It's the little things which make a home...

Avid music festival goer, I still demand my creature comforts. Whatever the allure of the music, I will only attend if I can be assured that my 3S requirements are met. I need a warm, dry and comfortable place to sleep, a daily hot shower, and somewhere relatively private, pleasant and secure in order to... ah... sh... read a magazine and contemplate the day.

In cases where a luxury caravan, say, was not available, The Brown Corporation have released a potential solution for one's festival movements. I have no connection with the company, have never tested it, but from the heart of my bottom, I recommend it.

An iTunes killer?

amazon.co.uk have recently started their mp3 download service - DRM-free and cheaper than iTunes. Worth checking out.

borborygmus 2008

If there's anything which will rouse this sleepy blog, it's the annual (2004, 2005, 2006, 2007) borborygmus track list - songs from record albums released in 2008 (or from 2007 which did not hit my radar until 2008). This should give a pretty good overview of what I've enjoyed this year; some of my long-suffering friends and acquaintances get a fully realised CD.

1. Meeting Place
The Last Shadow Puppets from The Age of the Understatement
2. Great Expectations
The Gaslight Anthem from The '59 Sound
3. Mykonos
Fleet Foxes from the Sun Giant EP
4. The Opening Act
Drive-By Truckers from Brighter Than Creation's Dark
5. Oxford Comma
Vampire Weekend from Vampire Weekend
6. Sing
Glen Campbell from Meet Glen Campbell
7. Rivers Run
Karine Polwart from This Earthly Spell
8. Constructive Summer
The Hold Steady from Stay Positive
9. Rosalie
Eliza Carthy from Dreams of Breathing Underwater
10. Supernatural Superserious
R.E.M. from Accelerate
11. Chasing Pavements
Adele from 19
12. We'll Get By
Gary Louris from Vagabonds
13. Frankie's Gun!
The Felice Brothers from The Felice Brothers
14. Domestico
Peter Bruntnell from Peter and the Murder of Crows
15. Kids
MGMT from Oracular Spectacular
16. Solomon Browne
Seth Lakeman from Poor Man's Heaven
17. re:stacks
Bon Iver from For Emma, Forever Ago
18. River Song
Dennis Wilson from Pacific Ocean Blue
19. Fareweel Regality
Rachel Unthank & the Winterset from The Bairns

Twelve of these were hardcopy CDs I bought, the balance downloads from eMusic.com. I saw nine of these acts live during the year.

Super-talented monkey Alex Turner makes the list for the third year in a row, this time with The Last Shadow Puppets and a record of an almost 60's pastiche of orchestral pop which is also right up to date. The Gaslight Anthem are new, punk-Springsteen - I have a ticket to see them next month. Fleet Foxes pushed all the right critics' buttons and were a huge success this year; this track actually comes from their EP, not the eponymous album. The EP was released first, but recorded after the LP - both are excellent.

The DBT's are old favourites and a superb live band (they toured in the USA in 2008 in tandem with The Hold Steady, which had to have been fantastic and shattering). The 2008 record was quite a mixed bag, with a more eclectic range of song styles, and although they lost interesting songwriter Jason Isbell, it holds up well. Vampire Weekend are a fresh New York band playing "Upper West Side Soweto". Following a path blazed by Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond, Glen Campbell put out a hugely enjoyable CD of covers, including this version of Sing which knocks spots off the original. Listen out for some of the arrangements which are reminiscent of the glory days of Campbell with the Jimmy Webb songbook. Glen sings and plays guitar belying his age.

Karine Polwart is an artist new to me this year, but became a firm favourite with her warm but sometimes hard-hitting Scottish folk. I saw her at the Cambridge Folk Festival. It was a positive year for The Hold Steady - a co-headlining tour with the Drive-by's and a good follow-up record to the brilliant Boys And Girls In America. A busy year for Eliza Carthy, arguably the leading English folk artist playing today. Dreams of Breathing Underwater is a wildly catholic original recording. It didn't quite work out live when I saw her this summer, although she was charmingly and bumptiously pregnant. Eliza was also part of The Imagined Village, folk-fusion which almost made it onto the list, albeit a 2007 release.

