Les Johnson and Me Live at Leytonstone What's Cookin'

‘Les Johnson and Me’ are a six piece, part rockabilly, part country, Scottish cum American roots music band. They played last Wednesday night at What’s Cookin’, one of the most exciting music happenings in the UK. It can be found most Saturday and Wednesday nights at the Leytonstone Ex-Servicemen’s Club in north-east London, and Sundays at the Union Chapel, N1.

“Les” is a 54 year old sharp-dressed crooner, pencil thin with dark baritone voice. Highly personable, he told me after the gig that he has been doing this for 7 years; he started when he was 47. His day job, he says, is running a Glaswegian charity. He and his band are a treasure. Check out the wonderfully named “Hitting the Small Time Big” via the band’s website. Listening to it again I get the Jim Reeves comparison that his website invites you to make. Especially if you imagine a previously unreleased Jim Reeves' track on a soundtrack to a Quentin Tarentino film not yet made. “Break My Heart”, also available to listen to, made me cry on hearing it again.

On the night “Les” (he did tell me his real name, but I had one too many Guinesses that evening) performed all his own songs with one exception, a totally unexpected cover of “Senor”. This was possibly the least successful performance of his set, but it still thrilled. It’s taken from what Les rightly described as a much underrated Dylan album, “Street Legal”.

Les’ band are, as I understand it, essentially the Shiverin’ Sheiks (also on Holy Smokes Records), who are more or less the same things as The Strange Blue Dreams…I think. Of particular note was the southern-fried lead guitar player, and the double bassist. Les and the young female backing singer dropped out after the interval; the rhythm guitarist took over vocal duties, a mandolin player was added, and The Strange Blue Dreams were born.

The Dreams had a more mannered take on their shared musical roots, slicker in a sense, but somehow less effecting. The singer is a talented guy, but he could not quite command the same amount of attention. Perhaps it’s an age thing, i.e. mine and many members of the audience. You’d probably be more likely to dance to the Dreams and more likely to weep into your beer to Les. As I get older it’s the weepers that get me.

John Martyn’s “Spencer the Rover” (Live at the Brewery Arts Club version); Shirley Bassey’s cover of “And I Love Her So” (from Live at Carnegie Hall) and Judy Garland’s version of “Smile” (as performed on the Ed Sullivan show) are right up there. Not that there’s anything wrong with dancing. When the Dreams were on stage, Les and his backing singer pulled some fancy moves, as did a lady from the audience who, sadly, was the only actual punter to tread the boards on this occasion.

Stephen and Ali Ferguson continue to present roots musical gems. I sure as hell wish I’d bought Les’ latest CD, “15 Hands”, on the night, but even better would be for Stephen to get someone to record some of these performances for a What’s Cookin’ “Live in Leytonstone” CD. He could have a classic in the making.

Neil Halstead, Pete Bruntnell and Danny George Wilson - Live at Hastings Electric Palace

Three sympathetic English souls have teamed up for a series of ‘In The Round’ singer-songwriter performances in the UK. Last night they arrived at a gem of a venue on the English Riviera: the Electric Palace Cinema in Hastings Old Town, Sussex. Danny Wilson initially got the most attention - by force of personality and sheer volume. For my money the subtler song-writing and performing charms of Neil Halstead and Pete Bruntnell had more to offer, however.

Danny, he of Danny and the Champions of the World and Grand Drive, is less suited to the unplugged acoustic vibe. After all his ‘Champs’ band is a full-throttle affair. Ironically perhaps, such was his vocal force that Danny could have been totally unplugged; it would have been more comfortable for all of us if he had. However Neil and Pete (pictured left and centre respectively; see below) kept an amusing comic routine going as they shared one mic stand between them.

Neil has performed with Mojave 3 and Slowdive, names familiar, like the Champs, from BBC6 Music. Solo, his sensitive but engaging vocal style, and measured, subtly powerful, songs, were perfectly able to hold this, admittedly small, audience. Initially he came across as the Nick Drake of the three; Pete, harmonica in tow, being the Neil Young (especially circa ‘Hawks and Doves’); with Danny as Bruce Springsteen. By the end of the evening all three had imposed their very distinct personalities and such comparisons had become (largely) superfluous.

