Ok, let’s talk amplification, people. I’m talking about the means by which guitars – and in my case, almost exclusively acoustic ones – are made louder than they naturally are.
Three reasons why I decided to do this. First, Vox have just brought out a new range of acoustic amps and, being Scottish, I thought it was a good time for you to look again at the previous lot as they’re likely to be on sale in a guitar shop near you soon. Secondly, since the original post I did about my first acoustic amp, the Vox AGA 30, I have splashed some cash on the Marshall AS50D and I thought, after a good year or so of use, it was time to compare and contrast the two.
The third reason is pretty shameless, really. Week in, week out, month in, month out, year in, year out, that Vox amp review gets hits. It just keeps on trucking as the most visited post I’ve ever done. Honestly. I might have written the most brilliant literary works of fiction, the most penetrating gig reviews, the most acerbic Dorothy Parkeresque jeu d’esprits, and none of them would have done as well as that amp review, according to the WordPress stats.
Any of you who’ve read the original review of the Vox will know it was pretty positive. So why buy a second amp? To explain, I have to tell you a little about my musical life, so any of you that know this already, you can scan on. I play with two bands: my own acoustic duo, Tribute to Venus Carmichael, and my mate Mark Allan’s country punk outfit, Isaac Brutal. As far as Venus was concerned, my motivation was to make us self-sufficient for small pub back rooms, having the additional option of more inputs should there be a bit of backing vocal needed, or even just another place to jack in another guitar.
And as for Isaac Brutal, well. The current line up consists of drums, bass, two electric guitars, singer and me. Frankly, the little Vox wasn’t quite up to being heard above the racket. So I had me a little tour of Amazon’s warehouse deals section, and found myself a good bargain of a Marshall AS50D in a very natty racing green.
And on the first – and arguably least important – point of comparison, looks, the Marshall wins hands down. Just look at it! It’s like a vintage Aston Martin that’s been compressed into a rectangular box. Utterly gorgeous. And, while it shouldn’t matter, when you’re setting up for a gig and people see that legendary Marshall signature across the grill, it does look – well, a bit like you know what you’re doing.
The Vox? They’ve tried their best with a tan leather effect for the box, a vaguely tweedy cover for the speaker, and vintage-stylee ivory-coloured knobs, but it pales in comparison, frankly.
So, half a point maybe for the Marshall. On the other hand, I would give a full point to the Vox for relative weights – it’s light as a feather, whilst the Marshall, er, isn’t. Frankly it’s a big clunky bugger to lug around.
Yes, yes, you say. That’s all very well, but how do they operate in gig conditions, and how do they sound?
The first thing I’m going to say may sound unimportant, but if you frequent the kind of murky venues I do, and/or have less than perfect vision like mine, it’s kind of worth half a point to the Vox. Its knobs are on top, and a bit easier to twiddle as you go along as a consequence. Even if you have the Marshall on a chair, you’re going to have to squat down and peer at the controls in a way that’s frankly not terribly rock and roll.
On the other hand, as I found at an outdoor festival a couple of years ago, the fact the Marshall’s electrical inputs are tucked away under an overhang on the front elevation can be an advantage if it starts to rain. At that time, I only had the Vox, and it was buzzing in a way that didn’t give me a lot of confidence as to my future well being. I mean, literally dying on stage may be rock and roll, but I’m hoping to keep it to the metaphorical kind for a few years yet.
Controls-wise, they’re initially similar: both have two inputs, each with bass and treble controls, anti-feedback, and chorus and reverb options. The Marshall has a separate, more sophisticated two-knob chorus effect, whilst the Vox has a single knob that gives you reverb, chorus, or reverb and chorus. Since it’s mainly reverb I’m looking for, the difference doesn’t put me up or down, really. The Marshall also has greater sophistication regarding loop options and a DI socket, but, again, I’ve not investigated any of these options yet – either I’m using the amp as the sound source, or I’m DI’ing direct into the PA with the sound guy mixing for me. The Vox has a line out facility which was used to great effect at one early gig (see previous review). Both have a footswitch socket – which, interestingly, the new acoustic guitar Vox, the VX50AG, doesn’t seem to have, according to a recent review in Acoustic.
Sound-wise, there are differences. My main acoustic guitars are, firstly, a Lag ACE100 that I’d recently got at the time of the first review. Outstanding sound acoustically: unfortunately, the pickups are a bit rubbish. I need to get one of those LR Baggs ones some time for it! And secondly, my latest baby, which you can see me wielding in the picture above: an Epiphone EJ200CE, an absolute beast of a thing based on the original Gibson Jumbo model. I may do a comparison review between the two guitars at some stage, as they’re similar in price point, but perform a very different purpose for me: the Epiphone is actually quite quiet to play acoustically, but amped up, it sounds plenty sweet – and loud. (If you want a decent review of the latter in the meantime by a gigging musician, check out this one).
Here’s the thing. Up until Wednesday night’s gig, I would’ve said, (and indeed was saying in an earlier draft of this) if I’m playing a small, intimate gig, as I almost always am (the stadium tour will have to wait another year or two, or maybe another lifetime) the Vox is the thing I want to plug into – especially the input which doubles as a vocal channel. It gives the Lag a lovely, honeyed sound, and the Epiphone, too – although she’s never quite going to match her older sister for tone. If the Lag were a Rioja, she’d be a Gran Reserva for all those gorgeous woody notes.
Full throttle Brutality. Pic: Kenny Mackay
On the other hand, I’d said, if I’m gigging with the Brutal boys (and girl) and I need to be heard higher up in the mix (on those rare occasions where I’m playing the riff, for example) then the Marshall’s the thing I lug into the venue. Much more resistant to feedback, its 50 watts can be used to good effect for the Epiphone or – and here’s why I said almost always acoustic at the top of the review – the Danelectro 12 string that I have on semi-permanent loan from Mr Brutal himself. That Marshall crunch is there when you need it, but equally, its tone for the quieter acoustic stuff is there too.
