Colin H on Michael Standing

I do like a good pun. And cultural history. And speculation. All three combine in this delightful aside from my book ‘The Wheels of the World: 300 Years of Irish Uilleann Pipers’ (2015).

The speculative aspect is this: could I have stumbled upon the ultimate source of the current TV news obsession of cutting to reporters standing outside somewhere where something happened hours ago but where absolutely nothing, bar darkness and bad weather, is happening now?

Legendary Irish piper Leo Rowsome corresponded vexatiously with various BBC producers between 1926-52, eventually securing several radio and TV broadcasts. It’s a fascinating tale in itself, possible to reconstruct from BBC Written Records and other sources (which I did, in a chapter of the book). One of the shows he was keen to appear on was ‘In Town Tonight’, a radio magazine/chat show that ran from 1933 to 1960, with a TV version simulcast from 1954 to 1956. Opening to the sound (and later vision) of Piccadilly Circus, the presenter would begin: “Once more we stop the mighty roar of London’s traffic and, from the great crowds, we bring you some of the interesting people who have come » Continue Reading.

Raymond on how a man of 77 gets to make his recording debut

In 2014, I started writing about the process of recording some songs with the intention of making an album. The project that I started documenting back then has grown arms and legs and morphed into a multi-headed beast (more about that some other time). I’ve taken several detours along the way, but the one that means the most is about to get a proper release on an actual record label, something I had barely even considered as a possibility when I started out.

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Colin H on Researching Music History

Not everything is on the internet, but likewise not everything you might be looking for in period sources might be where you would expect to find it. I thought Afterworders might be interested in this little glimpse of how a rich vein of research can be opened up by a single line of print in an obscure source.

The moral of this tale is twofold: (a) sourcing and perusing period print sources is crucial; (b) there are times when period print sources can trump the retrospective interview recollections of period participants. (The caveat being that, very occasionally, the opposite of point (b) is the case – where period print evidence is inaccurate.)

When I was researching Big Pete Deuchar for my first John McLaughlin book ‘Bathed in Lightning’ (Jawbone, 2014) – Pete’s trad jazz outfit the Professors of Ragtime having been John’s first band – I lacked the time to delve fully into the tale, and so it occupied only a few paragraphs in that book, essentially supplying a means for John to get from Tyneside to London. When I was subsequently working on the companion volume ‘Echoes from Then’ (self-published, 2017) I spent » Continue Reading.

Sewer Robot on Comedy Horror

Comedy Horror, eh? It’s bleedin’ everywhere nowadays. In movies, in those comics your kids buy, even on proper, non-satellite, tv channels. But has its ubiquity blinded us to fact that this marriage of genres is an ill bred abomination? I mean, I like sitting at home at my “table” and I also enjoy a vigorous game of “tennis”, but that doesn’t mean I can just bolt these two words together to produce a game involving tennis-style skills that can be played indoors on a waist-high wooden surface.

The poet Patrick Kavanagh has a line about the newness that was in every stale thing when we looked at it as children. True dat – but it’s also true that there were loads of things we encountered as kids which, though of fairly recent vintage, we, in our stupid innocence, assumed had been around forever.

Chuckle worthy beasties were ubiquitous in the culture when we were kids. “Over He-e-e-r-e” were Scooby and Shaggy hiding from ghosts in the pantry, over there was Creature Teacher and the other assorted ghouls of Monster Fun comic. We bought gum containing cards where the black and white monsters from old RKO » Continue Reading.

Colin H on Big Pete Deuchar

Today’s ‘i’ newspaper had a long piece on Spotify, apparently the saviour of the music industry by driving people towards purchasing physical product, according to recent research. One of the passing remarks in the piece was that almost everything recorded can now be found there. I suspect this is a greatly exaggerated claim. To give one example, very little of the commercially released output of Big Pete Deuchar (aka Big Pete Duker, on later releases) in the 1960s is available either digitally or on CD. Ironically, the one digital item I’m aware of – ‘Walk Right Out of the Blues’, A-side of a Melodisc 45 in 1965 –– is also his rarest British release in its original form. It’s the one Deuchar/Duker single I don’t have, but the A-side can be had for 99p via a digital compilation of British rock’n’roll. It just about qualifies.

