Kittiwake

In mid- October The Swede post the title track from Bert Jansch's album Avocet in the Monday long song slot. It is indeed and long song, all eighteen minutes of it. The post is here. 

Avocet came out in 1979, a return to form for Jansch who had been a little out of sorts in the mid- 70s, living for a while in Los Angeles, returning home, splitting from his wife and then touring Australia and the Far East for several months. Together with violinist Martin Jenkins he toured Scandinavia and out there they began to develop some new ideas for songs. Once home they worked them up and recorded them as an album with Danny Thompson on board, bringing his innovative double bass playing. 

These became Avocet. The title track is eighteen minutes long, a tracks that shifts about and goes through phases, but always returning too the start. It's a sublime piece of modern folk music. There's nothing revivalist or twee about it- it two men creating new music at the end of a decade that had seen its fair share of changes. Avocet took up all of side one of the record. 

On side two there are five more songs, all named after British birds- Lapwing, Bittern, Kingfisher, Osprey (written by Jenkins) and Kittiwake. The songs, all entirely instrumental, start in folk but go off at tangents into neo- classical, skirt around jazz, drone and meditative. I hesitate to use the word ambient because they're not ambient at all- but you could slip them into an experimental ambient mix and they'd fit. The album was re- issued in 2016 and you can find it on Bandcamp with three extra live tracks recorded in Italy. 

Kittiwake is the closing track, vibrating double bass strings and Bert's tumbling guitar playing, inventive and melodic. Lovely. I think Vini Reilly may have been listening to Avocet. 

Kittiwake

There's probably a post to be written by someone better qualified than me about an alternative/ secret history of the late 70s, music made miles away from the spotlight of punk, New Wave, new pop and all the exciting stuff that was going on that thrilled so many people. Far from this there was Bert Jansch and Avocet (recorded in 1978, released in '79) and John Martyn's One World (two years earlier, 1977). There are probably others that fit in a similar category, unfashionable and out of the glare of publicity and popularity but still sounding good today.  

Danny Thompson

Danny Thompson's death at the age of 88 was announced on Wednesday, a giant in the background of the English music scene from the early 60s onwards. An obituary I read somewhere yesterday said, musicians didn't get Danny Thompson to play bass on their records because they wanted some one who could follow the guitarist and hold down the root note- they got him in because they wanted Danny Thompson. His stand up double bass, born out of school music lessons where he picked up trumpet and guitar before settling on double bass, was as much a lead instrument as any other sound on the many records he played on. He played blues with Alexis Korner and then folk/ jazz with Pentangle and then on albums by Nick Drake, Richard Thompson, Davey Graham, The Incredible String Band, Bert Jansch and John Martyn and then albums by a slew of artists including Talk Talk, Everything But The Girl, Kate Bush, Alison Moyet and David Sylvian. 

Until I started looking at the list of records his bass playing adorns, I hadn't fully realised how many I own with his playing on them and his name on the sleeve. Danny's playing was melodic and inventive, basslines that told their own story, that worked for the song but very much existed in their own right too. Sympathetic but full of the man's character. 

Pentangle rewrote the folk rule book in the late 60s, updating folk music by fusing it with jazz and a modern sensibility. This of course outraged the purists. In this clip Pentangle play live in January 1971 doing Light Flight , a song I've been playing on and off for several years since Andy Bell covered it. 

In 1969 Danny played bass on Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left, an album I love (not least 'Cello Song which has taken on a whole new meaning for me since Isaac's death- I've written about it, before more than once, and probably will again). Time Has Told Me is the album's opening song and Danny's also there on River Man, Three Hours, 'Cello Song, Man In A Shed and Saturday Sun, his bass bubbling away behind Nick's guitar and voice and Joe Boyd's production. 

Time Has Told Me

Danny's connection with John Martyn was long and went beyond music. They were notorious drinking buddies and trouble causers. In 1973 he played on John Martyn's the fourth album Solid Air, a groundbreaking blend of folk, jazz, Echoplex guitar, blues space rock and after hours music. The title track was itself a tribute by Martyn to Nick Drake, John's guitar and Danny's bass dancing together and wrapping themselves around each other...

Solid Air

There's loads more I could post, potentially hundreds and hundreds of songs, all to some degree improved by Danny Thompson's bass playing, but these three will do for now. RIP Danny Thompson.