The Blind Lemons playing live in Shoreham

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_K11fwEV0w

The Blind Lemons feature my old school friend Tony Parsons (not the novelist!) on guitar, with whom I performed in the blues trio Little Albert Fly in the 1990s and, before that, in the 1970s, as a duo. Here he is with his current band. It's very tight now. I saw him recently, when I was in Shoreham for my mother's funeral, and found this video looking for a pub to retire to after the event. See here and here for some images, including, in the second one, me reading 'Smokestack Lightning' (which is dedicated to Tony, the first part of Twentieth Century Blues), with the band doing a shuffle version of 'Motherless Child', all at the Duke of Wellington. (You can see a very different sole performance of the poem from 2008, here. with harmonicas and recordings.) 

Little Albert returns for one night only

Here's Steve and me taking some tentative steps with Lou Reed's 'Perfect Day'. Our only rehearsals are actually playing at Maggi's New Year's (and other) parties, i.e., performing. Here we are at about 3.30 in the morning!

‘My Funny Valentine’, recorded croakily after too many hours singing, and a version of ‘Motherless Child Blues’ recorded earlier in the evening, in summer, 2015 may be viewed here.

New Year 2013 we also recorded ‘Motherless Child Blues’, this time BEFORE Maggi’s piano had been re-tuned. Here!

Steve was the keyboard player and founder member of the Liverpool band The High Five in the 1980s and his latest band is gigging under the name Cat Sundies. I was the singer and harmonica player of Little Albert Fly. No expense was spared when Tony Parsons and I played the Shakespeare's Head in Hove: they didn't pay. But here's a sideways photo of me and Tony in 1977 or 1978, taken by M. Foy.

Tony and I may be glimpsed here when he was fifty performing 'Motherless Child Blues' with me reading a bit of my poem 'Smokestack Lightning', in 2006. I also performed the poem as a song-piece at the Bluecoat in 2008: You can access that here. The event was filmed by musician and poet Ade Jackson, who has worked with Steve. Small world!

Ten Years of Pages: Ten Posts Nothing - Or Little - to do with Poetry

There actually is very little that has nothing to do at all with poetry on Pages. It is a poet's blog, after all, so even the less obvious posts might be tangentally linked to poetry. But here, in order of posting, are the least relevant to the stated themes.

1. Django Reinhardt's Guitar: talismanic object.

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2006/06/django-reinhardt-his-guitar.html

 2. Tony Parsons: a friend celebrated

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2006/12/tony-parsons-at-fifty-july-2006.html

3. The Blind Lemons: Tony Parsons' band celebrated (there is another post which has a photo of me reading 'Smokestack Lightning' along to the band. They had used the text in performance, but this is the only time I read it myself, the band softening to allow my voice to be heard). Tony and I used to play the blues together as Little Albert Fly.

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2006/12/blind-lemons-live.html

4. This is probably the first post where the blog is talking about itself, in this case its archiving by the British Library. I have put in a recent link to that. (Something I am doing a lot is augmenting earlier posts with new images and fresh links.)

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/robert-sheppard-end-of-fourth-series.html

 5. Frank Sinatra, a great clip of Frankie and Jobim. Or it was. The Estate snatches video off of YouTube quicker than you can say ‘FBI Tribunal!’ so it isn't there now. Go onto YouTube, type in Frank Sinatra and see what's up there for the next few days. Any way for now, try one of these. They seem to be identical adverts so may survive the purging for a while.

*

This post has little to do with poetry, but that 'little' is that the lyrics of the song were written by a poet, AND it's a curious fact that one of the de Campos brothers wrote a book on bossa nova and its opposition to the bel canto tradition. Which is why Sinatra is having difficulty holding back in a way the early, saintly Astrud Gilberto had no trouble achieving. Sinatra said: 'The last time I sang this quiet I had laryngitis'; the trombonist on the Jobim-Sinatra album said: 'If I play any quieter, I'll be playing out the back of my head'. It's hard (I've tried, a legend in my own bath time.) Here's the original post:

 http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/blog-post.html


6. An act of simple solidarity with Pussy Riot.

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/free-pussy-riot.html

7. Another reminder of my Malcolm Lowry activities as a Firminist. David Markson is a good read in anything but the conventional sense. His novels made me never to want to read another novel, a great achievement and one I might manage to live by one day. Until then, plough on through the procedural tedium of so mcuh contemporary fiction.

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/malcolm-lowry-and-david-markson-events.html

 8. It's a shame that the only video of me singing (other than the 'Smokestack Lightning performance at the Bluecoat which involves a little vocalising ) is one of my inebriated New Year's Eve sessions with Steve on piano. At least this wasn't the new year some of the party spent the night in A+E! (That's another story, as they say.)

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/singing-in-2013-motherless-child-blues.html

9. My funeral eulogy for my father. 

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/claude-herbert-sheppard-1924-2013.html

10. Memories of a good gig (even if the jerking bass player on this Later gig is not actually the one from the band). I have been subscribing to The Wire for a couple of years now and it is responsible for me finding all kinds of interesting bands and artists, mostly new: The Necks, Nicole Mitchell, Josephine Foster, The Glasgow Improvisors' Orchestra, the Fire Orchestra, Alasdair Roberts, Matana Roberts, John Butcher, The Thing, The Cherry Thing, Matsuo Butoh, Peter Brotzmann, Mary Halvorsson, Thumbscrew, Tyshawn Sorey, Steve Lehman and this group, The Bad Plus.

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-bad-plus-live-in-manchester.html

And, finally, all my other posts celebrating a decade of blogging are:


http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/ten-years-of-pages.html
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/ten-years-of-pages-best-bits.html
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/ten-years-of-pages-one-post-year.html

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/ten-years-of-pages-plans-for-future.html

Robert Sheppard: Smokestack Lightning

This is what happened to me. Tony thrust a copy of Tin Pan Arcadia into my hands and made me get up on stage and not sing, which I might have predicted, but read a passage from 'Smokestack Lightning' (printed below), which is something he always does when they play 'Motherless Child Blues'. Written about 1930 by Barbecue Bob, this song was one that Tony and I used to do, but which he now plays as an electric up-tempo number. However when I read it, the band softened to a Bob Diddley shuffle and I read these words:

Kid Bailey's the name I travel with, kidding
around: the name on the only phonograph;
walked up to the shop window, the glitter
of the diamond-fretted Dobro a death squad
tuning up. My handkerchief shields
the chord shapes from
your thieving eyes. Just pull the razor
and shave him. The gun in the guitar case was
no use - jealous man stepped up to Charley
as if to ask for Pony, retuned. Bill-
boards tell women what
to be: a circle of music-stands
dreaming thrills, dancing the Shimmy-She-Wobble -
some guy called it a dry fuck -
the guitar dances too, spins
above Charley's head. I could see
my own rapt reflection in the shine,
an invisible piano whose pedals are moody
bendings. Love my suitcase and the road.

(You can see a very different performance of the poem from 2008, here.) 

Page 524

The Blind Lemons live

This is the rest of The Blind Lemons (Tony is behind the amp.)