So what changed the other night? Bear in mind a lot depends on the acoustics of the venue, the mikes you’re using for the vocals, etcetera. But last night, for whatever reason, Kelly’s vocals were sounding a bit muffled on the Vox, so I switched them over to the Marshall. I’ve never heard her sound better. And, while the Vox did its usual good job with the Lag (and my occasional backing vocals) the Epiphone, out of the other Marshall input, was sounding fantastic.
So there you are. It’s horses for courses, frankly. If you’re in a folk-rock band, or indeed country punk, the Marshall is a thoroughly good amp, with a sweet sound and plenty of oomph when you need it. I’m not going to be retiring my little Vox any time soon, neither.
Tomorrow night’s a Brutal gig. The Vox is tucked up at home, safe and sound. The Marshall, though. The Marshall’s ready to get down and dirty in Henry’s Cellar Bar. And I know it’s got my back.
WordPress may have put adverts below here. And they don’t need any amplification.
Confession time first. I’d love to tell you this blog is the result of tireless research: slurping and spitting through hundreds of hopefuls, until finally, finally, boiling everything down to four recommendations. But I’d be lying: we have a marvellous little woman to do all that bit for us.
Step forward Jane MacQuitty, wine writer for the Times. We found some years ago that, aside from a few faults (overuse of the adjective ‘burly’ to describe any red wine of heft; suspiciously keen on ‘new wave’ Spanish, especially riojas, which we’ve found means the wine’s not kissed the oak for nearly long enough) she is a damned good spotter of a decent wine at a decent price.
So, let’s raise a glass to Jane, and long may her liver hold out. In terms of which glass to raise:
Let’s start with a white: Wm Morrison Special Selection Godello, £8 or currently £6 each if you buy 2, has a label that looks like this –
– but if you’re a traditionalist when it comes to wine labels, don’t let that put you off! From north west Spain, it’s a bit like an Aussie sauvignon blanc, with lots of tropical fruit oomph. And Obama was snapped drinking Godello last year, so drink it if only to remember a time when we had an American Pres worth looking up to.
Reds are more our thing though. Aldi has the best of them: first up is 2016 Exquisite Collection Pinot Noir, Wairarapa – everything you’d want in a NZ Pinot Noir, to my way of thinking, at least at that kind of price. Astringent raspberry and all that. Great with lamb chops, and I’d imagine it would slip down well with roast chicken, or even turkey!
Great stuff. The winner for sheer heft though is 2016 Cairanne, Domaine de la Belle Estelle, Rhone – Aldi 7.99 – another MacQuitty find. This not a wine to take lightly: it’s 14.5%, a big beast of a thing that shoulders its way down your throat. But oh, it’s quality! Any of the extended Wright family reading this: this is what you’ll be downing at the forthcoming Diamond Wedding beano in a couple of weekends’ time. The Godello’s the white.
Last but not necessarily least 2015 Animus Douro, Vicente Faria Aldi £4.99 – cheap, and very cheerful. We’ve struggled to find good Portugese reds in the past – they’ve always promised much, but failed to deliver – but this is really good glugging stuff. Best thing for a fiver I know of in any of the supermarkets at the moment. Give it a go.
…and that’s it, really. The daily musical advent calendar thing is kind of taking up my blogging time at the moment, so I hope this gives you the essentials. Drink up!
WordPress adverts underneath. Bet they’re not for wine. Unless the bots are super clever. Which they probably are, come to think of it.
Me looking glaikit in front of the wood store. I wonder if they use the word glaikit in Northumberland.
When you go away for an October weekend in Scotland or the north of England with another couple, what do you look for? Comfortable accommodation? Decent walks/cycle paths for the more energetic? History on your doorstep? Wood burning fire? Easy access to a pub?
Coldburn Cottage, in College Valley, Kirknewton has all of these, apart perhaps for the last one. The nearest place of any consequence is Wooler, and that’s about ten miles away. However, there’s a great thing now called a supermarket, where you can buy your own food and drink, so if you’re prepared to do that, you’re sorted. They have them everywhere now too, not just Wooler.
The whole area is freighted in history. A couple of miles up the road, there’s the site of Flodden, a catastrophic defeat for the Scots in 1513 that left most of the Scottish nobility, including one of our greatest kings, James IV, dead on the battlefield. Also nearby is Homildon Hill, where in 1402 the Scots were soundly beaten again. If you think you see a pattern emerging, you’d be right: basically the one big battle we won was Bannockburn in 1314, and we’ve been banging on about it ever since.
Bannockburn’s much further north, of course. Here, at the modern Border, are what used to be called The Debatable Lands, where for centuries warring tribes identifying themselves as much by their clan names as much as whether they were Scots or English periodically knocked lumps out of each other.
The history goes much further back. Much of our journey south from Edinburgh was via the A68, which for some at least of its length is the route of the Roman road known as Dere Street, running north from Eboracum (York) deep into the Caledonian forests. The same road became the marching route for mediaeval armies: on the way back up we stopped at an excellent cafe just over the crest of Soutra Hill, where an ongoing dig is uncovering some dark secrets from the former hospital that the Augustinians ran back then.
The cottage itself looks homely. If you’re looking for the latest crazy boutique/vintage/distressed decor, you won’t find it here – the owners have decorated and furnished it nicely, but conventionally, and none the worse for that. Highlights include the large dining kitchen, where you can cook, chat and drink all together at the same time; and the wood/coal burning fire in the living room. The bedrooms are up a slightly twisty, low-ceilinged stair so possibly not for everyone (and might prove a challenge if you’ve really been tanning the prosecco); there’s a bathroom (shower attachment on an old-fashioned bath; we stuck to baths, which were great) and a separate wee toilet.
