Got up this morning, I felt like Marcel Proust ..

It’s not every day that I feel like I ‘m stepping into the cowboy boots of the great French novelist. But this morning, listening to the playlist from the Afterword Americana- Alt country thread, I experienced a severe case of A la recherche des gigs perdues. A very overwhelming sensation. It was as though a honky tonk angel had dunked her donut in my large glass of Jack Daniels in a dimly- lit, rodeo bar in Amarillo, and memories of many long-forgotten gigs and favourite country songs just came flooding back.

Where did my enthusiasm for pedal steel guitars, lonesome cowboys and Stetson hats start? Was it watching telly – Bonanza, Rin Tin Tin and Rawhide? Or maybe at the cinema – Stagecoach, High Noon. A Fistful of Dollars and The Magnificent Seven?

John Peel must take a lot of the credit. So many tracks that he played that are still favourites. Poco – Rose of Cimmaron. Judy Collins – Someday Soon. Gram Parsons – Love Hurts. Grateful Dead– Ripple. Head, Hands and Feat – Country Boy. And somewhat more recently …Laura Cantrell – Not the trembling kind.

I’m » Continue Reading.

A couple of weeks ago, my younger brother, Don, celebrated his 70th birthday with a rather jolly party in New York where’s he’s now lived half his lifetime.

I was not there of course. It was completely out of the question for me to attend. I was far too skint and far too busy to pop over to the States. And, as I have expressed my dislike and disapproval of that vile, deranged, megalomaniac narcissist in the White House many times, I somehow I suspect I would not be allowed into the country anyway

An old mutual friend of ours who is a talented, amateur musician came up with a wonderful, very generous idea for the entertainment. He asked Don to list his ten favourite songs. He then recruited a couple of female singers to help him out with the vocals and performed them ten all live.

The set included Purcell and The Blue Nile and ended up with GOD ONLY KNOWS with all the guests joined in

All in all, I hear it was one of the highlights of the party.

After telling me about the gig, Don made gave me a serious attack of the willies » Continue Reading.

The Guardian has an interview today with one of my great favourites, the wonderfully inventive, quirky, Argentinian pop pioneer, Juana Molina.

As far as I know, she has one other fan on the AFTERWORD, @thecheshirecat, who I’m sure will be interested to hear she has a new album, DOGA, which will be released in November

Music wasn’t her first choice…the article mentions her earlier career.

In the early 90s, Molina was one of Argentina’s biggest comedians with her sketch show Juana y Sus Hermanas (Juana and Her Sisters), in which she portrayed a series of outre characters with some degree of John Waters in their DNA. (Some of them still go viral on TikTok, which she doesn’t let herself use because it’s too addictive.) But in 1993, on bed rest while pregnant with her daughter, she realised that if she didn’t pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a musician, she would one day be a bitter old woman railing at the pop charts. So she quit. It was as much of a shock to the nation as it would be if Kristen Wiig swapped SNL for MTV.

If you watch any of her wonderfully inventive videos » Continue Reading.

Only the English would call a tasty dessert Spotted Dick.

This morning’s Guardian had an article on the uncertain future of the Great English Pudding…

Britain’s puddings are under threat. According to research from English Heritage, only 2% of British households eat a daily homemade dessert, while a third never bake, boil or steam one at all.

“Sweet puddings are closely intertwined with British history and it would be a huge shame for them to die out,” said the charity’s senior curator of history, Dr Andrew Hann. But he went on to suggest that, at the current rate of decline, the British pudding will be extinct in 50 years.

The Guardian called in American, Tim Dowling who wrote this rather entertaining article about how he tried to cook ten classic English puddings and was somewhat under-awed by the likes of Sussex Pond Pudding and Jam Roly-poly.

The names alone bring back happy childhood memories. But I’ll confess I’ve never tried to make any of them. Am I an ex-pat being nostalgic for a vanished England?

What is very striking is how long all these puddings take. They belong to a different age.

Our dad would spend weeks making » Continue Reading.

Here is a thread full of kitchen sinks, angry young men, poor cows, hard-boiled East End geezer, Cold War skulduggery, long-distance runners and kestrels. Yes, we are going back to the novels and movies of the 1950s and 60s. I am particularly interested in the soundtracks.

What it’s all about? Alfie.

I’ve seen the 1966 film starring Michael Caine as a compulsive womaniser but I didn’t notice it has an excellent jazz soundtrack by Sonny Rollins.

This thread was inspired by a recent comment from @leffe-gin. Here is what he wrote.

There was quite a strong connection between kitchen sink drama and jazz music. A Taste of Honey (the play) originally had a live jazz band on stage, playing an improvised soundtrack I believe. Anyway, there were many similar things in theatre- my Dad was one of the jazz players on stage in a Birmingham play called Catback. I have the script – I can see why nobody has heard of it since! But this ethos moved from theatre to film. Jazz = gritty reality.

How big a role did jazz play in the soundtracks of this era?

Louis Malle’s Lift to he Scaffold from 1958 » Continue Reading.

On Saturday afternoon, we were driving home to Stockholm from our holiday cottage on Öland and listening to one of my mega driving playlists. The drive usually takes about seven hours, so we need a lot of music.

One of the tunes that was a big favourite was Utras Horas, that wonderful track from Senegal’s finest. Pan-African band, Orchestra Baobab. It’s from their first album, Pirates’ Choice and has been a personal favourite for many years,

I saw the original line up live a couple of times. The superlatively fluid guitar playing of Barthélémy Attisso (1945 – 29 August 2021), Togo’s answer to Jerry Garcia, was one of their trademarks.

