Four years ago, when reviewing Nigel Philip Davies’ first album, Songs from a River, I tried to put my finger on what it meant, culturally (pretentious, I know, but I can’t help myself). More as a result of desperation than inspiration, I invented a genre for it, Old Wave music, and opined that it reflected “the reality of the ageing of the boomer generation: the generation that invented youth culture, now coming to terms with its own mortality”.

Having just listened to the Welsh singer/songwriter’s second album, Reflections, I’m allowing myself to feel that I wasn’t so wide of the mark after all.

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Nigel Philip Davies: a moment in time

In fact, this collection of songs inclines me to double down on my original assertion. The more you listen to it, it feels less like an album and more like a moment in time: a generation (mine/ours) looking back on its era and putting its emotional affairs in order in preparation for what we know we’re all going to face in the not too distant future.

Not that this is album is all doom and gloom—far from it—and I stress that this interpretation is very much my own, no doubt coloured by our current reality of coronavirus lockdowns, social unrest and rising geopolitical tensions. I don’t know if Davies would agree with my take on the album, and I’m not even sure that he had an over-arching theme in mind when putting it together. But the songs, while covering a variety of styles and themes, have certain elements in common that point (in my mind, at least) to a sense of cohesion.

These elements are an historical perspective—both in a formal sense (one of the highlights is a song about the holocaust) and a personal one (the passage of time and its effect on relationships)—and a lightly-worn awareness on Davies’s part of where he and his songs fit into the traditions of post-war popular music. It’s this combination of the themes of ephemerality and cultural exceptionalism which makes me think of this album as a sort of living epitaph for one of history’s most privileged, wayward and creative generations.

All of which probably means nothing more than that I’m feeling my age. So, what about the songs?

SONGS THAT RESONATE

The opener, “I’ve Been to Berlin”, is one of two jazz-influenced numbers which are a throwback to a phase of Davies’ career that pre-dates his formation of (now dormant) folk-rock band Moongazer. The song celebrates Berlin’s glory as a bohemian metropolis but does so in a style reminiscent of the 1966 musical (and 1972 film) Cabaret, based on writer Christopher Isherwood’s pre-war experiences of the city. Whether or not the association is intentional, it does point up the fact that there’s a direct line of historical continuity between Berlin’s pre-war decadence and its post-modern edginess.

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Liza Minelli in ‘Cabaret’

There’s a risk with this style of criticism (i.e. trying to see songs, albums etc. in a cultural/historical context) of reading too much into things. Having made that caveat, I’m now going to say that, for me, the song traces a perfect historical arc for both the baby-boomer generation and Berlin itself: the boomers, born out of the rubble of World War II, came of age in the late 1960s when Berlin, rebuilt on the ruins of Hitler’s bunker, began to experience a cultural renaissance (the contemporary-music component of which, for example, was led by Tangerine Dream, formed there in 1967). When a boomer writes a song about today’s Berlin, and does so in a way that evokes the city in the 1930s and 1940s, such inferences are hard to resist.

So the opening track, whether by accident or design, anchors the listener’s expectations in historical and cultural references that can resonate fairly strongly with the post-war generation.

“I Live Alone” reverts to Davies’ more familiar folk style with some nicely picked acoustic backed by ambient strings and piano, its melancholy standing in marked contrast to the man-of-the-world bravura of the first track. The theme is love and loss, but something else too: “I live alone with this heart of stone, since I laid down this traitor’s throne…for my sins I must atone.” There’s a sense of emotional and moral exhaustion, an old order giving way, self-doubt, guilt and an uneasy reckoning with destiny. Not the sort of song you want to listen to last thing before going to bed, unless you’re a very sound sleeper not given to pangs of conscience.

The title of the next track, “Good Times”, immediately brings to mind the 1967 song of the same name by The Animals and there are similarities, especially the idea of a pub sing-along chorus (the British beat band placed theirs in the middle of their song while Davies uses his as the outro). While The Animals’ number has a regretful tone (young man laments his life of sinning when he could have been winning etc.), Davies’ is a more positive exercise in nostalgia, the sense of lost youth redeemed, to some extent, by the power of memory to make far-away and long-ago friends seem present here and now. The song is carried along by electric piano but solos from a surging Hammond-style organ and distorted electric guitar—Davies plays everything—add a keen edge.

Dylan is the next musical influence to get a nod, on “A Lifetime Ago (Or Maybe Two)” and “Better in the Morning”, both of which feature the master’s tinny, dissonant harmonica style and some of his vocal phrasing and lyrical feel. In “Lifetime” the hommage is secondary to the sense of Davies’ own life experience, captured vividly in the opening lines: “A lifetime ago or maybe two, the first time I set eyes on you,/pushing through the party crowd, head held high and oh so proud;/ I was laid out in a daze but through the haze I felt amazed by you.” This sets the scene nicely for a tale about socially mismatched love (“Lady and the tramp, they said—you so slim, me just underfed”) but the song ends in something of an anti-climax as the relationship’s (inevitable) failure is dealt with in a vague and almost offhand way.

The great man is more to the fore in “Better in the Morning”—a phrase, according to the album notes, often used by Davies’ mother when he was young to encourage him to take a more optimistic view of life. It didn’t work, judging by the ironic contrast between the title and the song’s dystopian social commentary: “The rich are getting richer as the huddled mass looks on/and dances in tiny circles to a politician’s song,/and every step is choreographed from the selection box of life,/while in a cold apartment another valued voter dies,/another hopeless, hapless martyr to the god of free enterprise.” The song has all the characteristic bite of Davies’ satirical pieces but, in the final analysis, it struggles to rise above the depressing realisation that, since Dylan brought the protest genre to perfection in the 1960s, things haven’t changed much; indeed, they’re probably worse.

“Always on Your Side” is a more personal form of self-expression, with Davies himself rather than his influences centre-stage. This is a moving song about lost love and well executed: the emotion in Davies’ voice is complemented by the intimate vocal ambience achieved by the mix, and the instruments—two acoustic guitars, bass, synth strings and piano—work together seamlessly. He’s a deft lyricist, too. The last line of the chorus, the first couple of times he sings it, is: “If you know how hard I tried to save you from the pain that comes when two worlds collide.” The final time he sings it, “collide” is replaced by “divide”. It packs a subtle, but effective, emotional punch.

