What of it?

MUSIC: Ralph Stanley Live Review

2009-06-05T14:18:00.000-07:00

Bath Festival: Ralph Stanley
Bath Pavilion (Fri 29 May)

Left to right stand four generally well-filled blue shirts, charcoal grey ties and trousers. Respectively they clothe men clutching fiddle, banjo, guitar and double-bass (or “bass fiddle”). The instruments sing and their voices are of the angels. Soon, a man clad all in black will stand among them. Ralph Stanley has been performing since 1946, and now stands held by a solitary spotlight singing ‘O Death’ acapella. Words fail us (save to say that we’d guess 50% of you, recalling the ‘O Brother…’ soundtrack, are now thinking ‘Oh, him…’). It’s an elemental voice, a wind-blown mix of sand and wood and salt. It sounds a millennia or two older than its 82 years, the witness to every last event that’s happened since. Put simply, it’s the definitive mountain voice. Like Aretha with soul, or Muddy Waters with electric blues, Ralph Stanley came in on the ground floor of his chosen musical form and unwittingly cast its sound in his own image. Every subsequent bluegrass vocalist stands inevitably, respectfully in his shadow. Besides setting them, tonight he also rolls the standards out: ‘Pretty Polly’, ‘Little Maggie’, ‘I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow’. When he leads a four-part acapella harmony for ‘Amazing Grace’, time stands still.

MUSIC: Booker T Jones Profile

2009-06-04T11:08:00.000-07:00

Wow. I said stuff, he listened and then he, like, said stuff back. I mean… wow. You’d be right in assuming that, for someone who took their first tentative steps in the art of conversation sometime around 1974, the novelty might have worn off by now. For that matter, you may also think that the successful completion of a 25-minute phone call shouldn’t really necessitate a celebratory jumping up and down on the spot. Such, I discover, is the unselfconscious response to crossing off the name that, ever since the death of Johnny Cash, has reigned supreme at the top of my Would Love To Talk To list.
Booker T. Jones. Born in Memphis on 12 Nov 1944. One of the key figures who took all they’d learned from the gospel they played in church and applied it to a new, secular, heart-baring musical form: soul. The organ playing head of The MGs, house band for the Stax label, and therefore one of the most influential acts in the history of popular music. Supplier of the bare bones upon which the likes of Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, the Staple Singers, Wilson Pickett and Albert King sung with largely unchartered abandon about matters of the flesh. A scholarly man who’d split his time between Stax and Indiana University, where he studied classical music composition. Who wrote songs like ‘I Love You More Than Words Can Say’ and ‘Born Under a Bad Sign.’ And who is on the other end of the line.
Regular “How are you?” opening pleasantries reveal that, later today, Jones will be flying down from his home north of San Francisco to play the Coachella festival in Indio, California. Unusually, the question is reciprocated. “You’re in England?” Bristol, yeah. “Oh, ok, cool. Bristol, wooah, I haven’t been there in a while. Nice town.” He sounds sincere. After all, he played the Colston Hall with Otis Redding in 1967, part of the UK tour when the impact their songs were making first began to sink in. “We were Southern boys, we didn’t know the music had been outside of our territory. To see people who’d been listening to us on pirate radio sitting in the front row, singing all the words, was such a compliment. I remember the whole town, the show, the theatre. It was a nice brisk day.”
I’m desperate to talk more about Stax but, after all this time, another five minutes won’t hurt. Instead, I’ll make polite inquiries about ‘Potato Hole.’ Must be nice to be releasing your first album in close on two decades? “It’s been a long time, yeah.” Why now? There follows a chastening lesson of an answer: never be so presumptuous as to second-guess where the most personal revelations of an interview will stem from. “Music has been churning inside me my whole life. I’ve always had the inspiration to put an album out, but haven’t always had the opportunity. For many years I was languishing with the music caught up inside me and not actually coming out. Now that’s over and I’ve got a release – in both ways.”
Those seem like extraordinary circumstances for a man with your musical history. Were you unable to get a deal? “Yeah. And I’ve also been pretty stubborn and singular in my musical quest. I didn’t really conform in the late 60s when I was at Stax, and that cost me. I had a love of jazz, country music, rock, but it was just out of place there. Which is fine,” he says in concessionary tone. “But I walked out...”
Did it feel that Stax were treating you more as an employee than a musician in your own right? “That’s exactly right. I absolutely was an employee, and they had every right to say ‘We’re doing very well and we want to continue with that.’ But, you know, I wasn’t the only one: Otis Redding was a big Rolling Stones fan, Eddie Floyd liked rock.”
‘Potato Hole’ was the result of jamming with Drive-By Truckers, the results “kind of lending themselves to a big funky southern rock ‘n’ roll band.” Neil Young also features. There are covers of Outkast and Tom Waits. It confirms an appetite for listening to new music that hasn’t diminished since playing on Stax’s first hit, Rufus and Carla Thomas’ ‘Cause I Love You.’ When that charted, did you think ‘I really might be onto something here’?
“No. I was in the eleventh grade. What I was onto was the best after-school job anyone could possibly imagine! A staff player making something like $15 a day. I was the highest paid kid in town. I borrowed the baritone sax from the school band room, my friend David Porter came to get me out of class, and borrowed a car to take me over to Stax, so [chuckles heartily] it was all just thrown together. I had no idea it would go any further than Memphis, our local neighbourhood.”
What was the music you drew on when you switched to the organ? “I had taken piano lessons, studied Bach and Handel, and took formal organ lessons from my teacher, Mrs Cole. But at home I listened to Roy Hamilton, blues records on the radio and around town, Hank Williams, a lot of gospel music, playing hymns for the men’s bible class on Sunday mornings. I’d sneak into the church with my dad’s key and play the big pipe organ.”
Last year, one of Jones’ charges, Mavis Staples, told me a little about Southern life in the 60s. “A black family moves into a neighbourhood and the next morning when they get up and go outside, there’s graffiti sprayed on their garage: ‘N-word go home’. Their car is all painted up, some have Klan crosses in the yard.” I put it to Jones that this can’t have been an easy time or place for a multiracial act like The MGs.
“Y’know, Julian, you’re mistaken for this reason: they couldn’t see us. There were no photos of us out at that time. I think black people thought the band was all black, and white people thought it was all white. We didn’t have any difficulty getting on the airwaves. It wasn’t until we played live, and that wasn’t so difficult at first because we either went to a white club or a black club. We kind of side-stepped all the pitfalls, except the restaurants and the hotels. There were times when Al [Jackson, drums] and I would go in to get the food to bring out to Steve [Cropper, guitar] and Duck [Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn, bass], and vice versa. The worst that could happen was you got tossed in jail. But that never happened...”
I tell Jones about one of my favourite records: an outtake from the ‘(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay’ sessions, Redding cawing like a seagull, fluffing the outro and the desk responding “You’re not ever gonna make it as a whistler!”
“I have never heard that!” he replies. “You’ll have to tell me where you got it.” I’ll send you a copy. “That’d be great.” I bring it up because, with everyone dissolving into laughter, it sounds such a pleasure. “Yeah… yeah, it was special.” To this point, Jones’ tone has been light and relaxed. Now there’s a weight. Any time I’ve seen the MGs or other Stax hands interviewed, when talk turns to Redding - four decades on from his death in a plane crash at the age of 26, just a fortnight after the ‘Bay’ sessions - it’s always accompanied by a faraway look and a sigh. This isn’t a line of inquiry to pursue much further. Was it like that from the moment he first sung with you? “Every time I was ever close to him it was special, recording or not.” No further questions.
Mr Jones, I should explain. I’ve sold this interview to my editor on the rather tenuous basis that England are playing the West Indies in Bristol on May 24th. And you’re the man responsible for the theme to Test Match Special. Are you aware of ‘Soul Limbo’s popularity with cricket fans over here? “Absolutely! I’ve always appreciated the cricket fans, because they use my song all the time,” he laughs. “I’ve been so jazzed by that! I’d love to hear that song played in the stadium. I’m gonna have to look you up and have you take me to a game.”

