Bill Tidy has announced in the latest edition of the CAMRA newspaper What's Brewing the sad demise of the legendary real ale campaigner, Keg Buster. This news is not very surprising, seeing that Bill himself is 84 and in poor health. Over the years he has created several wonderful long-running cartoon strips in addition to Keg Buster, such as The Cloggies and The Fosdyke Saga.
In the 1980s, Bill Tidy was a neighbour of ours in Westbourne Road, Southport. He was a regular at the Berkeley Arms, a hotel bar well-known for a fine choice of real ales and home-made pizzas; my friends and I spent a lot of time there. I occasionally saw Bill with his friends in the bar, although I never had the opportunity to speak to him. Bill drew a cartoon about the Berkeley which was framed and proudly displayed on the wall. I can't recall after all this time what the joke was, and this was in the days before we all had a mobile phone camera in our pockets. Unfortunately the Berkeley closed well over a decade ago when the building was converted to flats; I have occasionally wondered what happened to the cartoon.
By affectionately mocking us real ale campaigners, Keg Buster was a welcome corrective to the tendency to solemn self-importance and pomposity that some committed advocates for any cause can occasionally be prone to. I don't know whether there are any plans to replace Keg Buster, but if there are, the cartoonist concerned has a hard act to follow.
RIP Keg Buster, and best wishes to Bill on his retirement.
From November 2017. Click on the cartoon to see a larger image.
I've just had a wonderful evening in the Guest House playing 50s and 60s rock & roll and pop music; quite a few of my friends turned out to watch, people ended up dancing, and the whole night left me with a buzz. Then I got home and learnt the great Chuck Berry had died. John Lennon once said that if you had to have another name for rock & roll, it would have to be 'Chuck Berry'. I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised, seeing that he was 90, but one of our few surviving links to the golden age of rock & roll has been broken.
If rock & roll had only ever produced one song, it would be this.
The Old Roan (picture borrowed
from the petition set up to save it)
Unusually, I was driving towards Liverpool last Thursday (I almost always go by rail nowadays) via Aintree. I used to drive this route every day for 13 years when I worked in Norris Green, Liverpool 11, until I transferred to Southport in 1993. I was expecting changes, and there were certainly plenty. However, what I wasn't expecting to see that the Old Roan pub was boarded up. Checking on-line later, I saw that it has been closed for 3 or 4 years and is up for sale for conversion to retail premises. There was an unsuccessful petition (now closed) to Sefton Council Licensing Unit to allow the pub to reopen.
This pub was something of a highly visible landmark, giving its name to the surrounding area and to the nearby railway station; I don't recall it ever selling real ale. However, when I worked in Norris Green, I'd sometimes offer Wally Warren, the deputy manager, a lift if we were leaving work at the same time - we both tended to work late; he lived near the pub and it saved him a slow bus trip. Sometimes he'd offer to buy me a pint, and in we'd go. I was the union rep in the office, but no cosy deals were stitched up there.
For a while, we had a manager who seemed to have a skill in getting on everyone's nerves. After he'd been moved on, Wally told me that he'd learnt about our occasional drinks and asked, "Is it fruitful?" Wally replied that I didn't let slip anything that I shouldn't, and neither did he as a member of management; he added that the boss never trusted him again.
In negotiations, Wally and I crossed swords on several occasions, but it wasn't personal. He was an old-school manager with integrity, even if he could be a bit grumpy on occasions; overall the staff liked him and tended to tolerate his little foibles with a knowing smile. I learnt a few years ago that he'd died; if I'd known I'd have gone to his funeral.
As I drove past the Old Roan, all these thoughts came back to me and, although the beer wasn't up to much, I look back on those pints in that pub with fondness and, I'd go as far to say, friendship.
One of these occasions was the last time I drank a pint of keg lager. Wally bought it for me in error and offered to replace it when he realised his mistake, but I just accepted it. After all, it wasn't as though the Old Roan's bitter was much better.
After the most recent celebrity deaths, I've been reading quite a few comments on Facebook and elsewhere to the effect of: "Let's get this awful year out of the way - roll on 2017." Don't hold your breath, because the Grim Reaper doesn't operate by the calendar. Having said that, it does seem to have been a particularly bad year. Some deaths are sad but not astonishing: for example, the actress Liz Smith who was 95 after all, but George Michael's death at 53 was completely unexpected. I was never a fan, although I've always acknowledged his talent, but as Billy Bragg has said, "His support for the LGBTQ community, the NHS and the miners marked George Michael out as an activist as well as a great artist."
