Discovering Nick Drake

THE other day I spoke to Joe Boyd, the Britfolk impresario, because of his new tribute record, Way to Blue. The album is in honor of Nick Drake, who Boyd helped discover way back in the late '60s, and whose career was delicate, melancholy and all too short.

Today, Drake is revered not only be neo-folkies but by the leading jazz musician of my generation, pianist Brad Mehldau.

Boyd, of course, also had a role in Newport '65, the birth of Pink Floyd, Richard Thompson and Fairport Convention, AND produced what may be our favorite R.E.M. record, the enigmatic third album Fables of the Reconstruction.

Boyd got his start as a preppie New Jersey teenager who helped coax blues and jazz great Lonnie Johnson out of retirement.

Here is my conversation with Boyd, whose memoir of the musical '60s, White Bicycles, I cannot recommend highly enough.

Richard Thompson's "Cabaret of Souls"

HIS tunes are famously dark. But anyone who's paid attention to Richard Thompson's between-song banter, or seen his semi-comic 1000 Years of Popular Music, know how funny the guy can be. (He was beaten only by Hendrix for The Misread City's poll of favorite guitarist.)

So we wasted no time checking out his Cabaret of Souls, a theatrical staging of the Underworld that is sort of an oratorio, sort of a rock concert with strings, sort of a medieval torture, and sort of like a talent show in hell. And while it's not quite perfect, it's also far better than I'll be able to make it sound, and either the weirdest great show I've seen recently or the greatest weird one.

I'm not going to try to describe the plot of this strange hybrid of a beast except in barest terms. The audience is swept into the narrative even before they enter the hall -- at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica (snazzy arts center, by the way), the parking attendants and ushers wore devil horns. The band -- a chamber orchestra, basically -- limps out like a gang of zombies. A costumed Harry Shearer serves a narrator.

From there, we get a series of songs, some sung by Richard, some by Welsh folkie Judith Owen, some by others, in a variety of styles. Some characters represent variations on the Seven Deadly Sins -- gluttony, pride, and so on. Among the best of these was a gangster's moll whose song, "My Dave," was both tuneful and filled with the kind of self-deception Richard's songs are known for. Is there a songwriter better at capturing the lies we tell ourselves? Cabaret of Souls took advantage of his knack for creating widely disparate characters.

The music was in a huge range of styles, and I'm glad to report that in almost all the songs, it was still possible to hear the wonderful chiming fills he got from his acoustic guitar. (Still baffled how he gets that tone -- I've even played the Lowden guitar designed for him and cannot get close.) Also at this staging was double-bassist Danny Thompson, a Brit-folk hero since his days with Pentangle and a fruitful, longtime Richard collaborator of no relation.

Some concerns: There's an archness and mean-spiritedness to some of the characters that was jarring at the very least. (A few moments recalled the moralism of, say, Roald Dahl.) This was a quasi-medieval setting, and Richard's work is all drawn from the grim and unforgiving world of British and Celtic folk music, so perhaps it was in tone with the show's origins. It was still a bit jarring.

And the piece gets going quite nicely about 10 minutes or so in, but seems a little confused at first as we get various introductions to where we are, what's going on, etc. The piece has, I'm told by friends who saw the Royce Hall performance, been improved and made more theatrical since then. It could still use a bit of refining, I think.

But Cabaret of Souls was also funny, musically adventurous and at times, perhaps in spite of itself, genuinely moving. Richard Thompson continues to confound us.

Britain's "Electric Eden"

THE best of it still sounds as fresh as the day its long-haired practitioners pulled out their mandolins and plugged in the amps: British folk rock is one of the great unsung stories, at least in this country. The new book, Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music, gets at the movement's greatest musicians -- Vashti Bunyan, Richard Thompson, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, Bert Jansch, Anne Briggs, many others -- and connects them to currents deep in British literary and cultural life, including the resistance to industry, the flight to the landscape and the search for a distinctively British (and sometimes pre-Christian) culture.

