Another RT-list post that will need some proofreading later.
Rob and I visited Montmartre this morning. Upon escaping from the funicular--which we'd taken to save our feet for a long stand at Le Trabendo tonight--we found ourselves in the middle of a street fair. There was iffy but catchy music, food, wine, and streams of people. On the steps of Sacre-Coeur, a young man with a guitar and amp was performing a Sting song: "I'm an alien...." He stopped to declare that he was not an Englishman in New York, but a Haitian in Paris.
Inside the cathedral, attempts were being made to maintain quiet, by keeping the large doors closed and lots of shhhhh!;s. We were also pretty much herded through, which means I didn't get as much time as I wanted to look at what seemed to be a display about the church's impending receipt of a relic from St. Therese. Which St. Therese I don't know, but there was a photo of a nun with this wonderful look of slight mischief, a quirk of the lips that said, "I know something you don't know."
The leap from this nun/saint to Richard's show at Le Trabendo tonight is rather a large one for me to make, though I can bridge the distance in my soul without thought. I felt as if I were privy to some delicious spiritual secret tonight.
Here we were, close enough to Our Man in this tiny club that we quite nearly could have lipsticked a St. George flag on his forearm, in honor of the World Cup semifinal...this fellow who is recognized by a mainstream publication as the 19th greatest guitarist of all time. I was absurdly, selfishly grateful to be able to experience such a dynamic concert in such an intimate setting.
There was space in the club; I don't think the show sold out. I heard a lot of English accents in the crowd. What nationality is the promoter, Karel Beer? I believe he was the one doing the announcing, in French that I could, strangely, understand perfectly. (The only French speakers I don't understand, apparently, are the French.)
Our set list was basically the same one Richard Condon posted for Brussels--save the acoustic portion after Al Bowlly (one of the best Al Bowllys I've ever heard, by the way). Someone requested "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?" and Richard, after asking, "Do you really want to hear that?" played it. As soon as he was done, someone else requested "Devonside," and he acquiesced. Hence no Vincent tonight.
I don't know what the highlights were. I don't think there were any lowlights! I am relieved that "Too Late to Come Fishing" is no longer in the list; that used to seem like a spot where the energy level plummeted. The set list tonight felt strong and fresh.
Very early in the evening, Bobby the guitar man brought a note out to RT--a rugby score. (RT had already commented that every non-rugby fan in Paris was in the room--the same joke my husband had made when we were in line.) He read it to the crowd; I think England was ahead.
RT received periodic updates during the show. He later told us that France was ahead. Then he got a note that I could see--England 11, France 9. He wouldn't read it to the crowd, but he declared it made him very happy. By the end of the show, the upthrust fist and other triumphant gestures from Danny made it clear that he was getting info somewhere.
I feel so lucky to have been there. I only wish I had more detailed information to pass along; right now it's a bit of a blur. I do hope that someone else was there to post.
We can still hear the rugby revelers outside our window on the Boulevard St. Germain. Imagine if France had won!
Pam
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Brooklyn, June 2007
From the RT list. Will add more info later.
No real notes, sadly, because it was somewhat of a blur. (They sell very big glasses of wine there. A hangover plus rain-soaked clothing plus a 3-hour train ride makes for brevity on my part.)
But thanks to the mad mnemonic skills of former listmember Dan Sallitt, I have a setlist:
Needle and Thread
Bad Monkey
[This is, according to Dan, where the show broke to wait out the second of the evening's downpours.]
Dad's Gonna Kill Me
Take Care the Road You Choose
The Wrong Heartbeat
Al Bowlly's in Heaven
1952 Vincent Black Lightning
One Door Opens
I'll Never Give It Up
Hard on Me
Mingulay Boat Song
Man in Need
I Want To See the Bright Lights Tonight
Wall of Death
Read About Love
First encore: Sunset Song
Mr. Stupid
Second encore: Persuasion (guest appearance by Teddy)
Tear Stained Letter
I must apologize to anyone whose ear I sang into, whose person I may have bashed into while "dancing," etc. Off to sober up...
Pam
No real notes, sadly, because it was somewhat of a blur. (They sell very big glasses of wine there. A hangover plus rain-soaked clothing plus a 3-hour train ride makes for brevity on my part.)
