Musings on the byways of popular culture
by 26 Comments
Finding it hard to sleep? Nailing those tranqs to get some zeds? Whatever you do, don’t watch tonight’s re-broadcast of Threads, the BBC’s dramadoc from 1984 about what happens when the big one drops; if you do, you won’t sleep properly for months. Either that or you’ll overdo the meds in your desperation and slip off the coil ahead of any anticipated mushroom clouds.
If, like me, you’re just curious to see what horrified folk when it first went out, it’s on BBC Four at 22:20.
by 11 Comments
Nearly two glorious hours of Ms MacColl on the Beeb tonight (Sat 5th Oct) from 8:40pm until 10:30pm.
Stand by your VHS machines. Fire up the get_iplayer.
That is all.
by 10 Comments
I’m laid up with a stinking cold, and not in a fit state to attend tomorrow’s gig by Mary Spender at St. Georges in central Bristol. It’s a bitter blow, as I’ve been looking forward to this gig for a long time – I bought the pair of tickets early last December. I bagged our favourite pair of row-end seats 4 rows from the front.
The gig’s nearly sold-out now, and I’d anticipate that it will be a great event, very early in her tour schedule. She has a lovely voice, great guitar chops, and a healthy non-conformist attitude to a lot of things.
The tickets are e-tickets, received via email, so I can pass them on to someone else easily. If you can use them, please drop me a line by a DM and I ‘ll send them across.
All I ask in return is that you promise to review the gig on here – no money needs to change hands. On that basis, the first to message me gets the pair of tickets gratis.
by 22 Comments
We’re thinking we would like to sell up and move to the west of Ireland, and we are just starting to idly look at estate agents ads covering the areas to the west of Galway, with which we’re most familiar.
We haven’t really got a clue yet about what the practical obstacles or hindrances might turn out to be, but on the simple basis of the property prices we’ve seen quoted, it looks at least feasible.
Ideally, I’d probably want to look for a part-time job once over there, at least for a year or three, though that’s not a complete necessity, and to be honest, other than that the biggest hurdle might be moving all the CDs and vinyl.
Does anyone here have experience of making the move from the UK to the Irish republic, or can anyone point me at some reliable, sensible advice about how to go about it?
by 3 Comments
This morning I’ve been alerted by email to the availability by pre-order of Joni Mitchell’s long awaited Archives Volume 4 – The Asylum Years (1976-1980).
This set (4 LP selection of tracks, 6 CD full set of tracks) covers the Hejira, Don Juan and subsequent period, and I’ve been looking forward to getting this since Volume 3 came out.
Here’s the marketing bumf:
Features Unreleased Studio Sessions, Alternate Versions, Live Recordings, Rarities, And 36-Page Book With New Photos & An Extensive Conversation Between Joni & Cameron Crowe
Sourced From Original Stereo Reels, Nagra Film Recordings, Multi-track Tapes, Radio Airchecks & Cassette Tapes
Throughout the latter half of the seventies, Joni continued to creatively break ground with her fearless and fluid exploration of jazz. Rather than tread the same path, she challenged and reinvented her style with a folk fusion like no other. Ascending to an unrivaled sonic peak, this innovative sound took shape across the gold-certified HEJIRA [1976], the gold-certified double-LP DON JUAN’S RECKLESS DAUGHTER [1977], her collaboration with Charles Mingus entitled MINGUS [1979], and live album SHADOWS AND LIGHT [1980]. Channeling the thrill and excitement of these records, she delves even further into this season on JONI MITCHELL ARCHIVES, » Continue Reading.
by 18 Comments
Venue:
Patchwork Studios & Garrison Gallery, Maker, Torpoint, Cornwall PL10 1LA
Date: 11/07/2024
This review is, unavoidably, rather late in arriving on these pages. Preceded by being clobbered by Covid, and succeeded by a monstrous bout of post-Covid issues, it’s been brewing since the gig took place almost a month ago now.
Enough about your correspondent’s excuses. I wanted to report to you that a Katie Spencer gig is something you really do need to attend; she’s a fine talent and a lovely person. If you can find a gig of hers that’s close enough for you to reach, for goodness’ sake GO.
Nonetheless, happily Katie is still touring (when is she NOT touring!?) so a reminder here of her outstanding music is well worth writing up.
