Cultural Imperialism? Count me in, Dude
Aliens land in rural Northants. A tale for a special day.
Occasionally life wants you to notice something and it tugs gently at your sleeve to get your attention. Alternatively, sometimes it sneaks up behind you and clips you behind the ear with the proverbial coin-filled sock.
Here’s what I mean. In this election week the UK has had to focus some attention on the far right “they-come-over-here-with-their-foreign-ways” brigade. This crew would like nothing more than to pull up the drawbridge so we can stew in our own, rather rancid, Anglophile juice for eternity, free from the taint of the foreigner.
Then on Friday evening I was struck by the symbolism of an event in our tiny wee hamlet in rural Northamptonshire. You see we have a small pub in the 600-strong village. It has an outdoor performance area. Sunday afternoons see the local bands run through the usual stuff, culminating, with horrendous predictability in ‘Sweet Caroline’. Sometimes it’s listenable. Sometimes not, but it’s not optional for us, what with our house being 25 yards away.
Last Friday evening though was different.
You see some years ago we were lucky enough to have people in the village with links in the music business. They had contacts. Which last Friday resulted in Massy Ferguson playing the Three Horseshoes in Ecton village for the second time.
Now I’m guessing that you are thinking, being named after farm machinery means they are some kind of Worzels ‘Brand new Combine Harvester’ tribute act. Well, there are bands that could conceivably be further from that truth, but these guys are literally 4,723 miles from it, hailing from Seattle, US. They play sort of Country-infused rock, that has, like complex wine, many facets. A hint of The Boss, The Drive-by Truckers are closer if you are familiar. Early Doobies or The Hold Steady, certainly. And here they were - in Ecton!
Susie and I set off for the gig, arriving some 15 seconds later to be met with the utterly mind-boggling sight of singer Ethan Anderson, playing the flute, wearing a truly colossal suit (see pic), standing with our 13th Century church tower behind him, singing of his mother telling him that ‘sometimes you gotta to roll the hard six’. That image alone took your breath away.
The band’s huge professionalism shone brightly, honed from I’m guessing approximately 2,000 gigs over their years together. But the wonderful, exceptional thing about these guys was that they seemed to be genuinely enjoying themselves. They drank the beer, laughed with the locals in the breaks (They played three sets) and never once took a sly look at their watch. I loved the incongruity of it all and the music was bloody excellent too.
And here’s the thing about people from other lands. They expose us to unusual things here in the UK. This time it was music, but there’s fabulous food, wine, thought, creativity, technology too and in return we give them our history, culture, sports, fashion. The exchange is a great thing and everybody benefits. The idea that in some way British culture needs protecting from these aliens with their non-British ways would laughable if it were not already so obviously silly, not to mention against our own interests.
To expand on my original point though, this is where the sledgehammer symbolism gets kind of surreal. Some 400-odd years ago a candle-maker from Ecton village decided he’d had enough of the grinding poverty of the pre-industrial Midlands and headed west. In fact, he headed about as far west as it was possible to go at that time and fetched up on the eastern seaboard of the Americas, where he raised 17 children.
His name was Josiah Franklin and his 15th child was called Benjamin.
We got Massy Ferguson, they got one of their Founding Fathers. Make of that what you will. Me, I think the world is richer for the swap!
Aaaanyway….. I was going to show some gig footage, but I fear I may fall foul of copyright rules, so I’ll box clever and add a link to one of their albums to give you a feel, plus of course some pictures of possibly Ecton’s greatest ever suit.
Happy 4th July, y’all!
Oh and here in the UK, to quote another famous American, (in this case Al Capone): vote early and vote often!
Music-wise, the YouTube link is here
Spotify is here.
In both cases I recommend the track “The Hard Six” if you want a sample.