My resolve to post here a lot more frequently failed this week. This isn’t from lack of stuff to mention–there was a great Rickie Lee Jones gig in Glasgow last Tuesday on the upside, and a funeral of an old colleague on the downside. No, it is because I have been flattened by a passing bug. I think I’m in recovery mode now, though my head is still thick.
More later when I’m compos mentis.
Pilgrimer, 16 January 2016
My first Celtic Connections gig of the year last night began when the white lines imprisoning the freeway were the persistent powder snow on the M8. I huddled in my seat with only Jean Rhys and the Grateful Dead for comfort, fortified by the free Tunnock’s Teacakes and Caramel Wafers provided on the bus. There may be a deep metaphor there for what was to come.
Pilgrimer was billed as a “re-imagining” of Joni Mitchell’s Hejira with words by James Roberston and musical direction by Karine and Steven Polwart. The second half of the show comprised 10 (11 including encore) of Joni’s songs from her lengthy back catalogue.
Although I have some reservations about the show, I enjoyed it. I should also say that the reaction I have seen so far has been overwhelmingly positive so maybe my reservations are just me being me.
Robertson used Mitchell’s words as a point of departure for his own reflections and thoughts, inspired by his own journey across America and subsequent contemplation over twenty years. I hadn’t twigged beforehand just how much of a re-imagining the texts would be, thinking they would stick closer to Joni’s originals, and I was initially unsettled by the divergence. The programme for the evening printed the texts in full, and they are fine pieces of work.
At their considerable best, Robertson’s words sing for themselves:
Pound shoaps and shoaps sellin charity
By the auld grey Tay, they hunker doun thegither
When the east wind blaws
In this coorse cauld weather.
Wastit bairns and shilpit men,
Wabbit weemen tryin tae jyne up the rag ends,
Poverty thrives atween these pavey stanes,
Doun and oot in auld Dundee again.
I was reminded of what Tony Harrison did with the York and Wakefield Mystery Cycles, and wonder what Robertson could do with The Mysteries in Scots; fine things, I suspect.
Despite that, I remain uncertain about the re-imaginings as a whole, I think because of the divergence from the originals. For Tod, derived from Coyote, a song I love dearly, Robertson chooses not to pick up on the animal sexuality of the original at all (and sexuality is a theme that permeates Hejira), or the licentiousness of the titular Coyote:
Now he’s got a woman at home
He’s got another woman down the hall
He seems to want me anyway…
…
He picks up my scent on his fingers
While he’s watching the waitresses’ legs…
Karine Polwart performed Tod very well and with obvious enthusiasm, but I found myself wanting to hear what she could do with Coyote itself. Mind you, later in the set, Annie Grace‘s Pie Jock’s Visit Tae The Mune (Furry Sings the Blues relocated to Dundee, quoted above) hit the spot, as did Rod Paterson‘s Grey in Grez (Blue Motel Room).
Musically, the performances were great and occasionally sublime, particularly when Larry Carlton’s guitar and Fraser Fifield’s soprano sax. played off each other. I was in the front row so may not have got the best sound mix, but I think the performances could have been more expansive and relaxed if the band had the opportunity to perform the set for a few nights more with a live audience and cut loose. I also thought the show, at least in the early sections, could have given more thought to linking the songs rather than having performers come on and off stage without a lot of audience interaction.
If that sounds negative I don’t mean it to be: I reiterate that I enjoyed the show, and if it is revived or tours I would go again.
The second half was on safer ground–first class singers performing first class songs. I was too busy enjoying it to note down a set list but some things stick in my mind. Julie Fowlis instantly raised the bar on the night with a wonderous version of Cactus Tree. Olivia Chaney (see below) turned in a lovely Case of You on piano and followed it up with Woman of Heart and Mind on guitar. Rose Cousins came on for an intense Blue and Kathryn Joseph broke the mold with a version of Both Sides Now that had me scratching my head for 20 seconds but then made sudden, urgent sense.
A grand night out.