All three also deployed amusing on-stage, between song, banter, both with the audience and each other. The drollest was Pete, who came across as a more accessible Peter Cook. Sardonically introducing a song (‘Meet the Swells’) ‘inspired’ by building development issues from when he lived in Surbiton, he humorously toyed with the audience’s liberal sensibilities before launching into a typically passionate, intense, and empathetic performance.  Introducing ‘Tin Streaming Song’, Pete began to muse on the death of mining in Devon, before self-effacingly cutting that short and launching into his strongest performance of the night, which ended with a chorus that, for him, was untypically loud and demanding, but no less appropriate for being so.

Highlights of Neil’s contributions were ‘Tied to You’ , ‘Mighty Engine’ and ‘False Start’. There was no problem in tackling the latter. Yet, tired - he had driven his fellow musicians from the previous night’s gig - Neil struggled to remember the words for a couple of other songs in succession. ‘Elevensies’, he claimed, was used by US public service broadcasting as an anti-drugs song  - ironically, according to his website and to his comments last night, as he is rather fond of chemicals. Another song with which he struggled was a tale of love forlorn, but he was determined to nail it and, eventually, after two false starts, he did. The audience though, amused by his and Pete’s shoe-gazing musical sensibilities and seemingly stoned (or just knackered) disposition, didn’t care, in part because of the love they felt for these performers, whether already converted, or, in my case, getting there. These guys are no slouches either, to which their packed performance schedules, together and apart, testify.

I wish I could enthuse as equally about Danny George Wilson. He admitted to an overuse of ‘whoas’ in his lyrical range. He is not alone in this, it is this era’s favourite vocal tic. Danny uses it with more feeling than typical of much mind-numblingly moronic pop on which it appears, but generally he sounded like a man trying too hard. Sometimes his over the top sensibility worked – breaking, mid-way through one of his own numbers, into ‘Stand by Me’ was bold, inspired, and he got away with it. Other times songs that told tales of hitching to a gig with his Dad or of a love affair with Henry, a van that had once transported his band’s kit, were just cloying.

These are three great guys who, despite their musical differences, gel. They each added nice guitar and sometimes vocal touches to accompany the other. It was a shame though that they only truly shared singing and guitar duties on one song, the finale, and the one cover of the night, John Prine’s ‘At the Speed of the Sound of Loneliness’. This though was a sublime way to end the show.

Mike Hatchard's Crowhurst Breakfast Jazz - overeasy and sunny-side up

Mike Hatchard, jazz musician and singer, played a nearly two hour set this afternoon in the tiny East Sussex village of Crowhurst. Mike is a jazz and popular music veteran. As a young man he was Matt Munro’s musical director, he played with Barbara Thompson's Paraphernalia, and in recent years he has been playing up and down the English south coast with Herbie Flowers, former bassist with Sky and session man on many a classic 1970s rock album.

Those who came to Mike’s Jazz Breakfast at 1030 am on a Sunday morning in Crowhurst Village Hall were served bacon butties and coffee before he took to the electric keyboard, opened up with Sinatra's 'Come Fly With Me', and then provided the audience with a musical guide to some of the leading pioneers of 1920s jazz piano.

Mike plays with feeling and can sing often highly challenging and diverse material. A ragtime number associated with James P. Johnson and a boogie woogie tune popularised by Charles ‘Pinetop’ Smith were played with dexterity and gusto. Performing ‘Spain (I Can Recall)’) a Corea/ Rodrigo/Maren/Jarreau tune that Al Jarreau normally sings is not easy, but Mike carried it off. George and Ira Gershwin’s ‘Someone to Watch over Me’ was sung and played with great tenderness. 

More striking still was his take on  ‘The Dutchman’. The subject matter of this Liam Clancy folk number is a lifelong love ravaged, but not ended, by senility. Mike clearly loves this song deeply. It should have brought the house down. The audience were, I think, still taking it in long after he had moved on to the next number. 

Mike has great rapport with the audience, regaling them with tales from the road, which in his younger years was often traversed by bicycle. Such was the sympathy that Mike created, he even got away with an embarrassing ‘comedy’ number from a very different era: ‘Have Some Madeira, M’Dear’, a tale of an old man seducing an underage girl with the aid of fortified wine. 

