Answering to the earlier post, oddly I think it apt we cover the event after the event. Valentines Day, or the Feast of St. Valentine, has never quite resonated for me. Yes, I have received cards over the years, nearly as many as I have sent, but it has never been a delivery that would damage the postie's back. And, as my wife pointed out this year, we seem somehow to be missing the point, babysitting the grand-daughter this year, and entertaining my brother last year. Somehow you old romantic not.
My defence is that, in restaurants, Feb 14 is a date to avoid, all pink prosecco, heart shaped salmon pieces and blood on the carpet. (Blood on the carpet? Well, there's always at least one couple whose sense of duty has overshot the tint on their spectacles.) Nope, like New Years Eve, Mothers Day and St Paddy's day, I'm staying in, ta!
The song featured is by an artist I have mentioned before, making no apology there around. Hell, I even used this same song, for which I will have to apologise, but read on, I will explain. From agit-prop spiky solo bard of Barking to the only slightly less spiky older statesman of political song commentary, Billy Bragg has always lightened my heart, both musically and intellectually. Having little time for Twitter myself, his feed is actually a presence worth following, being, variously witty, acerbic or just plain right. (Sure, it helps if you are a goddam lefty pinko as well, to keep the Valentine colour theme alive.) Coming from his 1988 LP, Worker's Playtime, it is a rancorous song of bitterness. Confession time, I always took it be allegorical: the phrase is often used to describe the bursting of any bubble, but it is a much darker piece, as I learnt from this excellent article. Gulp.
Little more to say than that, really. And, should you not have found the above sufficiently chilling, here is a sparser still version, from a John Peel session.
Unable to leave you staring bleakly into your consciences, not all injuries being just physical, here's another favourite, two really, June Tabor and the Oysterband, from the first of their occasional collaborations, an altogether more upbeat version of the same song. But it is the same song, and I really must learn to listen harder to the lyrics.
Um, I hope you all did have a good day, if the opportunity arose. After all, the card industry can't support itself.
(Postscript: I noted the link to the earlier Tabor/Oyster piece commented on the two of my weddings. I have since had a 3rd, so maybe the old romantic after all, yes? Maybe we should go out next year...)
I initially thought I wouldn't make it to this party, my macbook's hard disk seeming to be in dire need of palliative care, the icing on a week of disappointments. Yup, just as you guys are belatedly getting around to impeaching your bleach blond furball, we have elected ours back in, with a steaming majority. Steaming as in, well, you know. So Brexit has been "done" and, pending 5 or 6 years of expensive, extensive wrangling with Europe, our garage sale of goodies will be up for grabs. It is what it is, and chlorinated chicken can't be all bad.
In the UK, our politics is gauged by colour. Red is Labour, a sort of rather more socialist Democrat party, not communist by any means, if still a shade by far too goddam lefty pinko for your Republicans. They were trashed on friday. Orange is the colour of the traditional 3rd party in the usual two horse race we run here, the Liberals, or, as they re-badged some time back, the Liberal Democrats. They came, traditionally, 3rd. Or rather, 3rd in England, somewhat swamped by Scotland's resplendent bright yellow party, the Scottish Nationalists, dominant party in that aspirational stand alone nation for 3 elections now. And counting. And, much as I am despairing the blue tide of the Conservative party in England, more right wing than they have ever been, who have triumphed and some, I doff my bonnet to the SNP. If and when, my scottish parentage may offer me the safety net of a scottish passport, when and if ever should become a reality.
Billy Bragg is the nearest thing we have to a Woody Guthrie. (OK that's harsh on Ewan MacColl and other musical firebrands, but, in terms of success, sales, and ubiquity, Bragg has a greater claim to the accolade, in my humble.) I can't imagine he will have been raising any glasses in good cheer this weekend, if similarly, like me, probably downing some. Of course, he is known in the US, having been chosen by Nora Guthrie to add music to the reams of songs found within her father's legacy, she appreciating their shared stance about fighting (aka singing) for the undertrodden and overlooked. The song chosen would be as much at home in the US as UK; it is an american song after all. All feeling today, mind, as equivalently out of step.
I'm spoilt for choice in looking for something evocative enough for the SNP; music of the scottish tradition is within an equivalent renaissance now as was irish in the 1970's and 80's. In my cups, sentiment is all, and so it is the Battlefield Band to whom I turn, with this tear stained version of the old Charlie Rich standard. I'm not so naive to believe in the the shortbread tin school of scottish thought, as so savagely laid into by Dick Gaughan, another firebrand politico, but you never know.
I think the UK will dissect in the near future, a new referendum demanded by the SNP of the new government, allowing the scots their right to an independent future, if so sought. This time it will be closer. Meanwhile, in Northern Island, the Unionists (stay with UK) are for the first time in a minority with relation to the Nationalists (join the rest of Ireland).......
