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...) 

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:

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: stealing dan & don at the bull's head, 7/3/06

In their blurb Stealing Dan & Don, playing their monthly residency tonight at the Bull's Head, are described as "London's only Steely Dan tribute band". Presumably Nearly Dan, who I've seen previously at the Jazz Cafe, are from out of town. Very tight, very proficient, as they'd need to be to do justice to the music. Covering the usual favourites from the 70s albums, as well as quite a few from the first Fagen solo records, they also serve up jazz versions of "Deacon Blue" and "Do It Again". Personally, I'd prefer if they stuck to the original arrangements. They can play though...