Cultural change was in the air in the 1960s – and a host of young British jazz musicians seized their opportunity. They began to challenge the orthodoxy that British jazz was the lesser cousin of the Americans, that home-brewed musicians were second rate. The musicians began to develop their own techniques, looked to other musical styles for inspiration, and drew into their ranks players from around the world. Musicians such as saxophonist John Surman and guitarist John McLaughlin came of age; composers Mike Westbrook and Michael Garrick, among others, brought new ideas to the table; players and composers from the Caribbean, India and southern Africa inspired cross-cultural collaboration; and the far greater popularity and reach of rock music was no longer seen as a threat but as a source of inspiration.

‘A New Awakening: Adventures in British Jazz 1966 – 1971,’ a triple-CD compilation from Cherry Red, charts these ‘exciting and revolutionary times’, when, as the blurb says, ‘musical boundaries were stretched or ignored and new identities forged’. It does a good job.

The usual suspects are covered by the compilation’s 48 tracks, including Graham Collier, Mike Westbrook, Tubby Hayes, Michael Garrick, Mike Gibbs, John Surman, Mike Osborne and John » Continue Reading.

I have just seen some clickbait about JK Rowling’s first line of ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ being voted the best ever (“Mr and Mrs Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much”). Whatever. I have, though, often mused over which was the best opening paragraph I have read in any book. So far, it is this one, from Jack London’s ‘White Fang’:

“Dark spruce forest frowned on either side of the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean toward each other, black and ominous in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness – a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at » Continue Reading.

Naomi Watts is given belated praise for her acting in Mulholland Drive in this list of great performances that never won an Oscar. Rightly so, in my opinion. Scarlett Johansson’s performance in Lost in Translation is another. An actress that unjustly did not win an Oscar for Best Actress was Margot Robbie for her role in I, Tonya (although she was nominated and so does not qualify for this list). Life is just not fair.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/23/and-the-oscar-nomination-doesnt-go-to-20-great-performances-snubbed-by-the-academy

The Tour de France gets underway in a few weeks and, as ever, there will be countless thrills and spills over the 22 days the race crosses Spain and France. I only got into watching the tour about four years ago but now view it compulsively; it is a race that gets more fascinating the more you know about it. And there cannot be many more exciting sights in sport than the peloton chasing down a breakaway group, overtaking it and then spitting out the exhausted breakaway cyclists just yards before the finish line. Amazing.

Ahead of the tour there is a great eight-part series on Netflix called Tour de France: Unchained. It gets behind the scenes of the 2022 race and includes excellent interviews with cyclists and team managers etc – as well as unusual footage of the race itself. (In part three there is a five-second clip where a young boy and his mother/grandmother are silhouetted in the foreground as the peloton speeds past in, literally, a blur – and the kid holds on to his hat. Classic.)

I love songs where cultures collide, resulting in something unexpected or fun or new or even weird. This is the Cambodian Space Project’s take on Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra’s Summer Wine. The video is not up to scratch but the song is great. Any more suggestions?