A comedy persona with more than a whiff of John Shuttleworth about him, he’s the dyspeptic uncle at the trendy house party, the grumpy old git stood by the kettle moaning about how crap “urban” music is, and haven’t they got any Kool Herc or KRS-1 instead? And, well, he’s got a point. Pitman is the putative rapping Leicestershire miner whose comic counterblasts at UK street-culture pollute the waters in Brit-hop’s swimming-pool. The simplicity of the settings suits the bare emotions of “Love”, “Look at Me” and “My Mummy’s Dead”, though the heavy reverb on the guitar detracts from “Working Class Hero”, which requires
a bitter quality – something, in fact, like the brittle version of “Cold Turkey” delivered here, whose frayed-nerve nakedness suits the song perfectly.. And not in a plaintive, “Jealous Guy” kind of way, either, but in the desultory, half-hearted manner of “It’s Real”, the minute-long instrumental that’s one of these supposed “16 Classics”. Given that four of these classics are fragmentary demos lasting little more than a minute, you can get some idea of the assiduity with which the barrel is being scraped. Two are live cuts from a 1971 benefit for John Sinclair; a handful more are demos for songs from Sometime in New York City, Walls and Bridges and Double Fantasy.
The bulk of the tracks, though, are demos from the John Lennon – Plastic Ono Band album, already featured in the Anthology. Something similar applies to Acoustic, except in this case it’s a matter of John Lennon whistling. Small wonder, then, that the protagonists of songs such as “Cross Of Flowers” and “Northbound 35″ are forever trying to escape some dying town, but always tethered by memories, measuring the widening gulf between their present and their past in evocative glimpses of abandoned cars, broken windmills, or “a steeple on the skyline like a single iron nail”. It’s a fascinating world that Foucault conjures up, full of everyday strangeness, one in which his folk-blues version of Creedence’s “Lodi” fits just fine..
It was once noted by some wag that, such was fans’ fascination with the singer, bootleg obsessives would be willing to buy a recording of Bob Dylan breathing heavily. Life is tough in Foucault’s territory – the title-track image, evoking the visceral battle required to draw sweetness from its armoured source, is also played to pun on “Cain” – and fate lurks where you least expect, such as the riding accident depicted in “Doubletree”. This follow-up to his 2001 debut Miles from the Lightning is stuffed with echoes of both performers, from the bucolic whimsy of “Mayfly” – a first cousin to Ramsey’s “Geraldine” – to the troubled, dreamlike portents of Phelps-esque blues such as “4 & 20 Blues” and “Tropic Of Cancer”. Surely Jeffrey Foucault has misplaced a middle name, so ably do his husky, weatherbeaten drawl and guitar-picking emulate the sound and style of careworn singer-songwriters such as Willis Allan Ramsey and Kelly Joe Phelps.
More serious perhaps is the whoosh of white noise, the air-conditioning, that threatens every silent or quiet moment.No doubt the youngsters had come to hear a youngster not much older than themselves At 15, Julian Bliss is an astonishing talent. In Schubert’s Unfinished, a tiny tot was having a whale of a time conducting. When she clapped her hands over her ears she had a point: this is a very bright hall and the volume can become painful. The RPO lost out in the “favoured status” accorded to the London Philharmonic and Philharmonia at the South Bank and clearly it will have to work hard to familiarise London concert-goers to this new venue.
It must have been a bit dispiriting to have so small a crowd but it was very pleasing to see some young people and indeed children. So I show it on the streets of Southall – I show them my environment, my people.”Having battled to get to where he is now, Sean is also determined to use his visibility to inspire other young British Asians to take their rightful place in UK popular culture. “I want people to understand where I’ve come from and the struggle I’ve been through to get where I am today.
I want to see a change in that mentality,” he states calmly, but forcefully.It’s a struggle that continues, as I find out when I speak to Sean’s producer Rishi Rich a few days later: “Some people are still not playing the record – and there’s no proper justification for why they’re not playing it It doesn’t really make sense. “In my video [for "Stolen"], I could’ve been riding in a convertible with six girls drinking a bottle of Mo?and then going to a club and chilling in a VIP section But that’s not me That’s not the life I’ve lived. The feel of the place is not dissimilar, with its barrelled ceiling, but at 900 seats it is bigger. There is an extensive balcony around the edge of the hall, as it happens completely empty on this, the first promotion of the RPO in its new abode.
