Monday 11 August 2014

EVENSONG. Canadee-I-O Nic Jones

One of England's army of super-virtuoso acoustic guitarists, Nic Jones has been copied by everyone, including the shameless old tart, Bob Dylan. Jones fell on hard auto times and plays no more but sings his stuff with his son playing the guitar parts. A bit too John'n'Yoko for me, that, but his album, Penguin Eggs, I think, is the best of a very, very talented English minstrelsy.

12 comments:

mongoose said...

Good one, Mr I. Very English - as discussed hereabove.

Lacks a breathy chanteuese though.

call me ishmael said...

You and your skriking bints, mr mongoose.

DtP said...

Dear Mr Smith

As mentioned ibid, takes a while to craft a reply - not a response - on Guido you were quite ruthless but a reply to some of your threads and I used to save them to draft e-mail.

We have a group e-mail address which the draft became available to everyone whilst I was doing a perfectly responsible point for point fisk to you but..... needless to say 'even Roger Waters who knows every weapons grade cuntishness when he sees it called Sinead O'Connor the nastiest piece of shit he's worked with' - or words very similar.

10 people in a room, had your entire thread ready for laughs and advertised I was tossing it off - about 3 paragraphs in - fortunately no chance of the old racist thing - shat myself when confronted - could have been anything. On review, Sinead O'Connor's a bit wank. Massively dodged a bullet. Needless to say, I save it to word these days and try not to stand near neon lights :-)

Cheers dude

DtP

callmeishmael said...

Not quite sure what you mean, mr dtp, you know I stumble about here, in cyberspace, always amazed when something I send actually appears on a screen, may I ask you, please, to redraft that for the hard of thinking; the room of ten, for instance, is that a real room?

callmeishmael said...

Almost percussive, mr mongoose, yet lyrical, the modalities of myriad tunings and timings, Jones's vocal, here, just behind the beat, there is no direct line from anywhere in English fingerpicking, so much of it influenced by the Morrocan tones in the work of Davey Graham, Bert Jansch and Nick Drake and later in John Martyn's stylings; some of it is coloured by US country blues players, like Leadbelly, Broonzy, Johnson and McTell. There is a documented, sung English tradition, in Cecil Sharpe collections and in the glorious Copper Family recordings but this army of bastard fingerpicking has only formed itself, here, since the 'fifties. Uncle Sam has had his own corps of pickers and for much longer, thousands of them, bluegrass, cajun, Delta blues, jug bands and boasts many almost academic virtuosi musicologists - Jonn Fahey, Stefan Grossman, Leo Kottke and more famously Maestro Cooder, David Lindley and in his own way, Jackson Browne but this is all Americana. Quite where English - I think it is an English, rather than a British school - players hear their muse is a bit more of a mystery. And there is tragedy, too, a cultural tragedy which lionises the meagre talents, the tiny palette of the monster, Eric Clapton, his new Ferrari, honestly, was six months late and it give him the blues so bad, and ignores the quiet, lifetime's craft of someone like Martin Simpson, Clapton pantomiming long dead black people in his all rights reserved copying-out book, Simpson lovingly tending his still, refining an English liquor, the better to soothe and comfort us all.


mongoose said...

I meant the voice rather than the guitar, Mr I. Although, that does sound a bit and curiously like something I cannot place but to which i will bend what is left of my mind.

Kerrin W said...

One of my all time favourites Mr I., especially the bit where he inhales through his nose before beginning the first line. These days that would be edited out, but it is the kind of refreshing detail that announces shut up and listen, you are now in the No Fucking About zone. Nic's version of Lord Franklin was spellbinding, too.

call me ishmael said...

Bend it, mr mongoose, I would love to know. I can think of no-one quite like Jones. Pentangle, with Renbourn and Jansch, especially Renbourn's version of the above-mentioned Lord Franklin and bits of Martin Carthy, although I know little of his ascent to BritFolk royalty and care less, echo Jones but I do think he is unique. Send the young mongeese to be and cudgel thy brains.

call me ishmael said...

I don't know if he wrote songs as compelling or revelatory as did/does Richard Thompson, mr Kerrin, nor is his technique as dazzling, his sources so eclectic but this, although part of a fairly narrow ouevre, has also been my one of my all-time, perhaps my very favourite piece of English acoustic fingerpicking. I am glad he's making a few quid, albeit fronting his own tribute band, most musicians'd die happy having crafted one of Jones's arrangements.

There is a film, dunno if you've seen it down there, about his life and times; not sure what I though of it, triumphalist ghoulishness on the one hand, a worthy showcase, on the other; confirmation that the blues run the game.

DtP said...

Yes, Sir, it was. Soz about the boozyness.

I used to copy your threads into e-mail format because it made it both easier to read and also compose an answer to. At my last job where we had a team of about 15 who had access to the group e-mail box, I had accidently pasted your thread about how Sinead was a total shithead onto the group e-mail draft board for about 4 hours whilst I tried to defend her in my head and reply accordingly.

In that time, every fucker and his dog read everything that was bad about Sinead's phrasing, wanton egomania and general gobby arsed cowishness.

Next morning - team meeting - who wrote this e-mail? 'Yup, that'd be me, soz about that - none of your fucking business' at which point there was kudos in the room. You write brilliantly bud, had that thread have been about Iraq - could quite easily had been fired.

Moral of the story - don't mix business and blogging.

Thank you

DtP

call me ishmael said...

Right, thanks, I understand, now, mr dick. You are too kind, I just do thinking out loud, only in pixcels.

DtP said...

Bjork's always been ace

Had it in my head for about 6 weeks,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17yWeynOfOI