#david booth

[dadsinsuits]

David G. Booth

[krispyweiss]

Song Review: David Bowie - “Cracked Actor” (Live, July 3, 1973)

David Bowie must’ve sensed the Spiders from Mars had run their course.

Like the “Suffragette City” that preceded it, the Spiders’ final “Cracked Actor” is raw and sloppy. They sound like a band ready for a permanent - or at least long - rest.

It’s out to promote the ongoing theatrical screenings of the restored “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars: The Motion Picture” and the forthcoming (Aug. 9) live album soundtrack and concert film.

Bowie was already a phenom at this point, yet his star was just beginning to rise, man. In hindsight, it’s easy to hear why; his subsequent phases of the 1970s and early-1980s were as groundbreaking as Ziggy - and the musicianship improved along the way.

Grade card: David Bowie - “Cracked Actor” (Live, July 3, 1973) - C

7/24/23

[theflyingfruitbowl]

DAVID BOOTH

David Booth is an award winning Dublin based visual artist whose primary focus is in painting.Born in 1986 in Dublin, Ireland. David Booth received his BFA in 2009 from the Institute of Technology Carlow. He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally and has work in both private and public collections. David currently lives and works in Dublin City. WEBSITE INSTAGRAM

[plungermusic]

Gourmet rural fare in the land of beans on toast …

Plunger associate Kelly Bayfield, David Edward Booth and (now, after this year’s belated first  viewing) Honey & The Bear with the wide-open, big sky, sun-kissed (at least when we’ve been there) rural expanse of distant Suffolk. So it was a welcome surprise chancing across Honey & The Bear’s forthcoming appearance (with Kelly & Dave) at Barking Folk Festival just a tube ride away from us.

Bounded by the North Circular, the A13 and the C2C line to Southend, Barking Abbey Grounds seemingly couldn’t be more different to Easton Farm Park but the organisers and crew had done a good job of creating a friendly atmosphere (even the security guy on the gate complimented us on our ‘bag search’ etiquette) and with the main stage flanked by trees and backed by St Margaret’s Church tower it was a pretty rustic setting for East London (if you kept your back to the tower blocks).

Sadly the weather couldn’t have been less dry-and-dusty Suffolk: leaden skies and alternating rain and drizzle dogged us on the walk from the train through the Abbey ruins and churchyard to the festival (leaving the slushy sellers and ‘water point’ bowsers looking a bit forlorn and surplus to requirements, this year at least!) The wet weather didn’t stop a few hardy souls from standing (or even sitting on the corporation deck chairs) in front of the main stage as Jack Valero came on, although most had parked themselves on straw bales under the partial cover of some awnings. 

Jack and his band took a little while to warm up and hit their groove, but were on song by Heaven Help Me Now (“Every songwriter must have a lockdown song, this is mine…”) with fine harmonies, and the breezy bustling Coming Home. There were hints of 50s poppy rock’n’roll in a Buddy holly vein in the upbeat Something You Can Do and also (combined with a splash of Buzzcocksy punk) in the surprisingly positive optimistic This Is A Nightmare with tub-thumping toms, brisk acoustic strumming, and some twangsome electric guitar. After noting his familial connections to the area (and his father’s in particular) Jack’s last song, played at the request of his dad, was a solo rendition of Billy Bragg’s New England… at which point pretty much all of us went, “Oh, so THAT’s who his dad is!”

Plunger’s faith in miracles was bolstered by the simultaneous discovery of where the bar was, and the rain stopping, just as Honey & The Bear (Jon and Lucy Hart on guitar and upright bass - most of the time at least, with Kelly on harmony vocals and David on drums) did their soundcheck, the latter event drawing a few more folks out from under cover.

Their set opened with The Miller, combining loping bass, rustic acoustic guitar (including a dextrous solo) and a Featy drum shuffle with sublime three part harmonies for a TTB-ish vibe. An appropriately mellower feel came in the Laurel-Canyon-Ronstadt-meets-English-folk air of Sweet Honey with its traditional-sounding melody. Back to back covers saw an entrancing (if abridged) rendition of Helplessly Hoping, where (it seemed to Plunger) Jon took on the Stills role, Lucy Crosby and Kelly Nash in the stunning harmonies. Jon switched to an electric guitar for a punchy 70s west coast run at Gillian Welch’s Look At Miss Ohio.