But thanks to the mad mnemonic skills of former listmember Dan Sallitt, I have a setlist:
Needle and Thread
Bad Monkey
[This is, according to Dan, where the show broke to wait out the second of the evening's downpours.]
Dad's Gonna Kill Me
Take Care the Road You Choose
The Wrong Heartbeat
Al Bowlly's in Heaven
1952 Vincent Black Lightning
One Door Opens
I'll Never Give It Up
Hard on Me
Mingulay Boat Song
Man in Need
I Want To See the Bright Lights Tonight
Wall of Death
Read About Love
First encore: Sunset Song
Mr. Stupid
Second encore: Persuasion (guest appearance by Teddy)
Tear Stained Letter
I must apologize to anyone whose ear I sang into, whose person I may have bashed into while "dancing," etc. Off to sober up...
Pam
State College, PA, October 29, 2008
Written for the RT list just a few hours ago, and now I must get some sleep.
State Theatre, State College, PA, October 29, 2008
Here in State College, Pennsylvania, rowdy young men are bruising up and down College Avenue shouting as if part of some Milgram experiment. Apparently it's got to do with some kind of sporting event. What do I know? I just go to Richard Thompson concerts.
Cozy in the confines of the very last seat of the front row, stage right--with a speaker right next to my head--I felt anonymous enough to jot down a set list.
I Feel So Good
Shoot Out the Lights
Time's Gonna Break You
Hope You Like the New Me
Dad's Gonna Kill Me
Hots for the Smarts
Walking the Long Miles Home
I Want To See the Bright Lights Tonight
Sunset Song
1952 Vincent Black Lightning
Persuasion
Crawl Back Under My Stone
Great Valerio
Cooksferry Queen
King of Bohemia
Valerie
encore:
Beeswing
encore 2:
Dimming of the Day
Substitute
This was, I think, a different "base" set list from the ones I encountered in Brattleboro and State College. "Beeswing" and "Dimming" were requests, but they were already very likely to be played in the slots in which they were played. A request for "MGB-GT" was denied by RT, apologetically ("I'm very rusty--and so are the cars").
I scribbled a few other notes during the show...for "Sunset Song," something about the tension between pleading and resignation in the instrumental melody.
"Persuasion": "light nimble rough rich." It seemed stripped down, almost tossed off, almost unconscious, in a very appealing manner. Sometimes I hear RT strain at this song, seem to struggle with it. maybe even overreach. Tonight it was very natural. Not that it didn't have rich emotional moments; I noticed, for the first time, the synchrony of sound and intent when his voice arches high on the word "start."
"Beeswing" had him accusing us of being "softies" and requesting a "big girls' blouse song," which had me in mild convulsions. (I never heard that term before about a year ago, and now I keep running into it.)
"King of Bohemia" was as lovely and melancholy as anyone could have hoped, and "Valerie" and "Cooksferry Queen" as vigorous.
"Wall of Death" has seemed slightly problematic to me these last three shows. This is where I admit certain disquieting observations I've kept to myself until now. At Brattleboro, and especially at Princeton, I felt that I was seeing the old man inside the young man during this song: less precision and passion in the guitar and, at Brattleboro, a strange, slight break in RT's voice when I thought I could hear weariness. Tonight, I caught some of that same hesitation, slight distractions or missteps, in the first several songs. But by the time he got to "Wall of Death," he had more than warmed up. It was stately and a little wistful--there's a real sense of begging in "Let me ride...one more time."
And by the time he got to "Substitute," he sounded as if he could go on for hours more.
I drew a picture during "King of Bohemia." It shows the black curtains at the back of the stage in this shabby-grand 1930s theater, with a lighting effect on them of a circular disk of stylized vines and curlicues, in a darker black. At the very bottom of the curtains, from my vista, was the very small shadow of RT's head and a bit of his shoulders, as if he was some small thing emerging into something vast and dark.
Pam
State Theatre, State College, PA, October 29, 2008
Here in State College, Pennsylvania, rowdy young men are bruising up and down College Avenue shouting as if part of some Milgram experiment. Apparently it's got to do with some kind of sporting event. What do I know? I just go to Richard Thompson concerts.
Cozy in the confines of the very last seat of the front row, stage right--with a speaker right next to my head--I felt anonymous enough to jot down a set list.
