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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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FESTIVAL SPECIAL: THE RHYTHM FESTIVAL
- Part One |
Twinwood
Arena, Bedford, August 29th, 20th & 31st,
2008.
No
need to worry, Serge – the Whiskyfun van
is back on the road, all cleaned up and as right
as nine pence. We’ve driven it through the
pretty Bedfordshire countryside, where I notice
many fields of barley are as yet unharvested,
to the Twinwood
Stadium, home of the Rhythm
Festival. We were so impressed by
this unusual setting for a Festival last year
when we just came for a day – it’s
an old air-base with a wonderful semi-natural
auditorium at one end – that we thought
we’d come for the whole bash this time.
At times I doubted the event would go ahead –
it must have made a big loss last year, and with
so many festivals this year and rumours of poor
sales everywhere it wouldn’t have surprised
me if this one got pulled like a number of others.
But we’re here, nicely parked on what I
guess was part of the old runway (now grassed
over) with lovely views down across the valley
on one side, and of our neighbours gathered around
their fold-away table on the other. |
 |
| As
it’s Friday, and it’s almost four o’clock,
they’re acting out the famous English Scrumpy
Jack tea ritual, which appears to involve the consumption
of several cans of the aforementioned beverage along
with some of Mr
Kipling’s Assorted Fancies. On the van
we’re preparing dinner – but don’t
worry Serge, there’s no signature dish tonight. |
| It’s
an interesting line-up – no one exactly new
or cutting edge – that’s not what the
Rhythm Festival does, but an eclectic collection
of vintage acts from both sides of the Atlantic,
with a particularly strong American contingent over
the three days. |
| Some
were big hits – some less so, but all seemed
a trifle bewildered by the relative paucity of the
audience. Partly it’s because there simply
aren’t that many folk here – and also
because the site can easily swallow up thousands
of bodies and still seem like one of those deserted
RAF camps that used to feature heavily as sets for
early episodes of the Avengers. There are three
‘stages’: the main auditorium which
never feels more than about a third full; the Alternative
Stage, mostly hosting the British bands such as
Wilko Johnson, Hey Negrita, Stackridge, Neville
Staples and Geno Washington, then the tented Marquee
Club Stage, which at one point on Saturday hosted
the smallest audience of them all. The principle
attractions seem to be the bars, as almost every
empty Nissen Hut (that is, those that aren’t
decked out with period equipment and rather odd
people dressed as Second World War soldiers and
airmen) seems to be full of beer kegs, a few tables
and chairs, an occasional DJ and hordes of people.
It’s as if the organisers are on a responsibility-free
mission to make as much profit as they can from
booze, and many of the participants seem only too
happy to join in. |
 |
| Talking
of drinking reminds me not only of Scrumpy Jack
and Scrumpy Pete, who disappeared in search of something
called Gwynt
y Ddraig, but also the feisty (or was it ‘kooky’?)
Michelle
Shocked – not that she was drinking since
she doesn’t now, but she did in her bad marriage
when her husband drank, and she drank, but you’ll
be glad to know that’s all over (as, thank
heavens, so was her set soon afterwards) and now
she’s met a great guy and is very happy. Performing
solo she also sang some of her nice songs (so that’s
who played ‘Anchorage’), but probably
should have followed her own oft-offered advice,
“Don’t talk too much now, Michelle”.
|
| She
was by no means the best, or worst, of the US performers
over the weekend. Sadly the latter accolade rested
somewhere between Saturday’s Quicksilver
Messenger Service and Sunday’s Jefferson
Starship, both of course great names from the
acid-tinged San Francisco of the late 1960s. The
Quicksilvers, who I remember with some affection
having been played their first album at great length
(do you remember Dino’s song?) by a school
friend who’d arrived in Oxfordshire from the
West Coast with albums by them, Moby Grape, 13th
Floor Elevator Company and others under his arm,
were not much short of a shambles. |
Michelle Shocked |
| Faced
up by original members Gary Duncan on guitar, who
looked like a fully-paid up member of rock and roll’s
walking dead, and Dave Freiberg (should that be
‘Friedhead’?), who Jozzer said reminded
him of his Nan, they were woefully under-rehearsed
and out of touch, inflicting lengthy latinesque
guitar solos on a largely unimpressed audience,
and eventually literally ground to a halt half-way
through ‘What About me’. Later as we
queued for tea we could see some arm-waving recriminations
backstage between Friedhead and Duncan. But Friedhead
had a second chance singing with Jefferson Starship,
with the newly-recruited Cathy Richardson as the
band’s latest Grace Slick replacement, led
by a rather disinterested chain-smoking Paul Kantner.
