Sound & Vision IVb........

'Summer's End' 

is a hill 

bleared by rain 

a first trembling  

wind 

the memory 

that into autumn's room 

winter will dip a glass 

hold up darkness  

to a chittering lantern 

moon. 

(Gerry McGrath)

And so, with September amongst us, here is the codicil to my cultural meanderings. August is the month of my birthday and my presents this year included the very wonderful painting of Gram Parsons by Jon Langford that introduces this article. I particularly love Gram’s work and I think Jon, whose music I have similarly adored for the thick end of 35 years, has produced a quite superb visual tribute to that awful trustafarian arsehole as my dear Laura insists on calling the Grievous Angel.

Also for my birthday, Ben was kind and considerate enough to allow me to take him and Laura to Barca in Tynemouth for fine food and the finest wines known to humanity as a warm up for his Amsterdam sojourn. However, I have nothing but praise for the lad after a fine set of AS results and a wonderful birthday present in the shape of a vinyl bootleg of Jimi Hendrix recorded live in Stockholm on May 24^th 1967. This was the night before Celtic’s Lisbon Lions won the European Cup, but I’d rather have been in the audience in Sweden, as Jimi puts down some of his finest tracks; the version of The Burning of the Midnight Lamp is wonderful enough, but this take on The Wind Cries Mary is without doubt the finest thing that Jimi ever recorded. The whole set is astonishing, with Hendrix clearly starting to outgrow the Experience and starting the improvisation that would lead on to The Band of Gypsies. Ironically, there are still are few nods to his earlier show band days, in the shape of cover versions of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and a very fine instrumental Sunshine of Your Love; a wonderful present from a very fine young man. I’m obliged son.

I’m similarly obliged to Trembling Bells and especially Lavinia who designed it, for the superb poster for The Circle is Unbroken tour with Mike Heron, which is now framed and hanging at home as well.  Next year, Laura is treating me to a ticket to Cropredy Festival, for my 50^th; don’t worry, we’re not camping as I’ve booked us into The Brasenose for the duration. Hopefully, Fairport will invite Trembling Bells to play, which would be my version of heaven I must admit. Trembling Bells are, unfeasibly, supporting Paul Weller in October, but not in Newcastle, which is a double edged sword; Alex offered Laura and I guest list spots, which is lovely (even though we can’t make the Carlisle gig), but the thought of being in a room with 2,000 Paul Weller fans makes me queasy.

In the meantime, with 49 weeks until Cropredy, I kept in the spirit of things by treating myself to the vinyl release of Maidstone 1970, a kind of documentary soundtrack to Fairport convention and Matthews Southern Comfort playing a free festival in Kent. Matthews Southern Comfort do a wonderful version of My Front Pages to close the disc, but the real highlights are the Full House line-up Fairports doing an all-too-brief Now Be Thankful and Sir Patrick Spens. Ah man, Richard Thompson and Dave Swarbrick on stage at the same time; what a fantastic show that must have been. I can only hope for something similar next summer in Cropredy.

One person who would despise English folk music is Jimmy Rabbitte, once the manager of The Commitments and second eldest son of the Rabbitte clan who Roddy Doyle has so memorably kept us apace with through the 5 novels (count them) that have told the saga of the Barrytown family. In the latest edition, The Guts, Jimmy is 48 and still grimly hanging on to the frayed coat-tails of the Celtic Tiger by selling downloads of obscure 70s Irish punk bands to nostalgic 40 somethings; more importantly Jimmy has bowel cancer. Luckily, he survives it and meets up with former Commitment, the terminally ill Outspan, heads down to the Electric Picnic in Stradbally, County Laois, gets totally wasted and sees his eldest son’s band steal the show ahead of all other bands. Perhaps his biggest epiphany is that he actually likes Christy Moore, but that’s what being face to face with death can do for a man.

Like every Doyle novel, the dialogue is a joy and a pleasure; pages fly by without you realising or even imagining this is fiction and not the lives of people you know and love. Roddy Doyle is perhaps the finest living exponent of the spoken word and character exposition; the genuinely touching scenes between Jimmy and his dad Jimmy Sr will strike chords with every middle aged male who picks up this book. What is even better is the hint that because there is so little about the rest of the clan, then Doyle must return to them again soon. A simply wonderful novel, by a simply wonderful writer; and he liked it when I told him that on Facebook as well!! Although, that contact was almost dwarfed by an email from David Peace.....