I Feel So Good
Shoot Out the Lights
Time's Gonna Break You
Hope You Like the New Me
Dad's Gonna Kill Me
Hots for the Smarts
Walking the Long Miles Home
I Want To See the Bright Lights Tonight
Sunset Song
1952 Vincent Black Lightning
Persuasion
Crawl Back Under My Stone
Great Valerio
Cooksferry Queen
King of Bohemia
Valerie
encore:
Beeswing
encore 2:
Dimming of the Day
Substitute
This was, I think, a different "base" set list from the ones I encountered in Brattleboro and State College. "Beeswing" and "Dimming" were requests, but they were already very likely to be played in the slots in which they were played. A request for "MGB-GT" was denied by RT, apologetically ("I'm very rusty--and so are the cars").
I scribbled a few other notes during the show...for "Sunset Song," something about the tension between pleading and resignation in the instrumental melody.
"Persuasion": "light nimble rough rich." It seemed stripped down, almost tossed off, almost unconscious, in a very appealing manner. Sometimes I hear RT strain at this song, seem to struggle with it. maybe even overreach. Tonight it was very natural. Not that it didn't have rich emotional moments; I noticed, for the first time, the synchrony of sound and intent when his voice arches high on the word "start."
"Beeswing" had him accusing us of being "softies" and requesting a "big girls' blouse song," which had me in mild convulsions. (I never heard that term before about a year ago, and now I keep running into it.)
"King of Bohemia" was as lovely and melancholy as anyone could have hoped, and "Valerie" and "Cooksferry Queen" as vigorous.
"Wall of Death" has seemed slightly problematic to me these last three shows. This is where I admit certain disquieting observations I've kept to myself until now. At Brattleboro, and especially at Princeton, I felt that I was seeing the old man inside the young man during this song: less precision and passion in the guitar and, at Brattleboro, a strange, slight break in RT's voice when I thought I could hear weariness. Tonight, I caught some of that same hesitation, slight distractions or missteps, in the first several songs. But by the time he got to "Wall of Death," he had more than warmed up. It was stately and a little wistful--there's a real sense of begging in "Let me ride...one more time."
And by the time he got to "Substitute," he sounded as if he could go on for hours more.
I drew a picture during "King of Bohemia." It shows the black curtains at the back of the stage in this shabby-grand 1930s theater, with a lighting effect on them of a circular disk of stylized vines and curlicues, in a darker black. At the very bottom of the curtains, from my vista, was the very small shadow of RT's head and a bit of his shoulders, as if he was some small thing emerging into something vast and dark.
Pam
Fairport Convention, The Cropredy Box
From The Green Man Review (www.greenmanreview.com)
Fairport Convention, The Cropredy Box (Woodworm, 1998)
A few days ago, the Green Man staff was discussing whether The Cropredy Box warranted a review. Someone opined that the three-CD set featuring Fairport Convention at its 30th anniversary concert in Cropredy, Oxfordshire, was only for the hardcore fans: the ones who fly into England from all over the world to commune with the band at Cropredy each year.
I'm one of those devotees, and even I said, "Naah, this collection is more than the average listener will want to hear." Of course, I bought it when it first came out. I was at the Cropredy festival in 1997, so I wanted a souvenir of my experience. Tonight, though, for the first time in months, I put on disc 2, on a whim.
I was rewarded with a sweet memory. In 1997, the usual festival compere (that's master of ceremonies for you Yankees), Danny Thompson, was recovering from surgery and unable to be at the festival. So the audience phoned him. Some 20,000 people, led by Martin Carthy, Norma Waterson, Heather Wood, Ralph McTell, and a host of other musicians, sang "Danny Boy" to Thompson over the phone.
The festival is studded with lovely occurrences like this one, and so is disc 2 of The Cropredy Box. I decided to write this review after hearing Richard Thompson's vocal on "Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman." It's a song he wrote in the early 1970s, while he was still with the band he helped found, and it surfaced on various recordings a decade after he left Fairport to become one of its most famous alumni. The hoarse, ominous voice in which Thompson, circa 1997, sang this song gave me goosebumps.
The disc also includes a reunion of the GPs, the one-off band featuring McTell, Richard Thompson, Dave Pegg, and Dave Mattacks. Cathy LeSurf drops in to sing Sandy Denny's "Solo." The goopily sentimental "Rosie" is trotted out. It's quite a mix of stuff, something for nearly everyone.
