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The Girl With The Thorn In Her Side

Robert Cochrane — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 11:46:52 +0000

The Girl With The Thorn In Her Side Robert Cochrane August 5, 2024 - 07:46

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EDNA O'BRIEN 1930-2024

Like her heroes Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, the writer Edna O'Brien neither lived nor died in Ireland, yet Ireland imbued all three. They represent the expulsion of enquiring minds from a country reluctant to change, a culture once riddled by hypocrisy, misogyny, and religious constraints. Things have thankfully progressed, and the outsiders, those harbingers of embarrassment, are now rightly celebrated. In 1960 O'Brien's debut novel The Country Girls was burnt by priests and banned in Ireland, her natural honesty about sex was a step too far out of line for those who maintained appearances. In later life, she was like a High Priestess of Loneliness, a symptom she both cherished and abhorred as essential to her craft.

Hers was a life of gauntlets laid down. Her interior world was resourced to consider and then expose challenges and rectify injustices, especially when it came to women's rights. Though England was better, she wasn't met with open arms. Her libertine attitudes and slaying of cows standing in the way, sacred or otherwise, meant she wasn't given an easy time by the critics in her adoptive country. When her friend Norman Mailer criticized her for being "too interior" in her working methods, she calmly reminded him that his own efforts might benefit from such an approach. O'Brien's life would make a perfect template for the kind of novel she would never have written: a blockbuster saga of improbable events where facts read like contrived fiction, a curious luxury from an eventful life lived well.

O'Brien was a writer of restlessness in the hope of some form of consolation or resolution. Her last novel, Girl, took her in her late eighties to Nigeria to research the fates of schoolgirls kidnapped by Boku Haram, with money to facilitate her quest sewn into her clothes. When challenged that she, as an outsider, had no right to tackle such material, she rounded, "I do not subscribe to that devious form of censorship. Theme and territory belong to all who aspire to tell it."

Her palette may have widened beyond the shores of her rejected land, but her sense of injustice and restitution burned and remained. Having embraced the freedoms of Sixties London, finally escaping the bitter confines of her marriage to Ernest Gebler, a talented writer himself, but one resentful to the point of hatred of the greater literary success of his former wife, of whom he tastelessly remarked that "her talent lay in her knickers," a phrase a critic in the journal Hibernia quoted verbatim.

She'd married him much against her parent's wishes, determined to escape the sense of loneliness and isolation that overshadowed her childhood in Clare. It is strange to think that this quintessential country girl became a friend of Jacqueline Onassis, Robert Mitchum, Jane Fonda, Marianne Faithfull, and Paul McCartney (who serenaded her children), to name but five. Her London parties at her Chelsea home are now the stuff of myth and legend. Elizabeth Taylor starred in X, Y & Zee, the 1972 film of her novel Zee & Co. Edna was even rescued from the downside of an unpleasant acid trip with R.D. Laing trip by Sean Connery.

Possessed a glacial beauty even in old age, her husky voice was instantly recognizable. Hers was a refined but scrutinizer's presence, an experience akin to being observed by a stately heron. She leaves behind an impeccable legacy that paved the way for women writers, especially Irish ones, to proceed with freedoms she had provided whilst existing in a time of necessary change, albeit in absence from her homeland. (the well from which she drew her copious inspirations.) There was a hiatus of a decade in the eighties, and she fell silent and contemplated suicide. The books that followed her literary resurrection were darker in tone, tackling subjects as diverse as abortion, Down By The River about a true tale about a teenage victim of rape, denied the opportunity to travel to the UK for a termination, and war crimes in Bosnia, the darkly haunting The Little Red Chairs.

Edna O'Brien's restlessness was rooted in a creative necessity to discern the truth. Her appearances on chat shows, where her responses resembled shards of poetry, only added to her mystique. She once appeared in a television advert for The Guardian newspaper, in which she informed the viewers that one should never read rubbish; at least one should end up writing it. Her output is relentlessly impressive, challenging, and intelligent, and it will continue to enlighten her in the wake of her impeccable absence.

