARK
From The New Yorker: “Before I arrived, I found the property’s purpose somewhat oblique: was it a shrine, a historic site, a mausoleum, a business? In the atrium, I discovered that Paisley Park provides an immediate target for a very particular kind of grief. (The museum’s curator, Angie Marchese, described it to me simply as “a place to go.”) Most of Prince’s fans didn’t know him personally, yet his work was essential to their lives. When he died, where could they mourn? An ungenerous reading might be that Americans are so ill-equipped to manage death that we are forced to mediate it through tourism. We soothe our pain by buying a plane ticket, booking a hotel room, buying a keychain: expressing gratitude via a series of payments. It works, to an extent.”

EXTRA! WHAT THE HELL… WILLIE DE VILLE DOES “ACROSS THE BORDERLINE” IN 1999.
Alongside the glorious mandolin of Freddy Koella, the great James Luther Dickinson, John Robert Hiatt and Ryland Peter Cooder song is still pertinent after all these years.

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Tuesday, June 12th

June 12, 2018 by Leave a Comment

ONE LORD ABOVE, DEVIL BELOW
Hillsong Church pops up on Sunday at the Dominion Theatre. Shame that Bat out of Hell is the musical in residence…

5-church

TWO DID YOU KNOW THAT THERE’S A RAMONES MUSEUM IN BERLIN?
“Flo Hayler is a Ramones fan. In 1990, he goes to his first concert, and becomes a devotee of the punk rock band, this gig marking the beginning of a lifelong passion. Starting with posters, he hoards T-Shirts and all possible memorabilia. To the annoyance of his girlfriend, his collection grows proportionally to fill his small Berlin flat. And indeed, Hayler collects so much Ramones memorabilia that he now has enough to fill a museum. In 2005, he opened the first Ramones Museum in Berlin, and the world. Head to Kreuzberg to admire 500+ items from the Ramones’ history. A café with snacks, coffee and, of course, beer completes the punk picture. Explore exhibition spaces decorated like packed living rooms. Photos, information and history pour out of display cases and cover the walls.” Oh, and the museum offers life-time tickets to loyal guests.

THREE PIANIST AND COMPOSER LIAM NOBLE…
…has a blog, Brother Face (brilliantly subtitled, Jazz musician gets tangled in words) which is always thought-provoking and enlightening. This is from his most recent post, on Ava DuVernay’s 2008 film, This Is The Life, a documentary which “chronicles the alternative hip hop movement that flourished in 1990s Los Angeles and its legendary center, the Good Life Cafe” according to Wikipedia.

“The thing I love most about the cinema is coming out afterwards, the feeling of moving from that enclosed space to the open world, the dislocation that confirms that something has changed. I haven’t spoken for five hours, but in my brain there’s a head-spinning avalanche all the way home, I’m trying to remember everything that I saw and heard, it came in such a rush, all the names of the MCs and crews, where was the club, was it LA, (I’ll check when I get home), I’ll buy all the records, and I’ll look for the lyrics so I can start again and piece it all together slowly at my own remedial pace. I’m lost. I feel like a beginner, like an idiot somehow and, as a musician, that’s the feeling I’m always looking for. It’s the best feeling in the world.”

And from the previous post, on songs from West Side Story, “Chord sequences stand up like a table, and if you want to build one with three legs you’d better know where to put them.” If Liam was American, he’d be published by The New Yorker.

FOUR A DIFFERENT LIAM AT THE PIANO AT THE LADY MILDMAY, NEWINGTON GREEN

5-pianostandNow that’s what you want to see on your pianist’s iPad. Especially when it follows Billy Taylor’s “I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to be Free”.

FIVE PINK FLOYD REISSUES, BY EVERYRECORDTELLSASTORY
“You have to feel a little sorry for Pink Floyd fans. Not too much, obviously. They are more likely than you are to have a final salary pension, a second home, a car that starts on a cold day, a membership to a gym they never visit and all the other trappings of the baby boomer generation, but it’s not as though this is lost on the record companies that sell products to them. Because those record companies are looking to suck up Floyd fan’s cash almost as relentlessly as Fixed Odds Betting Terminals target betting addicts at your local Ladbrokes…”

EXTRA! SOME RECOMMENDED LISTENING
Is That Machine On? is a look by Stuart Maconie at the “golden age of the music press interview.” An entertaining programme that ends up with John Pidgeon’s remarkable interview with Michael Jackson via his “interpreter”, sister Janet. Properly mad.
And Radio 4 still has Great Lives on Miles Davis available. Listen to Adrian (Portishead) Utley and Richard Williams attempt to convince Matthew Parris of Kind of Blue’s place in the Pantheon.

EXTRA! FOUND IN A BOX IN THE GARAGE
Osmonds Letraset!  Why?

5-osmonds

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Wednesday, November 1st

November 1, 2017 by 8 Comments

A tribute to Fats, a weird Sixties jam, some notable films, and a rather extraordinary gig…

ONE BEST OPENING PARAGRAPH OF THE WEEK
Amanda Petrusich, The New Yorker, on Fats Domino: “The moments in my life in which I experience the least complicated kinds of joy are usually when I’m listening to a record by a piano player from New Orleans: Jelly Roll Morton, Professor Longhair, Tuts Washington, Champion Jack Dupree, Allen Toussaint, and, especially, Fats Domino. I can’t explain the alchemy – let the biologists map out precisely what happens on a chemical level. It doesn’t matter how leaden or battered I might have been feeling before – how encumbered by my own cynicism, how spiritually ransacked. There’s an exuberance inherent to this music that is purely, mystifyingly transformative. In an instant, everything lightens.”

