2021 – Let’s hope it’s a good one, without any fear

Happy New Year comrades. I hope you have enjoyed the Christmas break and are looking forward to a better year. I expect I am not alone in being glad to see the back of 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic cast a dark shadow over pretty much the whole year. 2021 sees us back in lockdown but with various vaccines offering a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel.

We Brits also begin life outside the European Union. Even as a fervent Europhile, I’m glad that it has finally been resolved so that we can start to get used to a new reality. My big worry is that our divorce from Europe results in a rabid growth in political populism. Populists depend on having enemies, be they real or imagined, to deflect from their own shortcomings. If Brexit fails to deliver the huge economic benefits its proponents promised who will be to blame? For a short time problems will be blamed on ‘Johnny Foreigner’. That can’t last long, after all we’ve got we wanted…………..haven’t we? My biggest fear is Boris Johnson replacing Donald Trump as the face of populism. The parallels are disturbing. BJ has become known for spectacular U turns, just ask Marcus Rashford. Who can forget him lambasting Opposition leader Kier Starmer for daring to propose that he follow scientific advice and impose a two-week national “circuit breaker” lockdown for England in September. In October he announced a month-long national lockdown, saying “no responsible prime minister” could ignore how bad the situation had become……………….no shit Sherlock!!!!!

Bozza has already out trumped Trump when it comes to cronyism. Remember Dominic Cummings flagrantly flouting lockdown rules early in the pandemic? He justified a trip to Barnard Castle by saying that he was worried about his vision and therefore his ability to drive back to London. In order to try it out he drove his 4 year old son on a 40 mile round trip!!!!!. Boris believed in him and he kept his job. Home Secretary Priti Patel was accused of bullying. A cabinet office enquiry, the results of which were ‘sat on’ for months concluded that she had broken the ministerial code of conduct, however, Boris Johnson ignored the findings and ruled that she did not break the code. As a result, she kept her position. Last but not least, good old Boris announced he had given a peerage to the Tory donor Peter Cruddas, in defiance of advice from the House of Lords. Earlier in the year he awarded a peerage to his own brother. Boris makes Don look like a saint!!!

I’m sure that Bozza will be yelling ‘fake news’ at critics and will refuse to talk to ‘those lefties at the BBC’. I dread Britain’s youth arriving back in European beach resorts this summer, drunkenly singing Rule Britannia and threatening bemused locals. I equally dread the SNP forcing and winning a second independence ballot thus effectively breaking up Great Britain………………Still,  Boris will get to wear a red MEGA baseball cap , MEGA being ‘Make England great again’!!!

There is plenty to cheer about. Biden will hopefully re-embrace the Kyoto treaty giving a vital boost to tackling climate change. Hopefully Joe will reverse the insular politics of Trump and once more America will become the leaders of the free world. While Trump turned inwards, Russia and China started to spread outwards. Biden may not be the greatest president but hopefully one that re-unites his country and the western world.

If the vaccines deliver, hopefully we can start travelling again. 2020 saw slim pickings for us. Overnights in Liverpool and Sheffield plus a week in Halifax were all very enjoyable but how we yearned for more. The only gig we saw last year was Elvis Costello.

We have tickets to see Chuck Prophet at the Met in Bury in June (a gig twice postponed due to ‘Rona) and the Slambovian Circus of dreams in August at Greystones, Sheffield. I’m sure there will be many more gigs as venues reopen and bands resume touring. As I type, I’m listening to Margo Price who I dearly hope makes it over to the UK this year.

In a spirit of optimism we have re-booked our USA trip which was cancelled in June 20 (another Rona victim). We are off to Texas and California in September and look forward to seeing friends and family on their home turf. I can’t wait to spend an afternoon ‘In the Chilli parlour bar, drinking Mad dog Margaritas’ with the ghosts of Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark. I look forward to drinking Jack and Cokes with the ghost of Lemmy in the Rainbow bar and grill in LA and raising a glass to Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison in Barneys Beanery.

I can’t wait to get back to Liverpool and maybe even squeeze in a trip to London. A gig at the Trades club in Hebden Bridge is a burning ambition for 2021.

