Musings on the byways of popular culture
I haven’t seen this mentioned here yet – a recent documentary from the Gallagher family broadcast on RTÉ and BBC NI (but presumably not BBC nationally). It’s extremely well made – a human interest doc, not one for guitar bores alone.
I’ll put the iPlayer link in the comments.
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After a glowing review in this months Mojo about how this Touareg bands guitarist ‘unknowingly’ was channelling the sprit of Hendrix in his desert blues performances thought I’d check it out. The album itself isn’t yet on Tidal, my choice for streaming, but earlier ones are well worth a listen, and this live performance in a yard(?) shows what the reviewer is talking about. Loving the kids reactions when the beat drops (I believe that’s what the yoof call it). Will be playing more for the rest of the day, bringing some sunshine to a dismal Suffolk day!
No, not a review – a request… 🙂
I’m helping folk-bluesmeister Stefan Grossman and Repertoire Records towards a ‘Stefan at the BBC’ set, spanning 1968-86. We’re missing a couple of items… the sort of things that will surely have been taped off air by someone… hopefully someone reading this…
What we need are Stefan’s Radio 1 ‘In Concerts’ from 23/3/74 and 29/7/78 (this one with Davy Graham, John Renbourn, Happy Traum), and a ‘Folk on Two’ studio session from 23/7/85 (with Renbourn).
Survivals of things at the BBC can be curiously haphazard – Stefan’s first of two 1971 ‘John Peel Sunday Concerts’ is there (which also happens to be the one that several people taped off air as well… luckily one person taped his second 1971 ‘Peel Concert’) along with a 1976 ‘In Concert’ and a 1986 regional concert… but only a couple of tracks from the 74 and 78 ones.
If you think you have a cassette in the loft… 🙂
This just in… a lockdown duet worth a few minutes of anyone’s time 🙂
I thought Georgia bluesmeister Brooks Williams might like Bert Jansch’s late-period classic ‘Black Cat Bluyes’ and it transpired that he did…
My pal Lonesome Chris Todd filmed a promo last week for his new EP ‘Dark Horses’, using the faded grandeur of Lissan House in County Tyrone. It’s a beautiful track about complicated circumstances and a walk through a forest. Typical fare for a bluesman, obviously.
I had no idea this show existed – I’m giving the excuse that I was 16 when it happened, but it was on Sky Arts the other night and I forgot to record it. Drink may have been to blame. I’ve recently worked out that I can watch YouTube on my TV, and as Mrs P is absent I’m currently sitting on my sofa tapping all my toes. Great stuff
Boz Scaggs new album Out Of The Blues is very good I think. Mind you I’ve only listened to it once.
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I’ve been a bit quiet here for a while for a number of reasons, though I have been lurking! One reason was due to my annual “album in a month” RPM challenge, and due to pressures of work (another reason for absence, plus attendant stress levels) I decided to go back to basics and make a blues album, the great love of my teenage years which were spent poring over the works of Peter Green, Howlin’ Wolf, BB King, Ry Cooder etc al. So here it is, in all its Spotify glory (or there’s a free down load on Bandcamp). It spans all the stuff I like, and like playing, from acoustic through the early and later years and a spot of blues rock too for good measure. This one takes a wry look at how R&B used to have a quite different meaning to its modern definition!
Regular Afterworders will have heard me talking about Ballyclare bluesman Lonesome Chris Todd and his band the Hardchargers before. I’ve said it before but interest declared again: I’ve been helping Chris over the past year or so – and currently – towards a debut album (released last month) and furthering his performing opportunities outside of Ireland. I won’t benefit financially from any of this stuff – just an enthusiast for an artist wielding some contacts and loaning a bit of no-interest cash if needed. So, less a PR thread than an AW regular sharing one of his adventures…
Here’s the latest plank in creating that platform, the first of three live clips professionally filmed, by director Paul and his sidekick Jeff, at a show at Belfast’s Empire Bar on December 29th. Like most good things in rock’n’roll it was stitched together at an hour close to 11… or maybe 12…
We’d been introduced to Paul by NI film-making legend Michael Beattie. Paul was up for it – a plan to film three good quality live clips at the Empire show, to help get the message to overseas agents and promoters – in good time but reckoned, from costly past experience, » Continue Reading.
Lonesome Chris Todd, kingpin of the Ballyclare blues scene, was on Gerry Kelly’s BBC Radio Ulster show today, talking about hard times, paying dues and playing some blues. Regular Afterworders will know I’m a fan… so I cobbled together a slideshow to the new song he played, ‘Red Lion Yard’.
Last spring, Chris tried his luck in Blandford, Dorset – and found that (at that time) he didn’t have any. A week was spent sleeping in his van in Red Lion Yard, a pub car park. Ironically, during that period he did manage a few useful gigs – as sideman with Billy Boy Miskimmin, next on the bill to Jethro Tull at a festival on one occasion – and got a taste of playing shows in England after years of playing only in Ireland.
Still, you live and learn – and Chris got a great song out it, ‘Red Lion Yard’. To my ears it’s as if Charley Patton time-travelled from the Delta and found himself having existential car-parking issues in Dorset.