All that--plus Ashley Hutchings' narration of the history of the band. Let's go back to disc 1. Here we get Joe Boyd reminiscing about the band he "discovered" in the swinging Sixties, followed by a fiery set from most of the original Fairport lineup (minus Iain Matthews). Vikki Clayton fills in for the late Sandy Denny on this disc; it's a thankless task, but she tackles it with enthusiasm. Of course, when she sings "Matty Groves," she leaves out a few verses, but in doing so she spares the life of one of the characters, so what the heck.
So English folk-rock is born again on disc 1, and we follow its path through discs 2 and 3. The third disc is mostly the "new guys"--that is, people who've been in the band for the last 10 years or so. Here's where much of the instrumental brilliance comes to the forefront, with string workouts like "Dirty Linen" (with both Dave Swarbrick and Ric Sanders on fiddles) and "Woodworm Swing."
The concert ends with "Meet on the Ledge," the anthem Richard Thompson wrote before he married Linda Peters; when Martin Lamble, Sandy Denny, and Trevor Lucas were still alive; when we hadn't yet touched the moon or surfed the 'net. It's Simon Nicol, one of the original members, who now sings the line "And now I see I'm all alone." He's the only original member still in the band, but he's hardly alone; 25,000 people sang along with him that year.
There are two bonus tracks. The first is the traditional "Seventeen Come Sunday," which was recorded live for a Ken Russell special on folk music later broadcast by the BBC. (I missed this performance at the festival because I was stuck in a herd of fans sweltering in the souvenir tent.) The second is a recording of a very nasty little telephone prank played on Dave Swarbrick in 1979. This track leads to the CD warning: "Parental Guidance--Explicit Swarbrick."
I don't think The Cropredy Box is only for the hardcore. In fact, I'll assert that each of us in the "Fairport Cult" should buy a copy for a friend. To truly appreciate the album's ragged glory, though, the listener has to imagine the whole experience: the muddy hillside scattered with beer jugs, the multigenerational crowd with its multicolored hair, and the inward sense that something special will happen. It's not as good as being at Cropredy, but for most of us it's a lot cheaper, and it's a treat we can enjoy more than once a year.
--Pamela Murray Winters
Fairport Convention, The Cropredy Box (Woodworm, 1998)
A few days ago, the Green Man staff was discussing whether The Cropredy Box warranted a review. Someone opined that the three-CD set featuring Fairport Convention at its 30th anniversary concert in Cropredy, Oxfordshire, was only for the hardcore fans: the ones who fly into England from all over the world to commune with the band at Cropredy each year.
I'm one of those devotees, and even I said, "Naah, this collection is more than the average listener will want to hear." Of course, I bought it when it first came out. I was at the Cropredy festival in 1997, so I wanted a souvenir of my experience. Tonight, though, for the first time in months, I put on disc 2, on a whim.
I was rewarded with a sweet memory. In 1997, the usual festival compere (that's master of ceremonies for you Yankees), Danny Thompson, was recovering from surgery and unable to be at the festival. So the audience phoned him. Some 20,000 people, led by Martin Carthy, Norma Waterson, Heather Wood, Ralph McTell, and a host of other musicians, sang "Danny Boy" to Thompson over the phone.
The festival is studded with lovely occurrences like this one, and so is disc 2 of The Cropredy Box. I decided to write this review after hearing Richard Thompson's vocal on "Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman." It's a song he wrote in the early 1970s, while he was still with the band he helped found, and it surfaced on various recordings a decade after he left Fairport to become one of its most famous alumni. The hoarse, ominous voice in which Thompson, circa 1997, sang this song gave me goosebumps.
The disc also includes a reunion of the GPs, the one-off band featuring McTell, Richard Thompson, Dave Pegg, and Dave Mattacks. Cathy LeSurf drops in to sing Sandy Denny's "Solo." The goopily sentimental "Rosie" is trotted out. It's quite a mix of stuff, something for nearly everyone.