Closer to home, I can’t wait to attend another meeting of the CRAFT club. We have taken to convening in the Old Friends in Ulverston and staying there until the rules of membership have been met.

On the music front, 2020 delivered some great albums. I have collated my personal top 10 for your delectation. I would love to think that some of you will put aside any preconceptions you may harbour and check some of them out.

Rough and rowdy ways – Bob Dylan

It’s extraordinary to think that Bob’s career is into its sixth decade! If there’s one thing Rough and Rowdy Ways will be remembered for, it’s for its first single, and Dylan’s longest studio track to date, “Murder Most Foul”. Provided its own side to itself, and allegedly recorded “a few years ago”, the idea of a 17-minute Bob Dylan song about the assassination of John F. Kennedy sounds unlikely to say the least. Thankfully, Bob is at the top of its game for this experiment. Taking his point of view from himself, to the assassins, to the car itself playing topical music through its radio; Dylan is able to build an entire world around this singular American tragedy.

There are too many highlights to draw attention to any more songs. Bob Dylan’s lyrics at times seem too eerily prescient, musing on the mortality of man and the loss of innocence. Given the state of the world in 2020 and that Rough and Rowdy Ways was recorded before the height of COVID-19 and the death of George Floyd, it feels like Bob could see the way the world was turning.

(324) Bob Dylan – Murder Most Foul (Official Audio) – YouTube

Fetch the bolt cutters – Fiona Apple

Fiona Apple’s fifth album reminded me of Swordfish Trombones by Tom Waits in the way that it marked a radical departure from her previous output. Fetch the Bolt cutters is a stark and raw album, instrumentation is mostly Apple’s piano backed by offbeat percussion. It’s the lyrics that make this album. The abuse of women is one of her themes. Here, For Her contains one of Apple’s most eyebrow-raising lyrics. “Good morning, good morning/ You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in,” she snarls. The track was written in the aftermath of the accounts of sexual assault given to the US senate judiciary committee, which failed to block the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the supreme court.

Relay, meanwhile, swaps between a cheerleading chant and R&B. It’s a spectacularly acerbic song about refusing to indulge in the game of acrimony. “And I see that you keep tryna bait me,” pouts Apple, “and I’d love to get up in your face/ But I know if I hate you for hating me/ I will have entered the endless race.”

The title track rues the mistakes Apple made as a younger woman, and bridles at those who controlled her. She invokes Kate Bush, another artist who became famous very young and quickly outgrew the confines of pop.

“I grew up in the shoes they told me I could fill,” Apple sings, “Shoes that were not made for running up that hill/ And I need to run up that hill/ I will, I will, I will.” If this engrossing album opens with one kind of breathless climax, Fetch the Bolt Cutters ends with Apple panting, having finally crested the summit.

Thank you to the Guardian review which drew my attention to this great album and encouraged me to buy it ‘unheard’.

(324) Fiona Apple – For Her (Official Audio) – YouTube

The Unravelling – Drive by truckers

This album saw the DBT give a state of the nation address to America in 2020. Lyrically, the album is filled with rage: about school shootings (Thoughts and Prayers), immigrant children (Babies in Cages), the opioid epidemic (Heroin Again), the manufacturing of anger for political ends (Grievance Merchants), and “working hard for not enough” (21st Century USA). In an interview to promote the album, band leader Patterson Hood described a situation where “My daughter was in a lockdown drill at her school last week, she was locked in a closet with 27 other kids for over 20 minutes, not knowing if it was a drill or not. It’s to prepare for if someone comes and starts shooting up their school.” Bandmate Mike Cooley says “We’re starting to ask questions now, ‘Are we inflicting trauma on these kids, on the off chance this could happen?”

It’s a dark album that may alienate some of their fan base in the USA but in my opinion addresses issues that ‘normal folks’ are faced with. The (apparently equally dark) follow up The New OK is released in the UK in early January and I can’t wait to hear it. I also look forward to an album of unbridled optimism influenced by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris!!

