The Afterword

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Rheingans Sisters : Receiver

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What does it sound like?:

Time and space might well have contrived to put hurdles in the way of the release of Receiver, the latest, fourth album from the Rheingans Sisters, but not because of Covid. You’d have thought Rowan might have enough on her plate, what with the unfair concentration of talent that is the trio Lady Maisery and her own one-woman show that met with acclaim at the Edinburgh Festival last year. Meanwhile, sister Anna is not so much restless, but counterintuitively, finds deep musical roots wherever she travels, whether it be home in Aquitaine or with fellow music-makers in Scandinavia. But blood runs thick, as it so often does with folk families, and the firm taproot that anchors these two wild musical imaginations can be traced back to the family hearth in the Peak District, just over the moors from Sheffield, where instruments abound, and if the right one isn’t to hand – Rowan’s unique bansitar, for example – you can always get your luthier father to create one.

Rowan’s songwriting is not so centre stage here. All sensitivity and observation is present and correct, but there’s no award winners this time. I have a frustration » Continue Reading.

King Crimson The Complete 1969 Recordings Boxset

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What does it sound like?:

First of all – the facts – as much in their words as mine. An ‘Ultimate Boxed Set Edition’ of 20 CDs, plus further DVD and Blue Ray discs. The latter were not available to review, nor can the packaging be commented upon, though it says here that it includes unseen photographs and contributions from band biographer, Sid Smith, arch-Fripp-collaborator David Singleton, as well as Robert himself. This collection constitutes a very detailed document of one single, if intense, year in the life a band passing through a complete life cycle, leaving the world with, by any measure, a remarkable debut album – In the Court of the Crimson King. Of those 20 CDs, 7 are of live performances, and 6 of recording sessions, charting the development of the 5 tracks on the album; the balance includes expanded albums, and remasters, including that of the Giles, Giles & Fripp album.

For context, the album came out in October ‘69, when I was just turning seven, so I wasn’t exactly queuing at Woolies on release day, but older brother syndrome meant I soon became familiar with it, even loved it. I still think that Ian » Continue Reading.

Chester Folk Festival Online!

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Venue:

Nowhere, yet everywhere

Date: 29/05/2020

Nights Out? Are you serious? In the tradition of Russian election results, this is part announcement and part review in that we already know what is going to happen. By now it is accepted that Covid 19 has laid waste to the entire festival season, not to mention gigs at every other live venue, and people are getting nervous about when or even whether the new normal will accommodate such things. But you can’t keep a good festival down. So the lovely people of Chester Folk Festival have pulled together a remarkably full and diverse programme for an online festival. Chester is at the smaller end of the festival spectrum, and so is even more of a genuine community than most. I shall miss tonight’s reacquaintances with those that I meet year after year in the pubs and beer tents. But lo! there is a virtual beer tent; there are singarounds; there are chances to chat to the artists; there are even dance workshops – all Zoomed into your living room, of course. As for the gigs, these have been painstakingly stitched together from lockdown-recorded footage, provided by artists who had been booked » Continue Reading.

Holly Johnson Antiques

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The local rag has just announced that we are going to get yet another antiques shop in the town. (It is most definitely that kind of town.) I wouldn’t care, but we’ve already got another superannuated furniture emporium, trading under the name of Arthur Lee. It’s all going a bit Stella Street round here.

Got any stars of pop and rock moonlighting on your high street?

https://www.hollyjohnsonantiques.com/

ATM Database software

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Cataloguing my CDs is a project long in the offing, supposedly going to happen on long winter nights, which I actually spend singing, dancing and playing squash. The lockdown is the obvious time to realise it. I’m well under way with doing my books, but that’s relatively easy to do on a spreadsheet; each book only needs one entry for each field of author, publisher and year published, so a spreadsheet will do. But the information I might want to record for CDs is more complex, with each CD requiring multiple entries for tracks, musicians, possibly even lyrics for some of the folk stuff. Some of you must have attempted this / achieved this. Any advice you can give, other than ‘don’t bother, it’ll drive you mad’? In particular, is there any modest database software that would be suited to the task?

