Barlick here we come

We are less than a week away from the show that all of Barnoldswick is talking about, some people from Trawden are even coming. If you’re coming to Barton’s Emporium on Thursday I look forward to seeing you. Ben has taken a couple of days off work and everything. Merch will be available but if you don’t like carrying vinyl around Barnoldswick with a skinful why not buy some albums before the day here or here, that way you can learn all the words before the show. I’ve been learning my stuff this week in between watching slices of World Cup, you might think I shouldn’t have to learn stuff that I’ve written myself but it’s hard to remember when you’ve been making it all deliberately awkward. I’m enjoying it though, it’s good stuff and a lot of it suits the World Cup nicely. Check out The Skins below from last year’s Shinbone’s Revenge, it sounds perfect for a BBC montage of sporting action. I nearly compiled a footballing highlight video to go over it this morning so that I could show you what I mean, but then I thought “What on earth are you doing with your life?” Imagine it though.

One of my favourite Dylan albums is 60 years old today, it’s Blonde on Blonde as you’ve figured out. I’ll stick with calling it “one of my favourites” because let’s face it Desire exists and it has Emmylou on it. I do love Blonde on Blonde though, I could listen to it forever. Maybe I’m exaggerating but I could definitely listen to it for days non stop. I already have done.

I’ve posted a few times about the gig I did with some people who emailed me from Lancaster, we played the whole thing from start to finish and I’d never met them or rehearsed with them. It’s quite apt really, none of the musicians who played with Dylan were given the luxury of rehearsals and it’s sort of where the magic lies. I posted a video before that had quite professional audio and was from our second attempt at the show. This is an audience video from the first one we did and it features One Of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later). I’m happy to post this because the low quality audio covers a multitude of sins in my piano playing and the whole thing sounds pretty decent.

It might seem like I’m being self deprecating, shitting on myself a little bit to fish for a compliment or two but that isn’t my game here. It’s just that that particular piano part was a tough one, listening to that with the fresh ears that an approaching show gives really made my guts do a little somersault.

There are three keyboard players at large on Blonde on Blonde. One is Pig Robbins, who was the guy you went to in Nashville if you weren’t booking Floyd Kramer. He’s the guy who plays the beautiful tremolo parts on Rainy Day Women #12 and 35 (for the record doing that was a hardly a fun time either…) There’s also Al Kooper playing organ throughout the album. Everyone knows Al, he played on organ on Like a Rolling Stone, famously having never played a Hammond before and not knowing how to turn one on. That little story is so famous it even got a little nod in A Complete Unknown. The third player is Paul Griffin, he’s the guy who played on One Of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later) and I would shout from the rooftops about the guy. If I lived in a city with flat roofed tower buildings. Shouting from rooftops in Clitheroe would be mental, I’d slip in pigeon shit and knacker somebody’s pointing whilst doing myself an injury. So I’ll just spend a paragraph or two telling you that Paul Griffin is amazing.

Hearing the isolated piano in the video gives you more of a grasp of how utterly transformational Griffin is. We’ve all seen the Beatles Get Back film and smiled when we saw Billy Preston light up the room and the Beatles faces, whilst saving their album. Paul Griffin must have been doing the same thing every time he walked into a studio and sat at a piano. He lights up this song, showers it in melodic flourishes whilst injecting it with an infectious groove. You know that it’s a first take too, you can hear the improvising, the real time decision making. It’s actually astounding.

That clip in A Complete Unknown focused on Al Kooper at the organ, everybody thinks about Like A Rolling Stone as being an organ tune and he really did put some lovely stuff on it. Maybe they regarded it as tribute enough to Paul Griffin that there was an anonymous black guy sat at the piano not saying a word but I can’t listen to it now without hearing Griffin dragging it into his own domain. He is driving Like a Rolling Stone and everybody else, including Dylan dare I say it, is a passenger.

He didn’t just do it to Bob Dylan tracks either, he has an astounding CV including recordings with renowned awkward bastards like Steely Dan and Paul Simon. Another tune I think it’s worth listening to his isolated piano on is American Pie. I’m almost reluctant to stick it here because I know some people really despise Don Mclean. I never quite got that, it feels a bit like deciding to hate John Craven to me but we’re all different. Whatever you think about McLean though just listen again and really listen to the piano, Griffin is yet again breathtaking.

