Wednesday, September 28th

September 28, 2016 by Leave a Comment

len

ONE “A MILLION CANDLES BURNING FOR THE LOVE THAT NEVER CAME…”
As he leans out of a frame with a glowing cigarette, Len lets life (or the Lord) have it with both barrels in the first song released from his new album, You Want it Darker. “If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game / If you are the healer, I’m broken and lame / If Thine is the Glory, mine must be the shame / if you want it darker, we kill the flame.” Carrying on from the sound of Popular Problems, riding on a disco bass and a ticking hi-hat and underpinned by a synagogue choir, Len’s as compelling as ever.

TWO THE DRUM THING
From Dierdre O’Callaghan’s new book, The Drum Thing, excerpted in Guardian Weekend. “Each is photographed in their private rehearsal space – from studios, bedrooms and basements to garages and gardens.” Here’s Bobbye Hall, percussionist extraordinaire: “I would be lulled to sleep by listening to the blues. I knew that instead of using words I wanted to play and, being an only child, I had a chance to do that… I came to Hollywood on 15 January 1970. I had a 30-day ticket: either I make it or I’m gone. And I’m still here. I stayed at a residence for women in the industry. I had a friend, and I would come home and she would ask: “How was your session?” And I would say: “Well, I was working for this group, they call ’em the Doors, I think.” And she’d go: “Oh my God, you’re kidding me.” I had not a clue. When you play, there is a place you go. It’s not something you do: it happens to you. It’s almost like abduction: you came back and you looked at your watch and it was a different time.”

THREE GUITAR OF THE WEEK

guyatone

Courtesy of Drowning in Guitars, a 1966 Japanese Guyatone with a pickup that rotates. “This guitar reminds me of the old pinball machines, because when you banged on them and tried to manipulate the trajectory of the ball, a sensor inside the machine would recognize your caveman attempt and stop play with a lighted “TILT.” But this guitar might have been the first to encourage the “tilt” by offering a moveable pickup. In fact, this Guyatone may have been the first solid body electric guitar to offer this novel idea.”

FOUR THERE IS A FOOTBALL STADIUM…
that has been the ruin of many a poor fan, and, for me, it’s Leyton Orient’s at Brisbane Road. Last week at half-time the tannoys blared out The Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun”, when it should, of course, have been the same band’s “We Gotta Get Outta this Place”, such was the abject ineptitude of the current team.

leyton

No tactics, an inability to pass with any precision, the hoofed-upfield-ball straight to the opposition – there was no end to the misery, which culminated in the home team being booed off, the victorious away team applauded, and a group of supporters bellowing their displeasure at the Director’s Gallery. Still, always optimistic about the next game, eh?

FIVE LOVE THE DESIGN…
Of these Afropunk festival posters, from last week’s event, and their excellent rules.

afropunk2016

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Tuesday, September 20th

September 20, 2016 by 2 Comments

ONE MOGWAI GO ATOMIC
Kindly gifted tickets – thanks, R! – to Mogwai playing a live soundtrack to Mark Cousins’ documentary Atomic (which is edited together from “Duck and Cover”-type films and documentaries on the Cold War, Chernobyl and Faslane) at the Barbican, I was looking forward to some crepuscular soundscapes filled with creeping dread. Their music for Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, bleeding into the frames of the film between the crowd noises and the shouts of the players was beautifully atmospheric. Hunting for someone who’d like the other ticket revealed that Mogwai like volume – one person said that he and his daughter, both fans, had left a gig earlier this year as the eardrum-shredding levels of sound had made it too uncomfortable to stay. I like noise and volume, and it was at the rather restrained Barbican – how loud could it get? Answer, very.

