cream of the crop 2013

Just ducking under the Twelfth Night finishing tape here with my list of 2013's best music...

I listened to a lot of folk music again last year, thanks once more to my annual August Bank Holiday jolly at Shrewsbury and also to a series of excellent gigs at my newly discovered favourite venue, Cecil Sharp House, HQ of the English Folk Dance and Song Society and in every sense Folk Central.

In contrast, my attempts to seek out new jazz faltered a bit. The Bull's Head, my local venue, was closed for renovation work for most of the year (although it's open again now, thankfully) and there didn't seem to be much else around outside the November uber-binge which is the London Jazz Festival.

As always, wonderful Radio 6Music was an indispensable source of great new music with Mary Anne Hobbs' weekend breakfast show a particularly impressive new addition to the schedules. 

As for my runners and riders, to be honest the much heralded Bowie album only just made the cut with what to my ears was something of a curate's egg with an over-reliance on a heavy metal guitar sound on many of the tracks. Laura Mvula and Disclosure were fellow Mercury Music Prize nominees. It was good to see another welcome reappearance with the Prefab Sprout record justifiably appearing in many best-of-year lists. Such a shame about Paddy McAloon's health issues in recent years: this probably means that more new music from these quarters is pretty unlikely.

All the folk artists in the list (Lady Maisery, Melrose Quartet, Carthy Hardy Farrell Young, Steeleye Span and The Full English) were ones I saw live, Stacey Kent is the lone standard bearer for jazz and Mulatu Astatke album was by some margin the funkiest music I heard all year.

In no particular order then:

• Laura Mvula: Sing to the Moon 
• Disclosure: Settle
• Lady Maisery: Mayday
• Prefab Sprout: Crimson/Red
• Stacey Kent: The Changing Lights
• The Melrose Quartet: Fifty Verses
• Carthy Hardy Farrell Young: Laylam
• David Bowie: The Next Day
• Steeleye Span: Wintersmith
• Arcade Fire: Reflektor
• Low: The Invisible Way
• Owiny Sigoma Band: Power Punch
• Mulatu Astatke: Sketches of Ethiopia
• The Full English: The Full English

Stuff to listen to:

• Spotify playlist of some of the above 
• Other fave tracks of the year (Yes folks, "Get Lucky" sounds as fresh as ever to me...) 

2012 done and dusted

2012 was the year in which the balance of my listening habits rather veered away from Radio 6Music. Which is not to say there's been a lowering of standards there as might be said for other sections of the Beeb (see also below), just that I seem to have been casting my musical net a little more widely. On the one hand I've been soaking up a fair amount of Jazz FM and Radio 3 jazz coverage (hence numbers 8, 10 and 11 in my list below) and on the other I've been a reasonably faithful follower of Mike Harding's Wednesday evening Radio 2 slot (2, 3, 12, 15 and 16), soon to be pulled from the schedules, scandalously.

I also seem to have been to more gigs than ever. There's been a lot of jazz--several visits to Ronnie Scott's and, as ever, the annual ten-day November jazz binge that is the London Jazz Festival--and a fair amount of folk--notably a) a Sandy Denny tribute concert early in the year which opened my ears for the first time to a whole catalogue of music hitherto somehow off my radar and b) another rather pleasing August Bank Holiday at the Shrewsbury Folk Festival particularly in the company of some excellent woman singers (2 and 3).

That said, we did hear from a few of the old staples of my CD collection: Hawley, Fagen, Saint Etienne and Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier striking out on her own. I've also tried not to ignore some of the newer kids on the block: Mala's--possibly adult-oriented?--Latinised dubstep, the interesting fruits of Sam Lee's song collecting work among the Romany community and the impressive new blues/soul songs, piano and--especially--VOICE of Natalie Duncan.

For me it's Richard Russell's collaboration with soul-legend Bobby Womack which pips the others to the post. As with his work with Gil Scott Heron in 2010, Russell has brought the best out of a soul artist who's had a difficult time of it recently and whose best years we might have thought were behind him.

That's what I think anyway.