At first listen, “Won’t You Be Mine,” is pure throw-away pop: the upbeat tone and annoyingly infectious hooks recall the bubble gum music targeted at pre-teens during the late 1960s (“Mony Mony” by Tommy James and The Shondells and “Sugar Sugar” by The Archies spring immediately to mind). Hell, the lyrics even include the phrase, “I wanna be your man”! It seems to be nothing more than a sugar-coated invitation to have sex, but there’s more going on beneath the surface. In fact, Davies turns the subgenre on its head, replacing the sense of optimistic young love with a poignant awareness of mortality: “Life passes by in the blink of an eye, look away and your dreams fall behind…Life is a game that we won’t play again”. The goofy synth solo completes the inversion. It’s as though Davies travels back in time, abducts the musically formative years of a generation, then brings them back to the present, condensed into four minutes and 20 seconds of satire, irony, and sobering reality.

“1941” is the holocaust song referred to earlier. This, say the album notes, was part of a 27-minute magnum opus Davies performed with another pre-Moongazer project, prog-rock band The Vacant Chair. It would be interesting to hear the full cut, as the monumental theme and stadium-rock cadence of the chorus seem well-suited to a large-scale production. But this stripped-down version works well. The lyrics are a little stiff and formal as if, like pall bearers, they are conscious of the weight they bear, but they stay this side of bathos. Much of their emotional power comes from the way that the meaning of the chorus—“I’m still standing”—changes over the course of the song. When the first verse refers to the loading of the trains and the “flame of hope” being extinguished, the chorus sounds like survivor guilt; when the last verse alludes to the flame being rekindled by the fight for freedom, the chorus becomes a forceful testament of witness and memory.

“True to Yourself” is another strong track which sounds as though it would go down well with a big, live audience, based on the emotional warmth of the piano and synth cello arrangement, the rising chord progression and the lyrics’ potential to inspire. It strays a bit close at times to the kind of motivational messaging that pops up in your Facebook feed every day, but it has a big heart in the right place. One can imagine Davies singing it to his kids (and grandkids, too!) and, in the context of this album, there’s an engaging pathos in the idea of an older generation singing to a younger one. It’s basically Davies doing what his mother did when she told him that it would be “Better in The Morning”. What goes around comes around.

“Why Don’t You (Close Your Eyes When We Kiss)” takes us back to the relationships theme and the sinking feeling that the one you love no longer loves you. The song lands easily on the ear with a light, wistful melody and simple, understated lyrics. The simplicity is deceptive, however, as the overall impression—helped by the sparse, chiming instrumentation of piano and acoustic guitars—is that the song is as delicate and fragile as the relationship it describes. There’s also an unexpected chord change between the verse and the chorus which, while musically pleasant, leaves you feeling slightly off balance and conveys perfectly the singer-protagonist’s own mood and perspective.

Davies’s jazz past resurfaces in “Smile”, a jaunty singalong driven by piano and a nicely tripping (in the light-fantastic sense) bass which might be guitar or synth but sounds just like double bass (you can almost see the armbands and silk waistcoat).

This is meant to be a pick-you-up-when-you’re-feeling-down number, like the song of the same name first recorded by Nat King Cole in 1954 (based on a tune written by Charlie Chaplin for his 1936 movie Modern Times) and covered by innumerable others since. Coles’ song (and the scenes in Chaplin’s film that the music sound-tracked) offered an antidote to the general vicissitudes of life; Davies’ song, however, is about growing old—“The tide of doubt is rising, you think you’ve had your day, all the tunes you used to love now no-one seems to play…”—and is another example of what I consider to be the album’s demise-of-the-baby-boomer theme. (The song also echoes, in wit and spirit, “Look on the Bright Side of Life” from Monty Python’s Life of Brian movie—a more ‘boomerish’ cultural reference than Cole.)

And so to the final track, “Going Home”, a folk song in the “Wild Rover” tradition but more melancholic and reflective. It’s the perfect sign-off for this album, looking back on a full but not entirely satisfactory life and turning towards a horizon where home is not some romantic illusion or escape (no “green, green grass” here) but something more final, symbolized by the “western skies”. It’s been a long road and, as so often happens, the journey has turned out to be the destination: “I have sought salvation in a thousand bars where all men look the same and everyone is a friend of mine, no one knows my name…/ All the things I looked for, I thought would set me free, they were there the whole time through, lost inside of me.”

The song ends quietly, quickly, with no fuss, leaving the silence to echo in the listener’s mind.

PROUD IN THE INDIE TRADITION

Like its predecessor, this album stands proud in the DIY indie-music tradition. Its modest production values give the sound a raw edge which add to the sense, reflected in each song, of a man responding as honestly as he can to the curve-balls that life throws at him (and, by extension, us). In many other comparable recording artists, these factors might be limitations, but that’s not the case with Davies, whose range of interests as a songwriter and skills as a musician combine to make this album much, much more than the sum of its parts.

One of the few displays of kindness between public figures that we’ve seen during this shit-storm of a pandemic was Russell Crowe’s tweet to Victoria’s embattled premier, Dan Andrews: “If you find yourself going through hell, just keep going.” That seems to be the kind of spirit, and thinking, behind “Songs from Behind the Viral Curtain”, the debut EP by Steve Banks and The Sidemen.

As the title suggests, this is the band’s creative response to COVID-19 and the harsh reality of lockdown, which is more brutal for musicians (and other artists) than it is for many other segments of the population, for the simple reason that the necessarily free-flowing working lifestyles of creative people mean that they may not qualify for income support mechanisms like JobKeeper.

The Sidemen—five grizzled musicians whose careers date back to big-name acts of the 1960s[1]—have come out swinging, in every sense. Combining Banks’ humorous lyrics and soulful vocals with a musical authority that brooks no argument, this is a punchy, confident and highly accomplished EP made more remarkable by the fact that the musos recorded remotely from each other, in lockdown,

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But the music is not their only way of pushing back against our current affliction: a share of the EP’s proceeds goes to music industry charity Support Act which provides, among other programmes, support specifically for musicians affected by COVID-19. Coming from veteran rockers who’ve probably seen every high and low of a musician’s life, the donation has a certain poignancy.

