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Andy Powell – An Afterword Interview

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Colin H on Andy Powell

On March 1, I interviewed Wishbone Ash bandleader, scholar and gentleman Andy Powell for an Afterword exclusive – me in snowy Belfast, Andy in sunny Connecticut. In a couple of weeks, the Madfish imprint of UK label Snapper releases the colossal 30 CD + book/posters/etc set ‘Wishbone Ash: The Vintage Years 1970-91’. Cherry Red have also just released expanded 2CD editions of the band’s two mid-80s albums ‘Raw To The Bone’ and ‘Twin Barrels Burning’.

In 2015 I had the great pleasure of helping Andy with his autobiography ‘Eyes Wide Open: True Tales of a Wishbone Ash Warrior’. I’d recommend it to anyone interested not only in the glory days of British rock but in the nuts and bolts of how a band from that era has been kept alive in the changing times and circumstances since then, to the point of becoming the central cog in a kind of giant fan family around the world – a robust cottage industry thriving outside of the mainstream of what remains of the music business.

It’s well-documented that five years ago Andy Powell and Martin Turner, co-founder of Wishbone Ash, met in court to address » Continue Reading.

Let’s Rumble…

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I was at a terrific show by Lonesome Chris Todd’s Hardchargers on Saturday night and they ended with this version of Link Wray’s ‘Rumble’ that oozes quirkiness and personality. Thought I’d share it here. Probably only the second or third time this line-up had performed it.

New Dusk Fire release ahoy: the Mike Gibbs Band live in Brum ’91

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A heads-up for the Brit jazzers among us – another sensational archive release from Dusk Fire. PR sheet below…

Artist: Mike Gibbs Band Title: “Symphony Hall, Birmingham 1991” Label: Dusk Fire Form: 2CD digifile with booklet Cat: DUSKCD116 Date: 18.05.2018

• First ever release of recordings taken Gibbs and guitarist John Scofield’s 1991 band tour

• Featuring the talent of Kenny Wheeler, John Taylor, Steve Swallow, Bill Stewart, Tony Coe Julian Arguelles, Chris Pyne, amongst others

• 1000 copies ltd. edition pressing

• High quality digifile packaging inc. 8-page booklet notes by Ian Mann with archive images

Another unique Dusk Fire celebration of heritage British jazz marks the talents of Mike Gibbs and John Scofield. This 2CD set finds the duo harnessed to Mike’s 12-piece band, recorded at Birmingham Symphony Hall in October 1991 during a 12-date UK tour promoted by the Contemporary Music Network, a branch of the Arts Council of Great Britain. Over a quarter of a century later, “Symphony Hall, Birmingham 1991” offers up music still astonishingly fresh and contemporary, full of rich colours and textures, vibrant rhythms and inspired solos. This double album represents an essential addition to the catalogues of both Mike Gibbs » Continue Reading.

Andy Powell in Shindig!

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For those interested in the Wishbone Ash maestro, he has a splendid first-person (with a little editing from me) piece in the new issue of UK magazine ‘Shindig!’ on his pre-Wishbone time in the 60s, including a Top 10 of his fave records from the era.

Whatever happened to the Motors?

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I’ve been enjoying listening to the Motors recently – I’m sure I barely noticed them at the time (their ‘pomp’ coincided with me being between 8-12, and not hanging around the London pub scene, so I can be forgiven for this). Power-pop isn’t really my thing but, crikey, they were good at it. This one, ‘Love And Loneliness’, seems to have been their epic last hurrah in 1980. They apparently announced the towel being thrown in two years later but Google tells me their last UK gig was actually the Reading Festival in 1978. There must have been a lot of thumb-twiddling those last few years.

The curious thing is, though, that there seems to be no online trace of what key members Nick Garvey (generally seen in videos in a huge white shirt), Andy McMaster (the undernourished looking fellow) and early member Bram Tchaikovsky (generally seen in a stripey cutaway T shirt in videos, also looking malnourished) did subsequent to the early 80s. Yes, I known Bram had three LPs under his own name. But he called it quits around 1982 as well.

Former middling pop people keeping such a low profile into the internet era is » Continue Reading.

