You Must Be From Away

>Mix and Match #3

Getting good by now – steep learning curve.

This runs to 90 minutes and 11 seconds and it must have used every single molecule of CrO2 on the fucking tape.

High fives all round when the tape started rolling at very instant the needle hit the groove.
You know how it feels.

It’s pretty clear that I’m a pushover for a slide guitar – Joe Walsh, Nils Lofgren, Lowell George, David Lindley are all here. Ry Cooder hasn’t turned up yet.

Chris Rea would come as a surprise in this auspicious company. Admit it, you’ve pigeonholed him somewhere as….what?

“My friend put on a record” says Chris. “It was Joe Walsh. Suddenly the sky lit up. I remember looking out of the window at the sunset and thinking ‘this is it’. I went out and bought a guitar and a slide. Instant cure for depression. I was like a child with his first paint box and a blank piece of paper.”

Good enough for me.

Cenotaph-Letter from Amsterdam is – for me – the absolute standout of the tape.

It’s got everything

Dynamics, emotion, lyrics, wonderful Tubular Bells guitar overlays, slide guitar, the raging voice, manic accordion, “My back pages” melodies turn up for “The town square’s disappearing in drifts up to my knees”, clean cut off. Broad Yorkshire accent.

Beat it if you can

The rest isn’t too evil either..

Cliff Richard crawls out the pit of utter disdain with “Rock and Roll Juvenile”, Nils Lofgren stopped me on the spot in a fashion boutique in Oxford Street (aaaah, fashion boutiques, those were the days…), Peter Frampton’s Wind of Change was an excellent LP.

When I showed my mate Peter Wroe my latest treasure – Rick Danko’s first post-Band LP – he said ” You’re aware that we’re the only 2 people in the UK who are going to buy this, don’t you?”

I have no idea what came over me to include Phil Collins. My abject apologies.

But I absolutely know why Maggie May’s in there – it’s the ultimate sway-along-boozing-song.

You’d be down the pub and “Maggie” comes on the jukebox and the place would be filled with a rhythmic wave of heads and shoulders in time with the song.
And then there’d be the 39 seconds of relative silence, swaying glasses raised, from 3:54 where Ray Jackson from Lindisfarne comes in with the mandolin and Ronnie Lane does his nifty bass line, air-drumming and much spilling of beer at 4:32 (because you’ve temporarily forgotten which hand’s holding the glass and which the fag) when Micky Waller boomboomboombooms back in, some more spillage at 4:45 (another sloppy fill from Micky, with some BOOMBOOM bass drum) and then some slurred falsetto hoo hoo hoooo-ing along with Rod at 4:54 and then it’s time for another round.

That’s why Maggie May’s in there. Great stuff.

And here they are on Top of the Pops with the wonderful John Peel.

All as pissed as we were.

Maggie May – Rod Stewart
Rock ‘n’ roll juvenile – Cliff Richard
I ain’t much – Atlanta Rhythm Section
Things – Joe Walsh
Cenotaph-Letter from Amsterdam – Chris Rea
One Love Stand – Little Feat
Can’t get closer (wcgc) – Nils Lofgren
Marina del Rey – Marc Jordan
Real life ain’t this way – Jay Ferguson
Wind of change – Peter Frampton
Road hawg – Joe Ely
In the air tonight – Phil Collins
Love Needs A Heart – Jackson Browne
Taking the long way home – Valerie Carter
Two trains – Lowell George
Don’t look back – David Lindley
Neal’s Fandango – Doobie Brothers
Took the last train – David Gates
Wondering where the lions are – Bruce Cockburn
New Mexicoe – Rick Danko
Hold Out – Jackson Browne
Are you sure Hank done it this way – Waylon Jennings

Mix & Match #3.mp3 85MB 1:30:11

And here’s Cenotaph-Letter from Amsterdam as a separate track. You deserve it.
And Two Machines – a mashup of Lowell George’s “Two Trains” and Girls Aloud’s “Sex Machine”

>This is a Neumarkter Lambsbräu Hefeweizen – my first unfiltered wheat beer of the backyard season. 5.1 RPM. Organic, of course. (Eat your heart out, Croz.)