The promo video gives you an idea of the place, although for some unconscionable reason it has a horror film soundtrack: for those of you who, like me, don’t entirely discount these things, the place had a really welcoming atmosphere – which is more than I could say for a couple of old cottages I’ve stayed in in my time. Although there is a proper axe in the woodshed should you wish to re-enact scenes from the Shining.
It’s the surrounds that really make this place though. I’d like to think that the residents of the area were left relatively untroubled by all the warring factions over the centuries, just because they were so fecking hard to get to: as you approach from the north, you see a giant’s huge, unmade bed of hills, which the main roads all skirt around. This is Northumberland National Park, and there’s a tricky enough drive along single track road for several miles, on past the car park where day visitors have to stop, and further into the valley, to reach the place. It’s just a few miles from the A1, but it could be half a country away. Here are some of the Redoubtable Mrs F’s photos (click on one to see the whole gallery):
the beautiful coos
more beautiful coos
beautiful coos at a distance
yup,you guessed it, Mrs F liked the coos!
the cottage nestled into the valley
college valley
outside the cottage
What else can I say? Oh, just this. It has no mobile signal – you have to pretty much come right out of the Park and half way to the next town to get one. No wi-fi. No tv aerial or cable. There’s a tiny wee telly box that you could, in theory, watch DVDs on. We didn’t. We talked to each other, ate good food, drank good wine, walked, and talked some more.
I took my guitar and, while the others were still asleep, finished the lyrics to two songs I’d been blocked on for months. Then, unbidden, a really stupid third song in a country style about a guy that’s been trying to find a woman to dance to Dylan songs with him came to me, out of the sky. I don’t know if it’ll ever see the light of day, but it was fun to have its daft lyrics flowing out of me like a tap had been turned on.
There’s lots of research about the corrosive effects of blue light. I’m no scientist, but all I can say is a break from it was measurably good for my creativity. Actually, the valley has a few of these cottages available for short term lets, as well as a hall for performances, so it would be perfect for a songwriters’ retreat.
So, finally, here’s a stripped down version of one of the songs I finished (not the Dylan-dancing one: that can wait, possibly forever). I’d been experimenting with double-drop D tuning for a while (for non-guitar players, that’s when you tune the top and bottom strings down by a tone to produce a very mellow, low, droning effect) but I was struggling for words. I’d always been fascinated though by the story of the Roman Ninth Legion, the IX Hispana, who were stationed at York, and then disappeared from the records.
The legend – and some research – indicates they marched north to deal with those troublesome Caledonians, and didn’t come back. It may be why the Emperor Hadrian ordered the building of a wall right across the narrowest part between modern-day England and Scotland; again not far from where we were staying. Records don’t show whether he got the Scots to pay for it, but it seems unlikely.
There’s a place in the centre of York where, years ago, people saw ghostly Roman legionaries marching past, but cut off from the knees down, because of the change in ground levels. When we went there once, many years ago, we did the obligatory ghost tour, and, at the place where the legionaries supposedly appeared, I felt this almost overwhelming sense of sadness. Again, it’s up to you if you believe any of this stuff, but that’s supposedly one effect of the presence of spirits, I understand. That’s what the last verse is about.
Incidentally, when I say stripped down, it’s only because I’ve held back so far from going mad with the synths and sound effects. A ‘gone mad with synths and sound effects’ version may follow. I’m slightly worried I may have been channelling the spirit of Led Zeppelin, circa 1973, but then a chord change of D – C – G is hardly ever going to be the most original in the history of rock n’ roll, even in an alternate tuning!
Anyway, Coldburn Cottage, near Wooler – possibly the best holiday cottage ever! Take food, wine, and good company. And a guitar, obviously.
The Famous Spiegeltent is a portable device, a bit like the Tardis, that appears magically to host performances of all kinds in all sorts of places. Built in 1920, it apparently, in the 1930s, hosted Marlene Dietrich singing ‘Falling in Love Again.’ A few years ago, when I was still doing a mix of spoken word and music, I was lucky enough to perform in it in three separate years as part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s evening series, Unbound. Then it disappeared.
Well, not really. It was still somewhere in this space-time continuum, hosting great performances. However, it wasn’t in Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square, because the owners of the gardens which the Book Festival took over every August (no doubt for a fee) had decided having all these common people tramping over their grass and enjoying themselves was de trop and banned the Spiegeltent.
Yeah, I know. I’ve still to go to the Book Festival (that’s next weekend) and see what, if anything, has been allowed in Charlotte Square or if it’s restored to its rest-of-the year humdrum nature in full – there’s talk of most, if not all of the EIBF events being staged along nearby George Street.
Charlotte Square, sans book festival
However, in the meantime, good news! The Spiegeltent has beamed down to the Meadows, that fine piece of common ground on the south side of Edinburgh’s city centre. And, in keeping with its tradition of hosting brilliant chanteuses (I’m definitely thinking Dietrich here, not yours truly) it’s the venue for Camille O’Sullivan‘s latest show, Where Are We Now?
The Spiegeltent empty
Saturday night was Camille’s second performance of a run that goes on until 24th August, and, in recognition of this, it and the night before were cheaper. However, any glitches in the performance were due, not to Camille or her excellent three-piece band of guitar, keyboards/piano and drums, but to the nature of the venue and its surrounds.
The Spiegeltent is a fantastic space to perform, or watch a performance, in. I must admit I’m glad now I didn’t know quite how historic it was when I did my shows in it, or I’d have dropped my guitar at the prospect. However, it does have one drawback – despite all the wood, mirrors and brocade, it is, when all’s said and done, a tent. And that means sound bleed.
