Drumming With Taste

I’ve been away (at the Rory Gallagher Festival in Ballyshannon, Ireland)... I’m back. I enjoyed three full days and nights of inspiring music, played in tribute to this great musician who died tragically 22 years ago.

The greatest highlight, among many others, was watching again the great drummer John Wilson. I saw him many times in the 1960s playing with Gallagher’s power trio, Taste.

Wilson combined technique with passion in equal measures in a way that few drummers do. And 50 years on, performing with his own power trio, A Taste Of Rory, he is an even stronger player.

I should also mention the phenomenal Pat McManus (now arguably Ireland’s finest guitarist, since the loss of Gallagher and Gary Moore) who played an epic outdoor set to an audience soaked by, but oblivious to, a hard rainstorm.

And the pleasantest surprise was to take refuge in a tiny bar and find a band called Catfish playing Gallagher’s back catalogue with a fire and spirit all the more remarkable since none of these young players looked as if they could have even been born before Gallagher died.

If you love blues/rock (and Guinness) and have never been to the Rory Gallagher Festival... go!

Bob And Mavis

It's good to see that Bob Dylan and Mavis Staples will be hitting the road together on a tour of the States later this year.

They've known each other for more than 50 years – and Bob is said to have proposed to her early on, only to be turned down.

That never ended their mutual admiration – and there's a lovely duet by them which closes the excellent album "Gotta Serve Somebody - the Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan".

And Mavis's latterday blues/soul/gospel albums have sounded rather like Dylan without Dylan actually being present.

The two of them on the same stage is bound to be a powerful experience for those lucky enough to be there.

In the current era of formulaic, passionless and gutless songs and singing, Dylan and Staples are on another plane, almost another planet. When we lose them, the music really will be dead.

Ears Wide Open

I've been away... I'm back...

I thought I knew how to listen to music. It's something that I've been doing all my life, it seems.

And I suppose if the truth be told, a lot of the music that I've listened to 'live' has been on the loud side. And occasionally much too loud.

An effect of that has been finding some music much too quiet.

That was how I felt at a concert of early sacred music by the BBC Singers at St Paul's, Knightsbridge, a few nights ago.

The music – including pieces by Cornysh, Taverner, Horwood, Lamb and Wylkynson – was superb but I just wanted to turn up the volume to get the full effect.

Maybe years of listening to heavy blues and rock had taken its toll, and I was starting to lose my hearing, I thought.

In the interval I mentioned this to the person sitting next to me, and she explained the simple solution: "Listen with your eyes closed."

For the second half of the concert, I did just that. And she was right. The effect was remarkable. And the music pierced my heart and soul – as well as my ears.

The BBC? Don't Knock It...

If you thought the BBC was just too outdated and too unwieldy for anyone to manage it, a few moments inside the labyrinth of its Maida Vale studios in London would confirm your opinion.

People could go into this ancient maze of characterless corridors and rooms and never be seen again.

I was there last night because I had the honour of acting as roadie for drummer John Marshall, one of the legendary jazz musicians (along with Roy Babbington and Art Themen) playing with the BBC Big Band in a memorial concert for the late and great Graham Collier.

And once you were guided through the tangle of passageways and were inside the studio with some of the finest players in jazz, then you appreciated the fact that there are certain things the BBC does better than anyone else ever will. (As if to accentuate the timeless quality of the place, a plaque by the stage informed us that this was the studio where Bing Crosby made his last recording.)

Collier's music — especially in the hands of these master players — was absolutely stunning, running from dirty blues to sophisticated jazz, via grooves that could be (and have been) sampled by contemporary DJs and hip-hop musicians.

If you want to hear how good a night it was, the concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at 11pm on Sunday November 25 and will also be on iPlayer.

Stuck Outside The Forum With The Hendrix Blues Again

Was Jimi Hendrix a blues musician? There are some who will think this question in the same league as 'Is the pope a Catholic?' etc...

But for others, it seems, the very idea of Hendrix being thought of as a blues musician is akin to heresy.

A Facebook group called The Real Blues Forum hosts intricate and erudite discussion on the blues, but someone (not me) recently had the temerity to put up some pictures of Hendrix for discussion, because Jimi was seen to be holding actual blues albums in the photos.

When the subsequent discussion (all right, I did play a part in this bit) turned to Jimi being a great blues player, the originator of the strand made it clear that if there was another mention of Jimi's music (rather than the blues albums in the photos), he would remove, i.e. censor, the whole discussion.

A forum is a 'meeting place for open discussion'... but not The Real Blues Forum, it seems.

When I posted a quote from BB King — 'Jimi to me was one of the great explorers of the so-called Delta blues' — toys were thrown out of the pram and the discussion was closed down.

What is so terrible about suggesting that Jimi was part of the great blues tradition? BB hit on something with his reference to the Delta blues... for surely Hendrix was little more than the Robert Johnson of his time.

If Johnson had lived into the electric blues era, there is no telling where he and his playing might have gone. His music might even have been banned from being discussed on The Real Blues Forum.

First Time I Met The Blues

The first real blues record I ever heard was an album by Sleepy John Estes and it was actually quite terrifying. I had never heard anything remotely like it in my little schoolboy life.

Not only did it sound scarily grown up, but it opened a window into another, darker, more real world.

And it wasn't just that voice and that guitar. There was also the blues harmonica playing of Hammie Nixon. Altogether, this new (to me) sound was almost too much to take.

"Everybody ought to make a change some time," sang Sleepy John. And that's about all any of us needs to remember...

A Long Road

By chance, I heard that unmistakeable piano intro to A Hard Road by John Mayall last night and got the proverbial shivers. Although his previous album, Bluesbreakers, with Eric Clapton is the one everybody talks about, it was this one, with Peter Green replacing Clapton, that really was the manifesto for Mayall's blues.

The idea of a young white singer openly dedicating and committing his life to the blues may have sounded preposterous in 1967, but Mayall did just that and is still touring, aged 78.

And many of us whom Mayall, Clapton and Green inspired are also still playing. Something we never could have forecast. If Mayall can go to the end of the road, maybe we can too.

A Lot Of Front

Russ, dynamic frontman with Russ Payne and the Shark Dentists (www.sharkdentists.co.uk), pictured above, hit the airwaves yesterday to talk about our latest venture — a monthly blues night at the Port Mahon, Oxford, at which we're inviting local players to come and sit in with the band.

I set up the interview on BBC Radio Oxford, but Russ did the business in the studio. He's a great front man. And, like most drummers, apart from the likes of Buddy Rich, Keith Moon and Ginger Baker, I'm mostly happy to be in the background.

Wasn't it a bit arrogant, asked the BBC interviewer, for Russ to put his own name in front of that of the band? "Yes," said Russ. "But I'm a guitarist."