She will be buried in Ireland on Holy Island, her final request of pyrrhic resolution; that sense of loneliness maintained.

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Missing Feat

Dusty Wright — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 13:19:56 +0000

Missing Feat Dusty Wright October 30, 2019 - 09:19

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Little Feat may have been one of America's greatest rock 'n' roll bands in the mid-1970s. With the tandem guitar duo of Lowell George and Paul Barrere, their funky, swampy gumbo mix of rhythms and rhymes were hard to top. I was fortunate enough to see them on the 1977 Waiting for Columbus tour which would sadly be Lowell's last major tour with the band as he died of a heart attack in 1979. But Paul kept the Feat flame burning bright. His songwriting, singing and playing was just as integral to Feat's rockin' boogie sound as Lowell's tasty slide work. Best one let the music do the talking. I would suggest listening to Feats Don't Fail Me Now right now.

Roll on, Paul Barrere.

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The Poet Of Gaudy Silence

Robert Cochrane — Tue, 28 Aug 2018 23:29:57 +0000

The Poet Of Gaudy Silence Robert Cochrane August 28, 2018 - 19:29

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Lindsay Kemp 1938-2018

That the performer and maverick choreographer Lindsay Kemp who died suddenly on 24th August was a precocious and different child should come as no great surprise. Born as a replacement for his deceased elder sister Norma who had been a talented dancer when she died from meningitis aged five, her future brother found no problem on taking on the mantle of her creativity, or her ghostly costumes. Always in search of an audience he would regularly stage shows for the neighbours with his friends. When he joined forces with the son of a local undertaker, they discovered that tap dancing created fabulous acoustics when performed on the lids of the coffins. As a result of his father’s death in 1940, his ship “The Patroclus” had been sunk by a German torpedo, this tragedy entitled him to attend at the age of eight, Bearwood College in Wokingham, the Royal Navy School. His mother had hoped this might rid her only son of his eccentric ways, if anything his desire for self-expression flourished further and he was almost expelled for staging a late night performance in the dormitory as Salome, naked and festooned in rouge after conscripting much toilet roll for veils. It was a role he would successfully reprise in later life with a live boa constrictor for added dramatic value. Born in Birkenhead, and later a native of South Shields, he is proof that strange flowers blossom grow in unlikely and inhospitable climes

Aged 16 he returned North and enrolled at Bradford Art College. There he met a fellow classmate called David Hockney. It was his advice that Kemp should point his toes in the direction of London and its various dance schools. There was one major barrier though. National Service. Kemp joined the RAF, but was as an unorthodox recruit as he had been a schoolboy. He staged various camp, the pun is entirely intentional, productions and sought to escape the confines by wearing eyeliner and bangles and declaring himself, it was then illegal and totally unacceptable, homosexual. Kemp discovered sex whilst there, and his brazen proclamation had the desired consequence. He found a place, albeit short-lived at the Ballet Rambert, he was removed for being undisciplined, shared a flat with the future actor and director Stephen Berkoff, ending up in the chorus line of various London shows. It was at the Edinburgh Festival that he impressed the mime artist Marcel Marceau who took him on as a pupil. Soon the novice would become a teacher with startlingly influential results.

Kemp in 1967 was performing at a theatre in London's St. Martin's Lane when a young, terribly disillusioned singer called David Bowie appeared in the audience. Kemp had been using a song from his debut album When I Live My Dream as part of his show. Bowie, who was about to give up on his musical ambitions introduced himself afterwards. A sexual and creative relationship flourished which resulted in a touring show Pierrot In Turquoise which was filmed in 1970 as The Poet Of Gaudy Silence. Kemp was an emotionally charged pierrot whilst Bowie aloft a ladder performed his songs. The highly fevered atmosphere transferred into real life dramatics when Kemp discovered Bowie in bed with the production's female designer. His response was to slash his wrists under the influence of a lot of whiskey, he later admitted, it had been a rather half-hearted attempt. The tour continued with him using his bloodied costumes, the blood stains adding an extra frisson to the proceedings. I remember him enquiring if some ephemera I'd found relating to that time held anything relating to Bowie and himself. I said there was only one yellowed clipping to which he responded with his inimitable drawl:

“If it relates to me and Mr Bowie then it will be very yellow indeed!”

