Apparently there are a few Richard Thompson fans here. But whether you are or not, I recommend this week’s Private Passsions on Radio 3, on which he is the guest. For those who don’t know it, it’s kind of like Desert Island Discs – guests choose music which is important to them – but with a greater focus on the music and mostly, though not exclusively, classical music. As you might well expect he has some fine choices and impeccable taste, and is always interesting about the music.
Cara Dillon
Another bulletin from ‘WTF is wrong with people?’. Dillon and another woman were randomly shot by some idiots with some sort of pellet gun in broad daylight in Frome. Sounds like she had a very lucky escape – she was hit in the face and eye. Dreadful.
1974 and all that
David Hepworth wrote a rather good article about Richard and Linda’s Thompson’s I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight in the New Statesman recently (apologies if someone has already posted the link). He’s right about two things. It’s an album that is absolutely still as magnificent as it was fifty years ago. And also -1974 – what a year! He mentions Court and Spark and Good Old Boys. So that’s three masterpieces for a start. But looking at the list of releases on Wikipedia there is classic after classic. To take just half a dozen that mean the world to me:
Veedon Fleece AND Its Too Late to Stop Now from The Man Pretzel Logic by The Dan Late for the Sky by Jackson Browne Fulfillingness First Finale by Steve Wonder. 461 Ocen Boulevard by Eric Clapton
But honestly I could have picked twenty more. I know there will be many other albums here which Afterworders will hold dear in their hearts. Fill your boots and advocate for the best.
Van Morrison Moving on Skiffle
What does it sound like?:
I wasn’t going to post anything about Moving On Skiffle. @jaygee and @retropath2 have written superbly about the concerts featuring the music on the record, and the record itself, on an earlier thread and anyway I’ve inflicted enough verbiage about Van Morrison on you all over the years. But the thing is, I’m enjoying this album immensely, and that isn’t anything I expected to say anytime soon about a new Van Morrison record. So indulge me whilst I add my two penn’orth.
Moving on Skiffle isn’t actually a skiffle record at all. It does feature Alan ‘Sticky’ Wicket on washboard but other than that it’s Morrison’s regular house band and backing vocalists, joined on a few tracks by Seth Lakeman on violin. And whilst many of these songs were skiffle staples, really this is a wide bunch of folk, blues and country songs that Morrison will have known and perhaps played in the early days, many no doubt from his father’s record collection.
Generally the songs are delivered fairly straight – these aren’t radical, if you will, reimaginings. Some work better than others. I am not » Continue Reading.
Mimi Parker has died
Obituary
Low have announced on twitter the death of their wonderful lead singer Mimi Parker. She had ovarian cancer. She had a magnificent voice, and was the partner in life as well as music of the band’s Alan Sparhawk. It’s desperately sad and a terrible loss, above all for Alan and their two children. RIP.
Van Morrison What’s it Gonna Take
What does it sound like?:
Well I put my best foot forward, girded my loins, stiffened my resolve, and had a listen to this so you don’t have to.
I’m afraid it’s every bit as depressing as the album cover and song titles like ‘Fodder for the Masses’ and ‘Fighting Back is the New Normal’ might suggest. Yet more vague conspiracy theory winges. They are largely stimulated by Morrison’s objections to lockdown but with just a few minor changes most of these songs could equally be left wing protest songs about the likes of Johnson and Murdoch. Unfortunately that doesn’t make them any better; it’s actually part of the problem. Whatever it is he is protesting about, it is so unformed and uninformed that it is rendered meaningless.
But that isn’t the worst of it. The really depressing thing is how utterly lacking in inspiration this is musically. Mid tempo plodder after mid tempo plodder. Melodies ripped off from, but a shadow of, his own past material. Dull arrangements. Vocal performances which rarely rise above the perfunctory. He can do so much better than this and as recently as 2019 he did.
Two thirds of this record is wretched. » Continue Reading.
It’s a hard knock life for the working musician
I’ve just watched a free livestream on Bandcamp. Allison Russell celebrated the first anniversary of her wonderful album Outside Child by performing the whole album with three fellow musicians from what looked like her porch. It was absolutely terrific. But here’s what struck me. This was an artist performing an album which was widely critically acclaimed, and made the higher reaches of various AOTY lists in 2021. Deservedly so. And, yet, according to Bandcamp, there were precisely 33 people watching. I don’t know if thats worldwide or just in the UK, but either way it makes it barely worth doing. Two of us made donations, so far as I could see, and two others bought some vinyl.