THE LIST

1. Bobby Womack: The Bravest Man in the Universe
2. Karine Polwart: Traces
3. Caroline Herring: Camilla
4. Richard Hawley: Standing at the Sky’s Edge
5. Beach House: Bloom
6. Donald Fagen: Sunken Combos
7. Natalie Duncan: The Devil in Me
8. Kenny Wheeler: The Long Waiting
9. Snowgoose: Harmony Springs
10. Esperanza Spalding: Radio Music Society
11. Trish Clowes: And in the Night Time She is There
12. Thea Gilmore: Don’t Stop Singing
13. The xx: Coexist
14. Saint Etienne: Words and Music
15. Sam Lee: Ground of Its Own
16. Laetitia Sadier: Silencio
17. Lianne La Havas: Is Your Love Big Enough?
18. Quantic & Alice Russell: Look Around The Corner
19. Mala: Mala in Cuba
20. Spiro: Kaleidophonica

To hear more, fire up your Spotify machine...

• albums of the year (at least most of 'em)
• trax of the year (mainly odds'n'sods which have popped up on the radio)
• songs of the week (courtesy of This Is My Jam Inc.)

And, as ever, please argue...

song of the week 34: trombone shorty - the craziest things

Lately I've been listening to Mike Chadwick's Saturday evening "Big Easy" programme on JazzFM. It's pretty good.

The "Tremé" TV series is mentioned in dispatches more than a few times but a fair amount of new music gets an airing too.

Here's some Trombone Shorty to maybe whet your appetite (seems Jools is on the case too):




...and then there's also my fledgling Spotify playlist based on music from the show.

song of the week 22: michel legrand - dingo rock

More jazz this week, featuring legendary veteran French composer Michel Legrand, who I was lucky enough to catch at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club this week.

Legrand is mainly known for the lush orchestrations and sweeping melodies of his film scores but, as we saw and heard, he's also an remarkably virtuosic jazz pianist and despite his seventy-nine years his dexterity at the keyboard remains undiminished.

He recorded his Legrand Jazz album with Miles Davis in 1958 and they collaborated again in 1990, a year before Davis died, on a film called Dingo. This funky big-band version of a piece from the soundtrack (which for reasons unknown never made it onto the resulting album) was a highlight of the evening:

Free music - Dingo Rock

More about Legrand's film work in my earlier post.

song of the week 19: bud powell - bouncin' with bud

Been "doing some jazz" this week, thanks to a visit to Ronnie Scott's to listen to the most excellent resident band performing various Count Basie goodies. The whole of the 1957 Atomic Mr Basie album (a.k.a. "E=mc²") got a good airing as did several of the songs from the Sinatra at the Sands album--recorded with the 1966 Basie big band line-up--Iain Mackenzie stepping up for vocal duties on "Come Fly With Me", "I've Got You Under My Skin" and a few others.

This week's musical gem though comes courtesy not of Basie, nor Sinatra, but of pianist Bud Powell whose Blue Note "Best Of" album is one I've been dipping into lately.

Powell led a troubled life. He was horribly beaten on the head by racist police in his late teens and consequently suffered bad headaches and mental illness until his untimely death at the age of forty-one. His style was hugely influential: he abandoned the "stride" technique which had been prevalent in piano jazz up until then and began instead to use the left hand to play only sparse accompanying chords. He also occasionally drew on influences from classical music, as on the Side Two opener "Bud on Bach".

In Bertrand Tavernier's 1986 film Around Midnight, Dexter Gordon plays a character who is partly modelled on Powell. The movie is based on the true-life story of the friendship between Powell and Parisian jazz fan Francis Paudras. This trailer is a bit cheesy but it gives a flavour of some of the great music in the film. It's well worth seeing if you haven't done so already...

Track One on the "Best Of Bud Powell" album is an upbeat number and features Sonny Rollins on tenor sax and Fats Navarro on trumpet. Enjoy...

song of the week 12: scritti politti - overnite

Another of those greatest hits compilations we love so much saw the light of day this week. Hence another artist of yesteryear has been out and about doing the round of media interviews. Step forward, on this occasion, Green Gartside of Scritti Politti.

