Bert Jansch

Ok, so this is my first drunk blog post. If it's a little bit incoherent, well, you know why.

I went to see Bert Jansch tonight, and it was pretty awesome. Strange though, because the only material of his that I know is from two albums both released in 1965, and his latest from 2005 which I found inferior if only because his voice has changed in the 40 years since he started out.

I was introduced to Bert Jansch through a few songs that he has on the soundtrack to The Squid and the Whale (excellent movie, highest rating), and so I basically just wanted to hear those songs done 42 years after he originally recorded them. He played one of them, and I guess it was underwhelming.

Some things that Jansch has going for him though:

1) He sticks to his genre. He's a folk singer-songwriter, and that's still what he does.

What's Dylan doing these days? Fucking shitty blues records that critics get a boner from, when it's really just blatant homogenized blues that says nothing. If his name wasn't Bob Fucking Dylan he'd be playing Pinky Winkerbeans on open jam wednesdays with that shit. (full disclosure, I've tried listening to Modern Times maybe twice). Worse than new Elvis Costello, also producing critical boners throughout the interweb.

2) He wrote a better heroin song than Neil Young's "Needle and the Damage Done", called "Needle of Death", 7 fucking years before Young did! (2 years before Velvet Underground's "heroin", but comparing Jansch to VU is like comparing apples and dildos, so I figured I'd let it slide)

3) This has nothing to do with Bert Jansch, but I was very close to getting into a fight at a 60-something year old folk singer's show. I know folk shows are like librarian conventions, with shhushers and stinkeyers, which is both funny and ridiculous, but this guy deserved to shed some teeth.

If he's in your town, I highly recommend seeing Jansch. Also, he's really friggin' old, and walks like a 17 year old cat, but when he dies, he won't crawl under your steps to do it. At least I fucking hope not.