HUMOUR: Barack Obama - The Lost Speeches

2008-11-16T06:52:00.000-08:00

Uncle Bill’s Pancake House

Chicago, IL (27 Sept, 2004)

Today, I have been on a journey. Only a couple of blocks from my home, but yet further. A journey beyond those two blocks, beyond my city, beyond my state, and into your state, your city. Your neighborhood. A journey across and throughout the 50 United States of America, this great nation of ours upon which the sweet unfolding of history has placed an Uncle Bill’s Pancake House in every district. A place where honour and tradition stand shoulder to shoulder with optimism and renewal. In my right hand I hold the menu, and as my eyes fall upon that menu I see hope. Real hope. The Multi-Berry Special is a pancake combo where tastes and textures and flavors all mix together to form something new; something different; and something special - an imperfect place made more perfect through its promise of cream on the side. If we order this, then we can begin to turn the page on the invisible barriers - the single berry options - that once ravaged this menu and this establishment: the old divisions of blueberry or blackberry versus strawberry or raspberry. It's time to leave that to yesterday. It's time to choose tomorrow. A tomorrow that will see a new dawn: gluten-free vanilla plum jam. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, it is gluten-free at last! Yet still we are to arrive at the most important question of all: who’s going to pick up the tab for this breakfast? There can only be one answer. We are. Together. Paying for it with the closest available waitress and paying for it right now, because, my friends, we all know how it is to wait for change. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time [sits down]. Could I get some napkins, please? [Waitress: I’ll try to find you some and I’ll bring ’em to ya.]

Jiffy Lube

Oklahoma City, OK (4 Feb, 2007)

In franchised automobile service centers and Main Street repair shops, in people’s own garages and right here in this room, the questions are all the same. Will my car leave here in better shape than when it came in? Will my car even be fixed by tomorrow? Who will finally sort out the pinking noise, that age-old symptom of maladjusted ignition timing? This is the Subaru Legacy you inherit today. It's a Legacy of fast-worn fan-belts, a Legacy of lost tire irons somewhere behind the back seat, but above all a Legacy of achieving the greatest triumphs amidst the greatest odds. And surprisingly reasonable gas consumption. It's a story as American as any - that at the edge of despair, ordinary people come to the extraordinary realisation that if we opt for the Jiffy Lube Signature Service^® Oil Change, we can cruise freely down future highways. Yes, our greatness as a nation has depended on individual initiative, on a belief in tinkering beneath the hood on a Sunday afternoon. But it has also depended on our collective well of gratitude for the fast lube industry, of mutual respect. Everybody has a car in the driveway, and everybody's got a shot at acquiring speedy car maintenance. Americans know this. We know, too, that Jiffy Lube can't solve all our problems - and we don't want it to. But we also know that there are some things we can't do on our own. We know that there are some things done better by a guy with access to a hydraulic car lift. I won't stand here and say that fixing the pinking noise will be easy, or pretend to know all the answers. But there's a few places we can start. If we raise the hood together, we raise hope. If we raise… yeah, sure, here are the keys.

MUSIC: Strummerville

2008-01-13T09:40:00.000-08:00

As originally published in the Daily Telegraph:

Madness Live Review

Palace Theatre, Bridgwater, Somerset (Tue 8 Jan)

“My hand’s going in here… pink!” You’re listening to the sound of Alan Yentob calling the raffle. “81!” He stands onstage beneath a high vaulted ceiling, overlooked by a large rear balcony, surrounded by purple walls, like Brixton Academy made over by a youth club. Though, if memory serves, the Academy doesn’t have a test your strength punch bag on the way in. Welcome to Strummerville. They do things differently here.

Three weeks before his death, Joe Strummer played the Palace himself. Five years on, friends – celebrity and otherwise – are raising money for the Engine Room, a charity set up in his honour to help aspiring musicians from – and infrastructure of - his adopted hometown. “There are 500 Tauntons across the South West, but only one Bridgwater!” cries patron, Julien Temple, another to fall for the historically arty charms of a place often written off as an impoverished urban blot on the dramatically sweeping West Country landscape. He’s about to introduce an act that some refuse to believe are here at all. “We sold all 800 tickets in 10 minutes,” he told me earlier, “but they were arguing in the street: ‘No, it must be a tribute band’.”

Madness are a step ahead of Bridgwater Town Hall in their regeneration plans. Last month they were the other band to pack out the O2 Arena. On Monday they’ll release new single ‘NW5’; in half an hour they’ll drop it into tonight’s greatest hits set and it will sound utterly seamless.

Roxy Music ace Andy Mackay (charcoal suit by Armani, yellow tie by Biggins) adds gratuitous sax to ‘One Step Beyond’, and so begins an hour of unremitting joy. Eight men and 20sq ft of stage means seven have to stand still. The other makes up for them. Patenting that stiff, animatronic dance style in his youth is paying big dividends for Suggs now – he could keep this up for years. The charm, longer still: “I knew it was going to be a lovely evening the moment I stepped into your fair town.”

‘Baggy Trousers’ strikes up. Balding men share knowing smiles and break into the time-honoured jogging on the spot dance. The rest of the room follows, and the Palace looks like the happiest all-ages gym in the world. ‘London Calling’ announces the encore and dancing continues through misty eyes. Next up at the Palace, says a brimming collection of adjectives on the door, is ‘the brilliant fantastic My Winehouse’. For tonight, though, the tribute bands can wait.

HUMOUR: Tony Blair - My Legacy

2007-06-13T13:33:00.000-07:00

[Shuffles notes. Waits for make-up lady to apply sheen of moistness to the eyes. Clears throat] They say it’s raining. They say it’s pouring. They say Britain’s gone to bed and bumped its head, but I tell you this: it will get up in the morning. Just as it has got up on countless mornings before, and shall do again. And I’ve been there with you. We’ve seen fire and we’ve seen, y’know… rain. We’ve seen sunny days that we thought would never end and lonely times when we could not find a friend. Or so people would have you believe.
Because I look back to 2002. Those dark days when I felt as only Churchill had done before me: the one leader in Europe crying “Freedom!” Country on the brink of imminent destruction. Dark days… until the friend. For there, in the gardens of Camp David, I heard a voice. A voice that needs no introduction. “Say, Tony,” it said. “The hell with those French appetisers. If we’d appetised Hitler in that big war they had back then, they’d all be speaking Polish now anyhow. Whadya say we liberatiate a pack of Tangy Cheese Doritos?”
But this was no time for snack-bites; I could feel the hand of history on my shoulder. Though moved by this token of friendship, this common bond of understanding that has united our two great nations down through the ages, I declined. As Prime Minister of Great Britain, I felt under no compulsion to accept a Tangy Cheese Dorito unless I believed with all my heart that it was the only course of action to take based on the evidence available to me at the time. And when George accepted my tough, unilateral decision with good grace, in return I agreed to commit troops to Iraq. Such is the give-and-take of true friendship.
But now, I’m leaving. In a sense, the sun is setting. Tomorrow will bring a new dawn, with a new, radiant sun. Gordon. In the meantime, as shadows lengthen, I’ve begun to reflect on something I’ve never previously given much thought: my legacy. It isn’t Iraq, of course. I know I’ve freed its people from a tyrant, laid the foundations of democracy and brought hope to millions, but ‘legacy’ means the setting in place of something concrete. I simply began the healing process – it falls to someone else to complete it. Iraq, will be Gordon’s legacy.
My own lies elsewhere. Something I promised as long ago as 1996. Something often misquoted. So let me remind you of the time I stood up at conference and pledged that our three priorities in government would be “Reconciliation, reconciliation, reconciliation.” As you know, the changes in Northern Ireland have been staggering. I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway. But more - much more than this – I did it. Finally. Now, barely a month later, the sight of Martin McGuinness and the Reverend Ian Paisley laughing together behind my back has become an iconic image. And mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without sending our children to Ulster.
[Glances up from notes] Look, do you mind if we skip this bit? This ‘quantum revolution in gay rights’ stuff is all very well and, y’know, I’m happy for them, but it’s just… we’ve never really spoken about it; doesn’t play too well on the doorsteps of Guildford, according to Peter. So, if you want to bung in a line about equality, go for ‘equality of opportunity’. Talk about tuition fees or something. Right, the big finish. [Returns to notes. Eye-moistening lady responds to beckoning. Brow readies an emotional-yet-stoic position. ] Now, as Gordon readies himself to move into Number Ten, I leave you with these words. Wherever you go, whatever you do, I will be right here praying for you. Whatever it takes, or how my heart breaks, I will be right here. Praying for you.
Tony Blair was practising his final farewell speech with Julian Owen.

