Wednesday 30 November 2016

Gypsy jazz and more at the Ginger Pig

Remi Harris Project at the Ginger Pig Cafe Bar, Worcester, 

Friday 11 November


The poster at Worcester's Ginger Pig described Remi Harris as an "up and coming guitarist" but he has surely already well and truly arrived. With appearances at the Montreal Jazz Festival and the BBC Proms and airplay on Jamie Cullum's Radio 2 show it's commendable that Remi still plays intimate local venues. Accompanied perfectly by his never-failing rhythm section of guitar and double bass, Remi was equally at home playing acoustic or electric and ranging effortlessly across gypsy swing, jazz and blues and everything in between. The set was breathtakingly varied. 'Over the Rainbow' wandered unexpectedly into Willy Wonka territory with 'Pure Imagination'. Other highlights of the evening were an exquisite version of the Beatles' 'In My Life' and a dazzling rendition of Tunisian oud player Dhafer Youssef's 'Odd Elegy', with its unfathomable time signatures.

As a proponent of gypsy jazz, you'd expect the spirit of Django Reinhardt to loom large at a Remi Harris gig, but less predictable was the summoning of the ghost of Jimi Hendrix.

Totally absorbed in his music, Remi almost forgot to mention that his second album, 'In on The 2', was available at the gig. Standout tracks from the new CD included the Wes Montgomery tune 'Bock to Bock' and Peter Green's 'Need Your Love So Bad'. Fond of quoting little snippets of tunes – even Chuck Berry makes a brief appearance – Remi is always tasteful with this technique and never labours the joke. It might be said this is jazz and blues for people who don't really like jazz or blues, but that might suggest it's in some way dumbed down. In fact, Remi's gift is that he's able to infuse the music with intelligence, warmth and wit making it accessible to the wide audience it deserves.


Friday 28 October 2016

Autumn Hymns, New Living Rooms and Leaky Boats – a round-up of some of the best acoustic music you may not yet have discovered

Of what we spoke by Threaded ... The James Brothers by The James Brothers ... Autumn's Hymn by Son of John

Threaded are a classically-trained folk trio from the English Midlands and Of what we spoke is their first release. If you think the clarinet deserves more prominence in folk music, you'll probably take a shine to Threaded, who blend Jamie Rutherford's guitar with Rosie Bott's clarinet and the violin of Ning-Ning Li (whose illustrations also grace the beautifully-designed album cover.) The quirky opening track, 'The New Living Room' , sounds like it could have been a slightly manic piece of incidental music from 'Pogles' Wood' or 'Ivor the Engine'.

The collection intersperses Rutherfords' songs with an agreeable variety of instrumentals. Some of the songs are more effective than others. 'Left Off', a tender ballad of lost friendship, has shades of Nickel Creek and stays with the listener. While I admired the idea of setting Robert Browning's 'Pied Piper of Hamelin' as a song, the result - 'A Secret Charm' - is not entirely successful. On the whole, the instrumentals work best, from the delicate 'The Courtyard' (where Bott's clarinet somehow evokes the sound of a fairground organ) to 'Captain Markham' (imagine Rodrigo y Gabriela swapping guitars for violin and clarinet.)

Next up, the eponymous debut album of The James Brothers (alias Australian James Fagan and New Zealander Jamie McClennan), which was recorded in Scotland and mastered in Nashville. These songs, tunes and shanties are well-travelled, steeped in the tradition of the British Isles but distinctly antipodean. 'Hey Rain' complains about the fact that 'there's rain in me beer and there's rain in me grub' ... not to mention 'a Johnstone River crocodile livin' in me fridge'.

