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When It Happens To You

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Venue:

The Park Theatre, Finsbury Park, London N4

Date: 21/08/2024

Theatre reviews are few and far between, here on The Afterword, but having seen Amanda Abbington’s astonishing performance I feel compelled to recommend this play. It’s based on a real event, the rape of playwright Tawni O’Dell’s daughter. The rape is not reenacted, but happens offstage. The play is about the consequences of the rape on the family over the following years. The cast consists of just four actors, but as I have thought about it, I would suggest that it can be considered as an enhanced monologue. Tara, Abbington’s character, speaks about 75% of the script. The other cast members enable Tara’s part to move forward. They interact with Tara – they aren’t dumb ciphers – but essentially they are there to enhance the lead performance. But as portrayed by Amanda Abbington, what a mind blowing performance! Over the years I have seen some great performances at The Park (which is our local theatre): James Bolam in Bomber’s Moon, Anne Archer in The Trial Of Jane Fonda, Maureen Lipman in Dakota and David Haig in Pressure among them, but none of them compares to this tour de force. » Continue Reading.

Girls Night In The Round

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Venue:

Bush Hall, London

Date: 12/02/2024

This was very much an accidental gig. A friend wanted to go to some live music while his wife was away for a few days, but couldn’t find anything. I searched and found this gig and suggested it. What a wonderful piece of serendipity! I’d seen Demi Marriner supporting Sam Outlaw a few years back and vaguely knew of Kezia Gill from Bob Harris programmes, but neither Jade Helliwell nor Jess Thristan meant anything to me. The four of them are best mates, all originally from Yorkshire. This is their second tour. It’s a simple format – each one plays a song in turn – sometimes completely solo, while other songs have harmonies and backing vocals or guitar embellishments. There are themes for each round of songs, which are fairly loose. The great thing is that they are having such a blast onstage, performing together, and it’s contagious. Their joy and enthusiasm fills the room and considering that there was only song that I knew in the whole evening – their drastic and marvellous rearrangement of Jolene which closed the first set – it’s a testament to their craft and musical abilities that » Continue Reading.

Lori McKenna – 1988

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What does it sound like?:

One of the great things about music is when you unexpectedly discover an album that completely takes you by surprise. 1988 is one of this records. It bushwhacked me. While I expected to like it, what I have found is that it goes well beyond liking. It has overwhelmed me and I love it madly.

It’s clearly an album that has passed most music magazines by, because it’s not in their top albums of the year, though I think it should be.

McKenna’s name is probably unknown to many readers here. I was aware of her for years because she is an artist who regularly popped up on Bob Harris’s radio programmes. She had never made too much of an impression on me. Back in 2016 she released an album titled The Bird And The Rifle. My wife was taken by something from it that Bob played and she bought the CD. Since then she’s got Lori’s albums as they have been released.

I then realised that maybe Bob had a point and she was worth listening to. I liked TBATR a lot as well as her last two albums; The Tree which came » Continue Reading.

Spiral – fill your boots

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Many Afterworders may have seen threads of the brilliant French crime thriller series Spiral over recent years, but felt left out because you were late to the party.

Well the party is starting all over again. Prior to showing Season 8 next year, BBC iPlayer has made all seven previous series available.

The plots are brilliant, engaging, thrilling, scary and superbly resolved.

Depending on your preference you can swoon over Audrey Fleurot or Grégory Fitoussi or Caroline Proust or Fred Bianconi. Or not.

I feel tempted to spend days, deep diving into the whole brilliant morass once again. Emerging occasionally from my darkened room to engage with the real world.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0074sk6/spiral-series-1-episode-1

Mary Chapin Carpenter – The Dirt And The Stars

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What does it sound like?:

This isn’t a review of a new release as it came out in August. It is a review of what has probably turned out to be my favourite album of the year and as no-one else who posts to this site has looked at it, I feel compelled to review it.

I have been a fan of Mary Chapin Carpenter for some 30 years now (though I have to credit my wife with introducing her to me, after she bought the Shooting Straight In The Dark album). She released albums fairly regularly over the years, though after the peak of Stones In The Road in the mid 90s I would suggest she struggled for a long time to match that level of excellence.

Every album has had at least a couple of excellent songs on it, but her palette lacked the tonal variety of her best years and there were too many songs that were simply not memorable. There was little that excited me, though I persevered in the hope that her muse would return.

Indeed there was a huge change in 2016 when Dave Cobb produced her album The Things That We » Continue Reading.

They Get Paid How Much???

