The Lost Troubadours Return to Earth

Pok's 43rd birthday gig at The Gladstone in Brighton, the first appearance of his and Aurelie's new concept/band The Lost Troubadours (or possibly "The Lost Troubadours of Magmu")

Pok - vocals, mandola, electric guitar
Auralie - vocals, tambura, dulcimer, recorder, percussion
me - saz, percussion
Justin Love - vocals, acoustic guitar, percussion
Mark - Korg MiniSynth, vocals
Selena - electric bass guitar, vocals



Pok's quite well known in Brighton (where he was based when The Spacegoats came together in '91), so he put word out and managed to summon a fairly healthy audience for a midweek evening. We were very much among friends, including Nadine who used to play melodica in Gadjo, and Clive who used to play didg in The Spacegoats (in black coat and hat, playing the sax these days). It felt a bit like busking - very little rehearsal, no setlist, continually changing line-up, style and instrumentation.

Pok and I did quite a few things together: "Big Railroad Blues", Dylan's "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" and the Hunter/Garcia gem "Mountains of the Moon", The Beatles' "It's All Too Much", an amalgam of Incredible String Band songs and fragments ("The Greatest Friend", "One light/light that is one though the lamps be many" from "Douglas Traherne Harding", "Krishna colours on the wall..." from "You Get Brighter" and "may the long time sun shine upon you..." from "A Very Cellular Song").


Pok, in his element (thanks to Phil for the photo)
The Troubadours have a sort of mythological theme-song Pok has penned about the wingèd cats of Planet Magmu, which he and Auralie sing to the tune of "Lyke Wake Dirge" with a sort of prog-synth swooshiness in the background. Witnessing this (from onstage) with Pok in purple velvet wizard robe, all of us in glittery feline carnival masks, made for quite an extraordinary quarter-of-an-hour. He's written an epic new drone-based song called "Albion", including the lines "Albion's dreaming/and William Blake/has just rung to say/it's never too late". Playing along with that (near the end of the session, having fully loosened up) felt incredible. Typically, the battery in my MiniDisc recorder had died sometime earlier.

Auralie's just getting used to playing music in public, microphones, etc., so this was quite a big thing for her. She's written a Breton-style whistle tune and written some French lyrics to it. This got woven into a general droney jam involving tampura, dulcimer, etc. Not difficult to play along with, a simple musical environment in which it's possible to express quite a lot.

Of the recording, Pok says:

"troubadours recording not bad...more a 'historical' than a great gig...not too balanced sound, but great insight, esp. in what to learn from..(I am pushing voice too much where i could lay back a bit more ....not always.

Like to record all gigs and put them up in this new/old archiving tradition...wow..."

Listen Here
Mark and Selena did some synth and vocals stuff on their own, and Justin accompanied some heart-songs of his with simple skanky guitar grooves, inviting me up to accompany him (he even did a simple, reggae-ish "Stairway to Heaven" without it sounding like some kind of novelty fusion joke).

* * *
The night before I was in the bar of the Gulbenkian Theatre in Canterbury where three friends of a friend were singing unaccompanied folksongs. Will, Ed and Ginge have been walking around the country 10 of the last 18 months, singing songs and learning new ones from the people they meet. There seems to be some periodic folk-club or something that happens there, and they preceded a guitarist/singer on the Martin Carthy/John Renbourn/Bert Jansch side of things. They started with "Stand Up Diggers All", and immediately blew me away with their beautiful harmonies and general vibe. They sang another one that Chumbawamba did on that English Rebel Songs album, the WWI footsoldiers' "The Old Barbed Wire", also "John Barleycorn" and a few others I recognised. I immediately thought of that Oxfordshire protest song Andy Bard sang at the BGG last summer - "Otmoor Forever" - and wanted to suggest to them that they learn it, but they were surrounded by enthusiastic folkies after finishing their set, so I'll have to wait until I meet them properly (as I'm sure I will at some point). It's heartening to see people their age getting into this music (and tuning into the land as part of the musical exploration).

Oddly (or perhaps not), when looking for a Youtube clip Pok told me about (him busking in Glastonbury High Street), I found this of Will and Ed singing outside Glastonbury's Mocha Berry Cafe:

Two weeks in Exeter

As well as the session with Tim and the Drone session, there was quite a lot of music happening around me during the last couple of weeks spent in Exeter.

