Nov 062015
 

Lucid-Dreaming cropLucid-Dreaming crop2By Mark Fraser.

As I drift
and think awhile,
how much I miss
your tender smile.

Your kiss so warm
and gentle true;
the pain I bear from losing you:

In dreams
you meet me,
hold me fast–
hold me near until the last;
fading picture,
drifts away…
awake again-
these thoughts to stay:

I’d give the world
to have you near–
to hold you close,
release my fears;
and my wish I’d make,
so Pure and True-
is to fix the past..
cos I’m missing you:

Image Credit: Images used are cut from http://humorcials.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Lucid-Dreaming.jpg and used under creative commons license.

Nov 172011
 

As part of Edinburgh Folk Club’s Carrying Stream Festival, an annual celebration of Hamish Henderson’s life and legacy, Will Kaufman brought Hard Times and Hard Travellin’ – The Songs of Woody Guthrie to the Pleasance Cabaret Bar. Fittingly, this was on Remembrance Day. Voice’s David Innes attended and reports in.

Joe Klein’s masterly Woody Guthrie biography and John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath set the benchmark, as far as this reviewer is concerned, in documenting the US Dustbowl phenomenon, its resulting human tragedies, scar tissue which continues to disfigure the increasingly-hollow American Dream.
There is now, however, a new source of information, a 21st century interpretation of those hardest of times and of the hushed-up and damped-down radicalism which ensued.

Will Kaufman, a New Yorker who enjoys professorial status in American Literature and Culture at the University of Central Lancashire, has published Woody Guthrie, American Radical, in which he focuses on Guthrie’s radicalism and political activity, reclaiming this wiry, uncompromising American cultural icon as a champion of the oppressed, from the sanitised public romantic notion of Guthrie as a hick Dustbowl minstrel.

Kaufman is no stuffy, dusty, robed academic though. His love of Guthrie’s song canon and keen appreciation of Woody’s entertaining establishment-baiting writing and broadcasting has seen him take to the road and publicise his book and interpret Woody’s songs through live documentary.

Live documentary? A Macbook, an open-tuned Martin guitar allied to Kaufman’s expansive knowledge, dazzling digital fingerboard dexterity and sonorous singing voice made his visit to Edinburgh Folk Club a mesmerizing experience. Bringing a Macbook into a folk club shows that Kaufman himself is as radical as the subject of his show.

He describes Woody’s timeline, fleshing out this skeletal summary with contemporary 1920s and 30s pictures and social and political history of those times. Guthrie’s songs are the backbone of the performance but Kaufman draws on other songs of the era to illuminate further the hardship and hostility endured by Dustbowl refugees and those radicalised by inequality and authoritarian brutality. He encored not with a Guthrie song, but Steve Earle’s Stetson-doffing Christmas In Washington:

So come back Woody Guthrie
Come back to us now
Tear your eyes from paradise
And rise again somehow
If you run into Jesus
Maybe he can help you out
Come back Woody Guthrie to us now

The presentation is not without criticism of Guthrie, however. Kaufman counsels those who have yet to read his subject’s autobiographical Bound For Glory to “set the bullshit detectors to maximum” and ensures that Woody’s less-savoury proclivities are not ignored in a haze of hero homage.

To be as academically and musically gifted as Kaufman demonstrates he is, yet to remain as honest and true and entertaining as evidenced by the live setting, are comradely qualities that Woody Guthrie himself would surely have appreciated.

Woody Guthrie, American Radical by Will Kaufman is published by The University of Illinois Press and is available by contacting nickesson@combinedacademic.co.uk or by telephoning 01494 581601. We’ll see what we can do about reviewing it in Voice.

Nov 102011
 

Books really are the gifts that keep on giving. Have you ever tried turning down the corner of your Kindle to mark where you left off reading? With an eye on the calendar and mindful that Voice readers should be sending letters up the lum shortly, David Innes performs a labour of love in reviewing a seasonal offering from a fitba hero for whom every month was Movember.

Willie Miller is indisputably the greatest-ever Don. The image of him, bristling of moustache, jet black hair matted with Scandinavian May rain, nonchalantly holding aloft in trade mark single-handed triumph the European Cup-Winners’ Cup, is etched indelibly on every Dons fan’s retina.

It’s will be no surprise to learn that this iconic image dominates the front cover of Dream Team, in which Miller evaluates Dons with whom he played, stars who he managed whilst also trawling the Pittodrie archives to give brief pen pictures of legends of yesteryear as he chooses his best side and, unusually, backroom staff.

When football fans, always much more knowledgeable, of course, than those qualified and paid to make selection decisions, cannot even agree who should be in their team this week, selecting an all-time XI from their club’s entire history is guaranteed to cause arguments.

No doubt  Miller’s volume will engender more disputes than it will settle. Such debate is a huge part of football’s attraction to those addicted to it and happy in the knowledge that there is no known cure for this affliction.

Without giving too much away in case a Dream Team-shaped parcel finds its way under your festive tree next month, Miller rules himself out and selects a side in 4-3-3 formation, with seven substitutes. Unsurprisingly, most are his own contemporaries, but given that he played at the top level for 16 years, that gives him a wide constituency from which to choose.

All very interesting, but it is his – or perhaps co-author Robertson’s – research into Wasps and Reds icons of the 70 years of club history before Willie’s own career began that fascinates most. Although previous volumes have covered this before, an appreciation of Dons giants written from a player’s perspective gives occasional new insights to familiar and less-familiar names.

The fact that the terms “we” and “us” are used, even when discussing the author’s distant club forebears, is quite endearing.

What is disappointing is the editing. Occasional errors will slip through, but facts are easily checked. If the text is to be believed, the peerless Eric Black scored on his debut against Dundee United in another dimension, since there is no 31 September on any earthly calendar known to me.

The writing could frequently be sharpened, tightened up and sprinkled with some editorial pixie dust, but football books are rarely contenders for literary awards.

If you love the Dons, you’ll find Dream Team is of considerable interest and worth reading. If you don’t, I want to know why.

Willie Miller’s Aberdeen Dream Team
Willie Miller with Rob Robertson
Black and White Publishing. 236 pp. £10.99

May 122011
 

By Bob Smith.

I hiv a dream
Said yon Martin Luther King
I ti hiv a dream
Some happiness for ti bring

I hiv a dream
The toon centre’s free o cars
I hiv a dream
Acsef are sent ti Mars

I hiv a dream
Ti banish aa poverty
I hiv a dream
Fae “money men” we’re aa free

I hiv a dream
We’ve nae bond wi drugs an booze
I hiv a dream
Rangers an Celtic aywis lose

I hiv a dream
Oor toon’s clean an bricht
I hiv a dream
The granite’s gien a dicht

I hiv a dream
Stop worshipin at the “money”altar
I hiv a dream
Multi Nationals start ti falter

I hiv a dream
Dinna listen ti Donald’s bling
I hiv a dream

Menie faimilies start ti sing

I hiv a dream
UTG’s left aleen as weel
I hiv a dream
Oor cooncil is less feel

I hiv a dream
Fowk see sense unfurled
I hiv a dream
We aa bide in a better warld

I hiv a dream
P&J’s nae langer the Trump Gazette
I hiv a dream
An impartial view ye’ll get

I hiv a dream
The sma shoppie it survives
I hiv a dream
Supermarkets nae langer thrive

I hiv a dream
Dons win a European Cup
I hiv iss dream
Syne I waaken up

I hiv a dream
We aa live in peace
I hiv a dream
Iss wid be some eese

©Bob Smith “The Poetry Mannie” 2010