TWO FATS AND THE BYRDS
Later in the Fats Domino piece, Amanda P, when talking about his first hit, “The Fat Man”, says, “…but I’d still challenge anyone to make it through the bit after the second verse – in which Domino begins to scat in falsetto, approximating the wah-wah-wah sound of a muted Dixieland trumpet – and not be left at least slightly agog. It’s a nonverbal, nonsensical chorus that’s not exactly a chorus, yet is somehow a flawless chorus—effervescent, unexpected, profuse.”

So for lovers of that, I’d recommend this – Domino backed by the Byrds on The Barry Richards Turn On Show (such a title!), one of a number of “free form” TV shows that were on local UHF TV stations around America in the late Sixties. Start at 7 minutes 30 seconds to see Fats teach the Byrds “Walking to New Orleans”. He tells Roger McGuinn to play the two notes that start the song. “No… staccato. Just hit ’em…” and then, satisfied that they at least vaguely understand him, he leads them into the song. Skip Battin (I guess) on drums and Chis Etheridge (I guess again) on bass try to fit into the rolling groove of Fats’ piano, and Clarence White moves over and plays the answer lines back to Fats… “That’s it, three chords, no bridge… no solo”. Fats looks momentarily worried when the tv director asks him if they’re ready to do a take, before Barry wanders back into frame to introduce the song, snapping his fingers to denote that he’s with it. Fats continues the rehearsal until Skip’s got inside the rhythm, then says: “We ready!”

Barry: “Here’s Fats Antoine Domino in a jam with the Byrds, the Byrds, and F– ” at which point Fats cuts him off and starts singing “I’m walking to New Orleans”, the camera shot tight on his extraordinary face. But they’d never rehearsed the ending – after the third verse it trucks along with Fats humming a lovely phrase over and over, while Clarence and Skip answer him before he draws it to a close with a raised arm and a shambling blues ending. It’s really, well, sweet is the only word…

THREE IF YOU’VE GOT TWENTY MINUTES TO SPARE…
Watch Undeniably Donnie, a film about Donny “Flipside” Fritts, whose album from 2015, Oh My Goodness, this short film was made to promote. Kris Kristofferson supplies the narration (“Every morning his hands draw close to the keys of his Wurlitzer piano”) to a wistful and touching portrait of one of the great backroom boys of Alabama music. Known as the Alabama Leaning Man in honour of his totally laidback style – “I’ve only seen him run twice…” says Kris, before adding, “the truth is I’ve never seen him run…”. John Prine, who often recorded in Muscle Shoals, sums Donnie up: “It’s like when you see a character in a movie, and you just feel really close to that one character as the plot develops – usually it’s not the, y’know, main person in the film, it’s a character actor, y’know – and Donnie’s a living, walking character actor…”

FOUR BILL FRISELL: A PORTRAIT

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On Sunday, I’m hoping that I can get back to the city in time to go to the first London showing of the above film by singer and filmmaker Emma Franz. I’m always transfixed by Bill Frisell’s playing, whether he’s creating soundscapes and atmospherics, or modestly laying out a simple effects-free melody line from an ancient song that speaks to him. His touch is so delicate, yet so intense. If you feel the same way, then there are still some tickets left for the showing at the Curzon Soho this Sunday, November 5th, at 3pm.

Here’s Emma on Bill: “My own life experience includes many years having worked around the world professionally as a musician. I had long been an admirer of Bill Frisell’s music, as he seems to encompass everything that fascinates and excites me about music. In his music, there is individuality and universality, technique and simplicity, diversity, intensity and depth, and the sense of adventure of a child. Bill Frisell has already left a unique stamp on music, been artistically successful and critically acclaimed, yet remains an eternal student; humble, open-minded and constantly self- challenging.” I really like the idea of a musician making this film, and following Bill across his wide-ranging musical life. He’s been quoted as saying: “She got at something that I don’t think anybody’s ever [captured] – you know, it’s about the process, or whatever it is that I [go through]. I felt like you could actually see that.”

FIVE LOREN CONNORS AT CAFE OTO

5-loren2On a screen in a small music venue in Dalston a film is projected. In it a man shuffles around an apartment, struggling to free a record from its packaging. As he bends over you see a scar from some surgery running up his neck and into his hairline. The music that comes from the record when he drops the needle onto it is distant, ethereal, delicate, and distorted. Appalachian Blues, I wonder? Maybe Widescreen American Western Music? The man shuffles through drawings, hundreds of drawings, and hundreds more photocopies. He lays rolls of paint-splashed paper down on the floorboards of an apartment as the ghostly sounds play. That’s my introduction to Loren Connors’ world. The film is, appropriately, called Gestures. Then Connors walks on stage with a cane and a three-quarter sized student model Stratocaster (a Squier Mini, Fender’s diffusion line), sits down and starts a swirling, shifting piece. I’m transfixed. He builds walls of sound and then coaxes up tiny notes that sit on top, all the while using minimal chord shapes and flickering fingers to brush the strings. At times it’s angry and buzzing, but the impression I’m left with is a subtle and mesmerising beauty.

I’m there with Calum. I was saying that I’d never been to Cafe OTO, so Calum kindly gets us tickets for something coming up that he thinks I’d enjoy, and he’s spot-on. He last saw Connors years ago, when his hair was long and draped over his face when he played. Now he looks like one of Christopher Guest’s ensemble players, straight out of A Mighty Wind or Best in Show. At some point in the 45 minute performance, Loren’s partner, Suzanne Langille, starts reciting  a Keats ballad – La Belle Dame sans Merci – “And this is why I sojourn here/Alone and palely loitering/Though the sedge is withered from the lake/And no birds sing.” It’s alternately beguiling and creepy, which is, I think, its intended effect. It ends to wild applause. Loren sits back down, plays for another minute (an encore?) and that’s it. Brilliant.

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