extracted from my book "Totally Shuffled- A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod"
I wrote about Prefab Sprout more than once in Totally Shuffled, but this is the extract re them in particular:
August 18th
Prefab Sprout-Oh Joshua-McGurk Demo
I’ve
already mentioned Prefab Sprout more than once during this year. Apart from The
Fall and Bob Dylan, Prefab Sprout are probably one of the bands/artists who’ve
meant more to me than anyone else over the years. It was inevitable that a
track by them would come up on the iPod somewhere during this year, and at the
back of my mind I’ve been wondering (since January 1st actually),
what I could possible say about them.
It would be all too easy to fall into
what may appear as over-the-top raptures about them. It could simply be seen
as over-enthusiastic ramblings of an obsessed fan, eagerly wishing everything
was post-punk 80’s once more. It would certainly seem like an exercise in
nostalgia and a desperate attempt to convince the sceptical that Prefab Sprout/Paddy
McAloon are the epitome of musical genius, unmatched by hardly anyone else in
the past thirty years or so. The thing is, if you’ve never heard Prefab Sprout
then, however much I go on about them, how much I try to convince you of their
greatness is only likely to end up in disappointment. I am not such a skilled
writer that my words could explain what they are capable of and what they mean
to me.
On the other hand, if you have heard them, I suppose you may be like me
and therefore my words would be redundant or, bearing in mind that they haven’t
been more than moderately commercially successful, you may just think that I’m
completely wrong and misguided. So, there’s not much point I think, in trying
to explain anything about what they mean. I don’t intend to leave it at that
though. I can’t really just end it now by saying “there’s no point” and
limiting Prefab Sprout to a couple of hundred words. Irrespective of all the
above, they’ve meant so much to me since I first heard “Swoon”, their first
album, on a quiet weekday afternoon sometime in 1984, that I can’t honestly
leave it hanging here. Although not being an exhaustive list nor in any
particular chronological order, here’s just a few things about myself and
Prefab Sprout that may give an indication what it’s all about.
Hearing
“Swoon” for the first time, having had it heavily recommended to me by my best
friend and musical guru. I just didn’t get it on first, second or third
hearing. I must have played it through at least a dozen times straight before
something finally clicked and I realised exactly what he’d been going on about.
To this day, this is still my favourite Prefab Sprout record, though
ironically, it’s the one Paddy McAloon likes the least. No accounting for
taste.
Walking
down the street to see them live for the first of three times. This was sometime
in 1985 and they played at Liverpool University. I remember wearing a pair of
Levi 501’s, a white t-shirt and cardigan from Marks and Spencer and a pair of
Doc Martens. (Back then I was intensely fashionable. Or tried to be. Nowadays,
I don’t bother).
A clear memory of the gig was that they played a number of
songs from the then yet, unreleased Protest Songs album. As if it was only last
night, I can picture Paddy McAloon, wearing a fedora and denim jacket, singing
a song I now know to be “Horsechimes” and being totally blown away. This was
possibly one of the best performances of a song at one of the best gigs I’ve
ever been to-it was truly magical.
Going to
buy the “Andromeda Heights” album on the day of release and getting drenched to
the skin.
Being
shocked at seeing a photograph of Paddy McAloon, in 1999, with long grey hair
and an almost Gandalf-style beard. There had been no news of them for so long
and it was like seeing one of those shots of Syd Barrett.
On finding
out, with eternal thankfulness, that the internet was really designed to be a
repository of all the music you never managed to get hold of, making it a
mission to collect every single recorded Prefab Sprout track possible-b-sides,
re-mixes, live shows, snippets off the radio, Swedish television interviews. By
the time I’d progressed from dial-up to broadband my mission was almost
complete. Although I already had every album and a fair few singles, I ended up
with a 3CDr collection of all b-sides and demos in chronological order. I
wouldn’t have normally been so arsey as to do anything with CDrs except
scribble details on the disc and stick them in a jewel case or plastic sleeve,
but for these I made an exception; I spent ages creating sleeve art and using
software to make them look like a proper CD set. They’re still on the shelf,
filed next to the official releases.
The sleeve
notes to “Swoon” written by Emma Welles.
Waiting
ages and ages for anything new to be released by them, surviving on scraps and
hints from the internet and being staggered in 2000 to hear they were touring
again. Getting tickets front row, dead centre, for their 2000 show at Liverpool
Philharmonic. A massive sense of disbelief when they came on stage; I never
thought they play live again.