A couple of Scritti hits, "Wood Beez" and "The Word Girl", still get a regular airing on the likes of Magic FM but there's quite a bit more to the man and his music than this 1980s radio-friendly sheen. For one thing, his frequent references in both songs and interviews to 19th Century philosophical theory--the name of the band itself a homage to Gramsci--set him a fair way apart from his post-punk contemporaries.

He can still talk a good game these days, as testified by a couple of interesting tete-a-tetes broadcast last week respectively on the Guardian Music Weekly podcast and Radcliffe and Maconie's radio programme.

The Cupid & Psyche album of 1985 was the "one with the hits" but I'd argue that almost all his other albums are more interesting: Songs to Remember, his 1982 debut, is a bit clever-clever but has some good tunes nonetheless, like the lilting "Sweetest Girl", later covered by Madness. All these years later Green claims that he'd originally wanted Gregory Isaacs to sing it and Kraftwerk to play it. That would have been worth hearing.

It was a measure of the circles he moved in in the late eighties that the album following the hugely successful Cupid and Psyche, 1988's Provision, saw him hanging out with the likes of Miles Davis. Unlikely as it may seem, there were some similarities in the music of the two men during that period: they both made liberal use of studio techniques of the time--synthesizers, samples, drum loops and such like. (Difficult to believe in retrospect that in the eighties this would have been considered cutting edge.) The Scritti fanbase probably would have been attuned to expect as much but Davis's Tutu and Amandla albums (1986 and 1989 respectively) shocked and alienated many of his followers in the jazz community. His dalliances with artists with more of a "pop" sensibility--not only Green, but also the likes of Cyndi Lauper--didn't work in his favour either.

In all though, the "collaboration" extended only to a sum total of two tracks: on Tutu Davis covered Green's "Perfect Way" and on Provision he contributes an understated, almost apologetic, solo on the sublime Oh Patti.

As I say, the synth base of much of Provision make it a very dated sound to modern ears but if you can get past the 1980s keyboards I think there are some great songs on the album. It might be interesting to hear Gartside rework some of them with a more modern instrumentation. Can't see that happening though...

Enough already. Here's one of the less celebrated tracks:



P.S. Absolute--Scritti's greatest hits compilation--awaits your attention on Spotify

the great gig in the sky

It always seems unfair to me that so few musicians ever get the recognition they deserve. I've been to some great jazz gigs lately and have come across a couple of veteran players in particular whose significance I've only become aware of because of some rather sad circumstances.

I recently saw alto sax veteran Peter King and his quartet at the Bull's Head, my favourite jazz venue. There were a couple of comparative youngsters on piano and bass, 69-year-old King himself of course on saxophone and Martin Drew on drums.

Such a large man that even sitting behind his huge kit, Drew was an imposing presence, particularly on the more up-tempo numbers where he was really able to let fly with some furious solos. He seemed to "sing" along with them, as if they were the accompaniment to a tune playing in his head. Slightly off-putting for everyone else though, just the kind of tuneless droning of someone lost in music they're listening to through headphones:



I also remember him apologising to the other band members during the half-time break for "playing the wrong song", having seemingly mistaken one of the numbers on the improvised set list. I doubt that many audience members spotted his gaffe. Indeed, I overheard him jokingly asking "whether it actually makes any difference which tune the drummer plays".

Quite a humble, self-effacing approach for a musician who in his time, it turns out, played with some of THE major figures in twentieth-century jazz: Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Stan Getz, Dexter Gordon, Ella Fitzgerald and Ronnie Scott, amongst others. For THIRTY YEARS, he was a member of the Oscar Peterson Trio!

It was only after the gig that I discovered Drew's history because browsing through a newspaper less than two weeks later I came across a photo of Drew behind his drum kit in the exact same pose as I had remembered him at the Bull's Head. Drew had apparently suffered a heart attack three days after the gig and died. Here was his obituary. I had almost certainly seen his last public performance.

Eerily, today I discover that trumpeter and flugelhorn player Harry Beckett also died last month, within days of Drew. A couple of months ago I went to an excellent concert at the Barbican where many of the greats of British big band jazz played their way through a history of the music. Not surprisingly, the evening culminated in an extended tribute to the music of the late Sir Johnny Dankworth, including two numbers from his widow, Dame Cleo Laine, 84 years old, not so sure on her feet, but having lost none of her stage presence and self-deprecating wit.