There was a jam with just Henry shortly after arriving, and a couple with he and Keith (i.e., Orbis Tertius) near the beginning and the end of the period - the first of those felt pretty incoherent to me, the "group mind" not having quite gelled, and also due to the fact we tried a load of new material; the second session felt really good at the time, I look forward to getting a copy of Henry's recording. Orbis were meant to be playing at The Globe on Wednesday 13th, but that got cancelled (which meant I got to see MV&EE in Bristol, so I wasn't too upset about that).

Vicky's getting into playing the guitar, so I accompanied her on a few occasions playing "Bonny at Morn" (the Northumbrian lullaby I play with Orbis), "Lowlands" (a Scottish ballad we know via Anne Briggs via Alisdair Roberts) and, for some reason, Cat Stevens' "Moonshadow". Excellent fun, and she's improving with every strum.

We also went to The Phoenix to see Laura Veirs, who I'd never heard before, but was very impressed by. She's from Portland, Oregon, seems like an exceptionally nice person, and writes beautiful abstract lyrics which she accompanies with imaginative guitar playing (both she and Clyde from Your Heart Breaks, her support act, made use of loop pedals to make up for the lack of band). She also threw in a couple of American folk songs: "Freight Train" (which I know from the considerably more warped-out MV&EE version - interesting to hear it played straight) and "Cluck Old Hen" (which I've played with Sloppy Joe over in Wisconsin). I was expecting a more conventional singer-songwriter scenario, which would probably have bored me halfway through the set, but I was right there with her throughout.


Something I missed at The Phoenix - Simon Drone was performing as part of as "Digital Funfair", part of the Animated Exeter Festival. He wired a Big Mac up to his PlantChant device and processed the sound, with a friend reading the list of ingredients. He originally asked me, but I was off walking in the Mendips - we've done something like this once before. Ben Goldstone, a.k.a. George Lazenbleep, The Phoenix's resident circuit-bending wizard, was also heavily involved - the flyer above appears to be his doing.


This flyer, on the other hand, I found on the pavement across the railway cutting from St. James Park for an event at The Cavern billed "FYC in Wonderland" - it was the same evening (Tuesday 12th), and the incongruity between the gentle psychedelic artwork and the implausible sounding genres of music mentioned ("Ghettotech"? "Rubslap"?? "Niche"???) made me think it had to be some convoluted in-joke. So, of course, I had to go and have a look. Immediately upon arriving, a duo wearing ties announced got on stage, the singer remarked that he seemed to know everyone there, but still, helpfully, explained that they were half of "Tissø Lake" (not a made-up Scandinavian "fastcore" DJ afterall) and played some beautiful sombre folkie stuff on acoustic guitar and fiddle, before switching to accordion and drums. I've since checked out Tisso Lake online, and they appear to have an album out - the tracks here are really gorgeous - who are these people? The audience of a few dozen more-interesting-than-usual-looking students were largely in Alice in Wonderland-themed fancy dress (rabbit ears, playing cards, a Mad Hatter compere). A band called Right Turn Left, who would have sounded really original in about 1979 then played some energetic pop songs, not really my thing, but perfectly competent. Then the DJ's started up, playing stuff I really couldn't get my head 'round. Strange - it didn't sound exciting or original, just indistinct. A few of the DJ's friends danced seemingly to show moral support, then drifted off to the bar leaving the dancefloor empty. Three or four records in I managed to recognise Saul Williams' "List of Demands". FYC turns out to be a collective spawned by some Exeter University DJ's (I can't bring myself to tell you what it stands for). And Vicky's teenage son Thomas has assured me that almost all of those genres really do exist ("Niche" he tells me, is like speeded up "8-bit" - dance music based around '80's arcade game sounds - mixed with dubstep, and is "terrible"!)

I also found myself at two Tuesday jazz/funk jam sessions at The Angel on Queen Street (listening, not playing). These seem to be based around a core of three young men playing drums, bass (particularly good bass player) and electric jazz guitar, with various others coming and going. The first week it was just them - not bad. The second session they were joined by a second guitar and an excellent keyboardist (with all the right choices of keyboard sound), which was really grooving along nicely - great stuff.