Returning to their own accomplished originals, the hypnotic Riverman featured aptly fluid, restless picking on acoustic, rafter-shaking bass punctuation and tom-led drums for an almost Native American feel: piquant harmonies in the verse alternated with gentler, C&N tones in the chorus. One of Lucy’s older songs took us to a whole other sonic landscape - having swapped bass and guitar roles for this one number - the Waitsesque, Hot Club De Paris, 30s-cabaret bounce of Why Am I Always Saying Sorry also featured some manic whistling from Lucy.

After one of the crew popped his head round the back of the stage to advise “This’ll have to be your last one” (which Plunger for one thought was rather premature) the set closed with Wristburner: clever changes and less-obvious harmonies, tricksy timings, and a frenetic Gordon Giltrap-doing-Gerdundula urgency, topped with more fabulous harmonies.

Although we were naturally disappointed we couldn’t hear more, and a little suspicious when the MC announced shortly after, “Since we’re running ahead of schedule...” there were to be an extra 10 minutes of the (to Plunger’s ears, but de gustibus etc.) execrable-but-unaccountably-popular next artist, this brief but very tasty performance more than justified the slightly nervy tube ride and the rain-dodging, and gave us an appetite for more!

Honey & The Bear have a new album due out in November, with a short tour to promote it, details, dates ad merch here: https://honeyandthebear.co.uk

[jlslipakauthorthriller]

Dream a Little Dream

Dunne was the first to theorize the stability of plane, known as the “Dunne Effect”. He also developed the “Dunne Dive”, a maneuver that allowed a plane to dive without losing altitude. This maneuver was later used by the Royal John William Dunne was an aeronautical engineer, inventor, and author. Born in 1875, he began working on his first project at 16. Dunne was a pioneer in aviation,…

[insidethejeffersonian]

[lamour-est-la-force]

Me: Once Upon a Time season 1 is so cozy and comforting :)

ouat s1: government corruption, a woman almost having to give her baby away against her will, a mine collapsing with a child inside, a girl locked in a mental hospital, arson, homeless children needing to steal to survive, said homeless children almost getting separated in the foster care system, infidelity, drugging and kidnapping, attempted muder, actual murder, a murder trial that has nothing to do with the real actual murder, a man slowly and painfully turning into wood, etc.

[coppertophomegurl]

Every crime show has an episode:

A high school reunion murder

A killer with diplomatic immunity that still gets arrested through some outrageous loophole

There's always an episode where a psychic comes forward to help. Everyone will be extremely wary of the psychic except for one person. And the psychic will end up being correct.

Murderous twins. They're often separated at birth. All the investigators will make a joke about it being twins and then are SHOCKED when it actually does turn out to be twins.

Killer child. Literally just a little kid that kills (usually another little kid)

An episode that villianizes people with DID. (sometimes the writers do a 2 for 1 special and make one of the "alters" a different gender so that they can both villianize mentally ill people, AND make transphobic jokes 🙃)

Sleepwalking murderer

Murder by proxy via hypnosis. Similar to the psychic, most of the team will be very skeptical.

Someone finds a body in a time capsule

Some killer that just got like WAY too into Dantes Inferno

Murder victim that has multiple families/wives

Murder at a roller derby. This episode will usually give off big sapphic vibes

Feel free to add more!

[katebeckets]

BONES 1x03 — "A Boy in a Tree"

[bonescaps]

[kuningatarmirka]

I have a toast! 

[sevenfifteenam]

OUAT + Texts From Last Night [part 2]

[browsethestacks]

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's............oh!

Art by David Talaski

[vertigoartgore]

Dean Stockwell (alongside Dennis Hopper) in Lynch's Blue Velvet.

[plungermusic]

Rusticity, reflection, regret, remembrance, rain …

… rebirth.

David Edward Booth’s latest release All My Days probably wouldn’t be called ‘a soundtrack for summer’ by many listeners but Plunger aren’t so sure…

Many of the songs on the album (and indeed the process of recording of it) were rooted in or coloured by personal loss and tragedy, so it’s perhaps perverse to focus on the music alone (... but then, that’s what we do!) It has to be said too that the darker inspirations and themes are pretty cryptically delivered so the listener isn’t overwhelmed by Leonard Cohenish “Woe is me” brooding.

Despite its largely folky vibe this is the second album in a row Plunger have reviewed that has a touch of the Crosby & Nash about it, in this case particularly Graham’s wistful English bucolicism (helped in no small part by David’s downbeat Northwestern-accented delivery!) and there are touches of Crosbyesque Californian complexity and mysticism as well as lush West Coast harmonies. Opener Another Me exemplifies that, a threnody so English you can see the ‘not-quite-picture-postcard gorse-covered fells and bracing climate, while the major-tinged chorus oozes Laurel Canyon polish: 1970s electric piano and 1870s brass complete the juxtaposition.