Beckett was another veteran who had appeared earlier in the evening. Clearly a very old man, he played along with one tune--a Jazz Warriors number, I think--but then sat motionless at his desk in the trumpet section for the rest of the evening, looking very much like a fish out of water, but nonetheless seeming to enjoy listening to the music, as we all did.

Playing a kind of more typically British jazz music with many of the important groups of the sixties and seventies, Beckett also became an inspiration to young black jazz musicians in his work with the Jazz Warriors and continued to record until very recently. I know this--now--because I've just--today--read the obituary which appeared in the Guardian last month. Better to be appreciated after your death than not at all, I suppose.

They say these things come in threes, so here's wishing Dame Cleo the best of health...

Martin with Oscar ("trading fours" at 5:10)



Harry:





and Dame Cleo:

the art of the understatement

It's generally agreed that a period beginning roughly in the early 1940s and ending in the mid-1960s constituted the golden age of the musical. Also during this time many of the "songs from the shows" became a staple part of the jazz repertoire, for both singers and instrumentalists, and this continues to be the case where modern-day artists are concerned. It seems strange that this is so. Aren't these songs rather outmoded now? Aren't they representative of different, perhaps more innocent, times? What's more, if greats like Fitzgerald and Sinatra recorded definitive versions in the forties and fifties, why invite comparison with them by re-recording these songs decades later?

That's not to say there aren't worthy re-interpretations by modern-day artists, maybe in interesting new styles or arrangements, and perhaps these songs are anyway still worthy of a place alongside original compositions but there's sometimes a tendency to wonder, well, if it hasn't all been done before.

At it's worst, this phenomenon can be very bad indeed. In my view, Michael Parkinson's reputation as a broadcaster has almost entirely been shot down in flames since he has begun championing peddlers of lazy cover versions of showtunes. Watch, if you dare, this nauseating clip of two grinning backslappers in a "Parkinson Music Special" (sic) last year. Brace yourself:



BBC4 has a a season of programmes at present on what is known as the "Great American Songbook" (we don't have one of these in the UK, by the way). There have been concerts by a number of greats like Nina Simone, Tony Bennett and Ella Fitzgerald as well as series of documentaries "charting the evolution of pop from Tin Pan Alley to today's billion-dollar industry" and, this evening, a selection of songs from the films of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.

Strictly speaking, the films of Rogers and Astaire at RKO appeared before our "golden age of the musical" during a period when the Nazi war machine was clicking into gear in Europe, and although these were little more than fluffy, "screwball" affairs, many of the great American songwriters were contracted to write the music: Cole Porter to "The Gay Divorcee" (1934), Irving Berlin to "Top Hat" (1935), Jerome Kern to "Swing Time" (1936) and George and Ira Gershwin to "Shall We Dance" (1937).

Of course, it's for their dancing which Rogers and Astaire are best known, but their singing style is also an important part of the charm of these films. Neither of them has the strongest voice but their pitch, even on the high notes, is always spot on. It's just what these songs need. They don't have the overblown drama of operatic arias, but they do have witty wordplay, clever rhymes and unexpected and subtle melodic flourishes. The words become so much more meaningful by virtue of being understated.

Towards the end of "Shall We Dance", the characters played by Astaire and Rogers meet at the dockside. Having divorced for the sake of appearances and their showbusiness careers and now on the point of parting forever, they realise that they are in love with each other after all. "They Can't Take That Away From Me" is his remembrance of their time together.

The song, here in its original arrangement, has none of the swinging, almost jaunty, swagger of later interpretations, just a gentle string and horn accompaniment as perfect complement to Astaire's unfussy singing style. It may be a screwball comedy, but the line "The way you changed my life" with its final melodic up-turn followed by the close-up of Rogers's crying face I think is a genuinely touching moment. But then I'm just a big softie...

edited highlights

Notable musical events of the last ten days, briefly:

• The London Jazz Festival, particularly a mesmerising performance by the Tord Gustavsen Ensemble. So moved was I that I shelled out for the new CD which I then queued up like some kind of Scandinavian piano jazz groupie to get signed by the man himself.
• Finishing "Bringing It All Back Home", an enjoyable account of the musical loves of bolshie Yorkshire TV presenter and rugby league aficionado Ian Clayton. A good read and an unexpectedly harrowing last chapter...
  
