Would you like a Paddy or a Jason, sir?I was talking to my barber about Ramblin' Jack Elliott this week. No, Wait. Everything about that sentence is suspect. Firstly I wish to emphasise that he is not The Hat's personal hairdresser – as in my personal trainer or my assistant who puts the toothpaste on my toothbrush in the mornings. Nor is he really a barber. He is a painter who does bit of barbering to help pay for his proper job. That said, it becomes easier to understand why we were talking about the blues, rather than the usual hairdresser/customer relationship where you sit there and listen to their views on The Economy/Football/That Awful Woman on Tele and the Scandalous Price of Absolutely Everything.
But back to Jack - who travelled with Woody Guthrie and was once famously introduced by Dylan as 'my long lost father'. The reason he cropped up during the comb-over-wisp battle was that we both had, at some point in our respective histories, encountered the Rolling Thunder Tour, that grand panoply of extraordinary talent that clattered around for what seems Ever in the mid seventies. It left its mark wherever it went and it had stuck indelibly with Mr JustaTrim and fired up an enthusiasm that has never waned. And that's the point. We all have musical places and moments that can change us. This may well be happening to someone you know right now. We may rush out and invest in the Cd. We may see a recommended YouTube clip and become immediately obssessed with the artist or we may see someone live in a club, at a festival or a concert and realise that you are in the company of a really special talent. From then on, you are of course doomed – locked for ever into those late night debates about Influences and Tastes, forever defending your heroes against unreasonable assault – to the point where you finally rush to the book case and pull out the Cd or, more tellingly, the original vinyl LP and start quoting loudly from the sleeve notes.
The Hat was reminded of this whilst hanging around the tradesman's entrance at Festival HQ the other day. After trawling the waste bin hoping to pick up some hot gossip and breaking news, all I got to hear was Major Domo Paddy complaining about the size of the print on the back of Cds these days and what a pain it was to read. Even though he is a fine figure of a fellow and ostensibly at the peak of his powers with absolute Twenty Twenty Everything, I think he has a point and it is not simply solved by upping the magnification of his Discount Store reading specs.
Is the Hat alone in missing the vast canvas of the LP sleeve? These were frequently exquisitely designed pieces of art - Hipgnosis set a bar so high it has seldom been reached since - and they were accompanied by lengthy, informed, totally absorbing and beautifully crafted sleeve notes often written by high profile major exponents of the art. For many of us, much of our knowledge and understanding of our chosen genre of music came from lying back on the sofa reading these masterworks whilst listening to the music. They even gave us pull-out supplements of the lyrics. And then there was the overload of information bestowed on us....how else would we have learned about Memphis Slim's love of beer drinking women, Arlo Guthrie's barmitzvah, Billie Holiday's back story and what Jack Bruce looked like before he was old. But, somewhat inevitably once the free posters, the Stones' zipper and Led Zeps empty brown paper bag got involved, we knew the art had run out of time let alone succumbing to the march of that brittle plastic cd case and its miniscule print. Of course you can't turn back time and as my blues barber artist would say.."there's not a lot I can do about that sir..."
Finally. My cat is in the dog house. It would seem that in a desperate freelance bid for Fame and Glory – and without informing The Hat – he has wangled his way into becoming the key figure in a new competition on the Hebden Bridge Blues Festival website. It is actually a rather good competition with tip-top prizes. However, The Hat has been obliged to remind him who pays the food bills round here - Fame has a Price and is invariably short-lived. It was pointed out that the house guitar needs a new E string and he could well be a potential donor. I don't think it will happen again.
Pip Pip!
The Man in The Hat