Getting up at 4.25am and driving 200 miles to front a band consisting of an owl on drums and a rabbit-like creature on keyboards may not be everyone’s idea of rock ‘n’ roll, in fact it sounds like ‘The Wind in the Willows” – The Rock Opera
This was my Sunday and the shoot for the promo of ‘Hum Along’.
I drove out to Bristol from Hastings in ‘The Hastings Hummer’ (my Fiat Doblo, a little known but brilliant vehicle that I will bring to the masses!) and arrived on set at about 10am. The director, Peter Lown, is a friend of mine and he had pulled out the stops to bring it all together including pulling the master stroke of employing Russ Henry of Hot Soup to make all the costumes and dress the set. Russ is a designer and illustrator based in Bristol and what he created for the day was an organic, dream-like magical space that reflected the cross-dimensional theme of the lyrics.
Not long after I arrived and I was having my barnet (pronounced barnay – my hair for the uninitiated) straightened by Inma Azorin (who did a great job and is also a dreadlock specialist), when a guy came up to me and introduced himself as Jeff and explained that he would be playing the drums for me today…dressed as an owl.
On stage to my left on keyboards was Al, who when I first saw him was squeezing himself into some lycra tights which he told me ‘made everything rebound’.
Peter and I had never been in a ‘work’ situation before although I had no doubts about the quality of his work having seen his Mini-Masterpiece – “Misfit’ and his short film ‘Sound of the Sun’ but I was impressed by his focus and whip cracking on the set – he was no doubt impressed by my blantant disregard for the right chords while miming to the track!
Charlie Watts when asked what playing with The Stones for 25 years had been like replied, “Well, five years of playing, and 20 years of just waiting around”, Rock n Roll and Film are similar in this regard but I didn’t realise that having someone dressed as an owl on set would lighten the atmosphere of a sometimes long and laborious process this is mainly because when you’re wearing an owl costume, pretty much anything you say or do is funny. Having said that I’m sure Jeff, a filmaker himself, is funny without an owl costume. In the afternoon a few more characters were introduced to the shoot – mainly birds – selflessly wearing balaclavas and dancing madly on a warm day in a studio.
Without giving too much away, Dave whose costume had elements of butterfly in it, had the job of leading me off the stage, into a tunnel created by the aforementioned birds. This gave me an opportunity to use my limited acting experience and I wowed the assembled crew with a masterclass in ‘tunnel acting’, having already blown them away with my earlier display of foot-tapping;-)
At the time of writing I still haven’t seen the result of everyone’s hard work – but I just want to say a massive thank you to Peter and everyone involved…it’s going to be great…
Every week or so I put the ’5 star’ playlist on my ipod on shuffle and write about the first shuffled track that comes on…
The Place by The Action is an unusual track because what sets it apart from almost every song in my collection is that on the CD ‘The Ultimate Action’ that the track is on, the writer is billed as unknown?
The Action were formed in 1963 and were heavily associated with the Mod sub-culture in the UK at the time and to be honest I’m a sucker for anything Mod.
By 1965 they were signed to Parlophone, and as well as being on the same label as The Beatles they were being produced by George Martin. They played a kind of ‘Acid Soul’ or ‘Pop Soul’ were great musicians and their frontman, Reg King, was blessed with one of the great unsung voices (sorry) of the 60s and 70s. He had a voice of real emotion and when you hear him sing he means it…but that’s for another blog.
Despite critical acclaim none of their singles achieved chart success in the UK, their highest position was 47 with a cover of The Marvelettes, I’ll Keep on Holding on. No singles chart success in those days meant you didn’t record an album.
The Place was recorded sometime in 1966 and when I did a bit of research for this blog I found it wasn’t written by by ‘unknown’ at all but by someone called Jack Hammer. Obviously, whoever did the sleevenotes for the ‘Ultimate Action’ was a bit lazy or had something against power tools.
Thematically it’s a bit like ‘Let the Music Play’ by Barry White. A guy has split up with his girl but he’s too embarrassed to tell his friends at the club, simply the song has the ability to make me jerk my head like a chicken, with it’s driving beat, tight harmonies and cool jangling riff and you can’t get better than that!
The Action split up in 1968, Reg King went on to record one classic eponymous album, which was recently re-released and the rest of the band found Islam and went on to record some great psychedelic rock as Mighty Baby…but both of these are for another blog…
Criminally underrated is probably an overused term but I’m going to use it anyway to describe one of the greatest singer songwriters I have ever heard, David Ackles.
Born in 1937 in Rock Island, Illinois, my first encounter with him was in Crouch End music library in North London, a place I once visited frequently to stock up my itunes. Every time I went there this interesting reddish-brown sleeve with an indistinct figure seen through a broken window, simply titled ‘David Ackles’, looked back at me. I used to leave with jazz and folk but never ‘David Ackles’.
One day I’d rented all the Fairport and Sun-Ra they had, so I finally took a chance on ‘David Ackles’. When I got home and listened to it, it was like I was playing the perfect music – the opening track ‘The Road to Cairo’ with it’s slow swinging rhythm and that late 60s deep clicking bass line sound was so evocative. By the time I got to ‘Blue Ribbons’ and then ‘Down River’ with it’s out-of-tune bar room piano part, I was having a musical epiphany! His voice was so rich and dramatic and at other times understated.
That experience immediately caused me to buy the other 3 albums of the 4 he recorded between 1968 -73, Subway to the Country (1970) American Gothic (1972) and Five and Dime (1973). Of these three American Gothic was probably his most acclaimed, recorded in England and produced by Elton John co-writer Bernie Taupin, it was described as ‘The Sgt. Peppers of Folk’ by The Sunday Times when it was released. It contains tender ballads and social comment delivered with Jacques Brel/Kurt Weill undertones that give a hint of his background in musical theatre.
In all his work he has a unique ability to perfectly represent the lost, the lonely, the disaffected, the disconnected and the broken-hearted, even though he was a happily married, family man for nearly 30 years. When I heard the lyrics ‘I’ve been loved, so I know I’m alive’ from ‘I’ve Been Loved’ the second track on ‘Five and Dime’, the hair stood up on my arms and the tears stung the corner of my eyes, especially as I was watching my own mother descend into Alzheimers seemingly living out her days with no purpose, having lost my Dad.
He is sometimes described as ‘an artist’s artist’ and he can count Elvis Costello and Elton John among his most vociferous supporters also Phil Collins included ‘Down River’ in his Desert Island Discs. I would also cite him as a major influence.
David Ackles succumbed to cancer in 1999 and while we are all just men and women in physical form he is someone I truly wish I had met.
Introduce yourself to his music…
