Smokin'

Just back from a most agreeable folk festival in the North East of England; for an area described by George Osborne's father-in-law last week as desolate and only fit for fracking, a more vibrant, friendly and cultural area I've yet to discover. With champagne moments too numerous to list here, a festival high was seeing Edwina Hayes on the Friday night and then meeting her the following lunchtime at a Meet the Songwriters session. She was, without doubt, one of the most charming, intelligent and funny women I've ever met. And she writes some intoxicating tunes to boot.

 

As a slightly quirky footnote Edwina talked briefly about her father, now residing in Argentina. Even by her own admission he's a bit of a lad. If you've got a spare five minutes click on his website for a brief bio and some of the craziest quotes attributed to anyone.

Thirteen

If Ben Kweller's Thirteen had been around when I was a youth this achingly beautiful song would have found its way on to every mix tape I ever did for a girl. Now, as a middle aged man, I find myself including it on compilation CDs and Spotify playlists for other middle aged men. No matter, that doesn't stop it from being an achingly beautiful song. If only I was still a flirt.
 

Sky Ground

A lot of column inches been given over to the highly influential San Francisco music scene of the late 60s and early 70s. Bands like The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane rode a psychedelic wave that would transport them seamlessly from one decade into the next. Others struggled: Fifty Foot Hose and The Chocolate Watch Band might have been tearing up trees in the Fillmore district at the same time as Jerry Garcia, but ran out of gas before they could show their full potential. Likewise the rather aptly named Sky Ground (left) could regularly be seen on the bill at The Bear's Lair, Cinnamon A-Go-Go, Mandrake's and Sugar Hill. Fronted by Phil 'Parsley' Woodlands (originally from Leeds by all accounts) and Berkeley resident Dill Dilbert they never found an audience outside of the Bay Area and sadly folded in 1973. Woodlands and Dilbert did, however, record an EP in the back of a Cantonese restaurant on the corner of Mission & Third a mere two weeks before they disbanded: One Tree was pressed on blue vinyl in a limited run of only 250 - one of the reasons why copies often exchange hands for hundreds of dollars. That and the fact that Carlos Santana plays on it.

Lions, Peacocks and Magpies

Charlie Resnick's Nottingham

I lived in Nottingham for twenty five years and frequented many of the same haunts as Charlie Resnick: The Peacock on Mansfield Road was the perfect oasis for a pint and a gleg of the Evening Post and, like Resnick, I acquired many of my jazz records from The Music Inn tucked away in The West End Arcade. If I was hooking up with friends in town it was de rigeuer to meet them in Slab Square by the Left Lion (never the right) and every other Saturday during the football season you'd find me down the Lane: Meadow Lane, home to Charlie's team, Notts County (The Magpies). Other salubrious venues where our paths might have crossed would have included the Arboretum, Bentinck Hotel, Warsaw Diner, Victoria Market, Golden Fleece and The Bell.

But, of course, our paths never did cross. That's because Charlie Resnick never really existed. Well, he existed in my head. And in his creator's head, John Harvey. The reason for this sudden bout of melancholia is, in part, down to having just finished Cold In Hand the last in the Resnick canon - going back as it does to the late 80s. Charlie loved, in no particular order, jazz, sandwiches, cats, beer and Notts County. Ditto that. However, this surge of nostalgia may just be because a small part of me, every now and then, wishes I was back there. Charlie Resnick may not miss me. But I'm as sure as hell going to miss him.

Duck!

A theme park just around the corner from us unveiled its new ride this week. It made the local paper; with speed/drop/G-force stats that would make your hair, quite literally, stand on end I think it's safe to say I'll be sticking to the tea cups. Or the dodgems. But I digress. Reading the feature I was more interested in who they'd got to open this end of pier attraction. *Drum roll* Peter Lorimer! Or to give him his full title Peter 'Hot-Shot' Lorimer. A former Leeds Utd striker with a shot so fierce he was once pictured in Rothmans with his right foot cooling down in a bucket of cold water.