The Singer, not the Outfit

SHORT, fat and balding, he never the less has a charismatic presence prowling the stage in a long black jacket and pork pie hat that made him look like a cross between an Old Testament prophet and a shabby bookmaker at a provincial Irish racetrack".

That was how the London Times described Van Morrison at Wembley the other day and within half an hour of reading it I was on to a few shabby bookmakers in Clonmel, Ballyhaunis, Portlaoise, Tralee and Tramore with the news. Every one of them was delighted with the Times comparison and their only quibble was that the pork pie hat had definitely fallen out of favour among them, the firmly had nearly taken over. They were all happy to have their profile lifted and any comparison with Van the Man could only help.

My own objection to the review is fairly trivial and I could well be accused of (mere) pedantry, but it seems unfair to suggest there were no individual dressers among people like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniel, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Baruch and Joshua.

We are talking here about fairly sophisticated individuals (apart maybe from Micah, who stuck with an unflattering oversized look all his life, and Zephaniel, who apparently thought a cable knit cardigan was suitable evening attire) able to deal on an equal level with the Canaanites and take no nonsense. It is hardly fair to suggest they all outfitted themselves in the pre Christian equivalent of a chain store.

Meanwhile the London Independent told us that Chris de Burgh "has overcome the handicaps of shortness, stoutness and a well publicised fling with the nanny to become the most successful love balladeer of the last decade".

The only wrong word there is handicaps", short and fat is the way to go in the popular song world, you only have to check the Van review (and a poorly publicised fling is clearly no use at all, hardly worth the effort).

There are arguments simmering on our letters page about songs and singing. One writer says songs like Raglan Road and The Snow Breasted Pearl should be sung only by a man. Others are making facetious suggestions about Eurovision singers performing on horseback (at Millstreet, of course).

But look. When is a song not a song? When Norway won Eurovision last year the words constituted some 40 seconds of a three minute piece of music. A song is defined in The Classic FM A-Z of Classical Music as a form of musical expression uttered by solo voice presenting a text, with or without instrumental accompaniment." On this definition, Norway's winning entry might have seemed the exact opposite.

Of course the definition itself may be faulty. A couple of years back Aled Jones recorded himself in duet, the technology allowing him to impose his now adult voice on his former famous boyhood treble. Indeed long before that, back in the forties, John Bonner of Lincoln Cathedral overlaid his bass baritone on a record originally made as a treble. He sang Somewhere a Voice is Calling and Angels Guard, and apparently the standard was good. But neither of these records was strictly "uttered by solo voice."

Nor is it very long since Judy Garland's daughter Lorna Luft recorded a Christmas single with her mother 26 years dead at the time. Using a digital computer technique which lifted the original vocal from the 1944 film. Meet Me in St Louis, mother and daughter sang Mum's seasonal hit Have Yourself" a Merry Merry Christmas. The resulting effort would certainly not qualify as a "solo voice" utterance, so it is not a "song" if we are being strict, and we are never anything else.

All right, I have other fish to fry. I have been attacked by Macra na Feirme supporters for supposedly using tired old diche's regarding life in rural Ireland.

This is a serious charge, akin to accusing a chef of using packet soup or saying Macra farmers sell second rate vegetables.

My cliche's can be inspected by prior arrangement at any time and are all organically grown to the highest standards. They are free of all pesticides and man made nutrients and they thrive in wild natural conditions, God's soft wind and rain blowing on them in the freedom of 40 acres down near Blessington. The half of them get eaten by foxes and other wildlife but that it is natural too.

I wouldn't dream of interfering. I go down every other weekend, collect what's left, salt them myself and smoke a few for the connoisseur.

They are as good as you will find anywhere.