moseleymoles on Music and your parents

There you go.

My brother put a large plastic crate on the front room floor, containing about a hundred CDs. The process of clearing out my parents’ house ground endlessly on, as we worked through almost sixty years of books, papers, clothes, china…my dad in particular grew up in a small terraced house during the war and the rationing after. Part of the great post-war leap in social mobility, he and mum bought a large Elizabethan house in the middle of the Peak District and that was where they stayed for the next sixty years. They never threw anything away, and had enough tinned tomatoes stored up to last me out as well as them.

By the time I could talk to dad about music his taste was strictly classical and jazz. He would chunter at the kitchen table as I did my homework to cassettes of The Police or The Jam. Truth be told one of my earliest memories at the end of the sixties, in our previous house, involves his music taste. I can remember crawling under his enormous Grundtvig stereo system mounted coffin style in a large wooden cabinet, and » Continue Reading.

Tiggerlion on Mothership Connection by Parliament released 15th December 1975

George Clinton set up The Parliaments in 1956 to sing doo-wop. After all, once upon a time he did run a barbership, The Silk Palace in Plainfield New Jersey. A very young church-going Bernie Worrell defied his mother to spend time there listening to the street jive of the staff and future group members, Fuzzy Haskins, Calvin Simon and Grady Thomas. They almost signed to Motown and Clinton was taken on as a staff songwriter for a brief period. He finally gave up the day job in 1967 when (I Wanna) Testify became a hit. He was able to put together a substantial touring group, five musicians and five vocalists, but their record label Revilot went bust and he lost the rights to the band name. Though consisting of the same personnel, Funkadelic was an entire change of brand: funk and psychedelic rock blended together, inspired by Are You Experienced, Sgt Pepper, We’re Only In It For The Money and A Whole New Thing. “Making art out of nonsense”, as in I Am The Walrus, was a particular fascination and LSD helped facilitate their imaginations. They had a strong, consistent » Continue Reading.

Tiggerlion on Hoodoo Man Blues by Junior Wells and The Chicago Blues Band released 26th November 1965

The Great American Migration took place between 1910 and 1970. Over 6 million African Americans left the rural South and moved to cities in the North and West in search of jobs and a better life. Up to 1910, 90% of black people lived in three Southern states: Louisianna, South Carolina and Mississippi. By 1970, that percentage had dropped to 50%. 

In Southern states, Jim Crow laws mandated racial segregation in all public facilities, beginning in the 1870s. African Americans faced segregation, indentured servitude, convict leasing, an increase in the spread of racist ideology and widespread lynching. Farmers and businessmen needed to find replacements for the labour force once slavery was abolished. Indentured servitude dates back centuries but black men and women were still subjected to it in the South. An individual ‘volunteers’ to pay off some kind of debt by working. The debts were often tenuous and their size and length of payback frequently increased at the whim of the person providing the loan, creating a form of financial slavery. Women, in particular, were vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Convict leasing was even more destructive. » Continue Reading.

Tiggerlion on The Last Record Album by Little Feat released 17/10/1975

Little Feat began as Lowell George’s band and were born out of a desire to enjoy the three classic pleasures of life: wine, women and song. George had been working for Frank Zappa, appearing on Weasels Ripped My Flesh, Burnt Weeny Sandwich and You Can’t Do That Anymore Vols. 1, 4 & 5. He also claimed to have played guitar on Hot Rats. Zappa was experimental and avant-garde regarding his music but conservative and autocratic when it came to running a band. Drugs of any kind were not tolerated. Zappa might have appreciated George’s first tune, Willin’, but not its sentiment. He suggested George should form his own band if he wanted to sing about dope.

 

Originally, Little Feat were a four piece with Richie Hayward on drums, Bill Payne keyboards and Roy Estrada, who had also been a Mother, on bass. The debut album is uncannily like an acid-fried The Band. There’s some Country, some Howlin’ Wolf, some hallucinations and some scorching slide guitar. Sailin’ Shoes is altogether smarter. It starts brightly with a pop song unashamedly about ‘nodding’ from cannabis, features a second reading of Willin’ » Continue Reading.

