Back to the music

Another entry in my marathon run-through of all the stuff on my hard drive.

We've reached Bert Jansch, particularly his albums Edge of a Dream, which is recent, and It Don't Bother Me, which isn't.

Jansch was one of those ubiquitous figures on the folk, rock and even jazz scenes in the 60s. Everywhere you looked, he popped up in or with groups - he was a member of Pentangle and played with loads of others. His guitar style was so compelling that people like Neil Young and Jimmy Page admired him hugely and learned a lot from him. His solo music tended to be dark, late-night stuff, though never minimal enough to hide his virtuoso guitar ability.

It Don't Bother Me is really early - 1965 - before he founded folk-rockers Pentangle, and it's great. Edge of a Dream is Jansch hanging around with the indie kids who adored him: Johnny Marr, Hope Sandoval (swoon, who frequently plays his stuff, and has him on her records), Bernard Butler, as well as 60s mates Dave Swarbrick and Ralph McTell. Good stuff to listen to over a whiskey.

Here's 'Needle of Death', his famous song about a friend who overdosed on heroin.



This one's Angie - from It Don't Bother Me: Zoot will love the guitar playing.



'On the Edge of a Dream', with Bernard Butler and 'The River Bank' with Butler and Marr.

Paul Uppal - MIA

2 weeks since I asked Paul Uppal MP a few basic questions, such as whether he lives in the constituency he represents. Still, he's a busy guy. Big ministry to run. Oh no, that must have been someone else. He's a back-bench drone, but apparently one who intends to ignore his constituents.

Meanwhile, here's some music.
It's Bellowhead's albums Burlesque and Matachin. Bellowhead are leaders of the amazing British folk revival, specializing in big, good-time party folk performed by huge numbers of people, dragging in bits of Eastern European, jazz and all sorts of other genres. I'm not always in the right mood for Bellowhead - sometimes the voices grate a little on me, and occasionally I'd like a bit more tune, so I head off in the direction of Lau.

I don't think Bellowhead will convert anyone unconvinced by new folk (they do echo the old finger-in-the-ear stereotype), but they're worth a listen and I've a huge soft spot for them.

Harping on…

I'm working on a book chapter about O. M. Edwards's Cartrefi Cymru, a piece of Welsh travel writing. One of the places he visits is Y Garreg Wen, the home of Dafydd Owain, a blind harpist and composer.

This is the piece he supposedly composed on his deathbed (presumably on a smaller harp). The second film uses the words added a hundred years later by John Ceiriog Hughes, the leading Welsh Romantic poet. They're about the deathbed composition and start with 'Carry my harp to me…'.

Shuas mun Chnoc-fhaire

Intelliwench found this: Derek MacLennan's version of All Along The Watchtower - in Scots Gaelic (a dialect of Irish). I like it a lot.

A little bit of culture

Ah, Monday. It seems like only a couple of days since Friday and my office chair is still warm.
That said - excellent weekend. Very cultural, apart from my language while watching Stoke City lose a cup match to Chelsea.

Saturday night saw me attend Mumford and Sons, a young indie-folk band making waves over here. I knew they'd become the centre of a cult but hadn't actually heard a note of their music - I went because I got Emma a ticket for Christmas and thought it would be rude to send her solo. The only other thing I know about them is that Cynical Ben thinks they're the Worst Band In The World.

Are they? No. Live, they (and the support band, Fanfarlo) are brilliant - a mix of folk, Arcade Fire, Beulah and (in the odd apocalyptic number, War of the Worlds). The album, to which I listened the next day, is much flatter and the lyrics don't stand up to close scrutiny, but they are utterly thrilling live.

Sod off, by the way, to the bunch of students behind me. They chattered extremely loudly and inanely through all the songs, breaking off occasionally to shout the first line of a chorus half a bar before the band, presumably to prove that they knew the words. They are, collectively, a warty buttock.

In total contrast, I went to see Simon Rattle conducting Bach's St. Matthew's Passion at Birmingham Symphony Hall (3 hours, distinctly anti-semitic, in German - though with electronic surtitles in an very good typeface). A sellout crowd heard a period-instrument rendition (complete with viols, which I love), a children's choir for the first movement and a stunning set of soloists. The snobs next to me told each other that it was too fast but as I'd read the same opinion in a newspaper recently, I suspect they were trying to impress each other. I'm not expert enough to know whether the rapturous reception Rattle and the performers got at the end was due to the music or his superstar status, but I went away extremely happy.

Folking brilliant

I'm snowed under by marking, hence my (relative) silence, but I can't help enthusing about the gig I went to last night.

I was exhausted, yet thinking about staying in the office rather than go to see The Imagined Village, such is the pressure of work, but my colleagues insisted, so off I toddled. My seat at Birmingham Town Hall is one I've picked before - aisle, high up in the circle. The sound's great, the view's good and there's legroom. The way I felt, I thought I might fall asleep, but as I was on my own, it wouldn't have mattered much.

I've got The Imagined Village's two albums, but haven't had much of a chance to listen to the new one yet. I played it in the office and liked it - it's good modern folk - but thought it was a bit flat.

