‘who is this fine fellow, playing fine devilish tunes?’ (ornithology, death and despair in south london)

horsemouth is back from his mission.

how did it go? it went well (thanks for asking). thanks to lou, annie, myk, zoe and nick for coming out, thanks to martin howard and the others at water into beer for putting him on. (special thanks to lou for getting him the gig).

martin played first - ornithological themes (well ornithology, death and despair), e.g. at the ornithologist’s arms (a song of the type imaginary boozer). then he played as part of a duo as S+M, tainted love, you’ve got the love big songs of emotion ably sung.

then it was horsemouth’s turn.

after some internal debate he opened with the gospel blues satan (your kingdom must come down) - it took him a while to find his feet with this one (largely because he’d started too fast and forgotten to pick up his slide and... well because he was out of practice not having played since last friday 13th). basically this tune functions as an opportunity to talk to the audience and to see if they will sing (as usual many of the audience were better singers than horsemouth).

then (if memory serves) horsemouth played his ‘mercifully brief’ slide guitar instrumental ‘when the faun met alice’, then (swapping to the nylon strung guitar for reasons of pseudo-variation) the werewolf (an opportunity to see if the audience will howl like wolves), he then briefly digressed on folkways records and michael hurley. thence the devil (which horsemouth can now only hear with the bass on it, or rather he notices that the bass is not there) followed by an explanation, then worldes blisse (a chance to make the audience miserable). essentially these are the bedrocks of horsemouth’s set.


then (with a little time on his hands) gentleman john got an airing (this time it went well - the previous time it had been an impossible torture), crisis in the credit system got its first airing and horsemouth played mark linkous (sparklehorse)’s painbirds (in keeping with the nights themes of ornithology, death and despair). he then indulged in some onstage retuning - his least favourite thing - and finished with her hair like some glittering gold aka. la fille au cheveux de lin a debussy piano piece mistranslated onto slide guitar in open g tuning (again a first).

horsemouth tried to flog some CDs (but no one was interested). he retired to the back of the room to drink beer.



last on - bity booker - imagine joan baez as your nursery school teacher singing you songs about parrots, parokeets and sparrows, ok it wasn’t all ornithology, there was a song about a pony and a song about a mouse and she ended up with malvina reynolds’ (not pete seeger’s - as she pointed out) little boxes. she has a great voice - capable of going from a loud yet intimate whisper to a wide vibrato, and an admirably clear and practiced guitar style. horsemouth was impressed.

then the train back home and a walk and a falafel wrap as his reward.