Home Service reunite, world says “Who?”

The news that Home Service are the latest group to hit the reunion trail has not exactly set the blogosphere on fire as yet. In fact, apart from a couple of mentions on the websites of those involved and the festivals where they’ve already announced they’ll be playing this summer, there’s been practically no reaction at all, which makes a brief note here all the more imperative.

Why do Home Service matter? Simply because they are one of the finest folk rock groups England has ever produced, right up there with Fairport Convention and the Albion Band. Their slim recorded output may not stack up against those groups’ in terms of quantity, but in Alright Jack and their music for The Mysteries they produced two of the key texts of the genre. And the history and line-up of Home Service is completely tangled up with those of Fairport and the Albion Band in any event. Thankfully, that history is recounted in useful detail here, so I don’t need to go over it again. The point is that Home Service represent the continuation and full flowering of the best record the Albion Band ever made, 1978′s Rise Up Like The Sun. The creative mind mostly responsible for that masterpiece was not Albion Band mainman Ashley Hutchings but Derby singer-songwriter John Tams, one of the unheralded geniuses of English music. Without wishing to devalue the contributions of anyone else, it was Tams’ work as singer and musical director, plus the superbly eloquent electric guitar of Graeme Taylor, that made Rise Up Like The Sun such a massively ambitious yet successful record.

And, needless to say, it was Tams and Taylor who carried that success into their next group, Home Service. The only occasions on which I ever saw them were three visits to the National Theatre in 2000, when they were the house band for Bill Bryden’s The Mysteries. I am so, so glad I made the effort to go to all three of those mystery plays (albeit in the wrong order, and not all on the same day – which would have been completely overwhelming). Together, they represent by far the most memorable and powerful experiences I’ve ever had in a theatre. These were promenade performances, with actors and audience mingling together on the floor of the theatre, and by the end of each play everyone was dancing together to the joyous sound of Home Service, who were playing somewhere above on the balcony.

I wish I could give more of a flavour of those three wonderful evenings, but there is hardly anything to prove that they ever really took place. The plays were never filmed, but the original 1985 production, of which the 2000 production was a revival, was filmed in its entirety and broadcast on Channel 4. Those precious tapes have, however, disappeared somewhere into corporate limbo. Never commercially released on VHS or DVD, they may once have been traded among enthusiasts, but the arthouse film website of which I’m a member currently has no copies circulating. There is also, or at any rate there used to be, a CD available of Home Service’s music for the trilogy.  It’s well worth getting hold of, but it comes nowhere near capturing the ecstatic beauty of Home Service at full tilt.

At any rate, the reunion of Home Service has to be one of my most anticipated musical events of 2011. I can’t see them coming to play in Vienna, nor anywhere else in continental Europe for that matter, so a trip to England is definitely on the cards for sometime this year.

Swans Are Not Dead

The news that Michael Gira is resurrecting the Swans name for an album and tour this year is scarcely believable but overwhelmingly thrilling. I just want to bump this piece, ostensibly a review of a 2008 solo show in Vienna by Gira, but really some kind of fumbling towards an explanation of why Swans are so hugely important and special to me. For this and other reasons, 2010 is shaping up to be a beautiful year.

Three saxophonists

This is a great picture; I wonder what they were talking about. Does anyone know the year, location and occasion?

(Photograph © Gérard Rouy)

Geoff Smith and the fluid piano

My friend Geoff Smith from Brighton (see here for a review of the first album by his former group Attacco Decente, and here for a review of his early film soundtracks) has finally realized his ten-year dream of creating a microtonally fluid acoustic piano, an instrument that is set to revolutionize the way we think about and relate to the piano.

The World That Summer

This summertime business is all very well, but I have to say that I prefer winter. Having spent most of the long and hot months of June, July and August in my office cubicle in Vienna, except for two weeks on the beautiful Greek island of Crete, the pleasures of winter seem all the more distant and all the more acute.

Landlocked Vienna is not, despite the occasional pleasures of the Alte Donau, the best place in the world to be in summertime. There’s a distinct lack of pleasant open-air bars and cafés, for one thing, and it would be nice to be able to walk the streets of the 1st district without having to navigate one’s way through throngs of uncertainly pacing tourists. This particular summer is also notable for the fact that large parts of the city are currently being dug up and then laid down again, making life even more difficult than usual for pedestrians. I’ve given up any hope that the dusty wreckage of Landstrasse station will return to some semblance of normality in my lifetime, but maybe before the year is out Graben and Kärntnerstrasse will lose their current resemblance to a vast building site.

I’m also vexed by the question of clothing. An office drone like me has little choice but to wear a suit and tie all year round, which at 32°C is no fun I can tell you. Especially when you leave the office at lunchtime and are seduced by – how can I put this? – the competing distractions of summer fashion.

