BREAK/BROKEN: PIANO

If I get this in before a 'heart', I'll be surprised, the sentimental old buzzards that we all are, over here at SMS, but I'll have ago, knowing the thrill we all get from smashing a piano. No? Never done it? But you wan't to, don't you. Can you imagine the pure recidivist pleasure, the crash, the chords, the cacophony? We've all seen it done, surely?

Well, that was refreshing. Given custom and practice, what we now need is some music. Handily one Frank Turner has thoughtfully written a song on the subject, or about the post-traumatic debris. Wondering, perhaps, whether the piano is a metaphor for something else, the lyric certainly gives that suggestion. A pretty good song, isn't it, folk in its structure and melody, his voice in the unstructured school of similar observationalists like Billy Bragg. As the rhythm section come crashing in, the whole mood changes, into a bit of perfect and powerful 21st century pop music, indelibly English.

Broken Piano (2013)

I'll bet this is Carter's first appearance in these pages. He is an artist I have come to quite like these recent years, as he has gradually fought his way out of anonymous punky thrashes into a songwriter of some nuance. He has had a far from usual trajectory: old Etonians are more likely to end up running the country than topping the bill at medium sized music festivals; Eton College is the ultimate toff school in the country, a term there costing the price of a small family car, even before all the add-ons. Like the school uniform. Given the standard expectation for any self-respecting rocker to disguise their background, with

Joe Strummer and Shane McGowan each preferring folk forgot their sojourns at similar, if ever so slightly less elite institutions, the average public (as we call our private) school boy has to affect rough and tough back street upbringing to make it in the music biz. An Eton accent must have decimated credibility at the Roxy in 1975, or whenever. Indeed, the number of Old Etonians in the annals of popular music are relatively small. I couldn't find any, if you exclude Prince William, a contemporary of Turner, who is said to be quite the demon axe shredder. (I lied; he isn't.) But let's move on, Turner must be as sick as anyone by this concentration of his background. But, before doing so, given Eton has also a reputation as a finishing school for posh thick, Boris Johnson and that ilk, Turner actually completed his studies and then attended Mick Jaggers's old uni, the London School of Economics.

The Half-Life of Kissing/Kneejerk (2001)

A metalhead by choice in his teens, Iron Maiden* were his go-to band. And, surprise, surprise, like every other school or college, even Eton had its own band, Kneejerk, subsequently described as short-lived. From then he moved onto the post-hardcore (no, me neither) London band Million Dead. Around the time that band was appreciating 'irreconcilable differences', we should be grateful Turner caught hold of a cassette version of Bruce Springsteen's 'Nebraska'. This led to his style becoming more measured, with the introduction of melody, even if the words remained as vitriolic. Two well received albums under his name came out in the middle to late noughties, ahead of relative breakthrough, with 2009's 'Poetry of the Deed', bolstered by his relentless touring tendencies, becoming a summer festival staple across the realm of folk, roots, rock and alternative. His next move was to strip back further into a near acoustic mode, for 'England Keep My Bones'. Mind you, he kept his hardcore hand in, simultaneous touring with the unfortunately named Möngöl Horde. Switching allegiances between how much electricity he was needing to perform, The featured song for this piece comes from 2013's 'Tape Deck Heart', which, yes, was his break-up album, after the demise of a longterm relationship, making my suspicions above seem correct.

Live Fast, Die Old (2009)

I Still Believe (2012)

Keeping his b(r)and alive, a stream of EPS and compilations followed, until 2015's 'Positive Songs For Negative People', which drew some criticisms of being blander and more platitudinous lyrically, but was just as reassuringly and rousingly lively in its anthemic choruses. By now he was a chart regular, the album attaining a 2 in its week of domestic release, gaining also some US traction, 69 on the Billboard 

The Next Storm (2015)

chart. I personally didn't get on board until 2019's 'No Man's Land', a concept album, the subject matter and songs referring to powerful women, which included, in the final track, a tribute to his mother. Before, during and since he has maintained his hectic touring schedule, both solo and with the Sleeping Souls, the constant crew of musicians with him since 2006. Having discovered his work, I have delved back into his catalogue and, covid willing, he is one of the first acts I plan to see live when normal service fully resumes, this being something I have had yet to manage.

Rosemary Jane (2019)

Mindful I have strayed far from the theme, outwith the sole song offered, please accept the below as some slight recompense, being a revisioned version, 5 years on, from 2018's 'Songbook'.

Broken Piano (2018)

*Little known fact, in 2014 Turner appeared as a guest on BBC's Celebrity Mastermind, a special edition of the general knowledge quiz, wherein contestants start with a specialist round of questions. Turner chose Iron Maiden as his subject. And won!

