Bob's Soundtrack
2006
Capercaillie - Puirt A Beul
Monday, December 18, 2006
Almost a year ago during the Hard & Easy tour, shortly after the Winnipeg stop, I came down with the worst stomach flu I have ever endured. A tour bus is a poor place for such an affliction, and by the time we got to Saskatoon I was so weak there was some doubt if I could make the show. I do not remember the flow of events very well, but apparently I looked so bad the decision was made to summon a doctor backstage. He thought I was nuts to be doing anything other than lying in a bed, but he was kind enough to stay backstage while I stumbled around in front of the audience, trying to remember what to play through a fog of exhaustion and Gravol (Dramamine for our American fans). We never said anything about it at the time; the show must go on and all that, and it was hardly the first time one of us has gone onstage feeling like a bag of shit. And seeing as how we almost croaked in a bus crash a few days later, it kind of fell off the radar.
Thus it felt a bit ridiculous to find myself onstage in Saskatoon a few weeks ago in even worse shape than the last time. I knew I was sick days before the show, but I was hoping it was a bad cold, and stupidly told everyone I would make the gig. I felt absolutely horrible on the endless flight out west, and a full daily dose of Tylenol & Advil didn’t even make a dent in the incredible headache that developed. Once again I bumbled around the stage in a daze, while medics waited for me to fall over in a stupor. Our fans in Saskatoon are going to assume that I am always eerily pale, exhausted looking and a very sloppy player. At any rate, I went from the plane home to the hospital, where I spent the next week pretty much immobilized with meningitis. I was too sick to read, and watching TV was impossible. Even talking hurt. I just stared at the wall, muted conversation from my family and the tunes in my head the only entertainment I could stand.
I have always had the ability to listen to music in my mind. For years I assumed everyone could do this. It makes playing a bunch of instruments easier – all you have to do is find the way to finger the tune that’s already playing in your brain. While I lay there in the ward waiting for the next nurse to arrive, I replayed the piece ‘Puirt A Beul’ by the Scottish band Capercaillie dozens of times. For one thing, it has many layers, and is well suited to that kind of mathematical/meditation exercise. The title means ‘mouth music’, which refers to short little demi-songs, kind of like ‘Billy Peddle’. There are two of these in the piece, combined with some instrumentals.
Capercaillie specializes in elaborate Scottish Gaelic folk songs, with unusually complex instrumentals. Their sound is anchored around lead singer Cathy Makinson’s crystalline voice, and keyboardist Charlie McKerron’s creative settings. Generally, I am not a huge fan of keyboards and folk music. Something as naff as Enya always seems to lurk around the corner if you are not careful. Capercallie flirt with this sort of thing, but somehow it never gets away from them. Each tune in this set exists in its own perfect little musical world, like the parts of a symphony. Each new turn is a delightful surprise, but one that flows completely logically from what came previously.
While I was researching this, I noticed that the album Crosswinds, on which this piece appeared, has evaporated from their catalogue, and the compilation I first heard it on has also gone into record company aether. It doesn’t really matter to me anymore. I am pretty sure I could pick up a fiddle and play the whole piece from start to finish. Anyway, Capercaillie has a huge catalogue, and it is not hard to find their stuff anywhere. It’s all pretty good.
A lot of the folk music I listen to is about energy, or poignancy. Capercaillie is very different. For lack of a better description, their music is ordered and deliberate, and often quite pretty. As much of it is sung in a language few understand, it demands little other than loose attention. But then unlike so much ‘New Age Celtic’, it stays with you. Years after you have heard it, you find it lurking back there, playing away like an old record left to spin around and around, long after the party finished.
Perfect for hospitals.
Oasis – Rock & Roll Star
Thursday, November 16, 2006
It is not very fashionable to like Oasis, but an awful lot of people do. They have always been popular in Canada, and while they have flirted with the top a few times in the US, I think they just might be too British for American stardom. At the risk of generalizing wildly, as a rule American stars are supposed to be embarrassed and repentant about drinking and drugs. The Gallagher brothers are not really repentant about anything. Their numerous fights, arrests, break-ups and a gleeful use of narcotics do just not fit in very well in a world of 12-step programs and celebrity confessions. Canadian celebrity culture tends to be a little more relaxed; maybe that is why Oasis have done well here.
In Europe, Australia and elsewhere, their long career has been embraced with some fervour. This is the only contemporary UK act, (besides maybe Coldplay), that has really entered the pantheon inhabited by people like U2. Even then, they tend to lack credibility, at least from a critical standpoint. Being in a band where our image has often triumphed over anything of substance we have done, I can almost sympathize.
Rock and Roll Star is one of their earlier songs, written when Noel was still a guitar tech for bigger bands, and you can draw a line between that song and his later more self-conscious work. While he has written a bunch of great songs, and at least two classic ballads, this is one of my personal favourites. The song essentially states his fantasy - a fairly typical teenage one - of getting in the car and driving really fast, escaping from a dull city, getting up onstage and setting a crowd alight. Like a lot of Oasis songs, it is actually fairly slow – it gets its power from the crashing guitars that Noel is so good at creating. It’s just a string of Ds, Cs and Gs, the same chords anyone could play. But he meshes layer after layer of them, distorted guitars piling on top of each other until they turn into a rock wall. He keeps adding hook after hook, each one a killer. I suppose he thought in those days that he would never run out of good ideas.
I saw an interview the other day with Iggy Pop, about what he ‘does’, talking specifically about the ‘band format’. He was trying to explain that while he can write great songs until doomsday, they have no real impact and reality unless he is playing with his band, the Stooges. Iggy was trying to explain the economic problem inherent in touring, but it got me thinking about Oasis. Everyone agrees that most good bands are a collection of individuals who together are greater than the sum of their parts. No band demonstrates this more than Oasis, especially in a song like this.
Noel Gallagher is a decent singer, and an accomplished writer, but if he hadn't recorded this song, I never would have bothered. His brother Liam is far from a great singer, and according to all reports a complete dick, but he is as essential to this song as the melody. Liam’s sneering, swaggering howl somehow makes it real. You know, without ever seeing so much as a picture of him that this guy utterly and completely believes it:
In my mind my dreams are real…
And tonight, I’m a rock and roll star.
