Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 2. 7th March 1973

'A Voice Like a Tuned Clothes-Peg'

'A Voice Like a Tuned Clothes-Peg'

One early critic of Tom Paxton's said he had a voice like a tuned clothes peg. He added that "his song writing ability should guarantee a well earned return to obscurity". Paxton's no superstar, but now at the start of his second New Zealand tour he can point to more than a decade of real achievements. Songs like "Last Thing on My Mind", "Rambling Boy", "Bottle of Wine", "Mr Blue", "Outward Bound" and "What Did You Learn in School Today" approach the status of standards in the rock and folk catalogues.

In live performance he has built up a small but devoted audience, and by his own account the happiest moment of his life came at Bob Dylan's Isle of Wight concert, for ten insane minutes the crowd roared "Paxton, Paxton, Paxton" in appreciation, when only an hour beforehand they had been restlessly demanding the appearance of the big star.

Paxton has never had a hit album; at 33, he is one of that select band who can draw and hold an audience by the not so simple process of being himself. What becoming Tom Paxton has meant, is eleven years of paying his dues in club after club, concert after concert, on the gruelling round of folk clubs across America and England.

Along with Dylan, Ochs and Spoelstra, he was among the first of the "protest" songwriters; these artists, who as he says, were "writing in the first flush of hottest anger at what we were beginning to see was the monumental con job, and with the perhaps naive belief that songs could change people's minds".

He's not a protest singer anymore. "I pretty much feel the same way but I wouldn't attack, I wouldn't express my sell the same way now, I don't intend in a song to ever again try to tell you or anyone else what they should think or do".

So the songs have become more personal; part as he's said "of my own process of growing up". The real revolution he now sees to "lie in changing people's minds, in consciousness raising that will be expressed afterwards in political ways. Too many people are looking for answers outside their own bodies, outside their own minds ... " In concert, Tom Paxton gives you the full range of "what's been bouncing round the backrooms of my mind". Everything from cutting social satire ("From Phil Ochs I learnt that a laugh can made a bloody good point") to haunting love ballads, often written for his wife. Midge.

So if you can catch Tom Paxton's concert while he's here, do it; he's been one of the real contributors to our music, and one of the most likeable artists to set foot on a New Zealand concert stage.

IN CONCERT SPECIAL DOOBIE — SPECIAL DOOBIE The New Zealand Students Arts Council has secured a discount for all students to the Tom Paxton Concert on March 14th. These cards are used extensively overseas and Arts Council hopes to make them a regular feature of future international arts coming to this country. METHOD: You can acquire your Special Doobie at the Association Office on satisfying office of your student status. The cards are free and entitle you to $10.00 discount on a seat to the concert. You may also book at the D.I.C. on these cards. So go get your Special Doobie for Tom Paxton In Concert.

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