Ummagumma live at The Piper St Leonard’s

The Necessary Animals sonically rocked The Piper in St Leonard’s last night. Shame that there were only a few old farts like me and a handful of trilby wearers present to enjoy the blast. Upstairs at the re-imagined Norman Arms is an interesting experience. You could almost think you were at a happening decades ago, what with the day’s psychedelic wig-out residing under the title Ummagumma.

The N.Animals had teamed up with The Big Believe for the night, creating a crowded stage but a totally in-synch sound. They lived up to the psych billing, treating us to an inspired take on The Floyd’s 'Lucifer Sam' and a reworking of a Zappa Hot Rats’ cut that I’m choosing to call 'Sin of Mr Green Genes' and which included the innovative admonition to ‘eat up your greens.’ 'How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat..'. eh ...your greens.

Earlier a psych-surf band (The Somnians maybe?) had wigged out for just a little too long. Preceding them had been a Glasgow Govan ‘60s style troubadour with the musical vibe of Davie Graham, the attitude of Alex Harvey, and a hairdo that looked like he’d lost a bet down at the barbers. I think he was called CK Smith.

After the Necessary Animals had completed an impressive set that included a few takes from their excellent eponymous debut LP, we split, before the skinniest young guitar-slingers imaginable had had time to storm the stage.

What we’d witnessed of Ummagumma’s music was fine. The problem was that this apparent showcase of local talent didn’t do anything to promote or even explain WTF was going on. I wasn’t aware of anyone’s name, no one was announced, and no one had brought any info, merch or anything with them. I don’t think I’d have been the only one interested in an Ummagumma t-shirt or a CD by The Necessaries.

There was an air among what passed for organisation at this event of we’re too cool for school. This was a shame as what was needed was a square to take the mike and explain a little. You don’t have to be Harvey Goldsmith or a proto-capitalist bread-head, just encourage people to talk about the acts by giving them a bit of a big-up (and maybe get them to sell a t-shirt)

Anyway, thanks and love to all (especially Keith of The Necessaries).

A loft full of yesteryear

I have spent a good part of the day in my loft disinterring old memories by sorting through carrier bags of paperwork, slightly damp books, and yellowing photo copies. This was a difficult exercise. A good deal of it I am putting aside to trash, give away, or in some cases to offer to specialist scholars with a penchant for copies of UK and US Government documents relating to Kuwait in the 1960s and early ‘70s. Sad. Aside from the Kuwait documents, this was a difficult and often emotional exercise.

I am a hoarder. Why else would I have found boxes quite literally containing nothing but newspapers from the 1990s? However when the items I find are Christmas cards from long lost friends, a receipt for studio time in 1985, and heavily annotated 20 year old articles about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they stir up memories difficult to simply dispose of in the waste pile. A box of photos from the 1980s and 1990s mostly brought me cheer, especially those of my wife and I. Thinking of her does not invoke pain. A copy of a Sunday supplement magazine with Dylan on the cover, and with “For Neil” in my mother’s hand-writing, does.

I found an old cigar box with letters and cards. Some were from a slightly eccentric Edinburgh Quaker who many years ago would send me clippings apparently affirming unmitigated Israeli evil. He himself would not set foot in the Holy Land…on principle. However many were from my now deceased mother and father. I had long forgotten that my father had actually expressed in writing his “pride” in what he thought I had “achieved”. I don’t recall him ever clearly saying such a thing mind you. Rereading a note from my mother expressing similar sentiments was difficult, not because I don’t recall her ever verbalising such sentiments, but because in the end isolation and the disappointment she felt with her life made her love of her sons insufficient to want to keep on living.

Another dimension to the afternoon of half-remembered enthusiasms and distant echoes of longings once felt, and often discarded, were the piles and piles of rock magazines and newspaper clippings. Musicians’ obituaries, gig and album reviews, band profiles. Even a copy of Paul Yates’ execrable “Rock Stars in Their Underpants”.  The Middle East somehow took over from, but never entirely replaced, my youthful love of pop. The latter had rendered Tommy Docherty’s Man Utd pretty irrelevant for me when I was a mere 12 or 13. Pop has been a constant. It is a profession that I vaguely flirted with once as a would-be manager (briefly) and periodically ever since as an amateur critic.