Credibility and authenticity are hard things to pin down. They tend to mean a lot in the folk world, but are largely absent these days from pop music. There is no arguing that Liam Gallagher understood something that was never made explicit in the lyrics – that no one else in the world believed in him, or his brother - and was able to put all the anger and bile of the rejected outsider into every note. And that’s what makes a band great – the ability of disparate individuals to find something in each other’s ideas, and then twist and mold them, until together they are something else entirely. Arrogance and obnoxiousness can be assets in the hand of the right front man. Noel wrote the song, but he could never sing it. He is just not crazy enough to project that kind of rage against the world. Liam is indifferent to the nay-sayers and critics; all he cares bout is his own unquenchable anger. Together, the combination is pure magic.
Lucky Man – Grapes of Wrath
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
It is hard to take songs about the music business very seriously. At the end of the day, it is difficult to feel sorry for rock stars. Too many people want to feel the heat of the spotlight for themselves, and would sacrifice an organ or two for a shot at the big-time. Watch the masochistic humilio-fest of Canadian/American Idol sometime if you don’t believe me.
I missed the Grapes of Wrath when they had their late 1980s moment. I was listening to intense guys from London and LA scream at me in those years, (or alternately, geriatrics with out-of-tune fiddles), so I never heard them play in their prime. Peace of Mind was their big hit here in Canada, but Lucky Man, their attempt to put music industry frustration into song, is a bit of a lost gem. I stumbled across it while digging through someone’s CD collection, and it has stayed with me ever since.
Like a lot of their better songs, it is an appealing mix of pure pop melody with the sort of chimey electric 12-string guitars briefly popular in the 1980s. At their best they sound a bit like REM in a non-weird phase. What really made them popular was the two lead singers, who sang together almost constantly, weaving plaintive harmonies around their high, clear voices.
Lucky Man is an attempt at cynicism, but the band is utterly incapable of pulling it off. They try and describe their ‘lucky man’, an evil mogul who easily manipulates “small town boys nowhere going”, but the irony never takes hold. Instead, the bright melody and sweet chorus completely belies their attempt at righteous outrage. They end up instead just sounding a little bewildered, unable to believe that the world does not share their optimism. “And with a knowing tone, the famous dreams unfold…” sings Tom Hooper, but his world weary lyric is implausible. All you hear is hope, hope and excitement. The band was from Kelowna, BC, and in the melody you can hear the fresh faced wonder that town habitually wears, and the excitement everyone feels when they first drive over the mountains, and challenge the world.
If there is any pattern to the songs I have written about, it is about how every song needs a context if it is really going to take hold of you. The song and some bit of your own life need to connect - suddenly you see the world through someone else’s eyes, and the whole picture gets brighter and more interesting.
The Grapes broke up in acrimony a couple of years after Lucky Man. Maybe that is why this song sticks with me, and has acquired an air of potent sadness that was not there in the first place. In the soaring chorus of Lucky Man their hope and optimism defied the indifference of a tough business. In real life they were defeated. And if you listen to the song, you can hear the moment when it could have gone either way.
My Sister Rose – 10,000 Maniacs
Friday, October 20, 2006
For some reason, I have always rather enjoyed weddings. Newfoundland weddings, anyway.
Newfoundland weddings, even the ‘small’ones, tend to feature huge crowds of mismatched people, a surplus of food, booze and tunes, and some really funny speeches. The sort of stupid garter throwing and cake smashing bullshit that happens elsewhere never seems to happen here. Instead, if you are really lucky, it will all finish with a scrap in the parking lot. The music is all over the place, with hip-hop battling it out with two-step waltzes. It is a great pleasure to watch the old people sweep around the floor, but all ages are expected to participate equally, and it is one of the few occasions on which I can be compelled to dance.
I have been to a few memorable ones over the years. One I attended sometime ago featured over a thousand people. Half of them had not even been invited. As the couple were both from small towns, the entire population of both just showed up. Cue much hilarity.
Another one I particularly enjoyed, featured speeches speculating on the groom’s surprising lack of interest in getting married at all, with one ‘friend’ going so far as to suggest (in dead seriousness), to the party’s horror, that the groom was actually gay. I was sad to have missed one buddies’ wedding, which ended with one of his (not particularly young, or shapely) aunts performing an impromptu striptease on the head table. Good times.
More than once I have tried to capture one of these events in a song, but they never seem to get anywhere. Sentiment and realism are tough to get together in one lyric, and harder to get right. In the meantime, I can take solace in this song.
Natalie Merchant has pretty much disavowed her decade in 10,000 Maniacs, but she wrote some great songs in those years, and in my opinion, her solo work has suffered from a lack of the band’s sense of humour. Mind you, it is hard to blame her. Playing in a band with a half dozen older guys must have been weird, but the sometimes jarring juxtaposition between her thoughtful feminism and their rock and roll gusto made the band’s sound compelling.
My Sister Rose is a simple song about Merchant’s sister Rose’s wedding. I absolutely love it. In a sly, vaguely detached tone, Merchant describes her Italian family’s wedding reception. I am not quite sure if she is being sarcastic, or just sort of amazed by it all. The lyrics are simple, but very, very clever. Both sincere and silly, they are like nothing else in her repertoire. The melody slips and slides like a Gypsy Kings out-take. Instead of a real hook, it features the sort of crappy/brilliant mandolin line guys who can’t play mandolin always seem to come up with. Topping it all off is the chorus: the band just kind of barrels over her, five gruff men singing these rather sad ‘ooo’s’ and ‘aahs’, embarrassment dripping off every note.
Everyone admires the bride at weddings, but I always watch the men. They always look painfully awkward in their rented tuxedoes, hair gelled back, frozen smiles, like schoolboys waiting outside the principal's office. Unintentionally, I suspect, the male Maniacs put this moment into music. While Merchant floats up the aisle in a pretty dress, they linger at the back of the church, hands in pockets, shuffling their feet, cringing at her unabashed romanticism. You can almost hear her laughing at them; in light of her mega-fame, and their ultimate slide into obscurity, the song can be seen as a metaphor for their whole musical marriage.
And as one sometimes does at a wedding, when you see some fellow making what appears to be a dreadful decision, you kind of feel sorry for them.
Big, big plans are being made,
For my sister’s wedding day
We’ll have a ball, at the ‘Sons of Roma’ Hall
Family, friends, come one and all
Then they cut the five tier cake,
‘That Colucci, he can bake’,
A frosted tower of sugar & flour,
For the couple of the hour.
My Sister Rose, 10,000 Maniacs
Brimful of Asha - Cornershop
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Brimful of Asha is a classic one hit wonder.
