Most of us when we think about power, we look at the outcome: heat, light, government. Let's now look briefly at the flip and the mess left behind. With tiny Greta now bestriding the world, I think it only fair. The main thing the industrial revolution showed us was soot. And this hit home hard here in UK, arguably the first home for the coal fires of industry, and certainly first to take it for granted.
Ewan MacColl
Ewan MacColl is a name of some importance in the world of folk music. I'll bet you know at least one of his songs, even if it is just this one. A complicated and seemingly difficult man, he was born James Henry Miller, in Salford, near Manchester in England. Of scottish stock, his father was a passionate trade unionist who had been drummed out of Scotland for his firebrand workplace politicking, these views etched deep into MacColl's psyche. Looking for work at the time of the great depression, street singing provided as much income as early jobs. A member of the Young Communist League from his teens, agit-prop theatre became his home up to, during and after the war, writing, directing and acting. A brief spell in the army ended in either his deserting or being dismissed, depending on whose story you heard, but it seems his political persuasions had brought him to the attentions of the power that be.
Industrial Landscape: L.S.Lowry, 1955
Whilst the theatre provided his home and most of his activity and income, it is his music that has had greater posterity. Increasingly drawn to folk music in the 1950s, he was instrumental in the success of the still extant record label, Topic, releasing a slew of albums for them over the next few decades. And this was not folk as in trad.arr., old songs sung sweet, these were his own songs, fiercely opinionated and anti-establishment, if in the folk tradition. Think Woody Guthrie. Or, perhaps even, Billy Bragg. As well as offering a pointer to more of his music, here is a link to something I wrote a year or two back, which offers also some greater insight on the man.
'Dirty Old Town' is no call to arms, being one of the love songs he was more than capable of writing. But the words also reflect, if casually, the reality of most northern UK cities, the fumes and stench of pollution providing the backdrop to lives stunted thereby. Yes, the situation is better now, some might say as a result of knowledge and changes of practice. Or is it merely by the fact that the factories have all closed?
The song has had a fair few covers over the years. Here are a few of my favourites. I think it no surprise that both the Pogues and the Specials should find something of resonance in the song, their experiences, disaffected youth in post-punk London and Coventry perhaps not that changed from MacColls dirty old Salford of two decades earlier. Quite how or why LaVette chose the song remains uncertain, but the first few comments under the youtube clip suggest a recognition within any post industrial town anywhere,
It's hard to find a better transitional song to get us from sleep to dream than Fiona Apple's half-chanted declaration of feminist self-reliance and confidence. Unless it's Bettye LaVette's incredibly soulful transformation of it, which brings an awesome grit and determination to what had been a poppy, almost petulant charter.
Though I'm sure the 18 year old Apple had a more singular foil in mind - a wanna-be lover, an anonymous misogynist - the way LaVette takes on the lyric, especially the repeated coda of "I've got my own hell to raise", universalizes the sentiment for me. In my mind, the slow, sultry, sparse jazz-funk beauty of LaVette's chosen setting, coupled with the woman's own backstory as a black artist who initially faded early and spent decades toiling in the shadows as a cult favorite, only to revive her career late in life thanks to the incredible all-covers album from which this song comes, allows the song to play out as a grander statement, letting us see it - if we choose - as a kind of response to King's I Have A Dream speech, accepting the ownership of the dream on behalf of all women, everywhere.
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