mogwaiMy problem wasn’t the volume, but rather the ordinariness of both the film and music. Atomic was put together with little visual panache, poor graphics and illiterate subtitles. Nuclear Power, it told us, seemed to be one of two things – Good in Medical Hands (possibly)! Bad in Government Hands (definitely)! The score consisted of way too much use of the “Cathedral Organ” setting on the synth, and a general “It’s about Atom bombs and reactors blowing up, so we’d better play lots of loud bombastic rock” approach. This feeling was not helped by the guitarist stage left. His rail-thin legs in authentic rock posture, he leaned back and violently thrummed his guitar, creating a wall of sound that was impressive at points, but unrelenting to the point of boredom. I was very much in a minority when they ended with the guitars left on the stage feeding back until a roadie walked around turning amps off one by one. The audience leapt to their feet cheering and clapping. I was sorry that I didn’t feel the same…

TWO FOUND IN FRANCE
A bench in Cognac, celebrating the bare feet of Levester “Big Lucky” Carter, a Memphis-based blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, who recorded for the Sun, Savoy and Hi labels in the 50’s; the soles of Ray Charles’ shoes, in 2000; and the feet of Dana Gillespie, big-voiced blues diva. Then, from nearby Angoulême, home of the Bande Dessinee Festival, this wall-sized Robert Crumb at the very chic International Cartoon Museum.

franceApparently, Dana Gillespie organises an annual Blues festival at Basil’s Bar on Mustique in the Caribbean. Wikipedia tells me that many blues artists have appeared there through the years. Among the list: Ronnie Wood, Donald Fagen and Rolf Harris.

THREE GROWIN’ UP
From the interesting but poorly written cover story in Vanity Fair it looks like Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography will be the real deal, although the writer of the profile, David Kamp, seems a little presumptuous (and way too pleased with himself) when he tells Bruce what “Born to Run” is really all about…

FOUR MAYBE THE WHOLE CRAFT BEER/ROCK ’N’ ROLL INTERFACE HAS RUN ITS COURSE…
Quite why a grapefruit infused IPA is called Elvis Juice is not explained, although it contains some nicely named hops – Amarillo, Simcoe, Citra and Mosaic.

beer

FIVE A COUPLE OF RANDOM TV RECOMMENDATIONS
People Just Do Nothing is wonderful, reinvigorating the tired mocumentary format by being painfully accurate about the level of the music business that’s three degrees below success. The world of Garage and Grime is played out in lockups and recording studios, where time is money and money is short, but the lure of Jean-Claude Van Damme YouTube clips proves too distracting… Also on the iPlayer (and BBC2, late at night) is Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s fearless, filthy and ultimately tragic Fleabag. It’s like the first time you watched Green Wing or Peep Show or Flowers – the cobwebs of the sitcom are blown away by strange, often melancholy stories that actually reflect a more accurate view of the lives people live than in the marquee dramas that win the Baftas.

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Friday, September 9th

September 9, 2016 by 2 Comments

louisstewart.jpg
ONE RIP LOUIS STEWART
Sweet-toned Irish jazz guitarist, and a kind and gentle man, at whose feet I sat a few times in the late 70s. It was usually at the Jazz Centre Society in Covent Garden, as I attempted to figure out how a camera worked. Nikkormat FT-N, 35mm lens, Tri-x pushed to 1600 ASA.

TWO THAT MAN BISCHOFF AGAIN
The most fascinating figure in the recent Bowie Prom for me was the arranger and bassist Jherek Bischoff, and in investigating his oeuvre, I discovered a couple of interesting things. His 2012 release, Composed, featuring nine orchestral pieces, with different vocalists, was first written on a ukulele. “This record was recorded with one microphone, an Mbox and a laptop. I recorded each individual musician of the ‘orchestra’ in their very own living rooms. I then layered each instrument (sometimes one violinist playing one part twenty times for instance) until it was the size of a huge orchestra. I spent the summer bike riding from house to house recording each musician.”

Now, that’s an interesting approach. Pitchfork wrote that listening to the album whilst being aware of the process “is like imagining someone filling an Olympic-sized pool with an eye dropper: the mind balks, both at the enormity of the undertaking and at the disposition of the person behind it.”