I was never that much into the Liberals, feeling them often more material for a protest vote or for tactical voting. Sure, they have had some good ideas in their manifestos, and some fascinating characters in their ranks, but their time has rarely seemed right. As for a song with an appropriate link, it is back north I go. The scottish northern isles, Orkney and Shetland, with their respective scatter of tiny islands and far-flung communities, have long been staunchly electing Liberal members of parliament. Too far north to ever consider themselves Scots, I think this is why they sleight the Nationalists, a greater affinity to the Vikings and Scandinavia than to other britons, whether scottish, english, welsh or irish. The song has no political axe, but is as good a place as any to introduce Orcadian songwriter Erland Cooper to these pages, one third of Magnetic North and the Erland of the earlier Erland and the Carnival. He describes the music of Magnetic North as psychogeography. And that's fine by me.
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,
The break-up song, even the break-up album, is such a rite of passage for both performers and listener. For every song of love and fulfilment there are a legion of songs displaying dismay and despair. For every couple sharing "our tune", strip back the facade and each will have at least one song to recall their earlier disappointments in getting there.
But nobody, nobody, has better portrayed the randomness of the teenaged victim of cupid than Billy Bragg, about whom I have written before. And over a consummate acoustic guitar backing, by Johnny Marr, no less, playing a version of the Four Tops
classic, Bragg says all that ever needs to be said.
Trump has answered the great conundrum of the 20thC: how did a rational people like the Germans come to vote for a demagogue like Hitler?
I am probably not the most appropriate, as a Brit, to be passing comment on your election outcome. But I know one who does, and his widely reported, at least over here, tweet of 11/9 will no doubt offend many. But, as ever, those who have decried his comment merely miss the point. This is actually neither comparing Trump to Hitler, nor calling Americans fools, merely pointing out how shit happens, quirks all of the wrong time, wrong place, complications to what the literati might call common sense. Or common preconception, anyway.
So what of Bragg, archetypal Essex boy, the "Bard of Barking", his home town? And why has he become such a potent force in musico-political activism? Probably best known stateside for his being granted custodianship of the legacy of unfinished lyrics by Woody Guthrie and producing, with the band Wilco, 2 excellent volumes of new music for them, he has had a long enough history over here of irritating the establishment as to have become a national treasure, cropping up regularly on news programmes as a credible and articulate voice of, often, a counterculture to the prevailing winds. (It is sort of how things happen over here.)
Born in 1957 of english-italian stock, he first hit the establishment buffers aged 11, failing his 11 plus exams, the then entry into a better, or at least further education, He thus channeled his interest in poetry into a passion for music, picking up a guitar and practising like mad. The mid-70s were a good time for starting bands. In response to the overblown pomp of the dinosaurs of the music industry, another establishment, punk rock had begun it's eventually unsuccessful bid to smash it all down. His first band didn't make it, but in the process he learnt how music could shape opinion, citing the Clash and their appearance at a legendary Rock Against Racism carnival in 1978 as the moment. Oddly, his next move was to join the army, possibly unsurprisingly finding it not the best place for an opinionated young man of left-leaning ideological views. Buying himself out, as was necessary, after 3 months, cost £175, equivalent today to about $650.
Taking the d.i.y. ethos to the next level, he next became a busker, albeit with electric guitar (attached to a small speaker), honing his art and attracting the attention of the movers and shakers, including, as seems did everyone who ever made it, DJ John Peel. Peel had commented on his hunger mid-show, galvanising Bragg to immediately deliver a plate of curry and a demo. A series of records ensued, deliberately produced and sold cheaply, mixing political comment with quirky love songs, usually just voice and barely amplified guitar. His singing voice was a thing of simplicity; raw, unadorned and utterly without any accent other than his own, unmistakably thames estuary inflection. Nominally punk/new wave, irredeemably folk, at least to my ears, and thus my immediate interest. In a nation under the thumb of Margaret Thatcher, there was a healthy appetite for opposition, Bragg becoming a regular at the barricades.
Astonishingly, perhaps, songs like the above were hits, but sales were never massive enough for him to have complete control, at least not whilst in the thrall of an increasingly global record company, who expected ever more sales and commerciality. The overt nature of of his politics was probably rather too full on for universal coverage. It seemed for a while as if he could deliver, especially with anthemic and thought inspiring single, Sexuality, a pop song despite itself (but who listens to the words, anyway, perhaps the curse of the motivated lyricist.) In the end, and in order to get back the rights to his back catalogue, he had to pay back the residual of his six figure advance.
It was about now, late 90's that Nora Guthrie, daughter of Woody, came across him, sensing something of her troubadour father in his work and leanings. Whilst not an obvious candidate, Bragg took this like a duck to water, his vocal cords taking on just enough translanticism to be credible.
Back then, in the UK, the politics seemingly having turned his way, as ever it turned out so not quite the hoped for policies and directions of flow. (Which may be a glimmer of hope post Trump's victory. Just as you have to be careful for what you wish for, maybe so have more hope of your worst fears than you expect?) Anyhow, with the disappointments of "New" Labour, the nominally socialist or quasi-democratic party we have, Bragg turned his ear to the vexed issue of national identity, thwarted and subverted by an abusive nationalism, trying to find a path between racist exclusivist views and inclusive pride in a mongrel nation. Sound familiar?