TV Listings

2007-06-13T12:26:00.000-07:00

As originally published in Venue magazine:

Darcey Bussell’s Farewell: Live

Friday, 9.00-10.30, BBC2
In which The People’s Ballerina does the dying swan thing one last time, and an elderly lady living at the top of The Mall dispatches her favourite chef before hungrily fastening a serviette. Possibly. More assuredly, the Royal Ballet's most famous toe-pointer will take her final, Kenneth MacMillan-choreographed steps to the tune of Mahler's Song Of The Earth, having first enjoyed a Martha Kearney-fronted career hagiography. Fans of drinking games might like to ready their glasses in anticipation for each utterance of the words ‘darling’, ‘simply’, and ‘marvellous’.

The Culture Show

Saturday, 7.20-8.10, BBC2
Verity Sharp examines the £100million refurbishment of the Royal Festival Hall as the arts venue prepares to reopen its doors, and it’s the beginning of this weekend’s feast of Cocker, as Jarvis talks about helming this year’s Meltdown Festival. And a curator’s egg of choices he’s made, too: Motorhead are all well and good, but he’s obviously not heard the new Iggy and The Stooges album. Still, nice to see a little exposure for SUNN O))), arguably the world’s finest exponents of drone. Sportingly, the programme also features an interview with one of their chief rivals for the title, Peter Mandelson.

George Michael: The Road To Wembley

Saturday, 9.10-10.15, C4
“… and a special helpline has been set up for anyone concerned that friends or family may have cars parked in the area.”

How We Built Britain

Sunday, 9.30-10.30, BBC1

Ah, hubris: so much to answer for. Building England’s largest private house, Holdenby Hall in Northamptonshire, wasn’t enough for Sir Christopher Hatton. Not when there was a monarch to impress and a troublesome blot on the landscape (or, in modern parlance, an entire village). So he had it moved. Alas, Elizabeth I never arrived, and he died penniless. So continues David Dimbleby’s entertaining exploration of the great country houses of the 16th century, when your claim to architectural greatness was gauged by the scale of your chimney crop - Burghley House in Lincolnshire had 76 – and Her Madge’s playful penchant for murdering Catholic clergy was countered by master builder, Nicholas Owen, who travelled the country devising ingenious ‘priest-holes’ to conceal them. Still, it’s hard not to wonder whether Mr Dimbleby’s adherence to the old journalistic maxim of ‘assume nothing’ might not be reaching its outer limits: “Elizabeth didn't build much herself,” he notes, helpfully.

Hollywood Greats

Monday, 10.35-11.15, BBC1
Typically inspired piece of programming from the Beeb, this. First up, Jonathan Ross gets to perform his ‘I wuv you’ routine for Helen Mirren, with the grating (Harrison Ford) and the good (Jeremy Irons) turning out to pay tribute. Then the schedulers opt to follow it not with one of her lesser-seen screen gems (Cal, Hamlet) - or even the higher profile Long Good Friday or Some Mother’s Son - but Last Orders, a so-so, bloke-centric ensemble piece in which she barely features.

Lenny’s Britain

Tuesday, 9.00-10.00, BBC1
Mr Henry travels the UK in a bid to find out ‘what makes people laugh and how humour is used in everyday life’. Forgive our cynicism, but isn’t this rather like sending a piece of chalk to report the goings on in a cheese factory?

Frank Skinner’s Tough Gig

Tuesday, 10.00-10.30, ITV1
Given his booze-guzzling past, perhaps ‘Frank Skinner’s Free Shot’ was considered too risqué a title. As it is, we’re supposed to believe that visiting a New Age retreat in Dorset – replete with programmes for ‘personal growth’ and spewing forth the mumbo-est of jumbo – represents some kind of comic challenge. On second thoughts, perhaps we’re being unfair: according to some poll we’re sure we saw somewhere, our friends in the allegedly ‘spiritual’ community recently pipped both Ian Paisley Jr and the entire population of Canada to the title of Least Likely To Laugh At Themselves.

Gilbert White: The Nature Man: BBC Four On BBC Two

Tuesday, 11.20-12.20, BBC2
Trust the BBC Four slot to contain the highlight of the week: a documentary wholly original in its subject matter, fronted by a proper historian rather than some clueless sleb with a bland script and pushy agent, confident enough in the strength of a compelling narrative not to opt for the ghastly, audience-underestimating ‘reconstruction’ approach. Michael Wood tells the tale of Gilbert White, widely regarded as the founding father of the ecology movement. Rejected by the both the objects of his desire and the church, in 1787 he went on to revolutionise the way we perceive the natural world by penning ‘The Natural History of Selborne’ (pre-Potter, the fourth most-published English language book in the world). Sir David Attenborough is among the contributors.

Britney: Off The Rails

Wednesday, 10.00-11.05, C4
Aptly leaping straight into the Desperate Housewives slot comes this Britney doc and, my, how she’s fallen since those halcyon St Trinian’s days. Type her name into Google’s predictive toolbar and here’s what you get: ‘no underwear’, ‘shaved head’, ‘crotch shot’, and ‘bald’. Hardly able to top what’s already been revealed come a fleet of money-grabbing, jilted acquaintances and several rent-a-quote no-marks to lob a fistful of salt into an open wound. Sorry, we’ll write that again. Hardly able, etc, come her first agent, childhood best friend, journalists and music industry professionals to offer a unique, insider’s perspective.

Mary, Queen Of Shops

Thursday, 9.00-10.00, BBC2
A classic example of title-before-content commissioning. Apparently, the titular Ms Portas is something of a retail guru. Like you give a shit. Instead, here are a few surefire winners of our own. Edward the Contessa: following the tribulations of a wealthy, pre-op transgender patient. Richard the Lionheart: life with an eco-unfriendly transplant beneficiary. William the Concubine: unfortunate ex-pat falls on hard times in China. Alfred the Grate: fireside-dwelling chap who… (Look, this has got to stop. Ed.)

Question Time

Thursday, 10.35-11.35, BBC1
So it’s come to this. In lieu of a Labour leadership contest, poor old Dimbers is reduced to interviewing the six snivelling excuses for democracy who refused to stand against Gordon, preferring instead to vie for the unenviable responsibility of wiping clean Prescott’s desk. We were going to suggest a continuation of Friday’s drinking game, whereby you’d award yourself a single shot for each time you heard the phrase ‘tough decisions’ or ‘time for a new politics’, and a double for every ‘going forward’. Sadly, our resident health expert ruled otherwise.

