Rogue's Gallery (Various Artists)
The Barbican, London
2008-07-28
A wonderful evening of wonderful music organised by Hal Willmer.
The songs ranged from beautiful to raucous, solemn to hilarious.
Setlist as follows:
01) Intro
02) Cape Cod Girls - Baby Gramps + Chorus
03) Crossbone Sculley - Baby Gramps + Chorus
04) Hog Eye Man - Martin Carthy + Chorus
05) My Son John - Tim Robbins + Chorus
06) Haul Away Joe - Teddy Thompson + Chorus
07) Baltimore Whores - Gavin Friday + Eliza Carthy
08) Farewell Nancy - Langley Sisters/Ed Harcourt
09) Ole Og - Langley Sisters/Ed Harcourt
10) Sam’s Gone Away - Robyn Hitchcock + Chorus
11) Leave Her Johnny - Sandy Dillon
12) Bonnie Portmore - Kami Thompson + violins
13) Rolling Sea - Eliza Carthy
14) Dan Dan + Oboe Duel - David Thomas
15) Fire Down Below - David Thomas
16) Ged A Sheol Mi Air - Julie Fowlis
17) Mingulay Boat Song - Chris Difford + Kami
18) Good Ship Venus - Richard Strange
19) Long Time Ago - White Magic
20) Blood Red Roses - White Magic + Chorus
21) Coast Of High Barbary - Neil Hannon
22) Turkish Revelry - Neil Hannon + Gita
23) Bay Of Biscay - Norma + Martin, Eliza
24) Sally Brown - Teddy Thompson
25) Bully In The Alley - Gavin/Sandy/ Pete?
26) Boney Was A Warrior - Gavin w/ Shane/Pete?
27) South Australia - Shane McGowan w/Tim/Pete + Chorus
28) Haul On The Bowline - Tim Robbins + Chorus
29) The Cruel Ship's Captain - Tim Robbins + violins
30) Caroline And Her Young Sailor - Suzanne Vega + violins
31) Little Boy Billie - Ralph Steadman + Chorus
32) One Spring Morning - Teddy + Kath Williams + violins/BVs
33) Row The Boat Child - Jenni Muldaur + Chorus + violins
34) Drunken Sailor - David Thomas + Shane + Tymon
35) Lowlands Low - Chris Difford + Gita
36) Lowlands Away - Martha + violins
37) Grey Funnel Line - Martha
38) Wild Goose / New York Gals - Robyn Hitchcock + Chorus
39) Pinery Boy - Gavin Friday + violins
40) Lament - Julie Fowlis
41) Turas - Julie Fowlis
42) Liverpool Shanty - Shane & Tim + Chorus
43) The Mermaid - Martin
44) The Nightinglae - Eliza
45) Shallow Brown - Norma + Chorus
46) band intros
47) Old Man Of The Sea - Baby Gramps
Musicians:
Kate St John (oboe / cor anglais / saxophone / accordion)
David Coulter (banjo / violin/ saw/ukulele/banjo/mandolin)
Leo Abrahams (guitar / hurdy gurdy / mandolin/ bouzouki)
Andy Newmark (drums)
Martyn Barker (percussion)
Dudley Phillips (double bass / electric bass)
Roger Eno (piano, keys, harmonium)
I have a couple of apologies. Firstly, I was trying out some new equipment, and suffered from a loose connection. At a number of point one channel dropped out. I have corrected this by patching in the other channel. Where this is during the music it's pretty unnoticable, as the sound is mono out of the PA. During applause it is noticable as the sound changes from stereo to mono where I have patched it. Secondly, this was a really long concert, 3 hours 30 - too long for one of my batteries whcih gave out towards the end of the last song, so the very end is missing. Also due to the length, and the fact there were no breaks, my recorder rolled over to a new file after a couple of hours recording. There is a very slight jump where this happens. Other than that, the sound is really good. No better recording have surfaced, so here it is. I have included some links to information on the event, as well as some photos. Please enjoy, and let me know what you think.
Recorded by Pike1957
GM Pro Mics/Battery Box ->
Mic2496 -> spdif -> Microtrack (48khz, 24bit) ->
Adobe Audition (volume levelling)
Audacity (track splits, faded in/out, resampling) ->
FLAC (level 8, SBE corrected, labelled 44.1khz, 16 bit)
http://www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?id=7455&pg=1313
Profile
Baby Gramps
Steel guitar performer Baby Gramps is famous for his palindromes. He started performing in 1964 and is still playing professionally as of 2008.
Baby Gramps plays a mixture of styles and eras including traditional blues, children's and labor songs, as well as his own compositions. His busy and unusual guitar style includes flat and finger picking, and "chording" with the back of his hand and his elbow. His singing styles include throat singing. His performance is based in part on improvisation and he often encourages audience participation.
