Barred Bards

Scarred Bards

(Ain't Sorry)
Rebels with inner cause:" O death where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling?"*

by Don Allred
October 31st, 2005 4:36 PM Issue 44


Dylan's friend Blind Arvella Gray
photo: Conjuroo Recordings
COB
Moyshe McStiff and the Tartan Lancers of the Sacred Heart
Radioactive

A Taste of Ra
A Taste of Ra
Hapna

Dredd Foole
A Long Losing Battle With Eloquence and Intimance
Ecstatic Yod

Blind Arvella Gray
The Singing Drifter
Conjuroo


 
In the summer of 1971, COB, Clive's Original Band, led by Clive Palmer,
dropout co-founder of the Incredible String Band, descended through dogpaths of
Cornwall and into a London studio: barefoot buskers, shaking from their knapsack
the likes of cannily enigmatic "Lion of Judah," which darts across the parade
route of all orthodoxies. Meanwhile, the soulful "Chain of Love" has its own
karmic seeds to burn, So sayeth Moyshe McStiff and the Tartan Lancers of the Sacred Heart.

A Taste of Ra is the self-titled album of a certain pseudonymous Swede. (I
suspect the Dungen dude.) It's an in-joke on "acid folk," with someone shuffling
around his kitchen, talking and laughing under his breath. Eventually, we get
angelic Harpo Marxworthy string effects and dust-disturbing falsetto
vibrations, as if he's channeling St. Tiny of Tim, out of the Wilde Blue Yonder.
Recommended!

New England's Dredd Foole (Dan Ireton) used to lead a tribe called the Din
(AKA Boston noize kings Mission of Burma firstly, later Volcano Suns). As
presented by Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Forced Exposure's Byron Coley, the
Foole, armed now only with mostly non-noisy vocals and solo guitar, does indeed
fight A Long Losing Battle With Eloquence and Intimance (sic), and listeners
win. He's the bard of the barred and scarred, the ones who pay the toll and the
troll.
 (Ain't Sorry.)

1972's (expanded) The Singing Drifter is the only album by Arvella Gray, to
whom Bob Dylan attributed "He Was a Friend of Mine," which Gray himself never
recorded. Here, he sometimes drifts too far, yet usually manages to re-engage,
as a blind Windy City street singer had better. His voice and Dobro urge blues and gospel
into a glistening, steely maze of grace. Startling, but they don't call it
"faith" for nothing. (Or even so.)

*quote from song by Brendan Behan

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