This was a gig that replaced her original south Devon booking at the Barbican Theatre in Plymouth. I’d bought tickets to that as soon as they went on sale. About a fortnight ahead of the gig I looked things up on the theatre website for a last minute check of performance times. Good job I did, as the gig was no longer listed! A phone call revealed that they’d cancelled » Continue Reading.
by 14 Comments
About time too! I’ve watched this game from a bar in Ballyconneelly, which was brilliant, but failing that this’ll do nicely watching from my own sofa instead.
What a game so far. Extra time about to start. More of this Auntie, please.
by 26 Comments
Any Euro inspired vids you’d care to post?
by 22 Comments
Venue:
Bristol Beacon (“venue with a less problematic name” – N. Mason)
Date: 17/06/2024
Well, who’da thunk it? Here I was, perched at the very back of the newly revamped ‘Bristol Beacon’ main hall, so high up in The Gods that Mme Foxy claimed incipient vertigo symptoms as we took our seats, staring out over a sea of gathering pates belonging to chaps who, like myself, had most likely paid £1.99 for a Starline copy (with no hideous pink imposed upon the artwork) of the mighty ‘Relics’ sampler.
A mere 53 years after handing over my pocket money and retreating into the Floydian soundscape with my dad’s big headphones clamped on, I was watching a band put together by the original drummer, a sprightly, jolly, humble and generous octogenarian, having an obvious ball belting out a terrific selection of songs from the early albums – we got a splendid scattering of tracks from LPs right up until Obscured By Clouds.
If you’ve read this far you’ll almost certainly already know about the existence of this time-travelling show, and all I can do here is to report the fact that their Bristol gig this Monday was a complete » Continue Reading.
by 12 Comments
Despite sluicing the taxpayer to the tune of many billions in dividends, our* magnificent water and sewerage companies now want to increase their bills next year by between 24% and 91%, depending upon how well practised they are in keeping a straight face while they take the piss.
In recent months I have been off the sauce almost entirely, guzzling water by the gallon instead. I’ve lost 10 Kgs in weight, and if I look downwards past my stomach I can confirm that I am no longer in the early stages of obesity. All of this progress is however now in jeopardy, as it looks like the most sensible option from 2025 onwards is going to be to exclusively drink beer.
Should this result in inadvertent intoxication, I fear that I might rashly take to the streets with a few half bricks and head to the nearest water company’s offices to wreak revenge on the greedy thieving bastards.
* I say ‘our’ but a lot of them are owned by overseas interests these days. Market rules innit.
by 2 Comments
In case you haven’t stumbled upon this page in the labyrinthine mess that the BBC’s web presence has (again) become, here’s a 3 hour playlist of songs used in the THIS TOWN series, and a fine list it is too.
/as you were
by 138 Comments
What does it sound like?:
I’ve a confession to make.
Our esteemed contributor Colin-h asked me to consider reviewing this beast about two years ago, and this is how long it’s taken me to finish off these notes. Sorry about that Colin!
So here we are at last, these are my copious notes, written a little at a time over the last two years, and finally edited now into a hopefully coherent overview of what is after all a gargantuan collection of wonderful material.
This little (13 CDs!) boxed set of BBC recordings features Ian Carr’s celebrated Nucleus ensemble. I’m not going to wade in with a humungous retrospective of the man’s jazz pedigree with various well known serious alumni, I’m going to react only to the contents of these discs.
For many music fans the music they contain might be expected to be what we might term jazz-rock. But don’t let the Vertigo label connections fool you. This is first and foremost jazz. Repertoire, with Colin’s guiding hand, have assembled 13 CDs worth of BBC sessions from the band – in various constellations – across the years from 1970 to 1991; it’s an ocean » Continue Reading.
by 25 Comments
Dear Afterworders, may I commend to you this artist, whose singing and playing is of the very highest quality; Hattie Whitehead.
I know there are several amongst us who have already seen her play either her own material – she’s done 3 EPs to date – or the Joni Mitchell material that she currently performs on tours with Pete Oxley’s group that calls itself Hejira.
The great news is that her first full album is on its way to us at last, and she has a crowdfunding effort afoot to take the project over the line. If you have a mind to secure yourself a copy on vinyl or CD, accompanied by a T-shirt perhaps, or even a personalised video performance or maybe a sourdough loaf (I kid you not), then hasten across to the following place and shake your wallet at an artist who should be encouraged to flourish:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/hattie-whitehead-s-debut-album/x/37385807#/
by 32 Comments
I used to look forward to my weekly dose of The Staggers. My print copy of The New Stateman would drop into the mailbox each week, bringing me a mixture of hope, despair and thoughtful distraction. Along with the daily delights from this place, and the music monthlies, my time available for ploughing into my huge inbound paperback stack was heftily reduced, but happily so.
