THE GENIUS OF DANIEL ROMANO at the BORDERLINE, LONDON

When Daniel Romano released Modern Pressure earlier this year I phoned my local record emporium to ask if they had it in stock. Sister Ray has been in Soho for decades and have furnished me with countless new independent releases. “Never heard of him,” was the snotty reply. “What is he?” Well, in fairness, this was a reasonable question as record shops like to file goods in easy-to-manage categories but not an easy one to answer. I muttered something about he used to be country (which I knew was gonna conjure hideous visions in the already dismissive mind of said employee. I know it’s offensive to use the C-word in polite company but stay with me, think of Hank, Merle, Gram) but is now more, er, rocky.  Tap-tap-tap into his little computer and “Did he have an album called Mosey?” Yeah, that’s him. “Right. I can see why we’re not stocking him, we didn’t sell a single copy of that.” Oh.

I share this story, dear reader, so you don’t feel bad if Daniel Romano isn’t as familiar a name around your family dinner table as it is mine. If “hip” London record shops are largely ignorant to his oeuvre, and if on a Saturday night in the West End one can rock up to pay a mere ten quid on the door to witness his act in the intimate surroundings of the Borderline, then a six-page feature in Mojo magazine and an appearance on Later With Jools Holland are still , unjustly, some way off.

A brief history: From Welland, Ontario, Romano was in Canadian punk band Attack In Black (I still haven’t listened to them), and has released eight albums since 2009. He began on a folky-country path, went full-on pedal steel and fiddle country, then swerved into a sprawling hotchpotch of styles he calls “Mosey”, incorporating elements of Stonesy rock, Americana, new wave, psychedelia, piano ballads, a mariachi namecheck to Valerie Leon, strings, horns and, if that wasn’t enough, Romano also trades under Ancient Shapes, his punk offshoot. Oh, and he plays almost everything on his records, he’s a talented artist, a leather tooler and can no doubt replace the steering column in a ’57 Chevy while reciting Les Fleurs du mal by Baudelaire.

Last year I saw him play two gigs in one night. Joined by a second guitarist, they sat on stools and played a breath-taking acoustic set where you could’ve heard a pin drop, then a couple of hours later across town a rock and roll set with almost every song from an album nobody had heard. For punters (like me) expecting pedal-steel weepers it was audacious and brass-necked. Brilliantly so. Newport ’65 had nothing on this.

Which moves us along the dictionary to the D-word. As well as the obvious musical influences, from Freewheelin’ to Highway 61 Revisited to Street Legal, Romano’s willingness to change horses midstream, to defy expectation, to change image (he’s had more looks than Carlos The Jackal, and currently appears to be wearing a pair of his old sunglasses), and for his songs to remain living entities in that can be played in a variety of ways, makes him comparable to Bob Dylan. As a Dylan completist that’s not something I’d say lightly. A squiz at YouTube will throw up loads of different versions of songs and, such is Romano’s prolific nature, loads of unreleased songs as his two labels can’t kept pace. For example, ‘Fearless Death Tomorrow’, released on the Ancient Shapes album as a dirty punk thrash is, months later, played acoustically with tinkling piano and double bass.

The Borderline gig last weekend was his last show of the year and executed with the passion of the last show of his life. Opening with “Modern Pressure”, in which Romano unleashed a blood curdling primal scream, he was in scarily blistering form. Not one for looking back, the set was mostly tracks released in little more than a year, yet the manner they were performed was astounding. The album Modern Pressure has a springy, elasticated feel, yet here they were played as heavy, tight rockers with a furious intensity peak Clash or White Stripes might’ve managed. It felt like a skin-shedding, cathartic exercise with songs from the latest album (‘Sucking The Old World Dry’, ‘Impossible Dream’, ‘When I Learned Your Name’ etc), and a few from Mosey including a spirit-raising ‘Dead Medium’, all given a similar treatment. ‘(Gone Is) A Quarry of Stone’ was transformed from a mournful ballad into a terrifying exorcism complete with a guitar solo, effortlessly tossed in, that made my eyes widen and brow arch in admiration. The foot was taken off the gas fleetingly. ‘Roya’, is the most beautiful song of 2017, and in a rare delve into the past (2013 is several Romano lifetimes ago) the tear jerking ‘A New Love (Can Be Found)’ sent shivers down the spine.

Billed as Daniel Romano and Jazz Police (his band featured bass, drums and Farfisa organ), there was zero jazz in a pulverising set (no chat, nary a pause), but should Romano one day pull a trumpet out of his backside to play a few Chet Baker numbers no one will die of shock. Where he’s heading next is a fun game to play and one new song had a 60s garage vibe which then segued into the final verse of The Who’s ‘My Generation’. Perhaps a cheesy choice but the power was up there with anything those Shepherd’s Bush geezers ever did and was about as far from a Porter Wagoner cover Romano could’ve found.

It’s difficult to gage how successful he is back home in Canada, and I’d love to know the reaction of purist country fans to recent developments, but the UK needs to wake up to the mastery of Daniel Romano. As the master of all trades and jack of none, the man is a damn genius. 

Thanks to Michelle Raison for the photos and thanks to Daniel for allowing us to gate crash his dressing room. A few faces of Daniel Romano below. Enjoy.