Happy Workers Memorial Day

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You knew that didn’t you? Today’s the annual occasion to remember those who have sacrificed lives and health in the course of their work. And more importantly, it is a time to do something about it and to confront the vested interests of the ‘elf and safety cynics. Surely it is more relevant this year than any other.

Cycling home from work yesterday, I saw a bloke using a power drill on a fence. While using it, he was standing on the fat wheel of a wheelbarrow. But it’s ok, his mate was holding the handles of the barrow at the time. I got home to find demolition work on the farm building opposite had got to the stage where the asbestos roofing was being removed. Huzzah.

Imagine there’s no internet

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It’s easy if you try. Especially if BT failed to turn up for a second appointment in a week to fix your broadband. The next available engineer will now call on me a week today. That will be 33 days after I first reported the fault. I honestly felt mildly depressed ( and I don’t throw that word around without reason) yesterday when it became clear that I would remain cut off. Fortunately, I am still coming in to work, so have contact with the world in other ways. But of all the times to lose your broadband for a month, the lockdown was not it. I have had a chat with myself and reminded me that I didn’t use it at home until 15 years ago, and am cracking on with reading, and listening and song-learning, but I would just like to leaven that mix a little. How would you cope without the internet nowadays?

“The impact on my extended community is already profound”

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I am fortunate. I am a paid employee, with good employment protection, and the travelling public are still needing my services even now, and will certainly need them when things eventually get back to normal. In the mean time, I will not have run up impossible debts that collapse my ability to offer my services.

In the industries that provide the good stuff about which we love to chat here, so many are self-employed, so many are just getting by. Venues, artists, festivals, support staff – they won’t all survive this, and we will all be the poorer. Hell, just read Karine’s words; she says it so much better.

https://karinepolwart.com/campaigns/606627

Carbon-neutral touring

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Coldplay have announced that they will not be touring their new album until such time as they can find a way to make their gigs carbon neutral. Now, ladies and gentlemen of The Afterword, do not slide lazily into a smug rejoice, just because Coldplay aren’t, you know … they just aren’t very Afterword. What is the real significance of this announcement?

I take the warnings of the academics and experts seriously. I fear that most of us haven’t yet comprehended the ways in which our lives are going to have to change if we are not to cause irreversible damage to the climate. And, of course, I am a hypocrite, because there are countless ways in which I could do more to consume less. As the crews swap between acts on festival stages, I ponder the cost to the planet of my hedonism. There’s the electricity, for starters, just to pump up the volume, even for an ‘acoustic’ act. There’s the methane skull and crossbones lingering in unsavoury fashion above the burger van, the excess consumption going on in the beer tent. Meanwhile, on the campsite, all those Boomer campervans have each guzzled diesel to get there, but that » Continue Reading.

Lankum

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Venue:

Band on the Wall, Manchester

Date: 17/11/2019

The track listing for the Lankum albums and that of their previous incarnation as Lynched, might appear overfamiliar to the eye of the regular folk fan. By and large, the themes and tales are trad standards. For crying out loud, they open with that favourite of weddings and karaokes, The Wild Rover. Except that your expectations are not even given lip service from the opening notes, clanging and clashing cyclically. This is not so far from New York minimalism or trance dance, but the roots are unwaveringly folk, as are the instruments – concertina, uillean pipes, fiddle, shruti box. Then there are the voices. The Brothers Lynch undoubtedly have that magic that comes from family members singing together, vocals almost visibly honed in countless Dublin pubs. At times, Cormac Dermody breaks his silence so that all four are making rare harmonies twisting round themselves. But what gets the audience rapt, transcendent, are the songs where Radie Peat breaks out, stark, uncompromising, beautiful. I am told that hers is a classic travelling community style of singing, and it is little surprise that Lisa o’Neill is an associate. It’s harsh, weathered; it wouldn’t » Continue Reading.

Jazz : A Force for Good

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I am not a jazzer. No way. Expose me to pure jazz, and I will run a mile. It just doesn’t work for me, and I have tried (as have friends). It really came home to me when I went to see Bill Bruford some years ago. There I was looking forward to this alumnus of three of my favourite bands but, No! This wasn’t right at all. It was all clarinets and marimbas.

