review

BBC4 “Showbands”- an Irish cultural phenomenon explained

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By Veronica Lee, The Arts Desk

Ask most people what a showband is and they’ll give you a blank look. But ask any Irish person (or those born in the Irish diaspora) who is north of 50 and they will probably look misty-eyed. For between the late 1950s and 1980s showbands were a huge Irish cultural phenomenon, and Ardal O’Hanlon was our amiable guide through this brief but illuminating history of them.

Taking a break from his Caribbean sojourn in Death in Paradise, in Showbands: How Ireland Learned to Party O’Hanlon explained that Ireland in the 1960s was very different to the young, outward-looking country it is now – poor, mainly agricultural and rural, and living under the yoke of the Catholic Church. America had Elvis Presley, and the UK The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but none of these acts played Ireland’s small rural villages – and out of this musical vacuum came showbands, whose sets were a curious musical hybrid of covers of pop, country & western and traditional Irish ballads.

Showbands were distinct from the four-man beat combos elsewhere; they were larger for a start, typically numbering between six and eight: drums, guitars and brass, fronted by a lead singer who was usually the cutist-looking fellah. As O’Hanlon said: “They were versatile, hardworking mobile jukeboxes in shiny suits.”

O’Hanlan, who is from the border county of Monaghan in the Republic, got in a VW camper van to travel around the island of Ireland (showbands were a cross-cultural, cross-border phenomenon) to recreate the days when the musicians would chuck their instruments in the back and drive from gig to gig, six days a week. It was an unnecessary contrivance, as he spoke to his interviewees when they were both safely ensconced on sofas.

Initially, the bands played in church halls, managed by the local priest (who would measure the distance between couples to make sure the Holy Ghost would be able to fit between them), and where nothing stronger than soft drinks (“minerals” as the Irish have it) were served.

But pretty quickly promoters realised there was money to be made and commercial dance halls started springing up all over the place. At their peak, it is estimated there were more than 600 showbands working in Ireland – including the Royal Showband, the Miami Showband, Big Tom and the Mainliners, and Margo and the Keynotes – and they were household names, regularly pulling crowds of more than 1,000 people to ballrooms, six nights a week.

O’Hanlan spoke to several members of the best-known bands, who spoke with affection about their time on the road, not just in Ireland but in the UK too. Anywhere there was an Irish community there was a dance hall and many showbands were as popular here as back home. Some, like the Royals and the Miami, even went to Las Vegas, though with differing success.

O’Hanlon pointed out that showbands managed to work through the Troubles in Northern Ireland – their fans, from either side of the religious divide in Northern Ireland, didn’t care they were from the Republic. As Steve Travers of the Miami Showband said: “A showband is a perfect blueprint for integration,” while his bandmate Des Lee said: “We stayed away from politics. Our aim was to deliver two hours of entertainment.”

But then sectarianism did affect them. On 31 July 1975 when the Miami Showband were returning to Dublin late one night from a gig in County Down, a group of loyalist paramilitaries from the Ulster Volunteer Force attacked their van, killing three of the band. Some would read the attack as the beginning of the end for showbands, but in truth it was Ireland’s steps towards liberalising licensing laws – bars and hotels could now serve alcohol while live bands were playing, for instance – that did for them, as well as a new wave of emigration from Ireland’s rural areas, which took away much of the showbands’ fanbase.

There was little in the way of backstage gossip and it was a lot to run through, but O’Hanlon, with some excellent archive material and interesting reminiscences, made this an enjoyable hour.