All that--plus Ashley Hutchings' narration of the history of the band. Let's go back to disc 1. Here we get Joe Boyd reminiscing about the band he "discovered" in the swinging Sixties, followed by a fiery set from most of the original Fairport lineup (minus Iain Matthews). Vikki Clayton fills in for the late Sandy Denny on this disc; it's a thankless task, but she tackles it with enthusiasm. Of course, when she sings "Matty Groves," she leaves out a few verses, but in doing so she spares the life of one of the characters, so what the heck.
So English folk-rock is born again on disc 1, and we follow its path through discs 2 and 3. The third disc is mostly the "new guys"--that is, people who've been in the band for the last 10 years or so. Here's where much of the instrumental brilliance comes to the forefront, with string workouts like "Dirty Linen" (with both Dave Swarbrick and Ric Sanders on fiddles) and "Woodworm Swing."
The concert ends with "Meet on the Ledge," the anthem Richard Thompson wrote before he married Linda Peters; when Martin Lamble, Sandy Denny, and Trevor Lucas were still alive; when we hadn't yet touched the moon or surfed the 'net. It's Simon Nicol, one of the original members, who now sings the line "And now I see I'm all alone." He's the only original member still in the band, but he's hardly alone; 25,000 people sang along with him that year.
There are two bonus tracks. The first is the traditional "Seventeen Come Sunday," which was recorded live for a Ken Russell special on folk music later broadcast by the BBC. (I missed this performance at the festival because I was stuck in a herd of fans sweltering in the souvenir tent.) The second is a recording of a very nasty little telephone prank played on Dave Swarbrick in 1979. This track leads to the CD warning: "Parental Guidance--Explicit Swarbrick."
I don't think The Cropredy Box is only for the hardcore. In fact, I'll assert that each of us in the "Fairport Cult" should buy a copy for a friend. To truly appreciate the album's ragged glory, though, the listener has to imagine the whole experience: the muddy hillside scattered with beer jugs, the multigenerational crowd with its multicolored hair, and the inward sense that something special will happen. It's not as good as being at Cropredy, but for most of us it's a lot cheaper, and it's a treat we can enjoy more than once a year.
--Pamela Murray Winters
Joan Baez, Richard Thompson and Danny Thompson, Newark, 2005
This is a Dirty Linen review, but I don't know the issue in which it appeared.
Joan Baez
Richard Thompson and Danny Thompson
New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Newark, NJ
October 28, 2005
False men and false leaders, fallen heroes and firmly held ideals were on Joan Baez’s mind at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in late October. It’s not that social concerns are anything new to the venerable performer, who jokes often about her age. One such quip came after she mentioned one of her albums. “Should I explain what an album is?” she asked archly, and then explained that in the early days of her career, “I just stood next to the big black-and-white dog and sang into the tuba.”
Age has served Baez well. It’s added richness to her voice: How on earth does one talk about her sound, her aspect, without referring to the archetype she created in the 1960s, that birdlike soprano flowing from between the wings of raven hair? Otherwise, she’s escaped all the usual traps. She’ll traffic in nostalgia, for sure, but only when she wants to, and not without a sense of the present. (The NJPAC crowd enjoyed a musical joke she’s done for several years, where at the end of “Diamonds and Rust,” she told her blue-eyed, “unwashed phenomenon” erstwhile lover: “If you’re offering me diamonds and rust/ I’ll take the Grammy.”) And, despite her penchant for onstage dancing — a hip-swiveling, “I Dream of Jeannie”-armed maneuver that’s so uncool it’s cool — she doesn’t embarrass herself by trying to pretend she’s anything but a grownup. Sixty-four-and-a-half at the time of this concert, she didn’t even seem to be denying the “half” — just making that age look as fine as it possibly could.
What was surprising was the thematic cohesiveness of her set. She’s done many of these songs over the past few years, from “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “Diamonds and Rust” to Steve Earle’s “Christmas in Washington” and “Jerusalem.” Here, though, she brought them all together as a sort of musical revue designed to remind her listeners that there are youth in harm’s way and snakes in the henhouse. In a beautifully realized version of Elvis Costello’s faux-Civil War parlor song “The Scarlet Tide,”she added a line about bringing the boys back home, which made more pointed and contemporary the stanza: “Man goes beyond his own decision/ Gets caught up in a mechanism/ Of swindlers who act like kings/ And brokers who break everything.”
