This is an unlikely choice, and the idea that the pseudo Irish folk band The Waterboys would be a 2020 favourite was derided, even laughed at, by several of my contemporaries. Nevertheless Mike Scott and his cronies have metamorphosed into a soul rock band, with electronic backing. They are both hilarious and sincere, in a way that maybe Morrissey used to be.
The actual track is a rock stomper that you can actually dance to. The music is credited to Jim Keltner, the great American session drummer, although whether he actually plays is unknown, it does sound a bit processed. The other music credit is to Anthony Thistlethwaite, a long time accompanist of The Waterboys, presumably he plays the violin. Still it is the lyrics and singing of Mike Scott which animates this bulldozing epic, like a whole life in song. The coda is a proper rock guitar freakout, the like of which is rarely heard these days, but advances in a most satisfying manner after the emotions of the verses.
Yes there is a whole life in this song, ecstatic, searching and moving. The moment when he exclaims “And I Ran” makes you want to run alongside, imagining your own experiences through the vagaries of existence. It resolves, after many adventures, at “love’s fortress”, truly a A Long Days Journey Into Night. Yet he manages to emerge into the “small damp dawn”. Such a joy to hear the height of unbridled emotion, instead of some tinkly, mousy, half-formed musings so common these days. His optimism is infectious, he will keep running and never become “one of them!”
This song is track 9 or track 2 side 2 of the album Good Luck, Seeker. The album itself is a slightly mixed bag, starting with the Van Morrison inspired The Soul Singer. It traverses through some electro-folk and then the psychedelic Dennis Hopper and Freak Street. However it is side 2, track 8 onwards, which comprises a suite of spiritual songs taking us on a true journey. Some are delivered as poetry rather than sung, which appears to have upset some fans. Yet I find the balance between the rock bombast and dreamy romanticism works perfectly, the songs reflecting off each other, building a plangent vista. We slowly move into a spiritual realm, arriving bizarrely at The Society of The Inner Light at Steeles Road in London. The album finishes with the calming Land of Sunset, but before that there is a kind of reprise of Weary Land. The short Everchanging boldly proclaims “a new vista of fresh probabilities”. Still moving indeed, and all highly energising.
This cover shoot in 1985 was the apotheosis of my burgeoning photographic career. From the early 70s I read the New Musical Express religiously every week and even completed the crossword. Meanwhile The Smiths had become my favourite indie group, so the combination was everything I had ever wished for, this was as good as it got.
Commissioned by Tony Stewart the deputy editor (who I later unfortunately followed to the ailing Sounds) I drove the journalist Danny Kelly up to The Hacienda in Manchester where the shoot took place. I had done a fair amount of preparation, constructing a halo from a fluorescent ring lamp and preparing some gory make-up. I had no assistant and did all the set-up and prosthetics myself. Morrissey was as sweet as pie and liked the idea of the stigmata. He only balked when I wanted to use the actual club for some background shots, saying that he’d already been photographed there. Still it all went very well, but I wasn’t allowed to attend his interview with Danny and spent several hours hanging around the gothic Midland Hotel.
The shot chosen for the cover was not my favourite, but I guess it fitted their layout best. They did use a classic black and white shot with the interview, later featured on the cover of Morrissey: Fandom, Representations and Identities.
Back in the 70s the New Musical Express was a wide church, encompassing all contemporary music including folk, jazz and even modern classical. I discovered Philip Glass, Jan Garbarek and the Art Ensemble of Chicago in their pages. They would feature campaigning articles about Red Wedge and occasional specials such as a Youth Suicide issue. The writing was varied, iconoclastic and opinionated, notable favourites being Richard Williams, Barney Hoskyns, Ian Penman, Nick Kent, Tony Parsons and even Charles Shaar Murray. By turns humorous and political the NME became the voice of alternative youth, there was no-one else with their finger on the pulse. In addition they produced a series of budget cassettes starting with C81, which championed their diverse musical influences.