I started out talking about Blonde and Blonde and I ended up banging on about how great Paul Griffin is, that’s just the way it goes sometimes on here. I feel better for it too, I’ve got something off my chest.

Did everybody on social media do massive RIP posts this week at the passing of a musical legend? Did they fuck. Allow me- Dave Greenslade has passed and we can take a moment out of our Saturday to say “Well done Dave!” An outstanding career in prog.

I first became aware of Jon Hiseman’s Colosseum through Joe Madden’s Uptown Band, they used to play this song Walking In the Park before I joined. I wouldn’t have know that Greenslade was the organist back then, this was before I started pulling on every session player thread obsessively to see where it went. Colosseum pulled him in from Geno Washington’s Ram Jam Band at the end of 1968 and on the early stuff he sounds very much in the tradition of Graham Bond who Jon Hiseman had been playing with in Ginger Baker’s Airforce. He’s excellent on this stuff, obviously not as showy or self assured as the big hitters like Emerson and Wakeman but he’s still premier league. I became aware of him as a name after being drawn in by the band he gave his surname to. Mainly because they had Roger Dean covers on their albums.

Roger Dean has pulled me in over and over again. It hasn’t always panned out, see my earlier piece on Uriah Heep, but Greenslade are excellent. A rare lineup of two keyboards and no guitars, it’s difficult to know who is playing what between Dave Greenslade and Dave Lawson but it’s rich and inventive stuff with a gorgeous palette of sounds. I didn’t always love Lawson’s voice but it generally sounds like the stuff Matt Berry makes for the surreal musical interludes in Toast of London. Or rather Matt Berry records sound a bit like Greenslade, let’s get our causality right. You could do worse than listen to Dave and Dave at play today.

Much like Rod Argent as discussed last week, Greenslade pivoted into TV music in the 80s. Do you remember A Very Peculiar Practice? Me neither, but Greenslade wrote the theme tune and Elkie Brooks sang it. This is the kind of thing I’ve no doubt Mike Moore remembers.

Rest in Peace Dave Greenslade, you served well.

I imagine some of you don’t read the comments on my Substack letters, I imagine some of you don’t read the letters. Time is tight, we’ve always said it. Last week in the comments our chief Uruguayan correspondent Carolina Puerto dropped Uruguay’s favourite footballing anthems and what do you know, they’re kind of great! Here’s Jamie Roos and No Te Va Gustar for your enjoyment. If any other international readers have an offering to make I’m all ears, there’s a month of this to go.

I probably shouldn’t talk about politics on here, I talk about politics all day every day in my real life though, I’m engaged and interested. I’m a good member of the electorate, I vote for all the right stuff.

Do I have a comment to make on Burnham winning the Makerfield byelection though? I’ll be careful here. I like Burnham a lot and always have but I’m also aware that changing Prime Ministers has seemed like a pretty good idea every time we’ve done it in the last decade and we always seem to end up with buyer’s remorse. I’m aware he’s about to unleash chaos and there’s a chance we’ll all regret it…but…

Burnham is a Doves fan. He genuinely is too, if Keir Starmer said he was in his dorky voice you wouldn’t believe him, but Burnham can just drink pints and go to gigs and seem normal. It’s like a gift. Not to us, we just do that every day. But for a politician it’s amazing.

At his last Doves gig he shelled out a bit at the merch stand too, Luke (Doves’ extraordinarily gifted merch guy) even got a photo of him after his vinyl purchase. I’ve no idea who the other guys are.

If you’re wondering what Jez has scrawled on there in his dedication, he’s asking for a council tax reduction on account of being a Dove, here’s a closeup:

He hasn’t reduced Jez’s council tax though.

Make of that what you will.

Elliot Paisley is fast becoming my favourite writer on here, his piece The Death Of The Hangover really tickled me and frankly made me want to get right back on it. Check out this paragraph and then subscribe to this genius…

“Hangovers are the only thing that stops man from surrendering to permanent drunken stupor. They’re also the reason he enjoys a few brewskis. The jeopardy is part of it. If parachutes never failed, skydiving would suck. When you crash through the barn roof, you may regret jumping. When the emergency services find you, a dead pig and your own splintered bones beneath you, you might wish you’d stayed in. But if that was never on the line, you’d have never crossed it. The spice of life is that sometimes people die. Today is the cost of last night. And what a night it was.”

See you Thursday.

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