• Music quiz ignominy for Billie Piper At The Gates of Dawn, who put massive effort into finishing bottom of the table at the Three Kings. I was particularly pleased though to dig out Augustus Pablo (so to speak) to up our score slightly in the Obscure Reggae round.
  
• Mozzer on Desert Island Discs: utterly compelling listening. Kirsty Young is good at her job, striking a nice balance between ex-teenage Smiths devotee and gently probing journo. Seems Steven Patrick is actually quite fond of his old mum and dad. Ah bless.
  
• This week's contribution to the "gratuitous oldie" slot comes courtesy of Liz Kershaw on 6 Music. It seems TT main man Mark Hollis went on to make some interesting music, which I admit I need to investigate further before pontificating about here. In the meantime, how's about this for some good-time eighties synth pop...
  

Talk Talk - Such a shame

bad cover version

This week on "Later with Jools Holland", we learn that Diana Krall, for many years entranced by Brazilian rhythms, has felt sufficiently moved to cram her new album choc full of bossa nova tributes. To illustrate this, she slides into a husky gender-reassigned version of "Girl from Ipanema".

Now I like a bit of jazz as much as the next man but I just can't get on with this. Slurry and out-of-tune, for me it's bordering on Vic Reeves territory. It's a classic tune Diana. Why condemn it to such a painful and unnecessary death?

.

On the up-side, this week's programme also includes the very excellent Unthanks and some great soul from Maxwell.

scaffolding

At the BFI this month, they've got a season of films from the French New Wave of the late 1950s and early 60s. On Friday I went to see Louis Malle's "Lift to the Scaffold" which was released in 1958. It's got a great (improvised) Miles Davis soundtrack...



Hear the rest of it here...

follow the yellow umbrella

Join me if you will for a whistle-stop tour of some groovy old music venues.

(Er, they're in New York, in case you were wondering...)

Day 1: Midtown Manhattan, Broadway, Fifth Avenue, etc etc

Radio City Music Hall

Perversely, like many of the skyscrapers in Manhattan, the Radio City Music Hall sprung up in the Depression Era and opened in 1932. Home to musicals, films, and in latter years, the Grammy and Tony Awards, the lavish annual Christmas spectacular, which has run throughout its history, is a Nativity re-enactment using real animals: sheep, donkeys, even camels. For the duration of the show's run, they're housed in special living quarters behind the stage and can apparently be spotted being given a Christmas Day constitutional around Midtown Manhattan. The theatre has a spectacular Art Deco interior and its "Mighty Wurlitzer" pipe organ is the largest pipe organ built for a movie theatre.

Day 2: Greenwich Village,
a.k.a. "The Village" (1960s vintage),
now West Village.

Cafe Wha?

One of a number of establishments now on the tourist trail by virtue of having hosted early performances by one Robert Zimmerman. The establishment's own website lists Dylan as only one in a string of famous names who've popped in over the years--"Allen Ginsberg regularly sipped his cocktails here. The Café Wha? was the original stomping ground for prodigies Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. Bruce Springsteen, Peter, Paul & Mary, Kool and the Gang, as well as comedians, Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby..."--but a character called David Barry (??) has some interesting reminiscences.

Day 3: Walking tour of Harlem.

The Apollo Theatre

Originally opened in 1915, in 1934 the Apollo was given over exclusively to Afro-American performers as an opportunity to appear in the weekly "amateur nights" and, if well received, tour the U.S., make a name for themselves nationally, then return to the Apollo as a headlining act in their own right. Ella Fitzgerald was one of the earliest artists to do this, ditto Bessie Smith in 1935, and in 1959 James Brown, who later used the venue for his famous 1963 live album. So close was Brown's relationship with the theatre that when he died in 2006 he lay in state there, typically, "in a blue suit, white gloves and silver shoes." Harlemites queued up round the block to pay their last respects.

and finally, also in Harlem...