There was a different sort of jazz session on a Sunday night upstairs at The Globe, again with a sort of house band (drums/bass/guitar trio who are part of a 5-piece called Monkey's Uncle) and guests, including a superb flute player called Ruth. A bit fusion-y at time, some standards, people of varying abilties having a go. Simon Persinghetti from Wrights and Sites stopped in (it's his local) and mentioned that they get some completely amazing players dropping in out of the blue from time to time. It's good to know all this is going on in Exeter. Lots of pubs have blues jams and folk sessions, but this is all a bit more interesting.

I was back at The Globe on my penultimate night in the city, to catch part of Spin 2's second set there - Mick Drone's been playing bass with them for quite a while now (also Iggy, who's Droned with us and Ali, who I've played with in Dub Magnitude on fiddle and accordion), so I've been meaning to catch them for a while now. It was a bit more country/cajun/generally American sounding than I'd expected...I suppose I was hoping for more of a wild Irish, Pogues-y energy. But they're very good at what they do and had the place packed out and rocking. From there, I wandered on to the North Bridge Inn. Usually on a Wednesday night it's open mic there, but it being Eddie the landlord's birthday, he'd hand-picked the participants. I just the last three songs from the last act - a hilarious trio called The Dueling Kazoos, who'd reformed specially for the occasion. Blokes in suits and trilbies playing ukeleles, tea-chest bass and kazoos, utterly chaotic and hilarious. It felt like a really good evening 'round someone's front room (the NBI is a bit like Eddie's front room). To my complete amazement, a dreadlocked character (turns out to be one of the DibDub DJ's) asked me if Orbis Tertius would be gigging there again soon. I was genuinely surprised that anyone remembered our name (let alone could pronounce it correctly), but he'd been working behind the bar when we played there a couple of times and seemed really into it, so that's encouraging. There was a total lunar eclipse that night (well, 3a.m. the next morning), but I didn't know until too late - I got to enjoy wandering around Exeter in the light of the full moon, though, everything seeming somehow more strikingly three-dimensional than usual.

saz, guitar and derelict building improv with Tim C

me - saz
Tim - acoustic guitar, ambient sound


Ilford Park Polish resettlement camp - photo by George Harris
Listen Here
Tim recently moved from Plymouth to Exeter and got in touch via the Children of the Drone website about possible musical collaboration. I went to meet him and after a quick up of tea we were into some lovely modal jamming, with him bringing in some ambient sound from his laptop. He'd recorded it in a derelict building near Newton Abbot (part of a resettlement camp for Polish refugees immediately after WWII), slowed it down and layered it. Dripping water, stuff scraping along concrete floors, etc. It was a good idea, as the strings felt less exposed so that we could relax into the jam more, and the recording ended up sounding more interesting than it would have otherwise.

Tim's into bleak arthouse films, Pessimist philosophers and a lot of miserable music, but he's got a sense of humour (I notice the complete works of Morrissey among his CD collection). He told me about his partially-succesful attempt to get a group called "Relentlessly Depressing" together in Plymouth (with track titles like "Total Psychological Devastation"!), the idea being to take dirgey music so far it becomes hilarious.

He also pointed out that Henry Drone's drumming is rather like that of Jim White from Dirty Three. I'd not heard them (turns out to feature Warren Ellis from The Bad Seeds), so he played me some - melancholy instrumental music, and rather good.

Droning with Annie Surf Messenger

A hastily arranged COTD session last Thursday. A relatively small turnout, partly 'cos a few Droners had Valentine's Day commitments, but that made for a most interesting session. John and I vibed very well on strings, and we were joined by Annie Q from The Surf Messengers, a Crediton-based improv group. Vaughan had put her in touch a couple of years ago, but this was her first encounter with the Drone. Henry's been expressing a desire to get wind instruments involved in the collective for years now, and I can see why. She did some very nice singing, too.

