The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

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Seventh time Laucky

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Venue:

St. George’s, Bristol

Date: 20/10/2022

Lau at St George’s, Bristol – October 20th 2022 8:00pm to 10:30pm with a 20 minute interval.

A few years back someone gave me a little album called ‘Race The Loser’, casually describing it as a ‘folk’ album that they thought I’d appreciate. At the time, immersed in American and British Bluegrass and boxed sets of live gigs from Yes, it got shelved and mentally compartmentalised as ‘must listen to later – will probably be really good ‘cos Martin said so’.

It remained unplayed for quite some time, until I noticed that the band were on tour and coming to my favourite venue, St. Georges in Bristol. Giving it a quick spin to see what it promised, I was pretty astonished to hear what came across as ‘folk’ of a kind, but not quite what I’d expected. I was taken particularly by a track called ‘Torsa’ and another called ‘Far From Portland’ that took things to an exciting place where East Of Eden nodded to Larks Tongues and waved at the spirit of Martyn Bennett. What? Whaaaaat? No woolly jumpers here. Fingers not in lugs. The band was Lau.

So, I bought » Continue Reading.

Otherish – Gone Wrong Rainbow Blues

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What does it sound like?:

So here’s a new album from Otherish, a bunch of musicians from somewhere like Bristol and Belfast, loosely a bunch of pals. Echoes in their friendships from days of The Moonflowers and other aligned bands. A happy bunch who have been described as loving just the act of being a band. They’re not trying to change the world or get rich – though they deserve to do both – they are trying to have fun making music and then share it in a way that lets them continue the process because it’s a great thing to be able to do.

All of that innocent simplicity is reflected in the joyous nature of their sounds. Where do I start to describe their music? Do you value thoughtful and intriguing lyrics? Do you like occasional whimsy and fun? Do you enjoy careful experimentation? Are you more inclined to listen to warm, honest, human songs rather than a screeching din of electricity? Do you fall for organic songs? Do you admire a fearless wander to the edges of conventionality? Do you recognise craft when you see it?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the » Continue Reading.

Man alert

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I just stumbled on this offer from Cherry Red, who are selling the Twang Dynasty 3CD set at a low price in a sale – not sure how long this will last; they might just be clearing the shelves, but it’s a steal at this price.

This is the Ace/Jones/Leonard/Weathers incarnation from the reunion at the start of the 90s, and the extra discs are their performance at Glastonbury in 1994. Micky in fine form, the classic jam tracks present and correct, generous pricing, what more do you want?

https://www.cherryred.co.uk/product/the-twang-dynasty-3cd-boxset-edition/

As you were.

Loud, Quiet, LOUD, quiet, even LOUDer! whisper quiet

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There I am, burbling along through the weeds of the interwebby when I stumble across something some whippersnapper blerk writes which cheekily informs me that some snotty band with a name they ignorantly stole from an earlier UK band actually invented the idea of the loud/quiet dynamic. Well I never! I almost fainted with derision.

Here are one of the bands who really perfected that dynamic, decades before the upstarts decided they had something new, playing years after said upstarts fizzled to a tragic close:

Let’s have some more (or even better) examples of the LOUD/quiet dynamic from days of yore.

Lamont Dozier skips gig commitments, the rascal.

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One of the gigs I pre-booked aeons ago, pre-pandemic, was to see Lamont Dozier perform solo at St. Georges in Bristol. Sadly, due to reported ill-health, he had to cancel, and the tickets were put into limbo, hopefully anticipating a re-schedule at some later date. But now he’s cancelled, permanently, and I won’t ever get to experience his particular genius in person. What a giant of popular music, alongside his Holland buddies, I’ve missed. Nowhere to run to hear him now. RIP old chap, you soundtracked a huge part of my life. Thank you.

Guess the one in between?

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Like a lot of folk with a decent number of LPs on the shelf, I’ve managed to keep them all arranged alphabetically, allowing me to find stuff easily* when the urge to spin descends.

I wondered if it might be fun to give you the names of two long players that sit to either side of another, unidentified LP on my shelves, and see if you can guess what the LP is that sits in between them.

While you’re guessing what the one in between on my shelves is, you can give us a pair of adjacent titles from your own shelves, and we’ll see if we can work that one out… over to you in the comments, folks.

* this is in contrast to my CDs, which remain stored in a random fashion that relies upon visual memory to know roughly where they are on the shelves.

