Tag Archives: songwriter

From Bar to Street to Bookie

A few weeks ago, BBC Four screened a typically well-crafted documentary about that most quintessential of London bands, Squeeze. Squeeze: Take Me I’m Yours traced the group’s origins and formation in south London, the comings and goings of various members and the relationship between its principal songwriters. Chris Difford and Glenn Tillbrook have been the only ever-presents throughout the band’s career and have been responsible for the majority of Squeeze’s output during this time. They spoke about how their relationship changed over the years and how they came up with some of their most popular songs. It proved to be a nice companion to Jim Drury’s Squeeze: Song by Song from 2004, in which Chris and Glenn went into the songwriting process in even more detail. The film and book made me seek out these songs again and, in particular, the one I think might be their finest three minutes: Up the Junction

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Lonely At The Top

A few weeks ago, my friend John and I caught the first in what promises to be a busy few months of checking out some of our favourite songwriters at various venues around the British Isles. First up was Randy Newman who played two gigs at Dublin’s Vicar St. at the start of March. We had hoped to catch him there a couple of years ago, but he caught a sore throat and had to cancel. On the opening night this time, he began with Mama Told Me Not To Come and it was obvious that he was under the weather again and should probably have heeded the song’s advice. Fortunately, his head cold only affected him on a few songs and the rest of the show made me forget my own dose of the man ‘flu for a couple of hours

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All Things Must Pass

George Harrison: Living in the Material World is a return to form for director Martin Scorsese following the 2008 release of Shine a Light, his rather lacklustre concert film about The Rolling Stones. Fortunately, his depiction of the Beatle known as The Quiet One has more in common with Scorsese’s 2005 film about Bob Dylan. No Direction Home was over 200 minutes long and in two parts, but still managed to only cover Dylan’s career up to 1966. Living in the Material World is also a two-parter and is similar in length to the Dylan one, but manages to cover the whole of Harrison’s life up to his death on November 29th, 2001. A major strength of No Direction Home was its newly-recorded interviews with an extremely open and talkative Dylan. Living in the Material World makes up for the loss of its protagonist by drawing on a range of interviews with Harrison at various points in his career. It opens by chatting to two of his uncles who talk about the younger George growing up in Liverpool and also draws upon letters written by George to his parents. These are voiced by an actor and would have been more effective if he sounded like Harrison or, at least, adopted a Scouse accent. Visually, the lack of film footage from this period is nicely balanced by a simple but effective use of black & white photographs. Many of these appeared to be newly discovered and we also get to see a lot of unseen footage from his days with The Beatles

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Mixing Pop & Politics

“It’s surprising how quick a little rain can clear the streets,” sang Billy Bragg on a wonderful rendition of The Saturday Boy at Dolan’s last night. The Limerick streets are used to rain, of course, and if they were empty on a Monday night it was because everyone was at the Warehouse to welcome the Bard of Barking to town for the first time. It’s hard enough to get people to come out any night to see a solo singer backing himself on guitar, but it was a testament to his standing that he attracted a full crowd on a cold and wet Monday night in October. I got to Dolan’s early and filled my stomach with some tasty Guinness stew and later washed it down with pints of porter in the Warehouse as I joined some friends to check out the opening act. Paddy Nash hails from Derry and he did a fine job warming up the crowd. He was quite comfortable with the audience and explained that he had walked out on his job in the film industry when they wouldn’t give him the week off to follow Billy around the country. A song called Billy Bragg Jeans was inspired by a story Paddy heard about Billy buying a pair of jeans for a few quid in a charity store. He also gave us a song called Rubber Bullets that was sung from the perspective of a child growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. His best song, and the one the audience enjoyed the most, was called Ballad of a Nobody. This was a witty song that told the story of an average man with an average life and had everybody in stitches as its key line was repeated each time

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American Tunes

Paul Simon turned 70 this week and here are seven songs from both phases of his career as performed by female artists. The first four were originally released as part of his musical partnership with Art Garfunkel. The Bangles’ hit version of A Hazy Shade of Winter from 1987 is the most well-known of those. Lucy Wainwright Roche’s America appears on her 2010 debut called Lucy and Joan Baez’s Dangling Conversation is taken from her 1967 release, Joan. Icelandic singer Emiliana Torrini’s interpretation of The Sounds of Silence is from a 1996 compilation called Stone Free. The final three songs represent Simon’s solo career and begin with Hearts and Bones by Crooked Still singer Aoife O’Donovan from 2004. Susan Werner sings Something So Right on her 2007 Last of the Good Straight Girls album. Finally, Julie Doiron’s downbeat reworking of Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard was recorded live in Minneapolis in 2002. Happy belated birthday, Mr. Simon