For Bolan buffs – a missing BBC track

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I’ve been digitising a couple more reels of miscellaneous vintage BBC radio items today and among them were 7 Tyrannosaurus/T rex items of which I can figure out five titles and tentatively make a stab at the original source sessions for some of them. This one’s interesting – a decent quality ‘Elemental Child’ that seems distinct from the three versions on the ‘Marc Bolan at the BBC’ 6CD set. I’m guessing ‘Sounds of the 70s’ 25/6/70. Anyway, if you’re a Bolan buff, enjoy…

https://soundcloud.com/colinh-1/t-rex-elemental-child-bbc-session-possibly-an-otherwise-missing-one

In the absence of any word from Gerry Rafferty…

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…here’s something he was doing in August 1970, with the Humblebums, on BBC’s ‘Sounds of the Seventies’, which I’ve just transferred from a reel. Three songs: Cruising (Billy Connolly vocal), Keep It To Yourself (Rafferty vocal, prog-rock epic), My Singing Bird (Rafferty again).

https://soundcloud.com/colinh-1/the-humblebums-sounds-of-the-70s-6870-3-songs

Big Pete Deuchar & his Professors of Ragtime: The Band That Time Forgot

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Colin H on Big Pete Deuchar & his Professors of Ragtime

A couple of years back I posted on the Afterword a short feature on Big Pete Deuchar, one of the great ‘footnote’ characters in British music of the 50s and 60s – and one of the great characters in the British cycling and cycling administration worlds of the 70s and 80s.

That piece, around 3,000 words, was all that I could muster in time for ‘Bathed In Lighting’ (Jawbone, 2014), the first of my (now) two books on John McLaughlin’s musical adventures pre-1975. It ended up being one of the extra chapters appended to the e-book edition, with Big Pete & his Professors of Ragtime – John McLaughlin’s first experience of being in a professional band – getting a couple of paragraphs in the print version.

In essence, in such a long and illustrious career, the key role of the Professors of Ragtime in John’s story was to give him stage experience and, crucially, allow him to move from being a 16-year-old school-leaver and precosious sitter-in with older jazzers in Newcastle-upon-Tyne to being a gifted man with a go-getting attitude to playing music for a living, come what » Continue Reading.

And the Grammy for best Mahavishnu revival goes to…

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…somebody called John McLin – maybe the presenter thought there were no Laughs involved. The walk-on music is ghastly – but hearty congratulations to John for the award, for his solo on the Mahavishnu re-run ‘Miles Beyond’ on ‘Live At Ronnie Scott’s’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL3pGb8OEIU

Indexing fun

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I’m indexing a terrific book by my friend Stuart Bailie at the moment – it’s very Afterword-friendly and I hope to bring an interview with Stuart about it (the book, not the indexing…) to the AW in due course. As I hurtle towards the deadline, though, some interesting juxtapositions of things grouped together in the index catch the eye and raise a smile. Here’s my fave so far:

Hildegard of Bingen Hill, Benny Himmler, Heinrich

Any other fun extracts from music book indexes among the AW?

Folk music in England: is it a busted flush?

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I noticed in Ian Anderson’s editorial in the current fRoots (formerly ‘Folk Roots – the long-ago disguising of its origins perhaps ironic in the circumstances) that he despairs at the current audience demographic at folk music shows in England, which he notes has been a long-ticking time bomb.

In short, almost all the punters – even at shows by young performers (‘BBC folk-person-under-30-of-the-year’ awardees et al.) – are in their 60s and beyond. He ends by saying that his last mission will be to try and ‘get young folk musicians their own audience’. It’s a telling phrase. 20 / 30 year old artists in the folk idiom in England have essentially been borrowing, and living off, the early 70s Fairport convention audience for the past 50 years.

I don’t live in England and have only occasionally been at folk music gigs there so I can’t really bring much to the discussion, but from my limited experience Ian’s words ring true. What say others here?

The question isn’t about people saying ‘Oh, I saw young Sophie Swithins at the Toad & Sandcastle folk club last week and she was really good – and only 29!’ – it’s a matter » Continue Reading.

Henry Bolton: Time for a Reappraisal?