The mix of Mancunian melodicism and Californian colours continues in Run - strummed acoustic, noodling Tele and a walking-horse pace conjures a slow ride over Suffolk badlands - while the pared-back resources (palm-muted electric guitar and slick, bittersweet harmony vocals) of Just Following Tracks lend a Nash-demo-waiting-for-the-full-band-break-in vibe, heightened by the rising urgency, plaintive middle-eight, and hanging close.

Just Following Tracks’s doleful finality (“I’m not coming back”) is countered, at least in part, by the album’s two previously released singles, Blackbird and Rainbows Of October: the forrmer’s anthemic acoustic chords and vulnerable-but-purposeful vox carry a message of, if not exactly optimism, then at least cheerful perseverance (“… a song gives me wings to carry on…”) with a cello, piano and muted brass section crescendo; while the sparse haunting waltz of the latter has moments of (admittedly bleakly small scale) optimism in the line “I can live with growing older, for all the rainbows of October” albeit peppered by the relentless ticking hi-hat marking the passing of time, and bookended by a single sombre tolling piano note, like a mini-Bredon Hill knell.

With its gentle airy picking and rich upright bass You Are The Reason has the feel of an English village Girl From Ipanema (the Girl From Chapel Milton, perhaps?) but it’s slightly uneasy-easy-listening with the unsettling / unsettled chords and halting fragile vox: despite resolving to major in the school-piano-accented chorus (and a lithe bass ‘run’) the dissolving hanging close maintains that air of uncertainty. Uncertainty turns to menace in As I Have Always Done - insistent muted guitar-clucking and a rising-and-falling bass line, later beefed up with squeezebox / harmonium, could be the theme for a provincial P.I. (‘walking the mean streets and alleyways of Cheadle Hume’) underlined by the world-weary vocal: our hero emerges into the sunlight briefly in s lush multi-voice chorus before returning the the guitar-filled shadows and another unresolved close.

A brighter palette is used for the title track: chiming acoustic guitar leading a duet where David’s quiet, questing vocal is joined by the velvety tones of Kelly Bayfield (co-producer/arranger and provider of much of the harmonies throughout) in exchanged verses of loss and solitude, before combining in unison in the more optimistic closing lines. The closing track, My Friend Who Brought Me In - dedicated to Kelly’s late husband Mat “… who left us for other adventures on 2nd October 2019” - also opens with David’s vulnerable reflective vocals, backed by high-capo’d near-mandolin acoustic guitar, but the resolute, upbeat harmony chorus and appearance of a stirring colliery-brass section (with some fine cornet-like lead) ends on a more positive high note (in both senses).

‘Soundtrack for summer’ so often seems to mean relentlessly upbeat, cider-advert-popfolk or endless Balearic beats under unbroken sunshine, but All My Days evokes a real British summer - muted colours, blustery moments, the chill as unexpected clouds gather and the heavens open, and the sudden joyous warmth when they break… 

All My Days is a complex, but rewarding, listen that engages your heart as much as your ears.

All My Days is available now, to listen to and purchase, here: https://davidbooth.bandcamp.com/album/all-my-days

Track Listing

1. Another Me. 2. Run (2023 version). 3. Blackbird (album version). 4. Rainbows Of October. 5. All My Days. 6. Just Following Tracks. 7. You Are The Reason. 8. As I Have Always Done. 9. My Friend Who Brought Me In (album version)

Personnel

David Edward Booth - voice, guitar, drums, flugel horn, percussion, piano, acoustic bass, tenor guitar, tenor horn, cornet; Kelly Bayfield - voice, piano, keys; Ian Stephenson - double bass [+ harmonium, accordion, piano Track 8]; Serious Child - harmonium [Track 1]; Ally Mcerlaine - electric guitars [Track 2]; Roisin O’Hagan - voice [Track 3]; Vera Tomas - voice [Track 3]; Andy Trill - bass [Track 3]; Kev Walford - lead acoustic guitar [Track 3]; Jonathan Evans - Cello [Track 3, 4, 5]; Mats Hård - flugel & trumpet [Track 3]; Susie Ledge - voice [Track 4]; Joe Nielson - voice [Track 8].

[wanderlust-nikki]