Giant Donut Discs ® – August 2011
[by Ken Hunt, London] June Tabor & Oysterband, Lady Maisery, Mike Waterson, Nørn, Bahauddin Dagar, Peter Bellamy, Bob Weir and Rob Wasserman, the Home Service, Aurelia and the Velvet Underground. And lots to do with work, the spirits of Rudyard Kipling, Robert Mitchum, Bob Hoskins and the summer 2011 music festival season.
Love Will Tear Us Apart – June Tabor & Oysterband
The Oysterband – Ray ‘Chopper’ Cooper (cello, mandolin, bass guitar, harmonium, vocals), Dil Davies (drums, cajón), John Jones (lead vocals, melodeon), Alan Prosser (guitars, kantele, fiddle, vocals), and Ian Telfer (fiddle) – reunites here with June Tabor to splendid effect..
June Tabor and John Jones invest this song of Joy Division’s with an enormous dignity and pathos. “Why is the bedroom so cold?/You turn away on your side…” is a pretty haunting image of a love going wrong. The cello-led arrangement captures a chill wind blowing no-one any good. No need to explain any more. It is a masterpiece of an interpretation of a great song beautifully captured from one of the most glorious albums of 2011 thus far. From Ragged Kingdom (Topic TSCD585, 2011)
More information, tour dates and all that jazz at http://www.oysterband.co.uk/
Sleep On Beloved – Lady Maisery
Lady Maisery is the trio of Hazel Askew (of the Askew Sisters), Hannah James and Rowan Rheingans. Folk trio, I guess you’d say. Their debut reveals a remarkable palette of of assimilated influences and inspirations. They include Pete Bellamy’s setting of Rud the Kip’s My Boy Jack, the witchy Willie’s Lady (Martin Carthys and Ray Fishers passim), a pairing of labajalg (“an Estonian flat-footed waltz,” and don’t shoot the messenger) and a polska (“written especially for singing by the Swedish vocal group, Kraja”), a music hall piece (from George Fladley of Derbyshire via Muckram Wakes of Derbyshire) and this lowering-down hymn from the Sankey songbook. This particular piece chimed because of thinking about Mike Waterson. It is a wonderful album. From Weave & Spin (RootBeat Records RBRCD09, 2011)
http://www.ladymaisery.com and http://www.rootbeatrecords.co.uk/
Tamlyn – Mike Waterson
Remember Mike however you wish. If you fancy a bit of parody right now, even if it’s under 60 seconds in length, his solo album had Bye Bye Skipper. Right now, a deeper draught is called for. Miss the photograph of Mike pushing the wheelbarrow on the original LP. Scandalously The Times failed to run an obituary of Mike Waterson so in revenge we barbecued the pigeon that brought the news to the desert island. Another Murdoch organ mishap. From Mike Waterson (Topic Records TSCD516, 1999)
Derek Schofield and Ken Hunt’s obituaries of Mike Waterson are, respectively, at http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jun/22/mike-waterson-obituary
Ossemanidesh – Nørn
Last month’s GDDs included this fantastical Swiss vocal trio’s Lahillè – a track from their debut album, Fridj – and a suggestion that updates would follow. Here is the first bulletin. Ossemanidesh is from their third album Urhu, their musical programme about time.
They sing in an imaginary language they call Nørnik, so there’s no sense to be had from what they sing but masses of feeling to draw upon. It is the equivalent of abstract painting. Imagine Alexandre Calame and Caspar Wolf crossed with Joan Miró. Compounding these confusions, live they bring to bear a remarkable sense of musical theatre, certainly evinced by their performance at TFF Rudolstadt in July 2011, combined with phenomenal musicianship. This track from the same programme as the album it comes from, was recorded in the winter of 2010. Exceptional stuff that allows the listener to make all manner of judgements about the music uninfluenced by semantics. From Urhu (no name, no number, no date)
More information at www.norn.ch
Puriya Kalyan- Bahauddin Dagar
The death of Indian film-maker Mani Kaul (25 December 1944-6 July 2011) provoked a stream of associations, mainly of the dhrupad kind. The rudra vina player Bahuddin Dagar features in his music documentary film Dhrupad (1982) and his rumpy-pumpy-and-parrot drama The Cloud Door (1995). Additionally, the death of the rudra vina player Asad Ali Khan (1937-14 June 2011) was on my mind. This is an especially fetching and memorable exploration of the well-known evening raga. Recorded in March 2000 in Bombay, it reaches the parts, so to speak… From Rudra Bin (India Archive Music IAM CD 1077, 2005)
Puck’s Song – Peter Bellamy
I think about Peter Bellamy a great deal and for many reasons. For his music, of course. That goes without saying. But also for his enthusiasm, enthusiasms and enthusiastic phone calls coming out of the blue. For championing Rudyard Kipling (this was his second album of Kipling settings) when many casually put Kipling obsession down as antediluvian or imperialistic and irrelevant.
And most of all, after the music and the man, and probably not karmically healthy, I kick his arse for taking his own life.
Most recently on account of so many people discovering and locating Bellamy’s music. A new generation of listeners and a new wave of interest. If it is possible to look down and say, “I told you so!” then Pete is saying it now.
