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Wishbone Ash UK tour ahoy

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Yes, it’s nearly that time of the year again: Wishbone Ash’s annual UK tour. Begins on October 16, ends a month later in Clithero. I’m going to a couple of the Yorkshire shows. A link to the dates is herein.

I don’t know any secret info but Andy has hinted that with the US/UK exchange rate as it is, UK tours are no longer guaranteed. If you live in the Uk and fancy catching the Ash, I wouldn’t leave it till next time if I were you.

Here are the chaps last week in America:

http://wishboneash.com/tourdates/

http://wishboneash.com/tourdates/

Atomic Rooster 2016: who saw that coming?

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I’m amazed – and delighted – to see that there is a new incarnation of the mighty Atomic Rooster treading the boards. Founder Vincent Crane passed on in 1989 and there are some who would say that John Cann (guitar/vocal) and Paul Hammond (drums) – both also now deceased – were his definitive cohorts. Respectfully, I disagree.

I’ve always thought Pete French, vocalist on 1971 LP ‘In Hearing Of’ (the third of their five original-era albums) and on the US single version of ‘Devil’s Answer’ was by far their best vocalist – out of several (the others being Nick Graham, John Cann, Chris Farlowe, and Crane himself). Steve Bolton was the guitarist who replaced Cann in 1971, shortly after Cann had recorded the guitar parts for ‘In Hearing Off’. Bolton toured with the Pete French line-up and then, when Vince replaced French with Chris Farlowe, he (Bolton) played on the splendid ‘Made In England’ and toured with the Farlowe album, though departing before the fifth LP ‘Nice’n’Greasy’.

Some may recall Bolton from playing lead guitar on The Who’s 1989 tour and ‘Join Together’ live album, but what he’s been up to since then, I have no isea. French has done » Continue Reading.

Sharks Revival: Chris Spedding Speaks

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Colin H on Sharks

Wikipedia will tell you that Sharks – formed by Andy Fraser shortly after leaving Free – spanned October 1972 to October 1974, recording three albums for Island Records: ‘First Water’ (1973); ‘Jab It in Yore Eye’ (1974); and the unreleased ‘Music Breakout’. The two constant members were Chris Spedding on guitar and Steve Parsons on vocals.

Steve and Chris created a new album as the Sharks in the mid-90s, released as ‘Like a Black Van Parked on a Dark Curve’ in 1998, but both were involved in other things at the time: Steve wheeler-dealering behind celluloid scenes, Chris sessioneering and rocking in the USA (where he lived between 1978-2006).

Released in a couple of weeks, ‘Killers of the Deep’ is the new Sharks album, featuring Chris and Steve, with 1973-74 keyboardist Nick Judd also on board for those who crave added authenticity, plus Pistols drummer Paul Cook and bassist Toshi Ogawa. They’ll be doing gigs too. This time, they mean business…

I called Chris a couple of days ago to ask about one of his 1970 British jazz connections for another project, but I thought the AW might like to hear about the new Sharks project. » Continue Reading.

THE SIMON SPILLETT QUARTET play the music of TUBBY HAYES @ Ronnie Scott’s Sunday October 2nd 2016

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02/10/2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u5fybbD_CI

Text from Press Release:

Hot on the heels of the coveted award of a Blue Plaque on his childhood home in South-West London, Tubby Hayes is again being celebrated at his musical “spiritual home” Ronnie Scott’s Club in London.

Hayes’ association with Scott went back to the early 1950s and moved onwards through their dynamic partnership in The Jazz Couriers from 1957 to 1959. When Scott opened his own venue in Gerrard Street, Hayes was the natural choice to top the bill, and from the mid-1960s until the spring of 1973, barely a few weeks before his untimely death, Hayes’ various quartets, quintets and big bands frequently graced the Scott clubs Frith Street bandstand.

Headed by Hayes’ authority and award-winning tenor saxophonist (and author of the multi-award-nominated biography The Long Shadow of The Little Giant: The Music, Life and Legacy of Tubby Hayes), the October 2nd lunchtime performance promises to be a whistle-stop tour through some of Hayes’ best known compositions, taken from such albums as Tubby’s Groove, Tubbs in NY, Mexican Green, Late Spot at Scott’s and The Jazz Couriers in Concert, with everything tied together by Spillett’s dryly humorous, anecdote-packed introductions.