When the Staggers ceased to arrive here at the tail-end of ’23 (despite no emailed or posted reminder) on Jan 5th ’24 I paid to renew my recently lapsed print sub for another full year. But no New Statesman copies subsequently arrived. Braving their dire telephone ‘customer support’ service, I queried this, but they palmed me off by saying I’d subscribed via a 3rd party – I’d renewed via magazines.co.uk the big subcriptions accumulator site, and suggested I raise the issue there instead.
At first I assumed that things were just taking a long time and waited a couple more weeks, yet still no New Statesman copies arrived. So I queried things with the magazines.co.uk people – the third party.
They were super helpful – confirming with detailed evidence that my subscription renewal had » Continue Reading.
by 17 Comments
Venue:
St Leonard’s Church, Sheepstor, Dartmoor
Date: 07/03/2024
For the second time in a year I made the pilgrimage to St. Leonard’s Church in the little village of Sheepstor, perched up on the south-west corner of Dartmoor.
The point of the expedition was to catch a live performance from the folk duo called Ninebarrow. They are only touring a few more gigs this year before they embark upon a project that will keep them from our stages for the next year or so. So, a brief window in which to hear for myself their pristine harmonies and their gorgeously crafted songs.
It’s a small fortune for a return ticket on the train from home, and the trip was rendered affordable only by the fact that my younger vulpine brother lives only a few miles away from the venue and put me up for the night. Happily, he was entranced and delighted by the gig too, so it was a successful adventure all round.
The church was packed – a sell-out – but its small size means that even when full the atmosphere is intimate and cosy. Minimal amplification is needed here, which means that the guy’s voices carry » Continue Reading.
by 7 Comments
Fellow Afterworders who live within reach of hipster joints in that Lahndahn, despite my provincial location and my disdain for the alleged delights of our capital city, I feel it is my duty, nay privilege, to give you good news.
The attached link will take you to a place where you can book some tickets for what I reckon will be one of the most intimately satisfying musical events of your year.
I’ve seen Hattie sing and play. She is a part – the essential front-of-stage part – of the occasional band that calls itself Hejira. They tour a set built entirely from the Joni repertoire as represented within the double-LP called Shadows And Light. Their performances, and Hattie’s sensitive and confident delivery of Joni’s lines and chords, are a wonderful thing. In this gig she will be singing her own material and you will hear why she was invited to sing and play with Hejira.
I can’t recommend the opportunity to see this gig highly enough. I’d be there myself if it wasn’t for the fact that I’ll unavoidably be 125 miles away at the time.
Don’t say I didn’t tell you.
https://dice.fm/event/qdrp9-hattie-whitehead-22nd-may-servant-jazz-quarters-london-tickets
by 84 Comments
Browsing the spines of my LPs this morning it occurred to me that when choosing an album title, artists can decide to serve a wide range of purposes. The artist’s previous experiences and level of success may play a part, they may choose a title designed to intrigue the casual buyer or to simply signal their artistic or political intent. They may be confident – or lazy – enough just to take the piss with a throwaway title a la Ship Arriving, or they may make a little more effort.
My favourite is in the comments – what’s yours?
by 68 Comments
Have we got any posters here who live in Iowa? Do they stick to bottled mineral water? If not, surely they must be negotiating a bulk-buy option from their local mart by now, as their fellow Iowans seem to have lost their marbles entirely.
by 95 Comments
OK then, enough of all these lists. Enough arty-farty boasting or reminiscence. Let’s ROCK.
Gimme your under-four-minute-distillation-of-excessive-excitement.
This is mine.
by 98 Comments
…how come, when they cover the huge public turnout for Shane McGowan’s funeral procession through the streets of Dublin, they focus on a bunch of street musicians playing a song about Salford written by a Scot – Ewan MacColl – and not a Shane original?
Have they no soul? Are they that slack at their reporting that they didn’t know who the song they featured had been written by? Couldn’t they be bothered to find some guys playing one of his own, rather than a song the Pogues could only be said to have perhaps latterly made their own for casual listeners? Where’s the Reithian rigour when you need it? Sloppy sods.
Harrumph
by 7 Comments
Venue:
‘The Longroom’ at The Queen’s Head in Box, near Bath
Date: 26/11/2023
On a cold, damp night in November, one warm and nourishing evening.
