I can’t remember who said ‘A little Wagner goes a very long way’, but someone should if it hasn’t yet been said officially. Other gibes I like are one by Thomas Beecham — that’s right, of the cold and ’flu remedy Beecham’s though he decided on a different course in life — who observed that ‘Wagner has his moments, about one every 15 minutes’. And even Jim Naughtie (formerly of Radio 4’s Today) a keen Wagner fan once admitted that ‘you listen to 20 minutes of Wagner’s music, look at your watch and realise the piece started only five minutes ago’.
But enough bile.
I also thought I didn’t like folk and country music. My ears were eventually opened a little to the attractions of some country music by my guitar tutor; and once I realised there’s more to folk — a lot more as it happens — than all that finger-in-the-ear wailing about the past by Britain’s folk revivalists (who now insist we call it ‘roots’), I got to like much of it. A great deal of the folk I like comes from abroad and British folk is still a sore point for me, though I have mellowed.
But even then, when I was invited to go to a gig by the Australian ‘folkie’ Jeff Lang, I took some persuading. Actually, Lang who describes his music as ‘punk folk’ is about as far from the finger-in-the-ear wailing revivalist ‘roots’ crowd in their shapeless drab sweaters and straggly beards as you can get. And thank the Lord for that. And thank the Lord that I was finally persauded.
For many years commuting back home to Cornwall from London on a Wednesday night, I stopped off at a pub in the Somerset village of South Petherton to watch Champions League football, drink a glass of red or ten and smoke a few La Paz. And as you do, I got to know several folk there, one of whom was Paul.
Paul was a social worker in his early 60s who and a Labour supporter. I am unaligned politically (and prefer it that way because I like to be able to speak my mind and don’t like being obliged to talk shite and defend ‘my party right or wrong’) and pretty much in ‘the centre’, but it soon became apparent that I was to the left of Labour-supporting Paul. But that is another irrelevant detail.
Paul professed to be a fan of folk music and one day asked whether I might like to go to a Jeff Lang concert at the well-known Half-Moon, in Putney, West London. Don’t worry about the folk angle, he said, he’s a great guitarist. The gig was on a Wednesday night when I usually drove home, so the plan was that Paul would make his way to London and we would meet in Putney, and afterwards drive back out West and I would drop him of at South Petherton.
For the gig we were joined by another friend who likes music, and I’m so glad I went. Lang really is a one-off. Back in Australia he has his own band, but for his (I think) annual tour of Europe he performs on his own.
Well, I say ‘on his own’, but he uses an array of gadgets, mainly loopers, to produce a sound that really must be heard to be believed. Put baldly like that your heart might sink, but Lang is certainly not a slave to electronic gadgetry, but makes it work for him. The music and what he can produce comes first. And he is some guitarist. Quite apart from that he writes and sings some very interesting songs indeed and has a great voice.
The track here is one of my favourites from the album I am featuring, Chimeradour. But I particularly like the sinister quality he gets into the song and the sense of dread felt by a young lad who is not too sure what is going on and fears the worst. The other songs on the album are equally as good. Lang is worth checking out.
PS I wrote about Jeff Lang in this blog at the time.