At that
same gig, when Paddy McAloon asked the audience if there were any songs that
they wanted to hear, some wag, associating McAloon’s long grey beard with music
from the 1970’s, shouting for Wizzard’s “See My Baby Jive”.
Reading
Nick Hornby’s novel, “Juliet, Naked” about a middle-aged music fan’s obsession
with an obscure rock star and seeing the parallels re myself and Prefab Sprout,
as well as being a bit pissed off that Hornby had nicked an idea I’d been
harbouring for a good while.
Thinking
that “From Langley Park to Memphis” wasn’t their strongest album, hearing “Hey
Manhattan” once again, and understanding that it beats most other songs by most
other artists out of the park.
Paddy
McAloon coming out with the (then) unfashionable line that Paul McCartney is
one of the greatest songwriters of all time and knowing he was so right.
Finding
this track-never subsequently recorded elsewhere- and three others that Paddy
McAloon recorded when he was sixteen or so.
The
overall intelligence, humour and humanity that you can see shining so clearly through
Prefab Sprout, every step of the way.
what "Totally Shuffled" is all about:
One track per
day for 366 days on a broken iPod.
366 tracks out of a possible 9553.
From the
obvious (The Rolling Stones), to the obscure (Karen Cooper Complex).
From the
sublime (The Flaming Lips) to the risible (Muse).
From field recordings of Haitian Voodoo music
to The Monkees.
From Heavy Metal to Rap by way of 1930’s blues, jazz,
classical, punk, and every possible genre of music in between.
This is what I
listened to and wrote about for a whole year, to the point of never wanting to
hear any more music again. Some songs I listened to I loved, and some I hated. Some
artists ended up getting praised to the skies and others received a bit of
critical kicking.
There’s memories of spending too many hours in record shops,
prevaricating over the next big thing and surprising myself over tracks that
I’d completely forgotten about.
But with 40 years of listening to music, I
realised that I’ll never get sick of it.I may have fallen out of love with some of the songs in this book, but
I’ll never fall out of love with music.
extracted from "Totally Shuffled- A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod"
April 17th
Faron Young-Live Fast, Love Hard, Die
Young- single
Prefab Sprout
recorded a song called “Faron Young” on their 1985 “Steve Mc Queen” album. I
didn’t realise at the time, and didn’t know for a long time afterwards, that
Faron Young was the name of a country singer from the 1950’s. I didn’t know at
all what Paddy McAloon was singing about; “You give me Faron Young, four in the
morning.” Like all of Prefab Sprout’s work I loved the song-it was a single as
well.
Of course now, it would just be a matter of looking it up on the
internet, but then I merely put it down to McAloon’s Geordie accent and heard
it as, “you give me far on young, for in the morning.” (i.e. all separate
words). What it meant I didn’t know, and it didn’t seem to matter. I assumed it
was some typically cryptic Sproutian lyric. Would I have thought of the song
differently if I’d known what it was about? (Faron Young’s song “It’s Four in
the Morning” was the only record of his that made the U.K. charts (number 4 in
1975), though I must have missed it at the time, being preoccupied with the
latest waxings from Slade, T-Rex and The Sweet).
This track
however, stemmed from 1954. It’s quite ironic really.
Faron Young, by all
accounts, lived fairly fast. He grew up on a farm in Shreveport, Louisiana and
practised singing by serenading assorted cows whilst sitting on a fence and
strumming a guitar. Quite a picture.
At just 19 years old he signed his first
record contract and then had hit after hit. Elvis and Patsy Cline opened for
him during their early careers, so I guess he must have been pretty successful.
Faron even appeared in four low-budget films, including what must be the
classic, “Daniel Boone, Trailblazer”.
His film appearances even gave him the
temporary nicknames, The Singing Sheriff and The Hillbilly Heartthrob. I’d love
to see some of these films. I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled for them showing
up on a Wednesday afternoon on TCM or Channel 5.
Faron seemed to be a bit of a
mercurial character. Although well known for being generous, even feckless with
money, on the other hand he had a reputation as a master of the cruel, cutting
remark and swung from one mood to another in the blink of an eye. Even in the
hard drinking country world of the 50’s and 60’s, Faron had a reputation of,
not putting too fine a point on it, being a drunk.
By the late 60’s however,
the good times were slowly slipping away and everything gradually went downhill
for him. He ended up jumping off stage at a show and slapping a young girl in
the audience because he thought she had spat at him.
He tried to resurrect his
career, over and over again to no avail and became increasingly bitter at the
turn of events. He drank more and more, and by the early 1990’s he had
developed emphysema. On 6th December 1996 he shot himself with a ten
gauge shotgun and died the next day, in Nashville.
