A Martyn Joseph gig is pretty much as good as it gets.
He's billed as a folk singer and he plays in folk venues but the closest he gets to folk music is singing Streets of London on his latest charity album.
A single voice; mostly acoustic guitars; open tuning; no blues changes; audible lyrics. That may count as folk music by some definitions.
He does some Springsteen covers ("I thought his career needed a boost") and even a Tom Waits number, but mostly he sings his own material. Tonight there are three Phil Ochs songs: I'm Not Marching Anymore, Days of Decision and When I'm Gone. He says a reviewer compared him to Ochs when he was opening for Clannad; and years later he bumped into Phil's sister at a conference; she is now his dear friend. (Everyone he meets is his dear friend: you sense there are not that many people he is indifferent to.) Sonny Ochs praises him on the album sleeve for being so unadorned, for letting the songs speak for themselves. That's about right. That's how he treats his own material too. Words that say what need to be said. Tunes that let the words be heard. The Welsh Woody Guthrie.
The object of the evening is to raise people's spirits and make them believe that they can make a difference "even in the strange times in which we live". If we get entertained then that's an added extra. An apparently very sick lady in the front row has put a note on the stage asking for a particular song; she thinks it might be the last time she comes to a concert. Martyn says he hadn't rehearsed the song and can't remember all the words, but he sings a couple of verses anyway and then jumps off the stage and hugs her. He pauses before the interval to plug his personal charity which raises money for small, grass-roots projects all round the world. He's currently supporting a group who provide wild camping holidays for children with complex special needs.
It's not all happy clappy anthems. His lyrics are dense, thought-through. His celebration of Nye Bevan and the NHS talks about
The accident, the cancer cell
The final breath of sacrament at dawn
The beating heart, the broken
And the cry of the fragile being born.
Some might want to call Here Come The Young. his tribute to the next generation of activists, naive. ("You best get out the way / They might just save the day".) But the verses have a hard edged rage behind them, which makes you think of Dylan, or indeed, Phil Ochs.
Tired of rising oceans
Tired of bigotry
Tired of racist leaders
Lauding liberty
They're tired of a lack of shame
And they're tired of failed accord
Colluders and private gain
And they're tired of laws ignored
And they're tired of their future being taken from the now
So you better watch your back, sir,
Cos they're coming for you now
Tonight he sings "you'd better watch your back, Trump..."
It's something of a cliche for folkies to apologize about how miserable their set is. Martyn never fails to mention the review which said he made Leonard Cohen look like Julie Andrews. But in fact his songs are full of positivisty and optimism. One of them is actually called This Glass is Half Full. ("Some days you just don’t see it / Some days you will not feel it / Some days you will not believe it")
Tired of rising oceans
Tired of bigotry
Tired of racist leaders
Lauding liberty
They're tired of a lack of shame
And they're tired of failed accord
Colluders and private gain
And they're tired of laws ignored
And they're tired of their future being taken from the now
So you better watch your back, sir,
Cos they're coming for you now
Tonight he sings "you'd better watch your back, Trump..."
It's something of a cliche for folkies to apologize about how miserable their set is. Martyn never fails to mention the review which said he made Leonard Cohen look like Julie Andrews. But in fact his songs are full of positivisty and optimism. One of them is actually called This Glass is Half Full. ("Some days you just don’t see it / Some days you will not feel it / Some days you will not believe it")
It never tips over into being a "Christian" concert; but there is no forgetting that Martyn was one third of a project named "Faith, folk and anarchy."
Seen a lot of suffering seen a lot of good
Felt the big life love of a neighbourhood
A needle in the arm and the sadness grow
The holy and the hidden and the outcast soul
Seen a lot of surplus but in the wrong place
And in the eyes of the broken I thought I saw your face
It never feels like we are being preached at, although Martyn would make a good preacher. But by the end of the evening we are in no doubt about where Martyn's optimism -- and indeed his rage -- comes from.
War makers have their heyday on Friday
Peaceful voices crying mayday on Friday....
...Prophet calls for justice, he ends up dying
But you can’t silence truth ‘cos it will keep on crying
Sunday’s coming!
Seen a lot of suffering seen a lot of good
Felt the big life love of a neighbourhood
A needle in the arm and the sadness grow
The holy and the hidden and the outcast soul
Seen a lot of surplus but in the wrong place
And in the eyes of the broken I thought I saw your face
It never feels like we are being preached at, although Martyn would make a good preacher. But by the end of the evening we are in no doubt about where Martyn's optimism -- and indeed his rage -- comes from.
War makers have their heyday on Friday
Peaceful voices crying mayday on Friday....
...Prophet calls for justice, he ends up dying
But you can’t silence truth ‘cos it will keep on crying
Sunday’s coming!
1 comment:
I saw Martyn Joseph at a Warwick University Student Union gig in 1987 or 1988. He was excellent even then, and I still have the live CD he released soon afterwards, An Aching and a Longing — I must rip it to MP3s. (Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I have cassettes of his very early and more obviously Christian albums Sold Out and Treasure the Questions. I may have bought the latter at the gig. I'm pretty sure "Sunday's Coming" was on it.)
I remember seeing him on some kind of panel at Greenbelt a couple of years later, when "March For Jesus" was a big deal. He was not enthusiastic, but said he would support an Amble For Jesus.
I'd like to see him again, thirty years on, and get a sense of how he's changed. He certainly seems to have aged well physically.
I'd really like to see him again
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