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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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BILL FRISELL, Barbican, London, November
15th 2005 |
| Hey
Serge. Do you remember when you were a little boy
with shorts and bruised knees sitting in your school
classroom on a long sunny late summer afternoon?
Did they make you learn and sing those weird songs
that you didn’t quite understand ? Like all
those fair Spanish ladies who you always had to
say farewell to ? Or two two the lilywhite boys
clothed all in green ho ho ? Or my land is your
land is your land my land my land is your land ?
No ? Well I did. And of all the songs that have
stuck in my mind one, ‘Oh Shenandoah’,
always comes back to me. It’s just what a
schoolboy wanted - wide open spaces, the Wild West,
cowboys and, err… Native American Indians,
romance, and the adventure of the endless rolling
river all wrapped up in one. Cinemascope pictures
merging in the autumn-burnished leaves blowing through
a deserted school playground. |
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Enough
purple prose - back to Shenandoah. It’s a
river apparently, but as for the song – well
that’s a mystery left to the speculations
of numerous internet chat rooms (have a look, it’s
fascinating). But I still love it because my meaning
of the song is etched firmly in my memory, so when
I first listened to Bill
Frisell’s hypnotic and haunting
instrumental version (aided by the odd bit of Ry
Cooder) from his 1999 album Good Dog, Happy Man
I was taken back to all those adventures of my desk-bound
childhood. And I have to admit, I was somewhat taken
with Mr Frisell, albeit somewhat belatedly, as he’s
been recording and touring since 1978. However,
better late then never.
Six years and several albums later Bill has a Grammy
and numerous award nominations under his belt, and
is heading for that dangerous ‘national treasure’
territory – ‘a revered figure amongst
musicians’ the programme tells us. |
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He’s
playing as part of the rather stuffy London Jazz
Festival at the acoustically brilliant (good) but
soulless (bad) Barbican, accompanied by Greg Leisz
on guitar and lap steel guitar, and Jenny Scheinman
on violin. Oh yes, and the gig is being recorded
by festival co-sponsors BBC Radio 3, and broadcast
on Tuesday 22nd November on ‘Late Junction’.
So radio surfers - you know where to head for. |
I
should note that on a personality level Bill is
about as engaging as he was when I last saw him
five years ago. Could he, I wonder, have done a
deal with the devil ? “Beeal” said the
Devil (dam, why does the Devil always talk in that
corny accent ?), “Beeal, give me your charisma
and I will make you the greatest guitarist in the
world.” No, I can’t see it somehow...
just too exciting for Bill. But it doesn’t
matter, apart from the pink baseball boots and the
red hooped socks (ouch !) this is a man that lets
his guitar do the talking.
I could think of no better way of spending an evening
than watching, and listening to, Bill Frisell play
the guitar. I wouldn’t even want a dram, his
playing (all loops, delays and reverses) is as alluring
as the viscimetric whorls of the most powerful of
whiskies. And I wouldn’t care if he was playing
the wallpaper – and I have to say I’ve
heard some refusniks say dismissively he does just
that. It’s partly a guitar thing. Watching
him pluck harmonics out of the air at will; the
way he really works his guitar, almost like an extension
of his body. Like the skipper of a yacht he’s
always fidgeting with something, an amplifier switch
here, a pedal there (woops, there go the red hooped
socks again), his guitar volume control, always
beavering away to get the very best performance
possible from his instrument. And here’s another
quote from the programme, “his signature is
built from pure sound and inflection; an anti-technique
that is instantly identifiable”. Anti-technique
? Phew ! And he’s playing – guitar heaven
– it’s a Fender Telecaster, the virtuoso’s
instrument of choice. |
| That’s
the good bit. It was, as the man in the Gents (he’d
driven down from Birmingham) said, “Fookin’
ace”. But the choice of material was a bit
surprising. The evening was made up entirely of
a selection of songs written by John Lennon (although
of course attributed to Lennon and McCartney, or
as his Sir Paulship tried to insist recently, McCartney
and Lennon). Trying to figure out exactly which
song he was playing was quite a challenge, as the
give away melody normally didn’t emerge until
about two thirds of the way through the number.
I did manage to pick ‘Across the universe’,
‘You’ve got to hide your love away’,
‘Revolution’, ‘There are places’,
‘Julia’, ‘Please please me’,
‘Come together’ and ‘Nowhere man’.
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But there were a couple (quite good ones) that I
missed. And to be honest, rather than saying “it
didn’t work” it’s probably true
to say that the Frisell treatment showed up in cruel
light the strengths and weaknesses of some of these
songs. ‘Julia’ sounded like schmaltz.
‘Nowhere man’ was (I thought) quite
brilliant, as was ‘Universe’. I think
it was something about Frisell’s complex arrangements
exposing the frailty and predictability of some
of Lennon’s melodic structures. But hey, I’m
no critic, and that sounds dangerously like critic
bollocks, doesn’t it?
It was strange that when I got home I listened to
the radio whilst I tried to make sense of my notes,
Frisell’s gorgeous guitar still echoing through
my head. There on the late news was Mark Chapman,
whose notoriety I need not mention, talking about
the ‘incredible feeling’ he had when
he shot John Lennon. Rather tasteless really, and
what they call, so I understand, “a bit of
a downer”. - Nick Morgan (concert photo
by Kate) |
Check
the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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There's nothing more down there... |
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