So he lived fast, loved hard
(possibly) but didn’t die young.
And, from the later photographs of him in the
80’s and 90’s, I suppose he didn’t leave a good looking corpse either.
Because there's a bit flying around about U2 at the moment I thought I'd put this piece, from my old & now defunct blog, up on here...
Twenty Albums of Inspiration
It’s difficult
to pick just twenty albums that have either inspired (or indeed, influenced
me). Forty- odd years of listening to music; thousands and thousands of songs,
and probably millions of hours.
How to pick just
twenty albums? I have pondered this over the past few days and really got
myself tied up into knots over it. The more I thought about it I came to the
realisation that if I wasn’t careful
I’d be merely be collating a list of my
favourite albums rather than those that have been inspiring. For that reason,
there were some omissions that have left me feeling a bit guilty. Neil Young’s
“Tonight’s the Night”, Prince’s “Black Album”, Sunn 0)))’s “Monoliths and
Dimensions” as well as a whole host of Muslimgauze possibilities were
rejected.Selections from Miles Davis
and John Coltrane also have lost out. A whole shed load of blues artists didn’t
make the cut; mostly because they never really issued albums in their lifetimes
and although I have been very much inspired by individual songs they’d probably
one just be one track on a cobbled together compilation.
I also decided
to reject the notion of including any bootlegs or live (unofficial)
albums.This is a bit of shame because
this meant missing out on probably one of greatest live albums ever-a recording
of Bruce Springsteen 7 the E Street Band in Milwaukee in 1973 whenthe show was interrupted by a bomb scare five
or six songs into his set. The place was evacuated and Springsteen and the band
retreated to a nearby hotel where they got royally pissed. This didn’t stop the
show though and they returned to the venue at midnight along with the audience.
They then proceeded to play until 3 a.m. and for the life of me I just do not
understand why this has never been officially released.
I also rejected
the idea of picking a representative selection of albums either by genre or
trying to work in some sort of chronological order to it all i.e. starting in
the 1920’s and working through to 2013. This would have been just too
considered and although it had a certain attraction to it, the whole thing
would have just seemed a bit show- offy. This therefore leads to nothing much
from the 1960’s or 70’s and hardly anything from the past decade either. Is it
that nothing from the turn of the millennium has really been inspiring or
simply that I haven’t got my finger on the pulse?Maybe it takes time for music to inspire or
maybe there’s nothing that inspirational anymore. Anyway, here we go with the
twenty I’ve picked….
1 .Swell Maps-A Trip To Marineville
Apparently this
was one of Kurt Cobain’s favourite records although I’m not going to let that
put me off.
(I would have
written something about Buzzcocks “Spiral Scratch” E.P. and how that much more
than any old tat from the Clash or the Pistols or whichever big bankrolled punk
band gave me a moment of total inspiration and made me realise that music would
never be the same again. But that was a single rather than an album so…)
In some ways and
even more so than “Spiral Scratch”, this slice of beauty from Swell Maps was
equally as life-changing. Swell Maps weren’t from London or from some
fashionable punk haven; and therefore not hanging onto some old pub-rock coat
tails. They stemmed from the West Midlands and back when this album came out in
1979 they showed up punk for the tired old routine that it had already become.
I must listen to
this album at least once a year after all this time and it still sounds as
fresh to me as the day when I first got it. What I like about this album-what I
love and treasure about this album- is that on the cusp of post punk and the
dog days of punk, that Swell Maps showed there was an alternative. They were
derided at the time for being the new Pink Floyd and accusations of
improvisation and experimentation were thrown at them as if that was criticism
enough. As they defiantly sung on this record though, “Do you believe in art?”
and, in a telling barb at their punk contemporaries, “You chose to join in, I
chose attack/ I could have given in but I’m not like that.”
What Swell Maps
presented was a true alternative; not one based on posturing, safety pins and
bondage trousers (with all that inferred pretence at misplaced anger) but something
fiercely intelligent; something deeper and much more honest.
I cannot think
of a record that is less “rock” than this one. In fact, I can’t think of a way
to describe it to anyone who’s never heard it. I can’t think of any other
record or band that sounded like YMG’s either before or after. I can’t put them
in comparison to any other group. I can’t see who they were influenced by or if
they influenced anybody else after they broke up. Like most things that are
pretty near perfect, YMG’s were so simple and so obvious it was surprising that
no-one made music like they did. This album just appeared out of nowhere,
fully-formed and brilliant. There’s just a bass, rhythm guitar and the sparse,
clear, tentative vocals of Alison Statton. There’s no percussion and I don’t
even think they used a drum machine. Just simple, beautiful songs that fit so
well on a rainy Saturday afternoon.