Source: Showbands, BBC4 review – an Irish cultural phenomenon explained

Watch the complete BBC Four documentary

Robert Wyatt “Maryan”

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One of Robert’s great, subtle, riverine songs

By Rino Breebaart

There is a special, resonant magic that happens when a song’s lyrics and melody mingle and merge. Take the gently meandering poetry of “Maryan” off [Robert Wyatt’s] Shleep album. The lyrics unroll and bend with the melody like a river unrolling to its delta. There’s a tonal consistency to the song, a timelessness like a drone with downstream force ― addressing only its own flow (cue Wagner’s Rheingold prelude). It’s a beguilingly complex-as-simple song structure that comprises a long melodic verse, and some equally long instrumentals over basic but unexpected chord changes. There is no chorus, and then the verse is repeated ― the last word ‘Maryan’ stretching and rising in extended harmony. But it’s one of the longest verse-melodies in the business ― I think only Prince’s “7” comes close in duration ― and there too a distinct chorus is lacking, unnecessary. The lyrics and words pitch and bend to conform with the colourful melody just as the sound and vibe of the song remain harmonious with the natural setting. 

Over an ocean away,
Like salmon…

Actually, the salmon isn’t going downstream but back to the icy source of the river. Which is a woman. It’s a lovely dream-like tension of thematic undercurrent and execution. Unhurried, layered with trumpet and violin, harmonious like a small ecosystem of song. Circle of life stuff. Vaguely Joycean. And perfectly tuned to the subconscious themes of Shleep. Inspiration and return to nature via art.

A note should be made of the great run of Wyatt albums beginning with Shleep: Wyatt is singular in a way that’s difficult to transcribe ― he’s one of the most musical songwriters in a way that takes from free jazz and prog and pop, and yet he makes completely satisfying albums (in the old school sense) that are as intelligent as they’re artistic. He has more genius than tradition. He is an internationalist, a player in all styles living in Britain; wholly self-made and maturing on an ongoing basis. I’m tempted to call him the Dylan of Britain as there are touches of the 60s experimentalist about Wyatt, and I wanted to parallel his run of albums with Dylan’s late explosion from Time Out of Mind on ― but by revealing contrast, Dylan’s recent run is a devolution to genre whereas Wyatt’s is a true extension of the craft ― stretching and trialling free experiments of melody and form. His a wonderfully active musical brain. A song scientist using moody, disconcerting chords, gnomic impressionism, bemused wit and tender dilation as his alchemic tools. Singular and yet containing multitudes, as they say.

Source: The Slow Review

Review: Oysterband / June Tabor, Bristol Beacon – ‘A hell of a goodbye”

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photo Matt Congdon

It’s a magical last show from the band that are taking a long, long time to retire

By Gavin McNamara

After 45 years of touring, folk-rockers Oysterband have decided that the time is right to retire. They are, of course, taking a long, long time to say goodbye with a huge tour that spills well into 2025 – and they’re bringing along a special guest too.

The three albums that they have made with June Tabor are absolute cult classics, Tabor adding her depth, her gravitas, her subtleties to a band always best experienced live.

And so it is this evening, on a night of saying goodbye to Oysterband, June Tabor steals the show.

As soon as she steps, haltingly, on to the stage, Tabor is the focal point. On Mississippi Summer the harsh, dust choked fields are evoked with ease, Tabor exuding desperation and defiance as Ian Telfer’s fiddle flickers around her.

That fiddle seems to course through Tabor, sending jolts of energy into her frame: she grows as it plays, becoming an utterly commanding presence. It is, as she says, “one hell of a song”.

There are times when she spits out lyrics, unable to contain the fury that seethes within. On Bonny Bunch of Roses, taken from the classic album Ragged Kingdom, there’s disdain and an almost unspeakable power to her.

She may not move much but when you have a voice that can convey love and hate, joy and dismay in the way that she can, who cares? All the while Oysterband creates a huge storm around her, Sean Randle’s drums the prelude to a deluge.

It speaks volumes that, on their own farewell tour, there are moments when Oysterband leave Tabor on stage to sing solo. Les Baker’s Roseville Fair is entirely unaccompanied, darkly humorous and show-stopping, the story delivered with a wink and a sly grin. Hills of Shiloh, simply performed with Alan Prosser’s acoustic guitar, is heartbreaking, a remembrance of war soaked in emotion.