McClennan plays fiddle and guitar while his vocals are strangely reminiscent of Al Stewart (on songs like 'Shearing's Coming Round' and 'Leatherman'.) Fagan shares vocals and guitar duties but the real synergy comes in the mellifluous blend of McClennan's guitar and Fagan's bouzouki on tracks like 'Family Tree' and 'The Voyage of the Buffalo' (a tale of an ill-fated ship that transports convicts to Australia and returns to England with a cargo of New Zealand timber.) The duo further demonstrate their Australasian credentials with 'The Ballad of Ned Kelly' and a cover of 'Six Months in a Leaky Boat' (a Tim Finn composition from his Split Enz period which, when given The James Brothers' treatment, is revealed as a Crowded House song in disguise.)

Finally, the perfect accompaniment to these mellow, fruitful days and dark autumn evenings is surely Autumn's Hymn by Worcestershire-based Son of John. Son of John is, in fact, singer/songwriter and acoustic guitar virtuoso Jacob Johnson. The whole album has an earthy, traditional feel – though eight of the ten tracks are Jacob's original compositions. Both his guitar and vocal style (not to mention his banjo-playing) betray a devotion to the music of Martin Simpson while the choice of the traditional 'Spencer the Rover' suggests John Martyn is no small influence on this talented young artist.

The opening track 'Baseborn' has a lilting guitar figure and a compelling lyric: '... And the tale is far from done/and the song still sung/as it echoes round the halls/it breaks down the doors ... ' 'The Maid and the King' reminded me somehow of an early Suzanne Vega song, 'The Queen and the Soldier', while the dark arrangements of the title track and 'Let Me Rest', with their haunting female backing vocals, violin, jaw harp and handclaps on the offbeat, transport us into Ennio Morricone territory. If you like your contemporary English folk infused with a touch of Americana and blues, you need to listen to Son of John.

Further information:
The James Brotherswww.thejamesbrothers.co.uk/
Son of John:  www.sonofjohnfolk.com/

Monday 10 October 2016

I'm Not Just Being Nice About Dean Friedman


Dean Friedman at The Artrix, Bromsgrove, Sunday 25 September


Not everyone can remember who Dean Friedman is.  My sister, Jan, for instance. So we tried singing her a few snatches of his hits from 1977-78 ...  Lydia and Ariel and Lucky Stars ... but she still couldn't quite get it. By contrast, my brother Phil had fond memories of the album Well, Well, Said the Rocking Chair which I'd bought in 1978 – around the same time that I added Kate Bush's The Kick Inside to my record collection. 1978 was a great year for quirky, piano-playing singer-songwriters with unique vocal styles. Phil told me he'd been listening to Dean's back catalogue on Spotify and I happened to know that Dean was touring again – so we caught up with him in the intimate surroundings of Bromsgrove's Artrix.

Dean was supported by Michael Armstrong - a performer whose version of Allentown sounds more like Billy Joel than Billy Joel. After some original songs and covers from Michael it was time for the main man. 

Dean regaled us all with beautiful versions of many of his more lyrical songs - including Company, Shopping Bag Ladies and Saturday Fathers – but was also unexpectedly funny and self-deprecating. He mused that, when we had told our friends or colleagues we were going to see Dean Friedman, we were probably met with the reaction 'Dean who?' He also talked about the band Half Man, Half Biscuit, who had recorded a song called The Bastard Son of Dean Friedman.  Dean had written his own riposte to this in the form of A Baker's Tale, in which he speculates upon the real origins of Half Man Half Biscuit's Nigel Blackwell. In a similar darkly comic vein Death to the Neighbours is viciously hilarious.  

With rosy cheeks, white beard and a mane of white hair, Dean wouldn't look out of place starring in a remake of Miracle on 34th Street. As a performer he is as engaging and impressive as ever - his voice still soaring and powerful on Ariel, leading us onward to a touching version of Lucky Stars in which the audience has to sing the part originally sung by Denise Marsa. The result is Dean dueting with his audience ... women of a certain age – and some very deep-voiced men  – unashamedly singing the call and response:
Do you still love me?
Yes, I still love you.
You mean, you're not just being nice?
No, I'm not just being nice.
Do you feel sleepy?
Aw, you're so sincere. Yes, I feel sleepy.
Well, slide over here ...
  

