'Elegy for Jackie Leven'-Interview(+LivePerformance)Kirkcaldy Acoustic Music Club Oct 09

The Mixcloud channel Harknessian has put online an 18:14-minute audio piece titled “Elegy for Jackie Leven”: an interview together with a live performance from the Kirkcaldy Acoustic Music Club in October 2009. According to the uploader, the conversation took place during the interval of Leven’s concert at the Fife Acoustic Music Club at the Polish Club on 22 October 2009, which proved to be a memorable home-coming gig.

According to the description, Leven gives “a candid insight” into his itinerant lifestyle, his troubled past and his relationship with Fife, talks about his introduction to music in his formative years and touches on his Romany heritage, the “colourful” reasoning for choosing his first pseudonym John St Field, Doll by Doll’s antagonistic relationship with punk and his respect for his label Cooking Vinyl. The uploader calls Leven one of Fife’s greatest musical exports, an engaging raconteur, a gentleman and a prolific and consummate musician of the highest order; “Sadly there will be no Encore – RIP Jackie Leven”, he ends, closing with the line: “Bury me in the Village Square; where I can hear the feet of the children and the drums of the old men.” The audio itself has not been evaluated here; tags include Ian Rankin, Cooking Vinyl and Doll by Doll.