More Gigs-A-Go-Go

So I went to a couple of gigs last week, one in a church and one on a boat. That's just the way it is these days.

The church is St. John on Bethnal Green, which is literally down the end of my road here in swinging London. I've seen some memorable gigs over the years by the likes of Lonnie Holley, Gwynifer Raymond and a large man in a little black dress intoning the words to "Boys" by Sabrina while accompanying himself on the cello.

This one was pretty memorable too. We were there to see RÓIS, an Irish musician who caused a bit of a stir last year with their album "MO LÉAN" which combined traditional keening songs with electronics and a helping hand from Lankum producer John 'Spud' Murphy.

RÓIS arrived in their trademark black veil and matching outfit and performed some songs from the hit album and its predecessor "UISCE AGUS BEAN" (its all capitals I'm afraid), which I quite enjoyed.

After a while they left the stage while the support act Harry Hennessy and the drummer (both also veiled) filled in for a bit until RÓIS returned resplendent in red to express the fervent hope that we liked their new direction. I didn't. It consisted of some disco bangers, a couple of drippy MOR duets with Harry and a proggy power ballad. Despite that it was a fun night.

Not as much fun as Saturday though which was when I paid my first visit to Theatreship, a converted cargo ship moored near Canary Wharf. Its an excellent little venue and I will definitely be returning in the future.

The occasion was one of a series of shows billed as the 'Legendary Folk Instrument Series' in which living folkies prise instruments from the cold hands of dead folkies and play tunes on them. The instrument on this occasion was one of John Renbourn's guitars, built by Martin to his own specification.

We were treated to some fine finger-picking by Dariush Kanani, Daniel Burne and Jules Smith but that wasn't really why I was there. The main attraction for me was the chance to see the excellent Angeline Morrison live. She didn't disappoint.

Accompanied by Mr Kanani on the famed guitar, Ms Morrison treated us to a set of songs taken from the two mid 1960s albums by the African-American folk singer Dorris Henderson on which she was accompanied by John Renbourn. The two of them did Dorris and John justice.

Here's a track from RÓIS back when she was still clad in black not red, an original by Angeline Morrison that gives me a lump in the throat ever time I listen to it and a song from "Watch The Stars" that was probably the highlight of the set on Saturday.

"Oh Lovely Appearance Of Death" - RÓIS

"Unknown African Boy (d. 1830) (live)" - Angeline Morrison

"There's Anger In This Land" - Dorris Henderson with John Renbourn

I couldn't find any clips of Dorris Henderson unfortunately but here are the rest of them.  

Single Song Sunday

The series returns after a well-earned summer break and I think it may have caught the sun because there are several things about this edition that are not quite right.

The first is that it is all reggae - does that mean none or all of them count as an MRV? I don't know. The second is that technically the ten tracks below are not a single song. Most of them have the same rhythm track as the original record but a few just sample its most distinctive feature. But Single Plinky Plonk Sunday sounded a bit silly.

The original is "My Conversation", released in 1968 by The Uniques, then consisting of the sublime Slim Smith on lead vocals with Lloyd Charmers and Jimmy Riley on harmonies. There are some decent straightforward covers out there by the likes of Delroy Wilson but I have not included any because, frankly, what would be the point? The Uniques were given that name for a reason.

Instead we will skip forward to 1974 when Bunny Lee, who produced the original record, sold the rhythm track to Rupie Edwards who used it as the basis of one of the first ever single 'riddim' albums, "Yamaha Skank". Shorty The President represents them today. There have been several trillion 'riddim' albums since but very few as good as this one.

After that the 'plinky plonk' motif became ubiquitous for a while. The good folks at Riddimguide have identified well over a hundred examples and I suspect their list is far from complete. I won't go through the rest of the tracks one by one but they are in chronological order with two more from the 1970s, four from the 1980s and Beres from the 1990s.

King Tubby's dub version comes last because as far as I can tell it was not officially released until 1996 on a compilation called "King Tubby's Meets Scientist In A World Of Dub". The following year it appeared as a bonus track on a reissue of his 1975 classic album "Dub From The Roots" so my guess is that it is a mid-1970s cut.

I'll shut up now and hand over to the mighty Slim and the rest of the plonkers plinkers.

"My Conversation" - The Uniques

"President Mash Up The Resident" - Shorty The President

"Barnabus Collins" - Lone Ranger

"Cricket Lovely Cricket" - Jah Thomas

"Jah Forgive Them" - Leroy Smart

"Rocking To The A-Class Champion" - Johnny Clarke

"Its Good To Have The Feeling You're The Best" - Tippa Irie

"Don't Ease Up" - Eccleton Jarrett

"Hey Girl" - Beres Hammond & Josey Wales

"Conversation Dub" - King Tubby

Pun Fun 1: The Theme

As Monday's suggestion for a new competition got such an enthusiastic response (rather too enthusiastic in some quarters) I thought I may as well strike while the iron is hot. We'll see how the first one goes and if it proves popular enough we'll do one a month.