Bowie and he would later re-unite when he asked Kemp to collaborate on the staging of two Ziggy Stardust shows at the Rainbow Theatre, Finsbury Park in 1972. It proved a pivotal moment in the fusing of theatrics and rock, paving the way for Bowie's next incarnation of Aladdin Sane. The perfect collision of decadence and camp. Bowie, ever the thieving magpie copiously borrowed from the ideas of his former lover and teacher. Elton John even declared the proceedings “too camp” but Kemp's glittering genie was out of the bottle and in the guise of Bowie was attracting a mass audience. Kemp too was prolific in the 70s. He formed his own troupe, and tackled the likes of Jean Genet's Our Lady Of The Flowers, a hedonistic mix of glitter, nudity and debauchery though his productions offended the dance critics, who found him showy and iconoclastic. theatre scribes proved much kinder. He also found himself in demand as an actor. In 1973 he appeared in Anthony Shaffer's cult chiller The Wicker Man and also featured in Derek Jarman's Sebastiane and Jubilee as well as an unlikely appearance in The Stud starring Joan Collins, and the more likely Savage Messiah by Ken Russell. This provided him with a considerable amount of money which he frittered away on extravagant living, expensive productions and the inevitable booze and cocaine. His productions were always a visual treat, a trip into another world be sourcing texts and influences as diverse as Lorca and William Walton, touring Europe, the US & Japan.

By the mid-70s a shy retiring girl turned up at one of his teaching classes. With Kemp's persistent encouragement she blossomed. He reflected recently in a Q&A session at Manchester's Bridgewater Hall in late June this year that he had little idea of what she wanted to achieve, but that she was good. Returning home one evening he found a album pushed under his door, it was her debut The Kick Inside and the track “Moving” was dedicated to him. The girl in question was Kate Bush who would later collaborate with him in her film The Line, The Cross & The Curve in 1993, the time of her album The Red Shoes. She sent him an enormous bouquet of flowers at his recent Manchester performance. He was momentarily speechless. Like many great English eccentrics, Quentin Crisp springs languidly to mind, Kemp found much greater acceptance for his showmanship and maverick spirit, abroad. He initially settled in Spain, but eventually made his home in a crumbling convent in Umbria where he was feted as the undoubted legend, albeit the kind and modest one, he had become. He toyed with opera, his first sojourn Rossini's The Barber Of Seville was criticised for being too slavish to the composer's.

In recent years he had found a fruitful and meaningful collaboration with the English singer-songwriter Tim Arnold. The video for the song “Change” is as touching, and unintentional a legacy that one could hope for. The wonderful face of Kemp emotes starkly the haunting lyric. For a man who brought a silent eloquence to every nod and gesture, it is as brave as it bold and unadorned, and is akin to an animated photograph. His performance to the song “What Love Would Want” at The Bridgewater Hall was a sweeping arc of sublime simplicity. A small man filling a large stage with elongated arms and a tremendous ease of movement for someone who'd just turned 80. The lighting was superb, and the song superlative. Few of those there could have envisaged that we were witnessing his final performance in the land of his birth. After the show as he sat signing posters and photographs he looked like an ageless androgyne in white face paint and Japanese pyjamas with his trademark red dots at the edges of his eyes. It was magical and he was serene. Even his hands were painted white. As I was about to leave he beckoned me over. “You aren't going anywhere without a kiss!” I duly obliged as did he whispering that we'd stay in touch...