When it was located in Charlotte Square, that wasn’t such a problem – any book festival events still ongoing are some distance away and tend to be just authors droning on about their stuff. The only thing we had to try to do was time the half way break to cope with the fireworks at the Castle which signalled the end of the Military Tattoo (of which more later). In comparison, in the Meadows, the Spiegeltent has a bustling inter-venue bar outside, and a big blue circus tent type affair with other music shows ongoing about fifty metres away.
That might not be a problem for some shows. However, Camille’s performances range from full-on rockers to, to take an example from this set, an a capella version of a Jacques Brel song. She is a dramatic, dynamic, performer, who takes you on a musical odyssey through the full gamut of emotions with carefully-chosen dark materials from some of the great songwriters of the last 70 years or so. In other words, the perfect performer in many ways for the Spiegeltent – if it wasn’t for the sound bleed.
As it was, O’Sullivan spent much of the early part of the show making a single-finger gesture at the back of the audience – a plea for the sound guy to turn her monitor, the guitar, the keyboard, everything, up. It was a pity, because the performance was otherwise up to her usual brilliant standard (this was the third time I’d seen her). However, the best songs were, inevitably, the louder ones. Bowie dominated the early part of the set, and there was a great version of ‘Rock n’ Roll Suicide; Nick Cave’s ‘Mercy Seat’ got a barn – or tent – storming interpretation too.
Good as those were, my personal favourites were The Leonard Cohen covers she did towards the end: opening with a snatch of ‘You Want It Darker,’ from the master’s eponymous final album, she segued into ‘The Future,’ an older song apposite for our troubled times. My absolute favourite, though, was Cohen’s ‘Anthem,’ a fitting, uplifting, closer to a musical commentary on where we are now: ‘There is a crack, a crack in everything/that’s how the light gets in…’
Not even the post-Tattoo fireworks (which seemed to have more than one go) could interrupt. A two-song encore, including old favourite, Nick Cave’s ‘Ship Song,’ and she was gone into the night. Camille will have less distracted performances than this: but the material is strong, and her performances of it as incendiary as ever.
Next time, just cancel the fireworks and beam the Spiegeltent to our back garden, eh? The neighbours are really quiet.
I’ve not listened to nearly enough music in my near 55 years on Earth. I mean, even my CD collection – which seemed at one point big enough to cause stress on the house foundations, or at least make an indelible dent in the carpet – is a tiny, tiny, fraction of the rock, country, soul, blues and what d’you may call it committed to tape since I was old enough to know there was something rum about Gary Glitter.
And in case I didn’t realise how ignorant I was, there are magazines like Mojo and Uncut to rub my nose in my own vacuity. Here’s a typical example of the type of review I read as I attempt to navigate my way through the roiling rapids of new music, and pick out something I might drop a few quid on and actually listen to:
‘David Barbe is best known as a producer for the Drive-By Truckers, Deerhunter and other local and national acts… “Why You Gotta Make It So Hard?” recalls the weirdo pop of the Elephant 6 Collective…’
Ok. I know Drive-By Truckers: that’s who Jason Isbell used to be with, and I’ve even heard a couple of their tracks. Deerhunter? I feel I should have heard of them. I’m sure I’ve read about them, in Mojo and Uncut. Elephant 6 Collective? Nope. No clue.
I know. I should be ashamed of myself. To be fair, most of the time, I will have heard of the bands these reviews reference. It’s just that, were I put in front of a firing squad of musos and told to whistle one of their greatest hits, I might be hard pushed to even make a start before the vinyl collectors pulled the trigger.
So this review is proceeding from a state of ignorant, if not bliss, acceptance that I will never, ever, be able to reference someone obscure. Full many a flower may, indeed, be born to blush unseen, musically speaking, and, as a matter of empirical fact, waste its sweetness on the desert air. I’m afraid my time to surf Youtube for all these mute inglorious Miltons is, well, pretty limited by other stuff.
So I’ll come right out and say it. Jason Isbell and Cory Branan sound a lot to me like Bruce Springsteen.
To be fair, I’m not the only one to make the connection. Isbell was described as ‘Springsteen-endorsed,’ in his recent interview with Acoustic Guitar; Uncut’s review of Branan’s new album, Adios, explicitly references the Boss.
Let’s start with Branan. I first heard a song of his a couple of years ago, as the standout track on one of the taster CDs of new music you get with these music zines. It was called ‘Survivor Blues’ and there was one line in particular, ‘leaned, and lit a cigarette,’ that I especially liked for its economy. I then promptly failed to put in the hard yards online to hear more of his stuff.
It was only recently, when I saw the review of Adios, that I got my act together and ordered up a copy online.
For me, it’s a truly great album in the fine traditions of the best work of Bruce Springsteen. Some things are obvious musical Springsteen references: the honking sax on ‘Imogene,’ for example; the pounded piano at the start of ‘Blacksburg,’ or the Roy Bittan-like keyboard sounds on ‘You Got Through.’
The Uncut review specifically compares Branan’s style to Springsteen’s 1980 classic ‘The River,’ and the musical similarities are there for all to see. The meld of soul, folk and early rock n’ roll (‘Only I Know,’ for example, with its Buddy Holly-style chord progressions) has the same roots as the Sage of New Jersey.
There’s another link, which only became obvious when the recent reissue of ‘The River’ sent Brucie on the interview trail: country. Springsteen described listening to the likes of Hank Williams to get that sense of ‘three chords and the truth’ into his songwriting.
Now, I’ve described before how I came to country late. When I was a teenager, that whole glitzy, teeth n’ sequins commercialism seemed alien to me, a kid from a place where (arguably too much the other way) the emphasis was on telling things as they really were, no matter how grittily depressing that might be.
