ROBIN & BINA WILLIAMSON - Half Moon, Putney. 19.7.17

Watching Robin Williamson perform with his wife Bina last night at the Half Moon in Putney was a deeply moving and thought-provoking experience. The Half Moon, once a proud bastion of British folk, has long since succumbed to the deadly virus of tribute bands. A character like Williamson is definitely a throwback in terms of the pub's promotions. Nevertheless, having taken the punters money, it seems not unreasonable to expect that the venue will provide a properly functioning PA system and a competent sound engineer to operate it. Sadly, this was not the case. 

So I looked at Robin Williamson playing the Scottish harp to a small crowd of folk music lovers. This man, 73 years old, who has been a professional musician for over 50 years, with a discography and bibliography so large it makes the Incredible String Band (for which he is most famous) seem like a minor diversion sometime early in his career. I watched him play and I listened to the melodies, some of them hundreds of years old. I noticed how he played none of his old songs (he has literally hundreds), relying instead on the Celtic Bardic tradition that he loves (and that loves him) and on terrible jokes and marvellous old stories (tonight we were treated to a parable on youth and death from the book of the High Deeds of Finn McCool), I marvelled at the casual brilliance of his musicianship - he plays guitar, violin, Scottish harp, mandolin - and I wept, ladies and gentlemen. Of course I did. 

Interesting to compare and contrast with his old ISB partner Mike Heron, whom I saw in Scotland last Autumn. Heron relied almost exclusively on old ISB material, even including one of Williamson's songs. Heron sang them with joy and not a trace of nostalgia. It was clear that the songs were still very much part of him. Williamson, on the other hand, makes no nod to his own past at all. His music, rooted as it is in ancient tradition, is entirely in the present. You can easily see how, with the best will in the world, these two approaches are no longer compatible and that the commercial fact that Heron and Williamson could play bigger venues and command much bigger fees together than they can apart is just completely irrelevant to Williamson. He turns up in his car and humps his own gear. His wife Bina sings in a strange and compelling Indian style - all the more so as it is applied to British folk. She plays the psaltery and the saz and the autoharp. Her rhythm is beautifully stately, Williamson in his eagerness sometimes has to wait for her, and the rapport between the two of them is a joy to watch. 

But Robin Williamson... He is so much the real deal it hurts. This is where the Celtic Bard fits, or doesn't fit, in London 2017. Go and see him if you can, if you care. Because when he's gone, when it's gone, that's it. 

Having said that, he looks healthy and happy and I have confidence he will be carrying on his vital work for a good few years yet. A part of the legend of Finn McCool has it that if a day goes by when Finn McCool's name is not mentioned, then the world will come to an end. Maybe the same is true of Robin Williamson.

Donovan's 70th Birthday Party

Thoroughly enjoyed attending Donovan's 70th birthday celebration at the Palladium last night - courtesy of Garth Cartwright who said I was the most 60s person in his address book and therefore had to attend. I'm glad I did. Donovan is irrepressibly, one might almost say *remorselessly* himself at all times and he seemed in excellent spirits this evening as he attempted to provide the audience with the ambience of an early 60s beatnik cafe. In this he was surely successful, thanks in no small measure to the efforts of a Swedish classical guitarist whose unassuming manner belied his formidable technique. A lifetime's work has gone into those renditions of popular pieces by Albeniz and Tarrega et al. Next up was a poet who read a section of "Fern Hill". How difficult Dylan Thomas's poetry seems nowadays, so far removed from its source. But then - hooray! - Michael Horovitz shambled onstage and delivered a long anarchic poem full of kazoo interjections. At over 80 years old, he gave us a genuine display of the energy and irreverence of the beat era that did a lot to dispel the air of cosy nostalgia.

Then came Don. He did all the hits of course. His trademark slow vibrato was a bit wobbly but he warmed up after a few numbers. His guitar playing lost the groove here and there but it really didn't matter. The expert jazz rhythm section, featuring Don's arranger John Cameron on piano, rescued him each time with effortless grace and no small amount of affection. Best of all were the between song stories. The tale of the Billy Fury b&b was worth the price of admission in itself. Don is a first class raconteur in the Celtic Bard tradition (a tradition he claims, with some vigour, as his rightful inheritance). He is a benign egomaniac, basking in the love of the faithful, a true survivor of a gentler age. He threw Iris's into the audience at the end. Of course he did. Such good taste in flowers. It seems all is well on Planet Donovan. Bless him.