Not all of her choices were wise — particularly giving over part of the set to two cringeworthy poems, one written in African- American “dialect” — but, for the most part, she upheld and even surpassed that worthy image she created nearly half a century ago. Accompanied by two longtime band members — Graham Mabe on bass, guitar, and backing vocals, and Erik Dallapenna on guitar, lap steel, mandolin, and backing vocals — she might have rocked the house, if this house were able to be “rocked.”
NJPAC’s ornate setting — six balconies! — comes off less rich than nouveau riche; whoever paid for its showy splendor seems to have also ordered a cadre of audience members who seemed to find it beneath them to show too much adulation. Baez garnered some laughs and the requisite, if faint, singalongs for hits like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” but Richard Thompson and Danny Thompson, who were co-billed with Baez and had been first to take the stage, suffered from the torpor. There was nothing wrong with the Thompsons’ performance, which featured a chance to witness the extraordinary synergy between the unrelated guitarist and bassist. Maybe the music they offered was too complex for the strangely inert atmosphere. Richard Thompson’s self-deprecating wit — about Front Parlour Ballads, he said, “Rolling Stone said, ‘Extraordinary is not the word for this record’ ” — fell on ears unattuned to subtlety. The encore almost had to be begged for, as three or four Thompson fans stood and clapped vehemently over a wash of jewelry-rattling by the masses. One of these fans complained during the break: “Thompson sang, ‘Crawl back!’ and looked for us to answer, and when I sang back, ‘Crawl back!’ the guy in front of me turned around and glared.”
— Pamela Murray Winters
(Churchton, MD)
Joan Baez
Richard Thompson and Danny Thompson
New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Newark, NJ
October 28, 2005
False men and false leaders, fallen heroes and firmly held ideals were on Joan Baez’s mind at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in late October. It’s not that social concerns are anything new to the venerable performer, who jokes often about her age. One such quip came after she mentioned one of her albums. “Should I explain what an album is?” she asked archly, and then explained that in the early days of her career, “I just stood next to the big black-and-white dog and sang into the tuba.”
Age has served Baez well. It’s added richness to her voice: How on earth does one talk about her sound, her aspect, without referring to the archetype she created in the 1960s, that birdlike soprano flowing from between the wings of raven hair? Otherwise, she’s escaped all the usual traps. She’ll traffic in nostalgia, for sure, but only when she wants to, and not without a sense of the present. (The NJPAC crowd enjoyed a musical joke she’s done for several years, where at the end of “Diamonds and Rust,” she told her blue-eyed, “unwashed phenomenon” erstwhile lover: “If you’re offering me diamonds and rust/ I’ll take the Grammy.”) And, despite her penchant for onstage dancing — a hip-swiveling, “I Dream of Jeannie”-armed maneuver that’s so uncool it’s cool — she doesn’t embarrass herself by trying to pretend she’s anything but a grownup. Sixty-four-and-a-half at the time of this concert, she didn’t even seem to be denying the “half” — just making that age look as fine as it possibly could.
What was surprising was the thematic cohesiveness of her set. She’s done many of these songs over the past few years, from “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “Diamonds and Rust” to Steve Earle’s “Christmas in Washington” and “Jerusalem.” Here, though, she brought them all together as a sort of musical revue designed to remind her listeners that there are youth in harm’s way and snakes in the henhouse. In a beautifully realized version of Elvis Costello’s faux-Civil War parlor song “The Scarlet Tide,”she added a line about bringing the boys back home, which made more pointed and contemporary the stanza: “Man goes beyond his own decision/ Gets caught up in a mechanism/ Of swindlers who act like kings/ And brokers who break everything.”
Not all of her choices were wise — particularly giving over part of the set to two cringeworthy poems, one written in African- American “dialect” — but, for the most part, she upheld and even surpassed that worthy image she created nearly half a century ago. Accompanied by two longtime band members — Graham Mabe on bass, guitar, and backing vocals, and Erik Dallapenna on guitar, lap steel, mandolin, and backing vocals — she might have rocked the house, if this house were able to be “rocked.”
