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SHOW REVIEWS:
The Independent, July 5, 1999 The Times, July 6, 1999 NME.Com
Starry Eyed About Harry
The Independent, July 5, 1999
by John L Walters"Harry Smith wanted them all to go on without rehearsing," said my insider friend, talking about the multi-artist event at the South Bank. "But Harry Smith died in 1991," I said. Of course she meant Hal Willner, Smith's musical heir, who put more than 20 major egos together in a live compilation.
But who is Harry Smith, and why would Bryan Ferry, Jarvis Cocker, June Tabor and others want to pay tribute to him? The newspaper features and the video shown at the start of the evening show an old man in New York. But pictures from the Fifties, when he completed his Anthology of American Folk Music, show a young man in a hurry, sharply dresses with shades and a goatee, cooler and younger than many of the rock names who last night played many of the old songs he salvaged from 78 rpm obscurity.
The dazzling line-up of creative talent included Elliott Sharp and Robin Holcomb, Syd Straw and an A-team rhythm section with drummer Michael Blair, bassist Andrew Dorn and guitarist David Torn.
Beth Orton provided a reinterpretation of Mississippi John Hurt's "Frankie" and Eric Mingus delivered "Gonna Die With A Hammer In My Hand" accompanied only by his own upright electric bass before being joined by guitarist Gary Lucas for a storming "Judgement" by the obscure Sister Mary Nelson.
Jazz trombone giant Roswell Rudd played a chorus of Thelonius Monk's "Mysterioso" as an introduction to Harry Smith's 1950s animated film short of the same name. This was a humorous Dadaist collage synchronized to an early Monk recording of the tune.
Gavin Friday contributed an epic version of "When That Great Ship Went Down" at the end of which veteran jazz crooner Jimmy Scott intoned "Nearer My God To Thee". Scott and his trio, resplendent in tuxedos, performed a devastating "Motherless Child."
Kate and Anna McGarrigle introduced some more recognizable "folkiness" but confounded expectations by playing a bizarre cover of a song from the first Fugs album-which Harry Smith produced in the Sixties. There was a spirit of mutual support throughout the gig but for me there was a special thrill in seeing Van Dyke Parks for the first time-providing a sensitive accompaniment to the gorgeous Eliza Carthy and, right at the beginning of the night, performing two numbers with a harp and string quartet.
Nick Cave, a lanky, curatorial presence throughout the Festival strode on to perform a terrifying "John the Revelator" with the McGarrigles on stirring backing vocals.
Songs His Granpappy Taught Jarvis?
The Times, July 6, 1999
by John StreetSuddenly, Jarvis Cocker is bouncing across the stage, intent upon exterminating the cockroach that once inhabited his flat. Only a moment before he had been sitting placidly, an electric autoharp on his lap, singing about the cuckoo.
This might seem strange behaviour, even for Pulp's singer, but there was a reason. It lies in the Anthology of American Folk Music, a set of 84 recordings compiled by Harry Smith in 1952. The anthology, which was re-released in 1997, drew together an extraordinary mix of tracks from the 1920s and 1930s: weird tales of murder and redemption, dance tunes and gospel chants, hymns to trains and sunken ships. Two examples, from 1929 are Clarence Ashley's "The Coo Coo Bird" and the Masked Marvel's "Mississippi Boweavill Blues." It was these that provided the excuse for Cocker's cockroach and cuckoo songs.
Smith's compilation is no musty archive. It has been a living inspiration, providing voices and idioms for performers from Dylan to Beck, and it was this legacy that Hal Willner chose to honor, with an all-star cast, on the final night of Nick Cave's Meltdown 99. Willner's previous ventures have included tributes to the music of Charles Mingus and the songs of Walt Disney. For the Smith show, besides Cave and Cocker, Willner called upon Beth Orton, Bryan Ferry, Van Dyke Parks and more.
The resultant performance was blessedly free of starry attitude, as the participants mucked in together to reproduce or reinvent Smith's vision. The opening number had Syd Straw singing "The Butcher's Boy," backed by the Mondrian String Quartet and conducted by Parks. Geoff Muldaur coaxed a beautiful a cappella coda to "KC Moan" from Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Eliza Carthy, Robin Holcomb and Bobby Neuwirth.
Amid the evening's vast array of sounds and formats what stood out was the rich variety of woman's voices (under represented on the original Smith's anthology): the McGarrigles' warm harmonies and sly wit, Straw's husky tones accompanying Orton's reworking of "Frankie," June Tabor magnificently alone.
There were occasional dull stretches and duff moments; and maybe there was something of the school concert of the show. But overall it was a fine tribute to one of America's great mavericks.
Meltdown : London South Bank Royal Festival Hall
nme.com, July 1999
Going out on a crazy cross-patterned high, Nick Cave's final evening of cultural, social and musical meltdown had a cast big enough for a weekend festival. In paradise. Crammed into just under four hours. It was almost too much to take. Gathering together an errant Britpopster, endless lost American geniuses, a faded glam roui, unsung folk heroes, jazz nutters, avant-garde angels, Appalachian oddballs, classical renegades and much, much more, Cave's appointed co-ordinator for the entire evening, bald bumbling Hal Willner, showed an ambition worthy of the late Harry Smith himself.
Smith was the archivist, occultist and anthropologist whose massive 'Anthology Of American Folk' provides the songs for tonight's gig. First up is Brian Wilson's old collaborator, Van Dyke Parks (his debut on a London stage), chuckling his way through a lovely riverboat journey to 'East Virginia'. He's followed by Nick Cave, serious as cancer in a button-upped three-piece, singing apocalyptic gospel with Kate and Ann McGarrigle.
Other highlights include Gavin Friday and Margaret O'Hara dedicating the Titanicentric 'The Ship Went Down' to the people of the Belfast shipyard, an irascible Jarvis Cocker gleefully shouting, "I shat in your ciabatta", Bryan Ferry showing his bizarre interpretative skills on 'John Henry', and Dylan's old jousting partner Bobby Neuwirth looking like a Las Vegas cowboy and singing about wanting to be a mole in the ground.
This may have been a one-off act of madness, but it unearthed so many riches and unexpected unifying principles it deserves to be a long-term project. If anyone has the guts (or stamina) to make it happen.