Monday Long Song

One of several already booked 2020 concerts I lost as a result of the pandemic was Laura Cannell's Modern Ritual XIII, which was scheduled to take place last July, just round the corner from King's Cross station in London. I've been lucky enough to see Laura play several times over the years, most recently in 2019, at the 12th of her Modern Ritual series, in a small 16th century chapel, hidden deep in the Suffolk countryside. 

Laura kept herself busy last year, releasing the haunting 'The Earth With Her Crowns' in the summer and 'These Feral Lands Volume 1' in November. The latter features guest performances by cellist Kate Ellis, broadcaster Jennifer Lucy Allan and the terrific local writer/performer Polly Wright. Another name heavily involved on the album is the comedian Stewart Lee, who was also slated to appear at that cancelled Modern Ritual gig in London. Lee's contributions to 'These Feral Lands' are a revelation and even if  this style of music isn't generally your thing, you should make it your business to at least check out 'Black Shuck', where he summons his inner Mark E Smith and Captain Beefheart to startling effect. 

Here though is another tune from 'These Feral Lands', featuring Stewart Lee, Laura Cannell and Kate Ellis. 'Wrekin' delves deep into ancient Shropshire folklore, albeit with unexpected appearances by Kendo Nagasaki and Tony McPhee. 

Laura Cannell, Stewart Lee & Kate Ellis - Wrekin

Mind Train

I'm off to see Stewart Lee again next week, for the 6th time in a little over two years and the 3rd time on the current 'Content Provider' tour. In addition to being by far the best stand-up comedian currently working in the UK, Stewart is a massive music fan - in fact on both of the occasions that I've managed to snatch a few words with him, it was music we discussed, not comedy. So you know damn well that when he selects his pre-show and interval playlist, he does so very carefully indeed. On the last tour he had John Coltrane's terrific version of 'My Favourite Things' playing on a perpetual loop, but this time round he's introduced a little Turkish funk to the intermission proceedings....plus one other 17 minute tune that for all the world could be an extended out-take from Neu! or Can. But I cannot tell a lie, it's not a great lost Krautrock track. The chugging riff is in fact the work of ex-fab John Lennon, ably assisted by Klaus Voorman on bass and Jim Keltner on drums - and up front, yes, that's Yoko Ono. The tune is taken from Yoko's 1971 double LP 'Fly' and it's quite an exceptional thing. I'm looking forward to hearing it at full volume again next week.

Yoko Ono - Mind Train

Stewart Lee in Aldeburgh

'I'm post-laughter' says Stewart Lee. Expanding on this statement, he imagines an audience member's conversation the morning after the show. 'Did you see that Stewart Lee last night?' 'Yes I did.' 'What did you think of him?' 'Well, I didn't laugh much, but I agreed the fuck out of him.' In reality, on Saturday night in downtown Aldeburgh there was no shortage of laughter. He had the entire audience in stitches from his opening few lines, during the course of which he described the beautiful Suffolk coastal town, in typically deadpan style, as a 'white supremacist fishing village'. I laughed so hard that at one point I seriously thought I'd pulled a muscle in my chest. In the seat behind me, another man laughed equally loud and long. It was Alexi Sayle - and he knows a thing or two about stand-up comedy.

The performance was billed as a work in progress, which essentially gives Lee carte blanche to read freshly written material straight from the page when necessary, as he fine tunes his new touring show. He explained that trialling new material in the age of mobile phones and YouTube is usually a fraught process, but in Aldeburgh he was confident that being so far from civilisation, no word would ever reach the outside world. The new tour, 'Content Provider', begins in earnest in November and will continue throughout 2017 and into early 2018. On Saturday evening he talked (amongst other things) about Brexit, Game of Thrones, Bake Off and the differences between folk sex and jazz sex - some or none of these topics might make it to the finished show. I've already got my 'Content Provider' ticket booked for February, so I'll let you know.

Here's a recent Quietus interview with Stewart Lee, where he talks at length about writing, performing and being a music fan in the 21st Century. Even if you don't like his stand-up, he's a fascinating bloke and this is well worth a listen.

Shirley Inspired

This tribute to the great Shirley Collins pulls no punches and leaves few stones unturned - 3 CD's containing 45 tracks stretching to just under 3½ hours of music. It's a mighty undertaking. Does it overstay its welcome, sag, drag or bore? No, no, no and absolutely no. You've got traditional folk, you've got modern folk, you've got freak folk and you've got interpretations of songs that stray far outside any recognised definition of the F-word. It's a marvellous, lovingly curated set that I'm sure will continue to reveal further treasures with repeated plays. 'Shirley Inspired' was put together, in part, to help fund a new documentary film, 'The Ballad of Shirley Collins' and I'm pleased to have played a tiny part in such a worthwhile venture. Find out more here.

