The Fleece
Gaz has a new song.
He describes it as "a cover". It's actually a transcript of a conversation he claims to have had with a stranger at a wedding about being in the music business.
A lot of Gaz's songs are about being Gaz and writing songs. I've Paid My Money is about hecklers. Land Pirate, which almost stands as a theme song, is about life on the road. ('If I am to make sound check then I will have to drive/ So I went home and got in my van and hit the old M5').And yet he he maintains his connection with his audience. He's the guy just like you who sings about his life. "Thank you for your feedback/It was good of you to come /It blows my mind each time they let me play for anyone."
The new song is a one-sided conversation. "What kind of music is it? Do you play in a band? What pigeon hole do you fit? Just help me understand?" In this live act, he interjects answers. Miming shaking his head when the friend says "would I have heard of you?" shrugging a bit after "do you play in a band?" and admitting it's complicated when asked if you can download the music for free. "Where can I hear you play?" say the man in the song. "BRISTOL!" interjects Gaz...and the audience dissolve into applause.
For several minutes.
The very definition of show stopping.
That's what a Gaz evening is like. That's why I'll go and listen to him over and over. He was in the Fleece just before Christmas, and before that in a proper folkie pub cellar, and before that in the weekly lockdown facebook shows. It's a feedback loop. Billy Bragg says that all music is political, because it binds people together: the performer to the audience, the audience to the performer, the punters to each other.
"This is going to be the kind of gig where you make more noise than me" says Gaz at the end of the first song. ("If all the worlds a stage/Intermission's middle age.")
Some of the songs are anthems: even the dark, dark song about his medical condition ("your blood sugar's always high, faulty insulin is why") ends up in a sing-along in which the audience unkindly wave their pints at him. ("I can't drink cider any more/ shares in Thatcher's gold will soon be crashing through the floor.") . It finishes with a downbeat coda ("well, I can a bit, just not the same amount as once before") but the audience sing along to that as well. Odd themes like a soldier's suicide at a coastal fort in 1900 and quite deep meditations about agnosticism ("So if conciousness is energy, and therefore infinite in nature/There is is no need for fear you've already met your maker") don't break the party atmosphere.
Gaz clearly loved being on the stage, loved the venue, loved the end of lockdown and the home-coming atmosphere. He is, in a sentence, awesome.
Thank you for asking, but strange as it seems
I make a living not living the dream
I don't take for granted how lucky I am
Not rich and not famous but doing the best that I can.
Mention ought to be made of his support act, The Lonely Tourist, stepping into the breach at short notice after both the booked acts went down with the Covid. He kept joking about the fact that he was not going to sing folk-punk, which the booked act would have done. Observational, like Gaz, but more laconic - tending perhaps to absurdism and and humour. A man phones his Dad and is put straight onto his Mum. ("Hello Paul so and so died/do you remember they were nice to you when you were five/I'm not sure mum but that's a shame/Yes get a Mass card for them"). A man goes to the library and takes out autobiographies of pop stars. ("He opens the book at page one/It's anger is an energy by the singer John Lyden"). He doesn't have the vast back catalogue or the legion of devoted singers-along as Gaz does, but his songs are well worth your attention.
Listen: Tom and the Library
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