Tuesday 9 August 2016

Something Magic? - Felicity Fair Thompson's 'Hugo the Hungry Pig' reviewed


Hugo the Hungry Pig 
by Felicity Fair Thompson
Wight Diamond Press

In December we mentioned Felicity Fair Thompson's novel The Kid on Slapton Beach (see Chillies, Sherman tanks and super-moons.) Felicity has kindly sent us some of her other books so here we review something for a rather younger audience:

Something magic. The brush ran round the paper. This something looked like a pig. Ben gave it little ears and a curly tail. He coloured it orange and painted huge blue flowers on its back. He called his pig Hugo.

Felicity Fair Thompson's first book for very young children - Hugo the Hungry Pig - is an agreeable tale.  Adults can read it aloud and it seems perfectly designed for reading and sharing together.  An extra dimension of interactivity is provided by an occasional page for colouring in, space for adding a 'magic picture' of one's own and a dot-to-dot. All Wight Diamond Press's books are beautifully produced and Hugo the Hungry Pig is no exception.


The story is uncomplicated enough but the author conveys, in very simple language, a reassuringly warm and loving relationship between Ben and his mother.  Mum is an artist who finds time to take Ben to the library and on trips to the park where they can sketch together.  If there's a moral to the story it's that artistic activity, creativity and the imagination are to be valued. When Ben asks his teacher to explain what magic is, she says, 'Well, it's sort of special. Something you can't explain.'  Hugo the Hungry Pig reminds us that the things that are special and hard to explain are worthwhile.

Thursday 7 July 2016

Tenbury Music Festival gets into full swing

Tenbury Music Festival

Saturday 18 June, Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire



Steve Gibbons - seemingly effortless enjoyment
(c) Phil Richards 2016
Only in its second year, Tenbury Music Festival is one of those small-but-beautiful events which promises to get bigger and bigger. Tenbury in Worcestershire, nestling on the sleepy borders of Shropshire and Herefordshire, seemed unperturbed by the good-natured jamboree taking place in the heart of the ancient market town. Performers and organisers had generously given up their time to raise funds for the Teenage Cancer Trust but it was also a celebration of some of the most enjoyable musical talent in the region.


Steve Ajao - stroll on
(c) Phil Richards 2016
The main stage featured acts including singer-songwriter Dave Onions and bluesman Steve Ajao - who took a stroll around the audience while continuing to play guitar. Celtic rock band Quill featured a special guest in the guise of Clive Bunker (erstwhile Jethro Tull drummer) while headliner Steve Gibbons provided seemingly effortless enjoyment with his affable rock n roll, including his unexpectedly hilarious ditty Biggles Flies Undone.


Son of John
(c) Phil Richards 2016
Interspersed with all of this were a variety of more rootsy folk and fusion acts on the - let's face it - much more interesting acoustic stage. Swing drummer (and former Steve Gibbons collaborator) Sticky Wicket, with a five-piece band, had a repertoire ranging from The Jungle Book to B.Bumble and the Stingers' Nut Rocker. Arcadia Roots, led by singer/drummer Dave Small, galvanised the unsuspecting audience with a high-energy set which would have transposed well to the main stage, while the day drew to a close with the earthy, almost prayerful music of Son of John aka Jacob Johnson (accompanied by his mate Will on double bass) with songs from the stunning debut album Autumn's Hymn (which we'll be reviewing soon on the blog.)

It's hard to imagine a more varied collection of acts. We look forward to doing it all again in 2017. 

(Phil Richards' photographs used with permission.)

Sunday 12 June 2016

Unlooked-for Delights in Northumberland

St Cuthbert - Lindisfarne
(c) Tony Gillam 2016
One of the small pleasures of self-catering holidays is that the owners often thoughtfully provide a small selection of books for their guests, not knowing that I always bring with me more reading material than I could ever hope to get through in seven days. It wouldn't matter if I had a week, a fortnight or a month away from home; nothing will alter the fact that I'm a very slow and easily-distracted reader.  And so it was, exploring the little cottage that was our home for a few days, that my eye was caught by a copy of Ice Cold in Alex, the 1957 novel by a largely forgotten writer called Christopher Landon (who went on to adapt it into the classic 1958 film of the same name.)