3. Jelly Roll Morton-The Complete Library
of Congress Recordings
One of my
favourite records but also one of the most inspirational and most influential.
I only heard this a few years ago when it the subject of a Radio 4
documentary.I can’t remember who
presented it but they raved so much about it that I thought there must be
something about it that would be worth hearing in full. It’s an 8 CD set and it
cost a fair bit but is worth every penny. The whole thing lasts one minute
short of none hours long and is comprised of a series of interviews conducted
by Alan Lomax with Jelly Roll Morton in 1938, interspersed with Morton playing
many songs. I guess it’s closer to a massive novel or a series of films than a
record.
What’s so good
about this recordingand what is
inspirational and above all, utterly fascinating, is Morton’s tales of life in
New Orleans in the 1890’s and early 1900’s. He’s a fantastic pianist and singer
but an even better teller of stories. He’s not backwards at coming forwards and
at times he’s so over the top that it’s unbelievable.He not only recounts how considers that he
was really solely responsible for the invention of jazz but goes deep into his
family history as well as painting a vivid picture of life in the city. It’s
about the working life of a musician and what he had to do to become so
successful. What I like about it is that he makes it all sound as if it was
only happening yesterday rather than nearly a century ago. I’m sitting here
thousands of miles away and decades later and I wonder if it
would ever have crossed his mind that his words would have echoed down the
years. (After hearing him I think that it would have been the very least he
would have expected!)
This is history
but not that dry, academic history. It would be simplistic to just see it as
something of interest to jazz buffs but really because blues and jazz gave
birth to everything that followed, for anyone who has a passing interest in
music it’s got to be worth a listen.
As it lasts for
nine hours I could write about it for a lot longer than this. I’ve listened to
it all the way through probably two or three times a year since I got it and
every time I hear something different and get something new out of it.
4. Swans-Public Castration Is A Good Idea
I could be
really arsey at this point and rabbit on and on about Swans;
over-intellectualise the point to the point where it all becomes meaningless.
That’s not what this is about and that to me certainly isn’t what this Swans
record is about.
Clearly, this is
not a comedy record. In fact I can’t think of anything more bereft of humour
than this. It’s grim beyond grimness and isn’t something that I play to whistle
along to when I’m cleaning the windows. Many of the tracks on these 20 albums
that I find particularly inspirational are ones that send a shiver down my
spine, or a tear to my eye or a lump to my throat. In that sense I admit there
is a tendency for me to lapse into hopeless sentimentalism at the drop of a
needle on a record. I If I had a choice of twenty one records then I’m sure
that Paul McCartney may have well put in an appearance with “Goodnight Tonight”
or “My Love”.But I didn’t and he
hasn’t, and this Swans record may be many things but it’s not one of those
records that has me pretending that I’ve got a bit dust in my eye.
So why does it
inspire me? What is there about it that warrants its inclusion here? Like I
said I don’t wish to over play the point but I admire something that is
unremittingly stark and single-minded. It’s more than that, more than simple
admiration. To come up with something that is so intense takes a vision and an artistic
stance that is very rarely seen in popular music. And it is very intense. Swans
(at the point in their existence when this live album was recorded) were
renowned for playing so loud that audience would spontaneously vomit. They also
used ensure that the air conditioning was turned off wherever they played so
that the audience would find it as uncomfortable as possible and if anyone had
the temerity to either headbang or God forbid, place their hands on the edge of
the stage then the front man and founder of Swans, Michael Gira, would stomp on
their fingers.
This record
should be played as loud as possible but I’ve never had the chance to whack the
volume to the maximum as I’m sure the neighbours would complain. Even at a
low-ish volume it sounds loud. The nearest thing to describe it as is the sound
of a massive oil tanker running aground, very slowly and painfully loud, but
slowed down and repeated over and over again.
Two other
things:
It’s so grim and
dark that it’s actually very funny. But I’m sure that’s not what Swans
intended.
It is quite good
when it stops.
5. Camille-Le Fil
An album that
made me realise finally that a) not everything needs to be sung in English for
it to be enjoyable and b) because of this, maybe the exact words don’t really
matter at all. I have no idea about what Camille is singing about on this
record (it’s in French). She could be running through her shopping list or
giving us an especially complicated recipe; it could be a run through the
telephone directory of a small town or maybe something really trite and soppy.
