Brass

I am writing, as I almost always do, with music playing and, at the moment it is the most recent CD by a lady called Judie Tzuke (If you know her at all, you will know her from 1979’s ‘Stay With Me Till dawn’, made before, I have no doubt, many of you were born, but she has been producing superb music ever since.) and I was whisked away by a track called ‘White Picket Fence’ partly because it is an excellent song, but also because it features a brass band (Except it doesn’t: it does feature a trumpet, a flugelhorn, an oboe and a flute, but they are all played by the same person.  It sounds like a brass band though and you can’t have everything these days can you?) and I do love a brass band in a ‘rock’ song.

I suppose – as these things tend to do – that it started with the Beatles: All You Need Is Love and Golden Slumbers notably feature brass band ensembles but I am going to throw three different hats into the ring as the finest examples of rock (or folk/rock) / brass band hybrids.  They are to be enjoyed, loved and, in the case of the last one here to be buried to. (Is it a recent innovation that funeral songs should always be heartening and essentially optimistic?  I’m pretty certain that, when I was a boy, they were all slow and profoundly depressing.  I remember (a very early memory) when Churchill died and the dirge went on for days without break.  OK, he was a great man, but surely he would have enjoyed a bit of Satchmo or something as he was horse-drawn around the capital.) 

I perhaps need to explain at this point that, being the age I am, I have no idea how to embed videos into posts, so I’ll just have to link the titles to YouTube videos, but hopefully you have the patience to try them out.  I promise it will be worth it.

I presume it is probably a very British thing to do – brass bands being not only very British but even more specifically, I think, northern.  These three bands/performers are most certainly English, even though one of them hasn’t lived here for decades.  (Richard Thompson, despite being quintessentially British, lives in New Jersey.)  If, by the way, you want to learn more about brass bands – and at the same time Britain of the late seventies/early eighties – I cannot do more than recommend the wonderful film Brassed Off for your entertainment and education (If you can find it, I seriously recommend that you give it ninety minutes of your time). 

Anyway, here we go back to my three hats… has anyone seen the ring?.  Hat One is Sad Captains by the glorious Elbow.  I have seen Elbow many times and they never fail to be amazing, but on the tour to accompany The Take Off and Landing of Everything (the album from which this song is taken) they were accompanied by a small brass and string ensemble and this song was magical.  This is the album version and it is truly lush.  It could easily have been my funeral song, but I would hate people to think that I was a Captain.  Sad, everyone knows…

Hat Two is I Want To See the Bright Lights Tonight by Richard & Linda Thompson.  I have seen Richard Thompson many times, but always solo and although brilliant – there is no other guitarist in the world quite like him – I have never seen him perform this song.  The version here is (again) from the album, because although there are many excellent live versions available, this is the only one with the brass band in all its glory.  Definitely not a funeral song, but almost certainly on my list for the wake.

Hat Three, When An Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease by Roy Harper*, will definitely be amongst my funeral songs – even though my best friend insisted on telling me for years that I hadn’t played cricket for decades and had left the crease long, long ago. Sad, reflective, yet ultimately uplifting this is one of music’s great lyrics – telling simultaneously a simple tale of both Village Cricket and Human Mortality (not the easiest of combinations to master) – and the brass is perfect. Again, I have seen Harper many times and he does cover this song brilliantly live (there’s a live version here and, take a look, there’s my Bearded Man** in the very flesh) but without the brass band it’s just not quite the same. (Although I now have a confession to make. I have just listened through all of my clips and, if you don’t have time to listen to them all, then I can only recommend that you at least listen to the live version which, despite the whole premise of this post, features no brass at all. Harper is aural Marmite, but if you like him, you will love this***.)

I know this is a very different post for me – all will return to normal on Monday, I promise – but I hope you enjoy the songs and, of course, if any of you can point me at any more, I would love to hear them…

*The only non-band member to ever sing lead vocals on a Pink Floyd song (‘Have A Cigar’ on ‘Wish You Were Here’) he also provided backing vocals on Kate Bush’ ‘Breathing’ and was, of course, the ‘subject’ of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Hats Off to (Roy) Harper’.

**No coincidence that I had recently seen him when I wrote the first incarnation of The Bearded Man.

***Silly Mid-On, BTW, is a field position.