Here is my own, highly subjective list of musical losses that were particularly significant to me. Not mentioning an artist here should not be taken as a posthumous snub.
January
David Bowie was at his hit-making peak when I was a student, The Jean Genie coming out in my first year. At college discos, friends would sometimes chant "Neville Neville" to another of his hits; it's amazing what can seem funny after a night on the ale. His constantly changing pop persona kept him in the spotlight for decades: Ziggy Stardust, Thin White Duke, the heavy metal of Tin Machine and the white soul of Let's Dance, to mention just a few. His recent songs are certainly no disgrace to his memory.
Glen Frey. I always liked the Eagles, particularly Desperado, both the album and title track, which Frey co-wrote. Hotel California, which he also co-wrote, always seemed an especially eerie song, which I occasionally like to bash out on my 12-string guitar. I saw Glen Frey live with the Eagles on the Hell Freezes Over Tour in the McAlpine Stadium in Huddersfield in July 1996; it was a memorable performance.
March
George Martin.I wrote about his death at the time. I was 15 when the Sixties ended, so the Beatles provided the soundtrack of my childhood. Paul McCartney said of him: "If anyone earned the title of the fifth Beatle it was George." Says it all really.
Keith Emerson. As students, we'd often sit late into the night in each other's rooms listening to prog rock, which was massive at the time. Along with Genesis and Yes, we often listened to The Nice and Emerson Lake and Palmer, which both featured Emerson. As I recall, rock musos tended to view the latter two with more respect than most of their contemporaries. It is a cliché to describe prog rock as overblown and pretentious; while some undoubtedly was - even Rick Wakeman has said he doesn't know what Tales of Topographic Oceans was about - much was groundbreaking, innovative and pushed the boundaries. Emerson's bands tended to be viewed in the latter category.
June
Dave Swarbrick. Virtuoso fiddle player with Fairport Convention, in a duo with Martin Carthy, and in the line-ups of various other band over the years, including the band he founded, Whippersnapper. The electric folk that Fairport pioneered owed a lot to Swarbrick's vast folk repertoire and trad credibility. Ashley Hutchings described him as "the most influential [British] fiddle player bar none". He was an enthusiastic performer, although the energy had to be conserved in latter years owing to his long-term health problems. I wrote about him in June, where I included a Youtube video of him accompanying Richard Thompson.
Scotty Moore. Elvis was really before my time; I'd just been born when he first went into a recording studio. However, we were all aware of Elvis in the 60s and 70s, even when we could name only a handful of his 50s contemporaries. Scotty Moore was essential to the early Elvis sound and was credited with the invention of the power chord on the song Jailhouse Rock. Keith Richards once said: "When I heard Heartbreak Hotel, I knew what I wanted to do in life... Everyone else wanted to be Elvis, I wanted to be Scotty."
November
Leonard Cohen. His name has almost become shorthand for miserable dirges - I've made jokes along those lines myself - but this is only part of the story. His lyrics were often poetic, and in fact he began as a poet; the songwriting came later. His songs undoubtedly did reach a lot of people: I'd guess that Bird On The Wire and Hallelujah are probably the ones most people relate to. Actually, I'm not keen on the latter, but there are three of his that I do perform occasionally: my favourite to sing is Winter Lady from his first album.
December
Greg Lake. Much of what I've written for Keith Emerson applies here too. Lake's pre-ELP band was King Crimson, and the album In the Court of the Crimson King was a favourite, especially its searing track 21st Century Schizoid Man with its apocalyptic tone and Vietnam war references. I'm sure I'm not the only rock fan to have mused that Carl Palmer remains the only member of ELP still with us.
Rick Parfitt. Status Quo have at times seemed almost eternal, so it was a shock when Parfitt died, coincidentally on the day after Quo had played a gig in Liverpool (without him, as he'd given up touring for medical reasons). I have sometimes joined in the "three chord wonders" jokes about Quo that used to do the rounds, although in reality I liked them. I saw them live two or three times, and they were an excellent act. No one can take away from them the fact that they opened Live Aid with Rocking All Over The World, a song written by John Fogerty, but which Quo made very much their own.
