Waffle

Loudon Wainwright III singing White Winos on a 2004 Dutch documentary in the Het Uur van de Wolf series.

I watched this when it was broadcast. Then, as now, I loved the fact that the producers cared enough to have the song subtitled. When I showed the clip to DFG, she thought LWIII's head movements and slurred speech were the result of him having had a little too much too drink before the interview, but as far as I can tell, that's just how he is.

LWIII gets misrepresented as a jokey songwriter a lot, especially by journalists who want to talk up his (significantly less talented) offspring at his expense. In his best songs, the humour is in the service of something deeper, and occasionally disturbing.

That said, the jokey, clownish part of him is there, and here's a clip of him on the BBC's Jasper Carrot show in the 1980s - the trousers are not part of the clown act as people really dressed like that at the time - singing I Don't Think Your Wife Likes Me and hamming it up for the camera.

And...one more, singing Cardboard Boxes on Wogan, at around the same time.

British television in those days was a goldmine! Below are three clips from BBC Pebble Mill ca. 1982, featuring Simon Nicol and Dave Swarbrick from Fairport Convention playing as a duo. I love Swarb's violin style, but what stands out is how good Simon Nicol could sound as a guitarist and a vocalist. His voice is limited in power and range and tends to drown out in a larger band, but in the first one of these duo performances it sounds impassioned, raw and much more powerful. And of course, the only reason he never got much credit as a guitarist is that he spent years performing with Richard Thompson next to him.
Time to Ring Some Changes:

The Hen's March Through the Midden/The Four-Poster Bed - two instrumentals that Swarb had played since the 1960s. Not quite as good as the recording he did with Martin Carthy, but fun nonetheless.

The least of the three clips, but still worth a look if you made it this far: Three Drunken Maidens - cheesy but fun, both in content and presentation. Swarb's annoying habit of humming along to his playing is unfortunately very much in evidence.

A couple of years ago, I reviewed Swarb's then latest album Swarbrick Plays Swarbrick and mentioned his health troubles. Not long later, he had a lung transplant and within a few months he was back on stage. Below is a clip (with unfortunately poor sound quality) representing what he sounds like today, accompanied by guitarists Kevin Dempsey and Martin Allcock, another much-underrated guitarist. Swarb looks rough (but not as rough as before the transplant) but his playing is as energetic as ever.