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…the membership of his party seem to think so, and not (for him) iin a good way:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43098646

For those of us not in the UK (and indeed for those of us IN the UK who don’t follow the goings-on in minor political parties) Henry Bolton is the leader of UKIP – a small party of little-Englanders and retired colonels – it’s umpteenth leader in the past couple of years who has had a colorful private life (the only reason anyone outside his party even heard of him) and who refused to resign when pressured to do so by many in senior positions after a racist/adulterous scandal around Christmas.

The party is close to financial collapse but Henry (actually, himself a retired major…) insisted on a meeting of members, whom he would persuade of his value to them. That meeting is just over. Apparently, two thirds of them weren’t convinced:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43098646

So, Henry Bolton… one of the greats? Or a deluded berk heading for oblivion?

‘It’s Herbie, Mann…’

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While successfully procrastinating finishing something much more important, I’ve just been listening to ‘Herbie Mann Today’, receorded in 1967. I thought others might like to dig the flutey jazzmeister doin’ his thang… so here he is, at the 1967 Newport Jazz Festival rendering ‘Norwegian wood’ largely unrecognisable. Oud have thought it?

The Presidents’ Club, St Andrews’ Golf Club, Monasteries… Word In Your Ear…?

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Carol From Luton reports sensational news frokm the equality frontline… She attended Heppo’s WIYE event last night and was astounded to find, in a room of a hundred or so people, no more than 4 women. Not that this stopped Cazza from enjoying the evening, but it made me wonder (having never been to one myself – the geography is against me) – are all WIYE events among the last bastions of male preserve? Or was last night’s an aberration? The way Carol described the demographic it sounded like the last gathering of the Ents, wondering where all the Entwives had gone.

As Bazza Gibb asked 50-odd years ago, ‘Where are the girls…?’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfibU–RAVg

Belfast blues

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Regular Afterworders will have heard me talking about Ballyclare bluesman Lonesome Chris Todd and his band the Hardchargers before. I’ve said it before but interest declared again: I’ve been helping Chris over the past year or so – and currently – towards a debut album (released last month) and furthering his performing opportunities outside of Ireland. I won’t benefit financially from any of this stuff – just an enthusiast for an artist wielding some contacts and loaning a bit of no-interest cash if needed. So, less a PR thread than an AW regular sharing one of his adventures…

Here’s the latest plank in creating that platform, the first of three live clips professionally filmed, by director Paul and his sidekick Jeff, at a show at Belfast’s Empire Bar on December 29th. Like most good things in rock’n’roll it was stitched together at an hour close to 11… or maybe 12…

We’d been introduced to Paul by NI film-making legend Michael Beattie. Paul was up for it – a plan to film three good quality live clips at the Empire show, to help get the message to overseas agents and promoters – in good time but reckoned, from costly past experience, » Continue Reading.

Hard times in Red Lion Yard…

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Lonesome Chris Todd, kingpin of the Ballyclare blues scene, was on Gerry Kelly’s BBC Radio Ulster show today, talking about hard times, paying dues and playing some blues. Regular Afterworders will know I’m a fan… so I cobbled together a slideshow to the new song he played, ‘Red Lion Yard’.

Last spring, Chris tried his luck in Blandford, Dorset – and found that (at that time) he didn’t have any. A week was spent sleeping in his van in Red Lion Yard, a pub car park. Ironically, during that period he did manage a few useful gigs – as sideman with Billy Boy Miskimmin, next on the bill to Jethro Tull at a festival on one occasion – and got a taste of playing shows in England after years of playing only in Ireland.

Still, you live and learn – and Chris got a great song out it, ‘Red Lion Yard’. To my ears it’s as if Charley Patton time-travelled from the Delta and found himself having existential car-parking issues in Dorset.

Hopefully, 2018 will work out much better in the Ballyclare blues world.

RIP Jim Rodford

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The word is that Jim Rodford, bass man with Argent and later the Kinks, has died in a fall. I recall seeing him a few years ago at a small open-air country music/Americana event in Belfast, playing bass with a US C&W singer, whose name I forget, smiling throughout, sight-reading the whole set from a music stand. Apparently, the band’s own bass player had a problem and Jim was flown in at short notice. He did a great job. I remember thinking, ‘Wow, it’s the guy from Argent… and I imagine everyone else here neither knows that nor cares…’ By all accounts a very nice guy.

