This is a blog for friends and family members to get a wee report of the things ive seen and my personal opinions about them.It is mostly inconsequencial shit barely rescued by a mild seasoning of spellchecker.
Members of the public are welcome , as long as you promise not to get offended.
Woody Guthrie was born 100 years ago.His Family has Scottish roots so it was fitting Glasgow would be amongst a few set venues for this celebratory tour.
Billy Braggs first connection with the work of Guthrie was when he was invited by Woody Guthries Daughter Nora.Out of an archive of over 3,000 songs Woody barely recorded a single digit percentage of them , none of them to a musical score.This presents problems and opportunities to would be ressurecters , Bragg resolved this very early on by intimating , with Noras blessing, his own style based mostly of Brit punk and independent acoustic traditions.
The event started with some wonderful songs from an upcoming KT Tunstall Album of which the best was an evocative piece called Invisible Empire:( give it about 30 seconds to kick-in).
The night was designed to showcase the totality of Woodys themes as well as his influences of which Leadbelly was a major inspiration.Paul Robeson also gave Woody many gigs leading to public exposure in the days when there was no such thing like touring as we know today.Almost all of Woodys gigs were free performances at pickets and Strikes in an age when even being suspected Socialist was a blacklisted across the states offence in legal and cultural circuits.
Woody hated Fascists , here is a typical Bragg version of battle cry against the Nazis and their supporters at home and abroad:
In the video below Bragg gives an American audience a British style speech on the NHS and Twitter:
Woody spent some time in Glasgow when having been shipwrecked during the D-Day Landing he awaited transportation back to the US.Bragg performed a World premiere of the song Woody Guthrie wrote about the city and the clyde.You can see it performed in this link
Billy Bragg finished proceedings with an updated version of the perennial Great Leap Forward:
The Tartan Army , of which i was a lowly foot soldier tonight, pride
themselves on supporting you ever more.But , in the case of Craig Levein
they are more than willing to make an exception.The Tartan Army have
split into two camps concerning the current Manager , the "Flower of
Scotland" brigade ( known to us Glaswegians as Tcheuchters) hate him ,
the Urban(e) populace despise him , whenever his face appeared on the
Big Screens there was a searing cacophony of booos reverberating on two
sides of the stadium ( the other sides were empty with a crowd of only
32,000) , the admixture of gruff gravely Glasgow accent booing in unison
with the Gaelic adolescent high pitched lilting made for a very unholy
parody of impotent petty venom.
"What the fuck are they saying"
was what we Unbanities said to each other with quizzical bemused looks
as the Tcheuchters started a massive chant , after a lot of hit and miss
translations , de-coding and other linguistic real-time deciphering we
made out they were chanted "Bring on the Subs" , there were only 8
minutes gone!.Though , to be fair , the quality of defending as the
Macedonians ripped the defence apart at will on several occasions did
seem to suggest immediate emergency surgery was required to avoid what
people in the Balkans call a "Catastropht".Two minutes later the
Catastropht happened.More slicing apart, a beautiful run , two
step-overs while on full speed run from the brilliant Pandev , a quick corner, a deft
pass , a stroke , bulging net , and that most famous of anti-Hampden
roars....two seconds of silence.Realisation.32,000 Scots sober.
After
that distraction the Crowd got back to the game of loathing Levein with
fresh added ire.Leveins problems began when he came up with a
masterstroke after the Spain game in Autumn 2010 ( which we won 2-3).In
the midweek after we were playing the Czech Republic , who had lost at
home to Lithuania earlier in the tournament , at a low ebb of form and
morale.With the high of a good performance against the deserved World
Champions the Tartan Army was on for catching the Czechs at just the
right time to consolidate a position in the group that could have made
Scotland unassailable as co-qualifiers along with Spain.But , Leveins
masterstroke was not to press home the advantage and strike when the
iron was hot.He went for a 6-2-2-0-0 formation , learned from the likes
of Dundee Utd and Hearts , and go for a 0-0 draw.The hopelessly out of
touch and disjointed Czechs ambled , shuffled and struggled to find any
sort of form for a whole 70 minutes whilst the Scots sat back with no
concern to score at the other end.Ironically , the Czechs scored from a
British type set-piece goal late in the game.The points went to the home
side.The advantage was lost.And the Czechs finished the job from which a
more positive Scottish performance that night would never have allowed
them.
Thereafter the Tartan Army has gone seriously out of love
with the 6-2-2-0-0 , as Levein has stubbornly stuck to it , citing ,
among other things , that Del-Bosque has also come round the Leveins way
of thinking.The fact that del-Bosque has said this formation without a
striker allows him to get 5 men into the last third when attacking , and
Leveins allows the grand total of none , with the "striker" pressing in
midfield, does seem to suggest divergence on the practical ethos of
utilisation of the system.Considering last saturdays opponents Serbia
beat Wales 6-1 suggests Levein was not wrong to start off in a cautious
manner.Leaving tactical substitutions until very late into the day seems
to be
the issue of most concern.Though one must bear in mind Miller and
Naismith could have done everyone a favour by being more professional
with the golden chances that fell their way.Had scotland won the
pressure on tuesday would have allowed the team to patiently probe the
opposition with the crowd being a genuine 12th man.
Sitting near
the dug-out i got to see quite a lot of Levein, he has the gait of a man
who has a contract in which he would be better-off getting a severance
payment by getting sacked than resigning and giving up on a bumper
golden handshake.He will tough it out until told not to do so.In fact he has entered the Taking-The-Piss-Zone , stating we can win all our games just before getting two tame home draws , mainly due to a defend when in doubt postures.
One
has to be fair and point out the current Scottish , despite what the
MSM say,squad is not up to standard for an expansive system.Technically
Macedonia were far superior to the Scottish players.It was no surprise
goalkeeper McGregor was man of the match.
Patti Smith last night was superb! Stunning
voice , a lot of New York Punk scene vibes about , a dynamic performance full of raw emotion and sincerity you just cant find in the corporate rock age.
This was the song that captured everything about a special night those who were lucky enough to be there will live again and again.
There is a lot of confusion that the song "Because The Night" is a Springsteen song covered by Patti.The song was actually a joint collaboration with pieces written by both Patti and Bruce.The version of the concert had a typically rocky raw edge not seen for many years.
The night was rounded of by a version of Gloria with tributes to all those still fighting the good fights of social justice the world over.