The stuff I was going through was overwhelming, partly by virtue of its sheer quantity as it began to merge with the piles and piles of old books and magazines that already clutter our landing. However it also began to make me feel hopeless. Of course your life isn’t defined by old newspaper articles you’ll never read again and notebooks filled with scrawl. However they can say something about what your life was about, and, by now being old, what your life has become. Memories, past enthusiasms, hand-written notes suggesting real concern for the conflicts of far-away places. My notes from the present will not later be discoverable in box files or cardboard boxes. They will be on hard drives and memory sticks. Some will be included here, at least for as long as this blog exists. Their concerns, aside from what I need to do to earn money, will often be personal, whether I am writing about myself or an old band I have seen.   

Right now I just want to cleanse myself in all senses of the dust of yesteryear, but the boxes surround me, awaiting collection or council recycling. I am going out tonight and perhaps the booze will wash away some of the cloying sense of the past. At least until the morning when I will sit at this screen again, switching awkwardly between sad musings and professional assignments. 

The Random Canyon Growlers Live at the Birkbeck, Leyton

Last night a five piece bluegrass and “old time” music band played at what has become one of the premier London folk and country venues, The Birkbeck Tavern in Leyton. The Random Canyon Growlers, featuring guitar, double bass, mandolin, banjo and fiddle, are mostly from the east coast of the USA, but first came together playing in the Northern Rockies. Performing two sets and two encores, the Growlers’ fast paced, in the tradition, playing proved a perfect accompaniment to the pub’s impressive real ale selection.

Lead singer Jamie Drysdale told me that they write around a quarter of the numbers they perform; others are by such bluegrass legends as Flatt and Scruggs and country star Bill Monroe. This band will go down well in the north and south of Ireland, where they also have gigs scheduled this month; the common heritage is obvious, and is one that Matt Donovan’s fiddle playing gives particular expression to. They are also due to play in Brighton, Bristol and Chagwell. Their second encore was “Salty Dog Blues”, a deliciously titled and supremely fast-paced climax to another thoroughly good music night at the Birkbeck.

The band’s UK and Ireland booking agent was full of praise for Stephen Ferguson, the pub landlord and man responsible for the What’s Cookin’ gigs. Stephen himself puts on a brave face about the bottom line issue: will the pub survive the proposal before the council to turn the whole building into a block of flats. The “community use” defence in favour of a pub with very popular music nights may, sadly, not, be enough to stave off the march of “development”. Sign this online petition to register your objections so that hopefully more music of this quality can be enjoyed live at the Birkbeck.

10th October 2012

Stow Festival Ye Olde Rose & Crown 21st September 2012.

Having waited over an hour past the scheduled time to be allowed to pay my £5 and go upstairs to the Theatre at Ye Olde Rose & Crown on the second night of Stow Festival, I was not in the best mood to appreciate the promised night of folkish delights. 

I sat frustratedly through a solo set by a very pleasant woman called Sarah (aka “Bobbing for Apples”) that suffered from feedback that an hour of extra sound checking had not rectified. Audience reaction divided between semi pissed camp followers and polite applause for someone trying hard in very trying circumstances. She was actually a lot better when she really performed genuinely unplugged to avoid the feedback. Sarah was followed by a better but still mixed performance from another solo performer, Blabbermouth (a name more apt for the compere Paul Mosley). His set was better if a tad over earnest.

I was in need of something distinctly good to bother sticking around any longer in this hot and socially exclusive theatre room. Local band Candidate (see pic above) got off to a bit of a shaky start, but hit their stride half way through. Some nice Byrds-like arpeggio guitar and genuinely tuneful and emotionally engaged performances upped the quality of this gig no end. According to the band’s lead singer who I met earlier, few people like them except some comedian bloke who writes in The Grauniad called Stewart Lee. I think they deserve a wider blessing than him.

