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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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MICHAEL MARRA
The Cellar Upstairs, Exmouth Arms,
Euston, London, September
26th 2009 |
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| We’ve
come out to see Michael
Marra, which means yet another trip
back in time into folk-club land. We’re just
to the rear of Euston Station, well fed in one of
Drummond Steet’s better eateries, and heading
for the florid Exmouth Arms in Starcross Street,
home to the Cellar
Upstairs folk club. The pub is something of
a curiosity; the flowers that swathe the outside
walls, gently brushing the heads of the banished
smokers (Michael Marra among them) are hiding a
distinctly post-war structure. |
| Yet
inside, you are met by a curious assembly of half-timbered
ceilings, hanging olde-world pub paraphernalia and
I think at least four huge gaming machines, plus
the obligatory larger-than-life TV that’s
playing football matches that no-one is ever going
to want to watch. There are about half a dozen blokes,
locals not short of an opinion or two on most things,
scattered around the bar. Upstairs the function
room (“recently refurbished to a high standard
…suitable for all occasions from a darts evening
to a wedding celebration”) is packed. We’re
charged a derisory six quids each entrance, and
find a couple of chairs uncomfortably close to the
front, where the committee and resident singers
are holding court. There’s no stage. Marra’s
ironing board is there supporting his battered keyboard,
which along with a couple of microphones is plugged
into a sound system with an antediluvian amplifier
and mixing desk, that has the techie know-it-alls
on the committee scratching their heads and slyly
twisting a few knobs when no one’s looking.
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| The
floor singing is frankly pretty desultory, and not
a little tuneless, with nowhere to run for cover
where the bodhran comes out. The song that most
excites the crowd is a jolly tale of a poacher pulling
a fast one on a gamekeeper, a flimsy allegory for
the timeless struggle of the common man over authority,
albeit a little misplaced in twenty-first century
Euston Town. How many of these people, I wonder,
have ever met a gamekeeper? The best song of the
bunch comes from two performers from a rival club,
greeted with the sort of hospitality normally reserved
for death-ray wielding six-headed monsters from
outer space: theirs is a modern murder ballad recounting
the recent string of serial killings (prostitute
murders) in Ipswich. Do you wonder why we don’t
go to more folk clubs? |
| I’m
sure there’s little to be said about the gravel-voiced
Michael Marra that you don’t already know,
beyond the fact that my admiration for anyone who
can work the often stultifying folk-club circuit
and still perform so well knows no bounds. One of
Scotland’s greatest living troubadours performed
two perfect cameo sets of “songs from Dundee
and its surrounding planet”, featuring a cast
of the most unlikely characters. Dr John visited
Blairgowrie, Bob Dylan went to Edinburgh, and General
U S Grant famously visited Dundee. Marra’s
amorous cat Pius purred like as chainsaw shortly
before being neutered, and in ‘He said, she
said’, two misfits “hunted for each
other in a spirit of ruthless melancholy”
in the personal column of the Dundee Courier. His
songs are painfully and closely observed, Dundee
a microcosm of the outside world, flaws conceits
and frailties cruelly exposed, no stones unturned.
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| “Dinnae
tell him” shouted one of Marra’s Aunts
at a wedding reception when he enquired about someone
called Maggie Shaw, “Dinnae tell him, he’ll
only write a song aboot it”. Which he did.
But in and about this almost abrasive honesty is
a warm sense of surreal, and a celebration of the
human spirit, warts and all, probably best summed
up in the wonderfully unlikely ‘Frida Khalo’s
visit to the Taybridge Bar’. |
| If
you love Scotland then you should also adore Marra’s
wry take on a city’s, and nation’s,
foibles. And if you can’t, understandably,
face the thought of a trip to a ghastly folk club
to see him, then at least you could go out and buy
a couple of his albums. - Nick Morgan (photographs
by Kate) |
Check
the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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