Sunday, July 18, 2010

Political Animals

Having not been to the big city in a year or so, I was tempted to go to Tom Robinson's 60th birthday gig a few weeks ago, but when I realised I could see him in an abbreviated format as part of Richard Thompson's Meltdown 'An Evening Of Political Song', I was sold. Not least because I could take advantage of a half price concession ticket.

Ok, so I'm no longer signing on, but my new half-job isn't exactly going to keep me in hot and cold running champagne, and though half a job is of course better than no job, and the work part of it is fine so I just need to hold my nerve for a number of months in the hope it will turn into a whole job. At the half-rate it pays significantly less than the Joseph Rowntree Trust reckon you need you live on, so I'm hardly aping the extravagance of MPs' expenses here.

An ever-revolving onstage line-up is always going to be both mildly disjointed as a spectacle and refreshingly varied as a chance to see a lot of people in one place. And as ever, views will differ of what is the best or most interesting bit; Dorian Lynskey's view is here though it's hugely over-enthusiastic about that version of 'Next'. After SAHB, why ever bother?

I'd never seen Martin Carthy or Norma Waterson before, so that was something I was looking forward to, and indeed Norma's solo vocal run through Coal Not Dole had my spine tingling and the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. It doesn't happen all that often these days, but a repeat experience came with Emily Smith's version of Karine Polwart's Better Things in the second half of the show.

To be fair I wasn't expecting that much of Boris Grebenshikov, despite having one of his singles from decades ago but he was much better than I expected. The other highlight for me was being within five metres of Harry Shearer. Maybe for a singer he's a great bass player, but his MC-ing the evening was excellent, and he is the voice of a significant set of characters in The Simpsons, and rather more than that he is the lukewarm water of Derek Smalls.

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Thursday, July 15, 2010

It's Not Too Late To Start Again*

If you listed the ingredients of the sort of music I love most, you'd start with harmony vocals and guitar solos. Then you'd probably add singalong tunefulness, and a healthy sense of a band not taking itself too seriously. And if you look at that from a different angle, you'd see I've just described Teenage Fanclub.

With five years gone by since the Man Made album, it's certainly not before time that a new album 'Shadows' and the chance to see them again has had me uncommonly excited for a couple of months. Support band Veronica Falls have the slightly ragged guitar of early Teenage Fanclub, and hints of promising melody are slightly buried in the live mix. Maybe I should have listened to the tracks on their myspace a couple more times, I don't know, but I've stood through plenty worse openers and I'll be happy to see them again if they pass my way. But from the second the headliners launch into Start Again, there's only one band on my mind.

Maybe I've just been unlucky but three of my last four gigs have been blighted by unremitting dullards demanding their choice of song, to the ocasional displeasure of the turn. In this case, Norman's affability in shrugging it off is a change for the better, but I could have done without it all the same. And then Raymond rips into yet another guitar line that's half Neil Young and half purest pop, and the idiots are wiped away again for a bit.

After this much time away, and with a back catalogue that means they could do a four hour set of classic after classic, it would be a fine gig just for them being there. But in Baby Lee, and even in When I Still Have Thee which appears to be highly influenced by Nanci Griffith's 'Don't Forget About Me', they have new songs fully worth their place in the set, as Dave's pedal steel augments the perfect combination of guitars and vocals.

The world's a better place for Teenage Fanclub.

* 'It's too late to start again' is from the song on Teenage Fanclub's Grand Prix album called, surprisingly enough, Start Again. I disagree.

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