I am wary of 'Best Of' lists. The recent 'Best Singers Of All Time' poll in Rolling Stone is a good example. I did get inspired to compile a list of sorts though. These are ten music makers that have made impact, not just on my musical taste, but on my life. Music can do that, affect how you think about everything. Well, that's what it can do to me anyhow. Some of the people on this list are still around, some aren't. There are some iconic people mentioned here as well as some obscure but no less worthy artists. This isn't my 'Best of' list so I am not saying that the person at the top is better than the one at the bottom, this is just a bunch of people who have all made contributions to my education, my point of view and of course, to my record collection. When I feel like it, I will get round to another ten, and then another ten. We will see!
Lotte Lenya
There used to be this radio show in England on Saturdays I think called 'Junior Choice'. It was a music request show for kids. They played Disney tunes, Danny Kaye and Phil Harris novelty songs, Sparky and his magic and very annoying piano, that kind of thing. I remember listening one day in the garden, I must have been seven or eight. The kids show had just finished and instead of the usual safe bland stuff, this very scary but compelling woman was singing about Pirate Jenny. I was excited and totally scared at the same time. There was a sinister other worldly feel to the music and in particular the vocal performance that made me replay what I had heard in my head, kept me awake at night. I had no idea who Lotte Lenya was at the time, even less who Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht were. I loved the records my sister played me, but this was different, music that had the power to paint horrifying yet vital pictures in my mind. It was a lot later before I heard the rest of 'The Threepenny Opera' or made the connection between Pirate Jenny and the Jenny Diver mentioned in Mack The Knife. I will never forget the impact hearing that recording for the first time had on me.
Miles Davis
I was a rock kid pretty much from the beginning, and I found so much jazz to be nothing more than inconsequential noodling. That is not the case now, far from it in fact, and the bridge that let me cross over to the delights of the blue note was undoubtedly Miles Davis. Again, it was a radio broadcast that set things in motion. I heard an early 60s live recording of "So What" and suddenly the nonsensical made sense. There were no spare notes here, everything that was played made absolute sense to me. I was prompted to listen to more Miles, 'Sketches of Spain", "Miles Ahead", "Bitches Brew" and was amazed by the variety and feeling I discovered.
Peter Green
The subject of my musical obsession since I was 16. Green was a founder member of Fleetwood Mac, but had established himself as being at the forefront of the 'British Blues Boom' before that. As a child, I was aware of 'Albatross', Green's haunting instrumental, but later on I started listening to the early Fleetwood Mac albums. The conviction in his guitar playing, singing and harp playing moved me like no one else has before or since. The tone in his guitar playing especially ripped through me then and still does now. The fact that at the time I discovered his music he had already disappeared from view only heightened the appeal for me. Well, he came back to some extent in the late 70s, illness pulling him away again by the mid 80's. Ten years later and another comeback, which lasted till about four years back. Each return showed that his powers had diminished to some extent, but there were still songs, performances where enough of the magic was revealed for me to feel like I did the first time I heard him play 'Merry -Go-Round' on Mac's first album. I know from first hand experience that Peter has the capability to let some of the magic through now if only he allows it to come. The word is that he has been working with producer Pete Brown in the last few months and maybe just maybe there is more music to be heard. I will be waiting, ready to have my hopes dashed, but hoping they might be fulfilled instead.
Nick Cave
One of the artists that can scare the bejesus out of me, but in a good way. Part blues singer, part old testament prophet, part cool man about town if the town happens to be Sin City, Cave makes me happy. Successive line ups of the Bad Seeds lurch through the dark visions in Nick's head and the man himself croons his way round the lower reaches of hell. 'The Mercy Seat' is to me now as chilling as 'Pirate Jenny' was back in the day. Challenging whole hearted scary music.
Portishead
In the mid 90's, I was in a bad place. (What is that wrong with North London, you may ask?) I had been very ill, lucky (or unlucky as I thought at the time) to be alive, and I had no interest in music, no interest in the future. An appearance by Portishead on the Jools Holland TV show started to change all that. Here was a band that seemed to feature elements I always looked for in music with more modern components I had ignored up to that point. Beth Gibbons seemed so frail, yet this amazing sound came out, and who was that guitarist with the blues rock touches. the music press called this music 'Trip-Hop', I called it one small reason to stick around and see what would happen next. Sadly, new music from Portishead was thin on the ground, but now, years later, a third album has arrived and rather than trying to live on rehashes of 'Glory Box', it finds this band still experimenting, looking to the future. Thank goodness you came back.
Muddy Waters
Through Peter Green, I found my way back to some of the original blues men. Muddy Waters has a voice that cuts through me. hearing the singles he cut with his band in the fifties is as exciting today as it must have been then. I saw him three times towards the end of his life on stage, and there was enough of him left to dominate the stage with his presence. He moves me man, and I'm not sure how it's done.
Richard Thompson
A great guitar player, his style laying between folk/blues, something like Davey Graham say, and a Hank Marvin/Surf guitar vibe. That would be enough for me, but his song writing is off the scale. His early stuff was so good, later songs such as 'Can't Win' seemed to sum up my life in a way I couldn't, and he is still putting out wonderful if still neglected work today. With the song 'Dad's Gonna Kill Me' from his last album, he has summed up so much about the Iraq war that I have been unable to elucidate myself.
Jimi Hendrix
In three short years, he subverted what the electric guitar was capable of, and inadvertently almost killed off my favorite musical genre, the blues. After Hendrix, where was there to go but backwards. Voodoo Chile seems to take the blues to it's logical conclusion, yet against the odds, blues survived and Jimi didn't. Well, the man didn't, the music stays with us. I have to say that I find it harder and harder to listen to now, and I can't really explain why, but his influence on me remains.
John Martyn
Another one like Peter Green. Musically on the fringes, dancing between experimentation and innovation and monumental indulgence, yet his best music, no even a lot of his less than best music still affects me more than most stuff does. Wrongly labelled a folk artist by an industry that has to label you, put you in a box and keep you there, he is no more a folky than I am a sea lion but elements of folk permeate his work, as do elements of reggae, trip-hop, blues, rock, jazz and some stuff that doesn't have a name but that John Martyn came up with anyway. At his best (and worst) on stage, JM has been there in my life for so long that not having his music available is unimaginable. There are some songs of his that make me cry every time, some that I find new things in every time, one or two that just make me pissed off. All that and a song about John Wayne. Brilliant.
Freddie King
A huge influence on Peter Green, who seems to try that bit harder when he comes to a King tune, and one of the reasons I could never fall out of love with the blues. His wonderful guitar style sounds deceptively simple, but it isn't. A musician I once knew, ( a wonderful musician who will feature in one of the sequels to this blog entry) once said that the best way to understand a musicians work is to try and 'be' that musician for a while, to walk in their shoes, do what they did. You can play the notes, chop them off as he did, do a fair imitation, but never ever can you be Freddie King. Wrongly dismissed by some in my opinion, he was a truly great blues player, and someone I could never ever stop listening to.
(Part 1, 2, 3 etc soon come. Or not.)
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