MUSIC: Michael Eavis Interview

2007-06-13T12:04:00.000-07:00

The physicists might not have noticed, but – ever so slightly - the world shifted on its axis last week. Upon return from its regular pre-match briefing with Michael Eavis down at Worthy Farm, Rock Desk turned its attention to the music inbox. Having first reassured a number of concerned parties that, no, it really wasn’t in need of a 10” hammer to plesure its gril, it discovered an altogether more unlikely email from Mendip District Council.
Now, you’ll recall that MDC are the body responsible for licensing Glastonbury Festival. And that, not so long ago, Eavis was taking them to court, claiming that councillors were trying to block the event because he had “rattled a few right-wing cages” with his CND involvement. As recently as 2003 – despite no police objections – MDC rejected his license application, partly on the grounds of ‘the cost of the festival to the public purse’.
Après le lofty disdain… ‘The Glastonbury Festival helps put our wonderful district on the map’, beams the missive sent from the desk of MDC leader, Cllr Ken Maddock. ‘Wherever I go people don't usually know where Mendip is, but as soon as I tell them we are the district council responsible for licensing the Glastonbury Festival, then their eyes light up in recognition’. Indeed, so proud is Cllr Maddock of the event, that - with backing from a government tourism quango - he’s inviting fellow local bigwigs from across country to see first-hand just what a jolly good thing a festival on one’s doorstep can be. All of which means that the Friday line up is now set to include Arctic Monkeys, Rufus Wainwright, Amy Winehouse, Charlotte Meller from the Local Authorities Coordinators Of Regulatory Services, and councillors representing the City of York, Essex County Council and North Cornwall District Council.
Eavis has played his hand well, and played it long. Improvements in ticketing distribution and security have been key in assuaging villagers’ fears. Nobody mentions the fence anymore. Well, nobody save Eavis himself, who smiles as he notes it “snaking beautifully across the countryside” from his farmhouse base. Pilton residents have long been given free entry to the festival. This year, those not wishing to attend have been offered £150 for their ticket; one family of five has opted to take the £750 and head off for a summer break.
In return for his smoothing of both logistical operations and village relations, Eavis has been richly rewarded. Partly with the pleasure of hosting Cllr Maddock and chums, of course, but mainly by the passing of a four-year license – with annual renewal headaches now going the way of loitering touts and free milk – and a capacity extended to 177,500. Glastonbury, finally, is a respectable institution, even in the eyes of its nearest neighbours.
With the last corner of a long journey apparently turned, it’s perhaps little wonder that we find Eavis in a sentimental mood. “When I was a kid I used to build camps in the woods here. I was so excited. It’s exactly the same feeling I have now, and that was 60 years ago. Isn’t it strange? We used to generate electric with a bicycle, little light bulbs all over the place. It’s the same thing now, except the light bulbs are bigger. And 400 generators rather than just one bicycle dynamo.”
We’re sitting at a table in the site’s premier chill-out zone: a converted barn just across the back garden from the main house, all low sofas, high beams, and walls of deepened Suffolk pink. An anthology of Dylan lyrics and a print of John Peel bookend the neatly arranged line of bronzed, raised middle fingers denoting a succession of NME awards. A large, informal photographic collage of friends and family stands opposite a black-and-white print taken at the inaugural event in 1970. Still, not all is calm. Irish singer Lisa Hannigan dropped out this morning; Stephen Fretwell’s name stands bold on a sheet of paper next to Eavis’ phone. First, though, he needs to run the plan past the manager of the acoustic stage. “They won’t necessarily be pushed about by me, although I do try. That’ll be my first call when you’ve gone.”
Before we retired here, it was also the subject of the last call back in the office. Following last year’s time out, does the 71-year old Eavis really need to be throwing himself back into the festival maelstrom? “It’s a good thing to come back into, because the farm is very stagnant on its own. Certainly the farm staff appreciate the break, and so do the villagers. In an agricultural sense the fallow year charges up the soil and the land. And myself and the crew come back full of energy and it keeps the magic alive. Otherwise it’s just Reading or Castle Donington or something, which just isn’t the same. We don’t have to do it; the money that comes in is not essential to anyone. We’ve got another life here.”
On the drive down, there was a venture capitalist on the radio recommending that people should buy into festivals: high risk, but high return. “I suppose for some people maybe it would work,” says Eavis, sceptically, “but it’s not the way that we do it. There are no shares and no capital involved, and so we go from hand to mouth every year. We sell all the tickets, spend most of it back onsite, and give away 10% to charity. In theory that should give them £2m. Beyond that there are no real profits involved. We get paid for the land use, all the farmers get rent for the land. Shares and profit wouldn’t work at Glastonbury, they’d spoil the whole ethos. But then we’re different, aren’t we? We’ve got old fashioned principles. That’s why we’re so popular, I suppose. People trust us. I had four letters of complaint last time, after all that water round the railway line and people out in canoes. The public are so good to us, and we’re totally beholden to that trust.
“Although we earn a lot, it does go out so fast. Police are £1m, security is £1m, fence is £1m, flood stuff’s £1m – that’s £4m gone straight away on four items. That’s before you’ve even started paying for the infrastructure onsite. We’ve put in a new water main that’s four or five miles long, and extra flood relief. Altogether we’re talking about £1m extra expenditure, but it’s permanent stuff – it’ll certainly be there for 10 years, so it’s a good investment. And I still want to get £2m out of it at the end.”
Besides the free recycled toilet rolls and the campaign to sign up a 100,000 revellers to a 16-step method of reducing environmental impact, Eavis is keen to talk about bio-fuel. “Industrial fat, it’s called. Someone has made a business out of catching all that fat, refining it, and turning it into diesel fuel. So we’re buying everything and using it everywhere we can. I had the buyer here yesterday, and said ‘just buy it all – we need it’.”
Musically speaking, he’s also pretty darn keen on Joss Stone, set to play the relatively small environs of the Leftfield Tent backed by James Brown’s former band. “She’s gone all political now, dyed her hair purple. So I thought the tent would be the perfect place for her. She can whinge and complain as much as she likes, and they’ll love her for it.”
Eavis is, of course, as media-savvy as they come. His projected image of the farmer thrilled to have all of these wonderful musicians gathering on his land might be a fair one, but the machinations behind Stone’s confirmation – revealed in tones of apparent surprise – speak of someone altogether more knowing. “I read through the list of released names last week and asked ‘Where the hell is Joss Stone?’ So I said that to someone in the press yesterday, and this morning Joss Stone’s people said ‘because you lifted the embargo yourself we’ll have to go with it’. It was just a chatty piece on the radio but it got out, you see?”
400,000 people pre-registered for this year’s festival, on a system intended to limit buyers to a maximum of four tickets. In the event, says Eavis, “once they’d pre-registered they could just click and carry on, and I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing.” It is, though, just the one glitch waiting to be ironed out; the introduction of photo ID has, it seems, worked a treat. “There’s no re-sale going on, which is such a relief. It’s that profit thing again: it cuts out those buying cheap, selling dear, and being proud of it. It really annoyed me. People thought I was going too far with it, and said ‘it doesn’t matter because we’ve sold out’, but it went against the spirit of the festival.”
Back out near the farm’s perimeter, beneath a cloudless blue sky, stand a fleet of empty caravans. They’re temporary home to the hired hands now moving towards a most unusual crop: row upon row of the criss-crossed wire frames that will form the inner fencing; all laid out, ready for the planting. “Perfect weather,” says Eavis. “All the heavy stuff’s coming in, the generators and staging, all the big tops, so we really need the fields dry. Better now than during the festival for us, so we’re all jumping about and it’s all go.”

