HISTORY/AGAIN: Babbacombe Lee

Fairport Convention are way more than a mere convention, being more an british institution, now a year shy of their half-century. Some may be surprised to hear they are still going, seeing them as a band time locked in the late 60s and cusp of the 70s, others stalwart fans of their ever changing line-ups. I am sort of within the latter camp, but my custom and appreciation has flagged and faltered over the years. Of course, the received wisdom is that they are a mere shadow of their earlier glories, but I am uncertain they were ever much more than a well thought of cult niche. A highly regarded cult niche, maybe, but it is the eye of retrospect that is needed to see that, and if all the people who so now highly rate the Sandy Denny/Richard Thompson years had done then, well, maybe the story would have been different. But it isn't their history I have come to discuss, more their penchant for a good historical narrative.

Starting as the UK's answer to Jefferson Airplane, they reasonable swiftly moved folkwards, arguably inventing folk-rock. The folk canon is full of tales of derring-do, real and imaginary, and the band have littered their output with historical narrative from the english civil war to WW1, from Mary, Queen of Scots, to Napoleon. But the most ambitious historical set-piece was Babbacombe Lee, the 1971 concept album, telling the true story of John "Babbacombe" Lee, the man who could not be hung. Lee was an ex-navy ne'er do well and petty criminal, who, in 1885, was convicted for the murder of one Emma Keyse, his then employer. Sentenced to hang in Exeter prison, the trapdoor bizarrely refused to function, despite testing, 3 times leaving him standing not dangling. As a result his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, the story building up layers of mystic significance year on year. He was actually released in 1907, for a while sustaining himself on the strength of telling his story, but later years, between the wars, are somewhat shrouded in uncertainty, he seemingly having died in the USA, during the mid 1940s, giving him a lucky bonus of extra 50 odd years longevity. 

1971 had seen Fairport lose most of their more celebrated band members, shrunk to the quartet of Dave Swarbrick (fiddle/vocals), Simon Nicol (guitar/vocals), Dave Pegg (bass) and Dave Mattacks (drums). Swarb had found some old newspaper stories extolling the tale and the idea for an album was born. It is actually not a half-bad LP and has stood the test of time, perhaps better than some of their later output, possibly the reason why the current band, still including Nicol and Pegg, resurrected it for both a tour and a live recording, released in 2012. Here is the high point, the failed execution, in song, the 2 versions near 40 years apart. See which you prefer.

1971:

and 2012 (filmed in 2009):

Next year is Fairport Conventions 50th. They hold a yearly festival, Cropredy, in Oxfordshire. I was there for the 20th, 25th and the 30th birthday celebrations, unable to quite believe that last was nearly 20 years ago. I hope to return in 2017. Any of you be there? It will be history unfolding in itself. Again.

Buy 1971 or 2012

History/Again:Green Fields of France/No Man’s Land

Dropkick Murphys: Green Fields of France
[purchase]

I was a history major in college, and continue to enjoy reading about and discussing historical topics, so this theme is a natural for me. Over at my new blog, I’ve recently written about Civil War and Revolutionary War related things, and my wife’s family’s genealogy, and have occasionally plumbed the historical record in writing here. So, I didn’t want to repeat myself (again) despite the apparent invitation to do so in the theme. Instead, I thought, how about writing about World War I, which seems to have been overshadowed by its more recent and more horrifying sequel. However, beyond the trying effect of the war on the Crawley family, I think it is fair to say that most people don’t recognize how much that war, which ended nearly a century ago, still has a profound influence on the world today.

To the extent anyone thinks of the First World War, you probably have in your head an image (probably in black and white) of trenches, or pointy German helmets, or maybe poison gas, or those cute, if deadly, airplanes. Turn on any of the TV channels that have history shows, and it seems to be about 80% about Nazis, with a smattering of Civil War and American Revolution programming, and maybe a rare Vietnam show. Not much about the War of 1812, for some reason. In a recent listing of the top news stories of the 20th Century, the outbreak of WWI only placed 8th, behind both the assassination of President Kennedy and Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon. Both of these were important, but as important as WWI? I don’t think so.

According to Wikipedia, more than 17 million people died, and 20 million people were injured during the war, making it one of the deadliest conflicts ever. More remarkably, the war, and its aftermath, resulted in social and political changes that echo to this day. You can trace much of the turmoil in the Middle East, for example, to the arbitrary borders that were drawn after the war as well as the promise made to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The wars in the Balkans were a delayed reaction from the post-war breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Bolshevik Revolution was certainly abetted by the war’s turmoil. The rise of the United States as a predominant world actor stemmed from its relatively unscathed position after the war, while the British Empire’s decline was accelerated. And of course, the short-sighted and punitive Versailles Treaty led to chaos in Germany, and was used as a rallying cry that helped vault the Nazis into power. That’s just for starters. Add the Armenian Genocide, the Great Depression, an influenza epidemic, the decline of hereditary aristocracy, weakening of colonialism, the League of Nations, the increase of the use of technology in war, improvements in medicine and surgery, and the expansion of the franchise to women in some countries, and you begin to see how the 21st Century is, in many ways, the product of the War to End All Wars (That Didn’t Even Come Close). And there are even more effects, but this is a music blog, not AP European History.