Arguably, a return to form for R.E.M.. To me, Adele is the best of the "new Dusty"s thrown up in the last year or two, robust and natural. Gary Louris is the erstwhile leader of the (now defunct?) Jayhawks, and this solo record displays obvious similarities to their latter days. Louris also released a CD with Mark Olson, another original Jayhawk, re-united after over 10 years.

The Felice Brothers have a fun, raw Americana which steeps into their music and their stories. I saw Peter Bruntnell at a small, solo gig - he was patently a good songwriter. The record shows another side, however - pop and psychedelia. New York has thrown up lots of great bands in the last year or so; MGMT another good example. There are three or four brilliant electronica pop songs on the album; Kids was a highlight of their set at Glastonbury, with thousands of uplifted ravers leaving the Park Stage post-gig singing the riff - doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-do-do-doo doo doo.

A couple of chances to see hunky fiddler Seth Lakeman this year - he is popular and exuberant live. I don't think this year's CD is as strong as Freedom Fields, but it has attracted a wider audience. The most listened to album this year was by Bon Iver, recorded solo in a remote snow-bound cabin in the woods, fueled by the deer he hunted and broken relationships. Perhaps thought of as the least talented Beach Boy, Dennis Wilson proves his chops with Pacific Ocean Blue. Originally released in 1977, this "lost classic" was re-issued in 2008 combined with Bambu and other unreleased material. Dennis' ravaged voice oozes soul and raw emotion.

Finally, Rachel Unthank & The Winterset bring us to a classic northern English folk close - simple, beautiful harmonies. Fareweel!

I'm afraid it bought a tear to my eye

Whenever you are feeling gloriously moved by a globally recognised achievement, count on The Onion to make it all better: Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress.

Places & times I really wished I'd been

An article in the Sunday Times this morning about Annie Leibovitz contained this picture - wish I'd been on that porch too.



Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash with autoharp, Rosanne Cash with guitar

Barbed Wire Love

Last year, Stiff Little Fingers celebrated their 30th anniversary. Part of that was touring and playing their first album live, in its entirety - the enduring and influential Inflammable Material. I vividly remember its release in 1979 (I have a white label vinyl copy somewhere) and I was lucky enough to see the tour last year.

One of the songs on that album is the "doo-wop surf pastiche" Barbed Wire Love, which isn't typical of the record (c.f. Alternative Ulster and Suspect Device for that), but which... er... struck a chord, and is still a sing-a-long live.

See check out this a capella version, and note the official thumbs up in the comments section on YouTube!

borborygmus 2007

I now present the eerily ever more popular annual borborygmus track list. The rules are that tracks are chosen from releases in 2007, or releases from 2006 which did not hit my radar until 2007. 11 of the 17 tracks are from CDs I bought, eight are from albums I downloaded (legally!).

1. No Cars Go
Arcade Fire from Neon Bible
2. Paper Doll
Rosie Thomas from These Friends of Mine
3. Fluorescent Adolescent
Arctic Monkeys from Favourite Worst Nightmare
4. Trapeze
Patty Griffin from Children Running Through
5. Impossible Germany
Wilco from Sky Blue Sky
6. Tennessee Blues
Steve Earle from Washington Square Serenade
7. Never Any Good
Martin Simpson from Prodigal Son
8. Dress Blues
Jason Isbell from Sirens of the Ditch
9. Girls In Their Summer Clothes
Bruce Springsteen from Magic
10. Start A War
The National from Boxer
11. Please Read The Letter
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss from Raising Sand
12. Wait for the Summer
Yeasayer from All Hour Cymbals
13. Gotta Keep Walking
Willy Mason from If the Ocean Gets Rough
14. House Of Cards
Radiohead from In Rainbows
15. Spirit Road
Neil Young Chrome Dreams II
16. Den sodeste vals
Haugaard & Höirup from Gaestebud/Feast
17. Take Pills
Panda Bear from Person Pitch

Arcade Fire won me over this year; their first album was well feted, although passed me by. But in mud up to my ankles and in a sardine crowd, in a rousing performance at Glastonbury this summer, they completely won me over. Rosie Thomas was a chance discovery on eMusic.com, an extremely well-produced record featuring Sufjan Stevens, amongst others. Sheffield lads Arctic Monkeys spurn the difficult second album syndrome with, by golly, a record almost effortlessly better than their first release.