This combined with thin audience numbers at recent gigs I have been to by The Delines, and Yorkston Thorn and Ghatak (Khan not being able to get a visa) make me reflect that this feels a deeply tough time to be a working musician. Sadly acclaim, great reviews, and even the love of The Afterword, don”t pay the bills.
Is this a post Covid thing? Or a sign of something deeper and longer term? Or am I just interested in the wrong » Continue Reading.
Paul Heaton wants to buy you a pint
Here’s a nice thing – Paul Heaton has put some money behind the bar at 60 pubs to celebrate his 60th birthday. I imagine some of these places may be pretty busy today…..
The Delines
Venue:
The Arts Club, Liverpool
Date: 06/05/2022
The Delines make music that is low-key, quiet and dark. It’s liminal music – songs on the border where day meets night; land meets sea; where you can fall on the right side or the wrong side of the tracks. Take Little Earl, the opening song on the new album The Sea Drift, and of this concert. Earl is driving, propped up on a pillow, the first time he has done so after dark. His brother is bleeding in the back. We aren’t told but we presume it’s after a botched store robbery – in the passenger seat he has ‘a twelve pack of beer, three frozen pizzas and two lighters as souvenirs’. He’s panicking, looking for a hospital, getting lost. And that’s where we leave them, forever caught in this awful life-changing, maybe life-ending, moment. Willy Vlautin’s beautifully crafted songs give us scenes from a film noir, or moments in a short story by John Steinbeck or Alice Munro.
Songs like this, as performed by The Delines, are quietly devastating, and the sticky floor, standing venue that is The Arts Club maybe isn’t the best place for them. Not least because » Continue Reading.
Running the world
I really don’t know what to say right now. I can’t remember a time when I had such despair – and such contempt – about our political leadership here and around the world. Jarvis was right.
A Merry Christmas to us all; God bless us, every one
This is rather a lovely thing. Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon have made a limited edition of 50 acetate vinyl copies of Happy Christmas (War is Over) to mark the 50th anniversary of the record, and have given them to 25 independent record shops to sell and 25 music charities to do what they wish with them to raise funds.
Feel free to use this thread to get in the festive mood with other favourite Christmas songs, or heartwarming stories.
http://www.johnlennon.com/news/happy-xmas-war-is-over-50-acetates-for-the-50th-anniversary/
Sarah Everard, Sabina Nessa and too many others
I am not sure what I want to say about this. The details of Sarah Everard’s rape and murder by a serving police officer are utterly horrifying. Sabina Nessa was a much loved teacher; a woman, like Sarah, just going about her normal life. In these and so many cases, men took away their lives to serve their own gratification – because they could; because, in some sick way that is hard for most of us to comprehend, they obviously thought it was OK to do so.
I have seen so many comments from women saying that men – even well-meaning ones – simply have no idea what it is like to be a woman, thinking about how and when they go out; acutely conscious of any lone man on the street. Whereas most men don’t have to give these things a second thought – if I want to go out for a run in the dark after work I happily will. That option isn’t available for half of the population without a level of care that simply should not be necessary.
The problem is us. In the way we view women as sexual objects. In the way we exercise » Continue Reading.
Great guitar solos of these times
I love a great guitar solo. And I especially love it when it grows organically from a great song, both taking reflected glory from the song it is part of and adding to the overall impact of that song. There have been few recent examples as gorgeous as one of my favourite tracks from last year, Mary Chapin Carpenter’s ‘Between the Dirt and the Stars’. As Carl pointed out in his superb review of the album, which he posted back in December, it’s a beautiful, heartfelt lyric. Chapin Carpenter looks back to when she was 17, driving along listening to Wild Horses, carefree and young. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since.
Just over halfway through this elegy to lost youth, and reflection on the heartache of lived life, Duke Levine’s electric guitar emerges and builds. It’s a superb ending to a great song (and album).
And all the more notable because there is something slightly old fashioned about it too. You – or, more accurately- I don’t hear solos like this so much these days.
What are the greatest guitar solos of our time?Please post other perfect guitar solos you love – any will do » Continue Reading.