If I’m honest, I actually prefer Erdinger, but that prick Beckenbauer advertises for them and I refuse to have anything to do with any product he endorses.

Of course, if he starts cooperating with Saab, I’m stuffed….

>Essential knowledge

A “dag” is – as Wikipedia so tenderly points out…”wool on a sheep’s rear contaminated with mud and fæcal matter”

And I always thought it was the shitty bits of wool around a sheep’s bum……

Live and learn.

When dry, they click together when the sheep runs, hence the expression “Rattle yer dags” – Tell the rest of the family to get a move on.

A “dag” is also a character.
As in “He put a mouse in his girlfriend’s handbag. He’s a bit of a dag, that bloke”

Fred Dagg is the character created by satirist John Clarke – the prototypical black-singletted, gum-booted New Zealand dairy farmer. His monologues – and folk songs – are firmly entrenched in New Zealand urban culture.

Solar energy
Hamlet
Star of Wonder

“We don’t no how lucky we are” – in its original version – has been expunged from the catalog by the PC police.
I think it was the penultimate verse that did it…..

A reviewer noted: “This song doesn’t have much of a tune to it, and since it is generally sung when everybody is drunk, the tune doesn’t really matter”
I was speaking to a mate of mine
just the other day
A guy called Bruce Bayliss actually
who lives up our way
He’s been living in Europe
for the year, more or less
I said “How was Europe, Bruce?”
He says “Fred, it’s a mess”

Chorus
We don't know how lucky we are, mate
We don't  know how lucky we are,          

I was down
the Plough and Chequebook,
the night before last
There's a guy down there on the floor 
with his brain at half-mast
I said "You're looking really bad mate
your eyes look like strings"
He says "Get me an eight will you please Fred
I can't see a thing"

Chorus

Me stock agent’s got a beach place
where he spends most of his days
His wife bit the dust down there last year
got eaten by a couple of crays
And his two littlest daughters
got killed by a whale
I said “Are you going down there this year mate?”
He says “Fred, right on the nail”

Chorus

Me father-in-law’s been feeling
pretty pleased with himself:
He’s been living in Greece
for the good of his health.
I said, “How was the climate?
And how was your year?”
He says, “The climate’s too hot,
you can’t get a beer,
The sheilas look like blokes, and of course
the blokes are all queer,
and if you want a really good time,
you might as well live here.”

Chorus

So if things are looking really bad
you’re thinking of givin’ it away
Remember New Zealand’s a cracker
and I reckon come what may
If things get appallingly bad
and we all get atrociously poor
If we stand in the queue with our hats on
we can borrow a few million more.

Chorus

>

This may be heading us deep into trivia territory, but it might give the world an idea of the iconic status that Tim enjoys in New Zealand.

Big new winery opened in Havelock North in 2003, big open air concert to celebrate with folks traveling from all over the country. (We were there from the other side of the world, but that was more coincidence than planning…). That’s the view of the natural amphitheatre (aka sheep paddock…) and the winery from Te Mata peak.

Tim Finn
Kiri Te Kanawa
Ed Hillary

Lots of people will say “OK, rock singer, pass, pass”

Kiri Te Kanawa‘s is the classic “Maori kid from the East Coast makes it huge” story. Adopted as an infant and having been born into an indigenous society that – more so back then than now and it’s not good these days – doesn’t give you much of a kick start in life. “Whalerider” country.
So if Covent Garden, the Met, La Scala, Washington National Opera, Paris Opera, Sydney Opera and the Vienna State Opera mean anything to you, you’ll already know how good she is.
And if you don’t, then listen to her reading of Vissi d’arte from Puccini’s Tosca and you’ll understand.