(324) Drive-By Truckers – “Thoughts and Prayers” (Official Lyric Video) – YouTube

That’s how rumours get started – Margo Price

That’s How Rumours Get Started is the third studio album by Margo Price. The album was planned for release on May 8, 2020, but was postponed following the outbreak of the coronavirus. … The album was released on July 10, 2020. Coincidentally my birthday!

At 37 Margo Price has already lived enough to fill a book. Her parents lost their farm when she was a toddler in the mid-80s downturn that provoked the Farm Aid benefit gigs. Her musical career was jump-started by a psilocybin-fuelled psychedelic epiphany. Her early years on the Nashville side-lines saw her reduced to petty theft in order to survive,  involved a period sleeping in a tent, the death of her infant son, the latter precipitating a descent into whiskey-fuelled chaos that culminated in a car crash and a brief stay in prison. Self-funded, the recording of first album Midwest Farmer’s Daughter was a last roll of the dice that Price pawned her wedding ring for.

Thankfully Jack White pricked up his ears and listened and set Margo on the road to success.

This is her third album and I’m glad to report that success has not dampened the acerbic lyrics. I can’t wait to see Margo tour this album in the UK.

(324) Margo Price ‘That’s How Rumours Get Started’ – The Blues Kitchen Presents… – YouTube

Heart’s ease – Shirley Collins

Shirley Collins was one of England’s foremost Folk singers of the sixties and seventies. Following a painful divorce in 1978 Collins lost her singing voice and retired. In 2016 Collins returned out of the blue with the critically lauded album Lodestar. Heart’s ease is a more confident album and is an absolute joy to listen to. At 85, Shirley Collins managed to deliver an extraordinary album.

(324) Whitsun Dance – YouTube

Bonny Light Horseman – Bonny Light Horseman

Bonny Light Horseman are a collaboration between singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell, Eric D. Johnson from the Fruit Bats,  and multi-instrumentalist Josh Kaufman, based around traditional pastures.

On their self-titled debut, the trio reimagines centuries of standards for our fractious political climate, making old chestnuts feel new.

The land that time forgot – Chuck Prophet

I was really looking forward to seeing Chuck Prophet but the show we had tickets for was cancelled twice due to ‘Rona. It is now scheduled for June 2021……….fingers crossed!

In the meantime I made do with chuck’s new album. Recorded in the Catskills as it has become too expensive to make an album in his San Francisco hometown

A great set of songs about his country that fans declared a triumph. Even though there is liberal use of drum machines I loved Chuck’s latest.

Off off on – This is the kit

This is the Kit were formed by Kate Stables when she moved to Bristol. Now domiciled in Paris, she delivered her fifth album in 2020. Produced by Josh Kaufman of Bonnie light horseman, Off Off On was a worthy addition to an already impressive body of work.

Working Men’s Club – Working Men’s Club

Working Men’s Club are a young band whose leader hails from Todmorden in West Yorkshire. A line-up change saw the band evolve from a guitar band into a New Order-type rock-electronic hybrid. There are shades of fellow Yorkshire luminaries Human League and Pulp on this assured debut with the closing track Angel evoking Hawkwind. I look forward to watching this group develop. Mega stardom beckons methinks.

(326) Working Men’s Club – John Cooper Clarke (Official Video) – YouTube

Old Wow – Sam Lee

Sam Lee’s third album was one of the Folk music albums of the year. Produced by Suede’s Bernard Butler it also features a spine-tingling duet with the Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser on Wild Mountain Thyme. Another performer who I look forward to watching their career develop.

As I completed this blog Boris Johnson declared in an interview on the Andrew Marr show that Tier restrictions ‘probably about to get tougher’. FFS Boris just get on with it!!! Stop dithering man, every day’s delay will cost another 1000 lives. We did lockdown last year and all experts concurred that if we had done it earlier many thousands of lives would have been spared.

Don’t despair Brothers and Sisters. We can get through this. Focus on the positive and look for the light at the end of the tunnel. There is a Puerto Rican word – Pa’lente that means Go Forward.

(326) Hurray For The Riff Raff: ‘Pa’lante’ SXSW 2017 – YouTube