Yet, when the music in my comfort zone gets exposed to jazz, that’s when it really gets exciting. Joni when she gets Jaco. Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major. My favourite folk dance thrives when Andy Cutting’s melodeon, the hurdy gurdy and the bagpipes, get cut with multiple saxes and it swings. Above all, at the recent live reincarnations of King Crimson, what has got me on the edge of my seat with delight, what has enthralled me and kept me guessing, has been the syncopations, the flights of fancy, the vaulting instrumentals setting off at tangents. I have to concede; it’s the jazz which makes it.

Given the recent expose from the Daily Mail that a love of jazz renders suspect the credibility of Scottish » Continue Reading.

Riding in your heroes’ slipstream

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The Col du Tourmalet was witness yet again to an exciting stage finish yesterday in the Tour de France, as Alaphilippe extended his yellow jersey lead. This day in the Pyrenees may yet prove to be the defining stage of this year’s Tour, which settles the grand classification.

I don’t spend a lot of my life watching sport; I participate rather than spectate. But I love watching the Tour. It really shouldn’t be good telly, yet it is. There is an extra frisson with the Pyrenean stages, as well as some of the Alpine, in that I have cycled them myself. I did the Tourmalet in 2006 and seeing yesterday’s footage, I am right back there, grunting up the wonderfully maintained tarmac, recognising the shifting perspectives of the mountains, finally seeing the pass open up in front of me. Last month, I did Superbagneres and, despite it being an unremarkable overcast day in a lonely ski resort in summer, it was easy to visualise colourful crowds on the verges, egging you on; Dutch, » Continue Reading.

Unintended consequences in song

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“A solitary life / A life of small horizons / Dull as the pewter skies over NW11”

For the 0.3% of the blog who don’t own all of Richard Thompson’s albums, this is the chorus to a Solitary Life off Front Parlour Ballads. It’s a bitter lay; some might say typically so. The song finishes on an upbeat note with the subject matter dying of cancer. (Having a bodycount in song qualifies Thommo to play at folk festivals.)

But as I pedalled up the Denbighshire moors on a gloriously sunny Easter, I found myself merrily singing one of the couplets, as I oft have before: “Holidays in the Yorkshire Dales / Cycling tours of the North of Wales” He may sing it with a sneer, but it all sounds lovely to me, as indeed does the solitary life, says someone who has relished living on his own for the last 18 years. So I sing that song with a spring in my step and joy in my heart.

Do you ever find yourself enjoying a song for emotions that are quite clearly the opposite to that which the artist intended?

Notre Dame

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Architecture is one of the delights in my life. It lightens my daily commute, gives focus to my travels, can challenge the status quo and provides unexpected joys in unlikely places. It’s not just me; architecture matters, or maybe it’s the built environment, rather than the art. It is no exaggeration to say that I can feel the loss of architecture more keenly than the loss of a famous person I don’t know. I find myself saddened more by the footage of Notre Dame in flames, than I do by an obituary, just as I did after fire ripped through the Glasgow School of Art. I note the comments on t’other thread asking which would be the buildings that we would value in the same way as the French do N.D. As for those vandals who ripped through the Firestone Building in 1980, if I had my way, they would be punished as if it were a violent crime against the person.

Of course, those waging war know this – think the Baedeker raids and their reciprocal visitations on Exeter and Coventry among others. The Taliban destroyed the Baliem buddhas. It’s hard for me to comprehend that the antiquities » Continue Reading.

Sunday morning records

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As I succumbed to being bought a fourth pint in the pub yesterday lunchtime, I reflected on the distinct lack of responsibilities I had over the next 36 hours. I’m going out singing this evening, but otherwise the weekend was and is all mine. In fact, my main responsibility, given my early shift tomorrow morning, is that I must take it really really easy today. I reassured myself of this as I snuggled, or was that smuggled, under two duvets this morning, telling myself what a thoroughly dutiful day I was going to have, fire lit, doing very little. A couple of Christmas emails to friends in Australia, a swordfish steak for lunch, what’s left of yesterday’s ‘i’, some lyrics to learn, maybe even some browsing of this blog – I have some @Kaisfatdad gurdy-driven clips to check out.