There have been many other great acts we have lost this year, such as Merle Haggard, Prince, Maurice White (of Earth Wind and Fire) and, as previously mentioned, George Michael, but this list is specifically of music I have chosen to listen to over the years, whether recorded or live. I'm just hoping I don't have to update it between now and 2017.
Here are some high energy jigs and reels by Dave Swarbrick with Fairport Convention at Glastonbury in 1971. Plus ça change ...
I was sorry to hear that Úna McBride had passed away at the age of 59. Úna has deservedly been in the news recently because, despite terminal cancer, she raised large sums of money for charities such as Queenscourt Hospice and MacMillan Cancer Support, culminating in a special 'Courage and Sparkle' event in St George's Hall, Liverpool.
The Bec in happier days with brass band and brewery dray
Six years ago, Úna was involved in an entirely different campaign: to reopen the Becconsall pub in Hesketh Bank. The Bec, as it was known, was originally the hunting, shooting and fishing lodge for the local aristocratic Hesketh family. It eventually became a pub and was run for 25 years by Úna's parents, Frank and Úna McBride. Being the only local pub, it was central to village life, although in latter years it went in to decline. After it closed in 2009, Úna began a campaign in the name of her elderly mother, known locally as Mrs Mc, to reopen the Bec, not just as a pub, but as a community social enterprise for use by local groups and residents for meetings and functions.
She set up the 'Save The Becconsall' committee which quickly became very active and was able to attract interest in the project from a pub entrepreneur. Úna and her team worked tirelessly to resurrect this fondly-remembered pub, hoping to provide a valuable asset for the community. I spoke to her on the phone several times so that I could cover the campaign in the local CAMRA magazine Ale & Hearty, which I then edited. I also mentioned her campaign on this blog.
Maureen Baldwin from the action group said at the time: “The Becconsall was always a very attractive family pub when it was owned by the McBride family and it would be great if we could recreate that once again.”
Sadly that was not to be because a structural survey revealed that the building had been so badly neglected by its final owners that it was beyond economic repair. Demolition followed and the site was then redeveloped into houses and flats.
Despite her own battles against cancer, Úna later applied her formidable campaigning skills to raising thousands of pounds for health-related charities for which she was honoured just a few weeks ago at the Merseyside Women of the Year Awards. I admire her inspiring fundraising work for good causes undertaken when she was seriously ill herself, but also remember her earlier work as a highly committed pub campaigner on behalf of her community in Hesketh Bank.
An edited version of this will appear in the CAMRA column in the local paper, the Southport Visiter.
I'm sorry to hear that the virtuoso violinist Dave Swarbrick has died today aged 75. He was best known for his pioneering work with Fairport Convention, particularly on the ground-breaking album Liege & Lief which combined traditional English songs and tunes with rock instruments. So used have we become to what became known as folk rock that it easy to forget how controversial this was at the time. Folk purists regarded it as selling out, and as an innovation it was as contentious as Bob Dylan going electric. He was proficient on several other instruments, wrote songs and tunes in the traditional style, was in demand as a session musician, and released a string of solo albums.
I first saw him with Fairport Convention in the Southport Theatre in the late 1970s in the tour that preceded the group's calling it a day, except for annual reunions at Cropredy; eventually those reunions led to the band reforming. I later saw him on tour with Martin Carthy, a collaboration that happened periodically over the decades, and finally a couple of years ago at Cropredy, the festival that Fairport still holds annually. He was musically brilliant live, infectiously enthusiastic and, until his health problems began to take hold, a highly energetic performer.
In 1999, during one of his spells in hospital, the Daily Telegraph reported his death and published an obituary. Swarb was delighted with the highly complimentary nature of the tribute, bar the one obvious mistake, declaring "It's not the first time I've died in Coventry." He later told the Oxford Times: "I photocopied the obits, took them to gigs, signed them 'RIP Dave Swarbrick' and sold them for £1. After all, where else are you going to get a signed obituary? I had to stop, though, when The Telegraph got in touch and told me I couldn’t do it as they had the copyright."
He was received many awards for his work, including a lifetime achievement award, and saw Liege & Lief voted "Most Influential Folk Album of All Time".
Here is a masterclass of violin playing from 2014 with Richard Thompson who was in Fairport with Swarb in the early 1970s. After performing a set of tunes accompanied by Thompson, he plays along to Thompson's poignant song, Waltzing's For Dreamers.