Patty Griffin continues a stream of excellent singer/songwriter fare; she should be far more popular. After the occasional aural challenge of 2004's A Ghost is Born, Wilco produced a slightly more accessible record, which still holds its own in the quality of their output. Anyone who sees my last.fm profile will know what I think about Steve Earle - this year's release is influenced by a move to New York City.

Martin Simpson was this year's discovery at the Cambridge Folk Festival. A guitar virtuoso (he is impressive just tuning up), he has a deep grasp of folk/Americana, and can write a decent song, as this paean to his father shows. We Drive By Truckers fans were shocked to hear of Jason Isbell's departure from the band, but glad to see his first release on his own. Suffice to say that he is a developing solo artist, but the song included here ranks alongside the greatest anti-war protest songs of the modern era, and which I first saw Jason perform solo at a DBT gig. Bruce Springsteen re-unites with the E Street Band, and there's no better reason than that to give his latest a listen.

The National have a subtle style which just creeps up on you. You would have given short shrift to the idea of a Led Zeppelin/bluegrass hybrid, but Robert Plant & Alison Krauss have made one the best-reviewed albums of the year, and this track is my favourite of 2007. "The music of Brooklyn's Yeasayer is a genre-bending journey into pop, druggy rock, Middle Eastern and African musics, folk, and dub." And this new band also have excellent harmonies.

At the very beginning of the year, I earmarked the opening track of Willy Mason's LP for this list, and 12 months later, it's still here. Radiohead hit the headlines with their online release, asking the punters to pay what they wanted to for the download. The brouhaha should not take away from what I feel is their best record since OK Computer. Gnarly Neil Young gets back to his greatest ragged rock style, with a superb record, best played loud and featuring an 18 minute track of grungy guitar and horns.

Haugaard & Höirup are a Danish fiddle and guitar folk duo - one of my most serene moments of 2007 was noon on a Sunday, sitting on a blanket, drinking Guinness and listening to them. Finally, Panda Bear - Beach Boys harmonies will a modern, indie-rock sensibility.

Interesting to see that, even though I bought more records by download than physical CDs this year, the list has a majority of actual plastic. Also for the first time this year, I am distributing mp3 versions of my borborygmus 2007 cd, knowing that a lot of people just immediately rip it to a computer anyway.

Bubbling under: 2007 releases from Peter Case, Josh Rouse, Kate Rusby, Chuck Prophet, KT Tunstall, Ryan Adams, Okkervil River, Rufus Wainwright, Richmond Fontaine, Bright Eyes

Disappointing: Eagles, Klaxons

It tells a story

Is she really going out with him?
   - Leader of the Pack, The Shangri-Las, 1964

Without getting all smoking-jacket literati about it, I’ve been thinking about the spoken word on records.

The excuse of a new, bigger iPod leads me to ripping some older CDs, and so I’ve been listening to Stevie Wonder, amongst others. In the middle of Living For The City, off of the Innervisions record, comes this spoken play-let – the young innocent from the sticks arrives in New York city, only to fall prey to naivety and racism. As he gets tossed into a jail cell, the cop calls him “nigger”; it’s pretty strong stuff in 2007, and very edgy in 1973, when it was edited out in radio airplay.

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
   - Ernest Hemmingway

A full narrative - could you get much shorter? Hemmingway possibly wrote this short, short story for a wager, but also purports it to be his best work. Willy Vlautin, singer/songwriter of much-loved alt.country band Richmond Fontaine, peppers their brilliant Post to Wire record with a series of small, tight spoken-word vignettes called Postcards – messages from Walter to Pete, which in three pedal-steel backed tracks of less than a minute tell a detailed fall from grace story. Vlautin’s writing (he is also a novelist) has been compared to Raymond Carver, another author who is known for his sparse prose.

Which brings me to Charles Bukowski, not just because he is another exponent, but because he is the subject of a recent record by Tom Russell. Russell is a great songwriter (Johnny Cash, Nanci Griffith, Suzy Bogguss), albeit a mediocre singer himself. He is also exceptionally well connected, and can include Bukowski amongst his correspondents. Hotwalker: Charles Bukowski & A Ballad for Gone America is more of a radio show than a music record; with songs and spoken word it combines reportage and collage to describe the USA of Kerouac & Guthrie, poets & piss artists, circuses and shenanigans in a deservedly reverential way.