At one point Mike brought on Crowhurst’s newest resident to play the trumpet. Paul Eshelby is a professor at the Royal College of Music. More importantly he is a sensitive as well as a virtuoso musician. I am sitting in a village hall with 50 people on a Sunday morning watching Paul play ‘My Funny Valentine’ to Mike’s skillful piano accompaniment and thinking that in many other Sussex villages this space would be reserved for amateur dramatics and the bingo. In fact the children’s club was scheduled to follow.

Toward the end of his set Mike picked up the fiddle and performed a couple of numbers in a swing style accompanied by Paul and Steve Savage, an accordionist.  The three musicians’ feigned exit through the audience brought very loud applause and many, well-deserved, shouts for more, to which Mike responded by switching to an acoustic guitar to perform a French gypsy jazz number with Steve.

A great show. Look out for Mike performing with Herbie Flowers at the St Mary's in the Castle in Hastings, and elsewhere on the Sussex coast.

PJ Proby pisses all over Gary Numan

Death disco

I was partying with myself in the new vinyl room last night when the news broke that Bobby Keys was dead, and then it was Ian Maclagan. Both men were around 70, and may not have been in the best of health. Keys was the 5^th or 6^th Rolling Stone, playing rock sax, but with feeling, on their most memorable albums including ‘Exile on Main Street’ and 'Sticky Fingers’. Maclagan, a  keyboardist, was one of the Small Faces before joining the Faces with Rod Stewart. Songs were played in his honour on BBC 6 Music. The Small Faces never sounded better, in part because the DJ avoided the kitsch singles in favour of maturer album tracks.

Pensioner rock

At the Congress Theatre, Eastbourne last month I had a great seat among the wrinklies to witness the spectacle of a ‘60s Gold Night’. We had got tickets primarily because Gerry and the Pacemakers were headlining. Gerry can do no wrong in my book for his take on ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and for writing and singing ‘Ferry Across the Mersey’. Gerry was ill. Fortunately his Pacemakers actually did live up to their name and were a comparatively spritely house band for much of the evening. Spencer Davis was there. He was without Stevie or Muff (a-huh) Winwood, but, backed by the Pacemakers, the old guy almost sounded urgent at times. The Searchers were in great form. Altogether now… “Needles and Pinzzahh…”  Yeah.

PJ Proby stole the show though. 76 and looking and sounding every bit like a performer in a club scene from a John Walters or David Lynch film. His hit version of ‘Somewhere’ became alt-cabaret as he strained to stay in tune but was no less moving for it. What a star.

Gazza’s glitter fades

I attended an alternative disco for overgrown school kids at Hammersmith Odeon last Friday. It was billed as a Gary Numan gig. Gaza was ill. After a few numbers I wished he had cancelled. Middle-aged women tousled their hair, Gazza fashion, and routinely pointed at the bewildering object of their desires. One particularly bovine fan shunted me aside in her desperate urge to shake her ass in time to the flu-stunted posturing of her diminutive idol. His routine, if I can call it that, was a one-trick affair of one hand on mic stand, incline head and shake vigorously. 

Gazza has been recording with Nine Inch Nails apparently. They have if anything compounded the cabaret feel. A succession of indistinguishable alt-dance numbers were pumped out by his bland band. At times he didn’t need to be on the stage. From the seat that I eventually retired to he was barely visible anyway. I only came for the hits. ‘Cars’ was OK, but, like everything else, was somehow made soulless on the night. Perhaps my experience would have been improved if his male fans weren’t essentially balding overweight morons with more interest in beer and bogs that Gary’s collected oeuvre. Thank God I left before the ‘Are Friends Electric?’ encore and the nauseating spectacle of Gary parading his kids like a winner of Sports ‘Personality’ of the Year.

The support was Gang of Four. Now they were good. Roy Jenkins was always more interesting than Tubeway Army anyway. They looked and sounded great; and by playing first they could be enjoyed before the army of beer spillers and would-be groupies moved in. 

Joan Armatrading live at Bexhill's De La Warr Pavilion, England

Rock’s Charlie Pride is a born-again black artist.

I lost touch with Joan Armatrading nearly three decades ago. In 1985 she seemed firmly planted in the white musical bombast of the time. Me Myself I, the last number by her that I paid any attention to, was a brilliant piece of overproduced pop-rock stomp. Last night at Bexhill's dlwp her devotees and enthusiasts were treated to a one woman seminar on Joan as major league black performer with a rightful, but not sufficiently acknowledged, place in the international music hall of fame.

She gave us the photos to prove it.