Actually, if it had not been for a remix by Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, chances are very few people would have heard of it al all.
Cornershop come from Wolverhampton, England. The band is a partnership between Tjinder Singh and Ben Ayers. They specialize in an unusual fusion of Indian pop music and English dance music. Their name is a satire on the clichéd image of East Indians in the UK, who are thought to run the majority of the countries’ corner stores. Brimful of Asha, which came out in the summer of 1998, is pretty much their high water mark. While they have released music sporadically since, they have never had anything else that even smelled like a hit.
I love this song for a couple of reasons. A huge portion of my own work with GBS has been about taking defiantly local places, words and ideas, and making them interesting to the rest of the world. Our great question as a band has been ‘how do you take something obscure and insular, and place it into a context that everyone else can get’? The whole idea of placing folk songs in a pop context is part and parcel of this equation.
Cornershop is not a folk band, but it is safe to say that in the early 1990s, when they wrote Asha, Singh’s Anglo-Indian culture was as unknown as its Newfoundland equivalents. Nowadays, everyone has heard of Bollywood, but a decade ago, that was not the case. Asha is a tribute to an Indian singer, Asha Bonsle, who specialized in voice-overs for Bollywood musicals. The fact that many famous stars actually lip-synched to her voice was well known, and seemingly not a problem.
Singh lovingly recites a series of images from his youth, his Punjabi culture seen through the lens of life in the grey British Midlands. Better than anyone else I have ever heard, he evokes the fantasy of a more exciting life that can be spun from nothing more than a voice on the radio, or even better, a cheap 45 rpm record player. The groove is absolute killer, a testament to the skill a good remix guy can bring to an otherwise ordinary arrangement. I do not have a clue about Singh’s world, really, but this song tells me everything I want to know, and makes it sound like a wonderful place to be.
There are two other reasons I love this song:
a) Band co-leader Ben Ayers was born in St. John’s, a fact sneeringly included in every UK interview with the band I have ever read. It is always dropped in as if it was some terrible hardship he had to overcome, like growing up in an orphanage or something. I always react the same way - St. John’s? What’s so bad about St. John’s? I have often been tempted to write him a letter.
b) The chorus of the song:
Everyone needs a bosom for a pillow…
I don’t care who you are, that is brilliant.
www.cornershop.com
Altan
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
The first CD I ever bought was by the Irish band Altan, in 1993, just before Great Big Sea started. In those days, I was spending a lot of time at home in Barrie, where I lived at the time, playing around with music, and musical ideas, trying to figure out a way to do something more interesting with the traditional tunes I was learning. Rankin Street was done, and everyone knew it was time to take the next step.
Whenever I went into Toronto I would go down to the big Sam’s store on Yonge St. and buy a bunch of cheap stuff, and then absorb everything. When I got my first CD player, I grabbed a new disc by the band Altan. I had heard of them before, but they were not the sort of thing you were likely to hear on the radio in Barrie. Like a lot of modern Irish bands, they start where the Bothy Band left off. Essentially, they take instrumental music, and rework it in an ensemble fashion. While it is very much part of the tradition, it is heavily inspired by the pub sessions, where speed and virtuosity are valued more than anything else.
They already had a few albums out by then, and they have put out another half-dozen since. Island Angel was the last one they recorded with original flutist and band leader Frankie Kennedy, and it is still a great record.
Altan come from the Irish-speaking part of Donegal, in North-west Ireland, and their repertoire took advantage of unusual tunes and songs. What interested me then was how they had managed to infuse their music with so much energy, without using any significant percussion whatsoever, not even bodhran. A lot of the credit goes to fiddlers Mairead Ni Mhaonigh (Mary Mooney for the linguistically challenged) and Ciaran Tourish, who played so tightly they sounded like one person with four arms. Like every bouzouki player, Ciaran Curran had invented his own style, one that drove the band forward with the kind of speed I could hardly figure out. The set of reels starting with the Fermanagh Highland is a textbook on how to record and arrange tunes to make them interesting, even for people who hate instrumental music.
The song Dulaman (which is about sea-weed, apparently) was another eye-opener. Mairead’s voice floats over a simple groove of lock-stepping guitars and bouzoukis. The thing is as light as a feather, but also iron-hard in its rhythm. The bridge is the melody played by all the instruments, something both simple and complex at the same time. It feels like a lost bed track by the Moody Blues, with a mysterious vocal from Enya drifting in and out. Yet somehow, even though the lyric and the melody are essentially bright, it all sounds desperately sad. The flute takes these strange melancholy turns, and even Mairead, a singer of almost superhuman accuracy, slides in and out of the lyric like a ghost, as if it was recorded late on a misty fall afternoon after a long & tiring hospital visit.
Kennedy was dying of cancer when they recorded this album, and it is infused with the hope and potential grief that must have infected them all. He was Mairead’s husband, and the center of the band. One can only imagine what they were going through. There are a few other songs on this album, and they all feel like this. Jug of Punch, for example, is usually a raucous drinking song, yet here it sounds as melancholy and ethereal as a Lenten hymn. Even the sprightly reels take dark and unexpected turns, as if something dreadful was waiting over their shoulders.
Perhaps I am projecting all this. I do know this for sure, however - having worked on many records, the prevailing mood of the season can affect the music. I cannot hear Sea of No Cares without remembering the dreadful winter we endured while we struggled in the studio. On the other hand, Something Beautiful will always mean more to me than any other GBS music, written as it was, a defiant reaction to the deaths of our friends.
I have several other Altan records. They are all good, but none of them have this same blend of hope and despair.
Janelle Dupuis
Thursday, September 14, 2006
About this time last year, I spent a couple of weeks producing a record for a young New Brunswick fiddler named Janelle Dupuis. When I agreed to do the project, I was anticipating plenty of time to plan the project, and even more time to fine tune it after the fact. I had also hoped to help steer and promote the album when it actually came out. Unfortunately, I ended up squeezing it into the middle of an unexpectedly busy round of promotion for The Hard & the Easy. As a result, I hardly talked about it at all. A few weeks ago I listened to it again when I loaded it onto my Ipod, and it made me think a lot about the whole process.
