Category: Film

Rediscovering the Old Blues

29/1/2015

It's always a good time to Rediscover the Old Blues. We're just coming up to a slightly quiet patch for Kokomo: aside from a couple of private functions we're not doing anything public until March 22nd (at the Omokoroa Boat Club, just north of Tauranga).

Which means that aside from dealing with the management side with Colin – setting up gigs/promoting/planning/trying to retrieve money owed from festivals/etc – none of which is the most fun in the world, I've got a bit of free time on my hands.

Which is ideal. I've got books piling up that I want to read, mozzarella cheese to make, and a stack of movies I've been waiting to watch. But, as tends to happen, I got distracted by music. The books and movies will have to wait because I've been taking the chance to learn a few songs by old Texas bluesman Mance Lipscomb.

How it came about was that Mike Garner, who played at Papamoa with us last week and guested at the Christmas show, came round for lunch on Saturday (yum cha with homemade dumplings if you're curious) so we could try and hatch plans about doing a show together. We're still planning...

So we got stuck into watching a documentary about Mance Lipscomb. The late great documentarian Les Blank made a great hour-long film about him called “A Well-Spent Life” (he also mead a wonderful film about Lightnin' Hopkins). They've both just been released on blu-ray by Criterion in the States and I'm fortunate enough to have obtained a blu-ray player that will play American blu-rays.

What a fantastic film! Mance Lipscomb's life spanned most of the twentieth century and he spent it all as a share-cropper in Mississippi. To watch him and listen to him talk is to become immersed in the culture that he came from. And the music! Mance was one of the defining Texas guitarists and was a great fingerpicker with a driving thumb style. He played “knife guitar” (slide guitar using the side of a picket knife as the slide) and knew 1000 songs.

So that led me to learning a few. I think I've got his version of “Spoonful” sussed and “Sugar Babe” is coming along. And I've started a couple more. I don't know if there's much that is more satisfying in this world than nailing an old blues tune.

Look him up on YouTube – there are a whole pile of songs posted, and the Les Blank documentaries are probably out there somewhere on the internet, legally or not, now they've been officially released.

Yeah. Check out Manny. Your life will be richer for it.

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INSIDE INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS

6/6/2014

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Oscar Isaac as Llewyn Davis

(I realise after writing this that I never mentioned whether or not I like the film – absolutely, yes, I think it's wonderful is the answer. However, many of my friends disagree. Oddly enough, some Coen brothers-lovers hated it, and some Coen-haters loved it. Go figure.)

Inside Llewyn Davis, the latest film from brilliant cinematic brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, was not a box office success. It's now out on DVD and blu-ray, having been denied a cinema release throughout most of the country, and I think the reason for its relative failure lies firmly in its subject matter. Behind the wistful portrait of a fictitious 1961 Greenwich Village lies a story not of musical success but a film that examines exactly the opposite: why some people don't succeed.

The question is cleverly complicated for the audience by a couple of things. Firstly, as we see and hear from the very first scene - Oscar Isaac as Llewyn singing “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me”, the whole song not just a snippet – he's very good.

So, from the start, we know that Llewyn certainly has the musical chops to “make it” . He is not hampered by a lack of talent.

(An aside: the music in the film was recorded live, an unusual and demanding approach. The Coen brothers really hit gold with Isaac, an actor who is also a very impressive singer and guitarist. “Hang Me...” and the other songs he sings are from the repertoire of the late great Dave Van Ronk as are some of the incidents, though it should be stressed that this is in no way a film about Van Ronk.)

The second thing is that Llewyn is a bit of a prick. Some of his behaviour could be regarded as, er, not awfully nice. Prime among this is the fact that he's knocked up Carey Mulligan's folk-singing Jean and then, in need of money for an abortion, secretly asks to borrow it from her folk singing-husband Jim (Justin Timberlake). Which does seem a little iffy...

From an audience perspective, however, Llewyn's biggest flaw is simply that he's continually depressed. But who can blame him? His musical life is continually soul-destroying. Check out what happens the three times he sings songs for people (not on stage). Poor Llewyn...

So he's conspicuously not “making it”. But why? Other characters in the film seem to be doing OK, whether it's the naïve singing soldier (based on Tom Paxton) or Jim and Jean themselves (Jim has just written a great novelty song and rich royalties loom). What is Llewyn doing wrong?

Well, nothing really. Various reasons are amusingly meditated on, one being the idea of “authenticity”. Which is pretty relevant today. Gotta have authenticity. If you play the blues you damn well better come from a shotgun shack in the Mississippi. Or be poorer than dirt. Gotta be... authentically something.

Inside Llewyn Davis picks at this notion and several others. There's a lovely juxtaposition between Llewyn, who really is a merchant seaman, and a bunch of Irish singers who wear immaculately matching “authentic” fishermen's jerseys.

But Llewyn never makes it. And the film settles on no real reason apart from the most obvious one – timing.

The last scene, a repeat of the first but with added information after the intervening flashback, reveals the other performer sharing the stage with Llewyn that night. It is Bob Dylan. Signalled by an offhand line earlier in the film, we know this is the famous night the New York Times reviews his gig and starts his rise into the musical stratosphere.

And that was pretty much the end for the folk scene and all the potential Llewyns. “If it was never new, and it never gets old, then it's a folk song,” says Llewyn on stage. But Dylan made everyone else sound old while making people hanker for the new. And he was it.

(As a second aside, the film also raises an even trickier subject for musicians, or any artist really: when or whether you should give up if you aren't “making it”. The dilemma that faces Llewyn throughout the film is whether he should quit, give up the dream, and settle for – as he puts it – “just existing”. Which is a somewhat grandiose way of thinking, but he's young! It's something all of us ponder sometimes. Another joke in the film is that even Llewyn's efforts to quit are frustrated.)

Derek

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As of this latest website update (July 2018) it is clear that Derek is completely failing in his attempt to write a regular diary/blog/whatever. Everything here is currently really old but he's promised again to have another crack at it. Expect something sometime soon... probably...

Rediscovering the Old Blues

INSIDE INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS

As of this latest website update (July 2018) it is clear that Derek is completely failing in his attempt to write a regular diary/blog/whatever. Everything here is currently really old but he's promised again to have another crack at it. Expect something sometime soon... probably...

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