As I explained then, the competition is to see who can come up with the best worst pun in a song title on a specific theme. I set the theme, you submit your song titles, I collate them all into a list for you to vote on and then publish the final 'chart' and announce the winner. 

Before announcing the first theme I will make an undoubtedly futile attempt to establish some ground rules. Here goes:

• Only one entry per person. We can review this restriction for future challenges if we only get a small number of entries but we'll stick with it for now.

• Please send your entries via email to leggies27@hotmail.co.uk rather than put them in the comment section below. All entries on the voting form will be anonymised in order to reduce the risk of partisan voting.

• Any reader can vote, you don't need to have submitted an entry to do so (similar to the Eurovision final when all the eliminated countries still get to have a say in the outcome).

• And finally, please don't: vote for yourself; attempt to get other entries disqualified on a technicality; or complain loudly that your fellow voters are idiots if you don't win. These are all things that happened when I used to do this live. Also don't object if a group of Finnish tourists at the next table ask what is going on and I let them vote as well (covered by the previous rule). 

With all that out of the way it is time to announce the theme for the inaugural Pun Fun (official theme tune: "Pun Fun D'Amour" by Manhattan Transfer - I considered "Pun Fun (Go For It)" by Wham! but rejected the idea because it would have meant rhyming 'fun' with 'fun' in the opening line).

We believe in healthy bodies as well as healthy minds here at 27Leggies, so the theme is: 

SPORTS AND SPORTING EQUIPMENT

Please get your entries to me by Saturday 15 November. The list of runners and riders will be published the following Monday.

You might want to look at this list of officially recognised sports to get you started - although perhaps don't pick a pun about vovinam or galli-danda if you want to attract a lot of votes. 

Or you might prefer just to listen to these songs which may or may not be about cricket. There will be another one on Sunday but for different reasons.

"Cricket On The Moon" - Lee "Scratch" Perry

"When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease" - Roy Harper

The Basin Brims Over

The good folks at Basin Rock records - the pride of Todmorden - have a fairly small but highly refined catalogue which includes albums by the likes of Jim Ghedi, Nadia Reid and Aoife Nessa Frances.

They currently have a limited period special offer on, with all albums except those released this year available for £5 on CD or £10 on vinyl. They don't specify how limited the period is, and it may turn out to last for several years like the DHS sales, but I was not taking any chances. Two CDs have been added to my collection and I may go back for more.

First in the basket was one that was been on my wish list for some time, Johanna Samuels' 2021 album "Excelsior!". The Basin Rock blurb says: "With a special knack for balancing bright pop melodies with a drifting sense of melancholy, ‘Excelsior!’ is a tender and honest document of the importance of companionship above all else". Ernie says: I like.

It was swiftly followed by "Not Even Happiness", the 2017 album by Julie Byrne. The Basin Rock blurb says: "Julie Byrne’s second album adds atmospheric instrumentation and electronic flourishes to her unusual guitar tunings and fingerpicked melodies, moving the songs from the front-porch into subtle anthemia". Ernie says: "I refer the Honourable Member to my earlier answer".

"The Middle" - Johanna Samuels

"Morning Dove" - Julie Byrne

Anyone For Pun Fun?

Good morning all. I'm looking for some feedback from you today. 

Inspired by the likes of Rol and John Medd with their fiendish quizzes and photo challenges I am thinking of introducing an interactive feature to the blog, but because it will rely on having enough people taking part to make it work I thought I would sound you out first.

The idea is to resuscitate a competition I used to organise for my work colleagues way back when I still worked in an office. It seemed to go down quite well then but that may mostly be because it provided an excuse for a few drinks after work, something that would obviously be missing from an online version. 

The competition would be to see who can come up with the best pun in a song title. How it would work is that I would set a theme, you would each submit one entry fitting that theme, I would compile them all for you to vote on and the winner will receive universal acclaim (or derision from embittered losers). 

In the old days they would also receive a prize in the form of a terrible CD from a charity shop, like this one by a group of German urologists full of tunes about urinary tract infections, prostates and the like (this is real). I'll try to think of something equally bad for an online version.

To be clear, we would not be looking for songs that are really about the theme as with Rol's Saturday Snapshots quiz but ones you have pimped for the ride. For example, we had a fish theme and the entries included delights such as "Trout" by Tears For Fears, "Promised You a Mackerel" by Simple Minds and - mainly for the artist's name - "Sole Man" by Salmon Dave. 