My son Tom has made friends with young Sheffield band, Weekend at Bukowski’s, of whom much are expected. Whilst preferring the name they first thought of (Breakfast at Bukowski’s – so much more irony), I hope they tell great stories.

The Devil's Right Hand

I almost met Steve Earle, once.

It was in the Acoustic Tent at Glastonbury in 2005 - he had wowed us Friday evening, headlining that same tent in solo mode, and earlier that day we had caught Allison Moorer's set. When she came on to duet with him, we learned that they were engaged, and she would become wife number six... or is it seven, it's not easy to recall, since he married one twice, and anyway, it mostly happened when he was inebriated, i.e. incessantly between the ages of 14 and 40.

Anyway, Sunday afternoon, the festival winding down and the mud depleting any remaining energy, I went to see Patty Griffin in the same Acoustic Tent. She was marvellous, but unusually poorly attended. It seemed like the crowd consisted of just me... and Steve and Allison. He was pretty rock n' roll, with shirtsleeves rolled up right over his biceps, and his wallet attached to his jeans with a long robust chain, enough to deter anyone from trying to pinch either. And they were standing right next to me.

As Patty finished her set, I brayed for an encore and was just about to give Steve a friendly nudge (I figured that he would agree with me that he, Allison and Patty were all pretty damn fine at this singer/songwriter stuff), when I turned to see them walking off hand-in-hand towards backstage. Missed my chance.

I just finished reading Hardcore Troubadour: The Life and Near Death of Steve Earle by Lauren St John, and that missed chance weighs more heavily.

If Steve Earle weren't a living, breathing person, he'd be a character in a blues song -- a raucous ballad about a gifted rebel who drank too much, lost most of his women in a blizzard of crack and cocaine addiction, and always came out on the wrong side of the law. Somewhere in the midst of all this, he also managed to weld rock to country, the Beatles to Springsteen, and bluegrass to punk, establishing himself among the most thoroughly original and politically astute musicians of his generation. Granted unrestricted access to Steve and his family and friends, Lauren St John has given us a sometimes shocking, often moving, and completely unvarnished biography of one of America's most talismanic sons.

You can tell that St John worked for The Sunday Times and also writes biographies of professional golfers - I'm not sure that amongst the wild and hoary epithets I have for Steve Earle's life, him being hit for six would figure. Nevertheless, she does a great job. Ironically, I now like Steve the person less, but respect his music more.

Which leads me to introduce the first of a series of Axiomatic Things I've Learned At Gigs (ATILAGs):

There is no live music set which cannot be improved by a guest appearance from Steve Earle.

viz. Sharon Shannon, Allison Moorer and The Waterboys at this summer's Cambridge Folk Festival, where a hirsute Steve made another Friday night for me.

When lost for something to talk about, bring up the weather

Met Office spokesman John Hammond said Oxfordshire had endured the worst summer on record.

There was 298.8mm of rainfall by the end of July and the nearest comparable figure to that was in 1960 when 266.3mm was recorded. Oxfordshire is normally one of the drier counties and this kind of rainfall only occurs every 200 years. Most of the rain fell in July, but the west of the county was considerably harder hit than the east with precipitation in Brize Norton recorded at 27.6mm on July 19 - but 100.2mm on July 20.

Yes, all too obvious to us in the rural north of the county - flooded house, trees falling down in the garden, and the money pit that is our swimming pool sliding towards primordial soup with disinterest.

The bit which made me laugh was the coda:

Mr Hammond said the forecast for September would be drier by comparison.

It would be so tempting to append to the quote "he added, matter-of-factly, or ...insipidly, drolly, or even acerbically... anything but ...dryly."

Petition - please sign

I received this e-mail from a good friend - reading it made me angry. His son has CF and has just turned 18 years old.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to remove NHS prescription charges for adult sufferers of Cystic Fibrosis. Before being elected to power in 1997, this government made a commitment to remove prescription charges for adult sufferers of the genetic condition Cystic Fibrosis (CF). CF is an incurable genetically transmitted condition which often results in death in childhood or early adulthood and is the only illness of its type where sufferers have to pay for prescriptions for life saving day to day treatments. To date this government has yet to uphold it's pledge of over 10 years ago.

