Reviewing a review...

I reviewed the new Waxahatchee album over at Americana UK recently, and started a bit of a Twitter storm.

The fact that this album was being reviewed was at least partly because it had become an important release on the back of the hyperbole thrown around by The Guardian's reviewer. Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee herself) had stated that Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, one of the cornerstones of Americana, was her primary influence for her shift towards Americana based music. Having been accused of negativity and for reviewing The Guardian review rather than the album, neither of which accusation stand up if you actually read my piece I felt a bit of explanation and defence was called for.

• I gave the album a score of 6, if you go by the Pitchfork rating system this means: "Has its moments, but isn't strong" , negative would have been 4 or below and it wasn't that bad...

• It wasn't me who made the comparison to Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, Crutchfield set herself up for that one. It would have been easy to rip her to shreds for it, I chose not to take the cheap shot. That would have been negative.

• I simply wasn't hearing what other reviewers were hearing. I don't think it's very good and can't see myself listening to it again, ever.

•  That makes my suggestion that it doesn't in my opinion match up to Car Wheels... valid. I have played that album regularly since it came out and don't expect to stop now.

Does my opinion matter? No, of course it doesn't. Any more than the opinion of The Guardian matters. Let's see what the view of Saint Cloud is at the end of the year.

The Guardian review

Americana UK review

Matthew Seligman

I'm afraid that despite myself I'm going to be writing more obituaries. Matthew Seligman played bass on quite a number of my favourite albums. I'll post Robyn Hitchcock's tribute below as I can't word it better, and point you to some of his recordings instead. Seligman also played with Bowie at Live Aid and elsewhere and a variety of  other bands and projects. Wikipedia will help you with the details. I met him in a music shop in London in the mid eighties, I was looking at a bass and he warned me off it saying that he had tried it and hated it and we had a brief, fairly fanboy (on my side), conversation mostly about Thomas Dolby and Robyn Hitchcock.

Bruce Woolley and The Camera Club – English Garden. It's hard to believe that this was criticised for being rooted in the 60s. Bits of Bowie, all sorts of other influences and Thomas Dolby's keyboards made a unique sound. A terrific live band, I saw them twice and would love to get a copy of their Radio 1 In Concert which I had on tape for years.

The Soft Boys - Underwater Moonlight. One of those bands whose influence outweighed their impact at the time. I bought this because Matthew Seligman was on it. Not been off my radar since. Another cracking good record.

The Dolphin Brothers - Catch The Fall. I didn't know he had played on this until recently. Yet another album that fell through the cracks at the time, but is well worth your attention.

Thomas Dolby - Pretty much everything. I've talked about Dolby in the past and recommended his autobiography The Speed of Sound before. Seligman is writ large in the book and Dolby's career. You can safely try any of his solo albums but my current favourite is the last one A Map of the Floating City.

Jan Linton - Sendai. An ambient piece with flashes of fretless bass from Seligman. Sold as a response to the Japanese Tsunami and Earthquake of 2011. Quite wonderful.

Robyn Hitchcock's Tribute on Facebook 

Newsweek have the best round up of other tributes HERE.

John Prine, Randy Newman, and bit of Trump on the side.

I'm not going to pepper this blog with obituaries, unless like Tim Brooke-Taylor they are of someone who particularly affects me. Anyway I couldn't touch Americana UK's coverage of the passing of John Prine. My colleague Clint West has done a fine appraisal of him HERE, and Jim Finnie has produced a pretty much unbeatable Prine playlist.

Todd Rundgren's last album 'White Knight' featured a song called "The Man In The Tin Foil Hat" with Donald Fagen. While this was a blast of anger from the early days of Trump and the video is a bit amateurish and silly in places it seems to me to be worth an airing as there seem to be so many tin foil hats doing the rounds now.

While this feels like an attempt at a bit of Randy Newman style, even including a "Short People" reference in the lyrics, it doesn't come close. Political Science was released in 1972, doesn't it sound current?

This NPR piece is worth a read and listen for more on Randy Newman's satire. He is very American-centric but his songs are good enough to get over the more obscure (for us) references. Newman's most recent album Dark Matter returns to satire in a big way. If you only think of him as the Toy Story composer get that one and the best of Lonely At The Top for a crash course in Newmanomics.

Tim Brooke-Taylor

When so many people have lost loved ones to Coronavid it almost seems churlish to write about someone famous passing with it. But having followed Tim Brooke Taylor all the way from The Goodies to I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue since about 1970, I'm going to anyway.

