Saturday Live

I took this photo nearly two years ago today. I found it in my folder recently and knew exactly where and when I took it. I had returned to work following Isaac's death six weeks earlier and was on reduced hours, arriving home earlier than usual every day. On this day, 8th January 2022, I got home and went for a walk, ending up at Sale Water Park as the sun went down (about 4.30pm). At that point I took this photo, I looked at the sunset, the barren line of trees, the bleakness of mid- winter and my feelings of shock and grief. Everything felt empty. If the universe decided to swallow me up right there and then, gone in an instant, pop, nothing left, I'd have been quite happy. Or at least resigned to it. I can remember thinking it quite vividly. I wasn't going to do anything about it, I wasn't going to do anything silly, I just felt like if the universe had decided to end at that moment (or end me), it wouldn't have bothered me. 

And here we are now two years later. Things do change. 

For most of last year Saturday posts were Saturday live, bands, artists, musicians playing live on TV or at gigs. I haven't done one since November and toyed with dropping it but I have a few more that were on my list of unwritten posts and this one has some moments of beauty and genius from one of Manchester's greatest musicians and still a fairly unsung hero, Vini Reilly. There are lots of Durutti Column gigs and performances on the internet and some released as official recordings too. 

This one is Domo Arigato, The Durutti Column live at Shinagawa, Tokyo on 25th April 1985, Vini on guitar, keys and vocals, Bruce Mitchell on drums, John Metcalfe on violin and Tim Kellett on trumpet. It was released on VHS and CD (as FACD 144), a nine song set opening with Sketch For Summer and Sketch For Dawn and closing with For Belgian Friends and The Missing Boy, fifty five minutes of peak DC, Vini's playing exceptional and elegiac. The coming together of guitar, drums, trumpet and violin on Little Mercy, four songs in, is something else. An expanded edition of Domo Arigato came out in 2017, a three CD plus DVD box containing the full gig, remastered versions, extra tracks with a previously unreleased performance from Tokyo Loft Club in 1984. It's not possible to have too much Durutti Column. 

This one is three years later, Durutti Column live in Portugal, a favourite haunt of Vini and Bruce, this time an hour and a quarter's worth of music, sixteen songs with Andy Connell (ex- ACR and Swing Out Sister on keys and sampler). 

Who would want to be swallowed up by the universe standing by a suburban water park at sunset when these things exist in the world?

I've posted this clip before, a stunning performance of Bordeaux Sequence at Manchester Cathedral in 1985, one of my favourite DC songs, clips and performances. Everything about it is completely special. 

Three songs to download here, all from the expanded three CD version of The Guitar And Other Machines (originally released on Factory in 1987 and then re- issued in 2017), one from a gig at The Bottom Line in New York in October 1986 and two from WOMAD in August 1988. 

When The World (Live At The Bottom Line 1987)

Tomorrow (Live at WOMAD 1988)

Bordeaux Sequence (Live at WOMAD 1988)

Changing Places

There was an interview with Vini Reilly in The Guardian last week, a sombre and melancholic appreciation of the man and his talent. Vini talks about his traumatic past and how future Durutti Column drummer, manger and Manchester legend Bruce Mitchell saved him. Factory records, its home on 86 Palatine Road not far from where Vini lived then and now, had several people in its orbit that could be described as geniuses- Ian Curtis, Martin Hannett and Peter Saville all have a claim to the word. Vini is in that group too, his guitar playing and approach to music different from everyone else operating in the same spheres. Vini's view is if you go to Spain you can find flamenco guitarists playing in small bars 'in Cordoba and those guys will make me look stupid'. He casually dismisses his own song Otis as 'just messing about'. 

We are free to disagree with Vini of course, and to praise him and his music. 

In 1983 Anne Clark recruited Vini to play on her record, an album called Changing Places. The first side was recorded with David Harrow, Anne's poetry and voice on top of David's New Wave electronica. Vini played on the five songs on side B. Apparently he got the train from Piccadilly to Euston with his guitar, went straight to Denmark Street studios, played guitar for the five songs- beautiful, fragile, haunting, lighter- than- air guitar- and then got the train back to Manchester. A day's work for Vini but as this song has it, the echoes remain forever. 

Echoes Remain Forever

In 1991 Factory held a festival in Heaton Park to commemorate Martin Hannett. The Sunday line up was very Factory oriented. It was a warm and sunny day, everyone in a good mood. There were people coming over and through the fence, security unable or unwilling to stop them. Duruttti Column played mid- afternoon. They played Fado, a song that wouldn't be released in studio form until 1994's Sex And Death album. The music Vini, Bruce and keyboard player Kier Stewart conjured up that afternoon was a genuine form of magic.

Sketch For Vini

I've been playing a lot of Durutti Column recently. Their second album, 1981's LC, has been on a lot, as has 2010's Paean To Wilson, the 1984 12" single Without Mercy (two long form musical pieces recorded at Tony Wilson's suggestion with students from the Royal Northern College Of Music), the recent re- release 7" single Free From All The Chaos dropped through the letterbox not long ag and I keep returning to 1989's Vini Reilly album. 

In an attempt to pull some of this together into one place I've put together an hour of Durutti Column songs in the mix below, this selection all from the 1980s, and called it Sketch For Vini 1. It's not meant to be definitive or a Best Of The Durutti Column, just some of my favourites stitched together, starting with some of Vini's early work with Martin Hannett, then him being joined by Manchester legend Bruce Mitchell and the expanded line up in the mid-80s with viola player John Metcafe and Pol singing. Some of these songs are ones I've been listening to for the best part of three decades now and still don't get tired of- Sketch For Summer, Otis, For Belgian Friends, Bordeaux Sequence, Jacqueline, Sketch For Dawn 1. There's something unique and very affecting about Vini's endlessly inventive guitar playing, his tone and sound, his use of echo, delay and chorus, and despite what Tony Wilson said about it, his voice too. I'm going to follow it with Sketch For Vini 2 at some point, going into the 90s and beyond. The Mixcloud player won't embed- ongoing problems with the new Blogger- but you can find it and listen here. Hopefully it'll hit the spot for a bright autumn day in September. 

1. The Second Aspect of the Same Thing
2. Sketch for Summer
3. Jacqueline
4. For Belgian Friends
5. The Missing Boy
6. Enigma
7. Tomorrow
8. All That Love And Maths Can Do
9. For Friends In Italy
10. Otis
11. When The World (Live in New York 1986)
12. Bordeaux Sequence
13. Sketch For Dawn 1
14. Home
15. Real Drums- Real Drummer