The first time I ever met a real producer was when we met Danny Greenspoon, at the first pre-production sessions for the Up album. At the time it was an eye-opener, and an unpleasant one. Danny demanded that we dissect and then reconstruct every part, every song, every lyric, and every arrangement, and make sure every idea was as good as it could possibly be before we recorded a single note. And then in the studio he expected that we play and sing to a standard we were barely capable of. It was painful and unpleasant, and the more intuitive players in the band bristled under his demands. Despite all the ego blows, we knew it would be worth it, and that we were learning something important. The half million-plus sales of the album confirm that he knew what he was doing.
Since then we have worked with many producers, and both myself and Alan have sat on the other side of the board quite a few times. It can be a fascinating collaboration. A good producer comes to the table with lots of musical ideas, a realistic vision for the album, a bag of sounds, technical knowledge, and the ability to get great performances out of people. Good producers can also add that unexpected outside element, that extra piece of magic that makes a good track great. A couple of examples from our own past might be Steve Berlin's organ on Jack Hinks, or the elaborate loop Michael Philip came up with for John Barbour. While the arrangements for these songs were already well underway when these ideas were added, they are like icing on the cake. Years later, the songs sound wrong without them.
The Janelle album presented some interesting challenges. Her material consisted of a collection of 50 or so instrumentals, a mix of jigs, reels, waltzes, strathspeys and other tunes, plus one song. She had written some of the material, and the rest came from her Acadian tradition. Though she has classical training, Janelle comes from a strong and vibrant French musical world that has its own rules and language, one similar and also quite different from my own Newfoundland tradition. Janelle is also high school student, so I would have to do the tracking in a studio in Moncton, near her home, and I would not have access to all the high end gear GBS owns. With the exception of the two musicians I brought in, the other participants were Francophones, and we would have to communicate as best we could with my limited French, and their English. While my French is up to ordering a meal or renting a car, studio jargon and detailed musical directions are way beyond me.
As it turned out, the experience was wonderful. The musicians were energetic and enthusiastic, and easily overcame any language problems. Very quickly we were able to create the skeletons of arrangements. Her guitarist Nicolas Basques had a great feel for the tradition, without being bound stylistically. Due to the situation, we had to add drums, bass and everything else after we recorded the lead tracks, which is not ideal. However, Janelle and Nicolas played so well it hardly mattered.
My two favourite tracks are, ironically, the two with which I had the least input as a producer. One of the sets Janelle originally wanted to record consisted of a waltz, Laura's. While it was a pretty tune, I did not think it would be interesting enough for three minutes. I suggested she combine it with a French Newfoundland waltz I knew named Le Velours De Lan Vent, and tag on one of her jigs at the end for a change of pace. When we sat down to rehearse it, she surprised me by altering the original keys in a unique way. As a classically trained fiddler, she does not think in terms of the narrow key choices most traditional players stick to. The result was something delicate, full of space and air. Then we added some subtle guitar, and a little percussion. Back in St. John's, I played a little whistle on the end. Finished.
The set Marche Des Orages/Djable/Angus Campbell consists of what I would call a slow march, followed by an Acadian tune from Memramcook and a fast Cape Breton reel. I asked Janelle to slow down the first tune, and then try to speed up on the second, and increase the tempo again for the third tune. This sort of thing is hard for any player. And to do the bed properly, Nicolas the guitarist would have to speed up in lock step with her, pushing the tempo sometimes, and being pulled along at others. Each of the tunes would need to sit in its own rhythmic world, not too fast, not too slow. The increases would have to be completely natural, something you would hardly notice. It was asking a lot of both of them. We could have printed a click track, but all good instrumentals need to contain that elusive quality players call ‘lift'. ‘Lift' is the catchy and organic rhythm that dancers love. It is hard to describe, harder to pull off, and playing to a click track will almost certainly ruin it.
We recorded the supposedly rough bed track early on a weekday morning, as Janelle had to return to school for an exam later on in the day. We ran through it once to make sure both the musicians had the changes, adjusted the mics, and then did it for real. Janelle played the first tune flawlessly, and Nicolas had nailed exactly the blend of space and texture I was looking for. When the first acceleration came, he was in perfect synch with Janelle, even though they were playing in different rooms, only linked by headphones. By the time they got to the third (and hardest) tempo increase, me and the engineer John were grinning at each other in astonishment as they both slid into it like they had been playing it together for years. The tune finishes with an extremely difficult series of 16th notes, the sort of thing that only sounds good if it is played with incredible accuracy. The guitar had to sit in the narrow spaces between those lightening notes, and I could not believe that they played that part flawlessly, and then finished with aplomb. After John and I listened, we both agreed that it would be pointless to take another run at it. Neither of us could find a thing to criticize. In one take, they had both nailed it.
One of the hardest things to do as a producer is to know when to stop. There is always another texture, another instrument, another idea that would somehow make it better. On in the days that followed, the musicians would often ask me when we were going to start adding other tracks to the Marche set. I ran through dozens of ideas, but in the end, they always seemed extraneous. I am glad I resisted the urge to tamper with it. The track consists of one fiddle and one guitar, and to me it sounds as big as Metallica, and just as exciting. Sometimes, to be a good producer you just have to shut up and let the musicians' art shine through.
www.janelledupuis.com
Tannahill Weavers IV
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Due to some fairly lean university years, and general indifference, it wasn't until well into GBS's career that I ever owned a new car. Once or twice a year I would buy some shit heap, get it fixed to a level approaching ‘not really dangerous', and drive it until it literally fell apart.
One of those cars was a white Acadian (Chevette, for our American readers), which I was rather fond of. I had that car for almost two years, which was my personal record. Like anyone who makes a habit of driving bombs, I had to get used to working around some serious eccentricities. For example, in winter I had to start the car by lighting a cup or so of gas, which I threw into the top of the engine to loosen the starting motor. The brakes never worked right first or last, and my non-existent mechanical skills could do nothing about the serious rust problems that allowed slush & rain to seep into the floor.
One of the more minor problems was the stereo. While the radio never worked, the tape player functioned. Kind of. The first time I tried it, I popped in a new tape I had just bought, Tannahill Weavers IV. I had first heard the Weavers via my friend John Wiles, who had the Sunday morning folk show on OZ-FM. He played a lot of the stuff put out by Green Linnett records, the eclectic US traditional music record company. He also introduced me, and lots of others, to bands like Altan, Silly Wizard, and tons of stuff I never would have encountered elsewhere.
The Tannahill Weavers originally came from Paisley, Scotland. They have had countless membership changes, and lots of ups and downs, but they are still going today, a mainstay of the Scottish folk scene.
