This Album (and song) exploded into my young life in only the way a bunch of raggle-taggle cute Anglo-Irish boy musicians can… completely and utterly and wildly. I was all consumed with it and listened to nothing else for months. It was early spring. I had just met a guy who lived in a little cottage in County Claire and who had invited me to come and stay anytime i wanted to get out of England (which was pretty much all the time then).
Earlier in the year my dad had died and with him being an atheist, we had not known what to do with his ashes, so… as he had loved Ireland so much, i decided to take the man from Claire up on his offer, put them in my rucksack and scatter them into the Irish Sea (off the edge of a P&O ferry!). This proved to be harder than i thought, what with the wind and all!
I continued my journey, hitching my way through rural Ireland to County Claire, getting lifts in trucks and tractors from friendly farmers, with my guitar on my back and the sun on my face and The Waterboys on my clapped out old Sony Walkman… the passion and warmth of their music lifted my spirits and soon had me dreaming of new adventures…
Listening back to the album now, I can see that a lot of the songs are about moving on and saying farewell to things and people that you love… that sweet melancholy, and i realise now that it was the perfect album with which to say goodbye to my Dad.
My friend Kate sent me the lyrics to this song when i was feeling a bit overwhelmed. The least i could do was cover it. It’s one of the most heartfelt songs ever written, and an instant antidote.
Around about the same age (11), on visits home to see my father in Cambridge, i used to go with my older brother to a second hand vinyl shop called Andy’s Records. This was a deeply cool place where my brother would hunt out his picture disk punk singles. The Dickies, Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks in hot neon pink and acid green like rare precious stones that i was barely allowed to listen to let alone touch.
It was not a place to be seen with your slightly chubby younger sister asking for ‘Hi Fidelity’ by The Kids from Fame (they didn’t have it).
So at my brothers request, I wandered down into the bargain area in the basement where all the scratched, broken or just uncool vinyl was. I spent ages, fascinated, flicking through the graveyard of albums. Of course I hadn’t heard of any of the bands, so only had the covers and prices to go by.
Suddenly one of the covers caught my eye. It was a picture of a man, wild and rugged, wrapped in furs with scarves and hats. He looked like he might be riding a horse. This man fascinated me, so I picked up the album and wandered over to the guy at the desk. As there was no price on it, the guy informed me that I could have it for 50p as there was a little chip on the edge of the record.
When I got it home and my brother finally allowed me to play it on his stereo, the thing that struck me first was the sweet and wild violin playing of Scarlet Rivera. This coupled with the beautiful, desperate almost howl-like vocals of Emmylou Harris.
She was different to Joni. More earthbound and passionate. Like nothing I had ever heard before. It seems to me now that DESIRE is the perfect name for that album. There is so much wild aching sweet bloody desire in the music and for me at that age, it was like taking a little peek into a mysterious world that I would one day enter. Love and sex and passion and loss and mystery all brought to life by the mastery of Dylan’s words, stories and poems, truths and non-truths. The troubadour’s world in constant motion.
There was such a sense of travel and expanse in it. I wanted to go to all the places he was singing about and be all the people in his stories. My love affair with Dylan had begun.
The chip in the record never bothered me. I just used to play it from the middle of the first song Hurricane, but it was a great moment when, years later, i first heard the opening lines: “Pistol shots ring out in a bar room night”.
Of course , what other opening lines could there be to an album like that?
When I was 11, I went to live with a very cool familly in Hertfordshire. He made music videos and she was a kind of boho queen. They had 4 chilldren, ranging from 3 to 16, a big rambling house and lots of interesting people hanging out. It was a blessed relief compared to what had come before. In that house there was light and laughter and… there was MUSIC!
My first memory of listening to BLUE is hearing this voice coming from the sitting room together with the sound of what i now know to be a dulcimer. A beautiful high crystal clear voice, a voice that seemed to want to trancend all the pain that it was singing about, to rise above it. It called me like a siren and I followed. I sat down on the sofa and listened to the whole album, barely breathing.
I listened to the honesty of those words “I’m frightened by the devil, and I’m drawn to those ones that ain’t afraid” and I understood, even aged 11, what it must take to be able to write with such honesty.
And I knew in that moment that if that honesty existed and could be sung about, then everything was gonna be OK.
‘Further Into The Woods’ is the new album by Tom Bombadeal, it continues the mythical folk-hop style Bombadeal has been mastering over the last 5 years. This album (follow up to 2007′s Songs From The Wood) features an astounding 35 tracks and several other artists. Rappers Elemental, Teej, 777 are all in here contributing guest verses. Singer Sadie Jemmett sings and plays guitar as Bombadeal’s good lady Goldberry. Quirky singer and guitarist Flake Brown provides some songs that help set the scene – singing about some of the characters. The Levellers’ didgeridoo player Steven Boakes drops in to lay his tones on the closing ‘Protestors’.
Sadie Jemmett plays Goldberry and is featured on the track, ‘What Is It About The Night?’
Check this video out — Rolling Stones – Dead Flowers (Sticky Fingers) – Original version
A fantastic weekend of music in Norway at the down on the farm festival…. The mighty Steff from Ireland Chooglin from minnesota…the wonderfull james hand from nashville… not to mention the one and only Stan Ridgeway, and True west. and many many more…. the best moment for me was the whole lot of us jammin ‘dead flowers’ at the aftershow party on saturday night complete with double bass and trombones.