The NME slowly headed into a dead end street of their own making, forgetting their history and the wilder shores of music practice. The writing lost all ambition and pretension, there was only so much you could say about guitar bands amid the narrow confines of Britpop. In the 70s you read the NME to discover new music and new attitudes, not to catch up on the gossip in the Sun’s Bizarre column. The world still needs a daring and authoritative music magazine, there is The Wire, but what do they know about pop music?
R.I.P. NME ‡
I am writing this In Memoriam to Jazz at The Oxford, my local jazz club in Kentish Town, London. It happened on a Monday (when nothing happens) upstairs at a local pub for 12 years and was like having Ronnie Scott’s just down the road, but much cheaper, more relaxed and more personal. It was run by George Crowley, an excellent saxophonist in his own right, often playing with the guests and of course when the guests couldn’t make it.
Crocodile playing at The Oxford, Kentish Town
While it started off as often too full of student alumni, it only cost £5 and every so often someone of the calibre of Shabaka Hutchings would turn up. Great nights included someone transporting a full size Hammond organ up the stairs, big bands such as Crocodile outnumbering the audience and of course musicians of the quality of Jeff Williams, Laura Jurd, Martyn Speake and Kit Downes. I will be missing this…on occasional Fridays some of these musicians may appear at the Con Cellar Bar aka The Constitution on the canal in Camden.
Blues Night at The Constitution
Meanwhile the amazing Cafe Oto in Dalston, now the UK home of Sun Ra, continues to plough its unique furrow through nearly any kind of modern music as inspired by Wire magazine. A staggering number of amazing concerts with the cream of British avant garde jazz as well as luminaries from many international genres.
Sun Ra Arkestra at Cafe Oto (in Infra Red)
The sackcloth backdrop which looks like a temporary rebuilding memento is still there as is the relaxed and concentrated vibe which draws in performers as varied as The Necks, Annette Peacock, Jimi Tenor, Marc Ribot and The Thing. There is no stage, we are one. Just so you know – I’m a Member!
Across the road is one of London’s most famous and established jazz clubs, The Vortex.
Carol Grimes at The Vortex with Giles Perring
While presenting an excellent cross section of soul and avant garde jazz, I have always found the room a little bit too concrete and dry after it moved from its original location, a funky, wooden and crazy place in Stoke Newington Church Street, which for a few years until 2004 was definitely the best jazz venue in London. Thank you Billy Jenkins for some great nights there. Also of note is the funky Servant Jazz Quarters round the corner. Meanwhile just south of the River, an important new improvised venue opened recently called iklectik, set in hidden arty gardens in Lambeth and I would recommend discovering the Horse Party. Just don’t tell the Archbishop.
Bill Evans Band at The Jazz Cafe 9/8/16
This article is also inspired by a recent visit to the venerable Jazz Cafe, just off Camden High Street. After becoming one of the key venues for New British Jazz in the late 80s, the tiny L shaped wine bar in Stoke Newington Green expanded to a large venue in Camden and has recently been refurbished as a full on night club, featuring jazz. The main floor is open with a restaurant of sorts on the balcony and this works well for funkier outfits, such as Bill Evans who I saw there only this week. Seen some great gigs here such as the Paul Motion Trio (see above), Nils Petter Molvaer and Pharaoh Saunders.
Alan Wilkinson fronting Ya Basta at Flim Flam, Ryans Bar
Talking of L shaped rooms the L in the Flim Flam venue at Ryans Bar, again in Stoke Newington Church Street, has been removed after refurbishment. This venue is run by Alan Wilkinson, a free sax improviser of long standing and on Wednesdays presents the best of improvised music with an eclectic lineup of the famous and crazy in nearly equal measures.
Charles Hayward does his half hour snare drum roll
For more varied musical fare there is the Fiddlers Elbow just outside the Camden Market tourist trap area, presenting live music every night. The main pub room is kinda pentagonal, with a dance floor.