MUSIC: A Family Affair - The Sons and Daughters of World Music

2007-06-13T11:58:00.000-07:00

Julian Lennon was never forbidden from playing music by his father and enrolled into the army against his will. If Arlo Guthrie was ever reduced to herding cattle for a living when Woody died, praying that drought would never return, history doesn’t record it. When Frank Zappa passed away, no one was asking whether his heavy metalling son, Dweezil, could assume the role of musical visionary. Instead, these stories belong, respectively, to Vieux Farka Touré, the Zawose Family, and CJ Chenier.
The WOMAD festival doesn’t simply shine a light into previously darkened corners of song, providing sharp relief from a UK music scene seemingly content to churn out inspiration-free facsimiles of all that has passed before; it introduces whole new chapters to the well-thumbed, learnt-by-rote Book of Musical Folklore. What follows is a brief overview of the one entitled ‘A Family Affair’.
It’s the one that tells the tale of how the son of Malian blues legend, Ali Farka Touré, was finally able to join his once disapproving father onstage: “It meant so much,” says Vieux, “that nobody, not the greatest writer in the world, NOBODY, could ever put into words what I felt. Not even me.” It also details the travails of the Zawose Family, famously joyous evocates of Tanzanian Wagogo music, whose lives were thrown into flux by the death of the man who – to Western eyes - personified the form: their father, Dr Hukwe. “My father had seven wives,” says his daughter, Pendo. “I have so many brothers and sisters it can be difficult now to decide how to share what little we have. To simply feed everyone is very difficult and sometimes we are hungry.” CJ Chenier’s inheritance from his father, the widely acknowledged ‘King of Zydeco’, Clifton Chenier, was a welter of expectation and an equally ubiquitous tag: ‘Heir to the Throne’. “I really don't look for the crown,” he admits, “because I don't think anyone can take my dad’s place.” And finally, also from across the Atlantic, Ben Taylor has had to come to terms with following in the multi-million selling footsteps of both pater and mater: sweet father James, and Carly Simon. “With most people they’ve played thousands of shows before you ever hear them; with people like me, the first time you’re onstage the press tends to be there. It’s weird.”
For musicians born into a song-making dynasty, such pressure can sometimes begin a little closer to home. Rufus Wainwright – son of singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III and folk ace Kate McGarrigle – once told me about the time when, aged 17, he first played some songs to his mother: “She told me they were all crap and that I really should have more respect for my listener.” He defended her remarks as “shooting an arrow of reality.” Was that your initial response, though, I asked? “No, I was devastated,” he admitted. “But I have a sense of not believing the bullshit, and my mom is responsible for that.”
Ali Farka Touré, as we have seen, took the ‘tough love’ approach a whole step further by forbidding his son from playing music altogether. Vieux openly defied his wishes by enrolling in the National Arts Institute in Bamako. It was there that the kora ace, Toumani Diabaté, brought him into his performing ensemble and entreatied that his father recognise a burgeoning talent. Like Wainwright, time has taught Touré to appreciate his parent’s hardline methods. “I am only now realising why my father didn’t want me to go into music professionally. He had already seen what I am seeing now: what hard work it is to survive in the world of music. He didn’t want me to take a fall, and just wanted to try to make sure I had an easier path than he did.”
Clifton Chenier was another insistent father, as his sax-playing, funk and jazz-loving son quickly discovered when he joined the accordion-centric family business. “At first I thought there could be a place for the accordion as a secondary instrument,” recalls CJ, “but my dad quickly ended that thought by saying, ‘It's got to be first - you either play it or leave it alone’. That helped me make up my mind. As time went on, my love for zydeco music grew. [Before he died] it was already in my and my father's mind that I would continue. The only pressure I ever felt came from inside myself, and that was the want to do my dad proud.”
When Pendo Zawose’s father passed away, the realities of life in desperately poor Tanzania brought forth pressures of another kind altogether. “He would earn a lot of money abroad and that money no longer comes to us. We cannot choose what we want to be here; we are musicians and that is what our family do. We also make money from herding cattle, but things have changed and we no longer can rely on such activities; when drought comes then the cattle can die.”
The Book of Musical Folklore adopts a mocking tone when describing how traditional folk grandee, Pete Seeger, threatened to cut Bob Dylan’s electrifying cables at the 1965 Newport Festival. In this new chapter, however, it becomes clear that the times-they-mustn’t-change dictum of the purist can, on occasion, be of critical importance. “Our father taught us to be true to our traditions and what our ancestors taught us,” explains Pendo. “We have tried hard to make money from our music here in Tanzania, but people are not so interested - it is too traditional and the people want to listen to Bongo Flava [East African hip hop], imported styles from Europe and America.”
All of which explains why she bursts into laughter when asked if she enjoys playing in the UK. “You do not understand! The audience there are so so so interested in traditional Tanzanian music and give us so much respect. We rely on our music and on people listening to it. When we played at WOMAD in 2003 the audience were crying at the front of the stage as we were displaying so much energy in our dance. I can’t wait to go back, really.”
Wondering whether the Zawose Family’s musicality should be attributed to nature or nurture draws a similarly bemused response. “It is funny, as for us this was never really a question: we just knew it, it is in our blood. Music is not just something that we listen to on tapes, it is a part of our everyday life. My mother sings as she works in the fields and we sing as we cook, it is natural for us. I could sing and dance before I could talk and walk.”
It’s an upbringing wholly understood by Vieux Farka Touré. “In Africa, it’s always like that, to follow in the steps of greater ones who have come before. I’ll continue to do as [my father] did, united with him, carrying on the tradition and everything he wanted, if God wills it. But now it is up to me to try to do even better…”
For Ben Taylor, the journey along a musical path wasn’t quite so pre-ordained. He didn’t take up the guitar until the age of 11 and was, perhaps surprisingly, self-taught (“Well, you could say my dad taught me, because I learnt to play all his songs”). Until well into his teens, he considered his likely career path to involve either farming or gardening. “I think a lot of kids who grow up in households with successful musicians understand very quickly that it’s not as glamorous as the illusion would have you believe,” he explains. “We tend to be witness to a lot of arguments with managers and A&R people over the phone, people complaining about booking, overheads – it seems a lot more blue-collar from the first-hand perspective.”
Nevertheless, it seems both nature and nurture eventually pulled him towards a life in music. “I’ve drawn from my folks in attitude and style, plus other things I wouldn’t even know. They’re my archetypal influences as human beings, more than just as musicians, so I think maybe it’s a deeper cellular level – my character, physical attributes, etc - that reflects itself musically as well.” Ultimately, he concludes, “I wouldn’t have gone into it if it hadn’t been the family business.”
Finally, even in the most traditional of forms, the new generation are mapping out their own distinct musical direction. The late Dr Hukwe Zawose, says Pendo, “was very strict with the music, and sometimes we would not be allowed to play certain instruments. Now we have a new amount of freedom, while still respecting what he taught us. My father was the first Wagogo musician to mix his music with Western instruments [in collaboration with Canadian guitarist/producer, Michael Brook, he recorded ‘Kuna Kunguni/The Bedbugs Bite’ for the Real World-released AIDS benefit album, ‘Spirit of Africa’]. So we will also add new things to our music, and our children will say ‘Ah yes, that was my mother's idea; that was her way to develop the music’. Each generation should adapt and change, should it not?”

