‘I want to thank those who cannot be thanked by name...’

horsemouthfolk - the first gig at the wild hare club in
stretton sugwas herefordshire - photo by john clarkson 

always a difficult one - for stephen grosz (in his book the examined life) it is his patients (whose confidentiality must be protected so that they will feel able to tell something like the truth, or at least lie freely, when on the psychiatrist’s couch). it’s not a bad book but the chapters are a little short, they’ve barely finished describing the situation before the lesson is being drawn, the homily is being offered and we are on to the next one, and the analysis that precedes this moment of breakthrough can last years.

horsemouth was in a band (once upon a time). saturday many of of the surviving band members were gathered in the same room (excluding the famous one). it was the 50th birthday of the drummer’s girlfriend of those many years and many people horsemouth hasn’t seen in at least 20 years were there (scoob, debbie, alice, claire, fergus). he drank £5 a bottle beer and gazed up at the new tower blocks - built on the site of the indian takeaway where horsemouth was battered by a bnp’er coming back from the welling march (see white race you are destined to rule the world but you can’t cook your own food can you?).

it was also his friend martin’s birthday (but not a particularly significant one) so, after wishing him happy birthday and drinking a glass of his beer, horsemouth ditched out.


later (back at ross n’ elsie’s) there was a discussion of the economics of music and the changes wrought on it by the digitisation of music (changes that were only just coming in when horsemouth was in his first band).

horsemouth (as usual) told the story of vashti bunyan - bored by her music ‘career’ she heads off to the wilds of scotland but then when she’s got there joe boyd appears and offers to record her, they record an album but it flops, she goes back to scotland and sometimes listens to the album (on cassette) in the car... and forgets about it all. years later she goes into a library and looks herself up on the internet - and there she is, her album is a cult classic and people are looking for her.


similar cases abound (shelagh macdonald for example). there is also shirley collins (dumped by her husband she can no longer sing for many years), or people who simply leave the music industry practically never to be heard of again (jazz bassist henry grimes or folk singer anne briggs). sometimes all that survives of people is the name and the recording - there was never a photograph of robert johnson, then there was one, then two... maybe.

but this comforting story of technology bringing people back is not the whole story.

what horsemouth did next... (after leaving h*****y that is)

well he didn’t do anything for a while. he stopped playing and started to think about why he’d been making music in the first place (he read jacques attali’s noise for example). he went and got a job (one that has sustained him for the best part of those two decades).

every change brings its own losses (even the good ones) - he discovered a whole city lurking unexpected beyond the borders.

after a while he started playing music again (largely because he could) but this time he was singing, this time he was playing acoustically, this time he was embracing the possibilities of home recording and self-publishing that the internet had made possible.

yet the problem of making yourself sufficiently famous by your own endeavours so that people have heard of you remains.

horsemouth (working mule) has had a cancellation (in fact he’s had a number of cancellations) - this is good (the less he has to work, within the limits set by the need to put food on the table, the happier he is - or at least this is what he tells himself).