Is there an Ivor Cutler revival going on? There’s a post at Metafilter on the man, he featured in a BBC4 programme last week, and Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand writes about him as some kind of inspiration. I don’t know. I saw him back in the Seventies when he was supporting…well, to be honest I don’t remember who he was supporting. I even met him briefly when he came into the record shop I was working at, in Camden Town. Everyone loved him then, and it seems that everyone loves him now. An all-purpose cosy loveable eccentric with a lilting Scottish brogue. Alex Kapranos describes a typical gig:
I remember going to see him in Glasgow. It was an artsy kind of event – one of those gigs that are heavily funded by the Arts Council. The audience was incredibly reverential. They just seemed to be hanging on every word. This was fair enough, as he was pretty good. But it also meant they were laughing at everything he said. At one point he remarked: “You think that everything I say is funny just because I’ve got a funny voice.”
Personally I think there’s a fine line between surrealism and whimsy, and Cutler is over on the whimsy side, but good luck to him.
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