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Bare Trees & Second Chances

Robert Cochrane — Mon, 18 Jun 2018 14:00:00 +0000

Bare Trees & Second Chances Robert Cochrane June 18, 2018 - 10:00

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Fleetwood Mac founder, Peter Green first saw Brixton-born Danny Kirwan at the age of seventeen playing with his band Boilerhouse, and invited him to join him as an expressly talented teenager. Early on he composed "Jig-Saw Puzzle Blues" the B-side of the world-wide smash "Albatross" to which Kirwan can be heard adeptly contributing his delicate licks to. When a burnt out Green left in 1970 it was Kirwan and fellow band member Jeremy Spencer who steered the group into a more acoustic, less bluesy field, setting the tone for their later phenomenal success. They'd formed a healthy collaborative partnership whilst working on Spencer's solo album

Kiln House (1970), Future Games (1971), and Bare Trees (1972) remain stunning achievements from a period of transition and turmoil. Kirwan wrote half of the songs on that trio of million selling albums but alcohol got the better of the young guitarist, and a possible acid trip misadventure in Munich with Green may have also played a part in the destruction of his tenure with the group. He was fired mid-tour in in the US in 1972. Kirwan and Bob Welch had never been compatible as members of the same outfit, but when Kirwan refused to take the stage and smashed his Les Paul to pieces, heckling the others from the wings, Mick Fleetwood effectively fired him in what he saw as a virtual act of mercy to his troubled friend.

Back in London, and after a period of reflection, Kirwan emerged again via a new recording deal with DJM Records who released his first solo outing Second Chapter -- a beautiful and mellow affair with echoes of Nick Drake and Paul McCartney -- to favorable reviews in 1974. His refusal to tour limited the possibility of wider success, and this impeded the next album Late Night In San Juan a less accomplished effort a few years later. His cover version of the Beatles' "Let It Be" was given a reggae twist and though released as a single in the States, despite airplay didn't chart. His third and final album Hello There Big Boy was a tortured and tortuous affair. Kirwan looked haunted on the cover shots and the music was overblown and worse still utterly uninspiring.

Over seventy musicians were involved in its making, and the affair has been described by its producer Clifford Davies as "so bad." Reportedly Kirwan had recorded his efforts with his back turned on his collaborators. Then came the decades of a musical silence that he never broke, the years of the homelessness, mental health issues, and alcoholism. He was a regular user of St. Mungo's Hostel in Central London, but although he was reported to have a guitar in his room, encounters with him reported a disheveled and largely reclusive presence.

Danny Kirwan was inducted into the Rock Hall Of Fame in 1998. Needless to say he did not attend but was aware of the honor. The year 2000 saw the release of Ram Jam City a stylish and reflective collection of demos from the time of Second Chapter and that album appeared on CD in Germany and Japan, as have his other two solo outings. His story is the perfectly imperfect rock and roll fable. He was an anthem for a doomed youth, a poster boy of mellow wistfulness with an angelic face and talent to burn.

Huge success, incredible and dextrous ability and then forty years of silence. He married briefly and fathered a son. No cause of death has been given, but like Bowie sang in "The Man Who Sold The World" the creative spark of Daniel David Kirwan "died a long, long time ago."

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Mark E Smith Remembered

Millree Hughes — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 16:23:33 +0000

Mark E Smith Remembered Millree Hughes January 29, 2018 - 11:23

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Mark E Smith and The Fall lived on the outskirts of alternative rock and pop music for over forty years.

I saw them once in 1985. They played the Hammersmith Palais. I went with my brother Phil who was a big fan from the start. The place wasn’t packed but the core was positioned around the band, close. Many of them taping the show. I had this sense of the stage being low and we were really in on the vibe. Which was heavy, carrying a low-level threat of aggression. It felt like cheap grindy speed.

I didn't know the songs but they steered pretty close to The Fall formula. Heavy repetitive bass and drums. Jangly guitar, rough keyboards and this dead ahead vocal. Part drunk in the pub, part accosting wind up on the street ("give us a quid, lend us a fag, go buy me a pie") part like a beat poet wearing on your patience, Scholomance/Manchester, Druid, Vision interpreter, thug.