Please click here to sign the petition.

Overheard at the Cambridge Folk Festival

How about a sea shanty? Actually, how about a disco sea shanty? We found it in the Oxford Book of Disco Sea Shanties.
   - Bellowhead intro

You people at the very back - did you enjoy Nanci Griffith... from a distance?
   - Opening remarks from Shooglenifty, the final act on Sunday night, following the incomparable Nanci, who did sing mostly crowd-pleasing hits

Only people who think they are cool don't like "Imagine".
   - Irate fellow punter to me, after he overheard my remarking that I was disappointed in Joan Baez' selection of closing song (IMHO, Lennon in trite, dreary mood). Joan did score the most cool points earlier, however, with a goose-pimple inducing version of Tom Waites' Day After Tomorrow.

The sumbitch wasn't plugged into the motherf@cker.
   - Steve Earle explaining temporary mandolin technical amplification hitch. Gee, these musicians do have some unique jargon, don't they?

Massive nights

One of my work colleagues just asked me about The Hold Steady, who are playing a warm up gig in late August before some festival headline slots.

The Hold Steady are an absolutely fabulous live band - saw them at Glastonbury where they ripped the tent roof off, and in Portsmouth a few weeks later, where this somewhat abashed nearly-50-year-old clambered to the front and revelled at the feet of the band like the teenager still trapped somewhere within the portly folds.

This is a pretty good review of a live gig. And here is a video:


A rock band, some well-noted Springsteen elements, with a slightly punk-ier aesthetic.

I suggest you move fast, as they are likely to sell out gigs very quickly at the moment. I also suggest you move fast because there is a feeling that The Hold Steady are just on the cusp - either they are peaking and will never be this good again, or they will be massive.

We had some massive nights
We got the songs just right

A long long way

Yes, it surely was. But it would be worth it.

The occasional what have you read lately? opener would be met with an un-returnable passing shot. Knowing that a brief pre-adolescent fling with a Classics Illustrated comic would no longer sum up the experience.

Last year, I determined to read, for the first time, some Charles Dickens.

Unfathomably, I chose the longest, most concrete building block-like kilo-pager, Bleak House. I started it in almost ideal conditions, a short spring break in Barcelona - sadly, a mite too short to finish it, and it got abandoned when real life kicked in again. When it came time to pick it up once more in an effort to finish it before the year was out, I realised that the 400 pages I had already read six months before had completely vanished from memory. I read them again. So I did finish it, and it was good - box ticked.

Reading Bleak House sort of overwhelmed the rest of the year, not necessarily in literary quality, but certainly in shear bulk. There were other memorable moments, book-wise, but not many.

Luckily, just coming in under the wire was A Long Long Way, by Sebastian Barry. It is the story of a young Dubliner caught up with fighting with the British Army in WWI, at the same time dealing the Easter Uprising back home. Colm Toibin:

This is Sebastian Barry's song of innocence and experience composed with poetic grace and eye, both unflinching and tender, for savage detail and moments of pure beauty. It is also an astonishing display of Barry's gift for creating a memorable character, whom he has written, indelibly, back into a history which continues to haunt us.

Magnificently descriptive and brutal about war, it is also a brilliant evocation of an innocent trying to come to terms with the complicated politics of the Irish question. The book is powerfully sad - I kept hearing the anti-war songs of Eric Bogle whilst reading it.

Best book I read in 2006, by a long, long way.

In the lottery, we got a caravan with a burly chassis

Tense moments indeed, as we logged on yesterday morning at 9am to get our Glastonbury tickets, in the select company of about 250,000 other online souls. Friend Jim, legendary gig-goer and now a hero yet again, managed to get our allocation at about 10am. Cheers all round! 135,000 were sold in less than two hours, from the 400,000 who had pre-registered.

Chris immediately booked our caravan. I trust we will get our usual slot in the cardigan and slippers corner.

Now, who can give me an accurate weather forecast for Shepton Mallet in 12 weeks time? That's when Shirley Bassey will be amongst this year's acts.