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Salaries of the BBC’s top presenters have been made public.

Some of them are quite good at their jobs, but seriously, are the BBC not able to get others who could do the job just as well, if not better, for a fraction of these salaries?

The BBC’s top earners 1. Gary Lineker – £1.75m 2. Zoe Ball – £1.36m 3. Graham Norton – £725,000 4. Steve Wright – £475,000 5. Huw Edwards – £465,000 6. Fiona Bruce – £450,000 7. Vanessa Feltz – £405,000 8. Lauren Laverne – £395,000 9. Alan Shearer – £390,000 10. Stephen Nolan – £390,000

I don’t know who Stephen Nolan is, but for me the most incomprehensible salary is that paid to that candidate for The World’s Most Boring Man, Huw Edwards. Close to half a million for his capacity to send the nation to sleep. It beggars belief. It really does.

Brandy Clark – Your Life Is A Record

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What does it sound like?:

This record should come with a health warning along the lines “Contains tunes, choruses and hooks that will become embedded in your psyche, that will catch you unawares by springing to life at any time of day or night”.

Your Life Is A Record has been out for about six weeks now, but as it has become such a huge favourite in our house I felt I needed to share the love for it.

This is Brandy’s third studio album. Given that her first, 12 Stories came out in 2013, she’s not churning out material at any great rate. What that indicates, and that this collection of 11 songs amply demonstrates, is that she believes in quality not quantity. A thick seam of 24 carat gold permeates this record. One indicator for me of its excellence is that my wife will sing along with songs she especially likes (thankfully, unlike me, she has a good voice and can keep in tune) and I reckon I’ve heard her sing along to every song here.

Both 12 Stories and 2016’s Big Day In A Small Town presented songs that have similarities to Randy Newman (more of » Continue Reading.

It’s Immaterial: House for Sale project – anyone heard anything?

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This album came to grief in the Pledge Music crash. However in June last year John Campbell gave notice of a Just Giving fund raiser to “finance the manufacture and publication of House for Sale”. I did go to Just Giving but could not find the campaign. I have heard nothing more in the intervening 10 months. I know a few others here had also paid money to Pledge Music – has anyone read/heard anything at all? Is it totally dead now? Is there any hope that it might come to pass that the disc gets released?

Judy Dyble with The Band Of Perfect Strangers – Weavings Of A Silver Magic

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What does it sound like?:

Here are the facts – this is a live recording of Judy Dyble and the Band Of Perfect Strangers. They are accompanied by the Ad Hoc strings. The performance was at St Barnabas’s Church in Cambridge, in September 2016.

I thought I had heard very little of Judy’s work. I’m sure I have heard her album as a member of Fairport Convention and probably some Trader Horne. Beyond that I thought I was ignorant, but according to Wikipedia (I don’t have any biography or sleeve notes to go with this) she retired from music in 1973, with a few appearances at Fairport reunions being her sole output until she returned to the music business in 2003. So it seems that there is not that much of a gap in my knowledge given that much of her catalogue since 2003 has only had limited release. Looking at Discogs the eight albums she has made since she returned in 2003 have been released on fairly obscure, independent labels.

So, potted history aside, what’s the album like, you want to know.

Can a record be too polite? In a song titled Silence, Judy sings (albeit with respect » Continue Reading.

Another live gig stream – Amanda Anne Platt

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For the benefit of those who enjoy Amanda Anne’s music, and as a potential introduction for those who don’t know her, she’s doing a live stream this evening. It’s directed at her European audience as she apparently did one last week which was normal-is time for US audiences, but early hours for this side of the Atlantic. So to make up for that she’s starting at 2:00 EST, which is 7:00 BST. Here’s the confirmation: Amanda Anne Platt’s live stream notification We will be tuning in. I hope you do too.

DONOVAN – our trail-blazing hero

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As all Afterworders already know, any and all great music composed since the early 60s is indebted to one man and one man alone – take a bow DONOVAN (oh! you already have).

Now I see that the great man is dedicating a concert in April at London’s Cadogan Hall to Greta Thunberg.

But, thank the Lord for DONOVAN, for without him poor Greta would be lost:

The pioneer songwriter of Ecology will perform his classic Top 20 hits with his young band (‘Mellow Yellow’, ‘Sunshine Superman’, ‘The Hurdy Hurdy Man’, ‘Season of The Witch’, ‘Jennifer Juniper’, ‘There is a Mountain’, ‘Catch The Wind’, ‘Colours’, ‘Universal Soldier’) plus selections from his new release, Eco-Song, 21 climate change compositions by Donovan.

