Giant Donut Discs ® – April 2012
23. 4. 2012 | Rubriky: Articles,Book reviews,Giant Donut Discs
[by Ken Hunt, London] More music for a balmy life on the fictional desert island. April’s selections come courtesy of Christy Moore with Declan Sinnott, Madeleine Peyroux, Gangubai Hangal, Janis Joplin, Santana, The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock, Chumbawamba, Sheila Smith, the Grateful Dead and The Animals. Lots of Irish thoughts and thoughts about Ireland ripple through this month’s selections.
Gortatagort – Christy Moore with Declan Sinnott
John Spillane wrote Gortatagort (The Farm) about the place in Bantry, Co. Cork where his mother came from. Christy More imparts a real sense of presence to this song, though it took me seeing him perform it in concert for the song’s fuller magic to be uncorked.
The 6 April 2012 issue of The Irish Times carried Derek Scally’s article ‘Bucolic bliss drives Germany’s Heimat sensation’ and it prompted me to write a letter to the editor that I knew would never be run. Heimat is a concept that Irish people should understand better than many European peoples. It is not synonymous with Vaterland (Fatherland) or any of that trashy totalitarian stuff for a start. As Scally stated, it means ‘homeland’ and more. More particularly, it captures a sense of a place of belonging. When Christy Moore and Declan Sinnott performed Gortatagort at London’s Royal Festival Hall on 4 April 2012, what I also heard was an evocation of Heimat Irish-style.
Spillane recalls touchingly in his blog – at http://www.myspace.com/johnspillane/blog/431058506 – how Moore visited the site and soaked up its vibe.
From Listen (Columbia (Ireland) 88697 480002, 2009)
For more information about Christy Moore and John Spillane visit http://www.christymoore.com/ and http://www.johnspillane.com/ and http://www.johnspillane.com/gortatagort-the-farm
Wild Card In The Hole – Madeleine Peyroux
This is Madeleine Peyroux’ setting of a Woody Guthrie lyric dated to around 1949. It is an especial favourite among the album’s dozen tracks. Peyroux sings. Tony Scherr (guitar), Darren Beckett (drums) and Rob Wasserman (bass) provide the accompaniment. It is a tale about survival, most particularly what people do to survive in a world where it doesn’t matter one iota “who wins office/In that Big house on the hill.”
Talking to me in March 2012 in this outtake from an upcoming article in R2, Madeleine Peyroux said, “A lot of people have to really work hard to understand that something is a political message. I sing jazz songs, torch songs. You think it’s just a love song but it can also be a political statement ’cause anything you say about who you are is part of the community you live in. If you’re a woman saying you are in a relationship that is abusive and you sing about that in the blues, well, now people are aware that that’s a political issue. But back then ‘we’ didn’t think about it. Well, I think Woody and Pete Seeger knew probably more than anybody. Movements that have music and politics at the same time are when people get together.”
From the Woody Guthrie and Rob Wasserman ‘collaboration’ Note of Hope (429 Records FTN17844, 2011)
Raga Adana – Gangubai Hangal
This rendition in the ‘Masterworks from the NCPA Archives’ series – India’s National Centre Performing Arts – from April 1974 illustrates over and over again what a consummate vocalist she was. Here she is accompanied by Sultan Khan on sarangi and Shesh Giri Hangal on tabla. Krishna Hangal adds the second vocal line. This performance gets off to a ropey start in audio terms but the performance far outweighs any initial hesitations about the recording.
You settle into, and luxuriate in sheer vocal distinctiveness. From Ragas Ahir Bhairav, Adana & Yaman (Sony Music 88697 95834-2, 2011)
Get It While You Can – Janis Joplin
The US soul singer and songwriter Howard Tate first recorded this Jerry Ragovoy song in 1966. His recording was picked up on by Janis Joplin (1943-1970) for Pearl, rush-released in its original 10-track form after her death. The song could be construed as an unveiled hymn to hedonism. In her hands – and it is one of the best performances on what turned out to be her finest and final album – she reveals the song’s inner heart as being far more fragile. Over the years, talking to people who knew her and the Full Tilt Boogie Band has prompted how much a tragedy her death was the band. I steer towards the more romantic fragility of her vulnerability of this interpretation. Whooping it up may have been her public face but whooping it up she isn’t here.