Stewart Lee / Richard Dawson

The diary's been looking a bit threadbare recently, but last Sunday, Stewart Lee's latest stand-up show, 'Room With a Stew', became my first gig of 2015. Lee is a master of the demystification of live comedy. For example, when a laugh failed to arrive from the audience at an expected moment, he pressed pause on the performance, stepped out of character and walked us through the elaborate verbal scaffolding he'd erected to take us to that point, castigating us repeatedly for not sufficiently appreciating the quality of the humour. After reaching an apparent crescendo of rage, verging on a nervous breakdown, with the subtlest of movements he revealed that this too was all a device. The tension was released and a huge roar of laughter followed. The show really was a masterclass of a performance, thought provoking and very, very funny. I'm picking up the tour again in May.

When I briefly caught up with Stewart in the foyer after the show, we took a moment to share our mutual enthusiasm for the brilliant Richard Dawson. Dawson's musical palette is broad, from Faheyesque instrumentals, to cacophonous drones via unaccompanied traditional ballads. Sometimes there aren't adequate words to do justice to such a prodigious talent, so here are three examples of his work, I urge you to seek out more. This live show (here) is a good place to start.

Customers of Note

My little record shop was tucked away in a small town on the east coast of England, a place not known for being a celebrity hangout, so, in the course of my 14 years of loyal service, man and boy, I was singularly untroubled by a-listers browsing my wares while being hotly pursued by the paparazzi, had no incognito visits from megastars discreetly purchasing the latest Michael Bolton LP and gave refuge to no teen heart-throbs evading the affections of their over-zealous fans. In fact, off the top of my head, I can recall just three names of note who graced my modest establishment as customers, or potential customers, in all those years.

There was Twink, a man who happens to be a connecting link to many of my musical interests, who turned up one day in the early 1990s, with the initial aim of flogging me some stock from his own record label, but stopped back intermittently over the next couple of years as both supplier and customer. I'm sure I bored him to death with my fanboy questions about Tomorrow, Steve Peregrin Took and Syd Barrett, but he cheerfully indulged my enthusiasms, before gradually turning the subject back to pushing his latest Pinkwind or Hawkfairies release.

Then there was the day I looked across the shop to see a vaguely familiar face, looking down, browsing through the CD racks. It was one of those faces you somehow recognise, but was wildly out of context in the surroundings of my shop. Luckily the owner of the face made a purchase and paid by cheque, enabling me to confirm the identity of my unlikely customer. It was Walthamstow based psych-rocker and one time Countdown contestant, Nick Saloman, a.k.a. The Bevis Frond. Before I could strike up a conversation he was gone and so I don't know what brought him to my neck of the woods in general, or my shop in particular. He did, however, make an album with Twink back in 1990, so one assumes they were chums. Who knows, perhaps he checked out my gaff on Twink's recommendation?

In the mid-1980s, it seemed that every gig I went to in London was also attended by Andy Kershaw, he was everywhere. By the mid-1990s my omnipresent shadow at London shows had become Stewart Lee, whose musical tastes at the time clearly overlapped my own, judging by the sheer number of times I spotted him in audiences all over the city. In 1995 (or possibly '96) Lee and comedy partner Richard Herring brought their 'Fist of Fun' tour to a hall in my little town. It was an optimistic booking for a venue best known for its family variety shows, tribute acts and the occasional Irish country singer. On the afternoon of the show, Stewart Lee walked into my shop. 'Aha. Do you know....', I blurted out without thinking, '...you've been at practically every gig I've been to in London recently...' I'm not sure what the exact legal status of stalking was in the mid-1990s, but Lee would've been quite justified in expressing concern at my over-excited opening gambit. To his credit, however, he flicked through my stock for a few minutes, as we chatted about bands we'd seen and would like to see. Eventually he turned to me and, gesturing at my racks of LPs and CDs, said 'You've got some good stuff here', which was nice of him to say, but he didn't actually buy anything! The Fist of Fun show that evening was very funny indeed, but, as I feared, appallingly attended, perhaps 50 of us in a seated venue with a 900 capacity.

All that was in another lifetime and although I haven't crossed paths with Twink or Nick Saloman in the years since, I have continued to admire the work of Stewart Lee and a couple of evenings ago I caught a date on his latest stand-up tour, 'Much a-Stew About Nothing'. Unlike his previous live shows, which usually have a linking theme throughout, by necessity, 'Much a- Stew About Nothing' consists of four unrelated individual sections. The necessity arising when, soon after the BBC dropped his TV show 'Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle' after two series, the programme won a BAFTA, causing a swift (and, I would imagine, somewhat embarrassed) re-think. Two further series were belatedly commissioned by the Beeb and Lee has used this tour to knock the material, destined for Series 3, into shape, refining a rotating selection of half-hour set pieces over the past four months. On Saturday evening he was thought provoking and hilarious. Really hilarious. I'd love to elaborate, but you'll be able to see for yourself when the new series of 'Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle' airs in the Spring.