Minton's Playhouse

Founded in 1938 and frequented by early jazzers Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller and Earl Hines, it later played a huge part in the development of bebop. Dizzy Gillespie was a main mover, as was Thelonious Monk and, of course, Charlie Parker.

This is what they came up with...

jazz binge (continued)

Neil Cowley Trio and Alec Dankworth's Spanish Accents @ Royal Festival Hall, 22nd November

My November London-Jazz-Festival-induced jazz binge continues unabated with this freebee live recording of Radio 3's Jazz Line Up programme introduced by Claire Martin, the Gabby Logan of Jazz.

Neil Cowley and the boys perform the fourth of their five gigs in 24 hours. Their selection is in turn funky, rhapsodic, virtuosic and (maybe?) Svensson-esque. Alec Dankworth reveals that the family's Spanish connections--hence these compositions--stem from the times he and sister Jacqui were left by their touring jazz-royal-family parents in the care of Spanish childminders who took them on holidays to their homeland and tutored them in the language. More recently it seems his wife has been completing a PhD in flamenco music. I like these tunes.

Going all out for critcal mass, I also picked out these jazz CDs from the public library at lunch time.

• E.S.T. - Seven Days of Falling
• Keith Jarrett - Tokyo '96
• Pat Metheny Group - The First Circle
• Kenny Wheeler - What Now?

Next week: return of the indie guitar

so much jazz, so little time *

Alan Barnes Octet, Esbjorn Svensson Memorial, Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra @ Southbank Centre, this week

The London Jazz Festival is, in my view, a fine and noble thing: ten days of gigs all over London--many of them free--featuring top class jazz musicians of many creeds and various hues (Scandinavians in particular seem to feature heavily this year).

I'm not done with it yet, but already I've managed to fit in a) an authoritative and sensitively presented appreciation of the work of Swedish groundbreakers E.S.T. whose pianist and main composer, Esbjorn Svensson, so tragically died last year, and b) one of the best gigs I've been to in the last twelve months courtesy of saxophonist, bandleader and part-time stand-up comedian, Alan Barnes.

E.S.T. has been a name I've known for a couple of years although I never got to hear their music and sadly will never now see them live. Better late than never I'm sure but my Amazon shopping list gets another hammering as a result. This is what they're good at...



On Monday I went on something of a crash course on the music of Duke Ellington. Firstly an interesting talk presented by Radio 3's Alyn Shipton featuring Alan Barnes and Tony Faulkner. Faulkner has taken various tunes from Ellington's huge repertoire--mainly scored for big band--and arranged them for octet. Performing approximately three hours' worth of them this evening were Barnes and some of the greatest jazz players I have ever heard. Step forward in particular Tony Coe and Andy Panayi, masters respectively of the clarinet and flute.

* with apologies to John Fordham

elvis reunited with downhome music in south london aircraft hangar

Festival New Orleans @ the O2, 25th October

It's understandable that, after the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina two years ago, the State of Louisiana authorities would want to take some measures to give their ailing tourist industry a shot in the arm. This two day festival, laid on free of charge and featuring some big ole New Orleans names--Dr John, Allen Toussaint and Buckwheat Zydeco--drew a huge turn-out. It was just a shame that these three great musicians were consigned to a main stage area which allowed a big crowd to see them but only a small number of people to hear them properly. Drum beats bounced off the curved roof, more than thirty yards from the stage only an echoey gloop was audible...

The O2 prioprietors had clearly not foreseen the possibility that a free festival featuring internationally-renowned musicians would draw a large crowd and consequently failed to provide adequate bar and toilet facilities. (So how did they manage with Led Zeppelin? Oh yes, that's right. They were charging £100+ a ticket for that one.)

There was a good mix of styles though reflecting the varied musical heritage of the Big Easy: I also got to see (and hear, in the more acoustically friendly Indigo2 and Matter venues): Mardi Gras "Indian" dancers (the Hardhead Hunters), a gospel group (the Anointed Jackson Sisters) and some top class New Orleans brass band music (the New Birth).

Few people who, like me, are regulars at free events on the South Bank will not have come across the East End Elvises and, sure enough, they were there too, not only bestowing their general approval on the proceedings but also, invited up on to the stage by Kermit Ruffins, giving full reign to their hip-swinging groin-thrusting moves and almost total lack of rhythmic sense...

