Sunday, 28 February 2021

Off The Beaten Tracks 1 March 2021

Playlist for my Ginger Feather FM show which goes out daily at 8pm this coming week from 1st March. Also available to listen to on Mixcloud.

Show of Hands - Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed
Jez Lowe - You Can't Take it With You
The Humblebums - Silk Pyjamas
Cara Dillon - The Banks of the Bann
James Yorkston & The Second Hand Orchestra - There is No Upside
Oka Vanga - The Devil's Tide
Nancy Kerr & James Fagan - Dance To Your Daddy (live)
Martin Stephenson - Coleen
Ralph McTell & Wizz Jones - You're Gonna Quit Me Baby
Jez Lowe - Morpeth Olympics
Megson - Good Times Will Come Again
Gilmore & Roberts - Ghost of a Ring
Bellowhead - Sloe Gin
Howard Haigh - Kemp's Jig


Off The Beaten Tracks
On Ginger Feather FM 
Every day at 8pm

Monday, 22 February 2021

Off The Beaten Tracks 22 February 2021

A mostly North American line-up of bluegrass and Americana on this week's show, the exceptions being Fierce Flowers who are from France and Wood, Wire and Words whose album Riding the Rails was recorded in the UK in Hampshire. Listen on Mixcloud.

Curtis Eller - John Wilkes Booth (Don't Make Us Beg)
Vanessa Peters - Call You All The Time
Tim O'Brien - Farewell Angelina
Gillian Welch - Tear My Stillhouse Down
Slaid Cleaves - God's Own Yodeller
Fierce Flowers - Cette Ronde
The Mammals - Someone's Hurting
Rhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrisi - Gonna Write Me A Letter
Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors - Mama's Sunshine, Daddy's Rain
Blue Rodeo - Go Go Round
Cowboy Junkies - The Way I Feel
Hayseed Dixie - Kirby Hill
Indigo Girls - Power of Two
Martin Harley & Daniel Kimbro - Feet Don't Fail Me (with Jerry Douglas)
Wood, Wire & Words - I'm Going Home

Off The Beaten Tracks
On Ginger Feather FM 
Every day at 10am, 3pm and 8pm


Wednesday, 17 February 2021

Richard Thompson gigs - Edinburgh & Salford

A guitarist who I have been a fan of over the last 30 years or so is Richard Thompson, or RT as he is often called. I first heard his music when a friend lent me his copy of the compilation album (guitar, vocal). This featured a mix of rarities from his days in Fairport Convention, songs from when he was with Linda Thompson and some solo tracks. I then bought a copy of his 1991 album Rumor and Sigh and got tickets to see him in June the following year.

Normally at the Queen's Hall in Edinburgh the seating is unreserved and when myself and friend George Drever arrived at the venue, all the best seats in the stalls were already taken. We watched from the side for a while and then decided to go upstairs. The only problem was that neither of us were too sure which door to use so we headed through the nearest one and found ourselves in a storeroom. We did an U-turn and found our way upstairs. When we looked down into the stalls we saw that there was now a member of staff standing by the door which we had mistakenly gone through. 

Of the few times I've been on a guest list, a couple have been for RT concerts. I'd always assumed you had to be a friend of the band or work for a record company to get such freebies but in 2003 I was put on the guest list by my mum's cousin John Cumming whose company, Serious Music, was promoting the tour. John told me to just turn up at the box office and ask for my ticket. Unfortunately, due to a bereavement, John had forgotten to add me to the list. So when I got to the box office and asked for my ticket I was told they had no note of my name. It turned out that another chap was in the same position as me but he had been offered a free ticket by the record company. 

When Thompson's rather flustered tour manager appeared, he told this chap that he was sorry but the gig was sold out and added that he should contact the record company and tell them what had happened as he didn't like having to turn people away. On hearing this, I feared the worst but fortunately one of John's colleagues was on hand and asked the tour manager if I could be given a house seat. I hadn't come across the concept of house seats before but apparently these are kept to one side for emergencies. The tour manager waved his hands and said something along the lines of, “whatever, do what you want” as he looked like he had more pressing matters to attend to. 

The support act, Kim Richey, was on stage by this time so I wandered through to the bar where Kim's set was being relayed on a couple of speakers. This seemed like a very good idea. Often people aren't bothered about taking their seats for the support act and prefer to have a drink in the bar. This way you could listen to the support act if you wanted to or use it as background music if you were more interested in having a conversation with friends.

Having finally got my free ticket I decided it was only right that I should buy something from the merchandise table so purchased an Old Kit Bag tour t-shirt. During the interval I found my seat in the stalls and who should be sitting along from me but Runrig guitarist Malcolm Jones. I've seen Malcolm at a couple of RT's gigs and on one occasion saw him head backstage at the end of the show. What was unfortunate was that there were two other unoccupied house seats one of which could have been given to the chap who was sent off into the night by the tour manager. But such is life.

My other experience of being on the guest list was in 2009 when Thompson played in Salford at The Lowry. He was touring his 1000 Years of Popular Music album with Debra Dobkin on percussion and Judith Owen on keyboards. My wife Sam was aware of the mix up there had been at the Edinburgh gig so we made doubly sure that there would be tickets waiting for us at the box office. This time there was no problem except that our seats were on the very back row of the balcony and it was a bit of a climb up the stairs to get there. I should mention that Sam suffers from vertigo so she was feeling rather queasy when we made it to our seats. As she said to me afterwards, while it was very kind of cousin John to put us on the guest list, next time we'll buy our own tickets and make sure we're not stuck at the back of the gods. 