Musically, I noticed for the first time the similarity between "Season Of The Witch" and "I'm Waiting For The Man". One is about scoring heroin in Harlem, the other about beatniks making it rich. One seems to have proved considerably more durable than the other. And Andy Medhurst will be pleased to hear that Don opened his set with "There Is A Mountain" and Juanita the Mexican drag queen was called for with due urgency. Sadly, she did not appear.

A very enjoyable evening - thanks again to Garth Cartwright

(The vintage playbills at the Palladium are worth a visit in themselves. Such a treasure trove of British entertainment. A testament to the times when playing The Palladium was just about as good as it got.)

Patti Smith: Live in London July 3rd 2004

PATTI SMITH: 

London, Brixton Academy, July 3^rd 2004

She looked good. Thin, as ever. Hair just as wild and not noticeably grayer than last time, a little shorter perhaps. She opened with the title track to her new album, “Trampin’, which with anyone else would be a cliché but with Patti Smith  means a short and slightly eccentric little ditty for voice and piano. This dispatched, she bounds into the business proper with the full electric guitar onslaught of “Stride Of The Mind” – also from the new album – which the visual backdrop reveals to be a song about Simon Of The Desert, the biblical character who was the subject of a short film by Bunuel. Patti always wears her cultural references on her sleeve; she revels in them, and invites her audience to do likewise. This is no small part of her appeal and her uniqueness. Her voice is a tad road-weary but she’s in a good mood tonight, grinning broadly, eyes shining, and she seems genuinely tongue-tied with pleasure at the love that emanates from her audience - which is split roughly equally between male and female, old and young. That’s a shame in a way, because a lot of us love to hear Patti talk and tell a few yarns. Never mind. “People Have The Power” yells out a solitary drunken bozo at one point, and at this Patti stops everything and responds: “I remember that,” she says, “I remember that. I remember a million people in London marching in the cold. I hope you do that over and over and over and over...” her voice trailed from the microphone. Then deadpan: “maybe you could have a barbeque…” 

This changed the mood and Patti worked herself into a frenzy on a long rendition of “Gandhi”, another tribute to a hero off the new album. It was a surprise in that the last couple of times she has played London, she has been relatively calm, and now she was getting quite dangerous as she flailed around, breaking strings and knocking things over. Earlier, she had recalled glory days with a version of  “Break It Up” from her very first album “Horses” – which she dedicated to Jim Morrison - it being, as she pointed out, the anniversary of his death. As she pounded her own breast for the weird vocal effect in the last verse, I thought how magnificently brave she was, and still is. She is a complete original who has maintained a reasonably successful career in the music business for nearly 30 years and who has never sold out: she has always remained true to her particular vision of poetry and rock’n’roll. That in itself is remarkable enough, but on the basis of her performance this evening, it would seem that, at 58 years old, she still has sufficient energy and passion to create work that can stand comparison with her best early songs.

Still, it’s the oldies that get the crowd and no mistake. Whilst the new material is listened to and received respectfully enough, “Free Money” is wildly acclaimed as the anthem it always has been and the final encore of “Gloria” is a terrific blast of purest rock’n’roll faith and devotion. The notorious blasphemy of the opening manifesto is delivered clearly and defiantly. I’d heard that Patti had had problems with it in the past. Maybe she has lost her faith in light of the extraordinary damning denunciation of the Iraq war that is “Radio Baghdad”.  I can think of no other comparably successful artist in the rock field who has made such a powerful statement of condemnation. Against a startling backdrop of images from the Ancient Middle East, Patti and her musicians (Lenny Kaye and Oliver Ray on guitars, Tony Shanahan on bass and piano, J.D. Daugherty on drums) work up a Shamanistic improvisation with Patti alternating between half-sung, half-spoken poetry and very odd but strangely effective clarinet playing. Finally she arrives at the phrase: “Robbing the cradle of civilization” and she repeats it over and over. It’s very effective: it’s good poetry and it’s powerful music. It’s been a very long time since anyone tried to incorporate John Coltrane into a rock’n’roll setting – in fact, I think the last person who tried was Patti Smith. When it works, it’s superb and when it doesn’t, it’s just a noise. But it’s a brave noise, a tough noise, a noise that means what it says. Talking about the music, it’s a delight that Patti is using piano again, if only sparingly. Maybe next time she’ll revive “Birdland”. Let’s hope next time isn’t too long because Patti Smith really is a performer to treasure, and she is very much loved and appreciated in London. 

Adam Blake. London