HERE is my LA Times interview with author Rob Young, former editor of Wired magazine and clearly a major Brit-folk obsessive. He was inspired to write about music by Revolution in the Head's Ian MacDonald's book on Shostakovich and sees the aim of music writing as deciphering cultural codes.

This is a wonderful and well-researched book, though like the music it chronicles, it rambles a bit. It's hard to imagine an American publisher allowing this much backstory -- William Morris, Holst, druids, etc. (The book is put out by FSG in this country but is primarily a reprint of a Faber and Faber book published previously in the UK.)


And while this was not the book's primary goal -- which was to chart the late '60s/early '70s heyday of British folk rock -- I would have liked to see a bit more on the contemporary scene. Gen X West Coast artists in particular -- Stephen Malkmus, The Decemberists, Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart -- have been voracious at consuming and reviving this stuff otherwise ignored by the marketplace. (It recalls to me the way Boomer musicians both in Britain and America helped bring black blues figures -- Lonnie Johnson, Son House, Mississippi John Hurt -- back into the light in the '60s.) 

Here are some bits from my conversation with Young that did not make it into my Times piece:

Which recordings or artists from the classic period seem to hold up best?

I guess that's a cue for some of my personal favorites. If you allow that the classic period is 1969–72, which I call the Indian summer of folk-rock, then I'd have to mention Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left, Incredible String Band’s Wee Tam And The Big Huge, Fairport Convention's Liege And Lief, John Martyn’s Bless The Weather and Sandy Denny's The North Star Grassman And The Ravens. 

All very different: Drake is Romantic in the original sense, and his "River Man" is a haunting and supernatural vision, with the ghostly string arrangements of Harry Robinson. Martyn is ecstatic and almost funky, using his Echoplexed acoustic guitar for the first time in scintillating patterns. Fairport's album is one of the cornerstones of modern English folk, with rocked-up ballads and wistful, melancholic songs written in a traditional idiom. 

ISB are on a personal quest, and their album pulls in all kinds of ethnic and exotic instruments in a panoply of world religions and spirit codes. Denny's LP is loaded with omens and her songs are autumnal, washed by the unruly sea of fortune. I could have chosen many more but this is a radiant selection that couldn't have come from anywhere else but Britain. 

The Incredible String Band

Where can we hear the legacy of this period in contemporary music? Did it leave any traces in mainstream – or not so mainstream – culture or thinking in Britain or the States?

Well, I hear it in all sorts of unexpected places -- the weirder side of Kate Bush, the pulverising, organic avant rock of late Talk Talk, even the uncanny electronic reveries of Boards of Canada. But this is not too much about the folk tradition any more, more a shared set of sensibilities that tap into the complex British relationship with the landscape, with memory and nostalgia, the constant longing to reconnect with a more innocent age. 

Interestingly, the musicians who I find most convincingly replicate the sound world of classic folk-rock tend to be Americans -- Joanna Newson, Devendra Banhart, Espers, Matt Valentine's various projects... There seems to be an empathy in musical terms there – whereas it's hard to find current British folk music that doesn't sound trite, but which preserves some of the mystery, the occult presences that the best folk contains. 

R.E.M., Britfolk and White Bicycles

A lot of us are excited that Fables of the Reconstruction -- R.E.M.'s most poetic and mysterious album -- has just gotten a deluxe reissue complete with remaster and new material. Much of the weird, echoey Southern Gothic mojo on that 1985 album came from Britfolk producer Joe Boyd, and I'm reminded how great Boyd's memoir of the '60s and early '70s, White Bicycles, is.

In fact. I will second the statement of Brian Eno, who calls it "a gripping piece of social history and the best book about music I've read in years."

I knew Boyd's name for his work with Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson, Vashti Bunyan and Nick Drake. Boyd was an American college boy who went London while very young and helped invent British folk rock. He met Drake when the sad poet was a lost Cambridge student. He also ran the London psychedelic club UFO which helped birth Pink Floyd.

What I hadn't known was that Boyd got his start as a teenager -- whose friends had discovered that the great Lonnie Johnson was working as a cook in a Philadelphia hotel, tracked him down and invited him to play a house party in Princeton before they left for college.

