CAPTAIN BEEFHEART IS DEAD.

I met Don van Vliet just the once, in the gents at Warwick University. I offered him a pull on a joint. Ah, No, sir, people have paid good money to see us tonight and I like to be straight for them. Thirty years later, I still don't know whether he was shitting me or not. He was certainly, albeit on the basis of a brief encounter, one of the gentlest men I have ever met, even though Maestro Ry Cooder insists that Beefheart got the best from him by pointing a gun at his head. He hadn't recorded for a long time, instead painting in, I believe, the Mojave Desert. Last time I saw him he was playing two saxophones at the same time, threatening to sack his drummer and raising the roof. May he have been in Blues Heaven half an hour before the Devil knew he was dead.

EVENSONG. GODDAMN, WELL I DECLARE.....FALSETTO DEAD

Grateful Dead - Uncle John's Band (Studio Version)

EVENSONG, VIGILANTE MAN, RY COODER & DAVID LINDLEY.

SONGS FOR THE NEW DEPRESSION, NUMBER ONE.

This joint reworking of Woody Guthrie's Vigilante Man is meatier than Cooder's legendary 'seventies solo versions;  Lindley, though not as well known,  is also multi-instrumental maestro Americaine, nonetheless.  The images are of the Price worth Paying  'thirties dustbowl and of the expression of cruel selfishness which underpins the so-called frontiersman nouvelle, the teapartier,  the Godless heathen bastard, wrapped in a flag, pissing out on his fellowa, coming soon to the English shires, towns and cities, Have you seen that vigilante man, I been hearing his name all over this land?

IN THE WEE SMALL HOURS, TOM RUSH, NO REGRETS.

EVENSONG, JACKSON BROWNE FOR PRESIDENT.

IN THE WEE SMALL HOURS, KATE AND ANNA MCGARRIGLE.

IN THE WEE, SMALL HOURS.

Ralph McTell, so sweet, so foot-tappingly twee; his heartfelt, poncey wee narratives, captives oF his leaden, mechanical, appropriated finger-picking, a horrible, morbid accompaniment to his bedsit-dwelling audience's own, sterile, uninventive, pastiched lives......Robin Williamson,however, a whole other thing, his staccato open tunings, running joyful riot, his spare, sawing cello, his riffs, reels and ragas and his instantly penetrating lines lay bare the bones of living and loving, as they are. In the wide hills and beside many's a long water, you have gathered flowers, but they do not smell for me. If I could have, in a lifetime's scribbling, written only one line, that would be it - you have gathered flowers, but they do not smell for me.

EVENSONG: WILLIAM BYRD, GENTLEMAN OF THE CHAPEL ROYAL, 1540-1623, AGNUS DEI, FROM MASS FOR FOUR VOICES

EVENSONG. SEE? OLD MEN CAN PLAY THE BLUES.

A happy transposition. Maestro Segovia plays the Mongoose Tune, Bach Prelude BWV 1007.

EVENSONG: DEATH OF A CLOWN, SUSANNAH'S ALIVE. DAVE DAVIES.

His brother, Ray, is the beatgroup equivalent of Matthew Parris, dreary little tales of Waterloo Sunset and fashion and City gentry and oh, for fucks sake, the village green preservation society and Dave, the younger, funkier brother and the best nusician in the Kinks, was always overwhelmed. These are his two singles. Dylanesque, brash and enthusiastic, there is not a pretentious  line in either.

Ray was recently at Glastonbury, accompanied by a choir, would you believe, though not a very good one, egging-up his dismal pudding, fucking about, lazing, really, on a sunny afternoon. Waste of space, like,  those sixties, man.

EVENSONG; WAY TO BLUE, THE SONGS OF THE LATE NICK DRAKE, JUST NOT BY HIM.

EVENSONG: A MAESTRO AND TWO DIVAS. Paul Simon- Here Comes the Sun with Grahm Nash, and David Crosby- Rock &...

MATINS. NICK DRAKE WALKS

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.

THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON''T THEY? John Prine Steve Goodman, Souvenirs, Steve Goodman, You're the Girl I Love.

John Prine has the knack of Song; somebody said his music should be available on prescription to anyone hurting from Life's blows; funny, deft, razor-sharp yet gently, compassionately human and all in three chords or fewer,  John Prine has made valid the often pointless and overblown occupation of singer-songwriter.

Although he has produced a huge canon of work, Speed of the Sound Of Loneliness and Souvenirs are maybe his most well-known, well-covered works - one more "hit", therefore, than Richard Thompson - and his early partnership with the late Steve Goodman produced some of the nicest, well-judged second guitar work among a crowded galaxy of showier, Seventies pickers. Goodman's solo song, following this famous version of Souvenirs, shows just how good, how perfect he was on a big dreadnought, always enough, never too much. Eulogised still, even here, by some of our American readers, Goodman, dead and hallowed, will never inspire the discomfort and embarrassment of John Prine's current performances, seen in the second clip, below.

I have heard that Prine is ill, not long for this world, but that's no excuse for this shit and I never understand why people do this stuff beyond the time that they should, this is like Rembrandt taking a Stanley knife to a Rembrandt and proves, if it needed proving, that the Baby Boomers are rich in much, although not in dignity.

EVENSONG, HAIL, HAIL, ROCK'N' ROLL, RICHARD THOMPSON.

EVENSONG, DICK GAUGHAN, WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN

YOU POOR TAKE COURAGE, YOU RICH TAKE CARE

In 1649

To St. George’s Hill,

A ragged band they called the Diggers

Came to show the people’s will

They defied the landlords

They defied the laws

They were the dispossessed reclaiming what was theirs

We come in peace they said

To dig and sow

We come to work the lands in common

And to make the waste ground grow

This earth divided

We will make whole

So it will be

A common treasury for all

The sin of property

We do disdain

No man has any right to buy and sell

The earth for private gain

By theft and murder

They took the land

Now everywhere the walls

Spring up at their command

They make the laws

To chain us well

The clergy dazzle us with heaven

Or they damn us into hell

We will not worship

The God they serve

The God of greed who feed the rich

While poor folk starve

We work we eat together

We need no swords

We will not bow to the masters

Or pay rent to the lords

Still we are free

Though we are poor

You Diggers all stand up for glory

Stand up now

From the men of property

The orders came

They sent the hired men and troopers

To wipe out the Diggers’ claim

Tear down their cottages

Destroy their corn

They were dispersed

But still the vision lingers on

You poor take courage

You rich take care

This earth was made a common treasury

For everyone to share

All things in common

All people one

We come in peace

The orders came to cut them down.

 --------------

Je touch le chapeau a M. ptb 

EVENSONG. REMEMBER, O THOU MAN, RICHARD THOMPSON AND FRIENDS

IN THE WEE SMALL HOURS, MOONLIGHT MILE, TURIN BRAKES

Created by Jagger and Mick Taylor, written by Jagger-Richards, the song covered here is from the Rolling Stones' 1971 album, Sticky Fingers.

.

.....the song, "re-created all the paradoxical distances inherent in erotic love with a power worthy of Yeats, yet could also be interpreted as a cocaine song." No, surely not.

EVENSONG: THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN.

BIRMINGHAM SUNDAY, by  the late Ricard Farina,  performed by his sister-in-law, Joan Baez.

MONSTER MATINS