There is yet another edition of Pearl but I cannot be arsed to keep chasing the whims of the marketeers. From Pearl (Columbia Legacy COL 515134.2, 2005)
Waves Within – Santana
The album’s opening track Eternal Caravan of Reincarnation begins with cheeping crickets and saxophone musings and functions like a trek across the Thar Desert. Its drums fade and in comes Waves Within, one of the finest instrumental pieces in the early Santana canon. Caravanserai was a marked departure from the Santana of Oye Como Va and Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen and on its release it apparently caused some consternation. The group split after this album. One faction, represented by keyboardist Gregg Rolie (who co-composed Waves Within with guitarist Douglas Rauch) and guitarist Neal Schon, formed Journey. Lead guitarist Carlos Santana and drummer Michael Shrieve on the other hand took the music into jazzier realms.
The music on Caravanserai was quite unlike the Santana that I had listened to perform in an inhospitable concrete shell, sorry, concert hall in Hamburg in 1971. It had a depth of intensity that was heartening. From Caravanserai (Columbia Legacy 511128 2, 2003)
The Brutal Here And Now (Part I) – The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock
Barney McKenna’s death on 5 April 2012 at the age 72 must have awakened many thoughts in many people’s minds. The last of the original Dubliners, his group ranks as an omnipresent force in Irish roots music and their influence ripples outwards through Planxty, the Pogues and Mozaic to The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock – and many points between – in the grand tradition of non-harmless noise.
The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock is a four-piece band. On The Brutal Here and Now, the album from which this track comes, Enda Bates plays bass, sings, adds electronics, acoustic and electric guitars, banjo and accordion. Allen Blighe, their lyricist, sings and plays banjo, electric guitar and esraj. Donnchadh Hoey plays guitars and piano, toots tin whistle and sings. Brian O’Higgins drums and plays percussion.
The Brutal Here And Now (Part I) captures the fieriness of the Dubliners and recontextualises that fieriness. Hear it if you get the chance. From The Brutal Here and Now (Transduction TDR012, 2012)
Add Me – Chumbawamba
A tale about the sort of friend that you really don’t want on social media. “Would you like to add me as a friend? Add me. Add me.” The album that this cut comes from is one of their most thought-provoking works. Jo Freya makes a guest appearance on saxophone.
“I don’t like people but I think I could pretend…” Great warped line. From The Boy Bands Have Won (No Masters NMCD28, 2008)
Dear Father, Pray Build Me A Boat – Sheila Smith
Sheila Smith was seven when Peter Kennedy recorded her in Laughton, not far from Lewes in the southern English county of Sussex in November 1952. Her singing is infused with Gypsy spirit and marvellously nuanced. She has a confidence and surefootedness to her delivery that is astounding in someone so young.
Shirley Collins, the compiler of this volume, observes, “This is a real gem, surely one of the most delightful field recordings of all time.” At her talk at the launch of the four new Voice of the People volumes at the EFDSS’s Cecil Sharp House on 15 March 2012, she played Sheila Smith’s Dear Father, Pray Build Me A Boat and it was as if there were ripples running through the room. From the various artists’ I’m A Romany Rai (Topic Records TSCD672D, 2012)
Morning Dew – Grateful Dead
Bonnie Dobson’s song featured as a core repertoire item over the Dead’s lifetime (1965-1995). There are any number of interpretations that have emerged in the form of archival recordings over the years. This version appeals to me strongly. The band is bang on the money. It’s one of those recordings where you can pick an element to concentrate on.
Thinking about this song of dark times in another period of dark times, I sat in the Prince’s Head on Richmond Green in Surrey on St. Patrick’s Day – 17 March 2012 – and, writing, listened intently to Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann drumming in the service of the song. My focus was occasionally marred by particularly choice passages of Phil Lesh’s electric bass. From Live At The Cow Palace – New Year’s Eve 1976 (Rhino R2 74816, 2007)
We’ve Gotta Get Out Of This Place – The Animals
Disaffection, frustration and welling rage bottled into a far from ordinary pop song from the 1960s, but then the Animals were far from ordinary.
Listening again to this track was brought upon by hearing that there was a new edition – “Updated And Expanded” in banner headlines of the trade – of Sean Egan’s biography of the group Animal Tracks: The Story of The Animals, Newcastle’s Rising Sons.
A whole series of thoughts about the brooding atmosphere of this track – and It’s My Life in particular – flowed into my head. This is one of the finest working-class songs hymning migration. The leave-taking in this case tells a grittier story than most. From The Complete Animals (EMI CDS 79 46132, 1990)
The images of Christy Moore are © Santosh Sidhu/Swing 51 Archives. The copyright of all other images lies with the respective photographers, companies and image-makers.