Right away I loved the Weavers. Besides U2, it is the only band from whom I own every single album. Weavers IV came out in 1981, when the band was already 13 years into their career. It perfectly captured their aesthetic - guitars and bouzuki that mesh like glue, incredibly tight harmonies, spirited singing, and a fierce attachment to their local roots. Plowing through it all were the bagpipes, or as pipers might say, the Great Highland Bagpipes. The Weavers were one of the first folk bands to really use the big pipes. And they used them with the power and force of a electric guitar.
The album opens with the classic Johnny Cope, a Scots war song. The arrangement starts with a quick pipe march, played way faster than any pipe band. Half way through, the tempo shifts up several notches, as the band kicks into the song. It ends with another pipe march, even more aggressively played than the first one.
Thanks to my shit Acadian, I must have listened to that album a thousand times, as it was stuck in the player for our whole time together. For me, it cemented a lot of ideas about how folk music could contain the energy and power I loved in punk bands, while still remaining true to the intent of the tradition. In the early days of GBS, we often talked a lot about ‘aggressive folk', about the idea of marrying rock power to acoustic instruments. The Tannahill Weavers wrote the book about this long before we did.
They have made a dozen albums since then, and all of them are pretty consistent. On their most recent album, The Arnish Light, they sound as excited as they did on IV. For a band that started when I was a baby, they are incredible. If I can sound as good 35 years into my career, I will have achieved something indeed.
Wouldn't You Like It/Rock & Roll Love Letter - Bay City Rollers
Monday, August 21, 2006
An awful lot of my friends got started in music thanks to the record collection of an older brother. I don't have any older brothers, and most of my cousins, (at least the ones who lived nearby), are younger. My parents' record collection, as far as I can recall, included not one pop or rock record of any kind. Although they were the right age to be hippies, like many Newfoundlanders of their generation, the whole idea would have been absurd to them. Unfortunately for me, my one older sister was never much of a pop fan. She was more serious about actually playing music than me, and spent her time practicing piano (rather than listening to records and pretending to learn guitar). The only record she had that I ever gaffed was her one Bay City Rollers record.
The Rollers were already past their sell date the time they reached us in the colonies. At the time, in those pre-cable days, we could only get one TV channel in my neck of the woods, and that was frequently unwatchable. Popular culture had at best a four or five-year time lag. Still, you would have had to have spent the 70s in a cave not to have encountered the Bay City Rollers. Besides Kiss, they were the great teen sensation of that era. A good looking band from deepest Scotland, they played simple power-pop, and used tartan as their trademark.
By the time the Rock & Roll Love Letter LP fell into my hands, the craze had already been over for several years. However, as my record collection numbered four albums at the time, Love Letter automatically went into steady rotation. At the age of ten, I listened to this record constantly. If nothing else, it firmly convinced me that I was missing out on something. When I stumbled across it on I-Tunes recently, I could not resist downloading it. Unlike most 70's music, this has aged well.
The song Rock & Roll Love Letter was the big hit from this album, but Wouldn't You Like It is way more fun. Straight-forward British glam rock, the song would fit perfectly in the repertoire of Slade, Bowie, or any other UK rock star from that era. It features solid drums, and guitars that are just distorted enough to be cool. The hi-hat cymbal starts at the beginning and never stops. The pop hooks are just perfect, with big choruses, and verses about absolutely nothing. The solo is so simple its funny, and the bass line changes constantly. It sounds like it was played by a kid who just learned the instrument that morning, and was absolutely delighted with himself. Just like in all my bands, everyone is singing away constantly, chorus or not. To top it all off, every so often there is this weird frog-like noise. As a child, I had assumed it was just a result of the numerous scratches that covered the lp - either that, or the ancient needle on my mothers' hi-fi. At the risk of digressing into geezer land, all our records skipped and hopped. You just got used to it. Just like our rolling and snowy one channel TV, it was the way things were back then in the Neanderthal era. I am delighted to say that the I-tunes version includes this same weird belch. One cannot imagine what the point was, and the internet is no hope. My current theory is that it is an attempt to pay tribute to Slade, who included an infamous burp, courtesy of their bass player, on one of their bigger hits. Either way, it's perfect.
Love Letter is written around a flawless ‘rhyming guitar' hook, one I have just realized I have been imitating every since. Like most Roller hits, it is a cover of an earlier UK release, this one by a guy named Tim Moore. The chorus is as big as you could want, and even features shouted ‘Heys!", perfect for audience sing-alongs. The lyrics are a love letter, to rock - the lifestyle. Every eight bars something completely different happens, all of which fits perfectly with everything else. The handclaps are fat and sloppy. The bridge consists of a bunch of ‘oos', followed by a pointless and utterly ridiculous amp crash.
Absolute genius. Make no wonder Kurt Cobain loved this. First chance I get, I am going to buy another copy, and send it to my sister.
Hey mama poppa,
Hey you're boy is doing fine
And the energy you gave him
Keeps on trying to unwind
Cause I see an ancient rhythm
In a man's genetic code
Gonna keep on rock and rollin'
Til my jeans explode
-Rock & Roll Love Letter, Bay City Rollers
Son of A Gun/There She Goes - The La's
Thursday, August 10, 2006
The La's came out of the fertile Liverpool art-rock scene of the mid-1980s, which produced bands like Echo & the Bunnymen and the Teardrop Explodes. Revolving around writer/singer Lee Mavers and bassist John Power, the La's are notably simpler and more stripped down then any of their contemporaries.
Always tormented by line-up changes and backstage turmoil, the band began recording their debut album in 1986. In one way or another, they have continued doing so ever since. Four producers attempted to get the songs on tape, and the album titled simply The La's was cobbled together by Steve Lilywhite at the insistence of the label, and has been rejected by the band. For me, it is hard to see what the problem is. The songs are far from complicated, the instrumentation is a relaxed combo of acoustic guitars and simple bass lines, coupled with one or two-part leads. Critics and fans alike love this album. It has made the charts several times, and has been remixed more than once.
Yet somewhere in Liverpool, Lee Mavers is still toiling away in a studio, endlessly recording and re-recording these same dozen songs, trying to find some elusive end point that only he can see. Twenty years making the same album over and over again, an album that everyone else already agrees is perfect. It is a muscian's idea of hell. While the band has gigged sporadically, (with typical irony, only performing Who covers), they have never officially released anything else.
