Cellar Upstairs Folk Club, London
16 June
16 June
When I arrived at the little upstairs
room in the Exmouth Arms, Leon Rosselson was already sitting in
the front row reading the Guardian, which is what you would have imagined him doing before a concert. The compère introduced him as the
greatest living English political songwriter; an assessement with
which it would be very hard to argue. Like a lot of people, I knew his songs long before I had heard of him. I just kept noticing that my favourite performers -- Martin Simpson, Martin Carthy,
Billy Bragg, Dick Gaughan and Chumbawamba had all covered Leon Rosselson songs. (Come to think of it, they all covered
the same Leon Rosselson song....)
If you'd only heard Billy Bragg belting out "in 1649
to St Georges Hill...." you might be taken aback by the little man with
the squeaky voice (I almost wrote “nerdy”) chatting away about
1970s environmental protests and an arts project he was involved in which used an old
London bus as a performance space. He steers clear of the famous, well-covered songs: no
Stand Up For Judas, no Palaces of Gold...the man sitting behind me
shouts out for The World Turned Upside Down but he doesn't sing that, either. (I think it was the man sitting behind me who took the above footage on his phone: thank you, man sitting behind me.) He does sing "raise a loving cup to Abiezer / he's a dancing, drunken,
roaring, ranter" as an encore, though. Winstanley's Diggers broke away from Abiezer
Coppe's Ranters: I expect you knew that.
Several of the songs have that kind of anthemic, sing-a-long chorus. He spends some time teaching us ("Pete Seeger style") the words and tune of a newish, English take on the big rock candy mountains ("I'm going where the suits all shine my shoes...") But what he does best are patter songs and story songs and thesis songs. He's almost like Jake Thackray with the sex and catholicism replaced with left wing politics. (The ghost of George Brassens -- Jake's hero too -- appears to him in one song to tell him to carry on writing regardless of what everyone thinks.) Over and over again, he tells us about little men confused by a world in which everything is commoditized. There's the old tale about the man who finds that a motorway is going to be built through his back garden, and the newer one about the man who achieves celebrity by committing suicide on live TV; and the familiar story of poor Barney, forced to work in the factory when all he really wants is to make junk sculptures in his garden (suggested by a Marxist book about the condition of workers in communist Hungary, apparently.) Production lines keep turning up as symbol for everything which is wrong with capitalism:
Several of the songs have that kind of anthemic, sing-a-long chorus. He spends some time teaching us ("Pete Seeger style") the words and tune of a newish, English take on the big rock candy mountains ("I'm going where the suits all shine my shoes...") But what he does best are patter songs and story songs and thesis songs. He's almost like Jake Thackray with the sex and catholicism replaced with left wing politics. (The ghost of George Brassens -- Jake's hero too -- appears to him in one song to tell him to carry on writing regardless of what everyone thinks.) Over and over again, he tells us about little men confused by a world in which everything is commoditized. There's the old tale about the man who finds that a motorway is going to be built through his back garden, and the newer one about the man who achieves celebrity by committing suicide on live TV; and the familiar story of poor Barney, forced to work in the factory when all he really wants is to make junk sculptures in his garden (suggested by a Marxist book about the condition of workers in communist Hungary, apparently.) Production lines keep turning up as symbol for everything which is wrong with capitalism:
It was press, turn, screw, lift,
early shift and late shift,
every day the same routine
Turning little piggies into plastic
packet sausages
to sell in the heliport canteen
Some of the political points may be a
little bit obvious: his response to teh riotz is to say that the rioters are only doing the kind of thing that made England what it is today –
Francis Drake, now there's a looter
Plundering the Spanish main...
Was rewarded with a knighthood
Looters deserve nothing less
But more often, he
takes us off into complex slabs of poetical political theory that you really have to concentrate on:
What do you feel said the land to the
farmer?
"Sweat on my brow" the farmer replied
"Sun on my skin" said the spring time
lover
"Ball at my feet" the young boy cried
And the man whose eyes were made to
measure
Said “Proud to invest in a high-yield
area
Concrete and glass and stake in the
future...”
The club isn't amplified and the
language and argument require close attention; which makes for a
pretty demanding evening. But it's clear that everyone in the room
respects and reveres him as a song writer; the phrase "hanging on
his every word" just about covers it.
It's a cliché to say that Rosselson's songs are better when other people sing them. People say the same thing, equally unfairly, about Dylan. It's perfectly true that Billy Bragg on the one hand and Martin Simpson on the other have taken his songs and turned them into their own, wonderful things. But it's in the lessor known story-songs that his real genius lies, and I don't think anyone else can do them better. In a funny way (considering what an unassuming performer he is) the evening is carried by the force of his personality. A little man who can't always get his guitar to stay in tune and who sometimes stumbles over his own lyrics, speaking for little men who are having motorways built through their gardens.
It's a cliché to say that Rosselson's songs are better when other people sing them. People say the same thing, equally unfairly, about Dylan. It's perfectly true that Billy Bragg on the one hand and Martin Simpson on the other have taken his songs and turned them into their own, wonderful things. But it's in the lessor known story-songs that his real genius lies, and I don't think anyone else can do them better. In a funny way (considering what an unassuming performer he is) the evening is carried by the force of his personality. A little man who can't always get his guitar to stay in tune and who sometimes stumbles over his own lyrics, speaking for little men who are having motorways built through their gardens.
As before, the club itself was the star
of the evening, with a stream of talented performers getting up to
take floor spots. Resident singers Bob Wakely and Ellie Hill did cheerful renditions of Clyde
Water (drowned lovers), Sheath and Knife (brother-sister incest) and an, er, homage to the Carthy / Swarbs Sovay. Tom Paley did an
American song about – I'm not sure what it was about. There was a
skunk involved, and everybody said “whack diddle eye day” a great
deal. It dripped authenticity. Someone whose name I didn't get
did a killingly camp version of an old music hall song taking the mickey out of Scottish people. But the highlight was the fellow who sang a song of his own in praise of the National Health Service. I don't know
if the roof was raised for the song itself or for the sentiments behind it, but raised it most certainly was. It's a very brave man who sings protest songs in front
of Leon Rosselson.
A few of my favourite of Mr Rosselson's songs, for people who do not have a theological objection to Spotify.