The EP, however, is significant for other reasons. When Banks launched The Sidemen as a live act in May 2019 the focus, understandably, was on each member’s musical life history and the famous acts and songs with which they will be forever associated. What’s interesting about the latest project is that it sees The Sidemen working with original material for the first time.

This opens up intriguing possibilities for the band’s future development, hints of which may (or may not) be present in each of the EP’s five songs.

SLIPPING EFFORTLESSLY BETWEEN STYLES

One of the great things about musicians with long careers behind them is the ease with which they can draw on so many different musical styles and traditions. The first track, “CV Blues”, is (as the sleeve notes acknowledge) a nod to Cab Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher” and draws a neat parallel between Minnie’s bohemian loucherie and the pariah status acquired by a certain Chinese bat.

But while Calloway’s song is, in part, a celebration of hedonistic nightlife, “CV Blues” (again, as noted on the sleeve) evokes a New Orleans funeral march with master-of-ceremonies Banks providing a gothic-horror-comic oration: “Take a bat with attitude—let’s not have this misconstrued: that bat, well, he done us wrong, this ain’t his redemption song.”

The horns, arranged by Paul Williamson (like co-producer and guitarist Jeff Burstin, formerly of The Black Sorrows), pick the song up and carry it, helped by some great piano fills from Bruce Haymes (also co-producer) and beautiful backing vocals from Martine Monro who, although technically a guest artist, puts her stamp on every track and forms an integral part of the EP’s overall sound.

And I can’t help feeling the song makes another nod to musical precedent in the way that most of the instruments fade at the end, leaving the horns to themselves for a few moments of glorious, alley-cat cacophony. Decades ago The Band did something similar in the middle of a song called—wait for it—“Chest Fever”. If the similarity is intentional, it’s clever; if it’s accidental, it’s spooky.

The Sidemen slip effortlessly into country mode with “12 Steps”, an upbeat number with tasteful, melodic fills from Burstin and Haymes, light-but-tight bass and drums (Greg Lyon and Grant Gerathy respectively) and seamless harmonies between Banks and Monro. The mood is deceptive, however, because, lyrically, this is the most affecting song on the EP.

It’s about addiction—or, rather, the sense of vertigo that troubles a former addict when he or she feels at risk of slipping back into old, bad habits: “I’ve been on the 12 steps to survival, I think I’m going in reverse: don’t want to let you down, don’t want to go back there, I can’t tell you which one is worse…”. And how many of us, in lockdown, haven’t felt tempted to drink and/or smoke more?

Part of the song’s power comes from a surprisingly effective narrative device. The song begins with the protagonist “walking sideways down the alley” feeling “I made a terrible mistake”, but then he wakes up “safe and sound beside you”. Far from being an anti-climax, the fact that he dreams his fears underlines, rather than diminishes, the intensity of the addict’s psychological struggle.

The remaining songs are less tied to the COVID-19 theme but no less effective or enjoyable for that. “Secrets on the Darker Side” is a warm piece of romantic nostalgia (teenage love, anyone?) in which all the musical elements—especially the guitars of Burstin and Rick Fenn, Haymes’ piano, and a tantalising vocal breakout by Monro—combine to leave you feeling youthful and optimistic again.

“Father/Son/HG” (as in Holy Ghost) has Banks in reflective, even philosophical, mood, ruminating about religion and the meaning of life. The last time I heard Banks get this deep and meaningful was on “Me, Innit”, a candidly introspective song on his solo album “Ordinary Man” (also produced by Burstin). Both songs ask deep questions about life, but only one of them really works.

The problem (as I see it) with “Father/Son/HG” is that it elaborates an opinion, rather than a state of mind. And no matter how much you might agree with the opinion (“What we need is a basic code to navigate this rocky road, not one guy—you might call him God—firing up his lightning rod”) it lacks the emotional persuasiveness of “Me, Innit”, which is based on a real internal psychodrama.

And so to the closing track, “Rooster in the Hen House,” an out-and-out rocker in which the horns are back and Burstin and Fenn give Keith Richards and Ron Wood a run for their money. A tale about sexual infidelity sung from the point of view of the gleefully unrepentant co-respondent, it just makes you want to play the EP again. And again.

WHERE TO NEXT?

If the songs do provide a pointer to The Sidemen’s future development, it’s that it could be in any direction they damned well pleased. There’s no doubting the credibility, capability and versatility of musicians like these; the only question is where these attributes will take them, once they (and we) are free to live our normal lives again.

God knows what these guys will do when they finally get into a studio together….

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[1] Steve Banks, vocals; Bruce Haymes (The Paul Kelly Band, worked with Renee Geyer and Archie Roach); Jeff Burstin (The Black Sorrows, Jo Jo Zep and The Falcons); Greg Lyon(The Hip Operation, Georgie Fame, Crossfire, Doug Parkinson and many more); Grant Gerathy (former drummer from John Butler Trio, has worked with Pete Murray); Rick Fenn (guitarist from 10cc, worked with Jack Bruce from Cream, Mike Oldfield, Peter Green); special guest vocalist Martine Monroe (Bodacious Cowboys).

Two blues tracks—one New Orleans jazz-style, the other a hard-edged post-Chicago blues-rock sound—recorded 57 years apart. They’re the same song. One other thing they have in common: the singer.

Barbara Dane, ladies and gentlemen.

If you haven’t heard of her it’s probably because you grew up in the 1960s or later and you’ve been too busy listening to all the people—Bob Dylan and Bonnie Raitt are just two off the top of my head—who have been influenced by her extraordinary career of singing and activism.

At 92, she’s still with us, thank God, and still performing on special occasions. Let that sink in: born in 1927 and still singing the blues.

And how. Here’s her most recent recording of “Good Morning Blues”, with Cuban rocker Osamu Menendez and his band.

That was cut in 2014, when Barbara was 87. This is her first-ever recording of the song, with the sublime clarinettist George Lewis, in 1957:

“I sound so green I can hardly recognize myself,” Barbara says now of that earlier recording. You can see her point, but it’s not just the 57-year difference in her voice, it’s the contrast in the styles of music too.