It doesn’t matter one bit because her voice is so spectacular and soaring.
Because she puts so much passion into it I do have a sense that what she is
singing is important and meaningful.
Maybe it’s all to do with the language after all.
Maybe it’s my perceptions of
French; it wouldn’t sound the same if she was from say, Wigan or Preston
(although that would be an interesting option; maybe that’ll be the next
thing-albums remixed with Northern accents).
What is
remarkable to me and seems to run throughout most (but not all) of these albums
that I’ve picked is that they were unexpected. Unexpected in the sense that I’d
never heard of some of these artist until I’d heard the albums; or if I had,
then only in passing or that they’d not made much of an impression upon me.
With this album by Camille (as well as my next choice and the YMGs’ above) what
is inspiring is that these records come out of seemingly nowhere and although,
by and large,they’ve been
made by people in their very early twenties, they are works that have stood the
test of time. This is art that belies the relative immaturity of the artists; what’s
truly staggering is that someone so young can have the vision to produce
something so original and intense.
It is impossible
just to pick one track off this record; you’d have to listen to the whole
thing. (And that’s part of it; literally part of it. Although there are
distinct songs and different tracks it’s all strung together by a low hum that’s
playing in the background from the beginning the end of the album. This is the
thread referred to in the album title but as I don’t speak French I’m not sure
if that’s correct.)
It’s just a
beautiful record.
6.U2 –Boy
Imagine, if you
will, a strange parallel universe, where U2 had not become the mega-selling
behemoths of rock which they are now.Imagine if they’d only released this one album and sunk without trace,
like many of their contemporaries did. Imagine if a fiendishly difficult quiz
question was asking what was the name of the lead singer of one-hit wonders U2?
It seems impossible. U2 were always going to be successful; and therefore
subject to massive acclaim at the hands of the record buying public and
incredibly harsh judgements at the hands of the critics. They are such an easy
target that there’s not much point running through the list of ways to have a
pop at them. But if this had been the only record they’d ever made, would it
have all been different?
(I should say
that, at this point, in an wholly unfashionable way, that I have always loved
U2-right from this record through all the chest-beating and flag waving, wrap
round shades, Christianity and tax avoidance schemes. To this day, seeing them
live at the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool when on the War tour, was one of
the best gigs that I have ever seen in my life. I therefore hold no truck at
all with the long line of here-today-gone-tomorrow,Johnny-come-lately,hipper-than-thou,London-centric,public-school
patronising fuckhead journalists who condescend to us with their opinions from
on high. I don’t care one jot if U2 are the most unfashionable band ever. I
like what they do.)
But this is
about “Boy” and I’d bet if this had been their only release then by now if
would be lauded as a total classic; a cult album; a forgotten gem and a bit of
buried treasure. Instead, it’s seen as yet just another U2 record and I’d think
that even people who class themselves as U2 fans wouldn’t necessarily class it
as their best record. For me though, and even given the hindsight of time and
rose-tinted glasses, it is an uplifting, joyous, ecstatic record. From those
very first echoed chords there’s something special about it. Listening to it
not as a “U2” record but just as a piece of music I can’t see how anyone would
not failed to be moved by it; even just a little bit. It’s timely to recall
that when this came out, it was so different and against the grain of
everything else. It was all post-punk, long coats, Factory and Joy Division
miserablism etc. Along turned up this bunch of Irish kids (and at that time U2
were just kids and not grizzled old rock stars) who came up with something that
wasn’t narcissistic, self-centred and introverted but something that was
life-affirming and inspirational. And all these years later, it still is.Just give it a listen and imagine you are in
a different universe. You’ll be surprised.
Whilst I
mentioned at the very top that because of a lack of albums released by blues
artists that many of them missed out, I can’t really exclude one of my all-
time musical heroes, the great Willie McTell. (I could really have comprised
this list with 19 blues artists and one Fall album; for me it would have been
hard just to pick 19 blues artists. But some of them only ever released one 78
and those recordings are scattered across the internet and crop up, oddly
enough, on £1.99 blues compilations on the Hallmark label that you only ever
see in service stations and all-night garages.)
But this collection of Blind
Willie McTell tracks on 3 CDs is what may be termed the bees knees. It’s not
the first Blind Willie McTell record ever had; that place is reserved for a 12
track vinyl album released on Yazoo and for which I paid a fortune for a long
time ago. This collection has six times the number of tracks than that old
record and was cheaper as well. There is the old saying-“never mind the
quality, feel the width”-but every single track on this has deep, deep quality
to its very core.