(I’ve never thought of the connection up to now, but you could say that as much about the traditional Scottish folk songs as you could about punk. The guitars are different, obviously.)
It was only as I grew older that I realised that country was exactly about telling things as they were, and the plastic smiles and rhinestones of the big country stars that reached our TV were a long way from Nashville’s darker heart, and the likes of Willie Nelson. I still can’t stand that production line alternating bass figure you get on a lot of Johnny Cash songs, and too much plaintive pedal steel turns me off, but I get it, I really do.
Apart from the ones previously mentioned, there are three particular favourites for me. ‘Don’t Go,’ a story of a life long love ending up with the wife’s death, walks the fine line between mawkishness and tugging at the heart strings and, for me at least, makes it to the other side of that canyon unscathed. ‘My Father was an Accordion Player,’ is another (it would seem) personal family tale of a father-son relationship which is bittersweet but funny. My favourite of all of them, though, is ‘The Vow,’ a tribute to Branan’s late father that combines affection with realism in a truly touching way.
Branan is his own man so far as lyrics go, and all the better for it. Take these lines from ‘the Vow,’ as an example:
‘I said, well I just thought, and he cut me off, and said that’s what you get for thinking,
I remember thinking, that’s probably not the best lesson for a kid,
And although that was just something he said,
And when I see where I get with my thinking,
I get to thinking that there may have been some kind of genius in the effortless way
He just did…’
I’ve not even mentioned some of the other superb songs on this album: the bluesy ‘Cold Blue Moonlight;’ the protest song against the shooting of black civilians by police, ‘Another Nightmare in America,’ the rambunctious ‘Visiting Hours.’ I have listened to this album again and again, and got new pleasures from it each time.
As for Isbell, well, I’ll keep it short, as I’ve already headed north of a thousand words and tried your patience. In addition, I’m hoping for a guest review of his latest offering ‘the Nashville Sound,’ shortly, so we’ll see then whether his run of solo work starting with ‘South Eastern,’ and moving through ‘Something More Than Free,’ continues at the same level or not.
So for the sake of brevity I’ll offer as evidence of Springsteen influence just one track from the latter album, and that’s ‘Speed Trap Town.’ Protagonist with a conflicted relationship with his father? Check. Reference to State Trooper? Check. Storyline involving busting out of small town, and driving till the sun comes up? You bet. Moral complexity? Spades of it.
I appreciate this type of music won’t be for everyone: any synths in evidence are strictly in service of the guitars, and there is no word, anywhere, of whether or not it’s a rainy day in Manchester. The guitars are crisp, and generally, undistorted. Many of the songs extend past the three minute mark. Despite all that, it behoves you to listen.
Unless you’re way too busy with the Mute Inglorious Miltons’ back catalogue, of course. In which case, crack on, and do come back to me with the highlights.
South African red wine’s a bit of an enigma for me. Every so often I come across one that’s a cracker: and then I can never find it again. The Holy Grail for me is the wine region of Robertson, which I’ve never had a bad bottle from.
However, most South African supermarket reds in this country seem a bit, well, so-so. Not bad, but not outstanding. Unfortunately, the recent triallists aren’t breaking that trend for me, but they’re worth a try – and not just because the Proteas are over here to give the Poms a damn good thrashing in the Tests. Although that’s as good an excuse as any.
Both wines are from Morrison’s: first up, Beyerskloof Pinotage Reserve, reduced to £6.50 from £9. A hefty beast, this, that went particularly well with curry. I wouldn’t pay full price for it.
Maybe a bit more accessible is Leopard’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon, currently £5 down from £6.50. This is a long term favourite, and well worth snapping up for its damsony, blackberryish fruit (woah, just went a bit Jancis Robinson on you there!)
Read Mac Logan and Kevin Scott
I’ve just read the first of Mac Logan’s Angel’s Share thrillers, Angels’ Cut. It’s a tense, pacy thriller with a sympathetic hero. I’m looking forward to the next one.
Also well worth a read: my Thunderpoint stablemate Kevin Scott’s first novel, Dead Cat Bounce. Two brothers with very different life trajectories, one a charming loser, the other a seemingly successful London futures trader, have to combine to find a missing coffin, the one with their late stepbrother in it. This being Glasgow, there’s gangsters and black humour involved, but Scott cleverly subverts the more obvious tropes and comes up with a surprising conclusion.
Listen to Cory Branan
A more extensive review coming, but Branan’s latest, Adios, is just great. Here’s a taster, one of my favourites from the album, Imogene.
Have been at the Voodoo Rooms to see Callaghan/Jesse Terry
Where were you all a couple of weekends back? Edinburgh’s inaptly named Voodoo Rooms (they’re about as voodoo as a palatial, slightly glacial, Victorian drinking salon can get, I guess, unless they mean the dark magic used to spirit your money away with frankly supernatural bar prices) was half empty to hear these guys. Jesse Terry is a fine, mainly acoustic-guitar-based singer-songwriter: his cover version was Don McLean’s ‘Vincent,’ which fitted well with his own material. He is also, as I discovered when I went back to chat to him after his set, a really nice bloke worthy of your attention.
As for Callaghan, I’ve blogged about her and her ability with a good tune and a great voice before. Her covers on the night were The Drifters standard, ‘Stand By Me,’ John Denver’s ‘Annie’s Song,’ and, as an encore, ‘Over the Rainbow.’ I know, right? Not exactly my natural musical habitat, either, and my heart sank when she announced the last one as her encore. And then she sang it.
Oh. My. Actual. [insert appropriate deity]. What a set of pipes that woman has. I mean, I knew her voice was special, even when put through the digital music equivalent of a meatgrinder that goes to produce the universal burger we call an mp3. But live? Just stunning. Stunning. She could sing ‘Baa baa black sheep’ and I’d still turn out to see her. If the angels in heaven sing half as well, it might be worth me thinking about giving up all this sinning stuff after all.