I don't think that any band who as spent fruitless time in the studio could listen to this album without a touch of sympathy. Around the time of Sea of No Cares, we spent our own year in studio purgatory, and it is not an experience I would care to repeat. We recorded Gideon Brown (of all things) four times from start to finish, with several different drummers and more hooks than you could imagine, before we finally got it right. Somewhere I have a cd with over a dozen mixes of Widow In The Window, none of which were quite what we were looking for. Things got so complicated that I had to learn the bouzouki part for Sea of No Cares after the album came out. Producer Pete Perlesnick had edited together over 50 different takes to find the exact part he wanted, very few of which had been recorded at the same time, or even on the same day. Maybe the average listener can hear all this struggle, but now I just wonder "what was the problem, anyway?".
The same thought bothers me when I listen to these songs. There She Goes is one of my favourite lovesongs. I don't suppose everyone can identify with the narrator, building a fantasy around a girl who he doesn't even have the courage to talk to, but I certainly can. Mavers was a physically awkward man, and you can hear the pain of his adolescence in every line. The song has been covered by many artists, and has been a hit single again and again, but no amount of syrup can harm its perfection. Son of a Gun is weirder, a song about a mercenary that revolves around a riff of ideal simplicity. The groove is straight out of the Byrds catalogue, but it is coupled with a strange vocal, all delivery and no power. Mavers half-talks and half-sings, cutting words short, and pushing vowels out of proportion, in a way that really sticks in your head. You end up hearing every word, catching every nuance. And then the song just stops. I like to think that Mavers got to then end of his last verse, and decided that he'd said everything he wanted to say in the song - so why keep going, anyway?
Unfortunately, he could not apply this philosophy to anything else. A lot of folk songs combine sadness with beauty to create timeless music. The La's are far from a folk band, but whether Mavers knows it or not, he finished these songs a long time ago.
If you want,
I'll sell you a life story,
About a man who's at loggerheads with his past all the time.
He's alive, and he's living in purgatory,
All he's doing is rooming in hotel rooms,
And scooping up lots of wine.
He was burned, by the 20th century,
Now he's doing time, in the back of his mind,
He can hear them outside.
-Son of a Gun, The La's
*On a side note - GreatBigSea.com offers commercial links to these artists as a service to those who live far away from good record stores, or aren't particularly internet savvy, and would like to learn about or hold this music for themselves. We will make next to nothing from any sales - the point is to get good (and usually obscure) music out there.
Donegal Danny
Friday, August 04, 2006
Songs stay with you for funny reasons. This one has no real personal meaning, but I will never forget the circumstances under which I first heard it.
Some years a go a couple of friends and I spent a summer wandering around Ireland, searching out musicians and pub sessions. Every day was much the same. It started out with a nasty hangover. After a greasy B&B breakfast, we drove somewhere, and after a bit of desultory site-seeing, found another B&B. Then it was off to whatever pub offered the best hope of a session, and the chance to hear or play some tunes. Sometimes the evening ended there, sometimes it got more elaborate. In Galway someone told us about Doolin. Doolin is a tiny town just below the Cliffs of Moher, where musicians from across Europe were reputed to gather for the best sessions on the island.
To our astonishment, (Irish tourist directions tending to be a bit wobbly), this turned out to be true. Traditional music fans of all ages and nations were gathered there, it was like an informal festival. A tear of monster proportions ensued. On our fourth night there, we discovered that the pub would sell you a few cases of beer out the back after closing. Somehow we gathered a large party, and after a raucous hike through the country, we broke into an abandoned farmhouse down a wooded lane. By now things were getting a little blurry, but I recall stumbling around the barnyard, fetching bits of wood. One of the less inebriated partiers managed to get a fire going in the farmhouses' old hearth, and soon the scene was cozy indeed. Some of the party had instruments, and the session was soon going strong again, 20 or 30 drunks, some locals, but most from elsewhere, all swigging warm beer and shouting at each other, lit by the roaring blaze.
Some time later, I was engrossed in one of those conversations that only happens on evenings like that. I believe I was discussing why I had never become a pilot, but it could have been just about anything. Whoever I was talking too was embarked upon a similar flight of fancy, anyway. In the middle of us spouting nonsense at each other, someone in a thick German accent started shouting that the room was on fire. I took a quick glance at the hearth, where indeed a sheet of flame was shooting up the wall.
Bedlam ensued, as the whole tribe began shouting and running into one another, all trying to escape a fiery death. Rather than just walking out the front door, (which we had earlier removed), for some reason I began kicking planks out of a large window on which I had been leaning. I was about to climb out when I noticed a girl next to me, who was just standing there screaming. In an act of heroism, I picked her up, (she was fairly small, I suppose, it's hard to recall now), climbed up on the sill, and leapt out. I felt a sharp pain in my leg on the landing, but we were in a hay-filled farmyard, and it was pitch black, so it was no time to investigate. The girl said something to me in a language with which I was not familiar, (presumably a thank-you for saving her life), and joined the rest of the crowd, who were booting it down the lane as fast as they could stumble.
Suddenly it was silent in the yard. There was no sign of my friends. I stood there for a second, and then decided to go back in, just in case more heroism was necessary. Once again, rather than using the door, I climbed back in the window. Inside, all was calm and peaceful. My two friends stood there sipping beer, along with a fit looking guy from the North, Portadown if I recall. While the rest of us had been panicking, they extinguished the blaze with the rest of the beer, the Portadown guy assisting with a prodigious pee. They expressed some disappointment that the party had ended badly, and then one of them asked about my leg.
I looked down. One leg of my jeans was shredded, and there was an eight inch gash from my knee to the ankle. With that grim fatalism common to both Newfoundlanders and the Irish, everyone agreed that I had no doubt cut myself on a rusty scythe or something equally dreadful, and that blood poisoning was inevitable. As we were miles from anywhere, and it was the middle of the night, going to a hospital was out of the question. Instead I washed it as best I could with the remains of a flask, and decided to hope for the best.
The next day was grim indeed. We all had monumental hangovers, and I was limping heavily, convinced that any moment a case of tetanus was going to set in. It was foggy and rainy, and only one of the three pubs was open, a depressing, brightly lit room that was more like a hospital café. The merry crowd from the night before was gone forever, and the only other customers were two scruffy Irish hippies, who looked to be in as poor a state as ourselves.
