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Fahey john

The Baird Sisters, Hiss Golden Messenger, Nathan Bowles

Given that my last three blogs have been on Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin, I guess something resembling my tenuous underground credibility might be a bit compromised this week. A good time, then, to flag up some terrific music I’ve been enjoying these past few days that doesn’t have quite the same profile as Dylan et al.

Michael Chapman, Dean McPhee, Daniel Land live: January 29, 2012

There is a fairly telling moment, about three-quarters of the way through this mostly excellent night of three guitarists, at the Lexington, between the Angel and King’s Cross.

Hiss Golden Messenger – Poor Moon

MC Taylor, a songwriter and a student of folklore, is not a declamatory man. His songs are compressed and poetic, with nary a syllable out of place. You will hear echoes of familiar things – a bit of Van Morrison’s mystical warmth, or John Martyn’s angst, and the language will be unfussy, and derived from the folk tradition.

Nathan Salsburg, “Affirmed”; Dean McPhee, “Son Of The Black Peace”

As a general rule, I tend to think that my complete lack of musical ability hasn’t been too much of a handicap to a career as a critic. Unburdened by doomed musical projects – or, indeed, talent – it means I can avoid judging the success of artists against any creative failures of my own.

Sir Richard Bishop, Alexander Tucker, C Joynes: Club Uncut, March 1, 2010

Not one to apply layers of personal mystification to his music, the Cambridge musician C Joynes is telling the crowd at Club Uncut about his phlegm issues. Personable enough, he’s also a terrific guitarist, albeit one who it’d be more or less impossible to write about without mentioning John Fahey (which I did last time, writing about his, ahem, “Revenants, Prodigies And The Restless Dead”).

Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté’s “Ali & Toumani”; Tamikrest, “Adagh”

A vague New Year’s Resolution for 2010 – not a big one, admittedly – is to try and write about more African records in Wild Mercury Sound, after embarrassingly never getting round to blogging on the likes of Tinariwen last year (and on Toumani Diabaté’s “Mande Variations” the year before, come to that).

Jack Rose 1971-2009

Awful news over the weekend: the wonderful guitarist, Jack Rose, died of a heart attack on Saturday. Of all the adventurous new American primitives who’ve emerged in the past decade, it’d be just to call Rose the most talented of them all; a warm, intuitive and truly inspired player who dissolved the lines between traditional and experimental music.
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