THE PRIMITIVES at the BORDERLINE, LONDON

I see artists supposedly past their prime on a regular basis and it’s usually a case of focusing on the good parts, glossing over the not so good, and cutting them plenty of slack on account of credit earned in previous lives.  At times it’s even enough to have a few beers in their company as a small payback for the pleasure they’ve given.  Occasionally though, like the New York Dolls, they can still cut the mustard by dipping into their illustrious past yet remaining firmly in the present.  When done well, devoid of showbizzy revivalism, it’s unbeatable.  The Primitives on Friday night, on whatever gig measuring tool one uses, were unbeatable. 

They took ten songs from their past and with beautiful symmetry matched them with ten songs from their present.  The white-knuckle ride of early single “Stop Killing Me” was thrilling and yet near equalled by the tambourine battering given to Suzi Jane Hokom’s “Need All The Help I Can Get”.   The dreamy psychedelic jangle of debut 45 “Thru The Flowers” (which received the loudest cheer of the night) was suitably twinned with their folk pop take on Polly Nile’s “Sunshine In My Rainy Day Mind”.

Most of the current material was taken from their recent 60s girl-sung covers LP Echoes and Rhymes but old favourites, with their baa-ba-ba-ba-bas and their sha-la-la-la-las, sound like girl group covers anyway.  The effervescent “Spacehead” was a prime example, albeit a girl-fronted group covering the Ramones covering a girl group.  Hearing “Spacehead” followed by a powerfully petulant “Sick Of It” was the best back-to-back songs I’ve seen played in a long time.

Tracy Tracy remains a beguiling performer, possibly a more confident one than before, and sparkled from her kitten ears to her glittery toes.  She always, of course, received all the attention (one man on Friday patiently waited at the front of the stage to give her a bunch of red roses, not sure where that fitted on the sliding scale of kind gesture/creepy weirdo) but I always loved the way Paul Court looked on the cover of their second LP, Pure.  He’s still got a decent Barnet and an eye for a nice Chelsea boot, and Tig Williams kept standing behind his petal painted drum kit in shades of Keith Moon, whose picture adorned a vintage lamp stood on Paul Sampson’s bass amp.  The Primitives have lost none of their style and class.  I wonder what they do for day jobs.  They shouldn’t have any. 

There was no reminiscing, no do-you-remember when?, so it didn’t feel like an exercise in nostalgia, it felt like watching a fresh band with a great bunch of songs.  The only reference, and a telling one, came in their introduction to “Crash”, “This is our take on a song from the 80s by a band called the Primitives”.  I remember them, they were good, but these Primitives are blooming marvellous.   

TODD SNIDER at the BORDERLINE, LONDON

I wasn’t planning on writing about Todd Snider’s gig from last week but it would be remiss of me not to mention it; especially as I’m being nagged by Monkey Brother who was beside himself with excitement beforehand (“pissing my pants” was what he actually said) at the rare opportunity of seeing Oregon’s Snider this side of the pond. I warned against building his hopes too high. I needn’t have worried.

I’m never entirely sure what defines the genre “alt-country” but I think its contemporary country music without Stetsons or syrups. Kris Kristopherson once said “If it sounds country, man, that’s what it is.” Snider sounds country most of the time even though he described himself on Wednesday as a “stoner folk singer”. That tag seems more on account of his slightly drawled vocal, hippy idealism, leftish politics and tiny slits for eyes rather than his work ethic. His discography bears testimony to that with an album almost every year since his debut Songs From The Daily Planet back in 1994, none of which have been released in the UK.

Those albums mostly feature a back-up band but this gig was just Todd standing centre stage with a guitar, a harmonica and a bunch of songs. He’s a storyteller and an inventive lyricist; it was hard to second guess the lines as they veered off in unexpected directions, some with a simple knockabout quality, others long, winding, talking blues packed with ideas and rants. Stripped of the more overt country styling of his earlier records, those lyrics were to the fore and it wasn’t all heartaches and hangovers. In one song alone he told the story of The Kingsmen recording "Louie Louie"; Marilyn Manson laying "weird chicks"; dead bodies on television reports; and threw in a snatch of "Let's Get It On". Not your standard country fayre by any stretch of the imagination.

Whether tender or as the self-deprecating outsider Todd’s sense of comic timing bought many a chortle during the songs or the banter in between. It was a masterful performance. There are occasions when one watches artists (or anyone at the top of their profession) and think that’s as good as it gets. Every so often Monkey Brother and I glanced at each other, shrugged, raised our eyebrows and shook our heads. There wasn’t anything to say, it was just an acknowledgement that yep, that’s it. Just it. When I think of the time and money I’ve spent on other would-be troubadours I wouldn’t trust to deliver a letter let alone a song, it makes me feel the waster.

The first half of his set spanned his career from his debut right up to the forthcoming Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables before playing audience requests during the second half. His promise to play them all went unfulfilled but after 95 minutes and ending with "Conservative Christian, Right Wing Republican, Straight White American Male" he’d earned his corn. If I were a “stoner folk singer” I’d be putting my dope back in the tin and hanging up my guitar.