Off the back of researching Deuchar primarily for a chapter in my book ‘Echoes From Then: Glimpses of John McLaughlin 1959–75’ – concerning Deuchar’s Professors of Ragtime band, of which McLaughlin was a member (1959–60) – I’m working, when time allows, on a small book on Deuchar’s life and » Continue Reading.

Colin H on Quintessence

It’s been a while since we’ve had a history of Quintessence around here. On the last occasion, various reviews and previews aside, it was a ‘Record Collector’ piece from 2015. This time it’s piece that was originally published in ‘Shindig!’ in 2016, upon the release of the 2CD studio outtakes collection ‘Spirits From Another Time’. It might as well join our various other long-form Quintessence pieces around here.

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Colin H on Mike Westbrook

A wander down memory lane with Brit jazz colossus Mike Westbrook, published in ‘Record Collector’ in October 2017.

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Take a trip around Ebay and Discogs and you will conclude that Mike Westbrook is a man who makes rare records. Periodically, something from the first decade of his remarkable 50-year career is reissued and within five years it becomes a pricey second-hand prospect itself. Meanwhile, original pressings of those classics go on ascending the twin escalators of legendary greatness and practical inaccessibility. Absurdly, the current resale price for a 2008 Japanese CD edition of 1969’s ‘Marching Song Vol.1’ is around £100 – £20 higher than the (conservative) ‘Rare Record Price Guide’ price on a mint Deram original.

I can think of no other significant British artist whose 60s/70s oeuvre is currently so out of reach. However, with expanded CD editions of his 1972 ‘Live’ on Hux and his long unobtainable two-volume masterpiece ‘Marching Song’ out last year on RPM’s Turtle imprint (including unreleased 1966-70 tracks), with hopefully further expanded RPM/Turtle releases, this golden anniversary of Mike’s singular career in music is also a golden opportunity for new listeners to find out what all the fuss » Continue Reading.

Colin H on Stuart Bailie’s ‘Trouble Songs’

There aren’t many people from Northern Ireland who have made a living in what was the music media, but Stuart Bailie and me – for certain periods of time – have been two such curiosities. Stuart’s heartland is in the punk era he grew up in and in young people thereafter making noisy music; mine is in pre-punk musical history, only occasionally popping in to visit the here and now. Aside from neighbourly greetings and the odd cup of coffee there has never been a Venn diagram within which we have converged. And then Stuart’s long-promised book about ‘the Troubles’, and music’s part in its downfall (or vice versa), started to become a distinct possibility.

I was surprised but touched when Stuart asked me to help him with some of the logistical aspects of bringing his magnum opus to the masses. Knowing very well the lonely path of the musical history author, I hope I’ve been able to give some moral support along the way, too. The offer last year of generous part-funding towards printing costs from the British Council – provided that he delivered finished copies in time for a Troubles anniversary » Continue Reading.

Colin H on Linley Hamilton

Of all the great characters I’ve met in the music game, trumpeter Linley Hamilton is among the greatest – and one of the funniest. A master of shaggy-dog stories and witty remarks, a brilliant onstage raconteur and entertainer, and a man always ready to help fellow musicians in any way possible. He’s also among the greatest musicians I’ve met. For many years, Linley himself might have replied, ‘You don’t get out much, then?’ – his own harshest critic.

Recently, though, it seems to me that he’s become more assured about the quality of his own playing – and very definitely an artist deserving to be heard around the world. If I was to boil Linley’s story down to one sentence, the mid-90s Belfast bar-band hustler became a mid-2010s international jazzman, regional BBC personality (with a weekly jazz show on Radio Ulster), session man supremo, Irish jazz facilitator, music college tutor and inspiration… and still a bit of a bar-band hustler and casual comedy king.

No doubt all local musical scenes have individuals within them who are characters, scenesters, larger-than-life people who make things happen and get talked about. Linley was certainly one such » Continue Reading.

