23/03/2012

Trouble Town



The middle parts of places can sometimes in fiction take on a rather exotic quality –Journey to The Centre of the Earth or Middle Earth, for example. Yet in reality,  the middle of countries often  end up less  celebrated – musically included -  than other parts. Take the mid-west of the USA. Not for them the West Coast or East Coast  sounds or Southern Soul. Instead , Bill Bryson summed up the general image with the first sentence of his Lost Continent book, "I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to”.  Or there was Tom Hanks as the music manager in That Thing You Do, giving a warning to a complaining artist: “Jimmy, you'd rather be back on that state fair tour? They're playing in North Dakota this week.”

The same applies to England. The Midlands – too far north to be south but too far south to be north. Life in A Northern Town brings up a set of stock images, real or stereotyped -  salvation army bands, Eccles cakes, Theakstons' Old Peculiar and cobbled streets. Life in a Midlands Town, though, is rather more undefined and  somehow the identity isn’t as clear. In fact, for many people, the Midlands means  Birmingham and the Black Country - the West Midlands - forgetting the East Midlands and Nottingham, which have always seemingly had less notice. Unlike Brum Beat or the ( admittedly short-lived)  Solihull Sound there was never really a Nottingham Sound and musically it has never ranked with Birmingham or  Coventry, home of 2-Tone.The number of commercially successful artists from Nottingham hasn’t been huge. 60’s blues band Ten Years After; actress Su Pollard, who had a 1986 hit Starting Together; and Paper Lace, who had an inexplicable hat-trick of hits, including a Number One, in 1974.(Given their name, one might have expected them to dress up as 19th Century lace-makers - but instead they opted for American Civil War uniforms for their Billy Don’t Be A Hero hit.)

Maybe, though, this ambiguity suits Nottingham because it seems a good example of a town with not one identity but several- a Tale of Many Cities. For the tourist, it is the past – real and fictional – that dominates: the Lace Market, the Castle, Sherwood Forest and all the paraphernalia associated with Robin Hood. You can drink at the Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem pub at the foot of the Castle where the Sheriff of Nottingham lived, buy a Robin Hood outfit in the gift shop nearby and have a meal at the Friar Tuck Flaming Grill. (Not venison and mead, disappointingly, but gammon, egg and chips). Musically, however, in this  historical Nottingham  you are left with Bryan Adams and Dick James (both Robin Hood again) and possibly Nottamun Town by Bert Jansch or  Fairport Convention.

 If you live there ,it is the present that matters more and your view of that will partly be shaped by where in the many parts that make up the city you live. The song here, Trouble Town by Jake Bugg from 2012, is a bleak one, part teenage angst, part reflection of Clifton, a large housing estate south of the city. ”Stuck in speed-bump city and the only thing that’s pretty is the thought of getting out”. It’s a lyrical theme frequently  found across the urban landscape. Again, though, things don’t fit a neat pattern and past and present shift about as they do in Nottingham itself,   for the style of music of 18-year old Jake Bugg has more resonance with five decades ago, with early Dylan or Donovan,  than anything contemporary. The accompanying video of another of his songs, Love Me The Way You Do, has him traipsing down a railroad track, guitar slung across his back as if he was off to jump a freight train.
Link to Love Me The Way You Do

 Jake Bugg has quoted Don Mclean as his first influence but his songs like Someone Told Me or Saffron  also have echoes of others from a past musical era. Donovan certainly but also David McWilliams, for example ,with songs like Poverty Street, or Bob Lind -  best known for the rather overblown Elusive Butterfly (pipped to the post in the UK charts in 1966 by Val Doonican, complete with rocking chair and cardigan, just as the Bachelors outsold Simon and Garfunkel with Sounds of Silence) but he also recorded many other tracks mixing folk, country and pop. Lind’s biggest impact in the UK, in fact, was in stimulating a brief flurry of homegrown covers of his songs by artists such as Keith Relf of the Yardbirds and Adam Faith, whose final chart entry  was Lind’s Cheryl’s Going Home. This was Stage 3 of Faith’s eclectic musical career, Stage 1 being the pop idol phase from the late 50’s and Stage 2 being when he commandeered the Roulettes as his backing group and jumped aboard a passing beat group bandwagon for a few more hits. Stage 4 was his commercially unsuccessful 1974 album and single, I Survived, another of those songs that should have been a hit but wasn’t. The clip below is worth viewing for Faith’s air of nonchalant cool, even glancing at his watch at 1.12. (Faith died in 2003 and his reported last words are worthy of inclusion in a List of Famous Last Words -  along with ’Bugger Bognor’ and ‘Die, my dear doctor?. That’s the last thing I shall do.’ -  echoing as they did a collective national  thought at the time: “Channel 5 is all shit, isn’t it. Christ, the crap they put on there. It’s a waste of space”).
It has been a recurrent theme in this blog that places can have multiple identities depending on who it is that views them and Nottingham seems a particularly good example of this. I visited the city just before Christmas and much of what I saw was the stuff of picture postcards: the castle and the views across the town, the stalls on the Lace Market, church bells ringing out over cobbled streets. I was a visitor and these were not, of course, the same experiences  as those that inspired this song. That will always be the case, particularly with a city that has grown up as the collective sum of very different parts. Perhaps what Nottingham lacks  musically  is its own St Etienne, able to create its own town and sense of place where retro and modern combine and the past isn't a museum piece but part of the living world. As with the song here, voices from the past can be heard in the most contemporary of settings.

