Well I haven’t seen Loudoun play for years – maybe decades. He was good. I enjoyed it. This was a different Loudon to the one I’d seen before. He was less informal and more scripted. He also did a lot more of his family than I had heard before – giving his father prominence but mentioning his mother, Rufus and Martha and ex-wives with a degree of affection I hadn’t heard before. Perhaps knives have been sheathed?
There were quite a range of songs – School Days even had an outing. That is special to me because it was the first song I ever heard of his. It was the first track on the first album that was played in the guru maharaji shop when I first heard him back in 1971. It had made me stop thumbing through the albums in the shop and listen. I can’t remember him having played it before.
He even did a song on the piano! I haven’t seen him do that before.
I was disappointed that he did not play ‘Trump’ though.
The songs were separated by three spoken sections where Loudon recited three pieces of writing his father had written for Life magazine. There was affection and respect in the way that was done – a tribute to his father – as if he was finally making peace with his old man and recognising his talent. That was nice.
He was joined on stage by Chaim Tannenbaum on banjo and the two of them obviously enjoyed performing together.
It was a bit more subdued than I am used to with Loudon but that was probably the venue. I’m used to seeing him in more intimate clubs. But it was very good.
He’s only ever had one ex-wife – and she’s now dead.
I went to see the slightly more rock ‘n roll Johnny Dowd, Richmond Fontaine and Angel Olsen over the last 10 days.
OK partners.
What were they like?
Dowd – loose and ramshackle, some great guitar stuff.
Richmond Fontaine – as always, excellent – sadly their last tour as there’s just no money in it for them anymore.
Angel Olsen – current darling of the music press with by far the largest crowd by a long way, very popular with the 20 somethings and utterly pretentious crap.
I’ll give Angel a miss then.
I don’t think I’ll be gigging too much in the next month or so. We’ll be moving soon.
Some folks like that west coast American singer-songwrittery stuff, like early Joni Mitchell – who I hated everything she recorded until Court And Spark, or Jackson Browne – who I just hated, full stop. I much preferred Judee Sill and Warren Zevon. Sadly Olsen is more influenced by the boring 2. She sucks.
I never went for Judy Sill – she supported Roy once. Seemed a bit too much Christian stuff for me.
Judee.
Nearly all American music with lyrics is Christian based, particularly Blues. Even Dylan and some of it very obviously so.
But her stuff didn’t actually operate on that level at all, and was several steps removed and lyrically far more surreal.
So she wrote one song with Jesus in the title, but so did Strawbs and you wouldn’t ever accuse them of any Christianity leanings. Or The Beatles. Musically she was quite intricate and complicated – too much so for the much more simplistic Joni crowd. The king-pin west coast writer J.D. Souther and our own Bob Harris thought she was years ahead of everybody. I think they were right about that.
Perhaps I was put off by something I heard early on. I’ll give her another listen.
That was her problem – she requires more than just a cursory listen. People confused her / thought she should be like / expected her to be like Joni Mitchell, therefore, they never got her at all. Whilst Joni was writing juvenile trite pretty little crap for years, Judee was in reform school, doing armed robbery, prison and smack.
That’s certainly not the impression I got of her. I’ll have another listen.