TV REVIEW: Toulouse Lautrec - The Full Story (C4)

2007-03-30T11:01:00.000-07:00

“You know what people come here for,” said our host, Waldemar Januszczak, conspiratorially. Showing less faith in his viewers than such a confident opening implied, he added: “They come… for this.” Cue dancing girls. We’re at the Moulin Rouge. He was right. We did know.
Thanks to John Huston’s original film version of ‘Moulin Rouge’, in which tonight’s subject, the artist Toulouse Lautrec, was played with cruel pantomime by an actor with false shoes attached to his knees, we also know that the artist tended towards being short. “He was a leetle man,” confirmed a Parisian vox pop. “A meeniscule man.” Januszczak, who all but allows the waters to break in the pregnant pauses for which he apparently knows of no contraceptive, was on hand to add the voice of authority. “This… little man… who hurried about here getting notorious.” Short, you say? “Yes, he was short. Yes, he drank. And yes, he did live in a brothel. But that’s just an itsy bitsy bit of his story. Toulouse Lautrec’s… tragedy… is that no one takes him… seriously.” The viewers’ tragedy was that they were not being taken seriously by a man they could not take seriously.
Still, it would be unfair to insinuate that Januszczak told us little more than Lautrec’s lack of height. There was also what the family did rectify it. Electric shocks and hanging weights, gruesomely enough. And, showing us around the family home, the amiable son-in-law of the wee man’s great niece also informed us that: “The mother, she learned English to her son.” “Taught him English,” corrected Januszczak, an itsy bitsy bit ironically.
The mother also learned her son that he could become France’s greatest artist, and packed him off to Paris for some formal training by the aristocracy’s favourite portrait man, Leon Bonnat. Cue a city-surveying Januszczak. “Whichever cliché you choose to bestow upon this steaming cauldron of depraved creativity,” he began, in somewhat ungainly haste to bestow his own. The classy option might have been not to bestow one at all.
So Lautrec decamped to the bottom of the road to Montmarte. Or, in Januszczak-speak, “Paris’ naughty quarter, with historic qualities of bad influence and temptation.” Not everyone’s history books, it would seem, lead to Rome.
When Bonair’s studio closed, master Lautrec’s new tutor encouraged more naturalistic observation, and up the road to decadence – and a revolutionary approach to painting - he walked. It was here that he developed a penchant for gauche American cocktails. Januszczak was surprised. Afterall, he reasoned, “you know what the French are like about their drink.” Showing a heroic level of graciousness, the Frenchman to whom he addressed this remark was kind enough to concede that, yes, he, too, knew just what they were like.
And so to the paintings themselves. Traditionally, of course, this is the area where the art historian would earn his corn by forensically teasing out a subtext in the work far beyond the reach of the casual viewer. With that in mind, here is Januszczak casting his eye over the tender portrait of the prostitute who took Lautrec’s virginity. “What really makes this an… interesting painting is what he’s done to her face. Look… she’s got her finger up to her mouth as if she’s sucking her fingers. And all this hair falling over her… eyes.”
Many are the Januszczak lovers wont to compare their hero to Sir David Attenborough. Sadly, that would only be valid if the Knight of the Creased Khaki were ever to stride garrulously into shot and offer enlightenment on the level of: “An… enormous animal… feeding its bulk by way of a trunk, swinging away there at the front of its large… grey body…”
It is, frankly, not enough. So, in the spotlight next week? Allow me to hazard a guess. “This… deeply troubled… one-eared man… In this painting, the interesting thing is that the sunflowers are yellow. And… look… they’re in a vase…”

MUSIC: Bryan Ferry

2007-03-18T10:56:00.000-07:00

As originally published in Venue magazine:

It’s not cool to like Bryan Ferry. Roxy Music, sure, but not him. He was, afterall, carried through that group’s early years by the errant genius of Brian Eno. The point is proved by a solo career, covers-driven from the start, that has seen him come to resemble little more than a karaoke David Niven. Today he’s the brooding mannequin fronting an M&S clothing range, no mouth and all trousers. Worse yet, he bequeathed to the world Otis Ferry, poster boy of the Countryside Alliance, named after a soul singer and who spends his days – sing along if you know the words - sittin’ on the top of a horse, wastin’ foxes.
Well, the hell with that. Yes, Eno brought manic individualism to Roxy. But so did the freeform guitaring of Phil Manzanera, the wild sax and mournful oboe of Andy MacKay, and the skittish drumming of Paul Thompson. Few groups have harnessed such wilfully distinct elements into a sum still greater, and Ferry was the catalyst. The man looking like Comeback Special-era Elvis mugged by a girls’ high school make-up team, all black leather and glittery eyeshadow, provided focus. And his own contribution – musically an underrated pianist, vocally the jaded fop nevertheless convinced that the best party is just around the corner, affected disdain shielding the heart of a true romantic – is the most distinct of all. Roxy might never have recaptured the uniformly giddy heights enjoyed in the Eno years, but many are the later moments – ‘Mother Of Pearl’, ‘Out Of The Blue’ and ‘Street Life’ to name but three – that stand effortlessly alongside them.
The loucheness is a problem, I’ll grant you. Not stylistically, but in the way it’s apparently bled into a laissez-faire approach to quality control. Latterly, for every moment of AOR perfection (‘Oh Yeah’, ‘More Than This’) there’s been a ‘Taxi’, the mid-90s covers album so wretchedly uninspired that this unabashed Ferryhead has never made it to the end of side two. It’s even there on his new one, ‘Dylanesque’, a largely sleepwalking county-rock affair, and an illogical conclusion to the fandom originally highlighted with his urgent, piano-hammering take on His Bobness’ ‘A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall’ back in 1973. But yet, even here, there’s a gem to rival anything in the back catalogue. In the ghostly ‘Make You Feel My Love’ his voice is a mist rolling in across the moors, inflected with a new-found, Cash-echoing, pleading frailty. A voice he first mastered on two starkly haunting contributions to last year’s Warren Ellis-helmed collection of sea shanties, ‘Rogue’s Gallery’. And a voice highlighting a singer, well into his fourth decade of performing, for whom reinvention – despite too many inferences to the contrary - remains key.

TV Listings

2006-12-01T09:08:00.000-08:00

As originally published in Venue magazine:

The Smith & Jones Sketchbook
Friday, 9.30-10.00, BBC1

I blame Beyond The Fringe. Excruciating throwback to a time when BBC commissioning editors laboured under the appalling misapprehension that any comedy act in receipt of an Oxbridge education merited its own series. Younger readers may be alarmed to learn that contemporaneous critical judgement marked out Griff Rhys Jones as The Funny One. And, relatively speaking, he was, thanks in no small part to playing opposite a man whose sole comedic device was to raise his lower lip above the upper until taking on the appearance of a bulldog trapped in a car door.

The Culture Show
Saturday, 8.20-9.10, BBC2
This week the most presumptuously-titled programme on TV reports from the Cannes Film Festival, and includes Mark Kermode conducting a ‘major’ interview with Ken Loach on his new Palm d’Or contender, ‘The Wind That Shakes The Barley’. Exactly what would constitute a ‘minor’ interview is a matter for conjecture, though disaffected Beeb insiders deem the involvement of Davina McCall ‘more than likely’. Reviews of ‘United 93’ and ‘Poseidon’ also feature, as well as young Brit composer Daniel Hardy journeying to Vienna to bask in reflected glory on the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart.

