Monthly Archives: September 2014

Before I get to my review, a bit of stereotype slinging. About the Irish, who are oft said (you can ask anybody) to have produced the greatest drunken poets the world has ever seen. Here in the States, a drunk is a drunk is a drunk. In Ireland, if you believe the hype, every drunk is a poet and every poet is a drunk, and when the pubs close every last inebriated man, woman, and child who spills into the dimly lit street to stagger home or fall fecklessly into the filthy gutter is conjuring brilliant quatrains in their brain.

It’s obviously shite, and to the part of my lineage that is Irish (or is it Scottish, who knows?) offensive even, but I do believe the Irish harbor a romantic soul and love their whiskey as much as they love a gift for high-blown (Oscar Wilde and Brendan Behan, anybody?) speech. So just for argument’s sake, who is the greatest drunken Irish poet of them all? My vote goes to The Pogues’ Shane MacGowan, hands down.

He may be a spent force now; it’s been years since he wrote any new songs (that we’ve heard, anyway); his voice is every bit as much a ruin as the Acropolis; and the last time I saw him perform he hung precariously onto the microphone stand like a sailor clinging to the ratlines for dear life in the face of 90 mph typhoon winds. But the fact that he continues to draw breath at all is in itself a miracle.

I have done the math, and more whiskey has passed MacGowan’s lips over the course of his lifetime than was imbibed by F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Jones, Malcolm Lowry, and Dylan Thomas put together. Despite this dubious achievement, he has written some of the best poetry ever set to music, and has brought more happiness to mankind than a regimen of teetotalers.

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Before winning a Grammy for 2011’s Tassili, the enduring Malian outfit Tinariwen had already attained a deservingly high profile. International success wasn’t immediate, however; at the point of first album The Radio Tisdas Sessions in ‘01, they’d been active for over 20 years. This week Modern Classics Recordings reissues onto double-vinyl that impressive debut and ’04’s even better follow-up, Amassakoul.

Whether it’s through their latest record Emmaar, the breakthrough of predecessor Tassili, the group’s entry on the ‘10 compilation The Rough Guide to Desert Blues, or any of their four prior discs, Tinariwen has amassed a considerable following including such celebrity aficionados as Robert Plant, Carlos Santana, Brian Eno, Henry Rollins, and Thom Yorke.

Famous fans aren’t unusual, but the variety of these enthusiasts is worthy of note, surely indicative of the breadth of their listenership overall. Hippies, blues nuts, experimenters, punks, Alt/indie mavens, and of course those stereotypical lefties parking a used Volvo in the garage with the stereo tuned to NPR so not to miss the weekly edition of World Café.

Unlike other examples, Tinariwen has managed to conquer broader recording situations and specifically the introduction of outside contributors (Nels Cline, Kyp Malone, Josh Klinghoffer, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Matt Sweeney) without damage to their sound. This ability to bend and adapt is something they share with the great Malian vocalist-guitarist Ali Farka Touré.

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When it comes to bizarre, eccentric, and just flat-out inexplicable rock stars, it’s hard to top P.J. Proby (aka Jett Storm, aka Orville Wood, birth name James Marcus Smith), the wild Houston-born master of vocal histrionics who never made much of a dent in the American pop charts, but was (and still is) a legendary figure in English music circles. I’d heard the name, but I never thought to check Proby out until Ian Hunter, in his Diary of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star, called him, “The ace punk of all time,” adding, “His own worst enemy, so what. P.J. Proby’s the greatest—he’s a fuckin’ pirate in this world of drudge. Wherever you are P.J., the world needs you now.”

Those words were written way back in 1972, but the world still needs P.J. Proby, because if there’s one thing he isn’t, it’s predictable. Over the course his 50-plus-year career Proby has released more outrageous—a word that hardly does his schlock-ridden catalogue justice—songs than perhaps anyone in the history of rock, and he has proven over and over again that there’s nothing he won’t do for a hit, or because he just fucking feels like it.

Proby began his career in the late fifties under the name Jett Storm, but both his acting and singing careers stalled in his own country so he set his sights on England. There he changed his stage name to P.J. Proby, perhaps because England already had a Rory Storm, who in a weird coincidence also briefly adopted the stage name Jett Storm. And before long Proby found himself a bona fide pop star with a series of saccharine, string-laden hits, including overwrought versions of “Somewhere” and “Maria” from West Side Story. He also appeared on the 1964 Beatles TV special and was given a song by Lennon and McCartney that they’d intended to include on “Help!” but could never get quite right.

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“I distinctly remember the smell of trawling through my parents’ record collection throughout my childhood—the slightly musty, old paper flavour of discovery.”

“I thought Howlin’ Wolf must be the coolest guy to have a record cover that just said ‘This is Howlin’ Wolf’s new album. He doesn’t like it. He didn’t like his electric guitar at first either’. Who is this guy??—my 10 year old brain asked.

Growing up in Australia, so many of my favourite records were by artists who came from so far away and seemed so exotic and there was no internet for me to go find out every damn last thing about them and ruin the mystery. I love vinyl for that mysterious quality it embodies. It’s like the music and the artist live inside the wax, but you can never quite get a hold of them. You can have your moment with the needle but once the album ends, where does the music go?

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