Hopefully that gives you the general idea. If you would like to join in let me know in the comments and if enough people are interested we'll kick things off later in the month.

In the meantime, feel free to sing along with these hits.

Newness Abounds

Regular readers will know from the title of the post that it is time for one of our occasional roundups of some of the new records that have been sent my way by the nice folks in Promoland over the last couple of months. There have been some goodies. 

The MVP award goes to Daniel at Force Field who shared three of today's five albums, with the runner-up spot shared by Chad (No Rules PR) and Mark (Clandestine Label Services - its possible I was not meant to reveal that). 

We will kick things off with the only one of the acts featured today with which I was already familiar. That is Sweet Nobody whose third album "Driving Off To Nowhere" comes out on 7 November. You can pre-order it over on Bandcamp, and I would recommend that you also take a listen to their 2021 album "We're Doing our Best" while you are there.

Their blurb says that "Sweet Nobody write anthems for the soft-spoken, the unassuming, the overlooked, and the underappreciated" so they may not necessarily appeal to the raging egomaniacs that make up our core audience. Which would be a shame.

I'm actually familiar with some of the folks involved in the next act, although I didn't realise that until I read their blurb. The Telephone Numbers hail from San Francisco and share some members with The Reds, Pinks & Purples and The Umbrellas, both of whom have appeared on these pages before. Their new album "Scarecrow II" came out earlier this month. Some obvious influences but they make a nice sound.

This particular track "maps the claustrophobic competition of a music scene onto the infamous-among-Literature-majors mystical showdown between Aleister Crowley and William Butler Yeats". So now you know.

We're heading up the West Coast to Portland OR for our next act, Katy & The Null Sets. Their debut album "Troublemaker" came out last Friday and is officially "an album seasoned with angst, sweetness and self preservation in equal measure and via unexpected arcs". Or to quote respected reviewer Mr E. Goggins "this track sounds like Hem in Brazil suffering from occasional bouts of radio interference".

I was inspired to come up with that after seeing an album described as follows: "as if The Shaggs had taken guitar lessons from Tom Verlaine in Montreal in 2025, before forming a band by divine accident". Which album is that you ask? Why, its Hélène Barbier's new album "Panorama". It comes out on 14 November and is a must for all fans of The Shaggs, Tom Verlaine and divine intervention. 

The final new album we're featuring today may well be the pick of the bunch. Its "In Your Long Shadow", the debut album by Lillian King. Like Katy's album it came out last Friday; unlike that album there is no bossa nova. What you get is "slow-burning indie, folk rock, and atmospheric Americana that may appeal to fans of Sharon Van Etten and Big Thief". At last, something I can both understand and agree with! It has been on regular rotation here in Leggies-a-Lago.

"Revenge"  - Sweet Nobody

"Ballad Of Blythe Road" - The Telephone Numbers

"Last Time/ Next Time" - Katy & The Null Sets

"Plastique Couch"- Hélène Barbier

"Context II" - Lillian King

Room With A Vieux

Last Friday night found me at Troxy in London's lively Limehouse being blown away by the mighty Vieux Farka Touré and his band.

Vieux is very much the son of his father Ali, both master guitarists in the desert blues tradition (although some say there wasn't a tradition until Ali and a handful of others invented it). But while Vieux never separates from the past, as Chicory Tip did, he does change and rearrange it into something new, collecting and selecting independent views.

This is more evident on stage than on record. I doubt Ali ever indulged in a bout of heads down no nonsense boogie followed by an extended wah-wah freakout of the sort we were treated to in the final song of the main set.

Vieux was very ably assisted by his three piece band. The bass player was Marshall Henry who is a regular collaborator. I didn't catch the names of the drummer or ngoni player but they were both excellent. The latter had a big old grin on his face most of the evening and was clearly having even more fun than we were.

Here is one track apiece from "Salsa" (2017) and "Ali", the 2022 album on which he teams up with Khruangbin to rework some of his father's old tunes. To complete the circle I've add something by his dear old Dad. 

"Homafu Wawa" -  Vieux Farka Touré

"Tamalla" -  Vieux Farka Touré & Khruangbin

"Penda Yoro" -  Ali Farka Touré

Before we go, a special shout out to my new friends Natalie and James the Ululator who I met at the gig and who very kindly bought me a shot. Admittedly it tasted like cough syrup but its the thought that counts.

If you want to recreate the evening in the comfort of your own home grab the Night Nurse from your bathroom cabinet and settle down to enjoy this hour-long concert by the same line-up recorded a few months ago.