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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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BERT JANSCH
The Jazz Café, Camden Town,
London, June 8th 2009
This
special show, a prelude to a Jansch
tour of North America, has been promoted by Mojo
Magazine in the run-up to the unveiling of
their 2009 Honours List. In a few days’
time, Jansch, a former prize winner, will be handing
out the best Live Act award to the Fleet Foxes.
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| Tonight
he’s struggling to remember that the other
reason for the gig is the imminent re-release of
three long unavailable albums from the 1970s: LA
Turnaround (produced by Mike Nesmith, and apparently
a failed attempt to launch Jansch into the mainstream);
Santa Barbara Honeymoon and A Rare Conundrum. Introducing
‘One for Jo’ he stumbles at “This
one’s from …”, finally adding
“…Santa Barbara Honeymoon ... or maybe
it's from LA Turnaround ... it was one of those,
and it came out about 10 years ago…”
Later he plays “another song from one of those
albums …”. Fortunately, with only one
or two exceptions, he has no difficulty remembering
the songs, as he performs a selection that spans
his career. And it’s good to see that he’s
sufficiently confident in his new material to not
worry about disposing of some of his most memorable
songs early in the set, almost as warm- ups, rather
than saving them for the end. Not many artists would
get away easily with starting a performance with
songs as strong as ‘Strolling down the highway’,
‘My Donald’, Blackwaterside’ (which
as I recall came with a gentle yet pointed mention
of Jimmy Page, who famously appropriated much of
it), ‘Running from home’ and the lovely
‘Morning brings peace of mind’. Jansch
performs them with a seeming nonchalance that’s
at odds with the intensity of both his guitar work
and his voice, perhaps not quite as strong as it
might be, but as haunting as ever, as the I-pod
in my head often reminds me. |
Bernard
Butler, Beth Orton, Bert Jansch |
But
as Jozzer rightly pointed out, you can have too
much of a good thing, and what really makes this
evening work is the presence of guests Paul
Wassif, who joins on guitar at the end of the
first set, and Bernard
Butler and Beth
Orton who play and sing with him for the end
of the second. Orton’s vocals in particular
add another dimension to Jansch’s songs which
his flat and droning voice (much though I like it)
simply can’t achieve. She sings beautifully
on ‘Katie Cruel’ and ‘Watch the
stars’ from 2006’s Black Swan. Butler
is another musician who can add complex and wonderfully
complimentary layers and textures to Jansch’s
guitar and vocals, which he does on ‘Fresh
as a sweet Sunday morning’, ‘It don’t
bother me’, ‘Blues run the game’
and ‘Carnival’, the latter two both
compositions by the late Jackson
C Frank. Of particular note for guitarists is
the delicacy and effectiveness with which Butler
uses his Bigsby
vibrato arm, at the touch of a little finger. |
| Not
that the guitarists in the Jazz Café were
paying too much attention to Butler. They were about
five deep at the front of the stage, arms crossed
to a man, staring intently at Jansch’s fret
board, trying no doubt to commit every piece of
fingering to memory. They reminded me of something
I’d seen before, but I just can’t think
what. And whilst Jansch must be well-used to performing
in this sort of fishbowl by now, I have to say their
rather humourless fanaticism paid poor tribute to
this first class show. After all, music (if I dare
to suggest, like single malt Scotch whisky) is all
about enjoyment, and particularly the thrill of
the moment. I’m just glad that I was upstairs,
where apart from the two unaccountably sleeping
Americans, the fun was flowing as freely as you
like. – Nick Morgan (photographs by Kate)
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