With rather low expectations, a year or two back, I went to see the new version of the band with my teenage daughter at the Stockholm Culture Festival. I enjoyed it a lot. She was over the moon.

Anyway, as I listened in the car, it struck me. I didn’t know what they are singing about. And I didn’t even know what language they are singing in.

That inspired me to start this thread about pieces of music that we enjoy that are not sung in English . » Continue Reading.

In this era of mega-concerts in ginormous sports arenas, it is pleasing to see that gigs in smaller, more intimate venues are also doing rather well.

Over on TIGGER’S magnificent STARTER FOR TEN MEGA-THREAD, @thecheshirecat published this list of his Chamber Folk favourites.

Leveret – Bagpipers Three Cane Whale – Cassiopeia Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas – Moccasin Walk/Ackley Lake Purcell’s Polyphonic Party – Upon a Summer’s Day Olov Johansson & Catriona McKay – First Class to Glasgow Eelgrinders – The Voyage Rheingans Sisters – Ostbjorka The Wendigo – Frenetique Patterson Dipper – Mathilda’s/The Lads in their Hundreds Askew Sisters – I Wandered by the Brookside

I set about making a Spotify playlist only to discover that I could only find half of the artists. A timely reminder that there are all kinds of interesting musicians out there on grass roots level who are local heroes but are not as widely known as they ought to be.

Here’s a thread where you can give them all a mention.

Cheshire has inspired me to ask you all about your Chamber Folk favourites. Here is how he describes the music he is thinking of:..

Duos, trios, quartets; mainly » Continue Reading.

Here’s a thread in praise of the magnificent hive-mind of the Afterword. Whatever your query, there’s always some one in this community who will have an interesting, useful comment. You name it. Ornithology, archaeology, tautology, astronomy, gastronomy, Soviet Movies, punk-rock B-sides, Byzantine history, Icelandic fiction, Latvian poetry, Albanian sit-coms…. We’ve got a lovely bunch of polymaths. Here they are a standing in a row.

Over on the Chrisf’s This week I have been listening to…… thread, @Carl has mentioned that he has been re-enjoying EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL’s back catalogue. He’s also posted some excellent tracks.

That led me to an informative article by Alexis Petridis from the Guardian. See comments.

What a remarkable duo they are. From a jazzy Hull student band to Smiths fans and ardent Red Wedgers. From being dropped by their record company to finding themselves high in the charts again thanks to Todd Terry. At the height of their success, the break came that most artists would dream of. The chance to support U2. But it was a no no for Bono. They retired and started a family.

My kind of pop stars.

EBTG albums, solo albums, collaborations, remixes…everything goes. Let’s hear about your favourites

Oscar-nominated actor, Monica Barbaro, who plays Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown, recently met Joan, now 84, at a Sweet Charity concert in San Francisco.

It must have been a very surreal moment for both of them.

I love JB’s t shirt. NOT DEAD YET.

Link to photos in the comments.

Monica got a thumbs up from Joan:

”But she looked enough like me and she had my gestures down. You could tell who it was. She worked so hard. Kudos to her for taking the role on.”

Have we any other examples of actors meeting people who they portrayed on films or on the stage?

Or of method actors going to preposterous extremes to get their character right?

Lada Gaga’s preparation for playing Patrizia Reggiani in The House of Gucci comes to mind.

Bio Reflexen are screening A Complete Unknown today and all 196 seats are gone.

And it’s not just oldies who want to see the film. Suddenly the Bobster is popular with the kids according to the Guardian.

Of course the film’s star could have something to do with this:

It’s a remarkable performance. Star of the moment Timothée Chalamet inhabits the loose-limbed, live-wire physicality » Continue Reading.

Members of the Constantinople ensemble from Canada meet Senagalese kora maestro Ablaye Cissoko in a converted Stockholm stable. Saturday evening’s superb, sold-out concert at Stallet was a very international affair.

Sometimes when I go to a gig I know pretty much what to expect and can even predict the set list and the encores. This was not the case on Saturday evening. I was in a state of joyous ignorance and anticipation. Ducool had recommended the gig to me mentioning the excellent kora player Ablaye Cissoko. Kora gigs are few and far between these days. I was in.

The ticket price was very reasonable and the venue was appealing, Stallet is very cosy and informal rather like a British folkclub. The most recent band I’d seen there was the Rheingans Sisters. I suspected I was in for another top notch gig. The audience was full of hipsters and cognoscenti. Eaves-dropping on conversations, i got the impression there were several musicians in the audience. i recognised a bloke who lives on my street who is a rather talented klezmer player.

Looking at the stage before the musicians came on, I was impressed by the enormous variety of percussion instruments on display.

» Continue Reading.

What a delight that 1980s films thread turned out to be! My thanks to everyone who contributed.

That decade was a cinematic doozy! Almost 200 movies have been mentioned so far. And it’s not closed so please keep your comments coming!

And not only did we get reminded about some stupendous movies. We were also treated to added extras like @Locust’s account of skiving off school to binge watch all the new releases and being mistaken for a teenage film critic. And @Bingo-little’s wonderful musings on the many ways in which the Big Apple was portrayed in 80s movies. Let’s not forget @Gary’s utterly convincing elegy of Terence Davies’s Distant Voices, Still Lives. How could anyone not want to see the film after reading that?

So we’re done with the 80s now? Not a chance! It ain’t over until the Fat Lady dances..

I now want to know about your favourite songs from 80s movies. (Don’t forget there are some very naff movies with some great tunes.)

And also your favourite soundtracks…. I’d like to kick off by mentioning Gabriel Yared‘s magnificent theme tune for Jean-Jacques Beineix’s » Continue Reading.