In the George Lewis version, the music has the classic demeanour of an old bluesman, dogged and sweetly melancholic, while Barbara’s voice is strong and soulful in a wholesome way which, while sympathetic to the music, provides a contrasting sense of freshness.

Barbara then…

But it’s not “green” in the sense that most people would use the word. It’s the voice of the “good gal feeling bad”, trying to hold everything (including her relationship with a cheating man) together through sheer strength of will and personality, with little hope and even less romantic illusion.

Wind the clock forward and we’re almost in post-apocalyptic territory, musically and visually. The overtly political video was posted—and presumably created—in 2017, three years after the audio was recorded. Timewise, they chart an arc that starts a year or so after the launch of the Black Lives Matter movement and ends the year that Trump came to power.

Put the video to one side for a moment, and just listen to the music. Osamu’s arrangement draws heavily on the old Lil’ Son Jackson/Muddy Waters “Rock Me” riff (that’s the sexually menacing one, not to be confused with B.B. King’s much silkier “Rock Me Baby”) and the band—led by Osamu’s seething guitar and a harmonica that howls like a junkyard dog—locks it down tight.

What’s surprising is how well Barbara’s voice—weathered and leathery at the edges, but still rich and gorgeous at the centre—suits the treatment. It’s far more at home in this dystopian soundscape than the voice of her 30-year-old self could ever be.

…and now

How can a 92-year-old singer, with a career behind her that’s longer than most people’s lives, be so bang-on relevant today? Has Barbara evolved with the times, or have the times finally caught up with her? I suspect that the answer, if there is one, lies somewhere in her backstory.

AN INTERESTING TENSION

Barbara, first and foremost, has always been her own woman—one blessed with an outstanding voice and a passion for social justice. According to that fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia, “Out of high school, Dane began to sing regularly at demonstrations for racial equality and economic justice. While still in her teens, she sat in with bands around town and won the interest of local music promoters. She got an offer to tour with Alvino Rey’s band, but she turned it down in favour of singing at factory gates and in union halls.”

As that last sentence suggests, music and social justice have always been two sides of the same coin for Barbara. Her career as an activist has included travelling to Cuba in 1966 as the first US musician to tour there after Castro’s revolution, leading (while playing guitar and singing) civil rights marches and protests against the Vietnam war, touring and performing for anti-war GIs, campaigning for the environment and joining Pete Seeger in New York in 1978 in support of a miners’ strike.

In 1964, Bob Dylan wrote, in a letter to Broadside magazine, “The world needs more people like Barbara, someone who is willing to follow her conscience. She is, if the term must be used, a hero.”

Dylan sits in with Barbara at a gig in 1963

In terms of her social activism, then, Barbara has been a leader and an agent of change, someone ahead of her times. There was, and continues to be, a natural affinity between her political views and the music she loves and plays, which is essentially the music of the underdog. But there’s an interesting tension in the fact that while Barbara is a political progressive she is, musically, steeped in tradition.

How does that tension resolve or contain itself? It comes back, I think, to the fact that Barbara is her own woman, artistically as well as politically. She is equally at home in, as well as adept in, folk, jazz and blues. Her musical achievements are the stuff of legend but all I can do here is list, in no particular order, some (and only some) of the people she’s played with: Memphis Slim, Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Clara Ward, Mama Yancey, Little Brother Montgomery, Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden, Art Hodes, Roosevelt Sykes, Otis Spann, Willie Dixon and Wilbur De Paris (Wikipedia). Not listed by Wikipedia, but two of my favourites, are Lightnin’ Hopkins and the Chambers Brothers.

Lightnin’ and Barbara

In 1961, she gave a uniquely personal expression to her commitment to music and social justice when she opened her own club in San Francisco to introduce the blues to a wider, white audience. In 1970 she founded her own record label to promote international protest music.

Her musical originality works in the same direction as her political singlemindedness: the fact that she sings beautifully and authentically across genres makes her, within her field, diverse and unclassifiable; her ability to reveal the universal spirituality that lies so deep in jazz and blues transcends the music’s racial origins (she was one of the first white female artists to be profiled by Ebony magazine[1]), and her selfless promotion of other artists created new audiences and new possibilities. In her music—particularly in the way she has interpreted and promoted it—she has always been ahead of her times.

In what sense, if any, has she evolved with them?

YES AND YES

Earlier, I contrasted the progressiveness of Barbara’s politics with the traditionalism of her music. I confess to being a little disingenuous there, as I implicitly associated the politics with some sort of dynamic quality and the music with a more static one. But, as we all know, traditions must live, breathe and change if they are to survive. It’s in that sense that I understand Barbara to have evolved, and I can’t think of a better way of illustrating what I mean than by going back to “Good Morning Blues”—both the history of the song, or part of the history, and her two versions.

His Excellency

Count Basie is credited as the composer and his recording of it was issued in 1937, when Barbara was 10 (yes, I know it’s rude to harp on about a lady’s age but, hell, this is history). The lyrics, sung by Jimmy Rushing, were, one might say, a little on the light and frothy side:

Good morning blues, blues how do you do
Good morning blues, blues how do you do
Babe, I feel alright but I come to worry you
Baby, it’s Christmas time and I want to see Santa Claus
Baby, it’s Christmas time and I want to see Santa Claus
Don’t show me my pretty baby, I’ll break all of the laws
Santa Claus, Santa Claus, listen to my plea
Santa Claus, Santa Claus, listen to my plea

The next version I’ve come across was by Lead Belly, recorded in 1940 when Barbara was… nah, you work it out.