But even the act of doing nothing needs a soundtrack, eh? My half slumbering mind anticipated this morning’s playlist. I have certain Sunday morning records, just as I have ‘going out on the razz Saturday night’ records: Gorky’s Barafundle; Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter; looking out across heavy frost, Anthony Phillips Beauty and the Beast is a must (I » Continue Reading.

Encounters with Civilians #2

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A few years back in this place, in our time-honoured way, we shared our tales of what happens at the Venn diagram intersection of our own musical world and the normal lives of the rest of our world – family, non-music friends, colleagues. I was reminded of this on this day last year. One of my union muckers, aware that I was unlikely to be doing something straightforward like going to see the Alex, had driven the local train to take me to Crewe and once there, I was greeted with a

“Eh up, lad, where you off to?” “Audlem Bagpipe and Hurdy Gurdy Day.” “Do you know? I regretted asking that question even before I’d finished asking it.”

So how are the experiences with civilians going?

Further, while I know from blogs passim that this musical combination sounds like a real horror show to many of you, and the accompanying link probably won’t convert you. But surely you’ve got to love that, for one day a year, an obscure village on the Cheshire/Shropshire border becomes the focus for drone-driven dance music. There will be Northumbrian pipes, uilleann pipes, border pipes, English bagpipes and so much more than » Continue Reading.

Can you teach an old dog new (musical) tricks?

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18 months ago I bought a melodeon. This was no rash purchase; it was going to happen some day and I was having a particularly good week and the time felt right, even though I knew it would be some time before I got round to learning to play the thing. So it remains.

I played the piano as a pre-teen. I can read music. But that was all 40 years ago and more. Anyone out there paying any notice to my posts will know that I have recently taken to singing like the proverbial duck to water, but truth be told, I’m a lover of instrumentals at heart. Where I really want to be is in amongst the musicians in a session.

I was at several such sessions over the Easter weekend – fiddlers, guitarists, box players attentive to each other’s chords and progressions, learning from each other, bouncing off each other. I see the fingers feeling their way over frets and keys, familiar with shapes and patterns. I imagine that these old hands know how to translate with facility the note they hear in their head through their digits to expression in sound. I’m sure that those who » Continue Reading.

House Music – in the folk tradition

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House Music – in the folk tradition

The folk world has quickly established a new tradition. The deal is this. A houseful of songwriters are packed off to some remote location and told to be creative in each other’s company for the next week, and come back in time for a set concert debut. If this sounds to you like a folkie Big Brother, know that plenty of musicians have already made that observation. We never get to hear how Kathryn Roberts likes her toast, or whether Martin Simpson pulls his weight in the kitchen, but what we do know is that the musical output is often remarkable. It is typically festivals or various arts bodies that commission these and to prompt the creativity, there is usually a kernel of an idea – a concept if you like – to guide the subject matter of the songs. I have sufficient numbers of them to have a dedicated section in my CD racking and they get played more than most.

Last summer, ten women set sail for Eigg in the Inner Hebrides, in the wake of the Scottish referendum, to contemplate ‘separation’ in whatever manifestation they chose. The resulting Songs of » Continue Reading.

Referendums. In or out?

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I shall be on leave in late June, so today I have applied for my postal vote. If there’s a vote to be had, I shall exercise my democratic right, as fought for by our predecessors.

I shall vote. But truth be told, on this occasion, I don’t think I should have a vote. Referendums just ain’t the way to do things. Every few years. the electorate gets the chance to vote for a parliament that should pull together a coherent plan that integrates policies in all those areas where a government exercises power. Once they have elected that government, they should leave them to it and should not have the chance to vote on one particular decision or policy. An electorate’s decision on one issue may be completely at odds with all other policies, with all the dysfunction that that implies. Put it this way, if you had a referendum on the base rate of tax, and then a referendum on free tertiary education provision on the same day, you can bet that the outcome would a mandate for a low tax rate that could not support the mandate for tertiary education free at the point of provision.

So, » Continue Reading.

Cropredy Solstice

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I don’t hibernate. I keep active through the winter. I’m no hypochondriac and I wouldn’t insult genuine sufferers by suggesting I experienced SAD. But I can’t deny that I live for the summer. Life for me revolves around cycling and festivals and there’s no getting away from the fact that both work better with warm sunshine and long hours of daylight. I book my festivals as early as I can; it makes tangible the prospect of a distant season long before it arrives. It helps me cope with the winter sogginess of this England’s cheerless marshes, as someone may have said.