Baby Gramps has performed as a street musician, and has toured with Artis the Spoonman, Béla Fleck and the Flecktones and Phish. His rendition of "The Teddy Bears' Picnic'' was featured in Martin Bell's Academy Award-nominated documentary film, Streetwise (1984).
Martha Wainwright
Martha Wainwright is a Canadian-American folk-pop singer, who recently duetted with Snow Patrol at the V Festival.
Annie Lennox joined forces with Martha and 22 other female artists to raise awareness of the transmission of HIV to unborn children in Africa. The single "Sing" was released on World Aids Day on 1 December 2007, when Lennox appeared at the Nelson Mandela 46664 concert in South Africa.
Her second full-length album, 'I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too', was released in Australia on 10 May 2008, with other countries to follow.
David Thomas
American singer/songwriter David Thomas was one of the founding members of the short-lived protopunkers Rocket From The Tombs (1974-1975), where he went by the name of Crocus Behemoth. Though primarily a singer, he sometimes plays melodeon, trombone, guitar or other instruments.
Thomas's high pitched voice is one of the most distinctive in rock music; Emerson Dameron memorably described his singing as "Jimmy Stewart trapped in an oboe".
Gavin Friday
Founding member of the post punk group 'Virgin Prunes', Gavin Friday has recorded several solo albums and soundtracks.
In September 2006 a 2-CD collection of sea shanties called 'Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys' , produced by Hal Willner, was released on the ANTi- label. Friday contributes to two tracks including the lewd "Baltimore Whores" and "Bully in the Alley" with ex-Virgin Prunes bandmates Guggi and Dave-id.
Teddy Thompson
English singer-songwriter Teddy Thompson released his debut album ‘Teddy Thompson’ in 2000. It received much critical acclaim, but achieved little commercial success. During the time between his debut album and follow up he released the moderately successful Blunderbuss EP , and toured as part of Rosanne Cash's band. His song "Love Her For That" was featured in the film 40 Days and 40 Nights .
Teddy released his new studio album "A Piece Of What You Need" via Verve/Forcast on June 17th 2008. The album contains all new Teddy originals and was produced by Marius DeVries, whom Teddy met while recording background vocals on Rufus Wainwright's "Want" record in 2002. The album includes new songs Teddy has been testing out live, including "Turning The Gun On Myself", "In My Arms" and "Can't Sing Straight"
Julia Fowlis
Scottish folk singer and multi-instrumentalist Julia Fowlis sings primarily in Scottish Gaelic. She is a member of the successful Scottish sextet, Dòchas, who were voted winners of Best Newcomer award at the Scots Trad Music Awards in 2004, where Julie herself was nominated for the Best Gaelic Singer award. She won the Horizon award at the 2006 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, won Folk Singer of The Year at the 2008 awards and was nominated for the Folk Singer of the Year award at the 2007 awards. She appeared on Later With Jools Holland on BBC Two on May 25, 2007, and performed Hùg air Bhonaid Mhòir on the show. This cast Julie into the mainstream, gaining her fans such as Björk, Ricky Gervais and Mark Radcliffe and Radiohead's Phil Selway.
Eliza Carthy
Twice-nominated for a prestigious Nationwide Mercury Prize, Eliza is also the winner of more than five BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. In 2003 she became the first traditional English musician to be nominated a BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music.
Describing herself simply as a 'modern British musician', Eliza Carthy is only just beginning to reach the height of her musical powers. During a 15-year career she has become one of the most dazzling and recognised folk musicians of a generation. She has revitalised and made folk music relevant to new audiences and has captured the most hardened of dissenters with intelligent, charismatic and boundary-crossing performance.
Martin Carthy
Martin Carthy MBE is an English folk singer and guitarist who has remained one of the most influential figures in British traditional music, inspiring contemporaries such as Bob Dylan and Paul Simon. He is a renowned solo performer of traditional songs in a very distinctive style, accompanying himself on his trusty old Martin Guitar; his style is marked by the use of alternative tunings, and a strongly percussive picking style that emphasizes the melody.
In June 1998 he was appointed an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours. He was named Folk Singer of the Year at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2002, and again in 2005 when he also won the award for Best Traditional Track for 'Famous Flower of Serving Men'. In the 2007 Folk Awards Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick won "Best duo".
Norma Waterson
Norma Waterson is best-known as one of the original members of The Watersons, a premier English traditional group.
Her solo debut was well-received in the scene (including a nomination for the prestigious Mercury Music Prize), featuring collaborations with her daughter, Eliza Carthy, Martin Carthy and other members of The Watersons.