John - mandola, electric guitar, acoustic bass guitar, vocals
me - saz, balalaika, percussion
Henry - percussion
Annie Q - alto saxophone, flute, vocals


Listen Here

mv&ee on tour

I managed to catch Matt Valentine and Erika Elder's new band The Golden Road twice on their UK tour - or more like 1.2 times: their set at The Luminaire in Kilburn started much later than I'd been told, and after two songs I had to run for a bus to get back to Canterbury. I was rather alarmed by the opening number, having immersed myself in their astral-folk canon - the somewhat turgid country-rock of "Easy Livin'" didn't seem too promising. Sir Robert Bunkum was also present, and had pointed out how MV looks rather like our mutual friend Marcus, with a big beard (he really does), which added to the overall sense of disorientation.


The Golden Road live at The Luminaire, Kilburn
This was Andy's summary of an earlier gig he caught in Cambridge:

"Groovy! In full-on coutnry rock mode with bass, dulcimer(?), drunken drummer and standing up and everything. Or were they like some dodgy old pub rock band?"

It's a fine line. The dulcimer was actually a pedal steel, it turns out. And the drummer did appear to have had a bit too much to drink - but he kept a steady (if heavy) beat, it must be said.

But halfway into the second song I was completely entranced. It was the old gospel song "Get Right Church", sung by EE, the lyrics of which I recognised from a Rasta niyabinghi chant, with MV playing harmonica through loads of delay and the band chugging along in spacerock mode. I hung around for a bit of the third piece and then had to run...


It was worth the trip to London (particularly with £1 National Express "Funfare" tickets) though, just to catch a bit of Cath and Phil Tyler (the first support act) and the whole of Pekko Käppi's set. PK's a long-haired Finnish lyre player who sings epic folksongs, including one which he said was a sort of invocation to avoid hitting oneself with an axe! He had the whole trendy London nu-folk crowd completely enraptured. It took us a while to work out what language he was singing in (or was he making it up?). My first guess was Hungarian - not bad, considering how closely it's related to Finnish. "The Doozer" (one East Anglian and some backing tapes) also played a set - not The Doozer who once MC'd with Exeter's finest hiphop crew Critically Ill - but he failed to make much of an impression on us.

Here's Sir Robert's impression of the Golden Road set:

"That was quite something - yer i had th same experience in cambridge.....seeing mv's contorted marcus-c------gone-to-seed beardy face bawling 'Eaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasy livin!' made me think th wurst (when i stay in grimsby sometimes its in a cheap room above a pub....on friday nites they have shitty live pub rock bands i've never been down to see one but on many occasions have lain in my bed reading lissening to bad renditions of 'because th night' or 'american idiot' or 'song 2' boomingup thru my bedroom floor)also but by th time they got to that 3rd song 'hammer' (the one introduced as written by leadbelly/ that u had 2 leave halfway thru) was totally spellbound. they rocked on in similar vein throughout in cambridge and at th luminaire, definitely reminded me wot ive haard of th dead, playing th recognisable 'rock' songs from their 2 'proper' records ( on thurston moore's estatuic peace! label) - 'green blues' and 'gettin gone' but joined up//intersperced with totally different jammed/improvised sections...........they finished with a very long 'canned happiness' which takes th riff from 'on th road again' off into forever. starts off sounding like th canned heat orig...then it takes off into canned heat covered by spaceritual era hawkwind and then just goes th whole hog and sounds like orgone accumulator.........there were a couple of grey-longhairs boogying away at th back...........and finished in with mv and samara th bassist rocking out together while erika stood in th middle (she seems to have to play th same 3 notes all th way thru this one) looking faintly bored whch was a shame cos when she's in th centre light singing it seems th whole band are her backing players, a long cry frum th meek little voice intoning "when i'm dead and in my grave, no more good times will i crave.....""

There was a Children of the Drone session in Exeter that night, which I would have been at, had it not been for MV&EE being in London. I was on my way down there the next day, and ended up having a fascinating conversation on the coach with Chris Dowding, the trumpet player from Natural Causes, about the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (he studied up there), Supersilent, John Zorn, Robert Wyatt, Evan Parker, the New York jazz scene, The Wire, The Vortex club in East London, cLOUDDEAD, etc., etc. This is what happens when you carry an oddly-shaped instrument case (he asked me about my saz). The Causes were playing at The Blue Walnut in Torquay (Britain's smallest cinema!) to accompany some films the next evening, and I hoped to go, but unfortunately (and unsurprisingly) it had sold out.

