“Whaddya mean, you’ve never heard of Prag VEC? What’s the matter with you?” Everybody who works with people younger than themselves has had this very conversation, perhaps more than once. This time it prompted me to ferret about for my own ancient Prag VEC single, in breathless anticipation of its rosily-recalled excitements. But I’d lost … Continue reading
Post Punk Liverpool: Ten Tales of Tea Shop Delirium.
1976. An eccentrically creative theatre director, Ken Campbell, has chanced upon Robert Anton Wilson’s “Illuminatus!,” a brain-tangling trilogy of novels examining colossal conspiracy theory in minute detail. It strikes Campbell as ideal for theatrical adaptation, and it becomes the source text for an imminent production. He puts the idea to a local set designer, Bill … Continue reading
Ten Ineffable New Orleans Delights
A friend once confided in me that she led a jazzless life, and that she was beginning to wonder if she simply had no soul. Or maybe I was the one who told her that she led a jazzless life, it’s been known. Either way, the remedial compilation CDs I tried to put together presented … Continue reading
The Ordure Of The Day
Does anything in our shopping basket recycle its own ordure quite as romantically as wine does? While other items find their way to the shops via the path of purity, the wine route demands wellingtons, and its shelves present us with a whole glossary of evocative terms which ultimately tell us that we want this … Continue reading
How Many Albert Ayler Albums Does One Man Actually Need?
A quick flick through the pile tells me I need seventeen. Hang on, are we including the box set? Twenty-six it is, then! Sorry? Oh, “actually need?” That’s different from “has hoarded,” is it? Hmm, don’t like the sound of this… You’d think either figure would offer a more than reasonable grasp of the achievements … Continue reading
Do Bagpipes Belong In Jazz?
Sonny Rollins and his band are being filmed playing Ronnie Scotts in 1974. As Sonny introduces Swing Low Sweet Chariot with a brief tenor solo, the camera moves to the man who until now has been playing soprano sax. He is wearing a small white headscarf, a voluminous yellow shirt, a black leather waistcoat, a … Continue reading
Charleston Champions vs. Chiswick Chartbusters (Part One).
Two compilation CDs, inadvertently played back to back, struck me as more than vaguely similar. One was of music from the 1920s, the other the 1970s, and each reflected a time when popular music was in a state of flux, courtesy of jazz and punk rock. Both of these genres, of course, were frantically energetic … Continue reading
Why The World Needs The Liverpool International Jazz Festival
What musical advantage do Kirkcudbright, Tenby and Nantwich have over Liverpool? What is the seventh string which these and other towns have, which Liverpool doesn’t? A Fab Five, a Crucial Four, Three Tribes or Seventeen Tambourines? No. What they have is an annual jazz festival. It has long been a source of discomfort for Liverpudlian … Continue reading