How wrong I was. Live, this supergroup are stunning. The full album lineup includes members of the Carthy family, Transglobal Underground, Billy Bragg, Benjamin Zephaniah and all sorts of other luminaries, but the touring lot were Martin Carthy, Eliza Carthy (swoon), Chris Wood, Johnny Kalsi (on dhol and many other Indian percussion instruments), Barney someone, a stunning sitar player, a drummer and a electronics guy, who did amazing things on his theremin.

I guess most people think that folk is mimsy rubbish about shepherds with an undertone of xenophobia. Last night proved how utterly wrong that view is. A big band sparking off each other and singing songs about the recession and dating aliens is something to behold: powerful, subtle, fun.

The thing about folk music is that at it's best, it's like good literature. We all know that there are very few plots (some say 9, others 7): it's how you make it your own that determines whether you're a good writer. With folk, the themes are often similar, and the tunes are a mix of new and inherited ones. The art is in taking the familiar and rendering it unfamiliar. The Imagined Village did this to stunning effect, particularly with the openers, Sweet Jane and John Barleycorn.

Part of the power of the gig stemmed from their palpable anger at the BNP, which is trying to attach itself to the folk scene. Martin Carthy read out the Guardian's account of Nick Griffin turning up at his daughter's gig to propose 'doing something': Eliza was visible horrified. The band are hugely proud of the contribution to their sound made by their Asian sitarist and percussionist ('the future of English traditional music', Martin called them). They called a temporary halt while they filmed the audience shouting 'Bollocks' to the BNP, something they're doing at every gig - apparently ultra-white Shrewsbury wasn't very enthusiastic the previous night.

All exhaustion vanished during the set. They properly rocked: I've never seen a cellist, a sitarist and a bouzouki player do the heads-down-in-a-circle rock-out thing while a theremin wailed and a sampler added instant extra musicians, but it made perfect sense. Last night destroyed for me the notion that folk is a conservative art form.

The night finished with two standing ovations and a mass singalong. 3000 people following Martin Carthy and (gradually) the rest of the band in what he introduced as 'a little folk song from Wolverhampton': Slade's 'Cum On Feel The Noize'. And away I went, proud to be a part of something so passionate and so meaningful.

Here's some video : the live Sweet Jane is great, though the clip isn't brilliant quality.

Must grow a beard…

Despite being snowed under by marking, I'm feeling very relaxed and happy. Anita and I went to see Spiers and Boden last night, at the New Victoria theatre in Newcastle-under-Lyme. It was the first night on a tour consisting of… one night. Folk gigs are odd anyway - you never know whether the crowd will sing and dance or not, but this was in a round theatre, which was polite but very intimate. Every proper folk beard in Staffordshire was present and correct.

Folkies are also immune from record company shenanigans - usually releasing their own stuff or being signed to sympathetic labels. This was never more clear than last night. Neither musical genius had been pressured to smarten up: they're clearly familiar with the changing rooms at Oxfam (though they're dressed up in this clip).

I liked the echoes of rock gigs: instead of ranks of spare guitars, Mr. Spiers was surrounded by different melodeons, and Mr. Boden had a couple of violins, a guitar, and an amplified plank to stand and dance on. They were great.

Except for the banter. In folk tradition, the origin of each song and an explanation of what it was about seemed to be compulsory. Sometimes, a terrible joke accompanied the context. However, there was some wit involved. One anecdote was followed by this comment: 'That's a traditional English joke, collected by Cecil Sharp and it's now in the Cecil Sharp Library' (sorry, obscure folk music joke. Perhaps you had to be there).

Anyway, it was a wonderful night, aided perhaps by the Zubrowka and apple juice cocktails…

Aural Balm…

I'm a fan of Cara Dillon. She doesn't do anything spectacularly innovative with her brand of Irish folk (unlike, say, Kila), but sometimes a soothing voice, elegant arrangements and some melancholy lyrics are all you want. This is a live version of 'False, False'.

I've been in a folk and classical mood all week. Apart from listening to Anjali's The World of Lady A (corking), it's been all Tosca, Media Vita and Unthanks. I'm off to see Spiers and Boden with Anita tomorrow. It's not all work, work, work!

Snow joke

I'm happy today. Despite the fact that the Ultimate Authority of the Hegemon got a 7% pay rise (from £213,000 to £228,000) while lots of us lost our jobs and the institution was fined several million pounds by the government, and there's still lots of marking to do, it's snowing, which always makes me happy. I've also received the latest Stile Antico recording (John Sheppard's Media Vita and other music), and new albums by The Imagined Village and Spiers and Boden.

Another happy man is Pharyngula, the militant atheist and biologist, who's come up with a cunning plan. Institute a state religion in the US by means of a game show like Pop Idol. One of the rounds involves giving each faith a terminally ill child: to win, you have to get said child to recover through prayer! More fiendish details here.

Meanwhile, here's some Morton Feldman, in honour of his birth 84 years ago today.

At last, a festive celebrity death

You may disagree. It's Tim Hart, of Hart and Prior and Steeleye Span. A Christmas death is particularly poignant for this wonderful musician because Steeleye's biggest (though unrepresentative) hit was their recording of the medieval carol Gaudete.

