Blues People slash Cabaret

I was asked to take part in an event as part of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. The event was one of a series called Liner Notes which are an unpredictable set of performances by a  chosen group of performers about a - usually - classic rock album. They have been running for a few years and Michael Nolan and Emily Zoe Baker who started it all up are really nice people so its usually fun.
I'd done one about five years ago, one of the earliest, around Bowis album Ziggy Stardust. You're basically asked to do something 'around" the album (or a particular song from it). To extrapolate, please. That time it was up in Brisbane and the crime writer Shane Maloney told a grim story of a drive into the country with his mates in the 70s with too much speed and only one 8 track cartidge in the car, Ziggy Stardust. There was some sort of stop to rob a petrol station involved as well. The audience laughed, maybe nervously, but still there was mirth. William McInnes had a few shandies and harangued the event and Bowie for a while. A mediocre performance/spoken word poet got up and did what they do. Michael did a great Bowie turn and I read out "the NAZZ" from fifties beatnik character Lord Buckley as I thought it was legit as Bowie sang "He was the Nazz!" in the title track of Ziggy Stardust. It's an exotic enough piece to carry an audience and it went over better than you'd think. Here is a  clip of the Lord Buckley himself doing it. I didn't have the command of the text to deliver it with such high energy but I rolled it out pretty straight.




I was asked to do a few others in years in between. One on the Doors but I demurred, saying I loved the Doors too much. Fleetwood Mac Rumours era? I hated that too much.

There was also the Bowie in Berlin shows early in 2018 where Michael Nolan was one of the singers and closed the show doing HEROES.

This time it was a show around the Blues Brothers, a film I must have seen once and didn't really like and the music of which seemed to be pretty badly reheated 80s style versions of classic songs. I felt like saying "yes" though as they are nice people and agreed to do a John Lee Hooker song, even though he isn't apparently on the album (but is in the movie).

The Adelaide Cabaret Festival itself is also a pretty unique thing.  Created in 2001 by Julia Holt who made it happen in an inspired way. Its still an area or vague meeting place of many types of performance where an audience allows itself to come in and be surprised. Kind of like the rock music scene once was. A large part of the audience just takes a chance on a show. It's really well funded and the venues are terrific. In the past we did our narrtive shows Point Blank and Live In Hell in Adelaide. There were other people like the Canadian Jane Siberry and the Parisian singer Caroline Nin doing shows regularly. At this festival it ws great to see people like Maude Davey and Stephen Oliver doing shows. Like any scene there was a lot of dross but it was an area which wasn't totally rigid in who was allowed in and what was or wasn't right to be there. I could do without all the gypsy jazz imagery and the burlesque, tattoos and perky, faux sexy shit but that's the general wallpaper of the scene I guess.

So I flew to Adelaide to do one song. No bags checked as luggage, just carry on stuff. I was to borrow a guitar and amp from the house band. It was  agreat hotel just walking distance from the Adelaide Festival Centre where we were to play to a  sold out room. The show started with the band all in black suits and bad wigs. They did a poor version of Booker T's "time is tight". I say poor only because the bass player didn't hit the unison groove with the guitar which makes it so tight and tense, he just played the root note and hung on it rather than drove it. So it wasn't tight as in tightly wound enough for me. Michael sang Minnie The Moocher in Cab Calloway tails and moustache and then changed into a Blues Brother suit and hat and introduced the show. I was sitting with chef, Maggie Beer and Festival director Julia Zemiro, who were both also going to do turns. Maggie was nervous as she isn't usually a musical performer. She spoke around Aretha Franklin. Author Andy Griffiths was the highlight of the showcoming on to Rawhide with a  bad cowboy hat and neckerchief and told  astory of reading his books to rooms of four hundred children, comparing it to the Blues Brothers getting stuff thrown at them in a Country bar. He talked of evil, horrible, funny  kids and even worse parents and read out some of the reviews they wrote of his work online. I hope he gets paid well in his day gig. He was terrific in this show.
Eventually I got up and as I walked on I felt bad about trying to play John Lee Hookers Boom Boom Boom and just talked into the mic about how it was true, white people couldn't really sing the blues. Except for Boz Scaggs and Michael McDonald. I threw those names in just for a stir but it was a cabaret audience, pretty broad and jusst wanting a night out. I confessed I didn't like the film. I knew the music in its original form and there was nothing in this revisionist stuff for me. (I allowed it was marginally better than The Commitments).
I talked of the difference between Keith Relf from theYardbirds singing "I'm A Man" as some sort of young mans sexual yelping and Bo Diddley or Muddy Waters singing it when they've been called "boy" for such a major part of their lives. Yeah I had to tell the audience that it seemed that I was there to bring the story down to earth. I talked about Chicago and  Detroit being a  magnet for African Americans coming up from the Southern states looking for the work in industry which Henry Ford had promised them in the 1940s. (The Blues Brothers being filmed mostly in Chicago). I also talked of Dan Ackroyd probably coming from Second City in Toronto across Lake Michigan to Chicago and Lorne Michaels from Saturday Night Live also being Canadian. Michael had mentioned Belushi writing the script at Ken Keseys house and so I started talking about One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest and how that was directed by Milos Forman whose films were all produced and financed by Saul Zaents who had the jazz label Fantasy records which had some pop acts which he used to make quick money and one of these had been Creedence Clearwater Revival and how he'd taken ownership of the publishing rights to all John Fogertys songs - to this day - and how John retired bitterly in his early thirties but came back in 1981 with Centrefield which included a song called Vantz Cant Dance for which Zaents sued him  and how all the other members of Creedence - including his own brother - sided with Zaents against him..... Yeah I took things to a dark place - a void.