Colin H on Liam O’Flynn

In 2015 I wrote ‘The Wheels of the World: 300 Years of Irish Uilleann Pipers’, with piper John McSherry. The recently passed Liam O’Flynn was one of John’s piping heroes, and featured in three sections of the book. Here’s one, a profile of a quiet man.

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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.

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.

Raymond on a band who could have been contenders …

In 1993, the rock press started to talk about something called ‘Britpop’. I had no idea what it meant, other than that someone had invented yet another music genre. The phenomenon went on to carry some cultural weight, although perhaps not always for the reasons celebrated by some commentators. Depending on your point of view, Noel Gallagher hanging around Downing Street with Tony Blair was either the zenith of ‘Cool Britannia’ or the precise moment at which rock music relinquished its risible claim to be the standard bearer for anything resembling a counter-cultural movement. Here’s a clue: If you’re sipping tea with the Prime Minister, you may still fancy yourself as a rebel, but you are most definitely inside the tent, pissing out.

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Raymond on the remarkable rise of Doctor Peterson

If there is anyone out there who still hasn’t watched Cathy Newman’s Channel 4 News interview with the Clinical Psychologist Jordan Peterson, I would strongly recommend that you check out what was a wonderfully illuminating piece of television. I found it riveting, but I’m not sure if that was in spite of -or because of- the interviewer’s insistence on trying to put words into her interviewee’s mouth at almost every turn. If you try counting the number of times she says “so what you’re saying is …” before inserting a ridiculously skewed interpretation of what he has actually said, you will need all of your fingers and some of your toes. It is evident that ‘listening’ and ‘responding to what the other person has actually said’ were not part of Ms Newman’s game plan.

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Dave Amitri on It’s been 21 years…….

21 years ago this week Billy MacKenzie took his own life in his Dads shed. It was the end to a sometime glorious, often difficult, sometimes beautiful but ultimately unfulfilled life. For some reason I don’t quite understand Billy affects me more than any other pop star. Something about his ridiculous talent alongside his suffocating vulnerability and self doubt constantly draws me back. Like most of us he only came to my notice through his appearances on Top of The Pops in the summer of 1982. He laughed and pissed around while performing the still ahead of it’s time “Party Fears Two” and the impossibly catchy “Club Country”. He looked like someone with the world at his feet he had the looks, the swagger and that voice from some otherworldly place like nothing heard before or since. I went a bought “Sulk” expecting 10 more foot tapping pop songs and was left scratching my head at the likes of “Bap de la Bap” and “Nude Spoons”. It still confuses and delights in equal measure. After that despite insane record company spending and Billy wasting time and money on his whims and fancies only » Continue Reading.

Colin H on Pentangle 1969-73

The first half of the tale, chronicling 1967-69, with supplementary diversions on repertoire, releases and broadcasts during that period, appears here:

Pentangle: A History in Several Parts

It seems that there must be a word limit to threads, as I’ve had difficulty uploading the next installment on the original page. So here, in the comments, is Part 3 (of 4) of the tale, with similar supplementary diversions to be added.

Colin H on Pentangle

This may turn out to be the longest Afterword feature there has been. There may be those who falter before the end… there may be others who can’t be bothered starting… I was unexpectedly at a loose end this evening and, somehow, digging up and posting this piece for the sake of making it available to anyone who may be interested came to mind. I’ll post the first tranche (about a quarter of it) now, and the rest in instalments over the next few days.

Here’s the context: In 1999 I wrote a book about Bert Jansch. In 2006 I was commissioned by Sanctuary Records to prepare a tracklist and annotate a box set on his 1967-73 band Pentangle. I created an essay for the set by drawing from, editing and finessing a large slab of text I’d researched and drafted circa 1990-91 on the band, with a book in mind, before becoming a professional writer for a time (1994-2001, and again from 2012). Some of that early 90s material had been adapted for use in the Jansch book, but in it I covered really only the beginning and end of the band. Somewhere between that » Continue Reading.

fentonsteve on Vinyl cleaning

Full review in comments

Raymond on the template for an eccentric pop career

As a tragically obsessive consumer of music, I am used to the idea of ‘expectation’ out-performing ‘reality’. It has too often been the case that the act of imagining the tantalising possibilities of an eagerly-anticipated album has provided rather more fun than the experience of actually listening to it. Having learned to live with that kind of disappointment, it was always a particular treat when something managed to match my hopes and expectations.

