Jack Hues Official

Never tell your brother he’s out of tunes

My friend Jack, a Beatles brother ever since we both heard Please Please Me at the same time in 1963, is currently making this best music of his life. And being completely overlooked perhaps because one solo album is tolerated, and indeed celebrated by Prog magazine, but a second? And THIRD? Pure indulgence… Perhaps; Maybe? No! And he’s just released his best single so far On Whitstable Beach:

Casting the first pebble

Three, Four; nobody told me about Wang Chang I just heard them at random one day on the car radio; Vauxhall Astra (!) playing Capital Radio in London on my way to Lewisham College. Dancehall Days was also playing as I passed the classic SE London dancehall the Rivoli Ballroom in Brockley. Much loved by a blues Elton John and more accurately by Denis Potter in his Suez satire Lipstick on Your Collar, so it had some contextual resonance to my personal cultural Folksonomy. Great track full of space, rhythm, narrative and the endless yearning of our subconscious for meaning that characterizes the best popular music

What I’m talking about when I talk about Jack Hues

Never tell Jack he’s out of tunes

Pete Seeger: he surrounded hate and forced it to surrender

Excellent blog post by Gerry Cordon on the life of Pete Seeger

That's How The Light Gets In

‘He’s gonna look like your granddad if your granddad can kick your ass.’

Four years ago, Pete Seeger celebrated his 90th birthday party with a sell-out concert at Madison Square Garden.  Characteristically, it was a fundraiser for a campaign to which he’d dedicated years of his life: cleaning up New York’s Hudson River.  That night, Bruce Springsteen introduced Seeger with these words:

He’s gonna look a lot like your granddad that wears flannel shirts and funny hats. He’s gonna look like your granddad if your granddad can kick your ass. At 90, he remains a stealth dagger through the heart of our country’s illusions about itself.

And that’s the truth.  Pete Seeger, who died yesterday aged 94, opposed McCarthyism, and worked tirelessly on behalf of civil rights movement, making his first trip south at the invitation of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1956. One of the seminal political events in…

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Jazz Appreciation MOOC1

January 2014

How did I get into Jazz? Well as Pete Waterman says lots of us post-war kids who got into music owe it to our Mums, who were perhaps rock n’roll fans before marrying but bought records and turn their kids onto them. In my case my Mum took me to the NAAFI in Herford during 1959 and bought, brrmm, brrmm – The Everly Brothers Til I Kissed You!;  

Yeah, not Jazz… But the UK had no music radio, and wouldn’t have until 1967 (check the movie The Boat that Rocked for more on this). What little music that gained ‘needle time’ on the radio was very mainstream, which, in the 50s, meant Mrs Mills, Russ Conway, Broadway musicals and operatic show tunes. My Dad liked Frank Sinatra since Songs for Swinging Lovers (?) and then, joy of joys, Frank Sinatra starred with Louis Armstrong and the family went off to see High Society – Well Did you Evah! 

High Society created a number of family catch-phrases such as “have you heard its in the stars, next July we collide with Mars.” Fortunately Louis Armstrong & Bing Crosby also took the opportunity to introduce us to Jazz as well

Women in Music

If I can’t dance I dont want to be part of your revolution

As the late great Emma Goldman once put it, and read her book Living My Life if you can; dance. So on the 100th International Women’s Day lets dance to some of the great Women in music; continuous playlist on YouTube here.  At the moment it is PJ Harvey who most neatly captures that dance/revolution, but recently albums by Rumer, sumptuously, and Laura Marling, challengingly (you have to sit up straight to listen to it) sit on the dance/revolution boundary. But it is Polly Harvey’s ironically sly chorus, “Gonna take my problem to the United Nations“, that gives me the laughing dance by proxy The Words That Maketh Murder;

But if you’d ask me to name, off the top of my head, who my favourite female musician is then I’d usually say Cassandra Wilson, who grew out of the remarkable M-Base Collective in New York, along with Meshell N’degecello, to become the best jazz singer of the past thirty years. I could just listen to her voice alone, but the way she interplays with her musicians always seems fresh. She has a remarkable way of interpreting songs, I particularly like the way she takes Last Train to Clarksville and returns it to its anti-Vietnam roots and Strange Fruit sinks deep into its raw emotions. She has just released a staggeringly alive album Silver Pony, which is her best since Belly of the Sun for me. But demonstrating her massive intimacy here is Redemption Song

 

2010 in review

Radio YouTube Attractions in 2010

These are the most popular posts and my favourite albums in 2010.