Lead Belly: bluesman and convicted killer

Now the song gets serious (the lines in italics are spoken):

Now this is the blues
There was a white man had the blues
Thought it was nothing to worry about
Now you lay down at night
You roll from one side of the bed to the other all
Night long
Ya can’t sleep, whats the matter; the blues has gotcha
Ya get up you sit on the side of the bed in the mornin’
May have a sister a mother a brother n a father around
But you don’t want no talk out of em
Whats the matter; the blues has gotcha
When you go in put your feet under the table look down
At ya plate got everything you wanna eat
But ya shake ya head you get up you say “Lord I can’t
Eat I can’t sleep whats the matter”
The blues gotcha
Why not talk to ya
Tell what you gotta tell it
Well, good morning blues, blues how do you do
Well, good morning blues, blues how do you do
I couldn’t sleep last night, I was turning from side to side
Oh Lord, I was turning from side to side
I wasn’t sad, I was just dissatisfied.
I couldn’t sleep last night, you know the blues walking
‘Round my bed,
Oh Lord, the blues walking ’round my bed
I went to eat my breakfast, the blues was in my bread.
Well good morning blues, blues how do you do.
Well, good morning blues, blues how do you do.
I’m doing all right, well, good morning how are you.

The blues evoked by Lead Belly are dark and sinister, in the tradition of Robert Johnson’s “Hellhound on My Trail”. Barbara, in her version with George Lewis, drinks from the same well, but with a difference:

Oh, good morning blues, blues how do you do
Oh, good morning blues, blues how do you do
Oh, I’m feeling mighty well baby how are you
I got up this morning the blues walking round my bed
I couldn’t sleep I got up this morning the blues walking round my bed
I went to eat my breakfast the blues was all in my bread
The blues ain’t nothing but a good girl feeling bad
The blues ain’t nothing but a good girl feeling bad
I lost my good man and every dime I ever had
I’m going down to the river and sit down on a log
Oh I’m going down to the river and sit down on a log
If I can’t be your woman I’m not gonna be your dog
I sent for you yesterday but you come walking today (24 hours late)
I sent for you yesterday but here you come walking today
Well, If you can’t do no better why don’t you just stay away, stay away.

By introducing the line, “The blues ain’t nothing but a good girl feeling bad,” Barbara manages to be traditional and innovative at the same time. It’s based on what is probably one of the most famous lines in blues music—“The blues ain’t nothing but a good man feeling bad”—from one of the first blues songs ever published, in 1912 (in a way which, by today’s standards, would be spectacularly politically incorrect). But, just as Barbara takes “Good Morning Blues” back to the origins of its genre, she updates the song by re-gendering it. She breaks with Basie and Lead Belly and makes it something new—a woman’s song. Her artistic initiative in this respect is distinctive and personal, but what she creates is historically significant for all women.

True, Barbara wouldn’t have been the first female blues singer to feminise a song, but “being first” isn’t the point. The re-gendering of songs is a tradition within the broader blues tradition, and Barbara makes an original—in the sense of distinctive and personally authentic—contribution to both. I’m familiar with only two other versions of “Good Morning Blues” by female singers, both of which post-date Barbara’s: Ella Fitzgerald’s (1960) and Della Reece’s (1999). Both are a world (in Fitzgerald’s case, a universe) away from Barbara’s sassy feminism.

The point seems to be that, even when she breaks new ground, Barbara affirms the tradition within which she works.

In Japan, the name means “discipline, study”

Here are the lyrics of her version with Osamu:

Well, good morning blues, blues, blues how do you do
Good morning blues, blues, blues how do you do (looking pretty good)
Oh, I’m feeling mighty well but I want to know how good, partner, are you?
Let me say what happened to me last night
I lay down last night I was rolling from side to side
I lay down last night I was rolling from side to side
Do you know what, I was not sick honey I was just dissatisfied (you know what I’m talking about)
Well I rolled and I tumbled and cried the whole night long
Well I rolled and I cried, cried the whole night long
Now I had the blues so bad, I couldn’t tell right from wrong
Well I sent for you yesterday and you come walking today
You dragging them dogs and you come walking today
If you can’t do no better I’m going to throw your old number away
I’m going down to the river and sit down on a log
Oh I’m going down to the river and sit down on a log
If I can’t be your woman I’m not gonna be your dog

The delivery of these lines is certainly more knowing, and humorously so, than on the “green” 1957 version (incidentally, humour is very much part of Barbara’s style; check out “The Kugelsburg Bank” on her Throw It Away album—it’s hilarious). But, while Osamu’s urban rock places this interpretation by Barbara firmly in the early 21^st century, Barbara draws once again from the early history of the blues by including lines (my italics) from “Rollin’ and Tumblin’”, first recorded in 1929, by Hambone Willie Newbern. It’s probably one of the most-recorded blues songs of all time (I first heard it on Big Joe Williams’ Classic Delta Blues album, released in 1964).

So, in answer to the question, “Has Barbara evolved with the times, or have the times finally caught up with her?”, the answer appears to be “Yes, and yes”. She’s as relevant today as she has always been because—by virtue of her fierce independence, originality and musical gifts—she has placed herself both at the leading edge of social change and at the living core of a self-replenishing tradition, the two—change and tradition—working together seamlessly.

Everything about this pic says “iconic”

From this perspective, I would argue that Barbara’s long life and career are best seen, not in terms of simple linear progression, but more as a continuous backtracking and moving forward, the effect of which has been to broaden and deepen her art and political commitment constantly, to the spiritual  enrichment and benefit of her audience and, from all accounts, those who have known and worked with her.

It’s quite a legacy, but that’s not all. A documentary about Barbara’s life is under way: true to Barbara’s principles, this is not a slick Hollywood production but relies mainly on donations, which you can make here. Better still, Barbara’s legacy won’t be confined to video, or audio, or the written word. It’s already alive and kicking in the next generation of impassioned musicians: Osamu is her grandson….

Music dynasty: Barbara, son Pablo and Osamu

[1] Downbeat.com

One way to think about Byron Bay is as a sort of bohemian Cote d’Azur: many of the rich who retire or build holiday homes here made their money in the more louche areas of capitalism, such as media or entertainment, and its style and atmosphere come from the young and partly transient population of surfers, neo-hippies, buskers, artisan pop-up stallholders and tattooed baristas.

The vibe is laidback, rhythmic, sensuous (all those colours, sounds, smells and flavours) and sensual (tanned young bodies and…but enough of that).

Like its Mediterranean counterpart, it has natural beauty to spare: the town prostrates itself behind an elegant sweep of sand that curls at one end into the easternmost point of Australia, Cape Byron, before losing all sense of itself in the almost fluorescently blue ocean.