Greene King has decided to take obsequiousness to new depths by producing a beer called Purple Reign to mark our head of state's 90th birthday. Regrettably, on the actual day it was released, the singer and musician Prince, who wrote and recorded the song Purple Rain in 1984, was found to have died.
I've seen this tweet addressed to Greene King by Hannah Davidson of the East London Brewing Company: "please don't name your next guest beer after Sir David Attenborough".
The beer is made using sweet pale malt from East Anglian barley and English Challenger, Pilgrim and First Gold hops which sounds quite interesting, but if it's anything like Greene King IPA, it will be utterly dreary and devoid of any interesting flavour whatsoever. I seriously doubt it will be a worthy tribute to a multi-talented and versatile singer, songwriter and musician.
Lady Penelope and cigarette
(probably not a Woodbine)
Sad to hear that Sylvia Anderson has died at the age of 88. Like many people my age, I loved the various TV series in Supermarionation (i.e. posh puppetry) that she and her husband Gerry produced for us in the 60s. My favourite was, perhaps predictably, Thunderbirds.
Thunderbirds included the posh, elegant and beautiful London agent of International Rescue, Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward, whose appearance was based on Sylvia herself (although that wasn't her idea); she also devised the character's personality and provided the voice.
When not defeating the baddies helped by her loyal chauffeur Parker, Lady Penelope could sometimes be seen smoking a cigarette in a long holder, which would have been viewed as a sign of sophistication at the time. Imagine if one of the heroes of a modern children's TV show was shown smoking: the knee-jerk, shocked reactions about the irresponsibility of sending all the wrong messages to impressionable young people, along with demands that the producer be sacked.
Sylvia was justifiably proud of the Lady Penelope character because, unusually for the time, she wasn't a wife or girlfriend tagging along behind the square-jawed hero; she was a leading character herself, a valued part of the IR team, and a good example for the girls who were watching. Although Sylvia has gone, we'll still have Lady Penelope for a long time to come, partly because her date of birth is 24 December 2039, and partly because Sylvia's creation was so memorable.
Here is the Thunderbirds theme tune, which for my money is among the best of TV themes, played extremely well by the Band of the Royal Marines. I do like hearing it; perhaps it takes me back to more innocent (and pre-beer) times.
Sad news that George Martin has just died. It's hardly surprising - he was ninety, after all - but it is something of the end of an era for those of us who regard the songs of the Beatles as the soundtrack of our youth. Beatles detractors have sometimes claimed that the real talent on the albums was his, that he moulded the raw energy of a rough-and-ready Merseybeat group into something more commercially appealing, and that without him they would have languished in provincial obscurity, but he always denied such mean-spirited accusations.
A more realistic assessment is that he provided the opportunity for their talent to shine through, helping, advising and sometimes steering them, but the suggestion that he was some kind of Svengali figure is wide of the mark. One simple example was their reaction to his proposal to record How Do You Do It? as their first single. While they did record a competent version, you can tell there's no enthusiasm in their performance, and it really is no more than the Beatles sound by numbers. Gerry and the Pacemakers subsequently had a well-deserved number one hit with their rather more exuberant rendition. The Beatles held out for their own song Love Me Do to be their first single, an act of determined self-assurance virtually unheard of in a newly-signed band back in 1962. Martin's relationship with the Beatles was collaborative, not controlling, and the respect was mutual.
His reach was far wider than the Beatles, from Kenneth McKellar and Jimmy Shand to Ultavox and Celine Dion. Soundtracks included Live And Let Die, Roger Moore's first Bond film, of which Moore has said: "He made my first Bond film sound brilliant!" He also produced the theme song, for my money one of McCartney's best post-Beatles singles, and arranged its orchestral section: the end result was nominated for an Oscar.
Some idea of the sheer breadth and quantity of his work can be seen here, but he will always be known as the 'fifth Beatle'; while such an accolade has been given to a number of people, it is undeniably justified in his case. He was proud of his work with the group, but was always keen to emphasise it was their talent that he helped bring out: "I've been cast in the role of schoolmaster, the toff, the better-educated, and they've been the urchins that I've shaped. It's a load of poppycock, really, because our backgrounds were very similar. Paul and John went to quite good schools. We didn't pay to go to school, my parents were very poor. Again, I wasn't taught music and they weren't, we taught ourselves. As for the posh bit, you can't really go through the Royal Navy without getting a little bit posh. You can't be like a rock 'n' roll idiot throwing soup around in the wardroom."
