Angelic in appearance, musically gifted with an unusual, Moorish, open-tuned guitar style, Nick Drake was from the same hugely talented stable as Pink Floyd, John Martyn, Fairport Convention and the Incredible String Band, managed and produced by New England wunderkind, Joe Boyd. Leary of public performance, stage-frit, Drake failed to promote his work and, a long-time depressive, died young, from a drug overdose; some close to him said he topped himself, others close to him hotly refute that. His handful of albums have sold these last forty years, his song, Pink Moon, promoting wider interest when it was used in a VW advert. This is from a concert celebrating his work, in January of this year. Hannigan is previously unknown to me but she gives a spooky, hypnotic interpretation backed by an ensemble of Drakeites, some of them his contemporaries, some their children.
Way To Blue is the Drake compilation album best suited to those interested but unfamiliar with his work. It will be in all good public libraries.
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If you appeciate the guitar, Mt I, try this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4JUqOyh06g&feature=related
Or this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0x-AefwV4M&feature=related
35 year's old recordings! Seen live 2 years ago, still a hair tingling virtuoso.
Saint Lisa? Have I not pointed you to this at Evensong? If not, I should have.
Thanks, Mr Mike, but I fear the hauteur of Flamenco music and dance intimidates me and the dexterity of gifted players like Paco Pena gives me arthritis, just watching them. His virtuosity is unmistakable but there is a severity in it which, in a classical fiddler, would be admirable but seems ill at ease in a folk tradition, as I said, the dance with its whoops and hand-clappings and heel-stompings also grates with me; it is a fascinating culture, the Moors being put down by the Christians whilst their music and architecture remain triumphant but it is nor for me. I can watch Segovia all day long, as long as he is playing Bach, y'know, proper Baroque 'n' Roll.
I think you did mention Lisa, mr m, and if I followed the link, as I would have done, was unimpressed by the foxy little minx. Let's see what Ms Lilith makes of her, she has a nose for these things. Or an ear.
Heretic! I have had to sack St Joni as she has gone bonkers on me but St Lisa has more than stepped up to the plate. Though some of her stuff is a bit on the weird side I have to admit.
I am afraid I am unmoved by the likes of Harrigan, Rusby et all. I am inclined to imagine that they are girls who sang in the bath and then some music producer noticed how pretty they are.
Yes, sounds right, there are a few such on this BBC Way To Blue concert,as well as the relatively medicore sons of Richard Thompson and Paul Simon, augmented by venerati like John Martyn's bassman, Danny Thompson. I did like that arrangement of Black Dog and a couple of other songs but for my sins I am the original Drake-ite of forty depressed years' standing.
I don't think Martin Carthy's brat, Eliza, appears on this but I haven't seen it all and the folk aristocracy seems as shameless as well, the Kinnocks, in promoting its own spawn. No business like show business.
Ms Carthy, for me, comes under "et al" Mr Smith :-)
Yes, Lilith, down with Mr mongoose and his o'er privileged, warbling hussies, that's what I say, Whaddawewant? Rock'n'Roll, that's what we want. And the Blues. That's what we want, too. And some Baroque shit. But down with breathless jailbait, eh?
Right on Mr Smith, although for me The Be Good Tanyas (as breathless jailbait) must be excused as the exception to the rule. If I want a really good folky sob (and it is as inevitable as night follows day - can't stay dry eyed - is it the chord changes? the lyrics?) I listen to this
The first mrs ishamel went to school woth Tabor at the Kings High in Warwick, despite that, we do, here, generally admire her work, especially that with Maestro Simpson. I saw the composer of No Man's Lan in concert, here, last year, what a loathsome little turd, I imagine those - the commonest - are the only chord changes he knows. Think, Oh, what's a horrible thought, Bill Oddie on a banjo, maybe, that's what he was like. Martin Simpson, coincidentally, was on holiday here and accompabnied the warm-up act for a couple of songs and a bigger man than Eric Bogle would have fled the theatre ashamed in advance of his bogus theatrical three-chord caring shite. I cannot tell you how objectionable he was, although I may do in another post.
The song, however, does work a strange, melancholy magic; Tabor's relative anonymity, as with that of Richard Thompson, remains a mystery to me.