Moses (see pics above), a now E17 based but originally Huddersfield folk combo, I think, were apparently re-crossing some particular epic journey to grace us with their presence after 10 years apart (or so I could gleam from the onstage and rather cliquey banter by some of the blokes in the band with their dedicated followers).  Paul Mosley turned out to be their lead singer but even he, the night’s organiser, didn’t condescend to say what the name of his band actually was. I had to work it out from the description of their set in the programme. They were good, however, albeit that their incessant upbeat rootsy rousing performances occasionally seemed a bit forced, a bit like much New Folk in general (c.f. the Mumfords). The guitarist has the making of a good stand up comic, shame he didn’t do a warm-up while we were waiting for the gig to start. 

I can’t say if From The Deep, the final act (as billed), performing some kind of “swampy blues”, appeared or if they were any good as I had exited by this point. My problem that, and the late start. I think these gigs need better organisation, better sound engineers and a higher quality threshold for some of acts. Remember, Stow Fest/Ye Olde Rose & Crown organisers, some punters are paying, not (as elsewhere) cocking an occasional ear from the luxury of the bar.

Stow Festival 2012

The four day Stow Festival
kicked off Thursday night (20.9.12) with a selection of gigs in pubs and clubs across, unsurprisingly, Walthamstow. I got to see two. Not at the same time you understand, but by cycling fast under the influence. I was initially waylaid in Billy the Builders Bar in Clapton where I got bored waiting for a would be Django Reinhardt to appear and peddled back to E17.

The Duke’s Head (established 1837 it says above the stage; I think that’s actually when Wellington took command of the British armed forces) is in Wood Street. This is apparently now a regular free music venue whose threshold I had not crossed until walking into The Irregulars in full pelt. The Irregulars are a ska band specialising, it seems, in songs from “The Harder They Come” Soundtrack, some late 70s early 80s ska revival covers, and some obscurer numbers, obscure to me at least. There were quite a few ageing rude boys in attendance (all terribly polite these days), quite a few regular drinkers, and a few not so “local” looking people. There was a great atmosphere and the almost all-white band could play alright. Reflecting the inclusive spirit of the now rather old UK ska revival, not all the punters were white I am pleased to say.

I entered on “Miss Jah-Maica” (ouch) and exited on “Too Much Too Young”. There were two Beat covers as well, but sadly no “Stand Down Margaret” (she is reborn, no?). The evening was a lot of fun. Beer, like in so many pubs in the Stow, is not cheap at the Duke, but worth it perhaps if other bands who play here are of this calibre.

My next and final stop of the night was The Victoria. Once feared by “non-locals”, this upstairs and out of the way place on Hoe Street is actually a refreshing change from the more renowned music and arts venues such as Ye Olde Rose and Crowne where beer is pricey, gigs (like during the Stow Festival) are often in the theatre upstairs and therefore not free, and it’s not that easy to get a drink when busy. The Victoria has taken to holding Glam-Jam nights on Saturday that also charge, but offer an entertainment and a songbook hard to find elsewhere in Walthamstow.

The Victoria last night was hosting a free performance by Los Otros (see pics above; sadly taken after the event). They are modern jazz band with a front man with more than a touch of the trad about him. I only caught the last three numbers so it’s hard to judge the performance properly, but these boys can certainly play. A young tenor sax player (Polish, so I was informed) with good feel, and a very able drummer, double bass player and pianist who soloed to great effect. The bass man had more than a passing resemblance to Steve Howe from Yes (the band that couldn’t say “no”), which threw me somewhat. The front man sings at some distance from the mic which allows his voice, more a whisper than technically brilliant, to work to full atmospheric effect on top of, but not overly dominating, the excellent players. They finished with “All Blues”. I didn’t expect to hear a track from Miles Davis’ "Kind of Blue" album in The Victoria. Excellent.

http://www.stowfestival.com/