Pop Montreal, Nuit 1: Diamond Day after Day
There wasn't that much going on tonight - and I skipped out on the Gary Lucas-Gonzales gala, as well as the Ramblin' Jack Elliott show, in order to hang with one of my best friends, who is putting me up and baking vegetables for me and letting me drink his whiskey up - but I got more than I could have hoped for from the two shows I did catch: Vashti Bunyan was a muted revelation. She both was and wasn't the delicate flower you hear on Just Another Diamond Day - and, somehow I'd not quite registered this, she certainly wasn't anyone born "Vashti," but as English as they come. But much more so, she was a mom, who had moving songs about her children and her memories of her own youth to sing about in that impossibly pure, high voice. Every song was framed with a story, the two dominant themes being her major heartbreak in the mid-1960s and then, a couple of years later, her two-year trek from London to Scotland with a literal horse-and-wagon and her boyfriend of the time, in search of a dream of hippie back-to-the-land utopianism (an artists' colony Donovan attempted to start, though he was gone by the time they got there) off the coast of Skye. The latter story is sort of well-known now, but to hear her talk about it in person was quite another experience, a reflection on what seems madly naive in retrospect but is really not a form of idealization (and, I'd argue, false nostalgia) that's dead. The city and suburb kids who've driven her career revival and made a cult out of her obviously identify with it because they share that vision. I'm pretty dismissive of that end. And yet it's also relevant to the rethinking of food and agriculture and land use that's going on in more serious, grounded ways today. But even more compelling is what befell her after the period she mythologized in those songs, the time that she felt the music world had rejected her: She raised children in a very traditional way, as a lot of hippie girls did. The most moving song to me was the one about, as she said, "how much I hated housework and yet spent a lot of my life doing it, and dreaming of the road." The lyrics of Wayward speak of wanting to "be the one who ... came home with dust on my boots." But instead she was the one who was found waiting at home at the end of the day.The final, twice repeated line in the song is, "All I ever wanted was a world without end." And thinking of that not as a hippy on-the-road fantasy but as the fantasy of a housewife who has a world strictly delimited by the walls of a home, lends a great depth: She was just a few years too old to know that the much bigger and more serious revolution of feminism was what she was looking for, but since it hadn't come yet, she was tagging along with dreamy guys on their quixotic, wanna-be gypsy quests. And she got the worst of the deal in every way.
The weird thing, hearing these songs she wrote in the mid-1960s, was that Joni Mitchell's early work is no better. They were confessional and dreamy in a similar way, poetic to the same degree, both melodic and unique. Sadly it seems from interviews that what Bunyan thinks she lacked was "a strong visual image," which is hard to believe looking at her now: For a woman with three kids in her late fifties, she is quite beautiful, and she must have been stunning three decades ago. What she didn't have was the fierceness, I'm sure, the competitive bulldozing power that Mitchell did (and which, out of that underrated quality of competitiveness, kept her progressing beyond that style into her greatest work, and then, with equal confidence, into making crap). I'm led back to questions about family dynamics and other central issues of character, much more than talent, in asking why one made a huge impact and the other was ignored. And these are dark questions, because they're not at all about merit, not about community (which Bunyan seemed to have), but about an intrinsic fortitude, the ability to bite through the dogfight. But it also makes the end of her story about Wayward all the more affecting: "This year, I've found that open road again, and I've loved every moment of it." She truly seemed amazed that the young ensemble of musicians on stage with her - piano, flute, guitars, cello and violin, from various places in Scotland and the U.S. - were there, "playing this music I thought up when I was so young," and overwhelmed by the moment, on the last night of their tour.
That set of thoughts made the trek way up to Zoobizarre (which the festival's map made look way nearer by) worthwhile, to catch The World Provider. Malcolm Fraser and his all-girl band are no strangers to me - he's the brother of Toronto improv-jazz drummer Nick Fraser, for one thing, but also a regular and long-beloved visitor to Torontopia - but seeing him in this weird club with its subway-tunnel-style curved-rock roof long after the rest of Pop Montreal had gone to sleep was like the perfect before-bed apertif. (Uh, don't you all have before-bed apertifs?) And it was also the perfect commentary on Vashti's set - what TWP does is so free of outside judgment, so punk-without-punk, assertively goofy and yet unpresuming of any other standards of cool, rock and yet anti-rock, with super riffs and melodies and yet no polish whatsoever, a willfully stupid parody of rock frontmanship that is also great rock frontmanship. You could debate whether they're a great (or even good) band, but you can't debate that they are affirming in all the ways that Vashti Bunyan's story is not: TWP's performance is all about the fact that you don't have to pass any tests to be valuable, to be loved, to be human. Whereas her story is all about someone who was subjected to tests that were all wrong, and only got a second lease on life after people said, wait, those tests were stacked, and ignorant, and fucked, and we think we have something to learn from the loser.