Go see Martin McGroarty
My friend, colleague and fellow musical traveller Martin McGroarty is pretty much gaining the reputation round here of hardest working man in show business. We saw him at the Ship Tavern in Anstruther at the end of May, and the only thing wrong with the gig was we’d committed the schoolboy error of being the closest to sober in the whole place.
But boy, did he get the joint a’jumpin’ – and he now has such a following, any pub booking him can be guaranteed people travelling from as far away as, say, Dundee to see him! I see that he’s due to play there again on Saturday, June 24th, and I know it’s one of his favourite venues.
For a list of his gigs after that, go to his site.
That’s all for now, folks – more detailed musical recommendations coming soon!
To the Scottish Poetry Library on Saturday, for the launch of three new books by Red Squirrel Press: Diana Hendry’s new short story collection ‘My Father as an Ant;’ Stephen Barnaby’s new story pamphlet ‘I never realised it was as bad as that;’ and Kevin Cadwallender’s new poetry collection ‘Polishing Demons.’
There are multiple reasons for not making it to a book launch. In Scotland, for 6 months of the year at least, these are often weather-related: snow, hail, that icy rain that gets into the gap between your collar and the back of your neck, high winds closing the Forth Road Bridge, yada yada. On Saturday, as Sheila Wakefield said, the opposite was true: the unseasonably warm spring weather made it hard to leave the back garden, especially when there’s a lot to be done.
Still, there were firm motivations for me to shoehorn myself into the 11.25 X59, packed as it was with fellow Fifers seeking their poetry, one suspected, in Marks and Spencer; to then, using advanced ruck and maul techniques not learned on the playing fields of Eton, blindside the scrummage of early-season tourists heaving towards a pushover try in the tartan shops of the upper Royal Mile; and then, as the crowds thinned out around the abandoned Avengers film set on the lower reaches of the Mile, to find my way at last to the SPL, reflecting as I did so that it and its sister institution across the road, the Scottish Storytelling Centre, could be the last spasm of Scottish cultural architecture for quite some years, whatever political colour’s in charge at the bottom of the hill in Holyrood, that other modern architectural landmark (remember all that fuss about how much it cost? What was that about, then?)
Scottish Poetry LibraryThe Parliament
Scottish Storytelling Centre
One such motivation was Stephen Barnaby, whose speciality on the spoken word scene is mini-epics of 50 word fiction (the last paragraph could fit three of those in, just so you know!). I’d shared a stage (or corner of a pub with a mike) with Stephen on a number of occasions, and I’d always enjoyed his work. This time, though, his short story pamphlet had allowed him to stretch out a bit, and to good effect: the story he read, A Country Walk, concerned a visit to a friend in a psychiatric hospital, whose idea of a country walk was along the side of a motorway. Treading the fine line (literally) between humour and some pretty dark material, it was a perfect example of how Barnaby wraps up serious topics in a layer of charm and wit, and then roasts the two so the juices run into each other. Of course, his considerable performance chops don’t hinder.
My second motivation came next. Again, I’ve known Kevin Cadwallender as a fellow member of the Edinburgh spoken word scene for many years now. A much-garlanded performance poet and slam champion, he opened his account by telling us his new collection didn’t have any funny poems in it. He then proceeded to read a succession of funny poems – not laugh out loud, exactly, but full of that wry Geordie humour that we’ve come to expect from him. A poem like A Cynic’s Guide to Proverbs, with lines like ‘The wicked seem to rest quite a lot,’ clearly aren’t meant to be served up po-faced.
His closer, Ishtar on the No. 35 Bus, showed Cadwallender’s depth of vision, however. A much longer poem, it documents life on Easter Road, one of Edinburgh’s more mixed areas (and I say that as a life long fan of its most well-known occupant, Hibernian FC). The lines are grittily realistic, and yet uniquely beautiful: the Road’s ‘elephant hide’ a recurring theme throughout. Again, Cadwallender’s performance skills came into play: in the relatively douce surroundings of the SPL, he didn’t need to ramp it up as he would at a poetry slam, but, instead, peeled away the layers of meaning in this brilliant piece of work subtly and expertly until, at the end, there was that moment, that electricity in the room, you get at the end of any performance, spoken word or musical, when the collective breath is taken away. Then the applause.
I wasn’t so familiar with Diana Hendry’s work. However, she shared with the others that northern English sense of humour that, like those of the Scots, always has a dark edge to it (if we do go for independence, we totally need to move that border down a bit. Just saying). Her story, about a lady of mature years being ‘rescued,’ was more conventional than the others, perhaps, but no less enjoyable for that.
All of that, and then time enough when I got home to get the grass cut anyway.
You can buy all these fine volumes from Red Squirrel Press. And if your appetite’s whetted for literary events, my own novel launches are coming up next month: follow me here, on Twitter (@andrewferguso4) or sign up to the novel’s Facebook page for more details.
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There are some things in which the Redoubtable Mrs F and I are right up to the minute (no,really!); in others, I’m afraid, we remain defiantly old school. In the latter basket is our continuing refusal to embrace the digital age as regards our daily newspaper, which we still have delivered in pulped-wood format by a half-asleep teenager at some indeterminate time in the morning. (One motivation – or excuse – now is our own half-asleep teenager, Daughter and Heiress, studying journalism).