Hopefully, 2018 will work out much better in the Ballyclare blues world.
I’m off to Newcastle, County Down, tonight (and no, I’m not doing the accent…) to see the Hardchargers – Christopher, Hodge and Dave – blow those blues away with, er, a load of blues. Serious, no-nonsense, none-of-your-namby-pamby-airbrushed-Albert-Hall-residency-pap-here-matey blues. They’re the most exciting live act I’ve seen in ages, with a set that begins with resonator, washboard and ukulele bass and ends two and half hours later with edge-of-seat power trio workouts worthy of the late ’60s (including Alvin Lee’s thing with detuning E strings over the course of a solo that appears to last for days).
The track attached is a muddy Waters number, ‘I Can’t Be Satisfied’.
The chaps play roughly two thirds originals, a third covers. They record a debut album next month. I’ve every reason to believe it will be great.
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In my search for an antidote to boredom I decided to learn about the first blues singers with an interest for the ones that few cares about (unless Crumb, but that’s a bad example). So, I started to search informations about the likes of Barbecue Bob, Doctor Clayton etc… That’s how a website called http://www.wirz.de/music/odditfrm.htm became quickly handy.
There is a part in that site where the meticulous blogger had saved the strangest covers, the most obvious mistakes (because there is nothing that looks more like an old bluesman with a guitar than another bluesman with a guitar, apparently) and sometimes real uncommon things that never passed the printing. Have you had the same difficulties with blues records or is it a common problem in record industry ?
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A while back there was a thread of blues album recommendations but we have not had a detailed listing of people’s favourites of this core musical genre. For me it i the heart of all my music and the love affair goes back to the Stones Little Red Rooster, some 70s derivative Chicago blues and boogie by Aussie band Chain then getting into the heart of the matters with a compilation of early blues and the ripping slide guitar of Elmore James.
Live, the key event for me was seeing Buddy Guy and Junior Wells in about 1973 -first Afro Americans I had ever seen, Buddy in a red jump suit and Junior with a belt of harmonicas.Can still see them more than 40 years later.
Chicago /Delta blues is at the heart of my interest, with lashings of harp and slide. I dont like it too polite so Big Bill Broonzy and his ilk interest me less.
So anyway here are the favourtie records from my collection. not necessarily the ones most highly rated. Their is no BB King at the Regal – BB said it wasn’t anything special ,it was just another night on the road that » Continue Reading.
Having just been in touch with the Pacemeister, late of this parish, I thought we should catch up with his activities downunder. Shane tells me he’s been doing really well in the Aussie blues chart with his Trio’s latest album, and his form band the Bondi Cigars have a comeback album on the go too.
Here he is in fabulous form a year ago. (There are plenty more recent vids on youtube, but I just loved the feel of this one, and it’s atmospherically filmed.) That Pacemaker – he’s a class act!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q87_BcC8fds
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Songs for a bride on the cusp of a lifetime’s commitment. All for love.
I’ll start with something borrowed, a cover song, Charlotte Gainsbourg singing Hey Joe as reimagined by Beck. The subject matter, a warning. A warning of infidelity, murder and escape. Not very romantic, you may say, but, sometimes, the bride is understandably nervous.
I bet the Afterword can dream up many more, more appropriate songs.
It has taken Samantha Martin a little while to find the right musical vehicle for her astonishingly powerful, force-of-nature voice. She has worked within various roots music styles, taking a roots-rock approach with earlier group Samantha Martin and the Haggard. With current group Delta Sugar she has settled upon a soul meets blues meets gospel hybrid in which that voice is the key instrument.
Review from bluesinthenorthwest.com: Toronto based ensemble Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar have quickly been recognized as rising stars in the Canadian roots and blues music scene since the February 17th release of their exceptional recording Send the Nightingale. With extensive airplay and reviews from around the world, critics are hailing Martin as “a voice that comes along once in a generation” (Bob Mersereau) and “raw, urgent lead vocals that invite favorable comparisons to those of Bonnie Tyler.” (Duane Verh, Roots Music Report) Within a few weeks Send the Nightingale was featured on The Alternate Root Top Ten Tracks of the Week, and has reached #3 on the !earshot National Folk/Roots/Blues charts with several positions on » Continue Reading.
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Following his death, I’ve been listening to Don Covay. He was the epitome of party soul, typified by his biggest hit, See Saw. His backing band was aptly named The Goodtimers. Suddenly, he teamed up with The Jefferson Lemon Blues Band and released a full-on throaty blues album, The House Of Blue Lights. It was a completely unexpected musical diversion quite different to the rest of his catalogue. It was a musical hand-brake turn.
All the best groups develop their sound and some, such as Bowie, wilfully defy expectations but there aren’t many that do something out of character and then immediately go back to their usual delivery. I thought of Talk Talk and Spirit Of Eden. However, looking back, I can hear some of Spirit in their previous album and Mark Hollis continued to explore the Spirit style in his solo albums.
I’m convinced The Afterword can come up with more examples of the musical handbrake turn.
In the meantime, compare and contrast But I Forgive You Blues with See Saw. (The link to See Saw is in red underneath But I Forgive You Blues. I can’t seem to embed it).