I've always loved that film: John Mills, Anthony Quayle and Sylvia Sims on a perilous journey in an ambulance across North Africa in World War II. But I was surprised, when I tried a few chapters, to find it was also a finely written and engaging novel. This was one of many unexpected discoveries during our recent holiday in Northumberland. 


Bamburgh Castle
(c) Tony Gillam 2016
We stayed in the village of Belford - once a major stop-off on the coaching route from London to Edinburgh but now a sleepy retreat.  Nearby Bamburgh beguiled it us with its castle (sometimes encircled by swallows in the welcome summery weather, sometimes cloaked in sudden sea mists.) The castle overlooks both the village and the coastline and, if you stand on the beach, you can look out to the Farne Islands.  Bamburgh called us back several times that week, to visit the excellent Grace Darling Museum, to walk over the rocks and sand dunes, and to sample the Craster kippers or even the Horlicks and Malteser-flavoured ice-cream (something else I didn't know I wanted to try until I went to Bamburgh.)

The lovely town of Alnwick is larger than Bamburgh and its castle overlooks a river rather than the sea.  But the biggest surprise in Alnwick is not the castle (impressive though it is) but the largest second-hand bookshop I'd ever seen.  Barter Books is housed in the old Victorian railway station. As it was once a very grand railway station so the bookshop is a very special bookshop. 

Lindisfarne Castle viewed through the ruins of the priory
(c) Tony Gillam 2016
There were further discoveries to be made:  a fortuitously-timed drive across the causeway to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne allowed us to visit its 16th century castle, visible through the ruins of the 7th century priory.  

Other surprises included finding something called the Archimedes screw at Cragside (the first house ever to use hydroelectric power), a walk to the ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle from Craster (and then buying kippers to take home) and driving through the Cheviot Hills in search of a good picnic spot only to find ourselves accidentally entering Scotland, arriving at Kirk Yetholm where the Pennine Way ends (or begins) and meets St Cuthbert's Way. 

Which way next?
(c) Tony Gillam 2016
And now, we've settled into being back home. Everything is more familiar and predictable. Northumberland is a series of sun-drenched memories. The weather has turned more typical of an English summer (changeable and thundery) and I'm desperately keen to get hold of another copy of Ice Cold in Alex so I can finish reading the next hundred pages.



Sunday 17 April 2016

Skipping the Light Fandango at The Mended Drum

I've been a bit quiet on the blogging front recently.  In March, I was kept busy with helping to run various training courses in Birmingham, Worcester and York.  In Birmingham, I spent half a day at The Beeches in Bournville - a lovely venue built by the Cadbury family in the early 1900s, only half a mile from Cadbury World. In Worcester, I spent a day at The Fownes Hotel (a converted Victorian glove factory) and, between these courses in Birmingham and Worcester, I was sequestered for a week at the former Victorian mansion that is now the Burn Hall Hotel near the village of Huby, ten miles outside York.  The staff at the Burn Hall Hotel were amazingly helpful (especially the ever-resourceful and cheerful Operations Manager, Leo.)

I was helping with a training course for the Tees, Esk and Wea Valleys NHS Foundation Trust who claim to cover a catchment area the size of Holland.  Their patch seemed, to me, to equate roughly with the old Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. Taking an evening walk to the village pub, with deer in the fields and kestrels flying overhead, it was easy to imagine I had travelled back in time to Anglo-Saxon Northumbria, and I was quite prepared for a skirmish with a few Vikings on my way to the nearest pub.  Fortunately, all I had to do was dodge the passing traffic and get out of the way of a few lumbering tractors before taking sanctuary at The Mended Drum (apparently a reference to  a hostelry in Terry Pratchett's Discworld.)