Good morning, Australia (Source: west1.com.au)

You don’t have to be rich to live comfortably here, and it doesn’t matter how old you are, because it’s a place for the young at heart. And if you’re not, you soon will be. After all, the sun makes its first mainland-Australia landfall here every day. Who can contemplate that fact without feeling, somewhere in their bones, a stirring of youthful optimism?

It’s home to a lot of artists and musicians, including most of The Sidemen, which helps to explain why they launched here. But don’t let their residency beguile you into thinking they personify the town’s insouciant hipness. When I say they “launched”, I mean “went off like a rocket”.

Picture the scene: Byron Theatre, a charming weatherboard structure in the middle of town, on a balmy Saturday evening in May. The 246-seat auditorium is sold out and the audience—mainly boomers like myself with a smattering of Generations X and Y and the occasional iconic Byron yummy mummy in designer hippy gear—is good humoured and, between sips of wine or beer, talkative as it waits for the show to begin.

We’re here to see five musicians who have spent their careers backing some of the biggest names in rock or pop since the 1960s but who, until tonight, have never appeared as an act in their own right.

Jeff Burstin and Rick Fenn (guitars), Bruce Haymes (keyboards), Greg Lyon (bass) and Grant Gerathy (drums) have worked variously with the Black Sorrows, Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons, 10cc, Nick Mason and Dave Gilmour (both of Pink Floyd), Renee Geyer, Paul Kelly, Peter Green (Fleetwood Mac), Crossfire, Georgie Fame, the John Butler Trio and…that will do for now.

Roll up! (As in, come and see the show…)

The project is the brainchild of Steve Banks (Banksie), a gifted singer, songwriter and guitarist (and, full disclosure, old mate) who, only a few years ago, escaped from the world of business in Sydney and relocated to Byron to pursue his long-held and much-deferred musical dreams.

His aim (which, it turns out, is part of a wider agenda) is to give these massively credentialled and seasoned musicians the opportunity to play live together and entertain the audience with stories about their times on the road. It’s an irresistible formula.

It also raises some interesting questions. The show is formally billed as “Steve Banks and The Sidemen”. How will Banksie balance his role as vocalist and front man with his avowed intention of putting The Sidemen “front and centre”, given that they are functioning, to all intents and purposes, as his sidemen?

And what is the audience hoping to gain? A trip down memory lane? A chance to revisit the soundtrack of their lives? Relive the glory of their youth? Experience once again the glamour of the stars they once worshipped? Enjoy a bit of celebrity gossip?

Paradoxes and ambiguities, I think. But not for long: the evening will end by resolving itself in, for me, a moment of unexpected clarity.

THE SOUNDTRACK OF OUR LIVES

As far as this audience member is concerned, the answers to all the above questions are in the affirmative. I’m a tailender of the boomer generation: the music and the acts that The Sidemen brought to life and nurtured for all those years—still nurture—helped shape my sense of myself and my view of the world. I’m pretty sure all my peers in the auditorium feel the same way.

Let’s take a few random examples. Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames. I grew up in the UK but never saw them live. They were, however, a frequent, vibrant presence on our grainy black and white TV, with Fame on Hammond organ backed by a very tight r’n’b/jazz/ska combo (bands like that were always “combos”, they were never “bands”).

He had only three top 10 hits, but they all went to number one. My favourite was ‘Yeh Yeh’; the one I remember best, ‘The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde’, was a tie-in with the 1967 movie starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. With the latter, Fame became the epicentre of a cultural moment: the film launched a style revolution, with Dunaway’s elegant gangster-gal costumes single-handedly killing off the mini skirt in favour of the midi (much to the disappointment of my 13-year-old self).

Gangster gal (Source: Warner Bros)

Pink Floyd. This is a band you never speak of in just the past tense: they were, are and forever will be. One of the reasons they will endure, in my view, is that, while they charted the outer reaches of psychedelia, their far-outness was perhaps one of the most reassuring things about them; what was really unnerving about Floyd was their connectedness to reality.

We all know the sad story of sweet Syd Barrett. He defined Floyd’s originality as a combination of eccentric English pop sensibility (‘See Emily Play’) and space-age or science-fiction themes and imagery (‘Astronomy Domine’). It was after Syd had left the band and become institutionalised that a dark psychosis entered the music, culminating in the monumental and classic Dark Side of the Moon. But the strength of the album, I would argue, lies in the fact that its edginess is grounded in the stark contemporary realities of the Nixon years, Watergate and the Vietnam War.

There’s more to Floyd than this, I know, but we’re talking about how music shapes lives and memories. I was introduced to Dark Side by a friend from school (let’s call him Malcolm) who had dropped out after Year 10 and fallen under the spell of dope, acid and an all-consuming existential rage. We no longer had much in common personally, but we rediscovered each other through that album. I discovered a lot about myself, too, and I was grateful for the fact that, while the realism at the album’s core would take me close to the edge, the sheer artistry of it would lift me up and set me down somewhere safely again.

Coming down after listening to “Dark Side”

It didn’t work out that way for Malcolm. The last I heard about him (and this was only 10 years ago), he had become the town’s tragic freak, standing on street corners, cross-dressed and stoned, yelling at passers-by. He lived alone in sheltered accommodation. One night the police turned up, took him away, and that’s the last any of our mutual acquaintances saw of him.

If Floyd defined the downside of my adolescence, 10cc was very much part of the upside. Apart from the Beatles and Beach Boys, few bands, in my opinion, have so consistently raised pop to the level of art (and I don’t mean pop-art). ‘Rubber Bullets’, ‘The Dean, His Daughter and Me’ and ‘Wall Street Shuffle’ were part of the soundtrack to my later school years, while ‘I’m Not in Love’ came out while I was at university. It was hard to know where pop would go after that; perhaps it’s one of the reasons punk rock became necessary—after all, the song has become deeply embedded in the sonic wallpaper of every shopping mall in the Western world. Everything about it is perfect—not least the multi-vocal backing track which, along with the overall Spector-ish ambience, takes me back to The Mindbenders’ 1965 hit, ‘Groovy Kind of Love’. Eric Stewart sang vocals on both records. I hadn’t realised it until now, but that guy bookends my life from puberty to early adulthood.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” says a familiar voice over the PA, “pray silence while The Sidemen take the stage and reserve your applause for when I come out to join them.”