Perhaps, though, it is when everyone is on stage that the power of these seven brilliant musicians is felt most strongly. Susie Clelland sees the boys in the band massing around Tabor, their voices buoying her up along with some foot-tapping folk-rock.

Trad favourite, John Barleycorn, is muscular, driven by Telfer’s fluid fiddle. Sweet Sixteen is a capella, seven voices swelling, warming, enveloping. It is glorious.

There are contemporary(ish) cover versions too. All Tomorrow’s Parties sees fiddle and cello buzzing and thrumming around Tabor’s skeletal take on the Velvet’s classic. An encore of Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit is suitably psychedelic, as forgotten words fall down a swirling rabbit-hole.

It’s Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart that is nothing short of remarkable though. In the hands of June Tabor and Oysterband’s singer, John Jones, it becomes the ultimate lovegonewrong song. It’s even more creepy, even darker, even more restrained than the original and all the better for it.

Tabor, occasionally, takes a break and when she does Oysterband are left to say goodbye in their own way. Where the World Divides, River Runs and Roll Away are wonderfully solid folk stompers, choral harmonies and a beautiful interplay between fiddle and cello effortlessly inspiring grins and handclaps.

Jones’ voice is strong, only wavering when, every now and again, the emotions of farewell get too much. For All That Way For This, the six range across the stage, shuffling drums and mandolin showing that Oysterband are capable of fun as well as heart-string tugging.

By the time Put Out the Lights rolls ‘round there are people in the packed Beacon with tears streaming down their faces. Not only will this be the last time we get to see Oysterband on a Bristol stage but, between Jones and Tabor, every emotion has been comprehensively wrung from every person in the place.

It was a hell of a way to say goodbye.

 

Source: Review: Oysterband / June Tabor, Bristol Beacon – ‘A hell of a goodbye”

Review: “Georgy Girl” Is No Feminist Statement

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By Mark Fraser

Viewed with a proverbial pinch of salt, Silvio Narizzano’s Georgy Girl (1966) is what UK-based media commentator Leanne Weston aptly calls “a comedy of manners turned social critique set amidst the backdrop of ‘Swinging London’”.

It is also, Weston adds in her 2018 essay on the film, “about a world and a girl in transition”, in which the titular character Georgina “Georgy” Parkin (Lynn Redgrave) is portrayed at different times as either “an object of inspiration, affection or ridicule”.

More to the point, though, she is also seen as an object of desire, and it’s this treatment of the protagonist that gives the film’s narrative a sinister undertone as it pretends – in line with The Seekers’ song on which it is partly based – to be a tale about liberation and individualism when in fact, behind its genial facade, it is really one concerning incarceration and servitude.

Or, to put it another way, there’s quite a bit of unpleasant subtext at work in this movie.

Sure – the awkwardly individualistic Georgy has undergone something of a transformation by the end of the film as she achieves what appears to be a form of compromised marital bliss.

But how she gets there does, at times, touch upon the highly dubious.

During the first third of the story, for instance, Georgy’s father’s rich employer James Leamington (James Mason) – a childless businessman who insists he always looked upon her as a daughter while she was growing up in his house – suggests they enter a written contract whereby she becomes his mistress (this while his wife Ellen, played by Rachel Kempson, is dying). Oddly, despite balking at this generous offer to effectively be his whore, by the movie’s conclusion she has ended up marrying the man – an act which allows her, in the words of The Seekers at least, to become “a new Georgy girl”.

Meanwhile, Georgy’s in-residence butler dad Ted (Bill Owen) more or less pimps her off to his boss (admittedly this is only suggested in a brief exchange of dialogue; nevertheless the implication is there), reaffirming his and his wife Doris’ (Clare Kelly) fear that their lone offspring is an awkward loser whose only real hope in life is to attach herself to some well-to-do gent.

And, before she eventually ties the knot with Leamington, the hitherto virginal heroine has an affair with Jos Jones (Alan Bates), who has just married her roommate/best friend Meredith (Charlotte Rampling) after the latter becomes pregnant.