I'd argue that by enabling the Beatles to transcend their Merseybeat roots, encouraging them to take chances and become more innovative, he contributed to the general reshaping of pop and rock music in the 1960s and beyond, with singer-songwriters, whether in bands or solo, becoming the norm. Previously most pop performers had bought their songs from Tin Pan Alley.
Here is one of my favourite Lennon-McCartney songs, produced, of course, by George Martin who contributed the instrumental break:
In the last few days, I've heard two pieces of bad news.
Fred Hook, the business partner of Gail (the licensee of my local, the Guest House in Southport), and known as a bit of a character, died at the weekend; he was in his early 80s. While Gail nowadays is responsible for the day-to-day running of the pub, she and Fred have run pubs together for decades. In 2013, Fred was given a special award by the local CAMRA branch for 50 years in the licensing trade. I remember once during the weekly pub quiz, some lads were shouting out answers. I watched Fred walk over to them and simply say: "This is the easiest pub in Southport to get barred from." They duly shut up.
My sympathies to his family, friends and colleagues.
Mike in front of the now-closed
Tetley's brewery in Leeds
Mike Perkins, a stalwart of the local CAMRA branch and a genuinely nice bloke, was knocked down last week by a car near the Richmond pub in Scarisbrick New Road, Southport. He is seriously injured in hospital with several broken bones and I expect it will be months before we see him out and about again. The branch is having reallocate all the many tasks he does for CAMRA (even I have called in to take over our CAMRA column in the local paper).
My best wishes to Mike for a speedy and successful recovery.
It's always a shock to switch on the radio and hear that someone who seems always to have been there has died. It's even more so when it's a pop star from our younger years, seeing how closely we relate to those performers whose music we identified with at the time. So it was this morning with David Bowie.
He was a massive star when I was a student, and there was always one song that would fill our disco floor: Jean Genie (a thinly disguised version of the name of the French writer Jean Genet). Here is a version of the song on TOTP from 1973, thought lost until a cameraman found it among his personal collection a few years ago. Predictably, the BBC had wiped the original. Here he is with the great guitarist, the late Mick Ronson. Unfortunately I never him saw live, but this live performance gives some idea of how dynamic his concerts must have been.
I've just returned home from the funeral of Fred McCormick, folk singer, trade unionist and socialist; the chapel at Landican Crematorium was packed with friends and family, including many stalwarts of the local folk scene. Fred was a regular at my acoustic song session in the Lion in Liverpool and also at the Belvedere sessions, but his reach was much greater than that. He was also a lover of jazz and blues, and the local jazz scene also honoured his passing.
Peta Webb gave a beautiful rendition of the traditional Irish song 'Our Ship Is Ready'. Afterwards in Misty Blues in Wallasey, Ken Hall sang one of Fred's own songs, the comic 'The Bacon Butty Song', which lightened the mood, followed by several rousing songs from the Socialist Singers.
I'm just a local amateur singer-guitarist and my music doesn't have a lot in common with the blues, but it's a mistake to assume that the music someone plays is the only music they like, but I've found it's an assumption a lot of people make.
Although I can't claim to be an expert, I love the blues, from the classic bluesman like John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and BB King, to blues-influenced rock artists such as Eric Clapton, the Stones and Peter Green. The influence goes further because, as Muddy waters sang, The Blues Had A Baby And They Named It Rock And Roll. He was right: rock & roll was heavily influenced by the blues, and the basic chord structure of blues and rock & roll can be quite similar, which is no coincidence. Rock & roll also was influenced by country, gospel and doo-wop, but the blues provided the template that took rock & roll through to rock: Fleetwood Mac, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Whitesnake - among many other bands - all acknowledged their music and singing style were derived from the blues. For my money, U2's finest moment was when they played When Love Comes To Town with BB King.
BB King is one of the last of the genuine Mississippi bluesmen. 'BB' has in recent years been explained as meaning Blues Boy, but I remember years ago reading that this was a later revision and it originally had a more racist derivation: Black Boy*. I find this quite plausible, given the racism that these performers had to face through much of their lives: refusal of admission to hotels, or referred to the back door, and the lawful segregation in many aspects of everyday life that they grew up with in the old 'gallant' South. I think we British can take some credit for the fact that, because these blues singers were treated like conquering heroes over here even before they'd played any gigs in Britain, they were ultimately respected by white audiences in the USA. The Rolling Stones must take a lot of credit for showing white Americans what they had in their midst when they insisted on BB King supporting them on a US tour in the late 1960s.