Latterly his output has seemed gentler, his last 2 solo releases being often more straightforward song cycles of middle-aged contentedness, up to a point, in his own skin. But, having seen him play live this summer, at one of the music festivals I try to get to each year, on a scorching sunday afternoon, slotted in between Wilko Johnson and Squeeze, days before the fated Brexit vote, he was as rousing and rallying as ever. Playing a set of largely political song, accompanied only by his own guitar and a pedal steel player, he did his best to plead a vote to remain in Europe, to much applause and acclaim. To no avail, as it happened, but it gave me hope.
As I write he tours the U.K., alongside credible songwriter and producer, Joe Henry, revisiting some Guthrie-esque americana roots, to promote their excellent duet record, 2 voices, acoustic guitars and occasional eavesdropped background sound. His voice, now a weathered and tuneful instrument in it's new lower key, a joy alongside Henry's higher tones, and some wonderful songs. Like this:
So, be Billys and Braggs, as Washington threatens to burn. As one of the songs featured above says, maybe, it's true, in a somewhat different sense, there is indeed power in a Union, whether of states or of workers.
An oft-covered punkfolk youth anthem from UK singer-songwriter and left-wing activist Billy Bragg's 45 rpm debut that chugs along with the momentum of a train hurtling down the tracks, deliberate proof that the same combination of anger, frustration, innocence and optimism that fuels so much of his explicitly political work can be just as deftly applied to the age-old story of boy meets girl - or, at least, to the liminal narrative that comes of setting aside the old affections for the new unknown - in part because, to Bragg, moving on from the inevitabilities of cultural narrative is, after all, part and parcel of the political.
Because sometimes, you don't need to change the world, just your heart.
The poem we know as Jerusalem is William Blake's 1808 preface to his longer epic, Milton: A Poem, and is based on a legend that Jesus Christ visited Glastonbury, England, during his lifetime. This visit is reflected in the four questions that begin the poem, and Blake's conclusion is that if true, it would have resulted in a temporary heaven on earth. It concludes with the exhortation to recreate this state once more in England. In other words, it's a poetic alternate-universe fanfic of the Bible.
The poem languished until 1916, when it was set to music, a move meant to encourage the British fighting spirit at a time when World War 1 wasn't going well (see also Darius' description this week of Yeats' Slouching Towards Bethlehem from the same time and place). Since then it has become enormously popular song in England, often used publicly as one of several unofficial national anthems. I have to say, it's turned into an enormous earworm for me ever since I decided to post it.
Billy Bragg includes this version on his overtly political 1990 CD, The Internationale. Bragg is an English socialist punk-folkie. As was Blake, by all accounts. Hearing this song in Bragg's pronounced East London accent is quite fitting, I think, especially the line about the "dark Satanic mills." Clearly, Blake wasn't much of a supporter of the Industrial Revolution.
Jerusalem by William Blake
And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England's mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold; Bring me my Arrows of desire; Bring me my Spear; O clouds unfold! Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand Till we have built Jerusalem, In England's green and pleasant Land.
As a listener and blogger, I tend to favor a focus on history, production and musicality over text. From that perspective, today's song is easy to present: penned by Woody Guthrie fifty years before it was set to music and recorded by Billy Bragg and Wilco on their Grammy-nominated Mermaid Avenue collection, Walt Whitman's Niece is a fun rockabilly stomper that recounts a based-on-fact narrative of a night with a seaman friend and some girls. Period.
But as a teacher of English and Communications, trained in poetic parsing, it's hard not to notice the concrete power of the text here. These are heavily down-to-earth lyrics, with the first two verses constructed of structurally consistent couplets of event-oriented plot lines paired with self-aware lines protecting the anonymity of the people and places involved, ad infinitum, until we reach absurdity of not even being able to know which rug they lie on, which stairs they climbed to get there, which book of poems the unnamed seaman and narrator heard from the unnamed girls of the titular lyric.
If that were all he wrote, then the song would be an interesting exercise, nothing more. But perhaps not surprisingly for those who recognize the literate poetic genius of Guthrie himself, in that it reads a bit like a Whitman poem, especially at the end, the lyrical structure belies the crypticism of the words it contains. Here's verse three of three in its entirety, a testament to both the project and the poet it pays tribute to:
My seaman buddy and girl moved off after a couple of pages and there I was, All night long, laying and listening and forgetting the poems. And as well as I could recall or my seaman buddy could recollect, My girl had told us that she was a niece, of Walt Whitman, but not which niece, And it takes a night and a girl and a book of this kind A long long time to find its way back
When one thinks of Woody Guthrie, one usually things of music with a message. Guthrie sang songs of tolerance, peace, hope, and understanding. He was one of the most important songwriters of the 20th century. He changed beliefs with his words and killed fascists with his machine.
Woody Guthrie also wrote the song "Hoodoo Voodoo."
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