She did raw and accomplished blues, and subtler jazz, guitar. She sat at the piano and emoted like a latter day Nina Simone.

Joan's voice is as powerful as when she started but is now possessed of a richer, maturer tone. 

There were some occasional lyrical lapses. However Joan gave a flawless performance of numbers that ranged from the very good to the quite exquisite.

If there is one complaint, it is that Joan’s self-styled “last major world tour”, and first solo one, is evidently a low-budget affair. If she had been genuinely unplugged, the rawness that worked so well on her blues and balladeer numbers would only have enhanced her performance of the now classic Love and Affection.

It was still a barnstormer, but the pre-recorded synth strings and cheesy sax could have ruined it were it not for the sheer emotional heft and powerful hook lines that inevitably made it a winner. More or less devoid of “enhancements”, Down to Zero and The Weakness in Me, two comparably powerful torch ballads, were better performances on the night.  

Joan does great dead-pan too. She joked, self-effacingly, about pics of herself with better known performers, and introduced her encore so that she could get off the stage according to her schedule.

Joan closed the concert with an early favourite, Willow, and, oddly, gave the audience the last word as she played along to the few who felt confident enough to sing it back to her.

This gig though was an object lesson by Joan in “why I matter”.

She is of course preaching to the converted. 

Let’s hope she once again gets the attention she deserves from national and international media.    

Yellowmen raise the roof in Crowhurst

‘Raising the Roof’ was a late October musical celebration in a Sussex village in aid of the Yellowmen of Kadongdong. Loosely a folk night, it was a joyous and mostly very entertaining evening. 

The standard of performance was initially quite varied, but the second half was almost faultless, and this in a village hall in the south of England. A world away from the UKIP froth at nearby coastal towns, the cause was to aid local men bringing relief to a part of Kenya where death from diarrhoea is not uncommon. The performers were a mix of folk-based musicians, solo singers, performance poets, an Andrew Sisters-style act, and a relatively youthful rock cabaret act with attitude. Two threads ran through the evening: retired teacher Chris Fisher and members of the family Moses: Brian and his daughter Karen.

Chris, MC and the evening’s co-organiser with Brian, is possessed of an impressive traditional singing voice; Carthy-esque but not derivative. Brian opened proceedings with a spoken tale of winter gloom before Chris joined in, walking from the back of the hall while singing an acapella version of the traditional ‘January Man’.

The next act, Robson, a self-styled exile from Northumbria, sported a white jacket and shades and looked like a cross between Roy Orbison and Los Lobos, but was sadly possessed of the vocal charms of neither. He also fell guilty to the mistake of many an intimate, unplugged type event, whether in village or city centre: too much between song schpiel. When he lifted his singing focus beyond the childlike to a reworking of ‘Raggle Taggle Gypsy’, things improved no end.

Next up was a bit of a surprise. ‘JC and the All-Stars’ were fronted by a young man with real rock star swagger, a Liam Gallagher stance, and Ryan Gosling looks. Unfortunately it soon became rock star stagger as his back pocket quart of Scotch dominated more than his stage act, and a voice relatively well attuned to doing an Oasis cover struggled with (the perhaps inevitable) ‘Whisky in The Jar’. The band, led by Mark Cole, played well enough, with some nice lead guitar touches by ‘JC’ (Joshua Cole). Follow that.

Well, Roger Stevens, doing a comedy set, certainly did. I don’t know if he writes his own jokes, but every one was a winner, and I’d had less than a pint of a very local brew at this point. Most are unrepeatable here, but suffice it to say that gags about onanism are still funny.

Dave Roberts was billed as an ‘Old Hippy Sings Old Hippy Songs’. He did what it said on the tin, and he did it very well. ‘All Along the Watchtower’ was not just a straight cover, and its climax, segueing into the last line of ‘Stairway to Heaven’, was a hilarious exercise in self-deprecation. He was followed by a tasteful and highly accomplished instrumental acoustic guitar set performed by Fionn Johnson, not bad for a 13 year old.

Among the stand-out performances of the second half were Steve Royston, whose ‘Play for England’  juxtaposed British men serving in Afghanistan with millionaire footballers whose patriotic duty and failings usually preoccupies the nation more. Chris Fisher’s take on a Ralph McTell song was performed with a large remembrance candle and poppy as a prop. His performance likewise successfully trod a careful line between necessary scepticism and undue cynicism.  

