Jam Jar Bristol
I have just come back from the Jam Jar and am typing this review directly into Blogger. This week I have heard two if not three of the best folk acts in the world but I am not sure that I enjoyed anything more than Jay and Chezny hollering Bella Ciao to a singing and dancing audience. They are from a strongly traveller background and pour more vitriol into the Moving On song than you have probably come across before. They spit out the word "fascist" when the fellow dies fighting for the partisanos. Their favourite line in Hanging Johny is "And then I hung a copper (I gave him a long dropper)". People who know about sea shanties think that the song is really about different kinds of nautical knots, but I don't think anyone cares. Move Along Get Along Move Along Get Along Shift is punctuated by a lady crowd surfing. Folk Punk is often used to describe anything a bit up tempo, but Jay Terrestrial strikes one as an actual punk; while Chezny's bouzouki never strays far from campfire diddly diddly dee. The pirate captain Ward who informs the navy that their king may be king of all dry land but he's king of the sea sounds genuinely quite cross and frightening. So, in a way, do the band. The Firepit Collective don't do that many gigs or have a national profile; but they are one of the most consistently thrilling acts in the folk universe.
I shamefully didn't write down the name of the two support acts. An American with a guitar he claims to have bought for seven dollars says his dad tried to make him like country music when he was more interested in punk, and plays a kind of punk-country synthesis with such force that I thought the cheap guitar might fall apart. A British woman sings rather personal, politically charged songs in a space between traditional ballads and performance poetry. She didn't vote in the last election because there didn't seem to be much point, and now regrets it. (Maybe we could retire "Eton Mess" as a funny way of describing the present government?) One of her ancestors was on one of the first convict ships to Australia. The line "George the Third was a mental old soul" put a grin on my face for the rest of the evening.
I drank two pints of what purported to be Cinder Toffee Stout and am going to bed.
Play: Bella Ciao
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