Still, the dialectic between the two concerts makes me think, "What are we missing out on now because of our prejudices, our misplaced ideals, our brutality?" I can't believe the human race really changes; so there's another Vashti Bunyan out there playing in your town tonight, who is going to be discovered by another generation, who will not understand how we could have overlooked her or his spirit, and who will stand as an indictment of us. I can't really imagine a more important thing for music critics to do than to keep that question in mind every day, and yet I also can't imagine that we will ever get that answer right.
| Posted by zoilus on Thursday, October 05 at 1:37 AM | Linking Posts | Comments (6)
COMMENTS
i interviewed vashti last week before her harbourfront show in toronto (it will air on CIUT soon) and the way she described her time with joe boyd et al implied in every way that she did *not* have community. she said that during the recording of "just another diamond day", she felt very much "the singer", though they were her songs. she came in, recorded, and didn't hear the album until a year or so later. she also said that she didn't like the way the album sounds, and that she still has a lot of trouble with it. i wanted to ask her how that could be, as i hear very tangible links between "lookaftering" and her older work.
anyway, she's a very interesting figure, beyond her involvement in music and i think you capture that in your review, Carl. at the toronto show, the most moving moment for me was also her discussion of longing for the road and what she feels now, being able to travel it after so long.
sara/fig
Posted by fig on October 9, 2006 1:18 PM
Carl,
I sort of knew you meant song to a seagull and agree its not that different from early Vashti.
The point you make about talent is one I have thought a lot about. This is because in my own profession there are lots of smart talented people who dont make and lots of seemingly less talented less smart people who do. I have come to realize that things like mental toughness, certain people skills, how to project yourself (i.e. character) are a part of what we call "talent".
This is true for Joni but also true for Zimmi, or (the king of drive over talent) the thin white duke himself.
Id love to discuss this further in person.
G.
Posted by guy tanentzapf on October 6, 2006 10:50 AM
Oh, yeah, way tougher. But a toughness hard-won, it seemed, that may not have been there in the era in question.
The Joni comparison is more controversial than it need be, perhaps, because I should clarify that I'm absolutely only talking about her first album, Joni Mitchell (later retitled Songs to a Seagull). Which I don't think is that different from Vashti, really. In fact I think Diamond Day is a better album, and the stylistic differences (again not insignificant) seem to map to being (North) American versus being British. But Joni's next one (Clouds, I think?) is already quite different than the rather simple hippy-girl-with-guitar-and-talent of StaS, and partway in transition to Ladies of the Canyon, which is HUGELY different. My question was, is it possible to imagine that what separates these two paths, what makes one central and the other a footnote, is not strictly talent and vision but character in a much more mundane sense? I'm not sure the answer is yes, but it's one that the concert raised for me. But it's important in asking that question to realize that it's not just about social context, but about the elemental personal aspects that go into making one an artist who can revolutionize herself from phase to phase and one, somebody who can't. Which may just be saying that talent is not just the gift but the ability to use and maintain that gift against obstacles, resist resistance, etc. Which is not such a revelation but still an overlooked side of the definition.
Posted by zoilus on October 6, 2006 2:38 AM
Not sure I grasp the Joni comparison. Other than being women with guitars in roughly the same era, they don't really have anything in common, do they? On that basis, you could also compare, say, Gary (Red Hash) Higgins and James Taylor, but would that be at all illuminating?
Anyway, the main thing I took away from Bunyan's Toronto show the night before was a feeling of perseverance rewarded.
And, despite her quiet, grateful stage manner, she came off as tougher than her image. Three of the songs were all written about the same guy, who broke her heart in the mid-'60s. It was telling that she mentioned she ran into him again, 30 years later, and felt lucky to have escaped.
Posted by john sakamoto on October 5, 2006 3:51 PM
The Vashti Joni comparison is interesting however Joni had two more things going for her: a way prettier coice (in the traditional sense of "pretty voice") and she's a much better musician. This idea that Vashti was somehow not hot enough sounds to me like insecurity (She was a protege of Joe Boyd, working with robert kirby and the fairport convention crew, so its not like she wasnt being in with the hipsters). In any case I am happy to say that in 2006 Vashti is having a much better career. Popular music is a very bizzare affair.
G.
Posted by guy tanentzapf on October 5, 2006 11:16 AM
before-bed aperitif = night cap
Everyone needs a night cap....
Thanks for the bit about Vashti: she's someone I have been meaning to check out, but never have.
If you can swing it, that invite to spin tunes on the "mu is still open, btw - I've been handed extended hours. Just pick a day, and e-mole me the deets.
Thanks, swinger!
Posted by bruce mowat on October 5, 2006 9:20 AM