Full Length & Fabulous: The Beckham’s World Cup Party
Sunday, 9.00-10.30, ITV1
The world’s second-most lucrative footballer and 7,855,449th most successful singer host 500 ‘lucky’ ‘stars’ in the grounds of their Hertfordshire mansion. Or, possibly, the Ninth Circle of Hell, as would befit a night compered by Chris ‘I’ve Got A Brand New T.A.R.D.I.S. And I’ll Give You The Key’ Evans, and including a rendition of ‘Angels’ by Robbie ‘Take That? Don’t Mind If I Do’ Williams. One can only hope that, as Sloshed passes round the Gordon Ramsey-prepared nibbles, nice Mr Beckham will offer some relief to the nanny.

The X:Factor Battle of the Stars
Monday, 9.00-11.00, ITV1
A host of people you’ve never heard of combine to sing covers of songs you wish you’d never heard in the first place. Kate Thornton hosts, presumably remembering to give stern warning of the poor soul who was forced to watch the whole of The X:Factor’s last series. According to a psychiatric report, he came away with the jaded, listless sexual appetite of a 60-year old colonel.

Tim Marlow On…
Tuesday, 7.15-8.00, C5
Poor Five is still trying to reconcile itself to a dual-personality, a purveyor of high and low culture with bugger all in between, and spent a fretful night of tossing and turning following yesterday evening’s tawdry little 'Private Parts: The Penis' episode . It resolves to see a priest. The priest is sympathetic, and suggests that atonement might come in the form of setting aside an evening devoted to art, specifically the Italian Baroque movement of the 17th century. Five isn’t quite convinced that such an overtly religious theme will play too well with the largely secular and hugely desirable A1/B1/C1 demographic, and instead plans to showcase highlights from the New Tate Modern, undergoing its first re-hang since opening six years ago. Warhol and Picasso might not necessarily be to the priest’s taste, but wouldn’t he find some empathy with the rigid self-discipline of a compulsive neurotic like the Dutch Neo-Plasticist painter, Mondrian? Satisfied, Five books a return visit to the priest, same time, same place, next week.

Can We Save Planet Earth?
Wednesday, 9.00-10.00, BBC1
For those moments when even a polite “How do you do?” won’t quite cut it. The estimable Attenborough has come a long way since placating knife-wielding tribesmen with good old fashioned manners, and tonight concludes his two-part study into how the planet might be saved from catastrophically rising temperatures and seas.

Five Disasters Waiting to Happen
Thursday, 9.00-10.00, BBC2
Environmental issues have been much to the fore of late, what with Bristol gaining its first Green councillor, Blair finally ceasing to swing both ways and coming out as a nuclear lover, and David Cameron inviting hordes of Fleet Street’s finest aboard an ozone-depleting plane to join him in staring forlornly, in a compassionate Conservative kind of way, at a melting Norwegian glacier. A prescient time, then, for Auntie to screen her Climate Chaos season. As the far-from-sensationalist Environment Agency raises the spectre of water levels rising above London’s lampposts, tonight’s programme reports on conflicting prognoses from around the world about just what can be done to help others avoid the fate of the blameless inhabitants of Tuvalu. A small island slowly being engulfed by the Pacific, its people are in flight, amongst the first to be tagged ‘environmental refugees’. Somehow, TV Listings doubts that even the Home Office’s finest could spin a send-them-back-to-where-they-came-from approach on this one.

MUSIC: Can't we all just get a bong? In conversation with Michael Franti

2006-12-01T05:15:00.000-08:00

“For your security and safety,” says the plane’s steward, “we do a spiral descent from 15,000 ft above the airfield. We do this because it’s 100% effective against surface-to-air missiles, and extremely effective at avoiding small arms fire.” Welcome to Baghdad.
So begins ‘I Know I’m Not Alone’, Michael Franti’s award-winning musical travelogue of his visit to Iraq, Israel and Palestine. “I was tired of watching generals and politicians every night explaining the economic and political cost of war, the hardware and machinery of war, and never mentioning the human cost,” he says of his reasons for making the trip. “There were these hi-tech graphics of buildings that they were bombing and I was like ‘Where are the people?’” He was also inspired by William F. Pepper’s ‘An Act Of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King’, the book by the Vietnam war photographer whose work led King to say: “I have to speak out against the war. I can’t see these photos and remain passive.”
Still, honourable intentions aside, was there ever a moment in that plane when he was thinking ‘Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea’? “There was a point before that, actually, when we were waiting to get onboard. I have a song where the lyrics say ‘We can bomb the world to pieces but we can’t bomb the world to peace’. I had a 100 sheets with the lyrics translated into Arabic, but at the top of the page the song title was still in English: ‘Bomb The World’ followed by all these Arabic lyrics…” Black-humoured What Of It? dissolves into laughter. To no little relief, Franti follows suit. “We’re in the airport and I’m thinking ‘Oh fuck, man, I’m going to fucking Baghdad with these!’ We sat frantically trying to tear off the top of every page. So, yes, I had fear going into this war zone. Part of my fear was about Muslim extremists who’d maybe want to kidnap me, but also thinking maybe there were some Americans who wouldn’t want me sniffing around with my camera.”
The ensuing footage boasts a memorable cast. The Palestinian family who go into debt to feed him, unable to access food from their farm because of the recently erected wall that divides their land. The Black Scorpions, a metal band in a Baghdad basement who strip phone cable to string their instruments. Robi Damelin, an Israeli, and Nadwa Sarandah, a Palestinian, speak together about the Parents Circle Families Forum, a group comprising people from both sides of the conflict, united in bereavement. There are also Israeli soldiers patrolling their border, US soldiers stationed in Baghdad, citizens of that city who suffered under Saddam just as they’re suffering under occupation. And many others. A neutral editorial tone runs throughout. “When you go into a situation where there’s a military occupying a civilian population,” says Franti, “there’s an automatic imbalance of power that’s hard to not address. But I really believe that the way we’re going to get to lasting peace is when we recognise the suffering of all people. From the sideline it’s easy to kibitz about war, to say ‘well, gosh, if Hamas would just stop suicide bombing then there would be some moral high ground for the Palestinians’ or ‘if Israel would give some of the land back, then, y’know…’ But as soon as you start getting into those things and not addressing what all people feel on a physical, as well as moral and psychological, level, well… War doesn’t leave anybody out. The lesson that has to be understood is that violence begets more violence. What I hoped to do with this film was not necessarily try to change people’s minds, but try to open them.”
In many ways, the project marks a logical step for Franti. An innately political musician, he first came to prominence with the brilliant Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy and, specifically, overtly picking up the mantle of righteous funker from Gil Scott-Heron with the song ‘Television…’ (‘Television! The drug of the nation, breeding ignorance and feeding radiation’). His later – and current - outfit, Spearhead, are generally a rootsier proposition, though lacking none of the broad appeal, authority-questioning stance that saw his earlier band tour with both Public Enemy and Nirvana.
Faultlessly thoughtful and seemingly unquenchable of spirit he might be, but every politico needs the occasional confirmation that they’re getting through. For Franti it came with the incantation of a single word: Habibi, or ‘my beloved’. Every time you sang that, I tell him, in the streets or people’s homes, to young or old, all faces lit-up. How did that feel? “It was great, you know, it really restored my faith in the goddess of music. As conscious as I like to think I am, I’m still part of this ‘record industry’. I go to marketing meetings, I sit in on discussions on where we’re gonna tour and all these things, and it’s easy to forget that music was given to us to be something that we did together. And it wasn’t just my music, but witnessing how people in Iraqi cafes would be sharing music with one another.”
And Iraqi basements, too, where he met those cable strippers, Black Scorpions. “It was amazing to see that commitment. We were gonna go to their rehearsal, and they were like ‘Do you think you can give us a few dollars?’ I was thinking ‘these guys are trying to hustle us because we want an interview with them’. But that wasn’t it: there was no electricity and they needed money to buy gas for the generator. That’s what we don’t see when we give our tacit approval to go to war: the day-to-day lack of human security. How do people get to school? How do people find food? When they turn on the tap and give a glass of water to their kid, is it gonna be full of microbes that could be the death of their children? We don’t think about that. We think let’s go into Iraq, or into Haiti, or southern Lebanon, or wherever ongoing war against poor people exists.”
Unsurprisingly, Franti holds “many” abiding memories from the trip. “Some were really spiritual and deep things like sitting down with Robi and Nadwa, discussing the death of their family members and children and saying ‘We want their deaths to be a call for peace, not for more killing’. That really, really moved me. And then there were funny moments, like the morning I arrived in Baghdad and said ‘I want a traditional Baghdad breakfast’. You know, when I go to Paris I want a croissant. But their very special breakfast is goat’s head soup. And I’m vegetarian. That was a pretty big reach for me…”
Upon return home, Franti began work on both the film and the soundtrack album, ‘Yell Fire!’, that he comes to Bristol to promote. “I had my editing studio upstairs and recording studio downstairs, so I would watch footage and emotions would come up that I didn’t feel when I was there. Going through the process of editing and then writing a song was really a catharsis for me. When I was on the street there, people would say to me ‘We don’t wanna hear songs about war. We wanna hear songs that make us feel happy, make us feel up. Why not make us cry, or make us feel something tender? We wanna hear songs about connection to people’. So that’s when I decided to go to Jamaica: ‘Let me get my head out of this. Let’s hook up with Sly and Robbie and make the most joyous record that we can make’.”
Joyous indeed, but also musically ‘lighter’ than much of his previous work. Did he want the words to stand alone? “First of all, I didn’t want to make a ‘protest’ album: 14 songs saying ‘war sucks’. I didn’t feel it would be listenable. The other thing is, I want the music to reach beyond the choir.”
So, on the September 11 anniversary, Franti flew in Robi and Nadwa to address the annual Power to the Peaceful festival in San Francisco. He’s also been to Northern Ireland. “I visited people that talked about the troubles and the desire to seek some form of reconciliation. I feel that seeds of lasting peace in the world are held within the hearts of the people of Northern Island, of South Africa, of Israel and Palestine, Darfur – places where there’s been incredible conflict. I film wherever I go. Meet people, talk to people, play music in the street. It’s kind of an ongoing journey.”