"I woke one day to ash in light

My eyes grew dim my eyes grew bright

Death came and turned my bones to dust

And scattered swirling in the wind"

("I Come and Stand at Your Door")

To be an intellectual, to be well read and have wide ranging interests across time across culture and to be a working class Northerner took application. You didn’t want your friends, family and neighbors to think you were a smart arse. Mark E Smith took on a persona to be able to deal with it. And it came out when he performed. That essential contradiction in the middle of your self needs support. I worked with the actor Ed Stoppard -- Tom Stoppard’s son -- once. (I’m an artist but I work in movies to pay the rent.) He told me: "You need to find out what is going to get you there, you better hope it's a couple of glasses of wine or a joint and not half a bottle of whisky."

It’s a pragmatic attitude to performing. When I saw the Grateful Dead documentary, it made sense of the scene near the end where Garcia remeets an old girlfriend and for a time gets clean. But he separates from her and goes back to playing and doing smack. I had this sense of acceptance on his part that the one required the other.

Of course, it can go other ways. Coltrane cleans up and makes his best work. Brix, Smith’s wife for a period, says that he was happy during their brief marriage and for a time The Fall became a pop band and still made great music.

It's a hard road. Captain Beefheart and Patti Smith didn’t need to placate their working class side by adopting a drugged screen persona, self-creation is written into the Constitution. Fellow Mancunian Morrissey has made a study of his conflict.

"'Do you work hard?'

It said, 'I am from Hebden Bridge.'

Somebody said to me: 'I can't understand a word you said.'"

("Blindness")

But the point I want to make is that certain bands sound like and feel like the drugs that get them there. And for me Mark E Smith and The Fall was the sound of speed.

"Blues" was a street name for amphetamine sulphate, back in the day. They were (supposedly) cut with minute amounts of strychnine and other substances and it was also responsible for lots of deaths in the late '60s and '70s.

It had kept the Northern Soul weekenders going in the mid '70s and went great with punk. Sulphate kept you in an eternal present. On top of the situation and the situation on top of you. By the '80s it came in powder form often delivered to parties in London by French Chris on a motorbike. But one of the many things that set The Fall apart from the rest is that at times the music sounded like the next day. Irritated, hard to take, your body aching. The restless self-pitying sound of the come down.

At the Hammersmith Palais the anxiety was kicking in. Come a crucial moment the band broke into a track called "Everywhere and Everywhere." That was the whole of the lyrics and it seemed to go on for ages. Smith stood to one side as one by one people came out of the audience to contribute to the mantra. It got boring, then interesting and then boring again until you didn’t want it to end. It was like Stocks St Syndrome.

Thanks for the music, Mark E Smith. We will never experience it again.

On The Contrary

Robert Cochrane — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 13:08:23 +0000

On The Contrary Robert Cochrane January 26, 2018 - 08:08

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Mark E Smith 5th March 1957-24th January 2018

A mercurial maverick, Mark E Smith's was a survivor of the early punk movement whose creative output spanned four uninterrupted decades, thirty two studio albums and sixty six former band members. A true contrarian who orchestrated chaos, he rightly deserves the description of unique. Sometimes majestic, often a shambles, his performances could never be guaranteed or predicted. He hired and fired musicians like a malevolent monarch, and in the process created some of the most inspired and challenging music of any era. He defied definition, was as cantankerous as hell, but unlike Shane McGowan, alcohol didn't cease his output. When John Peel died the BBC invited Smith into the studio to speak of his former stalwart, the only coherent utterance was that he and Peel had never been friends, and the interview quickly had the plug pulled on it as Smith's ingestion of whatever he could lay his hands on had mutated him into a leering, bug-eyed goblin. Tortured and torturous he was a constantly uneasy presence.

