A greener shade of blues

A twenty minute walk from my house brings me to a supermarket, once the Granada Cinema, where The Rolling Stones played a gig in 1965. Fifteen minutes away in the opposite direction is an apartment block, the site of the Oldfield Tavern where in 1962 a drummer called Keith Moon auditioned for a band called The Who. They played gigs there throughout 1963 at the Music Club which also hosted Screaming Lord Sutch and many others. It is easy to imagine these young men travelling through the green and pleasant suburb of Ealing, ready to set the world on fire with their sound. With such an impressive musical history it is hardly surprising that Ealing holds an annual festival and this year I made the effort to attend the blues event held in Walpole Park.

At £4 for a day’s entry it is extraordinarily good value. The event is held in what used to be Sir John Soane’s back garden, just off a high street lined with the usual stores. The sun shone on this particular day, but had it proved wet and muddy, the day-glo wristband I was issued with would have allowed me to nip out to Marks and Spencers for some clean clothes or into Pitshanger Manor to dry out. In some ways this is part of the problem with this event and I’m afraid I did have a problem with it.

As at any other music festival there were the usual stalls flogging dream catchers and ethnic clothing but while I was there hardly anyone was buying because the age group for that kind of thing was barely in evidence. In fact the image I took away with me was of the many foldaway chairs that almost filled the main tent. I’ve seen these things advertised in the Observer colour supplement but until now I didn’t know that anyone actually bought them. They even outnumbered the pushchairs, and there were a lot of those.

Once parked in these things their owners just seemed to sit there, a few feet away from bands that were giving it their all. Occasionally someone would head to or from the bar with a beer which they would then place in the specially designed drink holder on the arm rest. They actually used it. How uncool. I found it hard to determine whether any of them were having a good time. I could have got it wrong. Perhaps these were the same people who sat listening reverently to singers in clubs in the sixties and they are still doing it fifty years later. On the other hand it might be that the worthy citizens of the borough were just making sure they got their money’s worth from a council subsidised event. Enjoyment didn’t appear to come into it.

On the smaller South Stage Sam Kelly’s Station House revue featured singer Debbie Giles, TJ Johnson and local guitar player Lally. A group of accomplished musicians who clearly love performing together, they sounded really tight and even though there were some foldaway chairs in evidence their occupants managed to behave as though they still had a pulse. The band were enjoying themselves and had nothing to prove.

Sandi Thom was promoting her new blues influenced album, “Merchants and Thieves”, on the main stage. Perhaps 3pm was just too early a slot but it was a shame that a talented and fresh blues voice was exposed to such a dozy audience (the obligatory dancing drunks didn‘t count). It wasn’t helped by the number of photographers, amateur or otherwise, who began to pop up during her set, to the point where a security guard intervened. This drew the wrath of one man who deliberately encouraged two small boys to dart about right in front of the stage with cameras for the rest of the performance, distracting to everyone and unbelievably rude. I was standing well away from the stage but put my own camera away out of embarrassment.

A great singer, I think Sandi deserved a better reception and I hope that if she returns to Ealing she and her excellent band will be treated with more respect. Another Scot with a particular affinity for the blues, she has embraced them and made them her own. I loved the fact that someone who has had a single at number one in seven countries was still prepared to sell t-shirts and CDs herself and sign them afterwards. She even unwrapped mine for me when I just stood there, star struck! This seemed to be the only opportunity to buy music at the event and although I realise that the download is now king, it seemed strange that this should be the case along with a lack of t-shirts, a staple of every other gig I’ve been to.
　 Music fans struggle to pay for and attend gigs in muddy fields in the middle of nowhere but this conveniently situated one is so cheap and safe that it might as well be a funfair. The local council supports it because it brings more money to the area, generating another layer of income. My impression of Ealing’s annual blues festival is that is a place where people come to socialise rather than celebrate a musical genre that grew from the pared down wisdom, wit and humour of impoverished African Americans, expressed in the most beautiful soul searing way. At this event the music is almost incidental. I went home while it was still light. If I had paid more perhaps I would have stayed all evening to get my money’s worth.