====================

Read more of my concert experiences in my 2012 self-published book Drum Solos, Bottles and Bands available to buy from lulu and Smashwords


Sunday, 14 February 2021

Off The Beaten Tracks 15 Feb 2021

This week's playlist. Listen to the show on Mixcloud

Linda Thompson - Give Me A Sad Song
Swarb's Lazarus - I Know My Love
The McCalmans - A Carrion Crow
Sam Kelly & The Lost Boys - The Shining Ship
Kirsty MacColl - He's On The Beach
Session A9 - Dig A Little Well For Zoe
Eliza Carthy - Follow The Dollar
Damien O'Kane - January Man
Claire Hastings - The Gretna Girls
Ralph McTell - Sleepy Time Blues
Nick Keir - Take My Time
Barrule - The Laxey Reels
Davy Graham - Don't Think Twice It's All Right
Swarb's Lazarus - The Brilliancy Medley and the Cherokee Shuffle
James Taylor - Oh, Susannah

Off The Beaten Tracks
On Ginger Feather FM 
Every day at 11am, 4pm and 8pm

Sunday, 7 February 2021

Off The Beaten Tracks 7 February

Back doing radio shows again now that we've got broadband sorted at our new place. This Ginger Feather FM show for the week commencing 8th Feb features tracks by Chris While & Julie Matthews and Jez Lowe from The Ballads of Child Migration album which was released in 2015. For info about it and more releases by Chris and Julie check out their website at http://www.whileandmatthews.co.uk/shop

Seth Lakeman - Blood Red Sky (live)
Salt House - Little Birdie
Kris Drever - I'll Always Leave the Light On
Chris While & Julie Matthews - Pinjarra Dreams
Ian McNabb - Permanent Damage (live)
Band of Burns - The Slave's Lament
Denise Dent - Like Water Like Air
Roddy Frame - High Class Music
Elvis Costello - American Without Tears
Jez Lowe - Snow to Nova Scotia
Talking Heads - Heaven (live)
Bella Hardy - Tequila Moon
Flook - Sharig / The Pipers of Roguery / The Huntsman

Tune in to Ginger Feather FM 
Or listen on Mixcloud 


Thursday, 4 February 2021

Book review: Remain in Love - Talking Heads / Tom Tom Club / Tina by Chris Frantz

My first encounter with the music of Talking Heads was the single 'Once in a Lifetime' which I liked but not enough to go out and buy any of their albums. That all changed with the release of their concert movie Stop Making Sense. A friend gave me copies of that album and the band's most recent studio release, Speaking in Tongues. It's fair to say that in the early to mid-1980s I was listening to a lot of hard rock and heavy metal and my friend was keen for me to widen my tastes and listen to something less ear-damaging. 

Stop Making Sense was on at the Filmhouse, the main independent cinema in Edinburgh, and they had a late showing one night which I was persuaded to go and see. We'd had a few beers before arriving at the cinema and as it turned out, seeing that film was as close as I would get to seeing Talking Heads in concert. It certainly was not your usual cinema experience as the audience was applauding at the end of each song and some people were getting out of their seats and dancing to the music. Fortunately, the staff at the Filmhouse were sufficiently relaxed to let us enjoy the film as if we were an extension of the audience who had actually been there enjoying the performance live. Lucky them. Sadly, after that tour David Byrne decided he had had enough of touring and Talking Heads would continue only as a studio band. 

This was one of a number of decisions that David Byrne took on his own or with Brian Eno, who the band brought in as producer, which clearly irritated Chris Frantz and no doubt the other two members of the band - his wife and bass player Tina Weymouth and guitarist\keyboard player Jerry Harrison. Another example being how Byrne took credit for writing most of the songs whereas according to Frantz, while Byrne wrote most of the lyrics, the music was very much a result of the four of them working together. 

But fortunately these negative aspects only make up a small part of Chris' story of his life before, during and after Talking Heads. One thing I learned from reading this book was the amount of success he and Tina had with their other band, Tom Tom Club. I remember being aware of a couple of their early singles but didn't know that the Club, along with production work, has kept the two of them busy since Byrne walked out of Talking Heads back in 1991. 

Going back to the mid-1970s, this book paints a fine picture of the New York music scene which was centred round the venue CBGB with other bands like Ramones, Television and Blondie all building up a fan base and looking for that first record deal. Talking Heads were invited to tour Europe and the UK with Ramones in '77. Looking back it may have seemed like a slightly odd combination, but it certainly worked at the time. They were quite different characters in each band with Ramones sticking with American beer and being overjoyed to find a McDonald's in Paris whereas Talking Heads, being former art school students, were much more into visiting galleries and checking out the local cuisine. 

For their second album the band headed to the Bahamas and the legendary Compass Point recording studio which was very much in its infancy. In fact Talking Heads was the first band to record there. It certainly sounds like an idyllic place to make music though in later years it wasn't all fun and games when it came to the violent behaviour of John Martyn and the drug-fuelled exploits of Happy Mondays whose album Chris and Tina were supposed to be producing. 

Reading this autobiography it is easy to get sucked into the idea that Chris and Tina were living this perfect life but Chris was no stranger to the rock 'n' roll excesses. One evening before going on stage he had a near-disaster when he snorted what he thought was cocaine but it turned out to be heroin. He comes clean near the end of the book relating how his cocaine use got out of control with Tina giving him an ultimatum - sort yourself out or their marriage would be over. 

That aside, most of us can only dream of the sort of life Chris Frantz has led but this book gives us a window into that world where you can have lunch with Andy Warhol at the Factory in New York or bump into James Brown outside a recording studio in the Bahamas. Reading Remain in Love has made me want to not only revisit my Talking Heads albums with fresh ears but to also check out Tom Tom Club's back catalogue.

To paraphrase AC/DC, who the Heads met at Compass Point in 1980, for those about to rock, funk and dance, we salute you!