The Goodies seem to have got lost by the BBC, no proper DVD issues, the one I have seems to have been filmed off the TV with a cine camera, and no repeats. It's not alone, lots of that stable , Monty Python, Rutland Weekend TV and so on are also in danger of drifting into history as I noted in my Neil Innes piece a while back. But The Goodies was the one talked about and re-enacted in the playground. Kitten Kong is the episode that gets the mention, my favourite however is still the Giant Dougal dog. I was never much of a fan of Python, the Rutland and Ripping Yarns  spinoffs were more my time period and I'm sure between them and The Goodies trained my sense of humour for Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy (H2G2). Ironically budget overruns on the H2G2 TV series was what lead to The Goodies cancellation by the BBC.

About 1980 or so having discovered radio comedy through H2G2 and being a typical teenager spending a fair bit of time in my room I found Just a Minute and I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. The former dominated by Kenneth Williams was funny enough but Clue was something else. When I started listening it wasn't as anarchic as it became in the 90s but was still laugh out loud funny. Brooke-Taylor was an integral part of the mix in Clue. Where Barry Cryer had a one liner for every moment and Graeme Garden would say less but would always bring the house down with his catchphrases, Brooke-Taylor played the comic victim, much as he did in the Goodies, butt of some of the humour but able to come out on top of any situation. he had the job of teaming up with a succession of guest team members after Willie Rushton's death. He worked best with Jeremy Hardy and Tony Hawks, but rarely failed to gel with the other half of his team. That was I think his strength as a comedian, being able to mould his humour to any situation and find something to bounce off.

I hope they now let Clue end as it's vitality has faded with the more frequent absences of the principal players. Indeed Just A Minute should also depart with Nicholas Parsons. The obvious replacement Gyles Brandreth was too similar on his one stint in the chairman's chair and would not I feel bring his own spin the way Jack Dee has.

The golden age was the early noughties for me. I was lucky enough to see them at the Bristol Hippodrome then and later on one of the tours about 10 years ago. This is the only episode ever recorded for TV, and Humphrey Lyttelton's last. It features the best team lineup, sadly now half of them gone, and is a classic. If you are easily offended maybe pass on this, although you will be missing out on some of the finest improvised comedy there is.

Comedy to keep you sane-ish

 As I said last time despite being an avid consumer of the news from an early age, currently I can't be doing with it. One big let down of the whole Corona19vid crisis/pandemic has been the way the media have continued to chase "stories" and look for angles.

Anyway, so rather than having the BBC World Service as an accompaniment to my insomnia I am doing old comedy shows on the BBC Sounds app, podcasts, mostly from iTunes, and other content from Audible. So in no particular order...

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day "is a podcast that celebrates the things that haven’t gone right". I've been a fan of this for a while now and her specials for these times have so far featured Mo Gawdat and Alain de Botton. They have certainly helped me. For lighter relief try earlier ones from a properly diverse range of guests. Surprisingly for me the episode with Frankie Bridge was very good, less surprisingly Tracey Thorn and George Alagiah were interesting, although there is a takeaway from nearly all the episodes.

No Such Thing As a Fish. If you need this introducing to you then you need to catch on quick. Always good value and often very funny. My other old favourite in this corner of the forest Answer Me This frankly sounds like the presenters aren't really that bothered anymore. The quality of questions has dipped alarmingly recently so it may not be all their fault.

Audible are producing new Podcasts at a rate of knots. If you belong then it is becoming a good source for quality programming. They even have The Goodies.

Other content on Audible beyond the reams of Audiobooks includes some original productions, from The X Files, Aliens and other well known franchises. Apparently there is also a Neil Gaiman book being dramatised at the moment by Hitchhikers director Dirk Maggs. Can't wait.

Radio Comedy? You can't beat I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, with Humphrey Lyttleton, not the current pale shadow. I hope they allow Just A Minute to fade with Nicholas Parsons passing. Other good value series that are easily streamed or downloaded on the BBC Sounds app and elsewhere include I've Never Seen Star Wars, which depends on your tolerance for Marcus Brigstocke, and Andy Hamilton's two big  comedy series Revolting People, set in the American Revolution, and particularly Old Harry's Game, set in Hell which I can listen to time and again  and laugh every listen.

The Museum of Curiosity combines comedy, science, history and philosophy and is well worth a listen. A new podcast from the makers of Horrible Histories is You're Dead to Me. Billed as being for those who didn't like history at school, but actually for those who love it has been great so far. After 20 or so episodes it has found its feet, but the producers clearly insist on Greg Jenner including some "wacky" sound effects and music bursts as clearly we are all too stupid to listen to unvarnished talking.

And that is where the BBC is failing. The fact that the Sounds App only works on fairly recent versions of Android and iOS excludes a big audience who haven't upgraded. Their chasing of the probably mythical "Yoof" market leaves the rest of us out in the cold as well. Audible and other third party content producers will fill the gap with quality programming that targets a wide range of ages and interests. As the BBC have been one of the big culprits in the news chase going on at present I now feel that the licence fee can't be justified by the current organisation and they should be cut back to the core public service remit and the more commercial aspects left to sink or swim. Never thought I would say that.

Stay safe, stay indoors.