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"The cords of all link back...strandentwining cable...

"Hello...put me on to Edenville... aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one"

Entries from October 1, 2012 - October 31, 2012

Wednesday
Oct312012

Travel notes

I'm currently on the road, working, with not much time for focused writing. Catching up with new releases from some of the old (not always) faithfuls and pondering fuller reviews...

I've already made some sceptical comments about Bob Dylan's Tempest, but I haven't yet given it the concentrated attention it deserves. The problem is that, unlike the curate's egg, it is genuinely good in parts. But the bad bits - instances of plonking rhymes, clumsy lyrics, unengaged vocals which ignore meaning, limited and repetitive melodies, some actively unpleasant sentiments: overall, the screaming need for a dispassionate editor... - keep getting in the way when I try to experience the album as a whole and appreciate the good bits. And there certainly are good bits, with some striking lines, delivered on occasion with both power and guile, where he makes the most of what remains of his voice. The band are strong, tight and utterly dependable.

Van Morrison's Born To Sing: No Plan B is a different sort of mixture. The music is jazz-based, there's fire in the singer's belly and grit in his vocals. The persona Van presents is not very attractive - grumpy, bordering on misanthropic - but that will hardly surprise long term fans. It is both interesting and impressive and deserves closer attention. I'm not being sucked in immediately, though: there is, again, some off-putting clumsiness in the lyrics (such as the repeated line about 'Going down to Monte Carlo, about 25k from Nice' - which one critic has nicely compared to a satnav message - and which is far too obviously there only to set up an easier set of rhymes with 'Nice' than 'Monte Carlo' would offer). And Van's lyric swipe at 'pseudo jazz' feels a little bit risky in this context: the backing is echt jazz, I would say, but very much at the smooth end of the genre, without much honk or harmonic edge.

John Cale marches briskly into his eighth decade with Shifty Adventures In Nookie Wood, finding new ways of being distinctly him, with angular arrangements and squelching electronics, weird songs and animated vocals. A fascinating, edgy mixture which will take time properly to absorb.

But where's the time going to come from? It's taking a bit of doing at the moment to keep Neil Young & Crazy Horse's Psychedelic Pill out of my earphones - and there's nearly 90 minutes of that record to get my ears round. It's not going to win any new converts - and people who know what Neil and the Horse sound like will know immediately whether they're interested in a 27 minute opening thrash which ranges through rants about the quality of MP3s (and an accompanying plug for his memoirs)  and the commercial exploitation of Picasso, through to the possibility of the singer acquiring a 'hip hop haircut'. You won't be surprised to hear that I think it is glorious: irresistible musical momentum, squalling guitars - and an intriguing set of conversational gambits from a weird old friend. Somehow, he can get away with clumsy lines more easily than Bob and Van (and the one about Picasso is a real clunker) - partly because the overall persona here is warmer and more attractive, partly because he can still take time to craft and develop a real story-telling lyric when he wants to. 'Ramada Inn' immediately grabbed my attention: a beautifully empathic, 3D portrait of a loving old couple coping with alcoholism. Who else is writing so well about that sort of thing? (Maybe some personal insights in play, given Neil's own widely reported farewell to weed... But, whatever: deftly done.)

Can we have some more listening hours in the day please?

Thursday
Oct112012

Peter Case in Brighton

The best of Peter Case's songs suck you in to their own little worlds so deftly that you shiver with the final chord, like shaking awake from a dream. You've been there, inside, seeing what he's been seeing...

'Entella Hotel' has a small crowd at Brighton's Latest Bar rapt and, when it's evocation of living the lowlife in San Francisco is over, Case's collaborator tonight, Michael Weston King, speaks for us all:

'That's not just one of my favourite Peter Case songs, it's one of my favourite songs by anyone, ever.'

There are barely thirty people in the room and Case is so good, that's crazy. I shake his hand afterwards and tell him he should be playing to thousands. 'Maybe in another life,' he replies wryly.

He's 58 now and has been making solo albums since his classic self-titled debut in 1986. Prior to that he played in a couple of punky bands the Nerves and the Plimsouls. He's an accomplished guitarist, picking blues licks on an open-tuned acoustic with drive and no little finesse - but it's feel and impact rather than scrupulous technique that he goes for. His voice is distinctive, clear and expressive, with occasional echoes of John Lennon; his look is equally his own - imagine a beatnik Willy Rushton after an all night session...

This is the last night of a short tour with Weston King, a British country singer-songwriter and formerly one of the Good Sons. The set up is like a folkfest workshop: the pair sitting next to each other and trading songs, occasionally joining in to accompany each other. They open with a fine joint reworking of Tom Russell's 'Blue Wing'. Weston King has a decent voice and is friendly and engaging, but Case's songs are in a different league from his and so - like a folkfest workshop - the intensity and energy level in the room tends to fluctuate as the spotlight shifts.

Peter Case likes to tell stories between songs, as well as in them, and we get a long tale of buying in to Bob Dylan's self-mytholigising of running away to hit the road as a child. And, since Case grew up in Buffalo, his route out was Highway 62 - which runs all the way to the Mexican border at El Paso, via the birthplaces of Woody Guthrie and Buddy Holly... Cue a splendid take on Dylan's 'Pledging My Time', re-imagined as country blues.

He's ready to mix in some old songs, like 'Put Down The Gun' (drawn, like 'Entella Hotel', from his second album Blue Guitar*) and even responds to a shouted request for the Plimsouls' 'Oldest Story In The World'. But he is clearly ambivalent about crowd-pleasing: he agonises over a request for 'Old Blue Car' and eventually turns in as an alternative, seemingly-improvised blues which he dubs 'New Old Blue Car'.

He also conveniently forgets my bid for the great 'Two Angels'. When I remind him afterwards he tells me that the song has just been featured in a TV show, providing the soundtrack as two vampires make love 'which, amazingly enough, is exactly what I was thinking of when I wrote the song...'

My partner and I reflect on the way home on the entirely random way that audience size correlates to talent. OK, someone like Case is always likely to be in the cult hero bracket, rather than a household name. That said, the cult really ought to be a little less exclusive. She points out that Peter is just as a good a singer, songwriter and guitarist as, say, Steve Earle, and of a similar vintage. But Steve is capable of drawing an audience in Brighton about a hundred times the size of tonight's. Go figure.

And go and see Peter Case at the very next opportunity: you won't regret it.

 

*and if you're not yet familiar with his second album's full title, try this for size: The Man With The Blue Postmodern Fragmented Neo-traditionalist Guitar. Yep, that's about it.