We spent the afternoon there, munching stale cheese sandwiches and pots of tea. There was nowhere else to go. One of the Irish guys produced a battered tin whistle and began to play music like I have never heard before or since. In his hands it was an orchestra, and he barely stopped for breath. Slow airs morphed into bright reels, followed by improvised pieces that wrapped around themselves like Indian ragas. It was utterly unique. Not to be outdone, the other guy took out a guitar, and when his partner took a break, sang a song, Donegal Danny.
Written by Irish songwriter Phil Coulter, the song is a memorable tale of a man who loses his friends when their fishing boat founders. It is long, and absorbing, and the singer sang it with all the pathos and passion it deserved. Sad and melancholy, it was perfectly suited to that misty afternoon. He sang it so well that all three of us, who had never heard the song before, remembered it ever since.
There are many versions out there, but it does not really matter who is singing it for me to be instantly back once again in Doolin, sick & hungover, terrified I had lockjaw, tired and cold, yet utterly transfixed by the power of that ballad.
And often at night, when the sea is high
And the rain is tearing at my skin
I still hear the cries of drowning men
Floating over on the wind
So here's to those who are dead and gone
The friends that I hold dear,
And here's to you, and I'll bid you adieu
Saying Donegal Danny's been here, me boys, Donegal Danny's been here
-Donegal Danny, Phil Coulter
Telephone Road – Steve Earle
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Steve Earle has had an odd career. Ostensibly a country artist, he has always been way too political for country radio in the US. Surprisingly, he has enjoyed a robust popularity in Canada. Albums like Guitar Town went multi-platinum in Canada, and he could sell out arenas here while he was struggling for acceptance at home. Drug problems, some pretty inflammatory political opinions, a constantly changing style, and a penchant for divorce have not helped him gain the mainstream.
I first heard of him though my friend Todd Baker, who had learned and played many of his songs. Copperhead Road was the first song I really got. I always love songs that give you a sense of place, and his tale of drug dealers and moonshiners in the deep south was a high-water mark. In fact, one of my own tunes, French Perfume, is a direct tribute to this song. Around the time Copperhead Road was released, maybe 1992, I interviewed him before a show in St. John's. I was impressed by the depth of his intellect and curiousity. I asked one question, and he talked for almost three hours, ranging over his youth, American politics, folklore, the mechanics of mandolins, and why the Pogues were even a bigger bunch of f*ck-ups then his own band. I only used a tenth of it in the story I wrote; I wished I'd kept the tapes.
From the ‘comeback' album El Corazon, Telephone Road is another great song, one of those that only lives in a particular place. His lyrics are brilliant at printing a vivid picture of the grime and flash that is the oil towns of Texas. When I was a teenager, many of my friends' brothers and uncles were starting to lead the exodus to the Alberta oilfields. Older guys would come home at Xmas and in the summer, driving big cars, wearing fancy cowboy boots, impressing us with their tales of easy money rough-necking in the Leduc. Earle knew those guys too. Far removed from the raucous sounds of Copperhead-era Earle, the song is relaxed, and he almost speaks the words, over an unlikely (and perfect) doo-wop back-up band. Earle's older brothers are mentioned just a couple of times, but you can hear the envy and yearning of the brother left at home, and the triumph of living your own dream.
Earle's career has taken a few turns since this song came out, but he's worth waiting around for. Not many artists can reinvent themselves over and over again, and still keep it interesting.
My brother Jimmy, my other brother Jack
Went off down to Houston and they never come back
Mama wasn't gonna let her baby go yet
But there ain't nobody hirin' back in Lafeyette
I'm workin' all week for the Texaco check
Sun beatin' down on the back of my neck
Tried to save my money but Jimmy says no
Says he's got a little honey on Telephone Road
-Telephone Road, Steve Earle
The Weaver & the Factory Maid – Steeleye Span
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Summer jobs were hard to come by when I was a teenager. The economy was in the toilet, and any jobs that were out there went to people who were older, more qualified, or more desperate. We spent the summers wandering around the streets, getting into trouble, pissing about with various bands, and otherwise not doing much of anything.
Pretty much my only source of income was a small cheque from the government, what was known then as the ‘orphan's benefit'. Whatever did not get spent on smokes and strings and bus money went to Fred's Records, on Duckworth Street. Fred's had a decent used LP section at the time, and records could be had for a dollar or two on a good day.
One Friday I wandered in, and immediately headed to the back where the small used folk section was. In those days, before everyone and his mother could put out cds, folk records were hard to come by. The entire Newfoundland record collection could still be easily counted in the dozens. Fortunately for me, some aging hippie who had fallen on hard times had come in earlier that day, and peddled his whole collection of 1970s folk albums. I bought the lot for a tenner, including two albums by a band I had never heard of, with the amazing name of Steeleye Span.
Steeleye Span does not sound much like Great Big Sea, or anything else out there these days, but in their time they were quite popular. The band's heyday was in the mid-70s, when their rock and traditional British folk fusion managed to crack the UK top-20. They never did much in North America, but they still have a large following among serious folk-rock fans.
Of the two albums I purchased, one was so scratched as to be unlistenable. The other was called Parcel of Rogues. It became one of my favourites. The album was released when the band was at the peak of their powers. Lead singer Maddy Prior never sounded better, and the arrangements are a perfect blend of British 60's rock and unusual UK folk songs. The album contains Misty, Moisty, Morning, (a song many bands have covered), but I preferred The Weaver & the Factory Maid. The song itself is simple, a ballad from the industrial revolution that speaks about a young farm hands' desire to leave the land and take a job in a factory, following a girl he loves. The song features Prior's voice soaring over the hymn-like melody, often harmonizing with herself, perfectly balanced with a symphonic arrangement of electric guitars and violins.
British folk songs are rarely as romantic as their Irish equivalents, and nowhere near as lush as French songs. While this one isn't very flowery, it has intensity rare in folk songs of any stripe. The narrator knows he is losing something important by going into the mills, but he believes he has found something better instead. His passionate defense relies on nothing except his own conviction, and is immune to criticism.
Many teenagers find themselves defending loves that make no sense to anyone else. The theme is a staple of pop songs. The anonymous writer of The Weaver and the Factory Maid managed it well enough for the song to still speak its sad and triumphant truth 250 years later.
As for your fine girls I don't care
If I could but enjoy my dear,
I'd stand in the factory all the day
And she and I'd keep our shuttles in play.
How can you say it's a pleasant bed,
When now't lies there but a factory maid?
A factory lass although she be,
Blest is the man that enjoys she.