Tubby Hayes: Blue Plaque

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Little Giant Gets The Blue Plaque Treatment At Last

Tubby Hayes, London’s very own Jazz Legend, has at last been awarded the coveted Blue Plaque treatment. On Wednesday August 31st 2016, a small crowd gathered at 34 Kenwyn Road, SW20, now the home of David and Maureen, to witness Tubby’s son Richard unveil a Heritage Foundation plaque in honour of his father, who lived in the house from 1936 to 1951.

There have been mooted plans for such an award for some years, all of which had come to nothing, but the Heritage Foundation’s interest was piqued by writer and film-maker Mark Baxter, mastermind behind the recent documentary film Tubby Hayes: A Man In A Hurry (Mono Media Films, 2015). The Foundation have previously honoured pop and rock icons including Beatles’ John Lennon and George Harrison and Dusty Springfield, among others. Thanks to Baxter’s dedication and belief, the plaque for Hayes marks their first award to a jazz legend.

Those who attended the unveiling included the director of A Man In A Hurry, celebrated film-maker Lee Cogswell and long-time Hayes’ champion, saxophonist Simon Spillett, » Continue Reading.

Johnny C’s ‘Sus chords: time for a reappraisal’ thread

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No doubt non musos around here were baffled by Johnny C’s recent reference to ‘sus chords’. I don’t use the phrase myself (they’re suspended chords), but Australians (Aussies) are big on abbreviations (abbrevos?) e.g. barbies, tinnies, ‘this arvo’, etc…

So, having kicked the jargon into touch, let this man – ironically, an Australian – explain what such chords are and give examples. He does so very well. Once your brain has assimilated what they sound like, let us hear any great, or better still unusual, examples of the suspended chord in music.

Caveat: I’m banning all examples from The Who and U2 otherwise there’d be no room for anyone else.

I’ll allow the ‘honorary suspended chord’, the greatest example of which is probably ‘Alright Now’, which goes from A to a sort of D, but the sort of D sounds like a sort of A sus4.

Over to you…

Start saving up now: 32 CD 1969-90 Wishbone Ash box set ahoy

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Andy Powell announces a long-gestating Wishbone Ash ‘vintage years’ 32CD set, planned for next year via Madfish, the people behind those enormo-boxes on Family, Pretty Things, Ian Hunter, Streetwalkers, et al. For those who insist that Wishbone Ash can only be either the four original members or the Mk2 one that lasted into the early 80s, there should be no angst here – it will cover those line-ups plus the WA Mk1 reunion period from 1988-90. (I wonder will it cover the lesser-known era in between Mk2 and the Mk1 reunion? Must ask Mr P…)

I don’t believe it will feature BBC material or DVD content, but expect lots of unreleased takes from album sessions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQP_Jr8DWNg

http://wishboneash.com/blog/post/ash_flash/

Blimey – 50+ mins of live Pentangle, 1968

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This has appeared out of the blue. Who knew? Over 50 minutes of prime ‘Sweet Child’ era Pentangle filmed with great sound by NRK (Norway).

The full concert is here (see link in this post) and comprises:

The Time Has Come Mirage A Woman Like You (Bert) Turn Your Money Green (Jacqui & John) Hear My Call Haiaitian Fight Song (Danny) Let No Man Steal Your Thyme Bells Bruton Town

Two further pieces from the same performance (at Oslo University, May 1968) are featured here: https://tv.nrk.no/serie/visefestival-i-kroa/FBUA07005968/19-07-1968

Travelling Song Pentangling

https://tv.nrk.no/serie/visefestival-i-kroa/FBUA07005768/07-06-1968

Jethro Tull: Stand Up – remix edition news leaks out…

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It’s not official yet, but someone over on Steve Hoffman’s forum has come up with this info, with a Nov. 18 release date:

2CD + DVD The Elevated Edition – Limited

CD 1 (All stereo remixes by Steven Wilson)

1- A New Day Yesterday 2- Jeffrey Goes To Leicester Square 3- Bouree 4- Back To The Family 5- Look Into The Sun 6- Nothing Is Easy 7- Fat Man 8- We Used To Know 9- Reasons For Waiting 10- For A Thousand Mothers

Associated Recordings 11- Living In The Past 12- Driving Song 13- Bouree (Morgan version)

Previously unreleased Original 1969 stereo single mixes Only released in Japan and on a US FM radio promo 14- Living In The Past (stereo) 15- Driving Song (stereo)

BBC Sessions Mono, previously released on the 2010 Collector’s Edition 16- A New Day Yesterday 17- Fat Man 18- Nothing Is Easy 19- Bouree

CD 2: Live at The Stockholm Konserthuset 9th January 1969 1- Introduction 2- My Sunday Feeling 3- Martin’s Tune 4- To Be Sad Is A Mad Way To Be 5- Back To The Family 6- Dharma For One 7- Nothing Is Easy 8- A Song For Jeffrey 9- To Be Sad » Continue Reading.