I didn't write anything down, I was just talking.
Then I read some words from LeRoi Jones from his 1963 book Blues People where he said the idea of white people singing the blues "seems as violent an contradiction as a middle class person singing the blues".
I read some from Charlie Gillets "the Sound And The City" witha  quote from John Lee Hooker about how many different names he recorded under. I wanted to say how much fun he would have been having : John Lee Booker, Texas Slim, Delta John, Birmingham Sam, Johnny Williams, and His Magic Guitar. He also many nicknames over the years, including the Boogie Man, the Hook, the King of the Boogie, and the Crawlin' Kingsnake. All these records on different labels under different names.

Then I read a poem from Amiri Baraka, explaining that LeRoi Jones changed his name to this at some point. The poem was from his book, FUNK LORE. The title poem, which comes near the end of the book and is part of a series all subtly involving pianist Thelonious Monk.

Funk Lore (English)

Blue Monk
We are the blues
    ourselves
    our favorite
      color
    Where we been, half here
half gone
We are the blues
    our selves
    the actual
      Guineas
    the original
      Jews
    the 1st
      Caucasians
That's why we are the blues
      ourselves
    that's why we
      are the
      actual
        song
    So dark & tragic
      So old &
        Magic
      that's why we are
          the Blues
          our Selves
    In tribes of 12
      bars
    like the stripes
      of slavery
 on
      our flag
        of skin
We are the blues
    the past the gone
    the energy the
    cold the saw teeth
    hotness
    the smell above
    draining the wind
    through trees
    the blue
    leaves us
    black
    the earth
    the sun
    the slowly disappearing
    the fire pushing to become
    our hearts
    & now black again we are the
    whole of night
    with sparkling eyes staring down
    like jets
        to push
        evenings
        ascension
        that's why we are the blues
        the train whistle
        the rumble across
        the invisible coming
        drumming and screaming
        that's why we are the
        blues
        & work & sing & leave
        tales & is with spirit
        that's why we are
          the blues
          black & alive
          & so we show our motion
            our breathing
            we moon
            reflected soul
 that's why our spirit
           make us
            the blues           we is ourselves
            the blues

I just wanted to do something clean I guess. I'm no good at cabaret. I do my own thing.

Julia told a story about being dragged into a reality tv competition show to duet on Jailhouse Rock which is apparently in the film.
A person in drag with two dancers lip synced to Aretha Franklins "Think" . I don't consider this performing myself but people loved it. They were up for a night out. They were starving! There was also a performance poet who spoke rapped through something. I am bad at listening to poetry anyway so I couldn't tell good from bad. I like experimental theatre and texts but most of all like to read poetry from a book. I love people like Pascalle Burton who use sound as well as texts. I mean, she puts in the work,  has the skills but hones it all to a point. I guess most straight performance poetry is all kind of a limerick turn to me, or rapping. But not very good rapping. Hey, I am ignorant of "spoken word". ( Such a lousy, barely functional description of an activity). Writers are not necessarily performers anyway, and shouldn't be made to do so. There is that often quoted verse by Yeats...

The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

The next day I had a wonderful  breakfast in the hotel and flew to Melbourne where Clare Moore picked me up and we drove for 90 minutes to Kyneton where we played to a  full house in a cafe in the main street called Major Toms. Keys, percussion and guitar and voices. Two sets.
We caught up with friends before the show and during. Matt Sigley runs a great book and record shop called Long Story Short across the road from the venue. I bought a Barry Humphries album, one by Country Joe, Little River Band and Willie Alexander and the Boom Boom Band.
We ate some roasted Brussel Sprouts and Caulifower and then did the show.
After playing a  set and a half I asked what people wanted to hear and a man asked for No Pockets In A Jumpsuit (1998) which I hadn't been near for twenty years. It was all still in me!
We drove down the highway through an incredible fog and arrived home at about 3am. 

Friday June 21st the Bison Bar, Nambour DAVE GRANEY SOLO Saturday June 22nd - the Bearded Lady, Brisbane.DAVE GRANEY SOLO
Saturday June 29th - The Caravan Music Club - Bentleigh Special guest Sean McMahon

July 12th - THE GOV - Adelaide.Special guests The Sunday Reeds