Hollow Point by Chris Wood

Hollow Point is a track on the handmade life album by Chris Wood and it accounts the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes on 22nd July 2005 by armed police or special forces on high alert following the London bombings of July 7th 2005 and some failed bombing attempts on July 21st.

The song is essentially in the ballad form, taking this traditional form and using it to tell a comtemporary story.  The accompaniment is mainly Wood's finger-style guitar, with percussive and tonal additions and flourishes as the song proceeds, at a slow and careful pace. 

This is wonderful storytelling - the progress of de Menezes from his flat, through the streets and into the Tube - in modern language and archaic form.  Its start and end acts as a traditional shell or bookends:

Awake arise you drowsy sleeper
Awake arise it’s almost day.
No time to lie, no time to slumber,
No time to dream your life away.

It was a gorgeous summer's morning
It was a gorgeous summer's day.
His cotton jacket was all he carried
As he walked out to face the day.

Tension builds as his journey continues; the mundane is misinterpreted.  He is caught in a situation of mistaken identity and he and the police are both on track to an inevitable conclusion:

Now he’s on their cameras, he’s on their radar,
He’s on their crackling radios,
His Oyster Card is in his pocket,
At 10am through the gates he goes.

And down and down dropped the moving staircase,
Deeper down go the others too.
And through the hour glass the sand is falling -
There is nothing they can do ….

Chris Wood's performance is wonderful, understated and honest, his vocal flurries copying his guitar playing, his plain English accent recounting the fateful tale.  The killing is not reported, just the conclusion of the official investigation:

If he’d have stopped, if he’d have listened …
Commissioner said that it was no good -
He said they gave him no instructions
That an innocent man could have understood.

Just a Brazilian electrician -
Christ only knows what he came here for.
The hollow point was the ammunition.
Now it’s our turn now for some shock and awe….

Chris Wood takes his time to tell his tale, the songs is over seven and a half minutes long, but no second is wasted.  This is the best modern / traditional / protest song I have heard. It gets to the heart of the misunderstanding in the incident, the assumptions made, the rush or pressure to do something. 

 

I think it's going to work out fine by Ry Cooder

I think it's going to work out fine is the last track on side one of the Bop Till You Drop album, released by Ry Cooder in 1979. 

It's an instrumental track, a version of a song written by Rose Marie McCoy and Sylvia McKinney and it has been covered by a variety of artists, including Ike and Tina Turner and James Taylor and Linda Rondstadt.  The song is a real "couple" song, an interchange of comments, a conversation. 
Here's the first verse of the Turner's version

Darling (yes Tine) it's time to get next to me
(honey that was my plan from the very beginning)
Darling (un huh) I never thought that this could be
(What you mean) Oh yeah
Your lips set my soul on fire
You fulfill my one desire
Oh darling (yes yes) I think it's gonna work out fine
(It's gonna work out fine)

Ry Cooder's version is smooth and haunting - the emotions of the song are carried and conveyed solely by his slide guitar playing.  The playing of the session men is entirely sympathetic - he uses his regular players of the time - Jim Keltner on drums, Milt Holland on percussion, Tim Drummond on bass and David Lindley on guitar. 

This was the Ry Cooder album which moved away from his acoustic playing and began his weird and eclectic journey through a pandemonium of musical styles and genres.  This album is a mixture of R&B cover versions, all soulful and quirky, with great singing and wonderful playing.

And, this album was the first digital "pop" record - a small step away from analogue to "an exact copy of the master tape" as it says on the album cover.  And what a cover; after the "Purple Valley" we now have a pink and blue portrait of the guitarist as a young man, more a pop image than a serious musical one - the guitarist as an icon, an image, a cypher.

Looking back at the original recording I am confused.  I was sure this track was the perfect closer of a wonder sequence of tracks but instead it closes side one of the record; it isn't the album's final track.  Back then, order was important - I hear older albums in a strict order, the flow of the music is deliberate and vital.  In my mind this should be the last track - maybe I moved to the turntable and put on another LP rather than turn it over?  Maybe.

Also, I don't think the emotions conveyed by this track match the song.  I think this is a sad tune, a melody about a bad situation which is going to be resolved, it's all going to be alright, don't worry.  The song is simpler, it's about commitment and love realised, it is a hymn of bravado, a braying cock-crow of a lyric. 

Why is a wordless song more profound? 

Michaelswood by Catriona McKay and Chris Stout

Michaelswood is the closing track on Catriona McKay and Chris Stout's 2010 album white nights. Catriona and Chris's music is Scottish music of the highest calibre; it is traditional but it is new; it is built up from a Scottish tradition but is a full and equal part of a wider, even global, heritage. 

These players are proud of their roots - Catriona plays scottish harp, Chris plays shetland fiddle.  They write of their homeland - , the Fair Isle, Shetland, Dundee, Glasgow  - and race to work with other players from other countries and traditions - scandanavia, south america, eastern europe, africa, [neilston?].  In a live setting they play with and off each other, sitting face-to-face, a dynamic and stormy rush of sound one minute, a sparce, precise air the next; madness and stillness.

Michaelswood is a thing of beauty.  A slow air, written by Chris Stout, it is sombre and stately and tugs at the heart strings.  It is yearning, sad, touching.  The fiddle takes the lead, the tune plainly stated at first, later elaborated and embroidered, always supported by the harp [although the solo harp at about 4 minutes in is delightful].  It is not complicated - the sheet music is easy to follow, the form and the harmonies are traditional, the chords in the key of D major are straightforward.  The beauty is in the writing, in the playing.

This is music that resonates on both musical and emotional levels.  It is sincere, it is authentic, it is effective.  It has been made a musician remembering a loved individual and that shows.  We don't necessary know the person but we "hear" the love, the respect, the loss from the players. 

Michaelswood is named after a forest of remembrance planted in Shetland by the family of Michael Ferrie, a founder member of Fiddler's Bid.  The tune is also a memorial, a remembrance of a musician, a recognition of the support of his family.  When Chris and Catriona play the tune in concert this context is explained.  However, for me, the tune tells the story without explanation, without limit.