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Colin H on Musings on the byways of British Jazz

That got your attention, didn’t it? Rather like the Afterword (definitively described once, by Hannah, as ‘still not as good as it used to be’), the British jazz scene has FOREVER been whingeing that it’s all gone to hell. There is some unreachable, vague point at which the British jazz scene was apparently great – but that point is ALWAYS years before the date at which a given person is stating it. Maybe in the 60s it was great in the 50s; maybe in the 70s it was great in the 60s, etc. etc…

Certainly, as my recently acquired April 1957 copy of British magazine ‘Jazz News’ would have one believe, the whole thing was all over already – flee at once, jump overboard, every man for himself…

I was delighted to find this on eBay recently. The magazine ran from 1957–63, beginning as monthly and then becoming fortnightly, even trying weekly at one point. I have many 1960-63 copies but ‘50s copies are much rarer.

I thought the Afterword might enjoy this wander down memory lane, around the beginning of the pop/rock era. So here is a » Continue Reading.

Raymond on tracing the musical lineage of your heroes

For a nerdish young music-obsessed Glaswegian in the late 70s and early 80s, the ‘Lost Chord’ record shop had an almost mythical status. It was located in the bohemian West End, the part of town where poets, intellectuals, posh kids and people who played in bands hung out. If -like me- you lived on the dull south side, getting there required not only dedication, but an ability to decipher bus timetables which openly mocked the restrictive notions of linear time.

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Raymond on buying vinyl

I recently bought my son a turntable for his birthday and, since he owned no vinyl, I spent a couple of weekends scouring various second hand and charity shops in the hope of assembling an interesting little ‘starter’ collection for him.

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niallb on The story of a support band.

This is an extended version of a post I wrote a couple of years ago. Think of it as the 12” remix.

If I could have jumped on any band wagon in my 34th year, then the FA Cup run of non-league Woking FC, in 1990, was as good as any tiny little band wagon around. It turned out that the little band wagon became a runaway train.

The date was Saturday 8th December 1990. A few friends had been following Isthmian Premier League team, Woking FC, throughout the Qualifying rounds. The Isthmian Prem was one division down from the Conference, the Holy Grail of non-league football. My mates had been to the home game against Bath City, from the Conference, in the 4th Qualifying round. Woking had won 2-1.

In the First Round Proper, The Cards (short for Cardinals, from the Cardinal Red colour of their red & white halves shirt,) drew high flying Conference side Kidderminster Harriers, again at home. It was a 0-0 draw and the replay, at Kiddy, was 1-1. The second replay (remember them?) also at Kiddy, was 1-1 until Woking scored in the dying minutes. » Continue Reading.

Colin H on Buddy Mondlock, Tommy Halferty and cunning plans

I’ve had an Interesting couple of days and, given the current clamour for long-ish new pieces of writing on the Afterword, in the wake of the Barge-gate controversy, I thought I’d tell the tale…

It all began a long, long time ago, in the morning of the world, when the trees were tall, the valleys fair and the beards less grey. In fact, 1994. Buddy Mondlock, a Chicago singer-songwriter with exquisitely crafted lyrics of gentle profundity and observation and a gossamer voice, had been signed to an Irish record label in some way associated with U2 for his debut album – which was and is a sublime set of songs, unshackled to any particular time or sound.

I reviewed the album somewhere and went to see him perform live in the upstairs room of a Belfast bar during a local festival. I seem to recall he had Guy Clark’s son on bass – a very effective two-piece. The live performance was as compelling as the record. I may even have reviewed the show somewhere as well.

Buddy has made a point of coming back to tour Ireland almost every » Continue Reading.