1 Rumer Post November 2010; Live on Jools Dec 31st 2010 Aretha; 

Rumer

High on My Headphones (November 2010)

It’s a cold, cold, November and I need something warm and lubricious on my headphones, so what better than new vocal sensation Rumer, with her decidely autumnal Seasons of My Soul. (The YouTube playlist for this post is here) Don’t know much about her, except that she is Anglo-Pakistani, has worked with Bacharach and that intelligent lounge sensibility oozes out of the album. Perfect aural mollycoddlying for when you come in from the cold and want to be warmed through, or early on a lazy Sunday morning. Aretha;  

Electric Eden

Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music

This month I have mostly been reading Electric Eden, the marvellous book by Rob Young which looks at the Arcadian tradition in British music in the twentieth century, or folk rock to you and me. At the end of the nineteenth century the Victorians had made our world so safe for piano legs that in 1904 a German music critic actually wrote a book describing Britain as Das Land ohne Musik; the land without music. Yet, in the nineteenth century we had developed a marvellous Romantic poetic tradition which had come from a spiritual engagement with nature, even as the industrial revolution developed apace. Electric Eden looks at how this emerging cultural tradition infused and changed various musics in the twentieth century. In some ways the first example of this spiritual, or even pagan, development in music was Charles Parry’s arrangement of Blake’s Jerusalem.

This post will try to summarise the book with a selection of tracks reflecting its concerns and interests. Rob Young starts his book with the metaphor of Vashti Bunyan‘s one year road trip in a Romany caravan to join Donovan’s artistic commune in Scotland. He’s moved on by time she got there; like other putative musical collectives in 1969 commerce got in the way of his vision. So Vashti, along with her dog and husband, kept on her pilgrimage until she reached and settled in the Irish countryside. She was living out of time but engaging directly with nature in the countryside in a series of Just Another Diamond Day.

World Music of Africa

A Personal History of African Music

I wasn’t planning to write this but I thought, after the World Cup had tried to celebrate the African dimension in football, I would comment on and play some African music, that I liked and influenced me, as a chronology (non-stop playlist on YouTube here). It is also Nelson Mandela Day today so as well as singing Nkosi Sikeleli Africa, here is a chance to say God Bless Nelson Mandela and enjoy some of the music from Africa. As Mendela said “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

Currently I am a huge fan of West African music from Sub-Saharan Mali, Senegal and Nigeria, as well as North African Rai and Arabic music. However during the World Cup I discovered that Ghana has a vibrant and developing music scene around blingy hiplife and both Cameroon and the Cote d’Ivoire have great dance music, you can follow new developments at AfroPop online. I live in London and apart from Ginger Johnson’s African Drummers, who played on Sympathy For The Devil at the Rolling Stones Concert in the Park in 1969, the first out and out African band I saw were Osibisa; criss-cross rhythms that explode with happiness. In our typical student house in London we used to play The Dawn off the first album to get us out of bed, but here is one of their minor UK hits from the YouTube Osibisa playlist by voycha; this is what they were like live. Music for Gong-Gong;  

World Cup of Music Final

Finals July 11th

Well I picked a final between Brasil and Spain, with Uruguay as dark horses and Domenech (France) to crash out at the group stage, so I feel fairly satisfied in the tipster department. England did exactly as predicted in “Why England Lose” and the ELO World Football rankings rated Spain and Holland Numbers 1& 2 before the tournament, so no surprises for them. However in todays Spain Holland Final we have At Last The Johann Cruyff Show, with Cruyffesque Spain reflecting the influence of his style on Barcelona, and the post-Cruyff Dutch team reflecting his arrogance. Well done to Bert van Marwijk for managing the team’s egos, and really well done to Rafael van der Vaart for helpfully getting injured at the right time. In terms of the final we have a team that dominate around 80% of their games, then score one goal, playing a team who only fire for 40% of their games but score 2 goals. Spain are also the team most fouled against, whilst Holland commit the most fouls (hello Marc van Bommel!), so it could be ugly between goals. Having tipped them as finalists and loving their pass and move style (unlike the UK journalist on the BBC last week who wonder why they never hoof the ball upfield to add some excitement) I expect Spain to win, just like Paul the Octopus. However I have a funny feeling that Casillas is going to make a howler and gift the Dutch a goal, which Sneijder will claim as he “forced it.” Whatever, at the end of the match we will all be able to go Ghanian, celebrate hiplife and Kiss The Bride;

World Cup of Music July 6

Semi-Finals

P/Review of Matches July 3/6/7; So it does look like a Holland Germany final after all; now there is a local derby to savour. Next Sunday I suggest you get over to Holland, wear some Oranje, neck down some Oranjeboom and hope the third-time lucky rule kicks in for the Soldiers of Orange. Given how unpredictable this World Cup has been however it might be won by street-fighter Suarez in the Final slipping it passed Casillas, who is due a monumental mistake with someone sharper that Roque Santa Cruz following up. Villa already deserves a winner’s medal as he is carrying European Champions Spain. Paraguay were immense until Nelson Valdez went off , suggesting that a great counter-attacking side can defeat Spain. Sadly Ghana, like Paraguay, missed a penalty that would have put them through; penalty heart-ache ruled Accra. Despite tipping them as dark horses I just can’t see Uruguay beating Holland but, whilst Germany are stronger, Spain are capable of unlocking any defence when Iniesta puts Villa through. So todays Theme Tune is some joyous Ghanaian Hiplife to thank them for their great performances. Trosky Blackman (featuring Osofo Mafia) with their Italianate BlackStar Football Anthem;