Bill Oddie on a banjo! EEEWWWW! I see what you mean about the chords being the only ones he knows...just checked out The Band Played Waltzing Matilda.. I don't think he even started playing an instrument until well into his 20's - perhaps all those corporate board meetings didn't give him the adulation he felt he needed. I can't go to gigs where everyone is wearing Bob Dylan hats and lumberjack shirts.
His party piece, after NML and BPWM, was a song about a kid with cerebral palsy or some such - he wrote it cos y'know, he's a caring bloke - and guess waht even the littel dummy herself loved to hear him sing about her incompleteness, and her parents Wow, they loved, him, for writing it. I'd a ripped his fucking beardy head off and pissed down his throat.
He kept changing his capo position, as if to illustrate his virtuosity, which it didn't and amid a sea of nodding grey, early-retired, teaching and social-working heads, he was worshipped and adored. Only not by me, he wasn't.
8 August 2010 14:44
OH God I found the song, it's called Rosie and makes the ears bleed. Does he write tunes for Rainbow? I can just hear Bungle or George singing it. I notice that on the album blurb it says
"At the specific request of his band, the producer, the engineer. and numerous other supplicants, Eric Bogle did not play his guitar on this album"
I am not sure No Man's Land will ever make me cry again.
It will, if you just play it yourself; I've never managed to get past the first chorus without choking up, and I, as you know, am a native of Sorrow and to the manner born.
Rosie, that was it; fuck, I had hoped to have forgotten it, like the Vicar of So-ham and his vocation.
I saw Suzanne Vega once. Breathless jailbait she was, indeed - if mad, angular, spiky, breathless jailbait - with nasty 1980s hair. Anyway, she kept changing her guitar. This song, this guitar. Next song, another guitar. Completely odd behaviour given that she strums about four different notes at the best of times.
I am so sorry Ishmael :-)
Mongoose, you have truly suffered :-)
It is the lot of the mongeese, I fear, suffering, Evening , Mr m.
She was on the radio recently, Vega, celebrating herself and her work, some retrospective, what an arsehole, made Suite Judy Blue Eyes seem almost modest, Dunno quite how we got here from there, from Nick Drake's shade. The Drake Black Dog is one of those fine, staccato-ish, syncopated, disciplined guitar accompaniaments which the English (as opposed to Uncle Sam) do so well. Jansch, Renbourn, Jones, Graham, Simpson and in the English school I would include Paul Brady and John Martyn. I will have omitted countless other fine players but the night blows cold and rainy and memory is abed. I will post Drake's Black Dog, such a grim tune for a young man. And from Way to Blue, a junior vocal ensemble performing that song with the original orchestration . For your delectation and opinion.
A kind word is never wasted, Ms Lilith, Mr I. ;-)
Jeez, Suzanne Vega. What was I thinking of? Da da dada da-dada-da, Da da dada da-dada-da. Yikes. The Specials would disown me.
The drummer of les especiales, John, in his early btwenties, used to deliver my 'papers, although musically illiterate, he was a charming young man. I thought their music was rubbish, though, although not as unspeakably tiresome as that of UB 40, members of which ensemble are unlikely ever to have delivered anything. Did I ever tell you about sitting on the grass at WembleyStadium, waiting for Mr Bob, and being assaulted by what seemed aeons of UB 40's turgid, cod reggae? mr verge would have something to say about them, I'm sure, Fucking awful, they are, sixty year old rude boys, It would, as they say in Brummagem, break the heart of a wheelbarrow.
But what about Way To Blue?
Jeez, were you at the halfway line? I was. 1985 or 4 or 6 or something. Maybe earlier; I cannot remember. Bob at Wembley - a distant figure all in black, the God squad years. May we be spared a replay.
OTOH the punk/ska years were a necessary Cromwellian revelation, Mr Ishmael, to rescue us from the X-factor Seventies of the Bay City Rollers and Supertramp, and the spine-numbing horror of the peanut sellers of The Slade. A jumping up and down shouting time before we got to understand Maggie, and we got our jobs and our slippers and Horlicks. That we picked up along the way some less than perfect friends is just the way of life. Music, song, the punctuation not the text, reveals the rhythm and heart of the story.