HUMOUR: On truth

2006-12-01T04:43:00.000-08:00

An example of my column writing:

My grandmother died a couple of months ago. She was too young to go, and her passing was marked by massive public demonstrations of apathy and general disinterest. Never the most popular of women (she was a staunch Methodist with a side-order of Jehovah’s Witness, meaning that she’d go door-to-door smashing up people’s drinks cabinets), Gran was nevertheless my closest blood relative and therefore worth a nice bit of grieving. She was also the only person to whom I could address questions about my past, though because she always swore she’d never tell me the whole story until my fortieth birthday I guess now I’ll never know.
As far as I am aware, I was born in a commune on the outskirts of Grimsby in 1972. My birth certificate indicates that it was called ‘The Rainbow Collective House Of Free Love And Inexpensive Gonorrhoea’, and apparently I was left outside its gates with the empty milk bottles three days after my birth, a sign around my neck reading simply: ‘Karmic Discharge’.
Is that true? Until I started primary school I was convinced that it was, but then the sheer otherworldliness of my life, its absolute lack of commonality with that of my peers, began to convince me that mine was a fairytale existence. Grimm.
More to the point, does it matter whether or not it’s true? It’s my truth, and I’m happy to live by it. For truth – real, genuine, sun-sets-in-the-west truth - is a dangerous thing. The FBI knew that. At the dawning of the Cold War, with McCarthyite paranoia in full swing, they filed a report detailing a series of experiments entitled ‘Reality Understood Now!’ (RUN!), including several remarking on the development of a truth drug. Early tests proved successful, as the report - recently released under the 50 year rule - testifies. The following is an extract taken from an interview with a fan of the hit TV show ‘I Love Lucy’.
FBI Agent Henson: “Is ‘I Love Lucy’ funny?”
John Doe: “Yes.”
Henson: “Is the show funny?”
Doe: “Yes.”
[Henson administers truth drug]
Henson: “Is ‘I Love Lucy’ funny?”
Doe: “Well, no, but it provides a comforting façade of moral certainty and low-level sexual titillation at a time when growing socio-economic tension and continued racial inequality will likely expose the American Dream for the bunch of bullshit that it is.”
Henson: “Good. Very good. Agent Sanders, we have ourselves a truth drug. Oh, and arrest this man.”
Recognising the catastrophic potential for social implosion should the drug fall into enemy hands, successive administrations banned all further research into its capabilities, though each for varying reasons: Marilyn Monroe, some rather awkward tape recordings and a 1977 personal health report headed ‘Diagnosis: Dementia’ to name but three.
Only President Clinton demanded a continuation of the trials, telling his wife “I may just be a country boy from the backwoods of Little Rock, but my grandmammy always used to say ‘the man who fishes on the east of the river will always come home to apple pie and cookies’. No, I don’t know what she meant either, but whatever, truth is good and lies are bad. Hey, you look hot.”
Concerned FBI officials persuaded the President to ingest the drug and record a second take of his infamous videotaped testimony to the Starr Report, and a solemn faced Clinton announced to an unseeing public the following: “Today, your President, the man to whom you have entrusted your very future, is on trial. So I want you to listen to what I am about to say, and I want you to listen well. I did have sexual relations with that woman. And boys, I gotta tell ya [Clinton leans back in chair, folds arms behind his head], I took her over the desk in the Oval Office and pumped her ass like she was a jammed pinball machine. God bless America.”
The drug slipped back into obscurity, but in late 2000 came word that blueprints for its manufacture had been smuggled out of the country. With the Presidential election in full swing, the oft-denied ‘shadow government’ demanded that both main candidates immediately be given covert tests. The results for Al Gore were alarming.
“Save the planet? Hell, why not? Chloroform? Sure, I'll try anything once."
George W. Bush followed. “Hell, I wouldn’t know who Vladimir Putin was if he jumped up and bit me on the ass,” chuckled the Republican candidate, winningly. “Or is that elbow?” he added.
The assembled agents breathed a collective sigh of relief and headed off for a hastily arranged vacation in Florida.
We’d be mistaken if we only considered the truth to be a bad thing in politics, however. In a lie-free world, great swathes of the everyday conversation we have come to cherish would be lost forever. Example.
“Was it good for you?”
“Good? Well, if by ‘good’ you mean was it over blessedly quickly and I’m not so sore that I can’t go and meet Simon, my lithe young fitness instructor then, yes, it was good.”
And do we really know what truth is? I think it was Camus who said “One man’s truth is another man’s let-off.” Which may well be the case, but shouldn’t such a singular concept be in receipt of a singular definition? Of course it should, and yet any account professing to have unveiled the truth is veiled by thick sheets of subjectivity and, often, ambiguity. Consider this extract from the soon-to-be-published Woody Allen Diaries.

July 14, 1982: The truth finally dawned today. Or at least it seemed like the truth – it may just have been indigestion. Afterall, what is truth anyway? Is it simply a felicitous extemporisation on the very nature of our being, or can I put it in my pocket? And, if the latter, what price can I get for it down the market?

To return to my original point, does the truth really matter? All pontification aside, the one immutable fact regarding the subject is that the truth hurts. In the meantime, to paraphrase Disraeli, there are lies, damned lies, and damned good lies that hold together relationships, keep us in work and allow us to toss aside thoughts about the bleak, endless, unbroken tedium that is life with the words “mustn’t grumble.” It’s been a pleasure talking to you.