Tiggerlion on Cupid & Psyche 85 by Scritti Politti

Green Gartside and his co-conspirators created this shimmering beauty of a pop album right in the middle of the dire eighties. It was the decade of Margaret Thatcher, economic recession, crippling unemployment, the miners’ strike, “the most bitter industrial dispute in British history”, UK military personnel dying and injured in an actual war, the dreaded Poll Tax and riots in most major cities. Sinn Féin began to stand in elections and The Troubles reached the most powerful in the country, the cabinet itself, at the Brighton Grand Hotel bombing in October 1984. HIV/AIDS was recognised and soon became widespread across the world. Mad Cow Disease appeared in British cattle. Princess Di produced an heir and a spare. Mobile phones, home computers, CDs and the Nintendo Entertainment System went on sale to the public, Eastenders appeared on the BBC and Channel 4 came into being. Live Aid changed the relationship between pop stars and the public. Rapidly developing synthesisers dominated the charts, along with gated drums, reverb, and jangly guitars as typified by the Rickenbacker 330. MTV transformed pop music into images, songs into cultural touchstones, and artists into icons. Michael Jackson’s » Continue Reading.

Kev Boyd on the ‘new old’ Martin Carthy album.

Martin Carthy’s first entirely solo album in 21 years will be released this year on his 84th birthday. A key feature of Martin’s recent live shows has been his purposeful revisiting of several songs from his earliest recorded repertoire. I had speculated for some time that this might signal a desire to revisit some of those old songs on a new album. The announcement of TRANSFORM ME THEN INTO A FISH confirmed this. It consists of 11 songs, eight of which originally appeared on Martin’s eponymous debut album in 1965, with the remaining three having featured in his live and recorded repertoires to varying degrees in recent (and not-so-recent) years.

It’s not unusual for Martin to revisit songs from his past. He’s sung different versions of some of the songs from his debut album, and entirely rewritten and rethought others. Some have rarely left his live repertoire, while others have dipped in and out, occasionally vanishing as quickly as they seemed to have appeared. What follows is an attempt to catalogue the various versions, revisions and variations of the songs from his new album that he has been known to » Continue Reading.

Colin H on No More Forever

Many of Dick Gaughan’s 1970s/80s recordings have been out of circulation for decades. That’s a large part of the impetus behind the current ‘R/evolution: 1969–83’ 7CD/DVD box set in progress (gratefully funded via a successful Kickstarter campaign), which will draw from BBC, club/concert soundboards, scattered studio rarities and selected (licensable) album tracks to fill in the appalling ‘legacy gap’.

Dick’s three 1977–81 Topic albums are available digitally but only one is currently available physically (the excellent 2019 remaster of ‘Handful of Earth’, 1981); the two Folk Freak/Wundertüte 1982–83 albums are available digitally but the label is long dormant and nothing has been remastered or available physically in nearly 30 years. The 1986 album funded by the STUC had only a limited shelf life that decade. The two solo albums for Trailer (1972; 1977), the Boys of the Lough album for Trailer (1973), the joint album with Tony Capstick and Dave Burland for Rubber Records (1978) and the two albums for Celtic Music (1985; 1988) have all disappeared into a cupboard of doom, owned by the same people, seemingly never to be reissued or licensed to third parties.

In the interests of history and for » Continue Reading.

Kev Boyd on A romantic take on one of London’s old school coffee bars

The Troubadour is an old school coffee house in London’s Earls Court. It’s been around for years and as well as serving coffee it also has a well-stocked bar, serves decent food, puts on small gigs and has a specialist wine shop located in the adjoining store. It’s probably best known by a lot of people for being the venue for a folk club back in the early sixties that was one of the small number of places Bob Dylan played on his first visit to England in the winter of 1962. One of the resident singers at ‘The Troub’ during that time was Martin Carthy. He and Dylan quickly became friends who spent a lot of time together during Bob’s first visit and continued to stay in contact for a number of years.

A young Paul Simon was also around the London folk club scene during that period and Carthy famously taught him his way of singing the English traditional song Scarborough Fair. Depending on whose version of events you believe, either Simon or an unscrupulous, unnamed music publisher immediately copyrighted the song and pocketed » Continue Reading.

moseleymoles on Visiting Islay, home of nine whisky distilleries

I know that whisky and in particular single malts are a frequent topic of discussion here, so I thought some reflections on a five-day stay on Islay earlier this week might interest a few. Various discussions and a life celebration led me and Ms Moles to book an air b and b just outside Port Ellen for a short stay earlier this week.