Way to Blue? Love the song, care not for the version. Shoot the one on the right who knows not what harmony means in any of its guises. And Teddy is a poor man's version of his dad but at least he can sing. St Lisa does herself no favours.
Drake had a very distinctive, end-of-hippiedom almost whimsical sound. Like Frodo, the future was not to be for him. I used to have a black plastic "Five Leaves Left". The rolling surface of choice reeking of Red Leb. A happy time of innocence. Check out Buckley.
Thanks, mr m, close to the halfway line, certainly, bored shitless, UB 40 AND Santana. I don't think I ever saw a good Dylan concert after the 66 tour with the partial-Band, which I saw as a kid; the first half was slurred, demotic acoustic, the second-half traincrash rock'n'roll, the best I ever heard, better even than Captain Beefheart's magical concerts, better than Jimi Hendrix. I listen to them now, sometimes, on the bootleg series albums and feel honoured to have been there, proud of my discernment as a sixteen year old, my back pages.
I see what you mean about Two-Tone but the music did nothing for me, indistinguishable from that Madness shit, and I could never credit John Bentley and his chums with having any sort of purposeful revolutionary consciousness, may as well have been Slade, blacked-up.
I find myself moved by that version of Way To Blue, maybe it is just the fact of it which is meaningful, down all these days, rather than the artistry or lack of it.
I had all the albums, one time, but they went down in one of several floods.
Yes, Santana played that day. I don't recall UB40. But why would I? And I envy you the Bob experience at his acme.
I think that there is an anger in us all. My first rememberings of music were from school, little, untutored, knew nothing. And it was the Baroque'n'Roll of Mr JSB. Then I "borrowed" (stole) my brothers' blues and folk records and away we went. It's the heart of the sound. Which I know doesn't seem to mean anything but it is the point. If a song can make you smile or cry then it has whatever we seek from music - or words for that matter. I remember long dead Rev Kelly saying that smiles don't lie. I guess that he meant tears too.
The film is generally, well, round here, seen as a homoerotic fan letter to always-centre-stage Robertson from the worm, Scorsese; but not even that dims the passion of the music - apart from van Morrison's - this is great but Tears of Rage is my favourite Band song.
If you haven't read Across The Great Divide by Barney Hoskyns I do commend it, the story of The Band, rather than the sadly pompous irrelevant posturings of Robbie Robertson, albeit that I think the best bit of The Last Waltz is Robertson effortlessly outplaying Clapton on Further On Up The Road. And Dr John, of course. Bob disappoints, as usual, past his best by then.
I think mr and mrs berserk are Band fans, or fans of some of them. Although I wonder, curious about his absence, if he lies, now, ungratefully dead, below the flower strewn patio patio, matrimony having proved his undoing, as it does to so many.
I am sorry about the Band and the film but they were very fine and I forgive them.
Across the great divide you may find a friend in Nancy.
Yeah, me too, I forgive 'em, best American ensemble ever, I think. Ophelia, that's a favourite. When I Paint My Masterpiece, too.
You should, nevertheless, read Redneck Levon Helm on Robbie Robertson and Albert Grossman. I saw that Grossman close up in 66, nasty, scary bastard.
Jet plane in the norning, away to bed, good mongoose night.
Safe travelling Mr Smith
Funnily enough, the patio does need re-laying....hmmm.
Still here, Mr. Smith, but have my head buried in the wonderful book on Blind Willie McTell you so kindly sent us.
Ms. Tabor used to turn up and sing with our college band from time to time, mates with one of them. Fine voice then and a fine voice now.
Ms. Carthy is a damn fine fiddler, and her mum a damn fine singer. But it's a while since I've listened to them as that good old rock 'n roll always calls me back, laced with dollops of all sorts of American old time music, which somehow calls to me far more than British folk.
Mr. Drake never did it for me, I have to say, but as I have noted previously, I was born into rock 'n roll. Yes to the Fairports, yes to the String Band, but NO to whining bedsit boy blues I have to say. The sound of Leonard Cohen (who I now admire hugely) issuing from every other room on my stairs at college near moved me to multiple homicide. That and fucking Led Zeppelin, whose only purpose as far as I was concerned was enabling me to go for a shit in a clean loo at the Bath Festival of ?1970?, as the rest of the 250,000 crowd were idiot dancing to Zep. Man. Christ they were fucking awful. Much as I like Mr. Plant.
