The Afterword

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Brian Patten

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Obituary

He was 79 and hadn’t been in the best of health, I believe, so hardly a surprise. But very sad nonetheless. Along with Roger McGough and Adrien Henri he was one of the three poets in Penguin’s bestselling The Mersey Sound, published in 1967 and that book meant a lot to me in the 70s.

Just Roger, the best of them, left now.

‘So, how long does a man live after all? And how much does he live while he lives? We fret and ask so many questions – then when it comes to us the answer is so simple after all.

A man lives for as long as we carry him inside us, for as long as we carry the harvest of his dreams, for as long as we ourselves live, holding memories in common, a man lives.’

RIP

The Tour

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Whilst we’re on sport, a word about this year’s Tour de France. We were watching the football on one screen whilst watching a compelling final stage of the Tour on another. I loved the innovation of including the climb up to Montmartre in the final stage, and the breakaway involving Pogacar and the indomitable Wout van Aert was just fantastic. As for the Tour itself, the yellow jersey contest was a non-event but there was plenty else to enjoy, especially the efforts of 22 year old Scot Oscar Onley, coming fourth in his first ever tour, and Irishman Ben Healy’s breakaways, stage win, and wearing yellow for a couple of days.

All of it tinged with sadness that this was the last terrestrial Channel4/ITV team broadcast with TNT having the rights in future. It was this team, with Gary Imlach, Phil Ligget and the late Paul Sherwin who introduced me and many others to the Tour of France in the 80s. Ned Boulting and David Millar have been superb since taking over from Phil and Paul, and it must have been an emotional broadcast for them all. Chapeau to them – vive le Tour!

Lucy Dacus

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Venue:

The Academy, Manchester

Date: 02/07/2025

Lucy Dacus may not be a household name, but she is having a bit of a moment. Hot on the heels of the success of boygenius her latest album is getting a lot of traction. Three years ago she was playing at Manchester’s 500 capacity Gorilla; now she’s effortlessly selling out the 2000 capacity Academy.

Her songs are understated, introspective and often low key melodically. But any fears that they wouldn’t work in a standing venue of this size are dismissed from the off, as she and her five piece band launch into ‘Hot and Heavy’ from her 2021 album ‘Home Video’, swiftly followed by the crowd pleasing ‘Ankles’ from her new album, ‘Forever is a Feeling’. She does almost the whole album, interspersed with songs from her earlier records including probably her best known song ‘Night Shift’. That, and the one boygenius song, ‘True Blue’, are greeted rapturously but so too are the new songs. The title track, and ‘Big Deal’ are standouts, but the song which arguably gets the warmest reception is ‘Best Guess’, which clearly is ‘Our Tune’ for many of the audience and I suspect will be much played » Continue Reading.

Time’s Echo

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Author:Jeremy Eichler

Time’s Echo by Jeremy Eichler is a brilliant account of four composers’ musical responses to the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust – Metamorphosen by Richard Strauss, A Survivor from Warsaw by Arnold Schoenberg , War Requiem by Benjamin Britten and the 13th ‘Babi Yar’ Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich. He brilliantly tells the story of how the key works came be written and premiered and explores the extent to which music can act as a memorial and testimony to such events, but can also run the risk of aesthetically airbrushing and exploiting such suffering. I found it a compelling read that, like all great writing about music, took me straight back to listen and hear the works with new insights and understanding.

Amongst the recordings he talks about early in the book is a 1929 recording of the Bach double concerto by the Rosé Quartet, led by Arnold Rosé and and also featuring his daughter Alma. Arnold died in London in 1946 a broken man. Alma died in Auschwitz, where she had conducted and led the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz. One of the musicians in that orchestra was Anita Lasker, a cellist. She survived » Continue Reading.

Cat Power Sings Dylan 1966

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Venue:

Bridgewater Hall Manchester

Date: 02/06/2025

Cat Power has been touring her song for song live performance of Bob Dylan’s 1966 tour setlist for the best part of 18 months. Indeed she recorded and released her performance at the Albert Hall (the real one) in late 2023 (@Junior-Wells reviewed it here at the time).

I’ve heard the record and enjoyed it without being blown away. And of course I know exactly what the setlist is going to be, so I wasn’t sure I could be bothered to go to this. But in the end curiosity won out, and I am very glad it did.

The show starts with the acoustic set of course, although unlike Dylan, Power confines herself to vocals, accompanied by one of her band on acoustic guitar and another on harmonica. The sound is impeccable, the lights are low, and there’s an intimacy in her vocals which means the cavernous and characterless Bridgewater Hall is made to feel almost like a late night jazz club. But as the songs follow each other there is a homogeneity in the slow tempo Power gives them all. Its pleasant enough but not really catching fire. » Continue Reading.

Eastertide

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I am not a religious person; I respect faiths but I don’t hold any of them myself. But religious art can still move and inspire me. This week we were visiting Winchester for a few days and we decided one evening to go to the Tenebrae service in the Cathedral. Tenebrae, I learnt, is an Easter service marking the betrayals, suffering and crucifixion of Christ. As the service proceeds a series of candles are extinguished one by one until at the end the church is plunged into darkness, representing the darkness – or tenebrae – that fell upon his death.

This service featured a series of readings from the Gospels, each one followed by one of the Tenebrae Responsories by the 16th century Spanish composer Tomas Luis de la Victoria. Now to be honest I have never paid a lot of attention to Renaissance polyphony before. But listening to these ethereal, solemn, sometimes dramatic four part harmonies soaring around the stunning vaulted space that is Winchester Cathedral was an incredibly powerful and moving experience. It didn’t make me believe in God but it was a very welcome reminder in these times of stupidity and ignorance, that we are capable » Continue Reading.

Richard Thompson’s Private Passions

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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.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0020r8l

1974 and all that

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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.

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/music/2024/05/revisiting-richard-linda-thompsons-folk-rock-masterpiece-bright-lights

Van Morrison Moving on Skiffle

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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

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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

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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

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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.

The Delines

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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