The audience laughs. So that’s how he’s squaring the “Sidemen front and centre” circle. Classic Banksie.

LICKS AND YARNS

First number, and they set the tone perfectly with a mid-tempo disco beat that turns out to be the 1981 Darryl Hall and John Oates hit, ‘I Can’t Go for That’. All we know at this point is that The Sidemen will be playing songs they used to play, wrote or wished they’d written. Presumably this number, penned by Hall and Oates, falls into the last category. Which kind of makes sense as It’s stylish and accessible—a bit like The Sidemen themselves.

Right to left, we have Jeff, head to toe in black, former lead guitarist with the Black Sorrows and Jo Jo Zep, playing a custom-made Noyce, also black, through what can only be described as a rather phenomenal-looking-and-sounding Fender amp in a matching black cabinet offset at the front by the tastefully subdued glitter of a silvery grill cloth.

(This amp, as will become apparent, is crucial to the whole enterprise.)

Greg, his head crowned with a magnesium halo of curls, is easily the most exotic-looking, but substance more than matches style as he rolls out a bass line that’s solid and vibrant, like a hardwood timber floor.

Grant on drums is in his early forties, which makes him the baby of the group but, judging by his relaxed composure, he could be the most experienced of them all.

Rick, tall and English, coaxes perfection out of a Roger Giffin Strat copy with a gentlemanly charm that makes the whole thing look so damned easy.

And Bruce, far left, sitting ramrod straight at a Nord keyboard, adds colour, texture, depth and rhythmic nuance with a poise that totally belies his self-effacing personal manner.

Let it rock (Source: LisaGPhotography)

Behind Jeff, a bonus for the evening—backing singers Vanessa and Martine; and, front and centre, singing his heart out and grinning like a kid in a toy shop, Banksie.

Jeff is the first to receive the This Is Your Life treatment. Born in Mt Waverley, Victoria, to a musical family, he played in several bands before international success with Jo Jo Zep. Later, as part of the Black Sorrows, he co-produced several platinum-selling records with Joe Camilleri.

“Name one of the highlights of your time with the Sorrows,” says Banksie.

“Playing on the steps of the Sydney Opera House.”

Greg pipes up from the back: “I was there!”

Jeff turns: “Were you?”

These guys have so much history to share, they’re still discovering each other’s, on stage, in real time.

Cue two Sorrows numbers, ‘Hold on To Me’, with its killer opening line (“We were dead on arrival…”), and ‘Harley and Rose’.

Next up: Grant. Born and grew up in Sydney (Maroubra/Matraville) and moved to Byron because “the surf’s better”. A nun taught him piano as a kid: “it was horrible”. As a drummer he’s worked with Labi Siffre and Jackie Orszaczky among others and toured the world with John Butler, playing major venues like Madison Square Garden.

This leads into Siffre’s ‘I Got the Blues’—which I initially mistook (similar intro) for Butler’s ‘Zebra’.

Greg Lyon was originally from Melbourne (where Jeff and Bruce are still based). He started gigging in his teens with someone called Little Johnny Farnham and became a regular in the Aussie Blue Flames, the local combo which backed Georgie Fame on his Australian tours. After a spell in the States he relocated to Byron, combining music with a 20-year career in academia, during which he helped create Australia’s first contemporary music degree course at Southern Cross University.

They play ‘Yeh Yeh’ which makes my night. It’s at this point that I notice that the audience, just like me, are seriously enjoying themselves.

And then it’s Greg’s turn to do an intro.

“Not so long ago, Rick mentioned to me that, with Mike Oldfield, he’d co-written a song for Hall and Oates, ‘Family Man’, which enabled him to buy a house in Byron Bay.”  A mercenary glint lights up his eyes. “So naturally I said to him, ‘Let’s write a song together’. This is it.”

It’s called ‘Do I What I Say, Not What I Do’. Greg apologises for the “indulgence” and says that it’s still a work in progress. No apology necessary, of course; the song rocks along very nicely.

Rick’s next. Born and bred in Oxford, England, his big break came in 1976 when the drummer of 10cc recommended him to the rest of the band. He joined to promote the Deceptive Bends album and has been with them ever since. Along the way he recorded an album with Nick Mason from which a single, ‘Lie for a Lie’, sung by Dave Gilmour with Maggie Reilly on backing vocal, was a hit in the US. And, with Pete Howarth of The Hollies, he wrote a rock opera, ‘Robin Prince of Sherwood’, which toured the UK and had a good run in the West End.

The band launches into ‘Lie for a Lie’ followed by ‘Dreadlock Holiday’, Grant nailing down reggae snare fills in a way that makes any distinction between technique and feel totally meaningless.

Suddenly it’s the interval. How did that happen?

A HARSH REALITY

The first I knew for certain that the gig was taking place was when Banksie rang me.

“Listen, mate, I got a favour to ask. Equipment hire is pretty expensive and I’m trying to keep costs down so that there’s as much money as possible for the band. Could I possibly borrow your amp for Jeff to use? We’ll need it for a couple of weeks, to cover rehearsals as well as the gig.”

Let me get this straight, I thought. Jeff Burstin, ex Jo Jo Zep and the Sorrows and ARIA Hall of Famer, would like to borrow my lil’ old Fender Hot Rod amp which, because I’m still a 10-hours-a-day desk-bound working stiff, I hardly ever get to use?

Two possible replies sprang to mind: “Is the Pope…?” and “Does a bear…?”.

Is he? Does it? (Source: eyeofthetiber.com)

Eventually I settled for, “Yeah, sure, no worries”, and hoped it sounded nonchalant.

Yes, I admit, for a moment there I was reduced to a state of childish excitement. My amp? On stage with these guys? But I make no apologies.

We all have our passions—music, sport, politics or whatever—and our heroes in those fields. Mine from an early age were guitar music, guitarists and their guitars: Eddie Cochran and his Gretsch, Bert Weedon and his Guild, Hank Marvin and his Burns, Lennon and his Rickenbacker.

Most of us don’t have the talent to indulge our passions personally, at least not at an elite level, and therefore do so vicariously, through our heroes. So, on the odd occasion when our personal lives and the idealised world of our heroes intersect, it’s OK in my book to be, as I was, a little star-struck.