I love the Band. Love Levon Helm who it seems to me was the engine of what was in fact a fine rock 'n roll beast, born in the barrooms of Ontario. He's still pumping it out bless him, and anyone who wants to know what he is up to will find many concerts of his available for download at bt.etree.org. Robertson a cunt and an ego on legs, but hell - if we discounted the artistic output of all such as he we wouldn't be left with a lot.
Now, back to the Test Match. Or under the patio.
Garcia died 15 years ago today. Shook me up to tears, and I left work and burst into tears in the car. Like losing a brother. I still miss him. Bless him. There are few people who have brought so much joy to so many people as he did, and still does.
By the way, anyone got any weed? It's a total bloody drought here.
Never mind the vicar, Mr Ishmael, he can take it up with his boss eventually.
This is more important. I'd be glad of your opinion on this piece.
http://codshit.com/wells-chapman.htm
I find it more plausible than the comment left earlier last week by someone questioning the validity of the conviction, but I'm trying to disentangle my prejudices from objective problems there are with Huntley's testimony and the sequence of events.
Thanks Mrs WOAR. As you know, we've looked at the immunity from prosecution granted US servicemen abroad before, notably, I think, in two EMPIRE BURLESQUE posts, last year; it is a matter of p8blic outrage in some countries, notably Japan and South Korea; even within the US Military there is also widespread disgust at the authorities' failure to prosecute in inter service personnel rape cases; on the face of it - and I have just skimmed the link you provided - host governments have form in this area. It is, further, an article of faith, here, that the police and the CPS are happy to frame anyone for anything. I will read on and come back, thanks.
It was his technique and the orchestrations, with Drake, the former verging on unique, Davy Graham had done something like, a few years before but Drake made an art of it. The lyrics, I grant you, were juvenile in the main but he had the odd gem. Wouldn't give you tuppence for LedZep, the English folkies, like Drake and especially Thompson but many many more being far more creative musicians thatn Page on his bowed twin-necks. Couldn't take that Plant record, either, the one Lilith reviewed with less than critical enthusiasm.
Tell me this, was Garcia a good, technical guitar player - like Guitar george, knows all them fancy chords - or was he just a nice sort-of doodler. Most of the Youtubed stuff is so badly recorded that it's hard, as a novice, to tell?
Garcia? Well, given that I have no idea what good guitar technique is, I can't say. I do know he practised all the time; I do know he felt he could only do one instrument justice, hence never followed up on his exquisite banjo & pedal-steel guitar playing. I do know that when he wasn't playing with the Dead, he would be playing with his own band, and other outfits - even a Bluegrass band - Old And In The Way - for a while in the early 70s.
I do know he poured his heart into his guitar and thence out to all who would listen, and I do know that he has moved me more than any other guitarist I have ever heard, to tears and then to joyous laughter as a result of "did you just hear THAT?"
I'd better put you a sampler together Mr. Smith. I would note that it is hard to proselytise about the Dead; they are not a band that people "quite" liked - you either got them or you didn't, it seems to me.
Technique. Knopfler is always quoted as a master guitar technician; but where's the soul?
I gather he used to practise and practise the solo to Sultans Of Swing, so that he had it note perfect every night.
Jerry on the other hand never played the same solo more than once. In 2500 Dead shows and well over 1000 Jerry Band shows (with some overlap of material).
Thanks, mr elby. Yes, a shame about Knopfler, just, in the end, a bombastic show-off, even the sweet stuff he did with Chet Atkins lacking any emotion. And as for Brothers In Arms, well, him and me, we ain't.
The reason I asked is that most of the YouTubed Dead or JGB stuff seems muddy and doodly, little different, really, to what I might doodle myself, and that bloke high-stepping in the short trousers, well, I don't see what he adds, vocally or instrumentally. I have been looking at JGB's And It Stoned Me, for instance, and I want to like it, I really do, but it seems such a mess, so long, more like a Mass for the converted than anything else; that's ok if that's what it was, obviously worked for you and millions of others but I fear I shall go to my grave Ungrateful.
JJ Cale, now, I'd call him a good guitarist.
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