To complicate matters, following the baby’s arrival a bitterly post-natal Meredith – who has already aborted previous pregnancies with Jones – decides she will adopt the infant out, at which point Georgy steps in as the surrogate mother. In effect this not only allows her to strengthen her connection with the soon-to-be divorced father, but also forces her to lie to the UK Government’s social services agency in order to keep her “daughter” Sara (actor unknown).

But when her happy-go-lucky lover irresponsibly throws caution to the wind by quitting his stifling job at the bank, Georgy has to reassess everything and, it’s at this point, she decides the lecherous old Leamington (who’s actually only 49) is the better option. Unfortunately, this development looks like it too may eventually be fraught with difficulty when – just as the newly-weds are being driven away from the church ceremony – her husband’s face seriously drops as it dawns on him that he hasn’t just secured a new (and much younger) squeeze who he has known since she was a baby, but will now have to compete with someone else’s child for his bride’s affections.

Thus, how their life of marital bliss will pan out becomes one of the story’s big unknowns as it’s here that the end credits roll. If anything, it is likely much of the above-mentioned unsavouriness dogging Georgy’s existence will continue as she embarks on what is in no way a certain future.

Mixed message

Georgy Girl

While this might sound like a grimly sanctimonious interpretation of a movie which, in many ways, tries to pass itself off as a melodramatic comedy, the conclusion is still inescapable – the ugly duckling heroine may have become something of a swan, but she ultimately looks set to remain stranded in the same stagnant pond. Or, to put it bluntly (and contrary to what the plot might otherwise be suggesting), it’s highly unlikely there will ever be a completely satisfactory existence for this woman.

In her above-mentioned essay on the film, which is included in the promotional material accompanying Powerhouse Films Ltd’s Blu-ray release of Georgy Girl, Weston acknowledges it does not treat its leading character “with warmth or hold her in such high regard” as audiences of the day did. Rather, “she is side-lined in her own story”; an interesting observation given Redgrave, in real life (and, one might add, quite unfairly) received third billing behind Mason and Bates.

“From today’s vantage point, Georgy just seems like an ordinary girl: vivacious, flawed, yet lovable – someone we could be friends with,” the critic says. “And that’s what makes the film so interesting.”

Perhaps. However, it’s also arguable that much of the movie’s intrigue stems from the fact its outlook is decidedly brutal. No one in the film, for instance, seems to have a particularly strong moral compass. Furthermore, at the end of its cinematic day, Swinging London is portrayed as a dead end; a place where wanton hedonism may be commonplace, but the privileged class still gets what it wants so long as it’s willing to pay the price. Thus, as a commentary about what was then the emerging youth culture’s attempt to distance itself from a stuffier (read older) generation, Georgy Girl actually turns out to be quite pessimistic.

This begs the question: is this what the film makers – particularly screenwriters Margaret Forster (who wrote the novel on which the movie is based) and Peter Nichols – set out to do?

Possibly, but it is quite difficult to ascertain as the quirky and upbeat feel of the whole narrative doesn’t seem to have an overtly ironic (or tragic) bone in its bubbly celluloid body.

Interestingly, Redgrave more or less agreed that the film’s portrayal of her character was not exactly positive when being interviewed by journalist Howard Maxford back in 1996.

“George (sic) is quite ruthless really,” she said. “So it is an immoral story, but George was such a survivor that people identified with her.”

Survival, though, comes at a cost – something, it seems, which may have been lost on progressive audiences of the day. As for contemporary viewers who embrace the values of the Me Too movement, they no doubt will find very few redeeming values in this ultimately sexist tale.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Leanne Weston: “Good Girl, Bad Luck: Morality and Performance in Georgy Girl”, Powerhouse Films Ltd promotional booklet, 2018, pp 5-13

Howard Maxford: “Making Georgy Girl”, Powerhouse Films Ltd promotional booklet, 2018, p 28

Source: Review: “Georgy Girl” Is No Feminist Statement