49 comments:

  1. I also like to listen to Trouble Town by Jake Bugg. It was really an awesome song and I know that I would really enjoy listening to it. I know that many people would also love to listen to this amazing song.

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  2. There you are! For some reason you just showed up in my blog feed last night, although this is dated last Saturday, which is very strange. Oh well!

    Thanks for this great column, all the better for feeling like I waited for it for weeks:) (Stupid blogspot system).

    It is definitely strange and true that places caught in the 'middle' seem to fall through the cracks of any national imagination (both the American midwest and the British midlands). I have very little imaginative vision of either region.

    For pure comedy, you might enjoy this fake wikipedia page about Nottingham:) - http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Nottingham!

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  3. Darren (Nottingham LIVE Magazine)1 April 2012 at 19:11

    Interesting column!

    We recently launched the Nottingham Music Awards, which will celebrate the achievements of the great musicians, singers, promoters, managers and others who play a part in what is a boom time for the Nottingham music scene. The Nottingham music scene is flying at the moment, with several bands being signed by labels, bands music playing on shows and several Nottingham acts appearing at the likes of Leeds and Reading and Glastonbury. It's a great time to celebrate that talent in a new, entertaining way. The Nottingham Music Awards will give the city a chance to acknowledge the great talent that is there and for people to enjoy themselves and celebrate what is a fantastic scene.

    So we may turn around the image of Nottingham music and create a "Nottingham Sound" yet!

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  4. Yes, the Bachelors outselling Simon and Garfunkel is one of those very disappointing facts about popular music, I think. Here are some of my other favourite disappointing facts!!

    1. Creed has sold more records in the US than Jimi Hendrix

    2. Led Zeppelin, REM, and Depeche Mode have never had a number one single, Rihanna has had 10

    3. Ke$ha's “Tik-Tok” sold more copies than ANY Beatles single

    4. Flo Rida's “Low” has sold 8 million copies – the same as The Beatles' “Hey Jude”

    5. The Black Eyed Peas' “I Gotta Feeling” is more popular than any Elvis or Simon & Garfunkel song

    6. Celine Dion's “Falling Into You” sold more copies than any Queen, Nirvana, or Bruce Springsteen record

    7. Same with Shania Twain's “Come On Over”

    8. Katy Perry holds the same record as Michael Jackson for most number one singles from an album

    9. Barbra Streisand has sold more records (140 million) than Pearl Jam, Johnny Cash, and Tom Petty combined

    10. People actually bought Billy Ray Cyrus' album “Some Gave All…” 20 million people. More than any Bob Marley album

    11. The cast of “Glee” has had more songs chart than the Beatles

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  5. Interesting list, Chris, but even if all of those stats were true, the new music mentioned is pretty forgettable compared to the 'old' music being outsold. And I think it was pretty predictable that newer music would easily outsell rock era music. Given technology and how it has made easy access not just to music, but to music news (for example, a lot of bands during the rock era that I followed would put out an album, and unless I heard a cut on the local top 40 station, I wouldn't have a clue), as well as made what at one time would be a national act easily international, it is easy to imagine what in 1970 would have sold 250k units being the current equivalent of millions.
    That goes without even considering that albums were expensive and a bit cost prohibitive for many in the big music buying age range, kids now have far more access to money than kids in the 60s and 70s. Without considering the fact that downloads are also now considered, and downloading music from your living room or studio is FAR more convenient than going out cruising the local music stores then deciding what you are going to plop your 6.99 down on.