Perth, City of Culture contender – surely some mistake?

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This is baffling. I wonder do any of our North Briton brethren have any views? I’ve stayed in Perth a few times (I have a friend who lives there) and it’s the equivalent to Armagh. in NI, in that ALMOST NOTHING stays open after 5.30pm. The place iis desolate. A huge middle-class town with a nice, compact pedestrianised central area where absolutely nobody goes out.

Last time I was there me and Mrs H were among 4 people in a perfectly good restaurant, early evening, sunny day, with enough tables for 80 people. The other two people were parents of one of the waitresses. We ended up going to the pub with them afterwards, wondering what on earth was wrong with the town. And they lived there.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-37123369

Alexis Korner sends shockwaves through Johnny C’s world

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I came across a 1978 MM interview with British blues godfather Alexis Korner recently and thought this quote might kick off an interesting discussion…

AK: ‘You have to keep moving and good music is always fluid music. that’s what I objected to in the Blues Boom (68-69). I objected to the 12-bars and five BB King licks as being the badge of the bluesman. That’s why I left the scene – there was far more to it than that. What about field hollers, work songs, gospel? It wasn’t down to 12 bars and three chords, and that’s why I split in 68. It had become a very bad joke and I didn’t want to be part of that movement I’d sooner play with jazz musicians who have a blues feel.’

So, @Johnny_Concheroo – what do say? Do you concede that, one or two original talents aside, a huge splodge of the British blues boom were meat & potatoes three-chord merchants with five or six borrowed licks? Or was Alexis missing something that ‘the kids’ were getting?

Attached is a great clip from German TV in 1978, featuring Alexis doing his kind of blues, then The Pirates, Dr Feelgood and Chicken » Continue Reading.

RIP Louis Stewart

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Farwell to the godfather of Irish modern jazz on the international stage. Briefly a member of Tubby Hayes’ Quartet in the 60s, then a long-time accompanist of Ronnie Scott. I only saw him perform once, at Bookshop Dave’s in Belfast, but he was a master – and a gentle soul with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AsZTOjDKXc

http://www.rte.ie/entertainment/2016/0820/810697-irish-jazz-musician-louis-stewart/

The Long Shadow of the Little Giant: The Life, Work and Legacy of Tubby Hayes

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Author:Simon Spillett

Simon Spillett is an acclaimed British saxophonist in his 40s who first encountered Tubby Hayes, his once dominant, widely-known British tenor sax/flute/vibes modern jazz forebear, on a mid-80s rebroadcast of a 1965 ‘Jazz 625’ episode featuring Hayes’ occasional big band. Tubby had died, aged 38 – from a combination of a heart valve problem and an excessive lifestyle of ‘addictive tendencies’ that had effectively reduced his body’s ability to recover from two heart operations – and by the mid-80s, despite being a figure of legend in the British jazz world, almost none of his many recordings were in print.

As time went on, Spillett wondered why nobody had written a biography of not only so important but so widely documented a musician but so richly colourful a figure. Summing up the key aspects of Tubby’s legacy at the end of this superbly researched and concisely, even-handedly and beautifully written book, Spillett suggests that one such is a ‘can-do’ attitude ‘from which we can still learn much of value’. He quotes Tubbs himself on this, from 1963, the point at which his seemingly inexorable progress – and with it the aspirations of the whole British modern jazz community – » Continue Reading.

Séamus Ennis & ‘As I Roved Out’, BBC Radio 1953-58

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Colin H on Seamus Ennis

I was researching a Dave Swarbrick CD note essay recently and came across a 1980 ‘Melody Maker’ interview with Seamus Ennis (1919-82), one of the godfathers of uilleann piping, ahead of what was to be his last visit to Britain (playing the Albert Hall with a host of younger musicians in an Irish-themed festival). Séamus had become something close to a household name in Britain during the 1950s, thanks to his extensive BBC radio (and some television) appearances – as musical pundit, presenter, musician, actor and storyteller. The 1980 interview was by Karl Dallas, who had known Seamus since the 50s and was himself coming to the end of his time at the ‘MM’.

Karl passed on a few weeks ago. I dedicated my book on the British folk revival to him back in 2000. He thanked me but couldn’t see why. It’s because he, like a handful of other writers back in the day, went extra miles in giving historians something really substantial to work with decades later on.