I don’t what’s
more of an inspiration to me; Blind Willie McTell’s life or his music. I guess
that you can’t really have one without the other. One fact about Willie McTell;
he was blind since birth yet carried a gun and managed to shoot dead at a
distance of twelve feet someone who was attempting to rob him. There’s loads of
this stuff but I’ll just write about the music and just one track. I could have
picked any of his songs; all of them touch me so deeply that a random selection
is good enough.
“Travelin Blues”
was recorded back in 1929 and is a thing of such wonder and beauty that mere
words cannot do it justice. There’s a lot of stuff about Robert Johnson being
the greatest blues guitarist ever but for me, the rolling, twisting, bubbling,
constantly looping notes that Willie McTell brings out are beyond comprehension.
I have a vague clue about how guitars are played but this is something else. I
have no idea how he managed to makes such sounds come out of a simple stringed
acoustic instrument-it’s like hearing an angel play. The fact that he manages
to sing at the same time just adds to the magic. It’s not some ordinary voice
as well; even though I have listened to this song hundreds of times it never
fails to give me goosebumps.
Not figuratively but literally.
The hairs on my
arms stand up. (If I had any on my head they would as well.)
8. Prefab Sprout-Jordan the Comeback
“If there ain’t
a heaven that holds you tonight, they never sang doo-wop in Harlem”
There’s no point
in writing countless words about this album or indeed about this song.
I don’t believe
in a God or any higher power, but something was going on when Paddy McAloon
wrote and recorded this song.
It is the most
perfect song I think that I’ll ever hear.
It’s the last
song I ever want to hear.
9. Crass- Christ The Album
It’s a bit of a
switch from Prefab Sprout to Crass but one thing that Crass have in common with
a lot of the artists and therefore a lot of the albums on this list is their
single-mindedness in their craft and their art. To me, there is nothing worse
and nothing more false than any artist just going through the motions, just
putting out any old rubbish. Now, Crass’ music may have been rubbish-but their
devotion to what they did and the care that they put into everything speaks
volumes. Actually, I quite like Crass’ music; it may have never been the most sophisticated
racket but as rackets went it was pretty exciting.
What Crass did,
away from the music, was open everything up. They showed up punk for the hollow
shell and collection of smoke and mirrors that it really was; the same old
“showbiz”; record labels, management, tours, single, album, single, producer,
artist, consumer. They (unlike the rest of the school of 1976) actually showed
that it was possible to go out and do-it-yourself. Anything was possible. You
didn’t need to be anything “special” to make music or make any form of art. In
fact, it was better to do-it yourself than any other way. In spite of what may
be considered as trite sloganeering to
this day, I’ll still have Crass hammering away at the back of my mind when I’m
writing anything or listening to an item on the news or reading the paper or
looking at a politician on the TV; “fuck off you lying bastards.”That’s how Crass have inspired me; to be
inherently suspicious and paranoid.
Oh, they were
very funny as well.
10.Bob Dylan-John Wesley Harding
It has to be
said that there’s just too much music out there. I can, at the click of a
touchpad, get hold of anything and everything that I could possibly want to
hear. I probably (almost certainly) have more music in the house than I will
ever have chance to hear more than once. I know that there a numerous tracks on
CDrs and cluttering up my hard drive that I’ve never played or listened to and
possibly never will. Being the wrong side of 50, I have to face facts that some
of these unlistened songs will outlive me. I know that’s a bit desperate but
quite true.
What’s all that
got to do with this Dylan album? Well, whenever I have got a bit bored of music
and can’t think of what to play (out of all these thousands of hours worth of
music), “John Wesley Harding” is the one touchstone that I can rely on. I was
going to write about how inspirational Dylan is and how for a long, long time
I’d dismissed him as a whiney-voiced, over-rated hippy but I’ll stick to this
record. Not just one track but the whole thing.
What’s so
special about this record is how that it can cut through all of the rest of the
music and in an aural sense, clear the palate. It’s also a measure of what I
now recognise as the genius of Dylan; bringing out such an unexpected, stripped
down record straight after the electric conversion and all the controversy that
it involved. This album is so very simple and basic that it initially appears
to be a bit soft; a bit folky and a bit singer-songwritery.But it’s not and for the reasons above.
Turning from the electric phase to this, Dylan brought out the hardest, most
diamond-like record that he ever made.
And what does it
show me?
Just make it simple. Say what you mean and mean what you say.