Chris Barber RIP
Chris Barber has died, aged 90. For my generation he was largely a name from the past; someone to file alongside the likes of Kenny Ball and Acker Bilk – decidedly uncool and passe. Wrong of course. I saw him live a number of times in the late 80s and 90s and realised what a great bandleader he was; what a great band he had (including the superb John Slaughter on guitar) and what a key role he played in popularising blues and jazz in this country – not least with the likes of Van Morrison of course. What always came across was his deep love and understanding of the music he was playing.
A genuine giant of British music in the second half of the last century. RIP
https://www.lastmusic.co.uk/news/chris-barber-giant-of-uk-jazz-1930-2021
Rodney Crowell and various artists – Songs from Quarantine Volume 1
What does it sound like?:
This is a public service message as much as a review.
Rodney Crowell has press-ganged various of his chums into providing tracks for a digital only compilation in aid of the Music Health Alliance in the States, which offers support to the music community including critical mental health and COVID-19 support. It’s avaiable on Bandcamp, and for two weeks only – up until the 19th of February, so just a couple of days left.
It’s all in a good cause, but the bonus is that it’s actually rather good. There’s a great list of artists inclduing Ry Cooder, Elvis Costello, Lucinda Williams, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Jeff Tweedy and Crowell himself. Most tracks are demos of songs already released – Harris has a lovely rendition of her song ‘Gold’, for example, and Williams contributes ‘When the Way Gets Dark’ from her last album. Taj Mahal performs a great version of ‘Sittin’ On Top of The World’. And there are some songs which as far as I know are previously unreleased, including a terrific one from Costello, ‘Maud Gone Wrong’ (Costello fans can correct me if it is already out there somewhere). Cooder, bless » Continue Reading.
Seamus Heaney, Van Morrison – from Bellaghy to Belfast
Blue Boy on Two of the greatest artists to come out of Northern Ireland – different, but with much in common
I was born and brought up in Northern Ireland, growing up in idyllic suburbia in North Down. From our lounge window you could see across Belfast Lough to Carrickfergus Castle on the other side. We lived there until I was thirteen, returning briefly for a few months two years later, before we finally moved away and settled in England.
I was fifteen when we came to England. Happy enough, we settled in well. But I had been taken from where I grew up, and I found that my identification with Northern Ireland was all the stronger in exile than it had been when I lived there. I loved literature and I loved music, and if you were a writer or musician from Ireland – North and South – you had my attention before I had even read or heard any of your work. James Joyce, WB Yeats, Flann O’Brien, Joyce Cary. Horslips, Rory Gallagher, the Chieftains.
And above all – then, and now – Seamus Heaney and Van Morrison.
They were born either side of the Second World » Continue Reading.
64 reasons to celebrate Paul McCartney
As we await the new album, here’s an article which has been getting a lot of posting with approval on Twitter and Facebook. I think it overclaims here and there, but it’s still a very good and entertaining championing of Macca’s brilliance. His argument about how the narrative of John as the edgy genius and Paul as the safe middle of the road entertainer was established is persuasive. It’s interesting though how things have changed. Increasingly it seems to me that Paul’s reputation has risen (fairly in my view) and John’s (unfairly) has fallen. Fact is, the miracle and uniqueness of the Beatles is that it had not one but two pop geniuses in the one band.
https://ianleslie.substack.com/p/64-reasons-to-celebrate-paul-mccartney
The Real Thing documentary
Possibly at the same time that @Chrisf was watching the Boomtown Rats documentary I was watching one on the BBC iplayer about The Real Thing – ‘Everything; the The Real Thing Story’. Even if 70s soul and disco isn’t your thing (and it’s not mine) I recommend this. I really hadn’t appreciated how unusual it was at the time to have a British all black band, never mind one from Liverpool. The film tells the story well about their upbringing in Toxteth, their sudden elevation to teen heartthrobs via THAT single; and their attempt to tell their own story in self written songs in the excellent 4 from 8 album – which of course bombed.
But what makes it is the three surviving members who, unusually for these kind of films, show not a shred of ‘what might have been’ bitterness – they seem happy with what they’ve had and generous to pretty much everyone they’ve encountered along the way. Highly recommended.