Donovan stood alone among his superstar peers singing out his climate change warning to the world. Donovan says, ‘It took 50 years from my first climate change protest song in 1968 and now, at last, here comes Greta the Great! It’s about time… and we have so little time left!’

Just think, without DONOVAN writing that first song there would be no Friends Of The Earth, no Greenpeace, no climate activists and Greta would still be in school. The world » Continue Reading.

Jason Isbell – count the days until May

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Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit are releasing a new album in May, according to Rolling Stone. The album, titled Reunions, will be out on May 15th. Dave Cobb is once again the man at the control panel. There is no news of any UK or European tour dates yet. Here’s a taster of what to expect – Be Afraid

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Jason+Isbell+Be+Afraid

…Frazey Ford is coming to town…

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Rejoice , the many fans of Frazey that hang around here, she’s coming to the UK in 2020.

First there is a date in January, appearing in Glasgow at Celtic Connections (the 23rd) then more dates later on in June.

She’s at the following venues:

Monday 1st, London Union Chapel Thursday 4th Nottingham, Glee Club Friday 5th, Newcastle, Gosforth Civic Sunday 7th, Leeds Brudenell Club Wednesday 10th, Bristol, Hen & Chicken

I guess there could be more as there are gaps in the schedule. London tickets are already on sale. I can’t wait.

It’s All Because We Stole The Koh-i-noor

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I had a call from “BT OpenReach” telling me that my router had been compromised by hackers and I needed to take action to fix it. I told the guy I’d have to boot up my computer, which was old and slow, so it would take a while. I put the phone down for about five minutes and got on with what I’d been doing. When I picked the phone up I told him he was absolutely right and that the hackers had already got to my router because I didn’t have internet access. He asked me to reboot the router. I said it was in another room and I’d have to put the phone down while I sorted it out. About another five minutes passed before I got back to him and told him it was back up. I spent a few minutes playing dumb, misunderstanding his instructions. He gave me a web address and asked me to enter it as he spelled it out, letter by letter. Then he asked “What can you see?” I said “A picture of Bugs Bunny” He replied with something unintelligible, then said “You think you’re funny man, but I’m smarter than you”. » Continue Reading.

Judy Collins & Jonas Fjeld – Winter Stories

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What does it sound like?:

At the age of 80 (she hit that milestone last May), at a time when some of her contemporaries are losing their voices and their creative wellspring is running dry, Judy Collins has produced a late career gem.

No doubt she would maintain her voice is not what it was, and I’m sure it must have lost some of the power of years long gone, yet it still sounds absolutely gorgeous, full of richness and pitched absolutely beautifully.

This collection is a collaboration, like her last release from a couple of years ago, Everybody Knows. This time, instead of the star billing with Stephen Stills, she is collaborating with the not particularly well known Jonas Fjeld. Chatham County Line also contribute, and I understand Fjeld has been a regular collaborator with them in recent years.

He sings in quite a husky baritone. He doesn’t have the greatest range, but he he contrasts nicely with Judy and they combine together to excellent effect. Let’s face it, Judy proved she can accommodate herself to all sorts, when she pioneered singing acapella along with the songs of humpback whales many years back on Farewell To Tarwathie.

Ostensibly » Continue Reading.

The Delines

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Venue:

The Union Chapel, Upper Street, London N1

Date: 08/11/2019

It’s so hard to put your finger on what makes a great performance. You see and hear it, right in front of you, but defining what it is exactly that elevates the playing of the songs you’re hearing from being merely good to the absolutely brilliant is immensely difficult.

There is a focus and intensity, building on the foundation of great songs. There is togetherness among the band members and a togetherness between the performers and the audience – a bond between us all; from us in the audience to them on the stage that further elevates things.

It’s certainly nothing to do with theatricality, though I guess showmanship is a different thing – it’s that ability to communicate the music and the lyrics.

Certainly there is little theatricality from The Delines, yet for this performance my eyes were riveted to the stage and my concentration was total and my enjoyment was unbounded. This was a great, great performance. One of the very best gigs I’ve been to for many years. One of the best I’ve been to in my life.

I only discovered The Delines earlier this year. » Continue Reading.

Steve Earle on Austin City Limits

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You can view the whole of Steve Earle’s recent appearance on Austin City Limits via the link. He’s playing his recent tribute to Guy Clark, which he titled, very appropriately, Guy. It’s time limited and only available until November 17th.