Musings on the byways of popular culture
Somehow, my Katie Spencer – sensationally talented but a notable non-beard-wearer – was involved in a follicular misunderstanding that led to her being booked at the Beardy Folk Festival. In heated eleventh-hour negotiations with organisers, she got away with it by agreeing to perform only material written by beardy people, including this one.
This appeared on YouTube today – a fantastic raggle-taggle version of something from Bert Jansch’s little-known country-rock period in 1974 from a shower of fellows straight out of a Coen Brothers hillbilly film. Get down!
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That nice Mr Paphides tweeted a link to this and what a treat it is. Full House era line-up of Fairport Convention with the addition of Linda Thompson. Right proper music that. Happy Friday
Regular Afterworders might have noticed I’ve posted a couple of clips featuring the Hardchargers recently. The ‘Chargers feature ‘Lonesome’ Chris Todd (electric guitar/resonator/vocal), Richard ‘Hodge’ Hodgen (dr/washboard) and Dave ‘Laughing Boy’ Thompson (bass/ukulele bass).
They are the missing link between Charley Patton and the Who – well, I think so. Blistering, telepathic, intense rock with howling field hollers and skiffle technology. After seven years playing up and down Ireland in a status somewhere between semi-pro and pro, up to 80 gigs a year (which in Ireland, trust me, is some going – it has nowhere near the live infrastructure or opportunities of Britain or Northern Europe), the first five months of 2017 will see a short sabbatical in above-ground ‘Charger activity.
A devut album, however, is being recorded right now with engineer ‘Late-Night Tony’ Furnell in Belfast, provisionally entitled ‘Scarecrow’, to be released nationally in May, at which point the chaps will tour Ireland. Hopefully, by then, cunning plans having been (a) thought of and (b) come to fruition, opportunities to play further afield, including Britain, will have solidified.
The vinyl-length album will feature 8 tracks – 6 cherry-picked originals and 2 blues classics in ‘Chargerified form – » Continue Reading.
Sandy Brown was one of the great characters of British jazz – traversing/transcending all the factions in a career from the 50s to the early 70s (and an untimely passing). He made trad jazz, ‘mainstream’ jazz, a proto jazz-rock record in 1968 with John McLaughlin on guitar (‘Hair At Its Hairiest’, yes, a jazz version of ‘Hair’ – available in full on the Fellside/Lake CD titled ‘Work Song’, a lost gem well worth seeking out), wrote for ‘The Listener’ and designed recording studuios for a living – including, from memory, the one in Lagos that Macca used for ‘Band On The Run’. He wrote a very eccentric autobiography in the third person, posthumously published as ‘The McJazz Manuscripts’.
I heartily recommend exploring his works.
I’ve just noticed this half-hour TV concert on YouTube, so pour a glass of McWhisky and enjoy the great man (with a borrowed/so-so rhythm section) on some foreign platform before the flood…