Born in Salford in 1957 to working class parents, his father was a plumber, Smith's brightness saw him progress to grammar school. He constructed The Fall with his girlfriend Una Baines on keyboards, after seeing The Sex Pistols play the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester, an inspiring event that fostered the formation of The Smiths, Joy Division and The Buzzcocks. Smith's world view expressed via his songs was dark and unforgiving, an unholy mixture of Hogarth and Blake. The band's name was lifted from Camus, whilst their influences were The Velvet Underground. Can and Captain Beefheart. Repetition was the key to The Fall's sound, hypnotic and almost mantra-like, they packed a ferocious punch live with Smith growling and snarling into the microphone, clutching the stand like a crutch. Along the way there were inspired if somewhat unlikely collaborations such as his sojourn with the dancer Michael Clark, and the involvement of his first wife Brix Smith saw the band progress, albeit briefly into the unusual status of a chart act.

Smith's drunkenness rendered him barred from many of the city centre pubs of Manchester. I recall seeing him alone in a corner of The Castle on Oldham Street surrounded by empty glasses. It was best not to interrupt his solitariness, although he on occasions be charmingly funny. On that occasion didn't seem worth the risk. I witnessed a truly embarrassing affair at The Castlefield Arena. The Fall were headlining, The Buzzcocks, I Am Kloot and Goldblade had all done their duties, but when the band hit the stage, Smith did not. They had to manfully jam for thirty minutes till Smith finally deigned to arrive, pissed and decanted from a taxi, clambering on stage to bark and hiss his way through what remained of the set. It was once observed that if t was Mark E Smith and your Grannie on spoons, then it was still The Fall. His cavalier attitude to those who passed through the ranks was a times cruel, abusive and possibly character forming, but became the stuff of myth and legend.

Towards the end as excess took its ultimate toll he performed in a wheelchair, or from the dressing room. A projected series of dates in America were pulled. There was an eloquent grace to his seemingly fearless determination. His final album New Facts Emerge was bright, fresh and dynamic. It can safely be said we will not witness another of his ilk. He was like a Beckett character, wise and angry, never going gently into any kind of night. His anarchic nature cost himself, and those in his circle, dearly, but he has left behind a blistering and brilliant output.

Restless and seldom resting, a rare dark light has ceased to shine.

RIP Ralph Carney

Dusty Wright — Wed, 20 Dec 2017 12:16:42 +0000

RIP Ralph Carney Dusty Wright December 20, 2017 - 07:16

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Ralph Carney has left this mortal coil far too soon. He was one of us, a musician from Akron who made it out and had become a much-beloved multi-instrumentalist where ever he hung his hat. (The last two years in Portland, OR.) Carney was also the uncle of Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney. He added his brilliance to acts like Tom Waits, The B-52s, Elvis Costello, Kronos Quartet, Jonathan Richman, St. Vincent... basically any band worth their salt that needed some brilliant reed component, whether clarinet or saxophone or some other homemade instrument!

Photo Courtesy of Patrick Carney

He had lived in NYC for a spell after leaving Akron and his initial brush with success with one of Akron's coolest bands Tin Huey, a band that the legendary Jerry Wexler signed. Their 1979 album Contents Dislodged During Shipment (Warner Brothers) is not to be missed. This Akron band boasted an incredible lineup that also including my musical mentor Harvey Gold, future Waitresses founder Chris Butler, Mark Price, Michael Aylward, Stuart Austin, and Ralph. Ralph could play any reed instrument. In fact, when I use to see Tin Huey gig around town I was astounded that he could play two reed instruments at once. Take that, Rahsaan Roland Kirk! I'd never seen a bass saxophone before Ralph wrangled one on stage. Nor had I witnessed anyone playing an instrument that large with such proficiency! It was a mind-blowing moment for a young music fanatic who was just starting to make his way around jazz and avant grade music.

But that was Ralph, he could play homemade instruments, trombone, pocket trumpet, bass clarinet, etc. It was no wonder that Tom Waits hired him and he became a core member of his band during his critically-lauded Island Records era that included Rain Dogs/Big Time/Frank's Wild Years. Check him out shredding on his clarinet above on Waits' Rain Dogs live! He provided the bass sax part that became the keyboard hook for St. Vincent’s 2014 single, "Digital Witness." (Carney’s sax was sampled for the keyboard riff on this track.) I can't go on... suffice to say, Ralph was an inspiration to anyone who added his magical madcap melodies to their music. And that's no snub to own original music as well.