Robyn Rowan Hitchcock
While primarily a vocalist and guitarist, Robyn also plays harmonica, piano and bass guitar.
His musical and lyrical styles have been influenced by his appreciation of Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Syd Barrett. Hitchcock's lyrics are an essential component of his work and tend to include surrealism, comedic songs, characterizations of English eccentrics and melancholy depictions of everyday life.
Ralph Steadman
Johnny Depp's anthology of songs, "Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys" (2006) contains two contributions from Steadman. He sings lead on "Little Boy Billee", and sings backing vocals on Eliza Carthy's song "Rolling Sea".
http://www.flickr.com/photos/caroline/sets/72157606443104395/
http://basilexposition.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/humble-pie/
This is my fair and balanced review of Rogues’ Gallery*, which I went to on Monday night.
I went only because the boyfriend was terribly keen, who is also a fan of the CD which inspired the event; I was myself completely unconvinced by the fantastic line-up (which included Martha Wainwright, Eliza Carthy, Martin Carthy, Norma Waterson, Neil Hannon and Robyn Hitchcock) assembled for this concert as their remit was to sing - seriously now - pirate songs and sea shanties. An evening of pirate songs and sea shanties. Well, quite.
As it happened, I was proved completely (almost completely) wrong as the evening went on over its nearly four hours and forty-five songs. We started to my mind somewhat inauspiciously with the performance of Baby Gramps, a man who looks every inch the singer of pirate songs, with extravagant beard and matching costume, who was accompanied by most of the other musicians singing back-up (as well as the main band who stayed on stage for most songs, providing the backbone for individual performers to do their stuff up front), lined up at the back of the stage. From this point on, however, I began to be won over as the pure talent on offer became too evident to continue in an effort to save face: I couldn’t withstand the Carthy family playing together (Norma Waterson sang two of the most riveting songs of the night) and Eliza Carthy playing and singing a few numbers on her own: the woman is a goddess. The Carthy family were probably the best received of all the acts on the night, with at one point an audience member shouting out to Eliza, “We love you - and your mum!” which got a warm round of applause from everyone else. It was a lovely atmosphere, not at all smug but, for want of a better word, cosy, and the admiration for the Carthy family was utterly justified in their stand-out performances.
Neil Hannon, I was pleased to see, got two of the best songs and did them extremely well; one was fairly bawdy and fun, the other much more tender about the sinking of a ship on “the lonesome sea”, accompanied by David Coulter on the saw. Hannon very nearly spoilt his own gorgeous performance and all but sabotaged Coulter by being a bit too arch when not singing, announcing the “saw solo” for comic effect, telling us to dig that intonation; whereas everyone else entered whole-heartedly into the affair, Hannon seemed to try to distance himself from the ridiculous piratical level of the night. In singing the song, he did it straight and in doing so did it terrifically, but the minute he didn’t have a line to sing, he looked a bit uncomfortable. All the same, though it came perilously close to it, it didn’t spoil the performance and I think it a terrible shame that there is no recording, so far as I know, of the evening, which had many moments which were as captivating as this one.
Other people on the night included one-time favourite of mine, Ed Harcourt, who acquitted himself well if not very imaginatively; Richard Strange, sporting a linen suit and rakishly tilted fedora, singing a filthy On the Good Ship Venus, performed brilliantly both by the singer and the well-orchestrated band; band drummer Andy Newmark giving it socks; cartoonist Ralph Steadman, in another highlight of the night, doing a rousing version of Little Boy Billy, a jaunty little song about cannibalism; Teddy Thompson, after a spellbinding Carthy family performance, coming onstage and winning over the crowd with a simple, “Follow that”; Tim Robbins not only being there but being quite handy with a guitar and not a bad singer; Sandy Dillon and her completely unbelievable voice on Johnny Leave Her; Suzanne Vega’s sweetly enchanting fourteen-verse lament; and Martha Wainwright adding a bit of American glamour to proceedings.
The only times at which I felt thoroughly vindicated in my lack of pre-gig enthusiasm were during the performances of professional eejit Shane MacGowan and the occasions on which David Thomas took to the stage. These two, along with Keith Moline and a Gollum-like fiddle player, did a rendition of What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor? which simply was not music. In the interest of balance my boyfriend thought it was “magnificent” - I think David Thomas in particular is the anti-music, everything that music is not. Thank God in Heaven Pete Doherty didn’t get there, though in fairness he’d probably have done exactly what MacGowan did.