But which newspaper, I’m sure you’re agog to know? Well, during the week, we subscribe to that bastion of bleeding-heart liberalism, the Guardian. However, on a Saturday, we take a lurch to the right in newspaper-buying terms and take the Times. What? Donate our hard-earned shekels to that hard-to-like family, the Murdochs? I like to tell colleagues that it’s because, after a week at the day job, I’ve lurched so far to the right I’m just about ready to invade Poland: but actually, it’s all about the columnists – Caitlin Moran, Giles Coren, and Jane MacQuitty, more specifically.
The last of these is probably of most use to us in a practical sense: even the legendary Coren family wit is unlikely to persuade us to travel 500 miles to eat in a London restaurant, whilst MacQuitty’s wine recommendations have often stood us in good stead. However, last weekend, she let me down, she let the Redoubtable Mrs F down but, of course, most of all, she let herself down.
It all started so promisingly: an article about wines our heroine had been tasting from the two German discounter supermarkets, Lidl and Aldi. I’ve previously waxed lyrical about some of Aldi’s bottles, in particular, so was looking forward to what Jane had to say.
Unfortunately, she focused on the very wines we’d be least likely to buy: whites, mainly, as well as a couple of clarets. Now, I know Bordeaux’s meant to be the best wine region in the world for red wine, but I suppose I’ve never shelled for an expensive enough bottle to really get a taste for it. So, unfortunately, it was a case of reading between the lines in MacQuitty’s article: she liked the Lidl Spanish and Italian ranges as well as the Bordeaux, she said, but didn’t specify which ones. Similarly, whilst mentioning fizzys and clarets aplenty, she only hinted at what else was good: Aldi’s Exquisite Collection ‘continues to please,’ she opined, as well as ‘its finest, beefed-up limited edition Lot series,’ before citing a Chardonnay as an example.
We decided to try Aldi first, given that we had a bit more to go on. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of the Lot series to be seen. In fact, not a jot. Fortunately, there was some of the Exquisite Collection, namely: the Aussie Shiraz (£5.79); Argentinian Malbec (£5.99); and a New Zealand Pinot Noir (£6.99).
First up was the Shiraz: initially tasted last night with one of my chicken curries – no chilli heat, but lots of spice to cope with, in a creamy, yoghurty sauce. We generally find an Aussie Shiraz pretty good to go with this dish, and the Aldi version was up against a strong rival, in that there was a glassful left of Yellow Tail, a Ferguson house favourite in the same vein.
It stood up well – plenty of flavour, hefty amount of alcohol but carrying it fairly easily, good, long finish and as good a match to Chicken Panch Phuran as you could ask for, really. Great value, too.
Next came the Malbec. Unfortunately, not up to the same standard as its Aussie stablemate: nothing wrong with it, really, but just a bit dry, a bit flavourless, a bit meh.
The New Zealand Pinot Noir was a bit more like it. We tasted it with my roasted salmon, lemon tomato and garlic dish (recipe: slice lemons and put at the bottom of a flattish casserole dish; ditto tomatoes and garlic; put salmon fillets on top; lob on salt, olive oil and a bit of paella spice, and stick in the oven till the salmon’s done) and it wnet well with that. A lighter red than we usually drink, but good for fish dishes.
So there you are – the Shiraz is the star!
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To the Usher Hall, last Monday, for Elbow. They’re not my all time favourite band, but I kind of fell for them when they helped me while away an hour or so of a long flight to Oz, 8 or 9 years ago, by watching a documentary of them. Since then, they played a key part in my nephew Dave and his wife Gill’s wedding ceremony (One Day Like This, along with Cave’s Ship Song, being their ceremonial music of choice – how cool was that?) and their Glasto appearance a couple of years ago had confirmed to me that, without necessarily really knowing any of their songs, or indeed any of their lyrics beyond that great line about kissing him when his lips are thin, they were good enough value for a family outing to see them when their current tour rocked up in Edinburgh.
Part of my motivation was out of appreciation that Elbow really don’t need to be playing venues as small as the Usher Hall. They’re pretty big league now, and could have done the same as most premiership bands do these days, by touching down in Scotland only for the time it took them to play the vast, soul-free void that is Glasgow’s SSE before pissing off south of the Border.
Instead, they had opted for the Edwardian magnificence of the Usher Hall. I’m not sure if Guy Garvey appreciated the irony of his toasting ‘some rich bloke’ who had endowed the hall with his pint of lager: Usher being one of Edinburgh’s great brewing and distilling families. When I was growing up, there would have been no question of such riff raff as a rock band getting on stage at the Usher Hall. However, needs must and, on the night, the grand old dame opened her skirts to, it’s fair to say, a generational mix of Elbow fans, including Daughter and Heiress and a pal down in the standing area, and The Redoubtable Mrs F and I in the upper balcony.
Our seat was great, I have to say, particularly as the lurgi which I’m only now recovering from had firmly taken a grip of me. We were at the centre of things, behind a stairwell with a good solid oak rail to rest one’s arms on; and the sound, for the most part, was great. However, this is where you should take this review’s lack of enthusiasm with a pinch of salt, because I’m concerned that my meh-ness about support band C Duncan‘s indie-poppy, guitar n’ synth flavoured set comes from hearing it through a fug of aforementioned lurgi (incidentally, if you’re looking up lurgi in Wikipedia because it’s an unfamiliar term to you, I mean the word for a flu-like virus first coined by the Goons, not that I was afflicted by a German chemical and construction company). Certainly, The RMF found their sound very pleasant.
Elbow came on with a strong set, and if I wasn’t exactly dancing in my seat at the start of the it, their meandering melodies and Guy Garvey’s great warm baritone was like the aural equivalent of a warm bath I could slip into and forget the viral firestorm going on in my bloodstream. There was a glitch mid way, though, with the sound, which appeared to reduce the band to playing on only onstage-monitors and amps half way through a song. This seemed to throw them slightly, and Garvey extemporised while, presumably, things were frantically plugged in and plugged out again to resolve the problem; but it broke the spell that had been building slightly, at least for me.