Somehow I missed his interview with Séamus when I was working on my book with John McSherry on uilleann piping in 2014-15. My last » Continue Reading.

John Rebourn, Faro Annie (1971)

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Colin H on Faro Annie

I was searching for something else on back-up disc today and came across a sleevenote for an early 90s reissue of one of the least-known but, in my view, the best of John Renbourn’s album’s, 1971’s ‘Faro Annie’. I see from amazon that even the reissue CD is now rare. You might as well find the original vinyl, though there’s a download available. I’ve tweaked the text slightly. Here it is, just because it’s a bit of buried treasure once again.

FARO ANNIE

With a contractual situation which had recently become weighted against them, the members of the Pentangle – formed in 1967 and slowly progressing to a dissolution in the early weeks of 1973 – had known and accepted that their 1971 album Reflection, recorded in March and released in October of that year, was to be their last album for Transatlantic. But it was not quite the last from the Pentangle family. That honour goes to lead guitarist John Renbourn’s Faro Annie, recorded around August 1971 and released on 14 January 1972. While some in the group were gnashing their teeth and looking for someone to blame – manager Jo Lustig and label » Continue Reading.

A late 60s Brit legend that might be unfamiliar to most…

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I’ve been discovering the late 60s music of the late Graham Collier recently, and it’s sensational. Here’s a track from 1969’s ‘Down Another Road’ by his septet that sailed pretty close to jazz-rock – but it swings! The drum solo is outstanding.

I have a feeling that they may even have passed Johnny C by at the time (their image didn’t scream ‘cool’), but if so, I’d say he missed out…

And am I along in hearing a pre-echo of ‘Walk The Dinosaur’ in here?

1972 Light Entertainment at its best!

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Yes, the format seems implausibly glossy and cheesy at this remove, and we wonder how the world could ever have been this way, and yet, and yet… there’s something rather fun and uncomplicated about this episode of LWT Light Ent show ‘2Gs & the Pop People’.

A terrific Heads, Hands & Feet performance, Sandie Show being great in one song and outrageously camp and un-PC in the next, Scott Walker being Scott Walker (before he startet making records to annoy people), Mike Raven being… well, beyond camp, and a lot of brightly coloured people (the 2Gs) jigging about. Oh, and some woman covering a Sandie Shaw song… when the real Sandie Shaw is actually on the show. Curious…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyv1SZ5mMMA

New Celeste: A Perfect Sky

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About 500 years ago I reviewed an album in a national publication by a Scottish band called New Celeste. I knew nothing about them at the time and never delved further afterwards – but I recall it as a really cool, slinky, wry, unobtrusively sophisticated record. I think it was a mid 90s comeback after a 70s/80s career. I should dig it out and remind myself…

I mention all this because Chief of the Celestial ones Iain Fergus got in touch earlier today to say hello and to say that his band have got another of those (comeback?) albums on the way. It’s called ‘A Perfect Sky’ and nowadays I don’t need to labour over another painstaking 160 word review: I can simply post the press release and point to a youtube audio sampler. Enjoy!

PERFECT SKY PRESS RELEASE

Seven albums in and there’s still no predicting what New Celeste will conjure next. You could quite easily be forgiven if you follow the inevitable Celtic rock label that’s so often hung round their neck by the unthinking or the even more confused, generic folk rock. All of which hint at but could never define a band that’s defied expectation » Continue Reading.

The World’s First John McLaughlin Interview (probably): March 1963

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Colin H on John McLaughlin

Back in February Christopher Hjort very kindly got in touch with me, as a John McLaughlin biographer, to share a photo of something remarkable that he had stumbled upon while doing research on unrelated matters at the British Library.

There, in the Wandsworth Advertiser edition of 22 March 1963, writer uncredited, was what is almost certainly the world’s first interview with John McLaughlin – along with what are (outside of a few in Georgie Fame’s own collection, uncirculated) the only known photos of John during his time with the Blues Flames. The full text of that piece appears below, but first some scene-setting…

Photos of McLaughlin in the 50s/60s are incredibly rare. There is one publicity shot with Big Pete Deuchar’s Professors of Ragtime (circa 1958/59), reproduced in Walter Kolosky’s ‘Power, Passion and Beauty: The Story of the Legendary Mahavishnu Orchestra’ (http://www.walterkolosky.com/); there is a stunning set of live shots with the Graham Bond Quartet from his April-September 1963 tenure with them, taken by future psychedelic scenester John Hopkins (but sadly priced out of the market for license at the time I wrote ‘Bathed In Lightning: John McLaughlin, the 60s and the Emerald Beyond’, » Continue Reading.