Ed Hillary was the first man – together with Tensing Norgay – to climb Mt Everest.
Came down and said “Well George, we finally knocked the bastard off”.
He’s the only living New Zealand to appear on a banknote. The image of the $5 fills the street front of NZ’s equivalent of the Fed in Wellington.
Beekeeper.
Too shy to propose to his future wife, so he asked her mother to do it on his behalf.
The first man to stand at both poles as well as the summit of Everest.
Spent years building schools, hospitals and bridges in Nepal.
He’s still listed in the Auckland phone book.
He’s New Zealand’s moral pinnacle.
He once called for more honesty in politics, to much aggravated moaning from the political class and cheering from the rest of us.
America just doesn’t have an equivalent.
No-one does.

Tim sings a duet in Maori with Kiri and then kicks into a set (“wound up like a two bob watch” as he put it at the time) with the Dirty Creatures that was amazing. “I see red” – this is from the Bic, Tim and Dave live concert – was unforgettable.

And Ed Hillary tells it like it was 50 years earlier.
“We got up there and there was nothing but space in every direction. We had reached the top of the world”
He’s here in a BBC interview later that year.

So for Tim to be on stage with these two….

Well, if you were to ask him, I think he’d have difficulty getting the words out.

>“When St. Peter asks me to chronicle the highlights of my time down here on earth, I’ll be able to say (with pride, if that’s allowed) that for a while I played rhythm guitar in a band with Albert Lee.”
Emmylou Harris wrote that.
She should know.

Albert Lee
– was voted Guitar Player Magazine’s “Best Country Guitar Picker” five times
– won the 2002 Grammy for best Country Instrumental Performance
– was in a band called Heads, Hands and Feet in the early 70s. Landed what was at the time the biggest record advance ever offered to a
band – half a million dollars up front..You can get their CDs on Amazon for upwards of 100 bucks. If you’re lucky.
– Played guitar [Under the falling sky] on Jackson Browne’s eponymous (or “Saturate before using” – take your pick) album
– was in Emmylou Harris’s Hot Band [Luxury Liner]
– toured with Clapton for 5 years
– worked with Glen Campbell, Dave Edmunds, Dolly Parton, Joan Armatrading, Ricky Scaggs, Joe Cocker, Willie Nelson, Linda Ronstadt,
Rodney Crowell, Vince Gill, Travis Tritt, Earl Scruggs, Nicolette Larson, The Everly Brothers, The Crickets and Bo Diddley
– Tours with Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings

And I bet you’ve never heard of him

I’m lucky. I saw him first with Bill Wyman at KUZ in 2004 and I saw him again last night (for the third time) at what used to be the village movie theatre in Lorsch (and is now the Rex Musiktheater. About 3000 square feet, bistro tables and bar stools for the very geriatric, “backstage” for the band is the old projection room upstairs, so they move through the crowd to the minuscule stage. Good camouflage. They’re about our age. They could be us.
Jeff Beck’s played there. So have Plant and Page. Paul Carrack’s there next month. As is Colosseum. And The Yardbirds. And and and.

Two and a half hour set with his mates (Hogan’s Heroes).Country shuffle, boogie, hardcore flat-out picking.
Everything from his own stuff [Payola Blues] to Everly Brothers [Brand new heartache] Presley [Don’t], Buddy Hollie [Ollie Vee] Beach Boys [Only with you], Johnny Burnett [Tear it up] Ralph Stanley [Man of constant sorrow] Hoyt Axton [Evangelina],Jerry Lee Lewis [Wild One], Motown [That is rock’n’roll] Delbert McClinton [Two more bottles of wine] and Richard Thomson [Dimmin’ of the day]

Just the nicest guy. Comes out after the show, flogs and signs CDs (and the set list I got from Ian, the mixer man) and chats away.

And he’s so fast.

Even with the shutter speed set at 1/2000, his fingers are still a fucking blur….