Category: Music

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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Support Darren Watson - Fight Censorship on "Planet Key"!

16/8/2014

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With the heavy fist of New Zealand censorship coming down on bluesman Darren Watson for having the nerve to poke fun at our "squeeky clean" prime minister (Darren has now been threatened with prosecution if he even puts his new song on iTunes) we urge everyone to go to http://vimeo.com/102441715 and listen to "Planet Key" before this entire country becomes a police state. Then share it with as many people as possible.

I don't care if you think the sun shines out of John Key's ass (though I kinda pity you if you do) but the idea that a musician should have his work banned and be legally threatened for nothing more than producing a (very good) satirical song is disgusting. I would hope shocks most New Zealanders who cling onto the quaint notion that there is something resembling freedom of speech in this country.

Seriously, this is something everyone should be worried about - a song criticizing the government has been banned from radio and television, because... it's criticising the government and might influence people. All I can suggest is listen to it, watch the video, share it with everyone you can. This censorship cannot stand.

(P.S. Darren just emailed to say "It's gone legal unfortunately. So if we lose we may have to raise some funds in a hurry." Disgraceful. Don't raise your head above the barricades in New Zealand. What a pathetic joke of a "free" country.)

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RIP Johnny Winter

18/7/2014

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I can't say I'm surprised by the news today that Johnny Winter died. But it does make me sad to note the passing of another great blues guitarist.

And Johnny Winter was one of the greats, a proud continuation of a Texas blues tradition that stretches through Lightnin' Hopkins and Freddie King with a thousand more in between.
Johnny learnt from many of them, played with everyone from Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix to Muddy Waters, and was one of the most inventive, supple and exciting guitarists you could ever hope to hear, whether on electric or acoustic.
And, if anything, I'm surprised he lasted so long, given inherent health problems and - more importantly - the prodigious amounts of alcohol he used to consume. As younger musicians we used to marvel at stories of Johnny's intake. Thankfully I only briefly tried to imitate it.
I first came across him on his sixties recordings, long epic jams on Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited" and others. Then there were the three brilliant albums with Muddy in the late seventies, Hard Again, I’m Ready, and King Bee, the student helping the master regain his mojo. And then there were his superb later albums (on Alligator?) - Third Degree, Guitarslinger and another I can't remember now. I copied a lot of guitar licks from those. Brilliant stuff.
Astonishingly he was still going, planning to tour again even if he needed to sit down to play these days. I hear there's a new album ready. Sad to miss one more career renaissance...
I hate writing about people who were my heroes who've just died. It does nothing but depress me. But sometimes you've gotta offer a swoop of the cowboy hat and say thanks.
They really broke the mold with Johnny - we won't see his like again.

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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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KRIS KRISTOFFERSON AT THE CIVIC

6/5/2014

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Kris on stage - sorry about the crap picture!

Last Wednesday was special for me. I saw Kris Kristofferson at the Civic Theatre in Auckland, smack bang in the middle, five rows from the stage. It was the first time.

I think all music-lovers have private “hit-lists” of people that they want to see before they die. I know I do. Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Springsteen, Albert King, Tom Waits, The Rolling Stones... it's a pretty long list. I've seen most of them (but not Tom Waits, damnit!). And, till last Wednesday, not Kris Kristofferson.

I'm not sure any of us escape our formative influences, and musicians are no exception. Those things that you first heard and loved as a teenager (or earlier) are hard to shake. For me that meant Simon and Garfunkel, Bob, Al Stewart and, possibly most of all, Kris Kristofferson. A bit later I discovered the blues.

The first song I ever wrote, when I was 14, was a parody of a Kris Kristofferson song for a school function, and there are bits of Kris scattered throughout the Kokomo opus – snatches of melody, character names – I'm sure if you were a Kris scholar with too much time on your hands you could document a bunch (I suspect my brother, who knows my early
influences better than anyone, spots them every time).

So, after nearly 40 years of singing his songs and borrowing from him, seeing Kris was something personal.

And he was fantastic!

It wasn't even vaguely the show I was expecting. It was billed as “solo and acoustic” and it mostly was. It was also billed as an evening of songs and stories, which it really wasn't.

I've heard for some years that Kris, now 78, is suffering the early stages of Alzheimers – maybe that's why he didn't do stories (aside from a couple of brief mentions of family). But it didn't stop him remembering the songs. Bucketloads of them. That's all he did: sing songs, one after the other, with no break except to say “thank you” and occasionally blow his nose (which he apologised for - “You didn't pay good money to see an old man blow his nose!”).

So it was just song, song, song. 10 songs in I checked the time: he'd been on for 25 minutes. The intermission came after 50 minutes, over twenty songs in. And another weird thing was he didn't really have endings for the songs. He'd just get to the end of the words – no repeat choruses, just the absolute basics – say thank you and stop. And then play another one. And another one. He has so many great tunes that “Me and Bobby McGhee” was casually tossed in third song rather than saved as an encore.

And he was magnificent. Taller than I thought with a shock of white hair and still obviously fit, Kris was a magnificent old lion. Sometime when he smiled (which he did a lot) you could see that younger Kris peeking through and got a hint of what a force he must have been back in the day – tall, handsome, wild, smart, funny, a warrior with the world at his feet.

The other odd thing about the show was the sound system. Or lack of it. The entire sound came from four small monitor speakers sitting along the front of the stage. It was pretty quiet, but that only added to the intimacy. You could hear a pin drop during "For The Good Times".

In fact it was so intimate that it almost seemed like an intrusion when, in the second half, his daughter joined him for 4 tunes and the final encore. She was small and perky and blonde and played banjo; she looked just like Reese Witherspoon being June Carter in the Johnny Cash movie. The two could hardly lock eyes with each other without cracking up laughing. It was incredibly sweet and rather moving.

In fact a lot of it was very moving. I had tears streaming down my face several times. He played nearly all the Kristofferson album (later renamed Me and Bobby McGhee after the hit), hauled out most of The Silver Tongued Devil towards the end, played some new stuff and even pulled out a song from my personal favourite Spooky Lady Sideshow. I figure he did over 40 songs by the end of the encores.

And, yes, he played the song that when I was a schoolboy just learning my first chords on guitar inspired me to write my first song.

Thank you Kris.

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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

Support Darren Watson - Fight Censorship on "Planet Key"!

RIP Johnny Winter

INSIDE INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS

KRIS KRISTOFFERSON AT THE CIVIC

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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