    On top of all that, not only is music accessible around the globe because of the internet (as well as music news), now a LOT of countries that were 40 years ago closed economies are now open to the exports of other countries, and downloaded music is an import export form of economics. As another example, there are a lot of bands who were popular in Canada and Britain in the 60s and 70s that are still mostly unheard of in the usa. This was true to the degree that the Beatles coming to the states was a HUGE anomaly. Before them there was no British invasion. The entire dowop period was , with the exception of VERY few, only artists from the states. Countries around the globe each had their own stars, and that stardom didn't cross the ocean much. It certainly didn't cross language barriers much.

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  6. I love that Adam Faith clip you posted - and laughed at him checking his watch:)

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  7. “Channel 5 is all shit, isn’t it. Christ, the crap they put on there. It’s a waste of space”

    Great last words:)

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  8. Me too! I also couldn't spot this column until yesterday (I noticed they are changing the blog service over to a different look at the moment, maybe your blog got caught in the crossfire!).

    I loved this column, especially because I wouldn't have heard the "voices from the past" in the song you wrote about ("Trouble Town") - it would just have seemed to be the "most contemporary of settings", so this was a great teaching moment about how to hear that fusion of past and present in a given song about a place....

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  9. I looked up who said those other famous last words:

    Lord Palmerston in 1865 said: "Die, my dear doctor! That's the last thing I shall do!"

    And allegedly the last words of King George V were "Bugger Bognor", in response to a suggestion that he might recover from his illness and visit Bognor Regis!

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  10. My favourite 'last words' are "Wait a minute…" (by Pope Alexander VI)

    :)

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  11. I like Humphrey Bogart's last words: " I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis"

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  12. Winston Churchill's should be top of the list - his last words were: "I'm so bored with it all."!

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  13. For tragicomic value, you have to love General William Erskine's last words, after he jumped from a window in Lisbon, Portugal in 1813: "Now why did I do that?"

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  14. Oh, nice! Me too, my blogger feed didn't register you until yesterday or this morning (I rely on that alert to let me know when you've posted a new column).

    My favourite last words are by Arthur Flegenheimer, the mobster. He had been fatally shot by another mobster and taken to the hospital. As police officers interrogated him on his deathbed, he gave them long and frequently incoherent answers, including: "Hey, Jimmie! The Chimney Sweeps. Talk to the Sword. Shut up, you got a big mouth! Please come help me up, Henny. Max come over here... French Canadian bean soup... I want to pay, let them leave me alone... A boy has never wept...nor dashed a thousand kin" before finally dying.

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  15. I like "Throw a quilt over her," the last words of Frederick II of Prussia, who noticed his greyhound shivering and issued this order to his valet.

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  16. Don't forget "Don't worry…it's not loaded," the last words of Terry Kath from the band Chicago (as he put the gun he was cleaning to his head and pulled the trigger - though the gun had no magazine in it, Kath was unaware that a bullet was already in the chamber; he was killed instantly).

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  17. Nothing beats Karl Marx's final words: "Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven't said enough!" (when asked by his housekeeper what his last words were).

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  18. I guess everyone knows it, but I still love Captain Lawrence Oates's last words: "I am just going outside. I may be some time." on Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated Antarctic expedition. While suffering from frostbite and sheltering from a blizzard, Oates felt he was decreasing his companions' chances of survival. Oates voluntarily left the tent; it was his 32nd birthday. He was never seen again.

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  19. I like the self-conscious style last words - like "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something" by Francisco ("Pancho") Villa :)

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  20. I like H. G. Wells's final words: "Go away. I'm all right." (Wells did not realize he was dying).

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  21. I agree with you Geoff, cities need a group that invest in creating it musically - creating it as a place, really (and if Nottingham had its own St Etienne, able to create it, make it so the "past isn't a museum piece but part of the living world" it would seem like a very different place).

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  22. Here's Adam Faith, Cheryl’s Going Home, that Geoff mentioned: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh5cUUEMqiw

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  23. I wasn't at all familiar with Adam Faith in his Roulettes phase - here's an example in case anyone else is unfamiliar with this period in his career!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV7rK8kUzXA

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  24. Humorously, The Guardian ranks Adam Faith's last words along with the words of Pitt the Younger ("I think that I could eat one of Bellamy's meat pies"), Bing Crosby ("That was a great game of golf, fellas"), Anton Chekhov ("It is never too late for a glass of champagne") and Roy Jenkins ("I would like two lightly poached eggs")!

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2003/may/13/guardianleaders

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  25. Oh god, Val Doonican's Elusive Butterfly, I remember thinking how much I preferred Aretha Franklin's version a few years later.

    Here's Doonican:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FF0m-580B4

    And here's Aretha Franklin:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaYl84OTzj0

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    Replies
    1. I never knew Aretha Franklin had covered Elusive Butterfly - thanks for the link.
      Re Pitt the Younger's last words in Martha's comment -he could have said 'I think I have eaten one of Bellamy's meat pies'!