The Stones fell in love with music which evolved in prisons, farms and shacks, far from the comfortable suburbia they grew up in, and had respect for those who made it. I wish Ealing was a magnet for young guitar based musicians and genuine fans, an up and coming generation to ward off the onslaught of over commercialised plastic pop but I’m not sure that you can recreate New Orleans in London without making the area a place where they can flourish and perform with fewer restrictions. The Stones and The Who came about because there used to be so many pubs, clubs and other small venues where they could perform and find each other. You seem to need expensive licenses for everything now.

I have a great deal of respect for the organisers behind the event because they do actively promote Ealing’s blues heritage. My criticism is not aimed at them. I feel very strongly that it requires the intervention of a younger generation that genuinely loves that music, sees what Jagger saw in it and actually performs it. Council grants and worthy people who use the drinks holders on their foldaway chairs are no substitute for a respectful and truly appreciative audience.

Through a glass, darkly, and whilst wearing dark glasses

I was channel surfing a few nights ago when I came across a documentary about Eric Gill, the sculptor. As I began to watch it there was something at the back of my mind, a slightly uncomfortable feeling. Eventually I remembered that Eric Gill was thought to have been a child abuser. This was confirmed by a visit to Wikipedia. These weren’t just allegations made against him, he described his activities in his own diaries.

Eric Gill was responsible for monuments, sculptures and plaques all over the country, the work of almost forty years. Much of his work is to be found in churches and he had quite a lot to say about man’s relationship with God. Some may wonder if God has had quite a lot to say to him, if there is an afterlife. As far as I know no one has asked that his work be destroyed or removed, and typefaces that he designed are still in use. Does this mean that the work of a self confessed abuser can be regarded as absolutely separate from the crimes that he has committed? Should I feel bad for liking the work of Eric Gill?

I find it difficult to sit through a Michael Jackson video, even though he was found not guilty on all charges of sexually abusing children in 2005. I wonder how many people in his entourage breathed a sigh of relief when that happened, not because they were concerned about him or believed in his innocence but because it meant that there was nothing to stop his music being played by the respectable and therefore royalties would still roll in. I’m no fan of his later stuff, but if “Don’t stop ‘Til You Get Enough” comes on I’ll watch it, feeling queasy and guilty all the way through it.

When it comes to Gary Glitter that opportunity never arises. His former backing band are till touring but I doubt if he has made much money from royalties lately. I loved Gary Glitter’s music when I was a kid and when the charges against him were first made public I couldn’t believe it. I suppose that by not buying his albums his former fans are punishing him in the only way they can. I suspect this means that the Glitter Band can’t use any material that he wrote and have to come up with their own songs. If I came across an old LP in a charity shop I might even consider buying it (not that I have the equipment to play it on any more) but I probably wouldn’t show it to anyone.

There is just something about a charge of child abuse that leaves a stain that cannot be erased or ignored. It isn’t like any other crime, partly because those who commit this kind of offence tend to keep on doing it or trying to. You can’t help feeling that even when most offenders of this nature are caught out they really don’t believe that they’ve done anything wrong. Society can tolerate a murderer who has done his or her time being amongst them but rarely a proven paedophile. The strange thing is that “Alice In Wonderland” is still a best seller when it must be obvious to anyone with functioning brain cells that its creator, Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), had an unhealthy interest in photographing little girls. There is no evidence that he took his attentions towards his models any further but I am sure that if Dodgson was alive today he would have taken advantage of the internet in the same way that many paedophiles have.

That looking is considered to be as bad as touching means that the career of an actor like Chris Langham is probably over. He was one of the main characters in “The Thick Of It”, a very popular TV satire of the Blair Government, but since his conviction for downloading child pornography he has not been seen in anything other than vehicles clearly meant to rehabilitate his career. In Langham’s case the images in question went quite a lot further than small girls in tastefully arranged drapery. They included video clips of the most violent kind and extreme kind. The impact on his colleagues must have been devastating. To find that someone who you may have introduced your own children to has tastes of this kind must have been shattering, knowing that your very successful television career may now depend on the amount of distance you can put between him and your next great script must have been almost as unnerving.

I still don’t know how I feel about this. I am thinking of buying a DVD of “The Thick Of It”, even though it features Langham. That Glitter LP might turn up. If it does I’ll keep the volume down.