Purdy at the 606 Club
A mention for a few others such as the 606 in Chelsea, allegedly a members supper club, but which presents British jazz and soul in an atmospheric candle-lit cellar. In Soho there is Pizza Express and of course the famous Ronnie Scott’s, both also a bit supper club these days. Ronnie’s does attract some outstanding acts, often American, due to being established over 50 years ago by a very funny and excellent saxophone player. Great nights here have included Art Pepper, Airto, Stacey Kent and of course Nina Simone. Also recommended in Central London is the celebrated 100 Club in Oxford Street, still surviving after many years. Vividly remember gurning at Slim Gaillard here for a couple of hours and grooving to the late Tommy Chase Quartet.
Blues Spiders at Ain’t Nothin But..
A good standby in town is the Ain’t Nothin But Blues Bar in Kingly Street, which does what it says on the tin 7 nights a week. Further East is the Village Underground, a cavernous venue under huge railway arches for Shoreditch hipsters who don’t like sitting down. Primarily a dance/pop venue it occasionally features jazz acts such as Snarky Puppy. The nearby Rich Mix in Bethnal Green has a more varied World music programme, but I am pleased to see James Blood Ulmer is appearing there soon, last seen at Cafe Oto.
Alex Ward, Shabaka Hutchings, Steve Noble at Boat -Ting
Finally a big favourite is Boat-Ting, allegedly London’s hottest new music and poetry club, although after 14 years it’s not that new. Hosted by livewire Sybil Madrigal it regularly features NEW – with Britains best drummer, Steve Noble, powerhouse double bassist John Edwards and the virtuoso guitarist Alex Ward. Best of all this is a jazz club on a boat on the Thames, feel the waves like nowhere else..
So where else in the world could I stand 3 feet away from a world class musician on a regular basis? Answers on a postcard, maybe from New York.
Nearly all these places are dirty, cheap, relaxed, and half full some of the time.
You can find some more proper pics of some of these places at Z360 Live Music
R.I.P. The Bull and Gate, Kentish Town. The Spitz, Spitalfields. The 12 Bar Club, Tin Pan Alley Denmark Street. The Red Rose, Finsbury Park. The Adelaide, Belsize Park. The Mean Fiddler, Harlesden. The original Marquee, Wardour Street Soho. The Moonlight aka Klooks Kleek, West Hampstead.
Update February 2019
Jazz is now back on upstairs at The Oxford, Kentish Town. George Crowley is no longer running the evening, but he was featured there recently and it was a great pleasure to see him destroying the “standard” he was requested to play.
To think you could record a track such as this and then not release it for several years is staggering to me. It was recorded for the Oh Mercy album in 1989 and the producer, Daniel Lanois, believed it should have been the opening track of that album. It finally appeared at the end of 58 tracks on The Bootleg Series, Vol 1-3: Rare & Unreleased 1961-1991. As if to make up for this omission it has now appeared in various versions on at least another 4 compilation albums. However a song of this quality deserves a place at the centre of a great album, which perhaps Oh Mercy could have been if another famous track recorded at the same time, Dignity, had also been included along with classics such as Everything Is Broken and Most Of The Time.
Back to the song, its resonance comes from the way it updates the classic Dylan of the 60s and is one of his last songs to still rock as if he wanted to be a Beatle or even Bruce Springsteen rather than a gravel voiced bluesman. The galloping drums (Daniel Lanois also produced U2) promise a redemption which of course never quite arrives, but we are certainly hurled towards another world by the building, chiming guitars of Mason Ruffner. The vocal phrasing is particularly strong and dylanesque, constantly tripping you up with the unexpected meanings, and when he gets to the punchline (Into the path you are hurled) the music soars, and his voice rises to the occasion.
This is a song which takes his dazzling work of the 60s and refracts it to render a more modern and mature vision. The lyrics are neither verbose nor florid, as they could have been in the 60s, they are simply trying to accurately describe a state of mind. In a sense it is a summation of his career, which can indeed appear as a series of dreams given his chameleon like metamorphosis from folk, protest, rock, surrealism, country, troubadour and guignol into an elder statesman on a never ending tour. There is a sense of sadness and languor, an absolute belief in his refusal to be a spokesman with all the answers, yet the mystery of existence still haunts and the extra terrestrial cards are nearly within his grasp. The emotion of a life lived pours through this song, a joyous requiem to the mystery of the unconscious.