Sleeping in summer, meanwhile, presents its own unique set of challenges. The night-time hours are riven by conflict: too hot under the bedcovers, too cold without them. Getting to sleep on holiday is no easier, as I’ve recently been discovering. You have a choice between lying awake sweltering in the night-time heat, or lying awake listening to the incessant wheezy hum of the air conditioning unit. All told, I sleep far better in winter than I do in summer.

For me at least, winter can’t come soon enough. Let me dream of going to Peter Brötzmann concerts wearing my old, baggy black jumper, and of walking the streets feeling the satisfying crunch of virgin snow underfoot. Let the coldness of the air freeze my breath and make my cheeks and fingers tingle. Let me part the deep red curtains that guard the entrance to Café F———, and enter its warm embrace to settle down with the Guardian and the perfect melange. Let me dream of once again walking down Schönlaterngasse late at night and being the only person there.

In memory of G.E., 1 February 1931–30 June 2003

Six years ago today, my mother flew away.

I just want to reproduce the text from the Book of Ecclesiastes that I read at her funeral. I first came across this text on Current 93′s “Hitler as Kalki” EP, at the end of which there is a recording of David Tibet’s father reading it.

“Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;

While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain:

In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened,

And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low;

Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:

Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”

Man assaulted by police dies on the streets of London

I’m not in the habit of making this kind of post, but I’m sickened by this film of a man being assaulted on a London street by a so-called police officer. This vicious and unprovoked attack took place in the middle of a demonstration which the man himself was not taking part in. A few minutes later the man died of a heart attack, leaving a woman without her husband and a man without his father.

Esbjörn Svensson 1964-2008

Just a quick note to mourn the passing of Swedish jazz pianist Esbjörn Svensson, who has died at the appallingly young age of 44. I saw EST twice, once at the Barbican in London and once at the Dome in Brighton. They were awesomely strong both times, with Svensson’s piledriving piano leading the jazz trio into wholly unexpected and joyful places.

Svensson did a huge amount to bring jazz to a younger and wider audience, using the framework of the rock concert to make jazz sound fresh, raw and accessible. His trio were pretty damn unique, and he has left us far too soon.

hello

I felt like making a website where I could put all the things I’ve written about music in one place. So here it is.

Most of the album reviews I’ve written (mostly for The Sound Projector) are on the site. There’s also previews (not much use, I know) of past live concerts in Vienna, taken from my monthly column for Ether, live reviews and a few letters to the press.

By the way, don’t expect too many updates to this site. I’m not going to be posting album reviews here regularly. The site is more like an archive, really. Still, I hope you find something of interest. Let me know what you think, please.

Carla Bruni, Quelqu’un ma dit

I read today – OK, I’m slow on the uptake – that the French singer Carla Bruni has finally married President Sarkozy after a short romance. With this news, her public profile continues to increase. She is someone I’ve admired for several years; I went to Paris in July 2003, trying to get my head straight after the death of my dear mother, and through a friend’s recommendation discovered her first album, Quelqu’un ma dit. It’s an album that has never been far from my mind since then, due to the lingering effects of Bruni’s wistful voice, romantic lyrics and fluid guitar. I very much enjoyed the fact that, because she sang in French, she hadn’t been through the British media circus. Until her relationship with Sarkozy began, Bruni was little known outside France, and to the best of my knowledge had played few concerts elsewhere. It was as though she didn’t much care for widespread British and American acceptance, and I loved that. Although the album was no doubt massively popular in continental Europe, I still felt like it was “my” album.

I had high hopes of the follow-up, No Promises, but sadly have been a little disappointed by it. In the first place, it’s sung in English. No doubt Bruni doesn’t need much help with her public profile any more, but I hope the decision to sing in English wasn’t made out of a desire to engage with the UK and US “markets”. And secondly, it’s not an album of original songs but a collection of settings of poems. I can’t fault the selection – Yeats, Auden, Dickinson – but still I can’t help wishing that Bruni had penned another set of lyrics to sit alongside the peerless romanticism of the first album.

Anyway, what with Valentine’s Day coming up and all, here’s a rough-and-ready English translation of Carla Bruni’s best song, the lorn and lovely “Quelqu’un ma dit”:

Someone told me our lives aren’t worth much
They pass in a moment, like a dying rose
Someone told me time is a bastard
making an overcoat of our sorrows
Someone told me
that you still loved me
Could it be true?

Someone told me destiny mocks us
it promises everything and gives us nothing
it seems that happiness is within our reach
so we hold out our hands and we find ourselves mad
Someone told me
that you still loved me
Could it be true?

But who was it that told me you still loved me?
I don’t recall, it was late at night
I can still hear the voice, but I can’t see the face
“he loves you, it’s a secret, don’t tell him I told you”
you see, someone told me
someone really did tell me
that you still loved me
Could it be true?

This translation © Richard Rees Jones 2008.