One of the attractions of Islay is that you get nine – nine! – top-notch distilleries within less than an hour of each other. Four (Laphroig, Lagavulin, Ardbeg and the recently-opened Port Ellen distillery, are within hiking distance of Port Ellen. Ardnahoe, Bowmore, Bruichladdich, Bunnahabhain, Caol Illa and Kichoman complete the set. We booked three distillery tours in advance, the Calmac Ferry from Kennacraig to Port Ellen and off we went in the car.

Our accommodation was a mile outside Port Ellen, so at the last minute we added two days of e-bike hire. This proved to be a godsend. Mrs Moles has less appetite for the lengthy hike than I do, but was very happy e-biking around the island.

Our first booked tour was Laphroig, the » Continue Reading.

Tiggerlion on Odetta Sings Dylan released March 1965

Odetta was born in Birmingham Alabama in the Deep South, home of spirituals, slave songs, the Delta Blues and traditional African American folklore. Her early childhood was spent in the shadow of Jim Crow laws, the Ku Klux Klan and lynchings. She moved to Los Angeles aged six but carried hatred and anger for the rest of her life, channelling it into political activism, standing up for black rights, and into a smouldering passion when she sang. She attended a Baptist church, her step father took her to see popular black acts of the time, including Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie, and her mother listened to opera on the radio on Sundays, but it was a school teacher who spotted her singing talent when she was ten. By thirteen, she was having formal classical singing lessons. For years, she was immersed in the rigor of lieder, oratorio and opera. As she approached graduation, she was determined to be a professional singer but knew that, as a black woman, she was either going have to mimic Marian Anderson or never make it singing opera at all. She refused to be » Continue Reading.

Colin H on ‘Melody Maker’ 1/1/55 – what fun was Britain having 70 years ago?

Colin H on TH White

Here’s a conundrum that Afterworders might find interesting: what to do with a painting – unique in the wild, with no other precedents at auction – by a significant mid-20th century literary figure?

TH White (1906–64) is well-known as the author of ‘The Sword in the Stone’ and other Arthurian tales (and much other writing). He painted only as a hobby – one rather fantastical self-portrait, used on a book cover, being the only THW painting that appears via Google.

The painting was bought at auction in September 1981 by a resident of Alderney and depicts the four-master ship ‘Liverpool’, which ran aground on Alderney in 1902. White lived on the island from 1946 until his death in 1964. The painting, signed in White’s distinctive monogram and dated ‘49, was based on an old postcard that was reproduced in a book entitled ‘The Channel Islands’ by the art dealer Harald Eggert, who was also the husband of the buyer. The painting is currently owned by a relative of the original owner’s second husband.

As Mark says:

‘Amongst accompanying documents kept by the original buyer (who died in 1997) is an invoice for the cleaning and » Continue Reading.

Tiggerlion on Where Did Our Love To by The Supremes released 31st August 1964

Florence Ballard, Mary Wilson and Diane Ross were all brought up in Detroit’s Brewster-Douglass Housing Projects. Ballard and Wilson met at Northeastern High School. Ross went to Cass Technical High with the intention of becoming a fashion designer. Even as a youngster, Flo had a powerful, expressive voice and boundless enthusiasm. With her best friend, Mary, she formed a girl group called The Primettes to complement The Primes, a group containing two future Temptations. In turn, Mary, forever in the role of go-between, recruited her neighbour, Diane, to contribute some poise. As teenagers they auditioned for Berry Gordy, chief of Tamla Motown. He told them to come back after they’d graduated. In the meantime, they regularly visited the Hitsville U.S.A. studio, sometimes making themselves useful but mostly making their presence felt. Eventually, they were allowed to provide handclaps and, more excitingly, backing vocals to some records. Finally, in 1961, Berry was persuaded to sign them on condition they changed their name. The girls selected The Supremes from a short list of six.

The first half dozen singles got nowhere. Gordy wrote and produced most of them. » Continue Reading.

