The Ned Wood Archive

Sam

Sam’s got plenty of time before Yardbirds at the Acoustic, so he sticks around at Left Field for the Radical Round Up.  This is where Bragg and two or three other musicians take it in turns to play radical songs – their own and maybe other people’s.  Just them and their guitars, taking it in turns.  What Sam imagines a folk club to be like.  Today they continue the American theme.  Bragg’s got a pair of latter day Woody Guthries with him: Jesse Welles and Billy Simons.     

With Welles, it’s all about the words.  There’s one about ICE and one about Gaza: “eye for an eye till we’re all good and blind” and one about King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard for some reason and then one about there not being any kings (maybe except badass Aussie rock and rollers).

Simons has a slightly different style, but he’s just as perceptive, just as angry, just as humorous.  There’s a sarcastic song about Jesus terrorising the world.  And a quip about Jesus posting an AI generated image of Jesus as a Trump-like figure on twitter. Another ICE song.  And one about Epstein. Another comment about Trump’s only achievement being the provision of an exceedingly effective emetic. 

No chance Sam’s going to avoid politics today. Well – he’s given himself permission after listening to AOC.

Sam went to the US a few times for work.  When he was younger.  The 90s.  They’d send him out for a week or sometimes, rarely, two.  Support, mainly. He’d go on site to some manufacturing plant or office complex.  Stay at the nearest motel or holiday inn, then spend a day sightseeing before he came home.  You’d need a hire car whenever you went to the states, to get from the hotel to the plant, so he’d have use of that on the Saturday.  Sometimes he went out into the country.  National Parks and stuff.  Beautiful places.  Mount Rainier or St Helens when he was in Seattle.  Joshua Tree when he was in San Diego.  Sometimes he went into the big cities.  New York when he visited New Jersey.  San Francisco when he visited San Jose.  Minneapolis was too cold to go anywhere apart from the nearest mall.     

He went to Joshua Tree for the U2/Gram Parsons vibe.  He went to Athens Georgia for the B52s/REM vibe.  He even stopped his hire car on the drive down from New York through New Jersey and got out to watch the traffic so he could say he’d actually counted the actual cars on the actual New Jersey Turnpike.  Then in New York itself, caught the subway up to the top of Central Park – Cathedral Parkway – just so he could walk across 110th street. But, there you go, that’s what gets Sam excited. Paul Simon and Bobby Womack.  

Did he find America?  He found multiple Americas.  Some of the places he went looked the same as everywhere else.  Same rooms in the same hotels.  Same offices in the same buildings.  But the people were like the flowers he came across in the deserts of southern California.  Blooms in the wilderness. Every place he went, he was welcomed by the locals.  They were friendly and generous and considerate.  Like bright glossy tiles in a mosaic.  It’s the greedheads and the masters of war we should worry about.

And those are the same sentiments that come across from Ocasio-Cortez and Welles and Simons.  Connect with the people. 

After he’s left the tent, he grabs a crumble and custard from a stall opposite and walks back towards the market stalls near the bandstand.  Before he gets there he hears this wonderful noise coming from Bread and Roses.  Like a psychedelic band from the sixties. More Americana: the Electric Prunes or the Seeds or the Chocolate Watchband.  Intrigued, he takes a look.  Crammed on the small stage are a young five piece.  The fact that the singer has a Vox teardrop and the bass player has a McCartney-like Hoffner only increases the sixties vibe.  They call themselves The Crystal Teardrop.  Sam can see the headlines now.  They explode.  He’s hooked.  Mind-expanding pink kaleidoscopic rhythms. Bright purple paisley guitar patterns. Dark red hallucinogenic organ runs. Groovy orange cosmic tunes. And they’re selling merch, so he grabs himself an album when they finish, then has to hair off back to the tent to drop it off before making his way over to the Acoustic tent for the Yardbirds.