To be perfectly Frank.....

 

PAT: SHAMROCKS, SNAKES, STAFFS & SPEAKING WITH THE PAST

Did Green Day derive their name from the Green Day of March 17? And I know I am a day or two late in nailing it, but it is one of many questions I don't plan to investigate too deeply, because it wasn't, but it's as good a place to start as any. It seems strange to me how St Patricks Day has become such a big thing in the U.S., certainly compared to his supposed homeland of Ireland. Even if, in the same way life imitates artifice, it is now catching up. I'm not sure the Liffey has ever been dyed green like Chicago's Chicago River, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were for the future. Not this year mind, but in the same way that Irish bars have become such a big thing all over the world, what the US identifies with as a merchandising exercise today, catches on, well, everywhere, in due course. Hell, even Thanksgiving is becoming a thing over this side of the pond, which seems more than a little counter-intuitive.Too much like turkeys celebrating Christmas. (Which is when turkey is supposed to be eaten, I should add.)

But it is St. Pat of Paddy's Day we are here to blether about, and the abiding myths and legends seem as good a place to start.

Paul Brady is, for me, the consummate Irish performer, and I would place him above Van Morrison, Christy Moore, Phil Lynott, Bono, any of them. A soaring and piercing voice, a human equivalent of uillean pipes, and capable of bringing forth similar tearful emotions, allied to a masterful guitar technique and, if his majesty with the traditional canon isn't enough, a glorious songwriter to boot. This traditional lament has been covered by him at many stages of his career, but it is this version that is the best, from his first solo album, and also his last to fully feature only trad.arr. Shamrocks were said to have been an essential part of St. Patricks preaching, using the three leaves as a metaphor for the Holy Trinity. It may also have been that pagan Ireland already held sacred this plant, and so used that regard as a link between old divinities and the new. It seems plausible, and probably why this plucky little plant is the national emblem of the land. But, tell me, does the shamrock ever have four heads, or is that a clover led question?

Let's stick with Irish artists to tackle the next topic, the tale of how St. Patrick rid Ireland of snakes. It seems that, whilst meditating and fasting, he was disturbed by one, and was so outraged that he henceforth banished all snakes and drove them into the sea. This strikes me as an ultimately dodgy story, and seems hard to swallow. That was, however, ahead of my appreciating that neither are there snakes in Iceland, Greenland, Hawaii or New Zealand. And never were, at least once they became islands. So unless Saints Thorlak, Arnaldur, Damien or the Virgin Mary were responsible for a similar banishment in those countries, I suspect it pure supposition. There are snakes, of course, in Ireland, but only in zoos and as pets. (What if one, or two, I suppose, escaped?) Shane McGowan is a learned and erudite soul around all things Irish, his songwriting awash with imagery and legend. The snake here is a ring, but one feels a whole lot more too. This is from McGowan's post (and between) Pogues project, the Popes, after he had become too unreliable for his bandmates, but before his muse had succumbed entirely to the ravages of his lifestyle.

So this is the one where St. Patrick's staff takes root and grows into a tree. I think we have all been to church services where the sermon has gone on so long that that would seem an entirely expected phenomenon, but I am not sure that is the message the legend imparts. The staff was made of ash, I gather, and, rather than down to the length of the discourse, was about the length of time the locals took to latch on to this Christianity lark. There are lots of songs about trees, especially in the folk idiom, and the piece chosen is only part provided by an Irishman, the wonderful uillean pipes prodigy and singer, Jarlath Henderson. With a vocal tone not dissimilar from that of Paul Brady, he combines a career as a musician, often in cahoots with fellow gael, the Scottish piper and whistler player, Ross Ainslie, with qualifying and working as a medical doctor. (Here is the duo with another song, an instrumental of the same name, from when they were both teenagers.)

The final story is how St. Patrick apparently met with two ancient Irish warriors, Oisin and Cailte Mac Ronain, who had somehow managed to survive the centuries and be there for him to try and convert from their pagan ways. They didn't get on, it seems, and it all gets very complicated as to why they met, other than for him to contrast the sunny lit uplands of the calm and Christian life, as compared to their roustabout fighting and brawling. St. Patrick seems to have prevailed as, given their great age, they died and he lived. It all sounds like the later episodes of TV boxset Vikings, which became progressively less fun as Heaven overtook Valhalla as final destination of choice. And there couldn't be a better illustration of pagan irish ways than by Horslips. The track above comes from The Tain, their 1973 musical re-telling of the legend of Finn MacCool, from whose warrior clan came the two elderly relics who met up with St. Patrick.

Slainte!

Brady, McGowan, Henderson, Horslips.