I hope that his family and friends find solace in knowing that Ralph made the world a better place. Just by his sheer joy of sharing and creating music. By being Ralph.

Nobody Left To Run With Anymore...

Dusty Wright — Sun, 28 May 2017 15:19:16 +0000

Nobody Left To Run With Anymore... Dusty Wright May 28, 2017 - 11:19

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Photo by dusty wright

The annual pilgrimage to the Beacon Theatre became a winter event that my friends and I relished each and every March, something to brighten up the dull blues of winter. The Allman Brothers Band were more than just a "jam" band. And while they defined the Southern Rock ethos and kick-started the whole jam band movement, they were more than that. Yes, they were improvisational monsters, but they also wrote and played highly melodic music, music that stands the test of time; and they owned the covers they performed as well. Only The Grateful Dead could rival them as a live act with staying power, albeit cast in a different Americana psychedlic haze.

Yes, they had weathered the storm of plenty of internal band drama during the '70s, '80s and most of the '90s. They lost their lead guitarist guru Brother Duane Allman in a motorcycle accident in 1971, and then founding bassist Brother Berry Oakley a year later. Thankfully that juggernaut of a lineup released one of the greatest live albums ever -- Live At The Filmore East. But the band would soldier on adding pianist Chuck Leavell to their lineup and releasing one of their biggest selling albums of all times -- Brothers and Sisters. Various bass players and guitarists would fall in and out with the band, but it was finally Warren Haynes (Gov't Mule) that offered the perfect dualing guitarist for Brother Betts. In what had to be extremely difficulut move for Greg and the band, original co-lead guitarist Dickey Betts would ultimately get sacked in 1999, and drummer Brother Butch Trucks' young nephew Derek Trucks would step in and add his guitar magic from 1999-2014. While ABB purists might argue that he's no Duane, he's truly one of the greatest rock guitarists of all time. His style was perfect for moving the band forward while still keeping a foot in the past. Not one to mimic Brother Duane, he played those legendary licks with his own slippery verve and attack.

Moreover, it wasn't until Derek replaced Dickey that the band would finally enjoy a lengthy run of stability. That new lineup with Haynes became the most potent lineup since the original ABB lineup. Few could have predicted that the Brothers could have kept the magic flowing, but they did. That lineup also released their final studio album, the critically lauded Hitting' the Note in 2003, and their first studio effort without Brother Betts, too.

The Allman Brothers Band performed their final show on October 28, 2014, at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. Remarkably, that show was their 238th straight sold-out performance at the legendary venue on Broadway. And with that longest tenured lineup featuring Brother Greg, Brother Butch Trucks and Brother Jaimoe on drums, bass player Otel Burbridge (Aquarium Rescue Unit), percussionist/drummer Marc Quiñones, and Warren and Derek on lead guitars. Many fans and critics still consider this the best lineup since the early Duane and Dickey years. But through thick or thin, anchoring every iteration of The Brothers was Brother Gregg. His voice connecting the past with the future. We marveled at how "old" and "authentic" he sounded back in the early '70s and now as the years slipped by and band turmoil took its toll, his voice remained steadfast, defining their blues-rock sound, someone who had definitely lived the blues through personal loss, battling demons and fighting health issues along the way. Yes, nobody left to run with anymore... the end of yet another rock 'n' roll era.

"Nobody left to run with anymore

Nobody wants to do the crazy things we used to do before

Nobody left to run with anymore..."