For his next one, he almost did that: “Bischoff began recording the album Cistern in an empty two million gallon underground water tank under Fort Worden in Port Townsend, Washington. The size of the space was a huge factor in the development of the album. In an interview Bischoff described how “the vast emptiness of the cistern generates a reverb decay that lasts 45 seconds. That means, if you snap your fingers, the sound lasts 45 seconds. That amount of reverberation is an absolutely wild environment to try to create music in.” He was bought up on a sailboat, which sort of explains the ukelele…

Oh, and he played a very gorgeous bass guitar at the Proms, a kind of glammed-up version of McCartney’s Hofner violin bass. He also played chords on it at various points, a sound I love. Hear his arrangement of “Ashes to Ashes” in the music player on the right.

THREE ANOTHER GREAT DAY IN HARLEM
Bob G sends me a link to this fascinating interactive piece in the Daily News, which shows just how many backgrounds and genres within Jazz that extraordinary amalgamation contained. Click on any musician to hear a performance clip. Hats off to Art Director/Photographer Art Kane.

FOUR JONNY TRUNK’S FRIDAY 50p MAILER IS ALWAYS FUN…
“Also this week I got sent this ace film about The Mellotron by someone on the mailing list. It’s great and stars Richard Nixon, who used to have a magic show on the TV – his able assistant at the time was the divine Anita Harris, who possibly still opens the Barnes Jumble Sale twice a year. Let’s hope she does…” The clip is terrific, until David Nixon – not Richard, sadly, as the Richard Nixon Magic Show has a great ring about it, especially as his nickname was ‘Tricky Dick’ – actually plays. Obviously none of the members of King Crimson or the Moody Blues actually saw this Pathe demonstration or they would never have bought Mellotrons in the first place. There’s a fascinating shot of the tape loops inside the cabinet, followed by a professional pianist playing, who is actually worse than David Nixon.

FIVE RIP PRINCE BUSTER
Richard Williams wrote a very nice piece on thebluemoment about the Prince – and just check out the bassline on this baby…

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Extra: An Update on “The Colyer”

September 9, 2016 by 4 Comments
thecolyer2

In July last year I wrote: “As we went walking that ribbon of highway that links Covent Garden to Soho, en route to see Amy at the Curzon, most of Great Newport Street was covered in scaffolding. Not such a rare sight in the centre of town these days, with properties being developed at a giddy rate. However, the covering of the scaffolding was – frankly – gob-smacking. A huge 60s-style caricature covered the top half of the four-story high structure, with my uncle Ken flanked by Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger.”

Now, an update, prompted by a comment on that 5 Things post by Californian legend Peter Asher, OBE, (“Just happened to see this. I went to all the Stones gigs at Studio 51 and was also a Ken Colyer fan. And when I later went on the road myself (as one half of Peter & Gordon) our tour manager was Keith “Avo” Avison who used to play trombone in Ken’s band! – Peter Asher).

In brief, the redevelopment of a site on Great Newport Street (at which there was a jazz club called Studio 51, which became known as the “Ken Colyer Club”) was branded (love those branding ideas!) by calling it The Colyer. Without asking Ken’s son. I quickly found out that there was nothing to stop the developers (an enormous Insurance multinational) from using Ken’s image or name. I wonder how that would have played out if they’d called it The Jagger? Anyhow, I made enquiries as to whether they would like to make a donation to Help Musicians UK (previously the Musician’s Benevolent Fund) who I knew had helped some of the members of Ken’s various bands when they had, as musicians do, money troubles. But the Large Insurance Multinational plc™ declined. Which sadly came as no surprise. A World Without Love, indeed.

The Heritage plaque affixed to the building by Westminster Council, is still there – Ken Colyer Played New Orleans Jazz here in the basement “Studio 51” 1950-1973. There’s a discreet nameplate with the apartment intercoms and the entrance hall carpet has a cornet woven into it. Two-bedroom apartments available now at £1,750,000.

thecolyernow

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