I once thought 'BB King' when I heard on the radio the very first guitar note of one of his songs. I'm quite sure I couldn't have recognised any other guitarist on such scanty information,
Quite simply, an era has passed.
* P.S. (4 June): having listened to a lot of media coverage and done a bit of research on the internet, I've now concluded that this derivation is unlikely, and is probably no more than an assumption. However, my description of the discrimination black performers were subjected to is completely accurate.
Here is BB King playing with the late Gary Moore. It's definitely worth nine minutes of your time.
Members of the Soweto Gospel Choir posed as customers and shop workers in the Woolworth's Parkview store in Pretoria to sing this tribute to Nelson Mandela. The song is Johnny Clegg's Asimbonanga, written during Mandela's inprisonment as a call for his freedom. Beautifully sung - definitely real music - and it's a pleasure to see the reactions of all the customers. I just can't see it happening over here in Tesco's though. There's a translation here.
I went to the funeral this morning of an old friend whom I've known since the late 1970s: Jeff Stoker, who died last week in his early 60s. He was a fine practitioner of the art of the accordion and an old friend of the Bothy Folk Club. He was for many years the main musician for the Southport Swords, and he founded the Mr Blundell's Alms ceilidh band with friends from the local folk scene. He played with them and later on he was the caller (i.e. calling the various dance moves needed during the dance). Mr Blundell's Alms was named after the Blundell Arms pub where the Bothy used to meet for more than 35 years. He enjoyed playing along with music sessions in pubs, especially in Whitby in Yorkshire during Folk Week, and sometimes led musicians in medleys of folk tunes at the Bothy.
Unlike a lot of folkies who like to sing songs about the sea, Jeff had actually been to sea with the merchant navy. I don't know whether it was there he acquired his habit of smoking a pipe, an increasingly unusual sight nowadays, although I don't think with him it was any kind of affectation. He simply preferred it to cigarettes. He also liked real ale and I often used to see him in the Guest House, my local, before ill health began to intervene.
Jeff for many years ran a small music shop in Birkdale called Acoustic Instruments North West, where he would sell, buy and repair instruments. I bought a number of things there over the years, including the speakers I still use with my PA system. I tended to get the impression that the challenge of a tricky repair was his favourite part of the service.
Jeff was happily married to Catherine, and they had two sons, Phil and Nick, but sadly Catherine died several years before him. I don't think he ever fully got over that loss. Not long afterwards, he asked me how I was getting to Whitby for Folk Week. When I said I was going to to drive over, he said, "Let's go together in my car." My protestations that I had my PA system plus two guitars were summarily dismissed by a reminder that he had a large Volvo estate, and so for several years we shared the journey and petrol costs. I suspect the journey to Whitby, where he and Catherine had spent many happy Folk Weeks, was easier with company than alone. I too liked the company, and the fact that - despite offers from me - he did all the driving! He always came to the Lunchtime Legends rock & roll party during folk week and at other times, and was happy to advise me when the sound needed balancing.
For many years, in the run-up to Christmas, Jeff ran a carol singing session in a local pub (originally the Blundell Arms, then the Park Hotel, and latterly the Fishermen's Rest - all in Birkdale); the plan is to keep this going. It was in the Fishermen's Rest today that we gathered after the service in St Teresa's. The three officiating priests included a brother in law of Jeff and a cousin, so it truly was a family affair. The one positive thing was that church was full with Jeff's family and various friends from different strands of his life. He was a modest man and I feel sure the turn-out would have surprised him, but I had thought it might be busy. And deservedly so too.
This is a music night organised by the Bothy Folk Club to raise money for the Southport Kidney Fund and as a tribute to our friend, Bernie Blaney, who sadly passed away a couple of months ago. Everyone who knew Bernie is welcome to come along. Bernie was former deputy treasurer of the
Fund, and a stalwart of the local folk music and pub quiz scenes. Those appearing include the Wayfarers Chorus, the folk group
Patchwork, and a number of resident singers from Southport's Bothy Folk Club
and from Maghull Folk Club. The event is at 8.00 pm on Friday 30 November at the Park Golf Club, Park Road West, Southport, PR9 0JS. Free admission; a collection will be taken, and raffles and auctions will be held during the evening. Plenty of free parking and the venue serves Thwaites Wainwright real ale.
