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.   

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. 

Wreckless Eric live at the Prince Albert, Brighton

When Wreckless Eric walked on to the tiny stage upstairs at the Prince Albert pub in Trafalgar Street on Monday night no one seemed to recognise him.  At first I wondered if he was an ageing roadie. As he stepped up to the microphone there was no audible acknowledgement from the half filled room. Seeing the smattering of chairs occupied in front of him, Eric observed that he had advised the pub not to put more out as his audience would be better off standing up in order to avoid getting haemorrhoids.

Storming into his first number, which was unknown to me, Eric thrashed his acoustic and sung with angst about a seemingly monotonous childhood. His voice was never technically brilliant, but it is still high up on the emotional register. Everything is intensely personal with Eric. As he explained to the Sussex audience, he is a local boy. He grew up in Newhaven and went to school in Lewes. Despite currently residing in New York where he paints and performs, after many years spent living in France, Eric’s youth obviously still resonates with him and with his writing. Droll humour runs through lyrics stuffed full of personal reminiscences, some of which he sparred about with members of the audience. The upstairs room at the Prince Albert pub is as intimate as a gig can get for both performer and audience. Several times Eric only part jokingly asked people to stop staring at him. 

Eric is best known for his Stiff Records material from the late 70s. Many numbers from that period were played on the night. These included “Reconnez Cherie”, and his biggest hit “Whole Wide World”. Always an intense experience, it lost little by being played solo. Not that Eric Goulden is the kind of performer who could have considered a cosy “Unplugged” groove. On the night many of his songs ended up as a thrashy, noise fest. Playing his acoustic through an array of effects peddles, Eric at times threatened to outbid “Metal Machine Music”, Lou Reed’s “pioneering” four sides of feedback released in the early 70s.

On “Joe Meek” Eric sung the praises of the man he called the inventor of British pop music. Meek is most famous for creating “Telstar” at a recording studio he constructed in his tiny Holloway Road flat in North London. That was just round the corner from a car boot sale where my wife experienced an epiphany after spending 50p on a CD copy of “12 o’clock Stereo” by The Hitsville House Band, Eric’s Americana-sounding, largely French, mid-90s combo. From that album, he performed a powerful version of “Can’t See the Woods (For the Trees)”. Sticking around for a chat afterwards, Eric told us that he is planning to record some songs from that period with The Len Bright Combo, a mid-80s garagey-sounding outfit that he has recently been gigging with again.

Eric’s lyrical references and banter suggest a man whose quest for love and happiness has been a rocky one. Yet he declared to his audience his happiness at being married to his sometime song-writing partner and co-performer, Amy Rigby. He ended his set with one of Amy’s songs somehow spliced together with one of his own, “33s and 45s”. This was largely comprised of lyrics based on classic song titles. It proved a suitable closer for a performer who obviously attracts the older fan keen to reconnect with a much earlier period in British music. Yet there is nothing nostalgic about Eric’s musical shtick, even if his between songs banter at one point found him talking about green double-decker buses.