Sharon Jones R.I.P. (May 4, 1956 - November 18, 2016)

Steve Holtje — Sat, 19 Nov 2016 17:19:07 +0000

Sharon Jones R.I.P. (May 4, 1956 - November 18, 2016) Steve Holtje November 19, 2016 - 12:19

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As widely noted, 2016 has been a year of painful loss in music. This month has been particularly bad: Canadian bard Leonard Cohen, jazz hipster Mose Allison, "Drift Away" songwriter Mentor Williams, Boston Symphony Orchestra cellist Jules Eskin, music publishing icon/musical polymath Milt Okun, Country singer-songwriter Holly Dunn, music historian/Norton Records co-founder Billy Miller, the uncategorizable Leon Russell, hot-shot bassist Victor Bailey, guitarist Al Caiola, classical pianist and conductor Zoltan Kocsis, Black Crowes keyboardist Eddie Harsch, French electronica producer Jean-Jacques Perrey, Sri Lankan violinist W. D. Amaradeva, classic pop singer Kay Starr, jazz bassist Bob Cranshaw, beloved Los Angeles music journalist/proto-punk musician Don Waller, and Irish singer-songwriter Bap Kennedy. Bad news practically every day.

And now Sharon Jones, the sparkplug soul singer whose late-arriving fame is a heartening story of talent winning out and the value of persistance.

Born in Georgia or South Carolina (sources differ) but raised from an early age in Brooklyn, NY, Jones grew up singing in church and at local talent shows, which led to work as a backing vocalist. But her big break didn't come until she was forty years old. At a recording session where none of the other vocalists who'd been hired showed up, she impressed the producers by overdubbing all the parts herself. They recorded a track featuring her as lead vocalist, and across a series of small soul labels, Gabriel Roth kept recording her until finally she got a full album, Dap Dippin', in 2002 on the Daptone label. Four more Daptone LPs, soundtrack work (plus an acting role as a nightclub singer) for the Denzel Washington-starring film The Great Debaters, dozens of one-off singles and compilation appearances, and a documentary film about her battle with pancreatic cancer followed.

All of her albums are great hard soul full of energy and joy, but where Jones really shone was on stage in performance with her ace backing band The Dap-Kings. Sharon Jones shows were a party but also an ecstatic ritual, a celebration of the glory of soul. Watch the full show above to witness her in all her glory.

RIP, Caroline Crawley

Millree Hughes — Thu, 06 Oct 2016 21:21:55 +0000

RIP, Caroline Crawley Millree Hughes October 6, 2016 - 17:21

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obituary

I knew Caroline Crawley and Jemaur Tayle who were Shelleyan Orphan through my brother Jeremy. They were making a video for their single "Cavalry of Clouds." I painted for pop videos and fashion shoots. They'd found this little unsigned drawing by the lesser known Pre-Raphaelites Simeon Solomon in a flea market and wanted me to paint something like that on an easel in the video.

They liked Nick Drake, that kind of thing, the early '70s folk and strings but their sound was steeped in a greater sweetness, a far off wistfulness. Like some new elderflower liquor based on an old recipe. Music and politics had taken a dark turn in the late '80s and the journalists were curious but suspicious. But for artists, musicians and fashion designers who knew them they represented a golden numinous away from all that.

Caroline's voice lifted them into a high cloud. There was nothing else like it in pop. Apart from it's sheer beauty as an instrument she created this intimacy. Watching her live she was a little shy, you found yourself leaning in a bit. She didn't embody the song or deliver it she seemed to be turning it over in her fingers like something very precious that if you came over here you'd see it from her angle.

British bands are very good at evoking a whole world in an album. The Clash or Black Sabbath, another place that you could go to. Clothes, new ways of talking, hair. Their first record Helleborine was for the kids that didn't want to go to the disco after the pub but went to the graveyard instead and drank hard cider in black and lace.

They took me on tour a couple of times in Northern Europe. I painted to one side, big Romantic images; we'd go out on the streets of Brussels giddy just mucking, about then drove to the next town sleeping off the wine in the van. I was on The Tube with them, the '80s best indie pop show but eventually the record company decided to sharpen it up and they didn't ask me back. (The author can be seen painting on the UK televsion show The Tube in the video at the top.) The band became more professional, touring with The Cure and I didn't see them much after that.

I see her now though in long wreaths of bronze hair leaning slightly back, turning this marvelous sound in the air. The music reminding me of something in the past that I have loved and is now gone. Not mourning but sweetly reminiscing like the autumn sun setting.