Very little in the realm of live music performance ever beats sitting 3 or 4 yards from the artist, listening in an intimately small space with the company of a small number of similar enthusiasts to music gently unfolding across a perfectly judged soundscape, neither too quiet nor too loud, and crystal clear in every detail.
As regards last night’s warm and cheerful event, sheltering from a cold, foggy, damp night in the run up to the turning of the year, I could have written here about the quirky venue, the little room at the back of the old pub on the high street of a linear village hanging off the coat-tails of Brunel’s railway and the nearby Georgian grandeur of Bath. I could have marvelled at the layout of the building, with doors off everywhere and rooms sprouting from rooms until you reach the fabled ‘Longroom’ where the action is. I could have riffed on the glitter-costumed splendour of the idiosyncratic eccentricity of the MC, with his Bono shades and his familiar » Continue Reading.
by 32 Comments
I know there are a lot of musicians here, most of them far more accomplished than my clumsy C,F and G strumming. Oh, and D as well. And A minor. I wonder if any of them have previously invested in any of Rick Beato’s training materials, or have any insight into its suitability for an old fart who wishes he knew more than that he just has a good pair of ears and pretty good pitch.
I ask because Rick is currently, at the time of writing, offering a humungous bundle of his interactive material for $99, which on the face of it is a huge discount.
Any observations are welcome: I’m tempted, really I’m tempted, but even heavily discounted, it’s still a chunk of moolah that I could otherwise spaff on a Dylan boxed set…
…so what’s the verdict?
by 14 Comments
Venue:
Wiltshire Music Centre, Bradford Upon Avon
Date: 03/11/2023
Just as natural as the weather; the band that calls itself Hejira.
We booked our seats for this about 6 months ago, just as they went on sale. Friends who booked a week or so later were nine rows behind us – the place had sold out fast. I’ve looked forward to hearing these songs played with the sort of musicianship and care they deserve ever since I bought our tickets, having been a Joni Mitchell fan since I first heard Big Yellow Taxi on the Light programme one weekend in 1970.
The set list was mostly made up of songs chosen from the four sides of Shadows & Light, the double live album that followed Joni’s album tribute to Mingus, possibly one of her least loved experiments. Before that, as Afterworders will mostly be aware, she’d had a run of completely staggering albums from Court & Spark through to Don Juan’s via Hejira. The fact that it is this last named LP that the band have chosen as their moniker says a lot – it’s laden with jewels. After Shadows & Light, she made a move to Geffen records » Continue Reading.
by 8 Comments
If you have any fondness for the old things, the rare things, the strange ways in which we came to this place, the wisdoms and foolishnesses we have partly forgotten, you may already know of Doc Rowe.
For six decades he has been documenting the folklore of these islands, gathering up arcana in scatterings of film, video, photographs and sound recordings, traipsing from one end of the isles to the other, tirelessly capturing culture that has, miraculously, persisted to the 20th century and beyond from much older places deep in the wild wood, hidden in dark, narrow, cobbled streets, on windswept beaches and high on the blasted damp of the bleakest moors.
There is a move affoot to digitise this huge archive, to make it more secure for those that follow us to be able to see, to wonder and to marvel at and to learn from. If you have a few bob you can spare, perhaps you can dip into your pocket and help things along. It’s not a huge amount of money that’s needed, but more than is currently available without a collective sub. Can you help to make it happen? The link to chip in » Continue Reading.
by 3 Comments
Venue:
St. Georges Glass Studio
Date: 13/10/2023
Friday evening, mid-October. Rough old day, full of wind and rain, and traffic warnings on the roads into town. Back’s been playing up again, and those placcy chairs in the upstairs room at St. G’s are murder for more than an hour or so. Coulda stayed at home and plundered iPlayer. Nearly did. So bloody glad I didn’t.
As regular readers of my reports will know, I’m something of a St. Georges groupie; the little Bristol venue makes up about 75% of my gig-going these days, as I’m a fan of sitting down and listening to the music at gigs, rather than wolfing down beer and talking bollocks with mates; that’s for the pub.
I often buy tickets for gigs there months ahead of time; if an interesting evening is listed in their schedule I’ll quite frequently just take a punt in the knowledge that their booking strategy is to book artists for whom sitting down and listening to the music is exactly what’s required. That’s not to say that jiggling about is frowned upon, or that it doesn’t happen, as recent experience with the Orchestra Baobab proved conclusively.
This gig, » Continue Reading.