Wrote Peter Bellamy for this album’s original release in 1972, “The Run of the Downs is a lyric tour of Sussex, in the manner of such traditional pieces as A Tour of the Dales. The tune is taken from the English country dance Morris On which also lent itself to Cornish Floral Dance.” The Downs in question are the South Downs of Sussex. Nic Jones provides the fiddle accompaniment. From Merlin’s Isle of Gramarye (Talking Elephant TECD178, 2011)
Click on for the label website, http://www.talkingelephant.co.uk/
The Winners – Bob Weir and Rob Wasserman
“Sing the heretical song I have made…” quotes Bob Weir in his setting of the Rudyard Kipling poem. Thinking about Rud the Kip prompted memories of this performance, recorded in the autumn of 1988. One time after doing an interview, we chinwagged and talk turned to Rudyard Kipling and Peter Bellamy. It emerged that Weir had his Kipling moments, too. But that should be a story for another time. The line “He travels the fastest who travels alone!” is one of my favourite travel tips. From Live (Grateful Dead Records GDCD 4053, 1997)
The Kipling Society is at http://www.kipling.org.uk/
Alright Jack – Home Service
Alright Jack is a song that became and stands as a cornerstone of the Home Service’s repertoire. There are many things I could say about this song and this performance and the song’s transferability. Suffice it to say that I shall delegate the job to Bob Hoskins, given what he said in The Gurudian (sorry, another poor joke). Asked “Which living person do you most despise, and why?” Hoskins answered splendidly. He said, “Tony Blair – he’s done even more damage than Thatcher.” And that is the reason why John Tams’ song lives on and is still so cogent, pertinent and resonant. Bliar was enough to have brought out and bring out the intemperate and agricultural language in anyone. Bob Hoskins’ reply was a model of restraint. PS And Bliar’s patronising piece on Durham in British Airways’ flight mag for July 2011 is a model of hypocritical cant. From Live 1986 (Fledg’ling FLED3085, 2011)
Bob Hoskins’ full interview appeared in The Guardian of Saturday, 18 June 2011. Read Rosanna Greenstreet’s excellent Q&A at http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jun/18/bob-hoskins-interview-neverland
Vous et Nous – Aurelia
Aurelia is Aurélie Dorzée (violin and voice in particular), Stephan Pougin (percussion and kit drums) and Tom Theuns (guitar and voice in particular). Aurelia are still pretty much unknown beyond Belgium. I never got – and never is a big word – the casual dismissing of Belgium as a cultural birthing ground and environment. Belgium’s roots music scene is spectacular. Maybe it is the linguistic factors – three national languages, Flemish, French and German – with each language group accorded their own parliament under the Belgian constitution. Maybe that puts off monoglot nations or one-language minds and prompts petty cultural sniping. Love the way that Theuns, a mainstay of the Flemish band Ambrozijn, switched from Flemish to French for love.
The Hour of the Wolf, the title comes from Ingmar Bergman, is another side of bringing it all back home. It is remarkable, one of the finest albums to come out of Belgium in the last five to ten years. Live, they transform themselves into something else: a band playing music for dancers, quite unlike this album’s music. Aurelia is a major addition to Belgium’s roots music scene. From The Hour of the Wolf (Home Records, 2011)
http://wwww.homerecords.be/francais/aurelia/wolf.php
Rock & Roll – Velvet Underground
Around the turn of the year – 1971 into 1972 – thanks to the cartoonist Paddy Morris (IT, Cozmic Comics and later Northern Lightz), I fell in with Dez Allenby, Martin and Adrian Welham, collectively the psychedelic folk group Forest. (They had a couple of albums called Forest and Full Circle to their name on Harvest.) The associations and links piled up. Arguably, the one that bound us together the most was Loaded. We played it constantly. Its references were wide both musically and lyrically. ‘I Found A Reason’ had a tongue-in-cheek streak. ‘New Age’ had that wonderful opening gambit of faded glamour and fandom as well as name-checking Robert Mitchum. (He had given a monstrously humorous interview to Rolling Stone in 1971, anecdotes from which we still chuckled over. One anecdote gave a new insight to the expression ‘dog’s bollocks’.) I digress.
And there was Rock & Roll with that bass line. “Jenny said when she was just five years old/There was nothin’ happenin’ at all/Every time she puts on the radio/There was nothin’ goin’ down at all/Not at all…” is how it starts.
The lyric continues, “Then one fine mornin’ she puts on a New York station/She don’t believe what she heard at all/She started shakin’ to that fine, fine music/You know, her life was saved by Rock’n’Roll.”
Sometimes we all need to blow away the cobwebs. If one fine mornin’ you realise nothing’s happening, blast away the cobwebs with Rock & Roll. Elemental stuff. From the ‘Fully Loaded Edition’ of Loaded (Rhino 8122-72563-2, 1997)
The image of Nørn and Aurelia from TFF Rudolstadt 2011 are © Santosh Sidhu/Swing 51 Archives. The copyright of all other images lies with the respective photographers, companies and image-makers.
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