NJPAC’s ornate setting — six balconies! — comes off less rich than nouveau riche; whoever paid for its showy splendor seems to have also ordered a cadre of audience members who seemed to find it beneath them to show too much adulation. Baez garnered some laughs and the requisite, if faint, singalongs for hits like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” but Richard Thompson and Danny Thompson, who were co-billed with Baez and had been first to take the stage, suffered from the torpor. There was nothing wrong with the Thompsons’ performance, which featured a chance to witness the extraordinary synergy between the unrelated guitarist and bassist. Maybe the music they offered was too complex for the strangely inert atmosphere. Richard Thompson’s self-deprecating wit — about Front Parlour Ballads, he said, “Rolling Stone said, ‘Extraordinary is not the word for this record’ ” — fell on ears unattuned to subtlety. The encore almost had to be begged for, as three or four Thompson fans stood and clapped vehemently over a wash of jewelry-rattling by the masses. One of these fans complained during the break: “Thompson sang, ‘Crawl back!’ and looked for us to answer, and when I sang back, ‘Crawl back!’ the guy in front of me turned around and glared.”
— Pamela Murray Winters
(Churchton, MD)
Guildford Festival, August 1-3, 1997 (from Dirty Linen)
The excess of exuberant RT-list blatherings has driven me to put in a couple of "professional" reviews. (And my having loaded so much Thompsonalia onto this blog in a single evening has me feeling unsettlingly monomaniacal, so I'll quit after this one or the next.)
From Dirty Linen #73, 1997
Guildford Festival
Stoke Park, Guildford, England
August 1-3, 1997
In Britain these days, it seems like folk music is defined as music that generates a sense of community. American folk music hasn't been hit as hard by the dance/trance music phenomenon as music across the sea. Two major genres are taking over the British folk scene: multicultural fusion and techno music.
At the Guildford festival, you couldn't escape someone's idea of music. The concession tents blared dance beats as we hammered in our tent stakes. Throngs of henna-tattooed, Indian-cotton-clad attendees meandered around Stoke Park with TUKA-tuka-TUKA-tuka incessantly urging them to keep going. It's not very relaxing to live your life to someone else's soundtrack. I missed quite a bit of the festival because of problems at the campsite. (A hint to future Guildford attendees: Don't pitch your tent next to anyone named Patsy or Edina.) I wasn't taking the right substances to enjoy myself as much as others around me seemed to be. But I'm glad I didn't judge Afro Celt Sound System by its dull name alone, or I'd have missed one of the most vibrant and organic meldings of world and dance music in Britain today. There was a tenor singing in sean nos style, there were uillean pipes, there were synthesizers, there were African drums. Somehow it all worked.
Transglobal Underground was equally danceable, but more obviously Eastern, with some excellent kora playing, including the requisite trippy solo. The lead singer was an enthusiastic belly dancer whose chants and fringes moved the crowd.
Is it cultural piracy to use these musics in a new blend? Also featured at the festival was London's own Richard Thompson, whose music has melded Cajun, rockabilly, and numerous other influences that were hardly pure to begin with. Thompson is an unapologetic musical eclecticist, and his set included polka, middle Eastern, and jump-jive elements. He introduced "From Galway to Graceland" as a song "designed to appeal to two very disparate audiences," thus, he hoped, increasing his popularity in the southern U.S. and the Emerald Isle. Guest Christine Collister sang backup on "Sweetheart of the Barricade," from Thompson's new Industry album, about the decline of industry in Britain. Thompson's solo set was not as flashy as those of some of his fellow performers, but it proved that fusion of various musical styles is neither new nor unappealing. It also proved that a single guitar, in the right hands, can synthesize myriad sounds as adroitly and enjoyably as a studio full of machines.
--Pamela Murray Winters (Arlington, VA)
From Dirty Linen #73, 1997
Guildford Festival
Stoke Park, Guildford, England
August 1-3, 1997
In Britain these days, it seems like folk music is defined as music that generates a sense of community. American folk music hasn't been hit as hard by the dance/trance music phenomenon as music across the sea. Two major genres are taking over the British folk scene: multicultural fusion and techno music.
At the Guildford festival, you couldn't escape someone's idea of music. The concession tents blared dance beats as we hammered in our tent stakes. Throngs of henna-tattooed, Indian-cotton-clad attendees meandered around Stoke Park with TUKA-tuka-TUKA-tuka incessantly urging them to keep going. It's not very relaxing to live your life to someone else's soundtrack. I missed quite a bit of the festival because of problems at the campsite. (A hint to future Guildford attendees: Don't pitch your tent next to anyone named Patsy or Edina.) I wasn't taking the right substances to enjoy myself as much as others around me seemed to be. But I'm glad I didn't judge Afro Celt Sound System by its dull name alone, or I'd have missed one of the most vibrant and organic meldings of world and dance music in Britain today. There was a tenor singing in sean nos style, there were uillean pipes, there were synthesizers, there were African drums. Somehow it all worked.
