St George's Bristol
The music that was cancelled in lockdown is coming home to roost. Festivals. Gigs. Midnight walks home after the last bus has gone. Milk stout. Remembering why I do this. Wondering if I am mad. Conversations with people who I only see at gigs about the gigs we have gone to, the gigs we have missed, the gigs we are intending to go to.
Oysterband (formerly The Oyster Band) have cancelled this gig twice. They did play Shrewsbury but John Jones was not very well. The band has been playing for 40 years. Most of the audience look to have been going to their gigs for that long. They were a trad band for the first part of their career: most of the material they currently do is 90s and later. (Here Comes The Flood is as late as 2007, which surprises me.)
Gigs by Great Big Bands can sometimes feel like reunions shows or re-enactments. The Oysters are still putting out solid new material; although it truthfully sound a lot like the old material. They are definitely the kind of band who have some great songs, and some songs which sound a little like the great ones. Having been at it for so long, there's maybe a hint of old-guy nostalgia coming in. People who were not that young in the 80s singing about meeting up with old friends they used to know in the Corner of the Bar. And elegiac green-ish anthen about the beautiful things we are destroying and have destroyed. John Jones manages to remain youthful if not actually young. He doesn't attempt to jump off the stage, but he retains his habit of singing with his hands, almost as if there is some recessive disco in his musical DNA. He can still be the fountain of affection and the instrument of joy (I'm the boy, I'm the boy) with a relatively straight face. They may not literally be a folk out, but that there is no shortage of folk-wisdom tinged with Dylanesque cynicism. The food we boy won't go bad, but the cows are mad and the chickens glow. The word from CNN arrives we watch the headlines of our lives each marooned in isolation.
Part way through the second half he winds back to one of the first traditional songs they recorded: that ubiquitous bit of folk nonsense about the young mad who accidentally kills his lover because he thinks she's a swan. As one does. (She haunts the judge at his trial, so he lets her off. In some versions she's actually a were-swan.) It's sung with a devout, mournful seriousness. John Jones says he's they've matched the set list to St George's ecclesiastical surroundings: anything too loud might break the acoustic; but then they bring the house down with a raucous Hal-En-To To welcome in the summertime, to welcome in the day-o. It's only a few days after May Day. They shuffle to the front of the stage switch off the PA and end the show with Switch Off The Lights In London City unplugged, with volume provided by the audience.
The second or third track they do is a purely instrumental piece majoring on fiddles and squeeze boxes. "We started our as a celidah band" they say "And maybe we still are..."
No comments:
Post a Comment