Steeleye were a splinter of Fairport Convention, in the days when British folkies were inventing folk-rock. All the music stands up still. Hart seems to have had a difficult life since his musical career founded - several wives, ill health, the usual for a faded rock star, and he died at only 61.

Ben will really hate this.

Quite enough of that, thank you

Despite having an awful cold, I really enjoyed the Henry V workshop this afternoon. It was great. Wasn't it? Well? I'm waiting, student readers… I've received Terry Pratchett's latest, Unseen Academicals, Nancy Elizabeth's lovely new album of folk minimalism - Wrought Iron - and Fuck Buttons' Street Horrrsing (yes, it is spelled so), and I'm off to bed with my new purchases in the hope I'll be compos mentis for Poetry tomorrow afternoon.

This is da bomb!

Good morning (or evening or afternoon for my far-flung readers). How are you all today? Here the sun's breaking through the clouds, a Test match is being played 19 miles away (weather permitting), and I've received a pile of CDs in the post (I have a new card, but no PIN, so can only shop online for now).

What has Postman Pat brought me today? John Adams' Doctor Atomic Symphony and three CDs of Vaughan Williams: 'Sancta Civitas' and 'Dona nobis pacem' (VW was a cheerful agnostic or atheist and liberal to left - 'Sancta Civitas' is an interesting exploration of the fate of the soul while 'Dona Nobis Pacem' is a warning against war), Folksong Arrangements and Choral Folksong Arrangements (which also has some Holst). Normally my tastes are a little more modernist, but I've a soft spot for VW, and he's on the classical wing of the peace and socialism movement - folk songs were (like the 1960s) a way to demonstrated solidarity and to reconnect with culture unadulterated by bourgeois atomisation - though not always successfully. The Adams is a symphonic version of his latest opera, which follows Robert Oppenheimer as he builds the first nuclear weapon - I can't afford the actual opera recording yet, but it'll come.

Meanwhile, Steve Reich, when's Double Sextet being released? It won prizes ages ago and it still isn't commercially available. Boo!

Mercury rising

Mercury Prize nominations are up - now the NME awards are simply an excuse to plug hairgel and because the Brits are merely for best marketer, they're the closest the pop world gets to credibility (though I rate the BBC Folk/World awards).

Florence and the Machine 5/1

Kasabian 5/1

Bat for Lashes 6/1

La Roux 6/1

Glasvegas 6/1

Speech Debelle 8/1

Friendly Fires 8/11

The Horrors 8/1

Lisa Hannigan 8/1

The Invisible 10/1

Led Bib 10/1

Sweet Billy Pilgrim 10/1

Which of these do you rate? Obviously the folk ones are merely window-dressing, they won't win, unfortunately. Florence and the Machine have had a lot of press interest but there's a suspicion that there's more style than substance. The Horrors might get a nod for following an emo-by-numbers debut with a very interesting sophomore album. On the other hand, there's a groundswell of press opinion that this is the year of the electro woman, so it could come down to Bat for Lashes v. La Roux. Glasvegas produced an LP that sounded like Oasis after a couple of years on a Liberal Arts degree, but they haven't really broken the mould. Your thoughts?

Didn't we have a lovely day the day we went to Oxford?

Hello again. How was your Thursday, and Friday morning? I had a spiffing day in Oxenford, then a lie-in this morning for the first time in years. Thanks to Zoot for driving and Mark for his incisive commentary: he told Zoot that 'you two were by far the best - and I wish that were a compliment'.

I took some photographs - most of Deer Friend and Zoot Horn performing at Catweazle (yes, I know, what a cringe-makingly hippy name). I didn't bother with many of Oxford - you'll all have been there or will do one day, and wandering around with a camera in such a place is likely to see me filed under 'tourist'.

Not that I'm not a tourist. We wandered around the market, visited several bookshops which was highly profitable (for the booksellers), drank fine beer in quaint pubs, then adjourned to East Oxford Community Centre for their open mike night. And open it certainly was - from enthusiastic youngsters, grizzled old folkies and the world's worst storyteller (and a racist Indian comedian channelling the spirit of Bernard Manning). Outside, smokers admired each others' poetry. I'm not joking.

All this was forgiven, however, when Zoot and Deer finally got on stage - last, as they'd been forgotten. Wiping the floor with the competition, they sang Richard Thompson's 'Waltzing's For Dreamers' and the old spiritual 'I'll Fly Away' to rapturous, well-deserved applause.

And now Deer Friend is quitting these shores for ever. She's off firstly to Berlin for recuperation, then Egypt from where she'll no doubt keep leaving comments here and doing her PhD, leaving her friends and bandmates bereft. Deer: it's never going to rain there. Just think about that! No blossom, no snowball fights, no sledging, and sand in your ice-cream every single day!

So what books did I buy? The Collected Letters of Saunders Lewis to Margaret Gilcriest, The Dent Dictionary of Fictional Characters, Willa Cather's The Professor's House, The Rise and Fall of Communism, Hoffman's Struwwelpeter, and Lafferty's Fourth Mansions.