The Victory Sisters were performing their wartime favourites routine for the first time ever. They have fine voices and definitely looked the part. Their set finished with ‘White Cliffs of Dover’; some of its more idealistic lyrics somehow sounding more ironic than ever amidst the political notes others were striking.

Brian Moses has the style and air of one of the Liverpool Poets. His almost aggressive telling of the kind of name he wished his street was called– Paradise Lane not Meadow Road - was powerful and funny. Roger Stevens then returned with Victory Sister Karen Moses to help him out on vocals. The Crowhurst News gave me the impression that he might be singing with the pulp fiction writer and husband of a Blair babe, Ken Follett, and the black Tory activist and ‘Play Away’ presenter, Floella Benjamin. Now they would make for an interesting duo.

The Collins boys, father and son, did one of the greatest versions of ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ I have ever heard – a very smart accompaniment to the passing round of Al Collins’ Bob Dylan hat to raise extra funds for the Yellowmen. Son Rory was less inspiring on his own as he, by his own admission, went for the lowest common denominator and regaled us, albeit in fine voice, with some sing-along Beatles’ and Kinks’ tunes.

Many of the performers were then brought out for one last time as Chris Fisher led them in finale that featured a funny take on the ol’ Macca standard, ‘Mull of Kintyre’; and, more stirringly, the Shire Horses’ ‘Sit You Down’. A very moving end to an excellent evening.

  

The White Light White Heat of The Oysterband & June Tabor

I don’t know if folk-grunge is a musical sub-genre, but on hearing The Oyster Band interpret “The Bells of Rhymney” at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, Sussex on Saturday night, I am thinking it should be. Apparently John Jones and the rest of the Oysters are happy to be termed folk-rock (perhaps in a knowing kinda fashion). However this was more the Fairports circa “A Sailor’s Life” (from ‘UnHalfBricking’), and with knobs on. If only The Oyster Band/June Tabor cover of the Velvet Underground’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties”, with June as Nico, had rocked like this. On that number you got the feeling that the boys wanted to rock out, but were holding back because of June's more measured, mannered, style.

"The Bells of Rhymney" was introduced by John as a tribute to the recently departed Pete Seeger, the American socialist folk troubadour. I had not realised that he was the first to put the original poem to music; many cover versions followed. On the night I thought I heard the repeated line “Who Killed The Miners?”. June’s earlier domestic political musings put the idea into my head that this surely inserted lyric was intended to be as much about 1980s Britain as a Seeger-type reference to unscrupulous US profiteer mine-owners of yore. Or maybe both.

(A note of criticism of the venue, or perhaps the band’s roadies and lighting crew. For much of the performance those in the balcony were treated to a "White Light White Heat" experience of a less pleasing kind than the Velvets produced. A naked back stage white light was beamed straight into our eyes, although this had stopped before the end of the gig.)

June Tabor brought a subtlety, not to mention vocal dexterity, to proceedings. Her confidence as lead vocalist contrasted with John Jones’ sometimes awkward but endearingly unassuming stage manner. I was pleased though that on the night she was only performing under the auspices of The Oyster Band, as too much of her between song banter and sometimes over earnest solo performances can grate. But when she is good, she is darn good. Their combined take on Jefferson Airplane's 'White Rabbit' captured something of the original's power but without adding too much. By contrast her and the band's interpretation of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" was almost a different song altogether, but no less powerful for that.

She led the whole band on a sublime acappella version of what I assume is a traditional gospel number. “Morning Star Rising” was, more or less, the title of this the penultimate song of the gig, and was for me the best performance of the evening. Perhaps it is being of a certain age, but hearing such exquisitely performed, but ambiguous-sounding, lines as “your mother is in heaven”, “your father is in heaven” made me struggle to hold it together.

The band gave an ample outing of their new LP ‘Diamonds in The Water’, which if its studio version sounds as good as the many outtakes performed on the night, will be well worth checking out. The whole ensemble, plus the youthful and very earnest opener Sam Carter, were on stage for “Put Out The Lights”, the evening’s closer. This I think is an Oyster Band number; although it was firmly and pleasingly in Richard Thompson/Fairports/Fotheringey territory (and might in fact have been "Shoot Out The Lights", the Richard & Linda Thompson number). This was an excellent gig from some very on-form folk troopers. Long may they rock.