A week later, I caught the Golden Road at The Croft in Bristol. The Doozer supported again - he seems to be a friend of the band, cos he was up on stage playing harmonica for "Canned Happiness" (their mighty reworking/deconstruction of Canned Heat's "On The Road Again" which went into a heavy trance-krautrock groove) and the remainder of the set, which ended with "East Mountain Joint" going into a ten-minute feedback coda. The mix and acoustics of the space were pretty hideous - everything sounded too loud, and generally too trebly/distorted/indistinct. But my MiniDisc recording (MV&EE encourage audience taping, in the tradition of the Grateful Dead) came out sounding really quite OK. I've since been in touch with MV and he's keen to get a copy, so one has been dispatched to East Mountain Road, Guilford, Vermont to await their return.

I had a little chat with Erika at the merchandise table, handed over COTD, ATW and Ail Fionn compilation discs so that they can experience some lo-fi free-folk sounds from this side of the Atlantic. Sir Robert had mentioned at The Luminaire that the rest of the band had to go back to the States (he presumably heard this in Cambridge), so I'd been expecting to witness the two-piece MV&EE set he caught on the previous tour. I asked Erika about this, but she explained that it was only the bass player who'd had to leave, and that they'd found a new one. He appeared to be English - they introduced him as "Sir Michael Flowers", but later refered to him as "Chris". He did a fine job in any case. Still, I was slightly disappointed, as I'd have loved to see just Matt and Erika doing their thing.

Philip from COTD got in touch a week later, having recently discovered MV&EE via YouTube, suggesting we might take something over for a future Brattleboro Free Folk Festival. I'm not sure how likely that is, but it's a nice idea...

"The Yellow Moon Band" also played a support set of mostly heavy rock instrumentals - really quite incongruous (the sort of band who should be supporting Wishbone Ash, as someone put it). Their web profile said something about "folk" and "psychedelic" - the guitarist got a mandolin out at one point, so I suppose that was the "folk" bit, but it just made me think of the Stonehenge scene in This is Spinal Tap.

Garcia's Last Stand

I've been working my way through 30 years of Grateful Dead recordings via archive.org over the last couple of months - picking a couple of highly-rated shows with appealing setlists from each year. Quite a fascinating journey. I'll blog up some highlights when I have nothing else going on, but this will do for now.

It was quite dispiriting to hear the band's decline from about '92 (even though I did manage to find the best of '92-'95), particularly Jerry losing his edge. Approaching the end of the road, I found myself listening through the last few shows of the ill-fated '95 summer tour - strangely compelling. The very last show was a bit of a disappointment (interesting how, in his general muddle of missed and misplaced lyrics, he sung "I will take a walk by the last muddy river and dream me a song of my own" in the Black Muddy River encore (the last song he sang live)) - a rather emotional So Many Roads, but otherwise not much worthwhile there. The previous day's show (also at Chicago's Soldier Field) was arguably a bit better, but the real revelation was Jerry getting it together for one last, moving performance - Dylan's "Visions of Johanna". I found some home video footage on YouTube (someone filming the giant screen over the stage). The Captain does look like he's on death's door, but he summons the magic here, gets all the lyrics right and everything. A few people have commented on the moment where he sings "Mona Lisa had them highway blues, you can see it by the way she smiled" and raises his right hand with a particular look in his eyes - a huge cheer goes up from the crowd - some kind of mutual recognition of something ineffable is acknowledged.



note added 10/03/10: Well, Youtube pulled this due to a "terms of use violation", which is a shame, but Jerry looked so rough, maybe it's better to just listen:

Wooden Shjips

I just discovered this San Francisco-based crew through a piece in a recent issue of The Wire. Stripped-down, primitive psychedelic garage trance rock'n'roll - love it! So simple and pure as to sound almost devotional.



It takes me back to the golden age of Spacemen 3 and Loop (both of whom I was lucky enough to see more than once), although the Shjips apparently had never listened to them. The similarity in sound doesn't bother me at all - can't get enough of this kind of thing.

Quite a few of their tracks can be heard here. And yes, it is spelled like that.