The owner of The Mended Drum has impeccable taste in music (1970s singer-songwriters) and a great choice of real ale. Me being a fan of beer and Procol Harum, I tried a pint or two of something called Whiter Shade of Pale which, thankfully, didn't cause me to skip the light fandango or to turn cartwheels cross the floor ... but it was very nice!

We only made it into York city centre once.  My favourite Mexican restaurant in York - Fiesta Latina - was still closed due to the recent floods, but we had a lovely vegetarian meal at a very hospitable place called the Go Down Restaurant (also in Clifford Street).


Returning home after all this training and travelling - a veritable passenger in time - I was pleased to find Wight Diamond Press had sent me a couple of books to review (including Felicity Fair Thompson's latest novel Hold Tight.)  And then yesterday I received the latest issue of Songlines  magazine (including a couple of CD reviews by yours truly) and a copy of The Persephone Biannually, including - in the section Our Bloggers Write - a snippet from this very blog's review of RC Sherriff's Greengates.  All of which makes me feel Passengers in Time is really connecting with the world of music and books ... as indeed it should.

Saturday 6 February 2016

Six Apples a Day - RC Sherriff's 'Greengates' and the Cataclysm of Retirement

In June of last year I wrote that I had just finished reading RC Sherriff's The Hopkins Manuscript - a novel about the moon colliding with Earth, first published in 1939 and republished in 2005 by Persephone Books.  Now, Persephone have brought out Sherriff's 1936 book Greengates. No interplanetary collisions occur this time, but the retirement of central character Tom Baldwin is hardly less cataclysmic.   


Tom has "worked for forty years to earn the pleasure of sitting by his fire on a week-day afternoon:  he had gone to work in the dawn of winter days:  through snow, and blinding rain - he had sat for hours in bitter fogbound trains - for six months at a stretch he had scarcely seen his home by the light of day."  Any of us who do the daily commute, whether by unreliable train or through roadworks and traffic jams - particularly in the inclement British weather - surely don't begrudge Tom his hard-earned retirement.  We may envy those who are able to retire; we may even fantasise about our own retirement, though the idea of retirement has changed considerably since the 1930s when Greengates was first published.  Over the next two decades, the state pension age in the UK will move up to 68 and people can go on working for as long as they wish.  Average life expectancy in England rises to 81 years this decade; in the 1930s a man would be doing well to survive into his 60s.  The 'demographic time-bomb' means governments struggle to support 'unproductive' citizens and are phasing out default retirement ages; people may not be able to afford to simply sit by the fire on weekday afternoons even if they wanted to and, of course, many surprisingly sprightly older people wouldn't be satisfied with that and so take up second careers, vigorously pursue hobbies or continue their education. 

For Tom and his wife Edith, retirement brings first freedom ... and then panic. Tom begins to regard his retirement "as a marooned man might think as he calculates the time his food will last" - he contemplates filling his leisure time with sticking cuttings in his scrapbook, a picture frame that needs repairing, some drawers that need clearing out, the garden, afternoon walks and books to read. "He had been given his reward for forty years of work. He had yearned a thousand times for freedom, and now that it had come he was afraid of it. It was the fear of a man who having habitually enjoyed two apples a day, is suddenly called upon to eat six in the same period."

For Tom's wife Edith, the panic is not so much about a surfeit of leisure time but the way Tom's retirement highlights a marriage that is, perhaps not as fulfilling as it should be:  "They used to have lots of friends, but these had gradually left the neighbourhood and they had never troubled to replace them. They had been sufficient to each other while they only had a few hours together each day - but now? ... it was a great pity."

In delightfully well-crafted sentences and highly original imagery, Sherriff explores his themes of retirement and the need for a purpose in life.  At the office, with the presentation of the inevitable retirement clock, Tom's colleagues gaze with "the sort of smiles used at weddings, turned on very carefully to half-pressure to prevent them wearing out too soon..."