Here he is in 1973 playing a catamaran, and holding his head up:

Val Wilmer book and documentary ahoy

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For the jazz and blues buffs among us, Val Wilmer’s classic 1977 book on black Americans in jazz ‘As Serious As Your Life’ is getting a new edition on March 1 through Serpent’s Tail. As far as I can tell, it’s had four covers and three subtitles in its time, the original subtitle being ‘The Story of the New Jazz’, then (in 1999) ‘John Coltrane and Beyond’, and now ‘Black Music and the Free Jazz Revolution 1957-77’. The new cover – a rather austere presentation, given the font and layout – is an adaptation of the original cover pic. Richard Williams provides a new foreword.

Publisher’s blurb:

‘In this classic account of the new black music of the 1960s and 70s, celebrated photographer and jazz historian Val Wilmer tells the story of how a generation of revolutionary musicians established black music as the true vanguard of American culture.

Placing the achievements of African-American artists such as Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Sun Ra in their broader political and social context, Wilmer evokes an era of extraordinary innovation and experimentation that continues to inspire musicians today.

As vital now as when it was first published in 1977, As » Continue Reading.

Wishbone Ash in Belgium

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A simple thread, this – just saw this clip of WA playing two songs (Warrior and Throw Down the Sword) live in Belgium last week and thought it worth posting here. Really atmospheric, and great sound – especially Bob’s new Rickenbacker bass and the tone on Andy’s solo in ‘Throw…’

‘Session musicians? No – get me that whole band over there…’

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Following on from the luxury session musicians thread, it might be fun to look at some little-known examples of an artist using (uncredited or otherwise) an entire other band as backing on a record.

Focus fulfilled this role on two or three projects in their early days. Here’s the curiously named Ramses Shaffy on a Dutch single from 1970, with Focus very much ‘doing their thing’, which would become so much better known worldwide a couple of years later:

Sarah McQuaid: If We Dig Any Deeper It Could Get Dangerous

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What does it sound like?:

I vividly recall being gripped and excited when I first heard ‘Crow Coyote Buffalo’, a 2008 album collaboration, released as Mama, between Sarah McQuaid and Zoë Pollock – one a shoestring, social-media savvy troubadour living in a rambling old house near Land’s End, the other a happily faded 80s pop star with enough residuals to live nearby in a yurt and potter about on a ukulele. Amazingly, Zoë’s perpetual-gap-year vibe and carefree music-making was somehow a perfect fit with Sarah’s hitherto defining characteristics of precision, planning and purpose. The album was a wild ride – thrilling, quirky and liberated. When Sarah was shaken out of her comfort zone, magic of a quite unexpected kind happened.

With Zoë’s free-spirit lifestyle proving incompatible with the business of tour dates, Sarah was back to being the precise, organised, careful cottage industry sole-trader of before. Her third solo album, ‘The Plum Tree & The Rose’ (2012), was also her third album with producer Gerry O’Beirne, all three recorded in Ireland. Although featuring some of her best song-writing, not least ‘In Derby Cathedral’, Sarah knew that the album ought to mark the end of her association with Gerry as » Continue Reading.

Startling news just in: expert analysis of a John McLaughlin epic reveals it’s all just one chord

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Danial Peter, a guitar buff with a very clear presenting style, has recently posted this fascinating breakdown of what John McLaughlin actually plays in the side-long epic ‘Right Off’, on Miles Davis’ ‘A Tribute To Jack Johnson’ (1971).

Famously, the track began as an informal jam between John and the two other musicians on bass and drums, with Miles rushing in from the control room when he heard it. (Later in the track, Herbie Hancock, who had literally wandered in to say hi, on his his way past the studio with a bag of groceries in his hands, was motioned over to an unfamiliar keyboard by Miles and ends up playing on the track there and then.)

I play a bit of guitar – no great theory expert, all bluff and instinct, really – but Daniel’s revelation that John is really only playing a Bb7 is fascinating to me. Being John McLaughlin he, of course, stretches and inverts the living daylights out of that chord, making it sound to the fairly casual listener like an armoury of chords. Clever and yet, in a way, simple stuff. The performance was all about the groove – keeping it moving, with an » Continue Reading.