On a human level, though, it was the death of an entire generation of (mostly) young (mostly) men, and the disillusionment of the survivors that led to the dubbing of this period as the “Lost Generation.” (Compare that to how the WWII era is recalled—as the “Greatest Generation.”) Never before had so many been killed in so many countries in such a wide swath of the world. Huge cemeteries were created, or existing ones expanded, to provide resting places for the dead and memorials for the missing. Eric Bogle, a Scottish folksinger who emigrated to Australia in 1969, visited one of these cemeteries in Northern France, and wrote a song, “No Man’s Land,” reflecting on the (apparently fictionalized) gravestone of one soldier, and the pointlessness of war. Bogle, who likely was also reacting to the futile conflict in Vietnam, also wrote another famous WWI song, “And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda,”

The song owes much to the American song, “Streets of Laredo,” which itself is derived from earlier English and Irish songs (gotta love folk music!), particularly in the use of the line “Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the pipes lowly?” (Also the source of the title of the baseball novel, Bang The Drum Slowly). It has been often covered (and modified), sometimes under the title “Green Fields of France,” or “Willie McBride.” The lyrics are clear and unsparing in their sentiment:

And I can't help but wonder now, Willie McBride, 
Do all those who lie here know why they died? 
Did you really believe them when they told you "the cause?" 
Did you really believe that this war would end wars? 
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame, 
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain, 
For Willie McBride, it's all happened again, 
And again, and again, and again, and again. 

The featured version is by Dropkick Murphys, best known as a rollicking Celtic punk band from Boston, who don’t do the expected thing and speed up the song. It is from their excellent album The Warrior’s Code which also included “I’m Shipping Up to Boston,” which featured lyrics written by Woody Guthrie (who wrote his share of anti-war songs), and was used in the movie The Departed (and in beer commercials, at sporting events, and on TV shows, including The Simpsons), and strangely, by two Republican candidates in Wisconsin, leading to denunciations by the band.

Since the armistice that ended the fighting of World War I, at 11:11 am on 11/11/18, and the subsequent treaties that formally ended it, there have been more than a few more wars—way too many more, unfortunately, some of which are happening even as you read this. Bogle was, tragically, right.

HISTORY/AGAIN : Mark Knopfler

Some artists clearly love a true story, if only and at least as a template from where to launch into fanciful forays of imagination. Knopfler is someone who seems forever digging around in the past as inspiration, uncertain whether he likes to research or has just a vast accumulated knowledge. Probably a bit of both, having trained and worked as a journalist, before a degree in english and working as a college lecturer, his career in music on a slow side simmer until the relatively advanced age of 28. Of course, Dire Straits became huge and possibly so ubiquitous that they and he became an easy target for the taste police, deeming him dull and anachronistic bombast, an irony given the majority of their/his songs retained a virtue of their lack thereof. I like him and always did, an early adopter, as Sultans of Swing soundtracked my student years in London. (Come to think of it, it's now so long ago it probably counts as history in its own right!) While Dire Straits dabbled in ye olde historical, meaning more WW1 than Italian familial vendetta, it is in his less acknowledged and still smouldering solo career that this side of his songwriting style has really found wings, now 9 albums strong, along with collaborations with, amongst others, Emmylou Harris and Chet Atkins.

Does the legend of Imelda Marcos' shoe cupboard count as history? I think it does, even if the song is a retread of that song indirectly referred to above. Arguably one of the weaker cuts from his first post Straits non soundtrack output, it wasn't until his 2nd record that he really found his narrative skills. The title track from that record follows, and I like to feel it alerted many a listener to the hitherto untapped world of cartography. A beautiful duet with James Taylor, himself no stranger to a shot at history*, it remains the high point of live performance.

Whilst his next record was largely a paean to his Northumbrian roots, it was 2004's Shangri-La that really outed his love of the biographic, with songs inspired by Elvis, by Sonny Liston and the UK King of Skiffle, Lonnie Donegan. And this one, about the developer of McDonalds, yes the meat patty people, Ray Krocs, with many of the lyrics, included below, lifted directly from his autobiography.

A distinct feature of successive output has been the greater immersion in traditional and rootsy forms, whether an anglo-celtic folk tradition or from country music. Lyrics increasingly based upon folklore perhaps, than hard evidence, but no less cinematic, like this whimsy around the Reivers, cross-border bandits really, who flitted between the english north and scottish south, sheep stealing, cattle rustling and generally causing havoc. (Hence the derivation of the word bereaved, meaning the fate of those who had been "reived".)

His next work substituted border cowboys for pirates, again using the metaphor of a band of marauding rogues for, maybe, the lifestyle of an itinerant rock and roll band. By this stage I fear the lyrical conceits get the better of his tune smithery, but it continued to add to his reputation as a reliable and authentic musician, selling respectably.

Finally we come up to date with last years 'Tracker', more confirmation of his comfort zone, but again featuring songs relating to real-life individuals, one to little known poet, Basil Bunting, and another musing on the legacy of novelist Beryl Bainbridge and her attempts at the Booker prize, the prestigious UK grail for novelists, and in style a tip of the hat to earlier musical memes.

So this is but a mere dip into the historical sources put to use by this gifted and self-effacing Northumbrian, clearly a well-read man, usually issuing these songs as either the title track or lead single. In concert he can seem embarrassed by his earlier successes, oft dashing off his hits with a grimace before another earnest folk-hued story unfolds. I suspect the audiences still come mainly for those hits, but overall, given the choice, I think I prefer the best of his solo work.

(*Machine Gun Kelly was written by Taylor guitar to go, Danny Kortchmar.)

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