Fes or Womad -or something else - best music Fest

[Peter Culshaw]

http://www.theartsdesk.com/index.php?op ... &Itemid=29

If you missed, a chunky eport on the latest edition of the Fes Festival - brilliant moments - and the country is changing, new constitution etc. I suggested Fes is the most "consistently high quality" world music fest - any one got any other candidates....

Also - its Fete de La Musique today France, longest day, and the birthdays of two of my favourite songwriters - Ray Davies (review of the fab final Meltdown gig over on theartsdesk also) and Manu Chao. Feliz Aniversario, amigos

This maybe shd be a seperate topic - but who else is a better living UK songwriter than Ray Davies? Paul McCartney? One of those topics the possee may already have run up the flagpole and taken for a walk around the block, but,,,,

[Des]

Which would you rather have? North African sun or a damp field in Wiltshire?

[Adam Blake]

This maybe shd be a seperate topic - but who else is a better living UK songwriter than Ray Davies? Paul McCartney? One of those topics the possee may already have run up the flagpole and taken for a walk around the block, but,,,,

Ray for me - on past achievements alone.

[garth cartwright]

Begs the question - have either Ray or Paul written any great songs since their respective heydays? I liked Paul's Waterfalls (early 80s) but can't think of anything since. Ray - well, I was never keen on the Kinks concept albums or their 80s stadium rock and the few recent songs he performed at the Festival Hall gig I went to last year were nothing to write on this forum about.

Songwriting appears like athletic prowess - a surging quality that peaks then fades back to nothing. The Stones have not written a memorable tune since the late 70s, Morrissey and Marr have proven themselves completely incapable of matching their early 80s efforts, Squeeze try hard but fail. Same for, say, Bobby Womack and Rod Stewart - both great writers at their respective peaks but I don't expect new good material from them.

It's odd isn't it - how artists can keep touring and recording, putting in some cases real effort in, but the magic is gone. Van Morrison remained of interest until the early 80s when his songs turned into diatribes. Jarvis Cocker peaked with A Different Class while Noel Gallagher spunked his best tunes on the first Oasis album. Even Paul Weller - who I don't like - wrote some powerful songs early in the Jam's career but has since gone on to offer just dull dull dull efforts since.

Who is writing really good songs today? The Adele album has a couple of really good tunes - both singer and producer cowriting - but I doubt she will shape up into something like Ray or Paul.

[will vine]

No, neither Ray or Paul have excelled in recent years for a number of reasons. I guess perhaps the most obvious one being having no pressing need to endure nervous breakdowns to fulfil recording contracts and have hit records.

One other thing that occurs to me is that they have both had to wait until way after their artistic peak to be able to realise many their songs 'live' in a way they'd have liked to present them. The back catalogue sells the tickets to the widest market and the tickets sell the back catalogue.

[David Flower]

Nick Lowe seems to want to be a modern day Sam Cooke, chiselling away in the hope of revealing a classic song. And he's making a pretty good job of it. What lack of love has done, for example

[will vine]

Yes, I know what you mean about chiselling away in the hope of revealing a classic. It sometimes feels like Nick's consciously using a template; writing with a particular artist in mind. In mentioning Nick and Sam Cooke in the same breath my mind immediately went to James Hunter who's written and performed wonderful songs, again [i]"in the style of"[/i]....Sam Cooke, Lee Dorsey, Ray Charles. Great songwriters but..........of a type....craftsmen I guess.

[Rob Hall]

You could compile a list of very good songs, written during the past 20 years by living English songwriters, that are 'better' than anything produced by Ray Davies or Macca in the same timeframe, but none of the writers involved would have anything like the heavyweight back-catalogue that those two have. Nick Lowe and Richard Thompson are two obvious candidates in this category. But in terms of hits, you have to consider the likes of Elton and Sting - maybe even SAW. I suppose it comes down to what you mean by 'better'.

[Peter Culshaw]

So - not many good songs written in last twenty years in UK then - there are good individual pop songs like Rehab and Angels I would say, but not really the body of work. As for Nick Lowe and the likes of Elvis Costello, to me their stuff is too obviously "crafted" rather than really felt, in any case the stuff I like of theirs was more than twenty years ago.(as was Ian Dury and Nick Drake, but I did say "living" at the top)

PArtly thats the result of dance music and electronics?

If you were to expand the topic world wide - the most rated songwriters Dylan, Waits, Young, Cohen - produced their best stuff more than twenty years ago, also.

Maybe that's one reason I got into, and tend to write about classical, jazz and world music....