I have been looking back over my previous Blog, which ran from August 2002 to June 2009. It is only readable now in Internet Explorer in compatibility mode, which is annoying.
I don’t always recognise me as the author, though I was the only writer, and some incidents I had completely forgotten. This, from a train journey to London in November 2006, is one of them:
“On the train journey down there was an old lady in a seat across the aisle from me–I would guess that she was in her eighties. She happily chatted away for most of the trip to anyone who would listen, mostly the people in the seat opposite to her. As we pulled into Kings Cross, the bloke opposite her stood up and helped her with her coat: I was still sitting down which meant that her rear end was level with and about ten inches away from my face. You can imagine how pleased I was when, like the inhabitants of Jericho hearing the distant rumour of Joshua’s brass section, the sound of a muted trumpet gave forth from her flanks and an entirely indelicate miasma filled the air.
“Either she didn’t notice or, with the trained insouciance of the monied classes, she had been bred never to acknowledge that such a thing as farting was a possibility and, without a word, she hobbled off.”
I’ve probably mentioned here before that I’m not sure what to do with the old blog. I ought to try and recreate it as pages here, but that would mean getting in about the coding of it, and I really don’t want to go there. Also, some of the writing is pretty gauche, but it is what it is, I guess.
I’m thinking about this because Kirstin is trying to transcribe some old diaries from 1950 and 1951 and they give insights that weren’t readily apparent later in the diarists life. It occurs to me that someday, should I have grandchildren, or if my nephews and nieces have kids who are interested they may be interested in what I have to say about myself in these blogs. I had a great-aunt who kept journals but, as far as I know, destroyed them before she died. I wish she hadn’t done that.
Thinking about all of this reminded me of this great song, which never fails to move me:
Doc. Sportello
It was in September 2009 that I read Pynchon’s Inherent Vice. The novel, which I enjoyed, was filmed by Paul Thomas Anderson. I didn’t get to the cinema to see it, but I have watched it several times on DVD. I watched it again last week when I had the house to myself for the evening.
The evening was a delight: Indian food from our local restaurant, beer, and DVDs. As well as Inherent Vice, I watched the excellent Anthem to Beauty, a “classic albums” documentary featuring the Grateful Dead commenting on Anthem of the Sun and American Beauty. The two films worked well with each other, sharing an era in common.
Also common to the two are narcotics. Inherent Vice deals with both Doc Sportello’s permanent residence in another consciousness and the emerging darkness around the hippy dream (Charles Manson is name checked twice), as well as the emergence of the narcotics industry. Anthem to Beauty covers similar ground (by implication rather than overtly): the band’s early gigs as part of the Acid tests and an openness to changed consciousness are important foundations, but the modern viewer is also aware of the consequences down the years. If Pynchon is exploring the mythology of the sixties, the Grateful Dead embody it.
Steal Your Face
Particularly poignant are interviews with the late Jerry Garcia as a young man, never far away from a chortling laugh at some ridiculous notion or situation, and the words unspoken as Bob Weir and Phil Lesh listen back to the studio master tapes, their faces pictures of reflection on what once was and what things became: hand-me downs, the thoughts broken.
More generally, I was reflecting over the weekend on what became of the counter-culture. In large part, of course, it was absorbed into and became part of the mainstream as time passed–Out on the road today I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac, said Don Henley. This became noticeable today when the death was announced of David Bowie: a freakish outsider in his early days, apparently a national treasure now, as competitive grieving sets in on social media.
I went to college/university on my 18th birthday. I thought I knew a lot about music, but was disabused of that notion immediately when I met fellow student Ian Blyde. In my first week Ian had introduced me to Johnny Winter and, more significantly, Mississippi John Hurt. I remember one day he came to college really excited about an LP he’d found, almost certainly in the late, lamented, Greyfriars Market.
The album was “Be What You Want To” by Link Wray, and featured local musicians including all of Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airman and a certain Jerry Garcia. I hope I still have my copy, if only because Amazon tells me it would cost me ££ to replace it. In any event, this is one of my favourites from it:
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