|
| This
was on a damp Sunday afternoon and the crowd was
shrinking by the minute. The set was divided between
their classics (“We’ll try not to fuck
up White Rabbit for you …”) and material
from Jefferson’s Tree of Liberty (“we’ve
got a new album out of folk songs and other old
shit …”). Time has not treated their
songs well, and much of their their new material
also seems very dated in a clichéd Californian
way - faux radicalism combined with sentimental
environmentalism and piano riffs designed for TV
golf shows makes pretty sorry listening. The worst
moment was when Kantner left the stage (“I’m
going to look for MI5 agents in the audience”)
and Friedhead sang the maudling ‘Cowboy on
the run’ – “Sometimes I dream
of a world without war: people laughing in the sun…”.
Ugh! |
Paul Kantner and Cathy Richardson |
| Far
more to the audience’s liking were New York’s
Gandalf
Murphy & the Slambovian Circus of Dreams,
who, with not a grey hair amongst them, kicked off
on the main stage on Friday and Sunday. The early
morning rain hadn’t cleared when they started
their second set, but they patently won the hearts
of the damp and characteristically weather-defiant
audience with their eclectic selection of Irish
jiggery, swampy country and western and the odd
King Crimson tribute. And as they played their final
song, ‘Alice inside’, I was tempted
to wonder if every American singer didn’t
have a Neil Diamond somewhere within them. |
| Stax
veteran Steve
Cropper, partnering with the
Animals, also won some spurs, although he was
almost upstaged by Blockhead and sometime Animal
Micky Gallagher, who certainly showed he had a Booker
T somewhere inside him. Gallagher’s keyboard
playing (he’d played briefly with the original
Animals when Alan Price left) was absolutely outstanding,
and as he and Cropper gelled during their Friday
night set, Cropper blasting out his trademark riffs,
they gradually left original drummer John Steel,
bass and vocalist Peter Barton and guitarist John
Williamson firmly in the shade. They were followed
by Big Star,
fronted by the legendary Alex Chilton, all floppy
hair, creased chinos and sports shirt and sports
jacket. As one of the real highlights of the weekend
Chilton was justifiably puzzled by the diminishing
crowd that almost evaporated in front of his eyes
in favour of the timeless cockney charms of Chas
and Dave. After all, this is the man who brought
the world the fabulous Box
Tops, with songs like ‘The Letter’,
Cry like a baby’ and ‘Soul Deep’.
Big Star was his commercially unsuccessful venture
into power-pop but now regarded as hugely influential
on a later generation of musicians. |
Steve Cropper and Micky Gallagher |
| This
all seemed to be lost on the Twinwood audience,
and thus, not surprisingly, the band lost a bit
of interest themselves. A shame, as they had apparently
played a blinder at Shepherd’s Bush a couple
of nights before. |
| But
it was a real elder statesman who made the final
transatlantic contribution to the Festival. A man
whose remarkable contribution to Woodstock (have
you watched it recently?) must nonetheless follow
him around like an albatross: Richie
Havens. It was Sunday afternoon, and by this
time the clouds were dark and low, but in his short
set Mr Havens just managed to keep them at bay.
He was gracious and charming, engaging and egregious,
accompanied by a wonderfully sensitive guitarist,
Walter
Parks, and for a few songs, cellist Stephanie
Winters. I was astonished to watch his guitar playing
close up – a most unorthodox
technique, but simple and effective. I understand
from the Rhythm
Festival Forum that some people didn’t
like it, but we thought it almost an hour of perfection,
with an eclectic selection of songs including ‘All
along the watchtower’ (and an amusing story
about its composer), ‘Freedom’ (of course),
‘Won’t get fooled again’, ‘Licence
to kill’, and as an encore his unlikely and
unintended disco hit (as recorded by Odyssey) ‘Going
back to my roots’. |
Alex Chilton and Richie Havens |
| And
as he sang his final song, the long-threatened rain
(the forecast had promised hurricanes, hail, a plague
of locusts, toads etc.) began to fall, and we retreated
to the comfort of the Whiskyfun Festival van. -
Nick Morgan (photographs by Kate and Nick). |
Check
the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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