Martin Simpson, Union Chapel, Islington, London 13 November 2007
14. 11. 2007 | Categories: Articles,Live reviews
[by Ken Hunt, London] To my mind, Martin Simpson's Prodigal Son was more than one of the finest releases of 2007 - it was the finest album of his recording career, trumping even The Bramble Briar (2001), also made for Topic. And he made his first album, Golden Vanity for Trailer back in 1976, so the lad's been around for some while. Explaining why Simpson has remained such a signal feature in my soundscape would degenerate into a wallow of words. Suffice it to say that his instrumental playing is impeccable, much like his taste in instruments. Over the last decade he has developed exponentially into one of England's finest interpreters of British and American song material in a folk idiom, whether traditional folk, blues or, in the stamp of that maestro of mystery, Hank Bradley, [...]
[by Ken Hunt, London] There can be little doubt about the impact the Indian subcontinent’s music has had abroad. Indeed, the tale is too big for one book, even Peter Lavezzoli’s remarkable Dawn of Indian Music in the West – Bhairavi. He names the usual, vital suspects like Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, John Coltrane, John McLaughlin, Trilok Gurtu, Yehudi Mehuhin, David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, George Harrison, Mickey Hart and Zakir Hussain.
Wisely, the author steers well clear of the far-from-plain tales of Raj-era India and its influences on the Western mind through music and philosophy, as illustrated by certain compositions by, say, John Foulds and Gustav Holst in Britain. In any case that part of the story is covered by Gerry Farrell’s Indian Music And The West (1997) – a book that The [...]
[By Ken Hunt, London] The papers and paraphernalia on the songwriter, guitarist, bandleader, novelist and occasional record producer John B. Spencer's desk spoke volumes about his life and interests. Constructed out of recovered Victorian hardwood floorboards, his desk would be strewn with the debris of recent conversations and idea-swapping about crime and mystery fiction, the stuff of allotment keeping and that season's seed catalogue from Marshalls ("The Fenland Vegetable Seed Company"). Alongside these would be a scattering of demo cassettes (some with the family budgerigar cheepin' in the background as the proverbial chick singer), handbills for art exhibitions and notebooks detailing ideas, overheard conversations and, sadly he related, real-life incidents too implausible to be used [...]
[by Ken Hunt, London] Lal Waterson, who died in September 1998 aged 55, was a founding member of the Watersons, the Hull-based folk group. Elaine, to use her proper name, was the youngest of the three siblings that eventually lent their name to one of the English Folk Revival's most influential and utterly inimitable voice-based groups. People called her the Quiet One. And there was a sliver of truth to that. Leastways while her defences were up and she was sounding you out, getting your measure. Still, without getting into the realms of cod-psychology about youngest children and their chatterbox tendencies, she had few problems when it came to talking, just difficulties whilst under the spotlight and getting asked to talk about herself and her songs. Lal Waterson was a very visual [...]
"It said more about pop than a year of Top of the Pops." - Observer, 1968 television review
[by Ken Hunt, London] The 1960s were a peculiar time for popular music in Britain. On the one hand, there was this enormous explosion of pop music (that was increasingly being called rock music) with a phenomenal coverage in periodicals and on the radio - especially pirate radio. On the other hand, British television barely bothered to cover the phenomenon, making at most feeble attempts to treat what was happening as worthy of serious treatment on television. It was a world of pop dominated by weekly programmes like Top of the Pops and Ready, Steady, Go. A hangover of a world extolling the importance of the Top Ten, when by the late 1960s the single charts were increasingly becoming the domain of [...]
[by Ken Hunt, London] Their marital relationship hitting the buffers by the beginning of the next decade was years away when Richard and Linda Thompson made these live recordings. Hindsight of that nature adds nothing to the frissons that In Concert 1975 delivers. After all, living a year of your life in no way compares to the way a year or three gets 'telescoped' for the purposes of biography. And in any case between 1974 and 1982 the couple released a sequence of jointly credited duo albums that count amongst the finest to come out of Britain during the period in terms of songcraft and performance. This is them at their peak, though they were soon to duck out of this life to pursue other, non-musical paths in a Sufi community.
When John Wood recorded this material for Island at [...]