The point he is making – that life is seriously a never ending Sisyphean task and yet also a series of vignettes which repeat outside comprehension, that his dreams have constructed his reality and so it has come to be, reflect a desire we all recognise – to arrive at a moment where we are at peace with our own dreams. In their bare and graphic descriptions we understand these incoherent dreams, perhaps we feel we have shared them. (I certainly do.) This man is no longer haunted by the history of his vivid imagination and crazy life, nor his frightening dreamscape, it has all become one and he accepts it for the madness that it was and may still be. There is still wonder, but no longer any fear, he is an observer who does not have to understand everything in order to see the chance of redemption. Surely the sign of a man who has gone the distance, no more worries, just thinking.
Bob Dylan thinking of Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), author of Illuminations. Stills from the official video for Series of Dreams 1991.
A sense of the series of dreams referred to in the song can be garnered from the official video, which quotes from many historical aspects of Bob’s life:
Original Release 1991 : The Bootleg Series, Vol 1-3: Rare & Unreleased 1961-1991.
This track also appears on : Greatest Hits Volume 3 (1994), The Bootleg Series, Vol 8: Tell Tale Signs (2008), The Real…Bob Dylan (2012), Side Tracks (2013).
Thinking of a series of dreams
Where the middle and the bottom drop out
And you’re walking out of the darkness
And into the shadows of doubt
Wasn’t going to any great trouble
You believe in it’s whatever it seems
Nothing too heavy to burst the bubble
Just thinking of a series of dreams
The Marc Ribot Trio dropped into a packed Cafe Oto with Henry Grimes on acoustic bass as the NY history man of 60s free jazz, and on drums the muscular Chad Taylor from Chicago. Just visible in the corner on his chair was a middle aged workman in a dirty T shirt, his body folded over his guitar. Marc played 2 seamless symphonic sets, with nary a word, just a few applause breaks, especially for the septuagenarian Henry. The music was free jazz but encompassed show tunes, cartoon breaks, marching songs, pop riffs, angular funk and metal shredding runs. It was a capsule history of 20th century American popular music, of which more later…
Marc Ribot plays a Gibson ES-125TDC circa 1962. This is a semi acoustic thin bodied dual pickup electric guitar (famously played by George Thorogood) which he used for every guitar style known to man. He accomplished this with a unique but simple setup of one pedal and one guitar mic, allowing full usage of the electro-acoustic qualities of the guitar. For the the riffing and the metal runs the guitar mic was pushed aside, but for most of the set the guitar mic was just a few inches from his guitar allowing a unique blend of sounds, and then suddenly a lever was flicked and we were back in the prairie with a steely acoustic country guitar whispering to us. Most remarkably he leant over his guitar, his chin appearing to rest on the body, the guitar mic a fraction away as screeds of notes poured out in concentrated flurries – completely hunched over but his arms flying up and down the guitar. At one point you could hear his gritted breath through the guitar mic, no doubt intentionally.
During the first set we went a from classic click-clack drumbeat into what sounded to me like Gabor Szabo’sThe Beat Goes On, well it was funky and Latin anyway! Marc’s cover versions often have a very remote relationship to the original and in no time the music had metamorphosed into angular 80s Bill Frisell style jazz funk, finishing with a chomping Stevie Ray Vaughan blues flourish. A lyrical show tune began the second set echoing the smooth classic jazz of Wes Montgomery and we sped through a catalogue of American styles rapidly coming apart at the seams, at one point sustained riffing drawing applause. As the music splintered, only lightened by bass and drum solos, we heard snatches of the American songbook being deconstructed, reaching its lyrical apogee with a version of Bob Dylan’s Lay Down Your Weary Tune. Yes he sang a song both appropriate and somehow elegiac, Marc’s tremulous voice following not the vocal but the guitar line:
Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song you strum
And rest yourself ’neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum
It felt like a Requiem for America…
Update 14 May 2019
Marc played a solo acoustic gig at Cafe Oto
Magnificent and quieter tonight –