Colin H on imaginary meetings in songs

Tiggerlion on AWB by Average White Band released August 1974

Average White Band came from Scotland, pairs of them playing in different bands interweaving in a soul scene of the late sixties and seventies spearheaded by “the godfather of Dundee soul”, Dougie Martin. They moved separately to London, seeking fame and fortune, and bumped into each other at a Traffic gig. When they jammed together, a friend said, “This is too much for the average white man” and a brand was formed. The ‘this’ was funk, a syncopated, rhythmic groove with subtextures, complexity and personality, derived from Afro-Caribbean dance music. Funk had been officially invented by James Brown in the sixties and was almost exclusively played by black bands. With their translucent skin, rubbish facial hair, some of it flaming red, and an insipid sense of dress, Average White Band looked the antithesis of cool and funky. But, they could play. The key performer is the drummer. Robbie McIntosh, who worked professionally as a teenager, brought the groove and a lot of the personality. He obsessed over Melvin Parker, who played on Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag, and wouldn’t play if he didn’t consider it funky. He loved to » Continue Reading.

fentonsteve on VW Danbury Highline

Mrs F and I spent the week before last dashing round the North Coast 500 route in a hired VW Danbury Highline camper van. This was our first time in a mobile van (we’re more familiar with static caravans), so I thought, as there was an ATM thread recently, I’d jot down my observations.

We chose to hire this one in particular because it has a toilet, and I have Crohn’s disease (thankfully my guts behaved themselves and I didn’t have to use it). We collected it from Aberdeen, which meant the NC500 route (starting and ending in Inverness) became over 700 miles for us.

THE VAN

I drive a 1.6 litre diesel VW Golf Estate, and the Danbury Highline is only about 25cm wider and 75cm longer than my car, but twice as heavy when fitted out. Engine capacity was a little bigger (1.9 litre), with a six-speed gearbox, but with plenty enough poke for going up the steep mountain passes of the Cairngorms or to barrel long the motorway at 70mph. I didn’t work out the MPG figure but it was not far short of my car. I’m 5′ 11″ and I could » Continue Reading.

Tiggerlion on Rock Bottom by Robert Wyatt released 26/7/1974

Robert Wyatt was a loose-limbed drummer in Soft Machine, part of the Canterbury Set, a band that managed to morph Progressive Rock with Jazz. He moved on to form Matching Mole and then a solo career. He started to write songs for his second album in Venice in 1973 where his partner, Alfreda Benge, was working as an assistant editor on Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. Its waters flow through the lyrics and the music. On the 1st June, back in London, an inebriated Wyatt fell from a bathroom window at a party, breaking his back and paralysing himself from the waist down. During his rehabilitation, he had plenty of time to contemplate his life and rethink the music. He describes his catastrophic injury as the beginning of his maturity. He was grateful to be able to do anything and now that he found he had to rely more on his voice and a keyboard, he developed his skills at manipulating both very quickly. Alfie, an ever-present at his side, gently suggested there needed to be more space in his music. Just breathe. Musically, he felt unfettered. He was free to » Continue Reading.

Colin H on future legends and future nonentities

charels edwards on Blind Boys of Alabama

The Bluesfest sideshow season is at its end. We’ve really enjoyed Meshell Ndegeocello, I’m sorry I missed Snarky Puppy, Elvis Costello was hit and miss.

And I wasn’t sure what to expect at tonight’s show, Blind Boys of Alabama. Would it be a couple of wheezing, wizened old dudes dusting off their gospel history? Or maybe some kind of cabaret mixing old and new, as I knew they’d recorded and played with a range of artists from other genres.

It’s hard to believe the original Blind Boys started in 1939. Membership has slowly changed over the years, but they’ve always had high standards and achieved many accomplisments including Grammy awards and collaborations with theatre, film-makers and many other musicians. Their wonderful version of Tom Waits’ “The Devil Down Below” introduces each episode in the first series of The Wire. (The show used five versions of the song, one for each series. Waits’ version is also great in series two.)

To my delight, Karen Rouse had scored front’row seats in the balcony. Backed by a powerfully sympathetic trio on keys, drums and bass, two old blind guys and a not so old guy » Continue Reading.