“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
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
How Art Pepper’s “Smack Up” LP Will Turn You Into A Lifelong Jazz Lover. Probably.
A regular reader, one Dave Gillespie, presented me with a common complaint. He said that much as he enjoyed listening to jazz, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was trying to crack a code, that there was a language being spoken in some of the music to which he was not privy. And let’s … Continue reading
“The Bollocks” To Be Minded At All Costs
How daft do we think people are..? There’s been much discussion lately about “de-mystifying” wine: does the traditional wine vocabulary still have any great relevance, or does it merely obfuscate; does it deter people from the specialist shops; did it ever make a ha’porth of sense, anyway? You know the sort of thing. But has … Continue reading