RC Sherriff - intriguing and paradoxical 
Sherriff himself is an intriguing and paradoxical character - a war hero and an insurance man, who enjoyed the glamour and excitement of being a Hollywood screenwriter but who lived with his mother for most of his life.  And, at the time of writing Greengates, Sherriff was an unmarried man in his late 30s who was able to get inside the mind of an ageing married retiree.   

Greengates has, as its main theme, retirement and - to borrow a phrase from Alain de Botton - the pleasures and sorrows of work. But another theme in the novel is home ownership - as a burden or an adventure.  It suggests that a new home - and a new project - can provide an antidote to depression and old age. The old house and the new house are almost characters in themselves.  The new-built house is "so gloriously clean and airy. Its very plainness and simplicity captured the imagination and gave one the feeling of being in a ship bound for some high-spirited adventure. One could never feel depressed or ill in such a room..."  Tom and Edith are seeking to escape old age and depression and the greatest adventure imaginable to such a stay-at-home couple is to exchange their old depressing house for a new one.

Tom estimates the value of their old house at £1,000 ("say £900 at the lowest") - it's not only life expectancy that's increased since the 1930s.  But despite being worth this princely sum, the old house - and its worn-out garden - have lost their appeal: "The garden was old and tired and wanted to be left alone ..." while the house was unreasonably expected "to remain fresh and young out of respect for his pretence at remaining young himself. The dining room was old and dull because the young man and the girl who had furnished it were old themselves..."


Greengates is the third Sherriff novel Persephone have republished.  I wonder whether they might next consider bringing out a new edition of his 1968 autobiography No Leading Lady.  From the First World War to London's West End in the 1920s and on to 1930s Hollywood, this would surely be a good read worthy of Persephone's mission to reprint neglected fiction and non-fiction.

Monday 18 January 2016

Mysteries and Coincidences

Every now and then, I like to go to the pub and catch up on reading some of my backlog of magazines while nursing a pint of real ale.  Sometimes it's Resurgence, sometimes Songlines or Shindig!, occasionally Lonely Planet.  Readers of this blog will know my tastes.  Yesterday it was the Summer 2015 issue of Acoustic magazine (for acoustic guitarists who care about Phosphor Bronze strings and appreciate Fishman pick-ups or, in my case, pretend to know what they are.) Why the Summer 2015 issue?  Well, I told you I had a backlog of magazine reading.

The mandolin that survived D-Day
 (image courtesy of Acoustic magazine)
In last month's blog post I wrote about Exercise Tiger and the Sherman Tank reclaimed from the sea at Torcross. The last place I expected to stumble across another Exercise Tiger story was in the pages of Acoustic magazine.  Yet here was an article written by Gordon Giltrap about a mandolin that survived Exercise Tiger. It seems Ken Small (the man who rescued the tank and established the memorial at Torcross) was given a mandolin that had been signed by some of the soldiers who took part in the exercises - the servicemen had scratched their names into the back of the instrument, which went with them to Omaha beach ... and was eventually returned to Devon. So now Ken's son Dean is the custodian of both the barnacled Sherman tank and the remarkable, war-veteran mandolin.

And, if finding an Exercise Tiger-related story in a magazine for acoustic guitarists isn't strange enough when, out of idle curiosity, I checked the stats for the Passengers in Time blog this evening it turns out that, while I was down the pub reading Acoustic magazine yesterday, 55 people were reading this blog. Why? I have no idea - but it seems we're big in Russia at the moment with 68 readers there, while some 48 people in Israel can't get enough of our eclectic mix of book, music and time-travel-related musings. We're also on our way to becoming a household name (kind of) in Vietnam, Malaysia and the Ukraine. So, let's hope stories about antique mandolins have a broad, international appeal.

About me

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Tony Gillam is a writer, musician and blogger based in Worcestershire, UK. For many years he worked in mental health and has published over 100 articles and two non-fiction books. Tony now writes on topics ranging from children's literature to world music and is a regular contributor to Songlines magazine.