“Oh yeah, that CD reissue of Horslips’ ‘Drive The Cold Winter Away’? Yeah, I have that one, hang on, I’ll put it on now”…….

….three hours later…..

“Here it is!”.

Socialists to be deported by UK to Rwanda

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Priti Patel has announced that all those identified by the security services as ‘socialists’ are to be deported to Rwanda next year. RAF Brize Norton is to be re-purposed as the exit point, and the Government intends to begin the process by vetting all known members of the Labour Party before flying out any confirmed reds in redesignated Airbus A400M troop transporters.

A Labour Party spokesperson is quoted as saying, “There’s only a few socialists left in the Party, so that won’t take them very long. I doubt they’ll fill more than one transporter aircraft.”.

It is understood that, on arrival, each deportee will be given a copy of ‘Teach Yourself Kinyarwanda’ and RWF 100,000 (about 75 quid).

Budget brilliance bought when you were broke

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The sad news that Gary Brooker has passed led me to recall that my first proper exposure to Procol Harum as an album band – having obviously heard the mighty ‘Whiter Shade’ and ‘Homburg’ etc. on Wunnerful Radio Wun over the breakfast table – was via this lovely little LP from the cheapo label ‘Music For Pleasure’ (mfp).

I’ve still got the LP, along with several other fine mfp releases (Animals, Monkees at al) and I’ve also got some Starline cheapies and various others from budget labels.

Do you have any, and which are your favourites?

Let’s exclude any of the cheap compilations – ‘Nice Enough’, ‘Picnic’ and so on, we’ve done those quite recently – what about the single artist ones you picked up for 50p or a quid on some dodgy looking budget label, but which led you on to greater and more expensive joys when you subsequently acquired the ‘proper’ albums by the same artist, having had your appetite whetted?

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Vlad’s mad – what can we do?

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Anybody care to speculate what happens next? So far from him we’ve seen copious amounts of lying, shouty piss-contesting (so far at least he’s kept his shirt on) and most recently a complete denial and rewriting of the history of Ukraine. On the part of the west we’ve had plenty of disingenuous statements (a.k.a. lying) about how much damage sanctions will cause, seen a wilful avoidance of any effort to see things from the other side, and been subjected to a lot of posturing and spoken defiance.

It’s hard to see any happy path though this cluster of idiocy.

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Sarah McQuaid conjures up magic in a little village hall

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Venue:

Under the Edge Arts, The Chipping, Wotton-under-Edge

Date: 12/02/2022

In the quirky space of this warm and charming repurposed old village school hall, Sarah played ‘The Tug Of The Moon’ for us at Wotton last night, and I was entranced. It was just one highlight in an evening packed full of fantastically original songs – all introduced with a charming anecdote to explain their provenance – and altogether the night was a beautifully measured performance. She threw in some perfectly chosen covers too; her rendition of the gorgeously gentle classic ‘Autumn Leaves’ for example was utterly mesmeric and transcendent; at the close of the song I heard myself whisper a quiet ‘Wow’ to myself.

She’s been compared vocally to Joni and Lana Del Ray on occasion, and I could hear those hints, certainly, though they don’t convince me of their weight. As comparisons go, what struck me most was that the venue organiser, introducing her at the start of the evening, also mentioned Natalie Merchant. I thought about that, and then she started singing. Yes, that’s in there too, maybe more than the others. But more than all this, much more importantly, is that Sarah has a » Continue Reading.

A wistful anthem. A single track to evoke a sense of calm. Your suggestions?

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Here’s my suggestion. With stylistic echoes of the marvelous ‘Sullivan Street’ from Counting Crows, it’s another strange, slightly melancholic immersion in a nostalgic dreamscape. It’s suffused with bohemian surrealism; it’s looking backwards to wilder days, and somehow also carries a quiet fond peace at the promise of the present and the days ahead.

It’s the title track from Flying Cowboys, the 1989 album from Rickie Lee Jones.

Down there by the river is a man Whose horn is twisted into shapes Unknown to the wicked and the wise And he bears the look of an animal Who’s seen things no animal should ever see He has been driven beyond all towns And all the systems until now though it is Long past too far he keeps going Because it’s a desert Because it’s a desert We come to the river We’ll walk away from all this now We come to the water We’ll walk away from all this now She first saw him he was standing in the doorway Illuminated from behind by a light Though imaginary posses chased them To these distant adobes Standing on the cliffs today I thought I saw you below Walking by the river » Continue Reading.