Within a few years he was accompanying Muddy Waters and Coleman Hawkins through Europe as part of the early '60s boom in blues festivals... And Boyd became stage manager for the 1965 Newport Folk Festival at which Dylan notoriously plugged in. The book puts him close to much of the action, in a kind of Zelig-like way.

Of course, all of this would be a kind of glorified name-dropping if Boyd could not write and observe so well. White Bicycles is as good a document as I know on the social revolution of the '60s -- the utopian dreams and musical possibilities as well as the drug casualties and damage done by kook religions.

In any case, here is one book where I am quite eager for the sequel.

Let me close with Fables for a second. This was the first R.E.M. record whose release I was aware of -- and I remember the bizarre, muted beauty of songs like "Green Grow the Rushes" and "Maps and Legends" on the local alternative radio station, and the weirdly understated video for "Driver 8." It was around time I started to open my own taste up from the steady and fervent diet of Beatles-Stones-Dylan to the music of my own time.

And while R.E.M. went on to put out at least two records I feel strongly about, there's something on Fables they never captured again.

Favorite Guitarists, on Reflection

Since he is widely considered the finest rock musician on any instrument, it's hard to be surprised that Jimi Hendrix won my guitarists poll quite handily. (Is that sound disgruntled Keith Moon fans smashing things in the background?) But there were some surprises along the way.

To review, this poll asked people for their favorites -- a house- burning-down grab, not the most important historically or otherwise. It came from a less formal poll I took among friends and on Facebook to determine the six finalists.

One of the surprises was the enigma of Hendrix. As I've made clear, he needs no defense for me, and he more than DOUBLED the votes of the runner up. But I was struck by the number of people -- musicians and music critics, not casual fans -- who told me that Hendrix's songwriting and singing took him down a notch in their estimate, or that his playing was too flashy. (I would retort with much of Axis: Bold as Love to any of those charges.) The fact that some people voted, for instance, for Neil Young over the mighty Hendrix slightly baffles me. I found myself, incredibly, having to defend the man's work!

I knew that the great white-blues-Boomers -- Clapton, Jeff Beck, Page and Richards -- might not fare terribly well here. In part, that's because many of my Gen X peers came of age at a time when these axe-men, however formidable, had been played to death on "classic rock" radio. (In some ways our ears have been "colonized" by Boomer taste in all kinds of ways.) All said, surprised to see Richards -- the least clearly virtuosic of this crowd -- yielding the most votes.

Surprising also was the strength of Richard Thompson, who came in second. There were certainly guitarists a little older, some a lot younger, some to the left of him (in terms of dissonance or experimental flair) and many to the center of him. But he seems to hit a sweet spot for the readers of this blog. As I've said before, he's a Boomer Xers love, a Brit at home on the American West Coast -- an oddly hybrid and genuinely wide-ranging artist.

(I was reminded of this last night by a very fine RT show at Largo last night. That was one set of Thompson with a band trying out his very British upcoming album, followed by a second set of classics -- going as far back as Fairport's "Time Will Show the Wiser," including an acoustic "Al Bowlly's in Heaven" which tempted me to stop playing forever, and closing with the full band augmented by Teddy and Kamila Thompson, singing along with their father in the parts originally sung by their mother, Linda. Thompson's soloing was stunning and unpredictable thoughout, with its weird blend of Django, Chet Atkins, Britfolk and Sufi modalism.)

Thompson was followed by Neil Young, who were followed by Young, with Richards and Robert Quine (who bridged punk and alt-rock with sessions for Matthew Sweet and Lloyd Cole) tied. Nels Cline, who did better as a semi-finalist than he did on the full poll, came in sixth. Not bad for someone who was only known to fans of avant-rock a few years back; thank Wilco for that.

And here I will come out of the closet re my own tastes. Here are my favorites. Of course, it's a list that changes a little every week:

Hendrix, Richard Thompson, Roger McGuinn, George Harrison. Robert Quine, Peter Buck, Johnny Marr, Kevin Shields, Thurston Moore, Stephen Malkmus, Doug Martsch, Django Reinhardt, Alasdair MacLean, John Fahey.

