Wednesday February 10th 2010

Having been around a long time before blogs were invented, I can’t help wondering exactly what their function is. For all my life until the arrival of email, the internet, the mobile phone and assorted other questionable toys, I felt that communication was more or less covered. There were phones (albeit broken public ones), in extreme circumstances there were letters, and there was, above all, the now almost extinct act of speaking to other people. If you wanted to know stuff, there were newspapers, the telly and even books. I felt like I knew as much about other people, and what was going on, as I wanted or needed to. In many cases, that included knowing nothing whatsoever about them.

Recently I read that the forthcoming election will be the first one ‘decided by bloggers’. The organ informing me of this then cited a handful of bloggers, of whom I had, needless to say, not heard. I’m willing to wager that nobody but a small coterie of people who pride themselves on being ‘opinion formers’ and their own close families will have heard of these people. And so, rather weirdly, we have yet another example of this great global tool of communication, the computer, having made the world mysteriously smaller, enabling a small number of arrogant nobodies to feel (and for all I know actually be) important.

This leads to the question: what are blogs for? Or perhaps more importantly, who are they for? Are they simply a modern and rather risible version of the parish magazine? In which case, should I be reporting faithfully on what Dave Forristal is currently growing on his allotment or the failure of Owen Houlston’s resonator to win ‘Biscuit Of The Year’?

Or is a blog just another version of one of those awful ‘family newsletters’ that poncy folk used to send around with their Christmas cards not that many years ago? You know, ‘Roger has finally become a partner at Lickspittle & Crawler .... Annabel’s salmon terrine remains the talk of Belsize Park ..... Magda has been invaluable to us and we will miss her terribly when she returns to poverty in Romania ... Piers this year became the youngest pupil in his school to pass advanced accountancy exams ....’

Well, this time I’m going to avoid both the above approaches and write this for people who don’t know anything about the event and don’t know us. So here goes.

A room full of people gathered at the very congenial venue that is the Green Note, and were all there by 8 or so. The purpose of the event was for people to play and listen to acoustic blues music in various instrumental combinations. There is a view that perhaps the most interesting music currently happening in blues is acoustic and this event gives people a chance to hear this kind of thing done (hopefully) very well, in a relaxed atmosphere, impromptu but not at all shambolic.

house band

There is a house band, comprising double bass, mandolin, keyboards and percussion. These musicians, together with any instrumentalists such as harp players who turn up on the night, accompany people who play and sing and therefore ‘lead’ a short set. Those people can request which musicians they want to play with. The scary unpredictability of being put with unknown quantities just about never happens.

The sound is nice and clear, you can hear what everyone’s doing. You can also hear a very wide variety of music, the acoustic side of things being much less samey that the standard electric fare. The music may veer at any given point from prewar blues, to folk/blues, to countryish songs and any other area that might loosely be described as ‘roots’ music. The norm is three songs each, though if it’s very busy (as it was on this occasion) this might go down to two.

Ryan, Charles, Mark, Martin
The evening started with event co-host Mark Harrison kicking off with some of his own compositions, playing his ancient National. He started with a song with mandolin maestro Ryan Carr and double bass genius Charles Benfield. They were then joined by brilliant keyboard player Dave Forristal and percussionist par excellence Martin Holloway for three more numbers. The well of enthusiastic adjectives has now run dry.

First ‘act’ of the evening was Owen Houlston. Owen’s doing his own individual take on prewar blues songs and doing it very well indeed. Nothing standard issue about Owen’s gruff vocals and impassioned resonator playing, which went very well with the house band. The key word here is ‘individual’. Blues at Green Note likes individuals.

Owen

Previous, and welcome, performer James Daniel was up next. He played harp and sang, accompanied by Chris on guitar and Ian on percussion. Charles and Dave joined them too. It was a fine set, Dave’s piano to the fore. James chooses interesting material to do that never gets an outing at a blues jam, and this time he pulled out the great New Orleans song ‘Junko Partner’, definitively done by Dr John on Gumbo.

James & Chris
Good friend of the event and regular Barry Jackson was up next. Another great set, relaxed but tight, the whole house band following the lead and going to all the right places, even if those places are sometimes quite unexpected. Ryan’s mandolin tore the place up, not for the first time.
Next came a newcomer to the event, Simon. He started by declaring that he’d been expecting to play solo and was surprised to find himself wedged on a tiny stage with more people than you can squeeze into a minibus. Dan Sheehan played harp, Ben played guitar for the first time at this event, more or less the whole house band stayed up. It was a rousing set, Simon hitting the bottleneck playing hard and generating great good humour. The audience got involved.

Hayley got up next and sang, very well, a standard. I think it was Love Letters In The Sand, I was a bit busy sorting out how to get everyone fitted in on what was a very busy evening. We had a record 11 ‘acts’, and regular Justin couldn’t get on. He took this very well, in stark contrast to what was going on at probably exactly that point in time at a well-known electric jam not too far away, where the host was in the process of offering what used to be called a ‘knuckle sandwich’ to a stroppy bloke who’d just been told politely that it was too busy for him to get on and do his guitar solo. Blues at Green Note doesn’t encourage stroppy.

Next on stage was event co-host David Atkinson, with bandmate from Dry Bones, Steve Deller. David played his quite wonderful Fraulini 12-string, Steve played a tiple. No, me neither. It’s a rather delightful mini-guitar with 10 strings (I think) that looks a bit like a ukulele but doesn’t sound at all like one, having a very bright sound and lots of poke. David and Steve are top-quality musicians (sse their band Dry Bones if you can) and they divvied up an excellent and really interesting set, one highlight of which was a version of Woody Guthrie’s classic Deportees.

Another newcomer to the event, Phil, was on next, and his was another high-quality set, utilising the skills of various band members, especially Dave, to back up his excellent singing and playing. He was followed by yet another first-timer, John, who played and sang with his wife Jenny also singing and his son on percussion. James Daniel played harp with them, Charles was up there too. They did a version of the blues standard Motherless Child (rather in the Richie Havens mould I’d say) and a song by The Subdudes (great band, check ‘em out). A good time was had by all. And John won the Longest Beard Competition by a country mile.

Now past our usual finishing time, we still had a good crowd and so there was time for Ryan to get up and do one of his own compositions, followed by another of his audience participation numbers. Once again the audience did indeed participate without too much coaxing (nothing worse than a performer sulking because you won’t join in, but this never seems to happen to Ryan).

Ryan
Graham Hinton, regular and fine performer, rounded things off, with most of the band and with Owen also there on his resonator. It was a good way to end the evening, the quality not having taken a dip at any point, and a huge variety of music having been purveyed by all 10 acts. That’s a record, as was the number of people still there right at the end.

Charles, Owen, Graham, Martin

So, a very good one. There was a very good turnout indeed, and the usual excellent atmosphere. Some very fine music was played by some very fine people. Nuff said.

Well, that’s another blog done. I guess the answer to my question about the point of them is that there are all sorts of genres of blog, and that probably none of them matter all that much. But what about the event described in this one? Does that matter much? Hell, yes, by any reasonable measure of what’s important in life.

Mark Harrison

Next one: Wednesday 10th March

Tell as many people as you can.
Bring as many people as you can
Come and play if you want to.
Come and listen and enjoy.
Put a comment on this blog.

Big thanks to Barry Jackson for the sketches and photos.