As Buckwheat would say "How sweet it is!"

we want more small venues (contd)

Maria Schneider Big Band @ the Barbican, 9th July

Disappointingly there are a fair few empty seats tonight but Maria Schneider--erstwhile student of Miles Davis arranger Gil Evans--is increasingly becoming recognised as a major jazz artist in her own right. Indeed, a track from her recent "Sky Blue" album bagged her a Grammy earlier this year.

Interestingly she doesn't have a record deal but instead makes all her music available via the ArtistShare website. With no predatory record company to cream off a percentage, all the money generated via her site is ploughed back into her musical activities. Under no outside pressure to act as an income generating machine, she's also able to make video footage of interviews and rehearsals available to her fanbase via her site.

You'd think a big venue like the Barbican would suit a 20-strong line-up like this but some of the sound seems to get lost. I enjoyed them more at the (smaller) Queen Elizabeth Hall a couple of years ago.

yadda yadda...

Big Band Metheny @ Bull's Head, 25th May

Sorry to rattle on again about the Bulls Head, but...Sunday lunchtime, Bank Holiday weekend, a decent pint of bitter, a 16-piece big band to blow you out of your seat, the funkiest piano you'll ever hear from erstwhile Jools Holland guest Neil Cowley, ear-splitting trumpet from Gabriel Garrick, and generally top jazz. What's not to like?

Note to self: I'm liking these Pat Metheny tunes--another well-established musician I'm finding out about via the back door (see also Robert Wyatt below). There just aren't enough hours in the day to listen to ALL THIS MUSIC...

Other stuff:
- jazzwise.com interview with Neil Cowley
- Pat Metheny on youtube

knees up

Tomorrow's Face @ the Bull's Head, Barnes, 23rd March

Five reasons why the Bull's Head is the bees knees:

1. There's great jazz on every night of the week

2. It's a real pub--not a bar, not a theme pub, not Wetherspoons, not a gastro-pub--and serves beer

3. Providing a) you live in South West London and b) you check the train times beforehand, you can get there and back by public transport

4. You can hear Steely Dan play there once a month (well almost: they're actually called Stealing Dan and Don)

5. It reminds you how much you like jazz. (It's on every night of the week. Did I mention that?) Some of the big names of British jazz--Humphrey Lyttleton, Stan Tracey, Digby Fairweather--play regularly, but the bands you've never heard of before--like Tomorrow's Face (a "slimmed down, 10-piece version of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra" - Time Out)--don't disappoint either.

live stuff: john chilton's feetwarmers at ray's jazz shop, 23/4/07

One of the great things about London is the amount of great music you can come across completely by accident, and not just buskers or up-and-coming musicians at the beginning of their careers, but also established artists who have a long history in the business. Passing by Foyle's bookshop on the way home from work, and going upstairs to the excellent Ray's Jazz shop and cafe, I stumbled into a Monday evening get-together of the (mainly) over-60s London jazz community. Jazz historian and trumpeter John Chilton was in the shop to sign copies of his new book ("Hot Jazz, Warm Feet") and he and his fellow Feetwarmers (that gravelly-voiced singer in the purple suit, yellow fedora and eye-patch can only be George Melly) were playing a few numbers beforehand. 81-year-old Melly's voice has probably seen better days but there was some fine playing from the band, particularly clarinettist Wally Fawkes (a.k.a. cartoonist Trog!). An unexpected pleasure...

live stuff: wogram root 70/african flashback at the reithalle, offenburg, 17/11/06

I caught this on a brief visit to France, part of the Strasbourg Jazz Festival featuring a mix of French- and German-based acts performing at venues both sides of the border. Tonight:

1. Wogram Root 70--Kiwi/German foursome: sax/trombone/bass/drums/occasional melodica/even a bit of throat singing. Enjoyable. Tuneful. Excellent musicians. And...

2. African flashback. French trio--drums/clarinets/bass. A mix of simple tunes (too simple) and some wild discordant free-form stuff. Not much to my liking to be honest.

Cool venue though...