Transglobal Underground was equally danceable, but more obviously Eastern, with some excellent kora playing, including the requisite trippy solo. The lead singer was an enthusiastic belly dancer whose chants and fringes moved the crowd.
Is it cultural piracy to use these musics in a new blend? Also featured at the festival was London's own Richard Thompson, whose music has melded Cajun, rockabilly, and numerous other influences that were hardly pure to begin with. Thompson is an unapologetic musical eclecticist, and his set included polka, middle Eastern, and jump-jive elements. He introduced "From Galway to Graceland" as a song "designed to appeal to two very disparate audiences," thus, he hoped, increasing his popularity in the southern U.S. and the Emerald Isle. Guest Christine Collister sang backup on "Sweetheart of the Barricade," from Thompson's new Industry album, about the decline of industry in Britain. Thompson's solo set was not as flashy as those of some of his fellow performers, but it proved that fusion of various musical styles is neither new nor unappealing. It also proved that a single guitar, in the right hands, can synthesize myriad sounds as adroitly and enjoyably as a studio full of machines.
--Pamela Murray Winters (Arlington, VA)
Birchmere, Alexandria, VA, April 16, 2001
Source: RT list again.
I hereby apologize to Tom Jackson for being quick to reach the keyboard. I won't spoil everything about tonight's show. (No, I'll just spoil a little of it.)
I've always liked the word "quiver." Don't you like it as well? It's a container for arrows--what you would think of as a stable protector for kinetic objects--but it's also something kinetic in itself. I've been looking for the word "quiver" all evening to characterize two moments in tonight's show.
The first was at the end of "Crawl Back Under My Stone." After that abrupt final strum, Richard stepped back, two or three steps, and I swear I saw him shake, or tremble--or quiver--and then open his eyes as if he'd caught his consciousness all at once in his own arms.
The second instance was the final note of...oh, man, which song was it? Might've been "Persuasion." Or "King of Bohemia"? He was picking out notes softly, as he sometimes does to end a song, and this last note was part of the major chord--not an unexpected note--but there was something about the way he hit it that the sound--not the pitch, but the sound--wavered. Quivered. If it was an accident, it was a brilliant one.
I told Richard that this was one of the best shows I'd ever heard him do. He seemed genuinely baffled. I said, "Hey, it sounds different to you up there than it does to us down here."
It was a powerful show, a passionate show, but it was the quiver that made it special.
(Or should I laud the arrows, rather than the quiver? Every one true to its target.)
Sorry I'm lapsing into purpleness...must be the beer....
Pam
I hereby apologize to Tom Jackson for being quick to reach the keyboard. I won't spoil everything about tonight's show. (No, I'll just spoil a little of it.)
I've always liked the word "quiver." Don't you like it as well? It's a container for arrows--what you would think of as a stable protector for kinetic objects--but it's also something kinetic in itself. I've been looking for the word "quiver" all evening to characterize two moments in tonight's show.
The first was at the end of "Crawl Back Under My Stone." After that abrupt final strum, Richard stepped back, two or three steps, and I swear I saw him shake, or tremble--or quiver--and then open his eyes as if he'd caught his consciousness all at once in his own arms.
The second instance was the final note of...oh, man, which song was it? Might've been "Persuasion." Or "King of Bohemia"? He was picking out notes softly, as he sometimes does to end a song, and this last note was part of the major chord--not an unexpected note--but there was something about the way he hit it that the sound--not the pitch, but the sound--wavered. Quivered. If it was an accident, it was a brilliant one.
I told Richard that this was one of the best shows I'd ever heard him do. He seemed genuinely baffled. I said, "Hey, it sounds different to you up there than it does to us down here."
It was a powerful show, a passionate show, but it was the quiver that made it special.
(Or should I laud the arrows, rather than the quiver? Every one true to its target.)
Sorry I'm lapsing into purpleness...must be the beer....
Pam
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