Increased coverage

Regular readers will be familiar with my rants about there not being enough cover versions out there. Too many inadequate or merely average songwriters keep churning out their own stuff (whether desperate for publishing royalties or just to express themselves, man) and ignoring all the unarguably great stuff they could be having a crack at ...

As further encouragement in the right direction:

•  remember even the very best songwriters will often play the field - Dylan: all sorts of examples throughout his career; Bruce Springsteen: Seeger Sessions, opening up at Hyde Park in 2009 with 'London Calling'; Laura Marling's lovely 'Needle and the Damage Done'/'Blues Run The Game' 7"; etc, etc;
• why stop at one song? I'm currently listening a lot to Chuck Prophet's Dreaming Waylon's Dreams, which is his version of a whole Waylon Jennings album, Dreaming My Dreams. A lot of fun, a great tribute and he really makes the songs his own.And also to Robyn Hitchcock Sings, a double CD set of Dylan songs delivered in Robyn's own inimitable style. (The second CD replicates the electric set from the legendary Free Trade Hall concert in 1966, complete with versions of the between songs chat and some drunkard in the audience shouting 'Judas' prematurely...)

And a PS - creeping in under cover of this post's title: readership continues to rise, helped greatly by Karl Erik at the splendid Expecting Rain site posting links to the recent Patti Smith and Richard Thompson pieces. The site had over 280 visitors on the days they came out. And last Saturday saw a current record of 587 page views. Many thanks for all the interest.

Not carping about Richard Thompson

A superbly performed concert by Richard and his wonderful band at the Dome in Brighton on 3 February, completing the UK leg of a tour to promote the Dream Attic album. I'd bagged front row tickets and it was a treat to see five such astonishing musicians at the top of their game, and having a whale of a time too. They thoroughly deserved the standing ovation at the end.

But I don't really want to do a full review, because I left more impressed than moved and I don't want to get into a gripe session. My problems are:

• I'm not keen on his recent song writing - he has written some amazing stuff in his time (as the early 90s tribute collection Beat the Retreat from the likes of REM and Evan Dando amply testifies. Buy immediately if you don't already have it) but I can't remember the last one that really did it for me;
• the set was heavily weighted towards the recent, despite some classics making an appearance in the second 'hits' half;
• I don't find his current singing voice attractive enough to sustain more than 2 hours of lead vocals.

I realise this essentially this comes down to the attitudes which infuriate me when they're applied to people like Bob Dylan and Neil Young: he doesn't write them like he used to, he doesn't sing them them like he used to, why can't he do more of the old ones, etc. In other words, why doesn't he make the artistic choices I would make if I was him? So I won't continue in that vein... You carry on doing what you want to do, Richard.

The good things I took away from Thursday were:

• awe at the tightness, technical brilliance and sustained attack of the ensemble. I was reminded (in a good way) of Red-era King Crimson, or a crack fusion band like the Mahavishnu Orchestra - with the added ability to turn out a polka or slip jig, and to have a laugh while they're doing it;
• particular appreciation of Richard Thompson's right hand - plectrum between thumb and index finger, middle and ring fingers often snaking out to pick beneath it. And the wonderful air a maestro has of time to spare when doing the most difficult stuff;
• beautiful performances of some songs I love - 'Wall of Death', 'The Angels Took My Racehorse Away', 'Al Bowlly's in Heaven'.

Then it sent me back to the old stuff. I've just been listening to Fairport Convention's Full House, which is not an album people talk about that much, in comparison with the epochal Liege and Lief, What We Did On Our Holidays, etc. Well, they ought to talk about it. Very much a band record - coping with the departure of star vocalist Sandy Denny, further integrating Dave Swarbrick, combining fresh original songs with the traditional tunes. And Richard's contribution is huge: matching Swarbrick step for step in the jigs, a glorious extended electric workout on 'Sloth', an endearingly tentative lead vocal for a verse of 'Walk Awhile' - plus some of the funniest sleevenotes you'll see.

And it gave me a cue for remembering the first time I saw Richard Thompson live: as a duo with Linda in a folk club upstairs at the Dog and Partridge in Clitheroe in (probably) 1974. They were amazing, as you'd expect. And the pub's lack of plush dressing rooms and separate facilities meant that I had my closest encounter thus far with a musical hero, standing next to Richard at the urinal in the gents. Didn't say anything, of course - you have to give these people a bit of space to do their thing ...

Woodcraft Folk

As promised...

I love their music and the way they release it, but I don't know much about them.

I sent off for a CD, Trough of Bowland, soon after its release in 2005 without having heard any of it. A review in The Wire caught my eye because (a) my kids were briefly Woodcraft Folk and (b) I grew up in Lancashire next door to the Trough of Bowland. My impeccable logic was justified. The album is an alluring mixture of squelchy synths, cheap Casio electronics, xylophone and other acoustic instruments, and occasional wordless vocals. It's charming and catchy, like incidental music for Children's Hour - in an alternate universe.

