The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

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Richard Thomson Freeview Channel

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All of the hits all of the time from Tuffnel Park’s greatest export, who I believe is a thing here.

OK it’s a BBC funded documentary I made about him coming on for 20 years ago and I might have posted it before (sorry if I’m boring you) but as he seems to have retreated from public view, reduced apparently to living in one room as the others are filled with unsold T Shirt and Tote Bag bundles from the last album but three, I thought Afterworders might take some melancholy crumb of comfort in this film, which is only otherwise still available in Mutoscope at the end of Brighton West Pier.

Muddy at Newport – 60 years ago today

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3rd July 1960: Rock’n’Roll was still a bawling infant, the Beatles known to but a few, the Stones two years away from rolling, the world very much still in black and white and, on this weekend, tense and uptight

A riot during Ray Charles’ Newport set the previous evening had brought out the National Guard and the next day’s performances were cancelled – then reinstated when the promoter trumpeted to the authorities that the event was being filmed to promote America’s culture around the world.

Muddy and his band played what must be one of the best Sunday afternoon festival sets ever. But then he had lent the band to John Lee Hooker (who’d arrived with just his guitar, not even in its case) for the latter’s lunchtime slot, so they were well limbered up.

I read a piece (wish I could refind it) where harp player James Cotton is quoted as saying Muddy was so furious about the band’s performance of one newer song in the set that he lambasted and fired them all straight after the gig. This apparently lasted four days until Cotton got a call from an only slightly repentant Muddy, telling him where to » Continue Reading.

Elvis makes a racket – Klaxon

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Elvis span a new 45 yesterday – sorry, I mean he dropped some new sounds on multiple electronic platforms. The music is a racket on which he plays everything, his ‘I knocked this up myself in the shed’ tradition that goes all the way back to Hoover Factory 40 years ago. The lyrics might just be a bitter and sorrowful swipe at those who find themselves manipulated by anti-democratic leaders. Chill out music it ain’t.

Elvis plays Artists 4 NHS tomorrow / Friday

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If you’re fresh from cheering and clapping our precious battered NHS out of your window you might like to know about Artists 4 NHS. It’s a group fundraising for official NHS staff charities and set up in the last few days by musician Ronan MacManus, whose wife works at Northwick Park hospital in London. The first streamed performance is tomorrow (Friday 27th) at 7.30pm and is from Ronan’s half brother, a certain Elvis Costello, live from his basement apparently.

Do join – and do open your wallet a little if you can. He’s bound to pull out a rarely heard song or two as well as a hit or three.

It’s several weeks – though feels a world away – since I saw Elvis at what turned out to be the last night of his UK tour. I can report that he’s older but still great and fired up, including when he spoke from the stage about the NHS and the running down it usually receives from our politicians. He also praised the care they give his 92 year old mum in the same hospital that was quarantining Covid-19 patients returning from abroad. Just like after one of » Continue Reading.

Geoff Emerick Remaking Sgt Pepper BBC doc

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BBC doc from 2007 in which the late Geoff Emerick (along with also Fabs recording assistant Richard Lush) guides various suspects (inc Kaiser Chiefs, Magic Numbers and Stereophonics) through a track each from Sgt Pepper, recording each on vintage Abbey Road kit.

There are a few revealing moments and along the way Geoff shares a few good Beatles stories. It’s not the whole album and the doc was made very quickly. I know as I directed it: we shot by day and edited by night for two weeks solid – but enough of that.

In my brief experience Geoff was a lovely chap. Off camera told me the detail about George’s chocolate biscuits – Yoko had three of them just under her blanket which she pulled up over her mouth to enable nibbling. He also spoke of how, before quitting during the White album, on one bad Beatle tempered evening he and a colleague hid in a store room to make the Fabs think they’d gone home, creeping out to clock off when their shift was actually over. Not that one would know this kind of thing from recent 50th Anniversary box set publicity…

During filming with Travis » Continue Reading.

Abbey Road: Here Comes The (different guitar solo)

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After all the recent talk about the merits or otherwise of HJH’s final vinyl (personally I think the new snare sound they gave Ringo ruins a large part of the album but that’s going a bit techie) I found this video of Martins George and Giles listening to a lovely unused guitar part on Side 2’s opener. Apologies – and be gentle – if it’s been posted before.

That 2000 Year Old Man again

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Just after I finished a ‘Night Out’ on this cracking hour long theatre piece by Kerry Shale of this parish, I noticed there’s a little taster video for it that’s worthy of our attention. Enjoy. Even more so if you can get there, it’s on for another 10 days.

The 2000 Year Old Man

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Venue:

JW3, Swiss Cottage, London

Date: 11/03/2015

The evening is a version of Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner’s 1950s improv sketches of an interview with a 2000 year old Jewish man going back to his experience pre Judaism, the invention of women, historical figures he met, his 200 wives, thousands of children as well as the small business he seemed to have run all along. Didn’t foresee the Spanish Inquisition but we got that too. It’s pretty faithful to the original LPs but no less hilarious and outrageous for it. Kerry Shale (our own After and Word friendly podcast announcer) is in his element, gloriously relishing the lines, priceless expressions and gestures as only a wizened 2000 year old Jew can do. Recommended for Afterwording Jews and non Jews alike (or an anti-theist like me who only ever saw the inside of a Synagogue on a school tour).

The audience:

Intelligent North London looking crowd, a few might possibly have been Jewish I think, though the ladies of them howled with laughter like it was hen party, so plenty of Shale fans. Pre show I got talking to the delightful actress Maggie Steed, who told me more than it’s » Continue Reading.