Of course, this gig will go down in history as the momentous occasion on which Robyn Hitchcock and I breathed the same air. Hitchcock got two songs and he appeared more and more as the evening went on in the gaggle of singers at the back of the stage (clustering round the same microphone as Tim Robbins and Richard Strange, the tall persons’ mic) and at one stage he came into the seated area via a stage door right beside the front row and stood by the wall to watch the stage (if I recall correctly, it was Hannon’s first song). Hitchcock stood by the wall practically beside me. I nearly fainted.
All in all, an extremely enjoyable night and my goodness we got value for money, though I wasn’t fit for firewood after a bum-numbing three hours and forty minutes of concentration. You won’t hear it said often, but the BF was right.
———————————————
* Now, here’s a thing: is it to be Rogues’ Gallery, as I have it, or Rogue’s Gallery, as I’ve seen other reviews put it? I am sure it must be the former, as shouldn’t the gallery be that belonging to the multiple rogues within it? What I mean to say is, is this a democratic collection of thieves and vagrants, or what?
http://eventful.com/london/events/rogues-gallery-pirate-ballads-sea-songs-and-/E0-001-009996111-1
Background
While working on the Pirates of the Carribean films, director Gore Verbinski and his star Johnny Depp became fascinated with the lore and fable of the pirates and sailors who ran the high seas before the days of upright tray-tables and airsick bags. Not too far behind was Hal Willner, who quickly joined into the mix, dragging a very impressive list of musicians to create what we now know as Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys.
The songs (on the CD) have titles like 'Baltimore Whores,' 'Boney Was a Warrior' (about Napoleon) and 'Little Boy Billee' sung by the artist Ralph Steadman about eating the cabin boy. A sea chantey (often spelt shanty) is a work song that was sung on the ol' ships in the day. Rhythmically they matched the activity speed of these men hauling on lines. Many of them are really filthy, many are really beautiful.
'The ocean: it's all about the vast blue that engulfs two thirds of the planet. The human being cast against that abyss creates an interesting bit of perspective. I think the sailors of the time were dancing with death, and these were there tunes.' '
Gore Verbinski
http://londonist.com/2008/07/londonist_live_rogues_gallery.php
When Hal Willner takes the stage dressed as a pirate to introduce wily mountain man Baby Gramps, the show ahead is guaranteed to be out of the ordinary. After the third or fourth performer, the artists got tired of calling "ahoy!" and growling "arrrrgh," but it made the evening no less nautical. Running nearly four hours with no interval, the show was something of a test of wills, but the attention deficit pace of the 43 songs kept things lively. With the exception of Neil Hannon, no artist performed solo for two straight songs, and Hannon's jokes, awesome stage presence, and deference to the saw player excused this bout of continuity.
The exceptional Carthy Family dominated the evening, and Eliza in particular was especially impressive; she complimented several artists beautifully both on violin and vocals, but really shone on “Rolling Sailor.” If it’s possible to shred on a violin, she does.
Other fixtures were Ed Harcourt and Gavin Friday. Harcourt’s heartbreaking “Farewell Nancy” sounded less mournful with the Langley Sisters leading the vocals. Friday gave an inspired performance of “Baltimore Whores,” perhaps the first truly exciting performance of the evening. The pair shared vocal duties on “Boney Was A Warrior” with a visibly unsteady Shane McGowan on harmonica and were joined by Baby Gramps in backing Sandy Dillon on “Bully In The Alley,” which was all too perfectly suited to Dillon’s cat-scratch vocals.
Teddy Thompson, for his stiff countenance, was strangely compelling, especially on “Sally Brown” when he managed to lead a singalong by enticing, “You can sing along at the chorus -- you must sing along at the chorus.” Sister Kami, with her smooth vocals, reminded us of just how lovely sea songs can be.
Deviations from the album track list included a new song by Baby Gamps, several by Scottish Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis, and the lovely “Bay Of Biscay” by Norma Waterson.
Elsewhere, Richard Strange leant his rich, trilled vocals to the excessively vulgar “Good Ship Venus;” Tim Robbins, guitar in hand, rocked “My Son John;” Jenni Muldaur took the spotlight for a change on a Jamaican chantey; Robyn Hitchcock provided snark and crunchy guitars.
As Wilner said, you couldn’t get through an evening of sea chanteys without the obligatory rendition of "What Do We Do With A Drunken Sailor." In the hands of David Thomas, Keith Moline, the still-shaky McGowan, and Gavin Friday, it took on an apocalyptic nature. Despite a light-hearted reference to the accordion on his knee, Thomas succeeded only in making perhaps the best known of sea songs borderline terrifying. However, if a song has been covered to death then it might as well scare you near to death.
Peter Doherty was a no-show, but honestly, if it hadn't been drawn to our attention, he probably wouldn't have been missed. And “Old Man Of The Sea” as led by Baby Gramps was probably the most appropriate the evening could have ended on.