This poll was only for rock guitarists -- I may run another on folk, jazz or blues guitarists.

Comments, please, folks.

Our Favorite Guitarists

SOME of you -- especially if you are a musician, music writer, or serious listener -- have already taken part in my informal poll of favorite guitarists. This was conceived not exactly as a historically rigorous greatest-of-all-time but the work you'd grab either if your house was burning down, or to take to the proverbial desert island. (I'm aware that these are two slightly different categories, one spurred by an instant craving the other by the opportunity for eternal contemplation. Can some musicians offer both?)

In any case, I have very roughly compiled the results. I'll admit that my method was unscientific and personally biased -- these people are friends or at least peers of mine. I allowed myself one vote, like anyone else, tho I think I will not post my own ever-changing list quite yet. And, most of those polled were born between the late '40s to the late '60s -- that is, we have fans who came of age with the British blues boom voting alongside those who grew up with college radio, alt-rock, indie, and so on. Some were primarily blueshounds or jazzheads; one is a critic of classical music.

Some generational patterns, of course, are apparent, and while most Boomers voted for Clapton, Page, Beck, Richards, etc. it wasn't enough to launch more than of them into the very top tier. Perhaps appropriately, the very highest vote getting musician is an eclectic and atypical Boomer with a significant Gen X/ alt-rock following. I was also surprised that Hendrix -- perhaps my favorite and certainly the greatest of all time -- did not simply shut down all opposition.

With no further ado, here is the list -- I don't think a difference of a single vote is significant, but this is in order of votes attained. (I have posted a poll on the right margins, using the top six names here as finalists. Sorry, folks, if your hero not on list -- I can only go to six.)

Richard Thompson
Nels Cline
Jimi Hendrix
Neil Young
Robert Quine
Keith Richards
Thurston Moore
Wes Montgomery
Roger McGuinn

Let me point out that the top four names on this list are all West Coast figures -- though of course Thompson grew up in England while Hendrix made his name there, Young is originally Canadian, etc. But Roger McGuinn is as solidly grounded in LA rock as you can get.

Some others came close -- Johnny Marr, Robert Fripp, Peter Buck, Pat Metheny, Pete Townshend. I'm struck by the huge amount of talent and huge range of styles in just a few names.

Marking Six Decades for Richard Thompson

THE godlike guitarist and peerless singer-songwriter richard thompson turns 60 today.

thompson is in my dont-get-me-started category of musical obsessions: i've loved his work since i was a teenager and songs like "valerie" and "a bone though her nose" were showing up on alt-rock radio. when i dropped into his back pages i was riveted; speaking to him over the years has been a real education.

Here -- one of my proudest moment from my on-again-off-again music journalism career -- i talk this englishman about his decades living in los angeles, and about how they have and havent changed him.

but for those new to the party, RT is the former guitarist for british electric folk band fairport convention, who after a fruitful (and painful) partnership with wife linda went off on a solo career that has to be seen to be believed. i mean that literally: seeing RT live, esp in a solo acoustic setting, is about as close to a religious experience as your humble blogger can report.

in a nutshell, his song takes the tradition of english/scottish folk (he played guitar on some of nick drake's finest tunes, incl "time has told me") and bends it around chuck berry, chet atkins and sufi modalism. he's an encyclopedia of guitar styles, but it doesnt come across like pastiche. his songwriting is often heartbreaking, other times wryly funny.

play around on youtube for him -- a solo valerie, a solo 1952 vincent black lightning, and i misunderstood following a quick interview. (and after a similar interview, perhaps his finest acoustic song, beeswing. fans of acoustic guitar might enjoy this 07 ucla rendition of cry me a river.)

i will shock and appall many for saying this, but compared to that other LA-based singer-songwriter bob dylan, i would take RT's output of the last 25 years over st. bob's any day of the week. the englishman has certainly not done anything to touch "highway 61 revisited" or "blonde on blonde" or a few others. but his work since the mid-70s has been very fine and there are not troughs like there are with dylan's career.

either way, i will hoist an english pint to this non-drinking sufi tonight.

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