Boy, how I understand why the pagans celebrated certain key dates of the year – the turning points, the banishing of the darkness, the renewal of fertility. But Midwinter’s Day just isn’t, is it? The middle of winter, I mean. There’s far too much still to come. But today it was light as I cycled home at five o’clock, earlier in the week there were blue tits singing like it was spring. By the second weekend in February, you can believe that the end is in sight; we have passed Top Dead Centre of winter. Now we dare celebrate. » Continue Reading.

Spare ticket : Manchester Bridgewater Hall

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30/01/2016

Evening all. Last minute, my mate can’t make it to tomorrow night’s concert 19.30 at The Bridgewater Hall. So there’s a spare ticket for an evening dubbed Espana, packed with the familiar and the favourite, including Falla’s Three Cornered Hat, Ravel’s Bolero, culminating with Craig Ogden playing Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez. It’s a good circle seat, for which I would only ask a contribution towards the original £40 price. You also would get the pleasure of sitting next to me at a gig which, believe me, is a lot better than sitting behind me. https://tickets.bridgewater-hall.co.uk/single/eventDetail.aspx?p=29405

Watch the (Big Garden) birdie

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It’s that time of year again. I have chopped up the rind off a couple of rolled gammon I cooked last week, ready to sprinkle on the wall outside my desk window. The birdfeeder is replenished with a more meticulous regime than is usual. Yes, it’s the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch, where the members of the UK’s biggest subscription organisation set time aside to do a proper, and invaluable, biogeographical survey of their own backyard. From this, experts will map and plot the ebb and flow of species, indicating the health or otherwise of our natural and man made habitats.

I love it. Every year, I wonder how I am going to tame my usual tendencies for constant activity and busy schedules, and sit for a whole hour. At first, I find it hard. My eyes haven’t adjusted to pick up on every camouflaged movement, or to differentiate between all the ‘little brown jobs’. I’m much better at identifying birds by their song than by sight. But then, unmoving but thoroughly moved, I detect so much more that is going on around me, presumably all the time. It’s a great piece of downtime. I am forced to sit and observe » Continue Reading.

Heckling

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I’m a crap heckler. But it’s so tempting at folk gigs; they’re usually small audiences and very often you really have had chats with the musicians, so it’s very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you can have a conversation between audience and stage. But the chances are that your supposed choice words were inaudible to all but you and merely disrupted the flow of performance. Some artists probably relish the banter, and it casts them in a good light. Others must find it less welcome; God knows, since I’ve started performing, I can’t imagine how I’d deal with it myself. So, I usually come away from opening my gob, wishing I hadn’t and feeling just a little bit stupid.

That said, I had a proud heckle last month at the Martin Simpson / Dom Flemons gig at Band on the Wall. The set was largely acoustic and they were about to play a jugband number, when Dom walks on stage with an electric kettle. It was clearly a set up, but the cross was well laid, the goal open, so it was irresistible. “Judas!” I cried. Mr Simpson was clearly delighted and, aside, explained to his » Continue Reading.

Journeys of Meaning

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On Friday morning at 8 o’clock, I will set off at a laden-Landrover-defined speed of around 40 mph for Shrewsbury. I know exactly how long it will take, just under 2 hours, as I make the same journey on the same Friday each year. SatNav? SchmatNav! I don’t even need one of my much loved maps. The route is hardwired. The litany of Marcher placenames is entirely reassuring : Wimboldsley, Sound, Burleydam, Edstaston, Preston Gubbals. At Bomere Heath, I am almost there. No matter the names on the fingerposts, I am familiar enough with the hedgerows to home my way there.

Making the same journey at the same time each year brings other associations: the angle of morning sun, the likelihood of mist and dew on the meadows, the songbirds mustering voice for their last autumn hurrah after the lull of summer. Indeed, until I started doing Shrewsbury, I never realised just how autumnal is the August Bank Holiday weekend.

I could go by a different route, but I never will now. It would be almost blasphemous. It is fair to say that I order my world in geographical terms. So I can appreciate how set paths were used » Continue Reading.