Prolificacy is a gift the recipient must use with caution. Any musician knows that you have to catch songs with as big a net as possible when they dare to fall from the heavens (or rise from the depths of hell if you’re AC/DC, of course). But knowing what to do with the spoils – and precisely when to do it – can be the biggest headache of all.
There are two opposing views that present themselves here:
MODEL 1 – Nilism – be selective with what you record, drip feed your public with what you regard as a series of carefully considered albums staggered over many years, and cruelly cast aside any unused material;
MODEL 2 – Dylanism – throw caution to the wind, record nearly every song you write, burn that candle at both ends and to hell with what your fans or the critics think – this is your creative journey as an artist, history will be your judge (yes, even if you compose something as, ahem, challenging as Wiggle Wiggle).
I remember a meeting in my early twenties with the head of a major record label who told me that the only true measure of a band or songwriter was a CD shelf full of albums displaying their name – only then could you trace the songwriting arc, assess their impact on music and crucially determine their development as artistes. He was clearly mad – I mean, hadn’t he heard of the live-fast-die-young ethos of punk? And didn’t he foresee that the only thing CD shelves would be good for in future was filling the wood burning stoves that would become all the rage? Well, he was a major label boss after all. But maybe he had a point. Dodgy records will come and go, of that there is no doubt, but a band or a songwriter should be judged over the whole. We can’t all be The Blue Nile (though we may try), and besides – some of the most interesting albums in an artist’s oeuvre are the misfires, the more “personal” or “experimental” of works.
Which makes our Record of Note this week quite the unexpected treat. Deacon Blue made a triumphant return last year with the Paul Savage produced “The Hipsters”, and conventional wisdom would dictate that all time and energy would be spent promoting and touring what is so obviously a re-energising record for the band. And yet in the meantime Ricky Ross – in between frontman duties for DB, and his own BBC Radio Scotland obligations –somehow found the time to pull together some old and new ideas and make a solo album in “Trouble Came Looking”. Recorded whilst wife Lorraine was on tour (in her other actor-ly job) with Men Should Weep, it’s a stripped down affair – just Ricky on vocals and guitar, Gregor Philips on various banjos and mandolins, and Lewis Gordon on double bass – and one which comes on like a Scottish Nebraska. The sound of the thing is bare, haunting, almost angry. And the songs are something approaching protest, from meditations on the economic recession ruining lives to human trafficking. If it sounds worthy and heavy going then it’s really not. For me, its great success lies in its simplicity, in turning these big issues into tales of personal struggle. But overall it’s an indication that lying away in drawers and scribbled down on old bits of paper some songwriters have songs that should be heard, no matter how out of the mainstream they may appear to be. And you can decide for yourself when we play three tracks on this Thursday’s show, alongside a whole host of the usual new and classic music, from 10.05pm on BBC Radio Scotland.
