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.

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.

Hey, get this Hey Ya

Undeniably, Hey Ya by Outkast has been one of the singles of the last few years. But please have a look at this cover by Mat Weddle. Absolutely genre busting. The scary thing is the end - the guy is in pieces, but where is the rapturous applause?

James Brown RIP

Mixing it up

Thank you to Chris - in a riposte to a copy of the borborygmus 2006 CD, he sent me one in return.

It includes a couple of live recordings from this year's Cambridge Folk Festival - one being Emmylou Harris singing Boulder to Birmingham. For that alone, it's a treasure.

When I foist these CDs into the hands of oft-bemused friends, I have no high hopes that through such evangelism they will fine tune their quite varied musical tastes to my, somewhat superior, ones. But it would be gratifying if they discovered somebody new and went out and bought a record on the back of it. On that basis, I have ordered Roddy Woomble's CD from Amazon.

I still cannot get into critics' darling Joanna Newsom, whose Ys is being raved about. Harp and wailing nu-folk. Igor Stravinsky's Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end is apt.

Music: borborygmus 2006

This is the annual (2004, 2005) borborygmus track list. As before, tracks are chosen from releases in 2006, or releases from 2005 which did not hit my radar until 2006.

1. Hummalong
The Drams from Jubilee Dive
2. Star Witness
Neko Case from Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
3. A Woman Like You
Bert Jansch from The Black Swan
4. I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor
Arctic Monkeys from Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
5. Change
KT Tunstall from KT Tunstall's Acoustic Extravaganza
6. Cruel
Calexico from Garden Ruin
7. Head Home
Midlake from The Trials Of Van Occupanther
8. I Will Not Wear The Willow
Karen Matheson from Downriver
9. Easy on Yourself
Drive-By Truckers from A Blessing and a Curse
10. Like the 309
Johnny Cash from American V - A Hundred Highways
11. Massive Night
The Hold Steady from Boys And Girls In America
12. Jersey Clowns
Josh Rouse from Subtitulo
13. Delirious Love (Wilson)
Neil Diamond (with Brian Wilson) from 12 Songs
14. January Man
Rachel Unthank & The Winterset from Cruel Sister
15. Steady As She Goes
The Raconteurs from Broken Boy Soldiers
16. Black Cadillac
Rosanne Cash from Black Cadillac
17. King and Country
Seth Lakeman from Freedom Fields
18. I Should Get Up
Teddy Thompson from Separate Ways
19. Drop Me Down
Tres Chicas from Bloom, Red & the Ordinary Girl
20. Do It Again
Nada Surf from The Weight Is a Gift

A really enjoyable year, musically. The highlight for me must be finally seeing Emmylou Harris at the Cambridge Folk Festival, although that was not the only marvellous thing about the weekend. The borborygmus tracks of the year are influenced from that experience, as well as other gigs.

The Drams (ex-Slobberbone people with a rep) were fantastic at a recent Railway gig, and rounded off a year of sweaty US crunching guitar bands at various venues (e.g. Bottle Rockets, Cracker). Neko Case's album was probably the year's favorite overall - wonderful voice, great songs and evocative production. In the first of a series of incestuous cross fertilisations in this list, members of Calexico feature on the record, amongst others. Swooned at one of her London gigs as well. Bert Jansch just keeps doing the same guitar thing in a superior way, but is fortunate to have been caught up in the general folk revival. The title track was also very good, but too long to fit on my compilation CD.

The Arctic Monkeys made a best-selling, ubiquitous record with a repulsive sleeve - but it was still a damn fine album. One of the many where I struggled to decide on the representative track, so you get the big hit. KT Tunstall made what seems like an interim record between huge chart hits, recorded in a few days in a remote Scottish sitting room - accoustic and cute. Calexico go from mariachi to pop sensibilities.

Midlake took a bit of getting into. I should have immediately loved it, as it was billed as a CS&N-style blend of Laurel Canyon influences - but I also found it a bit prog. It worked eventually. Karen Matheson is the singer with Capercaillie, seen at the Cambridge Folk Festival. Her solo record is sung almost completely in Gaelic. The Drive-By Truckers are, simply, the best rock band in America today. I think this latest record to be a tad weaker than The Dirty South, but then that was a masterpiece. Another fantastic live gig this year.

Johnny Cash - a poignant tune from his last(?) record, said to be the last song he ever wrote. The year's ultimate issue of Uncut magazine gave The Hold Steady's release five stars. I had to agree after just one listen, in spite of, or maybe because of, the heavy sprinkles of early Springsteen throughout. Josh Rouse gave us the lead-off track last year, but I was less impressed with his album this year. However, this track just popped up on my mp3 player in the last few days, and I had to reassess the whole Subtitulo.

Neil Diamond, like Johnny Cash, produced by Rick Rubin - could Rubin effect the same sort of resurgence as he did for Cash? Probably not, but I have always liked Diamond's voice and he was a magnificent songwriter. This version of the song features Beach Boy Brian as a guest. In a quite small but heaving tent in Cambridge, we saw Rachel Unthank & The Winterset give a charming set of really quite traditional northern English folk music. The Raconteurs are this year's supergroup, featuring Jack White of The White Stripes.

You can hear Johnny calling to his daughter Rosanne Cash at the beginning of this powerful song. She sings: It was a black cadillac drove you away... one of us gets to go to heaven, one of us has to stay here in hell. Seth Lakeman must be my discovery of the year - in contrast to Rachel, contemporary folk music from south west England, brimming with local historical references. His set at Cambridge featured the happiest percussionist I have ever witnessed. Also saw Teddy Thompson at the Folk Festival, who has a better voice than his father, Richard - but judging by the latter's stunning set in the same tent that same weekend, has some catching up to do in the guitar department. Still, a excellent album.

Americana from Tres Chicas, one of whom is Caitlin Cary (formerly of Whiskeytown and also in last year's list in a different guise). Finally, had to sneak in Nada Surf, which was really released last year, but I only found just recently. Do It Again. OK!

Liked but did not make the list: Love (the Beatles mash-up), Centro-Matic, Cracker, Dixie Chicks.

Not sure about: Bottle Rockets, Damien Rice, Cat Power, Howe Gelb.

Completely barmy: Joanna Newsom!