But the sense of referred glamour didn’t last long, because Banksie’s request reflected a harsh reality: the economics of making and performing music in the 21^st century.

Musicians have always been the last to get paid, but it’s even harder for them today. The internet, social media and streaming services have destroyed the business model of record sales, regular gigging and tours that underpinned the music industry’s growth in the 1960s and 1970s.

Online technology has made music more ubiquitous than ever, especially through personal listening devices, so that individuals these days are increasingly accessing music privately and relying less than their parents did on mass media and live venues.

The alienating effect of personal listening devices… (Source: everydayisspecial.blogspot.com)

And advances in electronic music equipment have made it easier for solo performers, DJs or small groups to flood venues with big digital soundscapes at a fraction of the cost that promoters would have to pay to hire a more traditional band of three, four or more musicians.

It’s got to the point that many live venues don’t charge the punters for the music. The idea is that the band brings in the crowds to increase the trade at the bar, then gets paid out of the “additional” takings. The proportion they receive is usually no more than a few hundred bucks in total.

I’ve even heard that some venues expect the musicians to underwrite the bar take: so, if the expected “additional” $2,000 or whatever doesn’t materialise on the night, the musicians are expected to compensate the venue. You couldn’t make it up.

My guess is that, for most of their working lives, The Sidemen would have followed the traditional template of gigging, session work, song writing and teaching, enabling them to enjoy satisfying careers and decent, though probably not particularly flashy, lifestyles.

Now, they face the same challenges as everybody else.

“When you think of all the talent and experience and years of musical history that these guys represent, there’s got to be a way of rewarding them more appropriately, in a way that gives value to the public too,” said Banksie toward the end of the call. “The question is, what is it?”

He was speaking now, not as the stars-in-his-eyes front man planning a major gig, but as a successful, retired businessman warming to a new challenge: how to introduce a measure of equitability in an industry where, more than ever, producers and creators are being denied a fair share of their rewards by distributors and consumers.

“I don’t know,” he said, answering his own question, “but I’m working on it.”

SHARING A PERFECT WAVE

I confess I’ve never seen the 2001 Australian hit movie, Lantana. Noirish, introspective stories about tangled relationships in suburban Sydney are not my thing. As far as I can tell, though, the title and creeping-plant imagery are well suited to the theme. I just tried reading the plot summary on Wikipedia; it was like ingesting broken glass.

Cue Bruce. He was part of the team, including Paul Kelly, that created the film’s soundtrack. The second set begins with the Lantana trailer, minus sound, playing on the backdrop and Bruce improvising over it. A dark and empty road lights up like foil in the headlights of a car; couples couple or glare moodily at each other; one woman talks tearfully to another; two men snarl at each other; Geoffrey Rush stares down at the Hawkesbury River, as into a metaphysical void; a woman’s body is thrown from the car….

Bruce’s music creeps from the shadows and curls itself around the images like the caress of a lover which, at any second, could snap into a stranglehold.

He’s from Bright, a charming old gold mining town in Victoria. Before being discovered by Richard Clapton’s bass player, he’d never played to an audience of more than about five people. Now his track record includes working with Kelly, Russell Morris, Renee Geyer, Colin Hay, The Waifs, Archie Roach and many more. He’s worked on the music for 15 films and won an ARIA for Lantana.

“You were there when Kelly wrote ‘How to Make Gravy’, weren’t you?” asks Banksie. “What happened?”

“Well, he walked into the room, playing a guitar, and said, ‘What do you think? It’s got a few chords from another song so I’m not really sure….’ And I said, ‘Nah, it’s really good. Work on it.’”

From little things, big things grow.

Guest vocalist Mark Jelfs channels Kelly with a near-perfect rendering of ‘Gravy’, and the show changes gear. The interviews are done, and the songs are no longer in support of anecdote or historical perspective. From this point on, The Sidemen are playing whatever the hell they want to.

The classics—so many of them my personal favourites—come thick and fast: ‘Rag Mama Rag’, ‘Drive My Car’, ‘Come Together’, ‘Heading in the Right Direction’ (the Renee Geyer classic with Vanessa delivering a beautifully judged lead vocal), ‘Shape I’m In’, ‘Oh Well’ and ‘Family Man’.

People are dancing, filling the space in front of the stage; the rest of us are either standing or rocking in our seats, clapping time. I turn to my Better Half: “Hey, that’s my amp up there!!”

One timeless moment (Source: LisaGPhotography)

“Yes, dear, lovely,” she says, and pats my knee before losing herself in the moment again.

We’re all reliving the best musical times of our lives, but there’s something else going on here, too. It’s particularly noticeable on ‘Come Together’ and an unrehearsed ‘Sunshine of Your Love’ which forms part of the encore (Rick walks over to Banksie: “Is this in E?” Banksie laughs and nods.)

Is it the sound quality? It’s been good all night, but now it seems to lift a notch. Or maybe the songs are taking on a new, fresh life of their own. We know them inside out, but they sound clear and pristine, as though we’re hearing them for the first time.

The Sidemen are not just purveying musical history, they’re creating their own timeless moment—and we’re part of it.

That’s not just my opinion. It’s clear from the mood of the rest of the audience as we spill out onto the street that it’s been a pretty special evening. So often when you get carried along by a crowd you feel as though you’re spiralling downward into something; not this time. The sense of energy and release is palpable, as though we’re all surfing the same perfect wave.

That’s when my moment of clarity hits: the real story of The Sidemen is not about the stars they supported back in the day, but about the talent, skills, hard work, creative energy and unassuming professionalism they’ve brought, and continue to bring, to every job they’ve done.

And it’s about the enduring musical legacy and tradition they’ve created in the process. Stars come and go, but it’s the side men and women of this world who keep the show on the road.

Job done (Source: LisaGPhotography)

At the pub the next day we catch up with Banksie, his family and friends, and most of The Sidemen. The mood is tired but happy. Bruce has had to go back to Melbourne for a gig. Before he went, he said something to Banksie which, we agree, will resonate with us for a long time.

“In 40 years of playing live, that’s the first time I’ve ever spoken on stage.”