A Hazy Shade of Winter (Simon & Garfunkel cover) – The Bangles

America (Simon & Garfunkel cover) – Lucy Wainwright Roche

Dangling Conversation (Simon & Garfunkel cover) – Joan Baez

The Sound of Silence (Simon and Garfunkel cover) – Emiliana Torrini

Hearts & Bones (Paul Simon cover) – Aoife O’Donovan

Something So Right (Paul Simon cover) – Susan Werner

Me & Julio Down By the Schoolyard (Paul Simon cover) – Julie Doiron

Three Is The Magic Number

It had been a while since my friend John and I had been to a gig in Limerick, but we made that right last Wednesday night. John’s a big fan of British and Irish folk music and I quite like singer-songwriters. Both categories were catered for at the Belltable on October 5th as three talented musicians from the British Isles came to town. James Yorkston, Adrian Crowley and Alasdair Roberts were the trio and Limerick was their first stop on a four-night tour that would take in Cork, Dublin and Kildare on the subsequent nights. It was my first visit to the Belltable since its refurbishment earlier this year and I must say I was impressed with what they’ve done to the foyer and the theatre area. Fife native James Yorkston was first up and he tried out a load of new songs on us. I’ve been a fan of his music ever since I heard his song Woozy with Cider and it was a pleasure to finally hear his wonderful voice in person. I’m afraid I can’t recall any of the titles of the new songs, but his quiet delivery and plucked guitar on one was reminiscent of Thom Yorke. He’s no Jimi Hendrix on guitar and spent some time tuning it between tunes, but also engaged in a bit of banter with the audience while fiddling with his strings. Yorkston was joined by Alasdair Roberts at the end of his set as the two paid tribute to a folk legend. Bert Jansch had passed away that morning and Yorkston revealed that his very first paid gig was supporting the Glasgow-born musician. He last met him when he supported him in Paris a few years ago. He admitted that he didn’t know him that well, but you could tell that Jansch’s music meant a lot to him. He and Roberts delivered an emotional version of a traditional ballad about a sailor who takes advantage of a servant girl that brought the first half of the show to an end

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Late Nights With The Power Pop

The American singer-songwriter Matthew Sweet celebrates his 47th birthday today. I first heard of him in 1991 when he released his breakthrough album, Girlfriend, a record I’ll be looking at when it reaches its 20th anniversary in a few weeks. The type of music Sweet performs belongs to a genre known as power pop, which feature vocal harmonies and strong melodies as well as memorable guitar licks. Groups like The Beatles and Big Star have exerted the biggest influence on the genre. Sweet has covered these bands throughout his career and, with the help of Susanna Hoffs, released two fine albums of songs from the sixties and seventies. Their version of Who Knows Where the Time Goes? is taken from the first of those and features Hoffs on lead vocals with Sweet providing harmonies and the guitar parts. It’s preceded by three songs that Sweet has contributed to tribute albums over the years. Big Sky appears on This is Where I Belong: The Songs of Ray Davies. Let Me Be the One is from If I Were a Carpenter. And his quite effective take on the theme from Scooby Doo is part of a musical celebration of Saturday morning cartoon shows. The final song is Death Cab for Cutie’s acoustic version of the opening track from Sweet’s 100% Fun album. Sweet’s just released a new album called Modern Art and you can download a free track from it at his website. From what I’ve heard so far, it sounds like it could be a welcome return to previous form. Both the new album and Girlfriend are available in a number of different formats and I’ll reveal more when I revisit Girlfriend on October 22nd. Hope you have a sweet birthday, Matthew

Big Sky (Kinks cover) – Matthew Sweet

Let Me Be the One (Carpenters cover) – Matthew Sweet

Scooby Doo, Where Are You? – Matthew Sweet

Who Knows Where the Time Goes? (Sandy Denny cover) – Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs

Sick of Myself (Matthew Sweet cover) – Death Cab for Cutie

Wastin’ Time

Yesterday my friend John and I took a day out to see a wonderful Ron Sexsmith gig at The Academy in Dublin. After a nice late breakfast at The Wild Onion in Limerick, we got into John’s car and headed out on the new motorway from Limerick to Dublin. We listened to Ron’s fine new album called Long Player Late Bloomer. I think it’s his best album since the first two he released about fifteen years ago. It’s full of his trademark hooks and melodies as well as witty and poignant lyrics. It also sounds really good and a lot of this is down to its producer, Bob Rock. The appropriately named Rock didn’t just produce the record, however. He also acted like a coach to the Canadian songwriter and urged him to work on his songs and make them even better than they already were. As we listened to the CD, John mentioned that he was actually looking forward to hearing these new songs even more than Ron’s already impressive back catalogue. I had to agree. There’s always new product to be pushed at any gig and usually a selection of tracks from the new release is something the audience politely listens to while waiting for the earlier favourites to make an appearance

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