Another good night at the Cumberland
On Monday, we watched part of No Direction Home, Scorsese’s documentary about Bob Dylan. The part that struck me most strongly was an anecdote about the night of the Cuban Missile Crisis. One interviewee walked into the Gaslight Coffee Shop and found Dylan playing. They ended up singing You’re Going to Miss Me When I’m Gone together. About half way through the song, he realised that there was a good chance that there’d be nobody around to miss him.
It occurred to me as I watched, and again last night, that I could think of no better way to spend my last night on Earth than singing and playing with friends. And last night I did exactly that.
Last night was the first Tuesday night of the new University term, which means the Newcastle University Folk and Traditional Music students are back in town. So the Cumberland Arms Bimonthly Tuesday Singing Session was invaded by many of the regulars from the Cumberland Arms Bimonthly Tuesday Anything But Irish Session.
We settled into a good song, tune, song, tune vibe and a cracking night was had by all. Often in sessions with a lot of players1, singers hardly get a look in, and when they do the players take the oppportunity to have a chat and get some beer in. Not last night. Singers all got full attention and we didn’t have the ‘half an hour of reels’ which can be so much fun to play. We singers didn’t overindulge ourselves either; no thirty verse ballads laden with doom, death and despair for us.
There’s so much talent on the course that it can be scary. An older singer fluffed his guitar part slightly and excused himself saying he had always sung with people no more than two years younger than him and he found it quite daunting being in a room full of people younger than his children, making the music he loved
Speaking of talented young people
On Saturday night I went to see Bellowhead.
Wow! I’ve been an admirer of Spiers and Boden, and of Jon Boden’s singing in particular for a while now, but the full 11 piece band is a thing of power and beauty. There was lots (and lots) to love, but the stand out performance was their reading of Flash Company with Jon in full on torch singer mode, while the band played a cacophonous free jazz kind of thing, apparently designed to put the singer off by bearing no relation rhythmically to what he was doing, and almost none harmonically either. A triumph. Courting too Slow, The Prickle Eye Bush and the ‘disco sea shanty’ all kicked some serious arse, and those are just the songs. The Rochdale Coconut Dance, now much tighter than the version on E.P.Onymous is still one of the most danceable tunes in the world, and the introduction to English traditional chair dancing was quite splendid.
Whether you think you like English traditional music or not, you should check these guys out. Preferably in a venue that isn’t all seated.
I can’t wait for their ‘proper’ album.
1 The usual distinction is between ‘singers’ and ‘musicians’, which is inaccurate; singers are musicians, dammit.