Bert Weedon, who, inspired generations of British guitarists, famous and not so famous, has died today aged 91. He wrote the best-selling guitar tutor, Play In A Day, and was the first British guitarist in the British pop charts (or Hit Parade, as it was known then) in 1959 with Guitar Boogie Shuffle. You can read a lot more about his musical career and the generations of guitarists he influenced in a BBC obituary here. In the meantime, here's a video of him from around 1982 performing his first hit, and what strikes me is the obvious pleasure he has in playing:
I've just learnt that Bert Jansch, one of the most influential guitarists of his generation, died last night of cancer at the age of 67; I hadn't known that he was ill. Bert Jansch was admired as a solo performer, but was also known for many musical collaborations, particularly as part of a duo with John Renbourn and as a member of innovative folk-jazz band, Pentangle. Many guitarists in the folk and the rock worlds have acknowledged their debt to and admiration for Bert Jansch, including Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin who recorded Jansch's arrangement of Black Waterside virtually note for note and renaming it Black Mountain Side. This was controversial as Page neither credited Jansch or paid him any royalties.
I saw him several times on solo gigs and once with John Renbourn, and the first LP I ever owned was the Bert Jansch Sampler; my own attempts at the instrumental Angie were derived from playing the track from that album over and over again. I still sometimes like to listen to his lyrical album Rosemary Lane.
The video below is of Bert Jansch playing Black Waterside, a song that he learned from the legendary folk singer Anne Briggs, a debt that that he did acknowledge. BBC report here.
It's difficult to write a post that refers both to the death of Amy Winehouse and to the massacre in Norway, but I feel impelled to because the two events have been linked in many people's minds: some individuals have poured scorn on those who have been saddened by Amy Winehouse's death for - as they've put it - mourning a junkie while nearly 100 innocent young people were ruthlessly gunned down by a deranged neo-Nazi fanatic. My view is that Amy's death is no less devastating to her family and friends than the deaths of those killed in Norway are to their own families and friends. I also tend to have an aversion to condemning people for the way they live when they're not harming anyone else, but on Facebook and in comments beneath articles about Ms Winehouse, there is no shortage of people ready to condemn her; it was her own choice, they say, she brought it on herself. I'm not so sure: I don't believe she began taking drugs and horrendous amounts of alcohol with the attitude, "This will kill me, therefore I choose it." Addiction is not a choice, it is a consequence of bad choices, which isn't the same thing at all, and once you're an addict, the concept of choice becomes rather hypothetical.
It's better to remember her undeniably great talent rather than her sad end. Unfortunately she has joined the ranks of those who in different ways burnt out, such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Gram Parsons, Jim Morrison, Phil Lynott, Ian Curtis, to name just a few. Like those others, it's best to remember her through her music.
As for those killed in Norway, I can't believe there's anyone who reads this blog who isn't shocked and outraged by the senseless massacre and waste of so many young lives in the name of an odiously misguided ideology. But among the comments to various on-line articles, I've seen some rather vile anti-Moslem statements, as though this mass murderer's warped motives had some validity, a deceit I believe most decent people would utterly reject. If, like me, you'd like to send a message of condolence to the people of Norway, there is a link here where you can do so.
The Watersons - Mike is
wearing his trade mark cap.
Mike Waterson, member of the Watersons folk group, died yesterday aged 70 after a long illness. The Watersons were a family folk group who were highly influential from the 1960s onwards, making great use of vocal harmonies rather than musical accompaniment. Their influence on folk harmony singing has been and remains immense to this day, and I have known local vocal groups who have been happy to admit their debt to the Waterson's style. I saw the Watersons only once, in Southport in the early 1980s, and it was something of an eye opener to me at the time, both in terms of the material and the way it was sung.
As well as singing traditional songs, Mike was also a talented songwriter who wrote on a wide range of subjects that caught the imagination of other singers; I heard his song A Stitch In Time (about a woman who sews her drunken, violent husband into his bed so he can't move) sung at the Guest House singaround just a fortnight ago. Another of his songs, Bright Phoebus, the title track of an album recorded with his late sister Lal Waterson, who was also a song writer, is regularly sung at folk clubs and festivals.
Mike was brother to Norma Waterson, who herself had a life-threatening illness recently, brother in law to Martin Carthy, and uncle to Eliza Carthy, one of the most prominent young folk performers today. Here is Mike's obituary in The Guardian.