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  26. And here's Bob Lind's Elusive Butterfly too:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPH8RxDZ_eY

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  27. Jake Bugg is nice - you can get a free download of Trouble Town at his facebook page (click the small grey star in the top right corner): https://www.facebook.com/jakebugguk

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  28. I hadn't heard Trouble Town by Jake Bugg but I think it really does an amazing job at evoking small-town alienation and frustration!

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  29. This singer is 17 or 18 years old? He has one very old school Johnny Cashesque voice, and this track is great!

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  30. I agree with Desiree - this kid makes you feel like you're listening to a weathered and aged American artist, battling the depression of his surroundings…

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  31. I worry that he's been born too late to have this kind of music get his very far, unfortunately - if he had been doing the same thing in the 60′s, he would have his own plaque on the wall somewhere in Nottingham. I guess we'll see what he does next to live up to his professed influences of Dylan, Cash, The Beatles and McLean!

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  32. Here's Nottamun Town by Bert Jansch that Geoff mentioned - I can never understand why this is never on compilation CDs of Bert's - it's certainly one of his best!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzyPZAJ-Gnw

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  33. And for good measure, here's the Fairport Convention version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om4KMCKBJuY

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  34. My mother, Jean Ritchie, also did a version of Nottamun Town (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsUKApb2gr8) - it's interesting to imagine that there might be some parallel between the Kentucky mountains, which she often sang about and where she was from, and the British Midlands (certainly Kentucky is the middle of the U.S. and also the northern South in perhaps the same way that the Midlands are the southern North of the UK, and I know that the British North is kind of the U.S. South in terms of its place and cultural relationship to national identity?). Just a thought!:)

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  35. Thanks for the introduction to Jake Bugg, who I hadn't heard of!

    I went in search of his other songs you mentioned - here's Someone Told Me:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJovqpbjpao

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  36. Also, it's harder to find a version of Saffron, but it's here as the first song he performs in this longer BBC piece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDINJAB0KBY

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  37. Geoff, you might also enjoy Jake Bugg's "Love Me the Way you Do" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX-uLF6L9Oc - with an interesting video that reminds me of some American midwest shots (of train tracks).....

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  38. Jake Bugg definitely reminds me of David McWilliams in Poverty Street, you're absolutely right Geoff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZsqMv9_lgY

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  39. Wow, I think Jake Bugg (who I had never heard of until reading your blog this week) has a bright future ahead of him - I think he could become a seriously important UK male singer/songwriter in the years ahead.....

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  40. I think his fusion of Country, Folk and Indie sets him aside from any artist in the chart today.

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  41. Great song - it spoke to me, an American with zero knowledge about Nottingham or any other British town except London, about being stuck in a small town out in the sticks, stuck in a dead-end job, stuck in the daily grind.

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  42. Ha ha yes, check out the uniforms in Paper Lace's Billy Don’t Be A Hero: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cdFuMgMkBM. Hilarious!

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  43. I only knew Paper Lace from their hit "The Night Chicago Died," which I remember was played constantly and was top of the charts when I was a teenager in the U.S. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-L0NpaErkk. I had no idea about the Billy song in Civil War uniforms, or the fact they were from Nottingham, always thought it was an American band!

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  44. Thanks for the link to the Jean Ritchie song, Jon. Judy Collins recorded some of her songs, I think.Thats an interesting comment about Kentucky and the Midlands -there does seem a kind of parallel

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  45. Hey man - we do have a reformed Ten Years After, with new frontman Joe Gooch, nowadays. Ric, Chick and me are still in it. you might also like my music with Joe Gooch in Hundred Seventy Split - http://www.hundredseventysplit.com - it's a different sound. I live in Nashville now, I've been here for a while and I've been working in country music. very different to Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. look me up if you are ever in Nashville!

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  46. I was about to ask what the "Solihull Sound" was and then I had a memory flashback to an earlier column where you explained it, so for anyone else wondering and remembering, here's the earlier explanation by Geoff (from the column on Life In A Northern Town):

    ‘Solihull Sound’, a sound based on the Applejacks and a tinny organ that sounded like – ding dong, the Avon Lady had come to call.

    Do I get extra grade points in the Geoff University for my memory and research here???

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  47. I have a website devoted to the Brum Beat, including lists of the 1960s West Midlands bands and their music, in case you are interested: http://www.brumbeat.net/index.htm - there are quite a number of bands!

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  48. Re Leo Lyons' comments above, this was the original line-up of Ten Years After at Woodstock:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq-ihdqfELU

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