And it came in a nice limited edition - card sleeve, intriguing art, inserts. The dread CD can be made into an attractive artefact if you really try...

So I was all set up to be a fan. What's next? Well, nothing very obvious. I kept my ear to the ground and googled them occasionally, but there didn't seem to be much activity. Just one track on a 10" EP, It Happened On A Day, which also featured the mighty Tunng and three other acts. Then, out of the blue, I happened to see a vinyl reissue of the original album a year or so ago. Beautifully done, nice to have - but how about something new? Further silence.

Which was broken last month when I happened on a recent 45 'Quiet, Birds Have Ears' b/w 'At Home With Howls'. Worth the price of admission for the titles, I'd say, but the music's fine too: some added drive from Trough, with more use of real drums and something approaching a Krautrock pulse - and someone singing words - on 'Howls'. And yes, fellow fetishists, the packaging is admirable: pressed on half white, half clear, vinyl with an insert of some spirograph patterns. Not your everyday sort of record.

All strongly recommended, if you can find any or all of single, LP and CD.

And also recommended is splendid bespoke record label Great Pop Supplement, where Dom eschews CDs and downloads and focuses on putting out desirable vinyl. I'm also enjoying his releases from Trimdon Grange Explosion (great folk-rock from former members of The Eighteenth Day of May) and an EP from Karen Novotny X (80s electronic stuff).

Random cultural exposure...

... is often the best sort. Just listening to a nice free box-set copy of Purcell's King Arthur which I spotted in someone's recycling bin when I was walking the dog yesterday. I often have problems with opera, which strikes me as bloated and overwrought (cf Meatloaf), but the baroque ones are cleaner and simpler and - for me - more effective for that. Keep your eyes on those bins.

PS  I particularly recommend a rollicking folk song that has snuck into Act V:

'We'll toss off our Ale till we canno' stand,

'And Heigh for the Honour of Old England.'

Brits abroad were not hugely different in the late seventeenth century... 

Patti Smith - in excelsis

She was mesmerising at the De la Warr Pavilion last night. A genuinely shamanic performer with a voice of honeyed iron. Mixing readings in with songs drawn from across her thirty five year career and making a satisfying and consistent whole.

              (photo courtesy Anna Rhodes)

The musical platform was flimsier than usual. I missed Lenny Kaye's rock-solid guitar. A trio combining daughter Jesse's piano, vibes/guitar and violin/harp (as in Joanna Newsom rather than Sonny Terry) brought some new and interesting textures to familiar favourites. But they were often tentative and Jesse in particular seemed ill at ease. It didn't matter: Patti was in commanding form, owning the songs and driving through them. 

Commanding, but with her usual gawky charm: thanks to the audience, pleasure to be there, frequent references to the virtues of sea air - which Bexhill residents should remember 'even when they get fed up of the town'. Several times she broke off, grinned and apologised for missing a cue. Like the oracle at Delphi stopping midflow, peering through the smoke over her spectacles, and regretting that she hadn't done that particular prophecy very much recently...

She set the tone by singing a spine-tingling 'Beneath the Southern Cross' solo to her own acoustic guitar. Given the original boasted Tom Verlaine as well as Lenny Kaye, it was clear her confidence was high, and rightly so.

A lot of the evening had an elegiac tone. She introduced 'Ghost Dance' by talking of the Hopi's ability to summon the spirits of their ancestors for help and guidance 'which we all can do'. She read her last letter to Robert Mapplethorpe. She sang a song for Jerry Garcia ('who didn't teach me guitar'). She dedicated her wonderful cover of Neil Young's 'Helpless' to her late husband Fred - and the lines 'Baby can you hear me now...sing with me somehow' were particularly charged. A beautiful reading from WG Sebald's After Nature focused on the painter Grunewald, whose thirteen year old son died unexpectedly and the artist 'did not long survive him'...

Elegiac but never doomy or downbeat. Patti Smith has come through her tragedies and sadness and wants us to do so as well. Stomping and joyful versions of 'People Have The Power' and 'Because The Night', with the audience roaring out the chorus, were topped by an extraordinary encore of 'Gloria'. Patti said that they hadn't really rehearsed it ('but we haven't rehearsed anything very much'), but any ragged edges were immaterial: it throbbed and burned with all the passion and yearning and self-belief that took her out of that New Jersey 'Piss Factory' onto the train to New York City and into her art and on and on and on...

One of the talkative crowd shouted 'When will your new record be finished?'. She spat back 'Do I look like Nostradamus? ...You sound like my record company.' Watch this space - she's got a lot more to say yet.