It Is Unusual

It's been pointed out that my earlier post about Tom Jones gave him a bit of an easy ride, since his brilliant autobiography manages to have no mention at all of sex with hundreds of groupies and paints a picture of a lifelong happy marriage based on true love.Which seems slightly odd.

Whatever the truth is, Jones looks unlikely to supply it now. I apologise for my naivety.

That's The Way To Say Goodbye

Russ Payne and Unison Bends shared the bill with Leonard Cohen at the weekend – courtesy of DJ Paul Mansell and Marlow FM radio. Paul – who has a John-Peelish quality about him – invited us to play a 'live' set from our new album 'Liquor and Iron' on his eclectic Magic Bus show.

But with Cohen having just departed, it was inevitable that Paul would lace the programme with some of his greatest songs So we kind of alternated.

When Paul took some time to enlarge on the genesis of the Cohen classic 'Suzanne', I was inevitably reminded of my first year at university in London; I lived in a hall of residence with cardboard-thin walls and a neighbour who had just one album, 'The Songs Of Leonard Cohen', which he played through the night. I more or less knew 'Suzanne' off by heart.

On the odd occasions when I saw my Cohen-obsessed fellow student, he looked wan and miserable. Perhaps no great surprise there. Cohen at that time had a reputation for being relentlessly doomy, but he went on to show he was at his best when combining darkness with light, and gloom with a wicked humour. At that, he proved to be the master.

Jones The Storyteller

If you think of Tom Jones, you probably think of him as a singer. Having just read his autobiography, 'Over The Top And Back', I now think of him as a great storyteller.

It doesn't read like a ghostwritten account but like the man himself recounting his remarkable life in a completely authentic voice.

He also shows incredible self-awareness, detailing his faults, failures and mistakes as well as his often unbelievable turns of good fortune.

It's also worth mentioning that he seems to have enormous respect for drummers (appreciating how they can make or break the sound of a band) and for songwriters.

As Bill Haley once said, Jones "out-Elvised Elvis". And he also lived to tell the tale – brilliantly.

Things Have Not Changed

As Beyonce and Bruce skip to the side of Clinton, and Ted Nugent grabs his crotch for Trump, it's refreshing that there is no likelihood of Bob "I've lived through a lot of presidents" Dylan getting involved with any of them.

It's best put by Andrew Kirell in his look at Dylan's refusal to be goaded into taking sides in a Rolling Stone interview that spent an inordinate amount of time asking him about Barack Obama.

Kirell writes: "His reluctance to play the game should serve as inspiration for those of us who feel disillusioned with a two-party system that has become, at its core, a competition amongst used car salesmen. 

"Platitudes are exchanged, harsh words are spewed, the promise of 'reform' is parroted over and over again, but nothing ever really changes. And if it does, it’s not because some politician in a big office made it so. Dylan understands that."

Dream Gig

It seems that some rock 'n' roll dreams do come true... Alex KP, the remarkable singer-songwriter, mentioned on this blog in the summer, was not only persuaded to add her spine-tingling voice to tracks on our new Russ Payne and Unison Bends album, 'Liquor And Iron', but she has agreed to perform with the band at our 'live' album launch in Brighton on November 26.

It promises to be the most exciting gig that the band has done. I wouldn't want to miss it.

Softness In The Machine

Interesting reading the official Robert Wyatt biography to find that this one-time highly individual drummer and latterly remarkable singer has long been plagued by feelings of musical inadequacy and anxiety dreams of the onstage shit hitting the fan.

Maybe he's just particularly honest in owning up to it... Since there are many more musicians who experience such worries...

Wyatt was there from the beginning with The Soft Machine – named after the William Burroughs novel of the same name – and he probably appreciates as much as anyone that this reference to the human body as a soft machine is apt. The human machine can do amazing things, but its software is often vulnerable.

Even though 'Different Every Time' is an occasionally hagiographic 'authorised' book, it does not shy away from the vulnerabilities of this particular soft musical machine. And it's an excellent read.

At last...

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

And what better way to write a new post than to hail Bob Dylan's being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - at long last!

The carping from those who don't get it has already started... but as the Poet Laureate of Rock 'N' Roll pointed out some time ago, something is happening and they don't know what it is.

Those who know and love Dylan and his work  - and know what it has meant to them on this long journey from the Sixties to here - will get it and will be overjoyed.