-The Weaver & the Factory Maid
http://steeleye.freeservers.com
Good Guys Don’t Wear White/Salad Days – Minor Threat
Monday, July 10, 2006
The St. John’s punk scene wasn’t very large in the mid 1980s, when I put in my time. A few hundred kids, who went to all the shows, and band membership was pretty interchangeable. Ken Tizzard, who played in the Watchmen & Thornley, was a stalwart of the scene. Danny, who stage-manages GBS among many other things, was another. I played bass or guitar and sang in a few bands myself, all quickly forgotten. Not much of my record collection from that period survives. I left most of my records somewhere in one of my many moves, fed up with lugging around boxes of moldy albums. A few singles and compilations hung on, plus anything by the Clash. And Minor Threat.
I am not really sure why I still like this band so much. Maybe it is because unlike much of that scene, there is something truly honest and timeless about their music. Leader Ian McKay started as just another punk screamer, but somewhere along the way he learned to write and sing properly. Minor Threat only lasted from 1980 to 1983 - like many of my favourite bands, they broke up before I ever heard of them. McKay went on to found the Dischord label, and front the band Fugazi. Both continue, in 2006, to be an inspiration for independent minded musicians everywhere. McKay also came up with Straight Edge, a philosophy of non-drinking, non-drugs and non-violence that was widely embraced in the punk community. While maybe a little unrealistic, you have to admire a man who never compromised his ideals for a second.
Both these songs come from the 7-inch release Salad Days. It came out years after the band broke up, and it is miles beyond their early work. Good Guys Don’t Wear White is actually a cover of an earlier garage classic. The working class anthem was loved by the St. John's punks, who knew all too well what parental approbation felt like. As a bonus, anyone with two fingers (and two guitar strings) could play this song. Salad Days is more ambitious. The arrangement was elaborate by Minor Threat standards, and even includes tubular bells. In the reflective lyrics, you can hear McKay talking to the audience, and himself, wondering how you can grow up, and still hold onto your ideals, how to stay young without acting like a kid. Anyone who plays in a band for a living has to face this sooner or later. McKay realized it a lot earlier than most, and figured out a way forward.
Good Guys Don't Wear White
I'm a poor boy born in a rut
some say my manners ain't the best
some of my friends they've been in a whole lot of trouble
some say I'm no better than the rest
but tell your mama and your papa
sometimes good guys don't wear white
Salad Days
Wishing for the days
When I first wore this suit
Baby has grown older,
It's no longer cute.
Too many voices
They've made me mute
Baby haws grown older,
It's no longer cute.
www.dischord.com/bands/minorthreat.shtml
Soundtrack of my Life: Dark Streets of London
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
I came late to the IPod thing. In fact, if I had not gotten one for free from the label, I would not own one now. I never had a Walkman, and though I have a brace of portable cd players kicking around, I never actually took them anywhere.
The Ipod shuffle is perfect for me. Most aficionados would sneer at it. It can only take a fraction of the songs a big 60 gig unit holds. Yet for me, it is more than enough. I rarely listen to albums anyway. I always preferred the radio. I like songs, songs that have a beginning, middle, and end. The surprising juxtapositions which a good DJ can manufacture are way more interesting to me than an extended session lying on the floor digging into something like The Wall.
I have about 200 songs on my Shuffle. All of them mean something to me. I have room for another 100 or more, but I am still waiting to hear what they might be. For now, to abuse the cliché, these 200 songs are my personal soundtrack.
Dark Streets of London – The Pogues
Sean and I formed Rankin Street sometime in 1990, after a couple of false starts. The membership stayed fluid for a long time after, as did our repertoire. We were learning to play, but more important, trying to figure out what to play. We started out doing the standard Irish pub band repertoire, mainly Irish classics like Wild Rover and Nancy Whiskey. Very quickly we had to give that up. For one thing, we felt silly pretending to be Irish. Worse, every other band was doing the same thing.
When Darrell joined the band, the repertoire began to expand, and get a lot more interesting. Darrell shared our enthusiasm for Newfoundland songs, and we pushed more and more of them into the show. Surprisingly, with the exception of warhorses like I’se the By, local bands did not play much Newfoundland material in those days. We also started playing weird rock and folk covers, and really thinking about arrangements. All of a sudden our audience started getting a lot younger. The generally conservative pub owners complained that their regulars could not get in when we played, and they did not like our cavalier attitude to their beloved Irish songs. On the other hand, they liked the hundreds of college kids who showed up to see us play, kids who brought an incredible energy to that scene.
Somewhere in those years I heard the Pogues for the first time. Everyone loved their cover of Dirty Old Town, but this was the song that really caught my attention. I had spent my high school years in punk bands, which were all about do-it-yourself attitude, writing about your own life, and self-belief. I was always trying to put some of that ethos into: Rankin Street. To that end, we played harder and faster than everyone else, and our ‘who gives a f*ck’ attitude to performance was pure hardcore. We were always up for an odd idea, and we pushed the envelope as far as we could. That said, musically, however, it was not really happening. Too often our arrangements were bog-standard pub band.
Dark Streets of London was a watershed for me. Here was a song that had everything I loved about 1980s hardcore – pure honesty in the lyrics, a defiantly local subject, a narrator who didn’t give a shit about the tone and quality of his voice, a massive sense of humour, and best of all, a stumbling, driving shuffle riff, a hook which came almost entirely from the accordion. You could not even hear the guitar, and anyway, it wasn’t important. The piano accordion riff was both the train driver and the engine.
I remember getting a tape of this song, and playing it over and over again on the crap boom-box that had followed me from high school. Up till then, astonishingly, I rarely played the accordion with the band, just using it for the odd instrumental. I didn’t really like the way the accordion was played in songs by Newfoundland bands of the time. Figgy Duff aside, most of them used it like right-handed piano, playing simple melody along with the singer. Now I knew exactly what to do with the accordion. It would function like the left hand parts of a rockabilly piano, or maybe a blues harmonica – play the riffs, push the rhythm, and provide a powerful new sound to the songs we were working on.
It seems obvious now, but when we started Great Big Sea shortly after, the distinctive accordion parts of songs like What Are You At and Great Big Sea came directly from that idea.
The Pogues have dozens of amazing songs, but this one is a really special. For me, it was a template.
And now the winter comes down
I can’t stand the chill
That comes to the streets round Christmastime
And I’m buggered to damnation
And I haven’t got a penny
To wander the dark streets of London
-"Dark Streets of London", from the album Red Roses For Me
www.pogues.com