However, they got their mojo back as the set wore on. Again, in my over the counter medication addled state, it was the third last song of the main set, The Birds, that really took off (apologies for the pun – I hate when real journos do that!) so I’ve put a Youtube of a similar version they did at the Eden Project in 2014 at the bottom of this. It did what all the best Elbow songs do: building slowly, from deceptively simple chord progressions and some whimsical lyrics, to a rousing, anthemic chorus. It really, really cheered me up and made me forget myself.
The closer was, of course, One Day Like This, and Guy Garvey had us singing along – talk about a crowd pleaser. He even got us to sing the line about kissing him when his lips are thin all by ourselves.
After that, a brief encore and off into the night with all our viruses. At 45 of your English pounds, not a cheap gig, but I’m still glad I went.
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I should really start this wine recommendation, as indeed I should preface all my wine recommendations, with ‘I know what I like.’ In other words, I have no formal qualifications whatsoever as a wine expert. All I can claim is a limited and partial knowledge and interest in the topic, gleaned from years of highly motivated research.
Despite this, friends and colleagues, when we’re out somewhere serving the stuff, will almost invariably pass the wine list to me, saying, ‘Andrew, you know about wines, what do you think?’ What they really mean is, ‘Andrew, you seem to drink a lot of wine, so you should have it worked out by now, surely, ya lush?’
They may have a point on the quantity, although, dear reader, I’m not generally to be found on the floor of the bar at the end of the night grabbing at legs. Not these days anyway. I almost always drink responsibly (the Sambuca Shot Incident at Christmas being the exception that proves the rule) and so should you. Thing is, lightweight that I am, when I do drink anything at all I’ve found that wine, and red wine in particular, is the thing my system seems to tolerate best, particularly along with food.
Anyway, enough about me and on with the wine, I hear you say. Fair enough, dear reader, fair enough. Today’s lesson concerns a little-known wine region of Spain called Cariñena, which is geographically located a few miles south of the city of Zaragoza, and roughly half way on a line between Madrid and Barcelona. Baking hot in summer, freezing cold and harrowed by a wind called el cierzo in winter, the region is not without its challenges for its wine growers, even if it’s been cultivated here since Roman times.
However, despite its never having reached the upper echelons of La Liga in terms of Spanish wine regions, it’s one which I’ve always found, when it comes to supermarket reds, is a sure bet for a decent bargain. It’s a bit like a South African region called Robertson: although I know virtually nothing about South African wine regions, I know to grab a bottle from Robertson any time it appears because it’s always been a cracker.
So far as Cariñena is concerned, on the other hand, I know a wee bit more from my travels in Spain: that corner is between the big producing regions of Rioja and Catalunya, and like its neighbours, Campo de Borja and Calatayud, is a bit undervalued as a result. It’s not sexy like other northern areas like (especially) Ribera del Duero, and it’s not even got the industrial scale that other lesser regions like Castilla-La Mancha have.
So, when I saw a couple of bottles in Asda from the Cariñena region the other week, I reckoned they were both worth a go. They were Casa Luis Reserva, 2012 (currently reduced from £5.50 to a fiver) and Extra Special Old Vine Garnacha, 2015, reduced from a fiver to a mere £4.25. Here’s what they look like:
Now, my finely honed drinking instincts told me the Casa Luis would be the better drop of the two. The gold string’s by no means a guarantee of quality, but the fact it was a reserva (the categories of ageing and length of relationship with the oak barrel in Spanish wine being tinto, crianza, reserva, gran reserva) suggested someone, somewhere in the winery had reckoned this one was worth the investment of time that the status requires.
However, on opening the bottle initial signs were not so encouraging: the cork crumbled half way up and I needed to execute a delicate piece of surgery with the old sacacorchos to retrieve the bottom half. On inspection, the business end of the cork didn’t appear discoloured and didn’t give off any indications of the wine being corked (I’ve read that the red end of the cork should either smell of cork, or of wine, and if it smells of anything else, it’s corked). However, I still wonder if that was the problem with this particular bottle, because very disappointingly, it was undrinkable and had to be used up in my Southern French Chicken recipe.
The only problem with the Garnacha was rather more self inflicted as, somehow, the first bottle of it managed to knock itself off its coaster and only an act of couch-borne athleticism unparalleled in Olympic history on my part managed to save some of the contents from emptying themselves onto the living room floor. As it was, there was only a limited sample left for research without getting down on my knees and sucking it out of the carpet fibres, and even I have my standards.
Fortunately, other bottles were also available from the same retailer and I can confirm that it is, in fact, a belter. The label chunters on about 45-year old Garnacha vines: for those of you interested, I do have it on good authority from Bosi, my charming guide round the fantastic Cambrico winery I posted about last year, that old vines of that kind of age produce less grapes, but much more concentrated flavours: the balance for the winemaker, of course, is between volume and quality.
For those of you less bothered with specifics, fill your boots! This is a big, bouncy, fruity red that’s good with pasta dishes, spanish tortilla, and, I’d imagine, the usual red wine staples of red meat and strong cheeses. It’s a ridiculous price for wine of this quality.
Not so good as a carpet cleaner, but, well, that’s not what it’s for, is it?
Full throttle Brutality. Pic: Kenny Mackay
Charlotte Square, sans book festival
The Spiegeltent empty
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Scottish Poetry Library
The Parliament
Scottish Storytelling Centre
initially tasted last night with one of my chicken curries – no chilli heat, but lots of spice to cope with, in a creamy, yoghurty sauce. We generally find an Aussie Shiraz pretty good to go with this dish, and the Aldi version was up against a strong rival, in that there was a glassful left of Yellow Tail, a Ferguson house favourite in the same vein.