Happy birthday to the Belfast Cowboy
Van Morrison is 75 today. But is he resting and enjoying a well earned retirement? Oh no. Instead the old curmudgeon is one of the few artists of his stature preparing to do some live gigs, whilst also taking a pot shot on his website at the ‘pseudo science’ informing the continuing lockdown. Rave on Van!
But no matter – what a career he’s had; what music he’s created. Truly one of the greats.
Anyone who cares to post some more videos of the great man please do; he seems to have eased up on getting everything on the internet taken down and there is plenty out there. Here he is with the superb Donal Lunny.
Ken Robinson RIP
I was really sad to hear today that Sir Ken Robinson has died, at 70, of cancer. A working class lad from Liverpool who done good, Robinson was a hugely influential academic on education policy, teaching and advising governments around the world. He was revered in the arts world for his insistence that creative and cultural education was as important as maths and science.
If that makes him sound like a po-faced liberal lefty, well he was probably guilty of two of those. But he was also one of the funniest performers I have ever seen on any stage. He was a keynote speaker at a conference I was at once. When he came on he was faced with a thousand jaundiced delegates wondering when they could get out to their first pint of the evening. 45 minutes later he had a standing ovation.
If he is known at all outside the world of cultural and educational policy it’s probably for his Ted Talk, which was – and remains – the most viewed ever. Here it is. If you haven’t seen it it’s worth quarter of an hour of your time.
The Chronological Bob
Sometime back @junior-wells drew our attention to a Spotify playlist with all of Bob Dylan’s recorded material available for streaming, in chronological order of recording date. Well, since then, I have been working my way through it, so you don’t have to it. I admit it’s not exactly a lockdown challenge to rival, for example, reading all of Proust’s ‘A la Recherche du Temps Perdu’. But it’s kept me busy and given me much enjoyment, and I have some observations to make. You may or may not agree with them. Please do let me know. I will make them in the thread below.
Doing Bob chronologically. You got the time, I got the playlist
Greatest Irish albums ever
Turns out other people do lists too. The Irish Times are just trying to wind me up with this one though, aren’t they?* No Horslips? No Rory? No Them? No Chieftains? ( I know they describe it as contemporary music, but Planxty made it so I think the Chieftains could). Moondance chosen ahead of any of half a dozen better Van albums. Astral Weeks just at 11, with some record I’ve never heard of at Number One?
Any other views?
* rhetorical question – I know that the point of these things is precisely to annoy everyone.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/50-best-irish-albums-of-all-time-in-order-1.4295696
Afterword Best Albums of the 21st Century – the results
Just counting them up now – coming soon!
May take me a bit of time. 96 of us voted for no less than 620 albums – that’s an average of over 6 unique choices each. So consensus is thin on the ground. A few albums clearly stand out however, although it has still been possible to get into the Top 10 with just 5 votes.
Will try to post later this evening.
The Afterword Lockdown Poll Part 3 – The 21st Century
After Dai’s and Craig’s sterling efforts with the all time greatest albums, and then 80s/90s albums, it falls to me to bring this triumvirate to a triumphant and exhausted close. So, the challenge now, is to name your top ten albums released since 1 January 2000. Personally in thinking about this I found it harder than either of the previous two – not because there isn’t enough good stuff there. Quite the contrary. So many riches to pick from, but few of them as hard wired into my consciousness as ‘all time favourites’. So I think this is going to be a very diverse list which should remind us all of some fantastic records we may have forgotten about.
Dai’s Rules still apply:
1) Post 10 albums ONLY 2) Place them in order 1 to 10. Number 1 will be allocated 10 points down to 1 pt in 10th place. 3) If you post more than 10 only the first 10 will be counted. 4) If you don’t post a preference in the 10 then each will be allocated 5 pts 5) Post exactly like this : Number – Album – Artist e.g. 1 – Dare – The Human League » Continue Reading.
Wheelbarrow valves
This afternoon I had to blow up the tyre on our wheelbarrow. As I struggled to put the sodding pump onto the inaccessible fucking valve I felt a sharp stab of nostalgia, nay a veritable Proustian rush, as I recalled this thread, surely a contender for what in Afterword post terms is known, I believe, in these acronym-filled times, as the GOAT.
ATM (really): right-angle valve adaptor for wheelbarrow wheel?