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Bebop Spoken There

Spasmo Brown: “Jazz is an ice cream sandwich! It's the Fourth of July! It's a girl with a waterbed!”. (Syncopated Times, July, 2024).

The Things They Say!

Hudson Music: Lance's "Bebop Spoken Here" is one of the heaviest and most influential jazz blogs in the UK.

Rupert Burley (Dynamic Agency): "BSH just goes from strength to strength".

'606' Club: "A toast to Lance Liddle of the terrific jazz blog 'Bebop Spoken Here'"

The Strictly Smokin' Big Band included Be Bop Spoken Here (sic) in their 5 Favourite Jazz Blogs.

Ann Braithwaite (Braithwaite & Katz Communications) You’re the BEST!

Holly Cooper, Mouthpiece Music: "Lance writes pull quotes like no one else!"

Simon Spillett: A lovely review from the dean of jazz bloggers, Lance Liddle...

Josh Weir: I love the writing on bebop spoken here... I think the work you are doing is amazing.

Postage

17372 (and counting) posts since we started blogging 16 years ago. 656 of them this year alone and, so far, 61 this month (Sept. 17).

From This Moment On ...

September

Fri 20: Lindsay Hannon’s Tom Waits for No Man @ Gala Theatre, Durham. 1:00pm. £8.00. SOLD OUT!
Fri 20: Rob Hall & Chick Lyall @ The Lit & Phil, Newcastle. 1:00pm. Free (donations). SOLD OUT!
Fri 20: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 20: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 20: New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band @ The Oxbridge Hotel, Stockton. 1:00pm. £5.00.
Fri 20: Leeway @ 1719, Hendon, Sunderland. 7:30pm. The Old Black Cat Jazz Club. CANCELLED!
Fri 20: Gaz Hughes Trio @ Traveller’s Rest, Darlington. 8:00pm. Opus 4 Jazz Club.

Sat 21: Jason Isaacs @ Seaburn STACK, Seaburn. 1:00-2:45pm. Free.
Sat 21: Vieux Carré Hot Four @ The Beehive, Hartley Lane, Earsdon Whitley Bay NE25 0SZ. 4:30pm-6:30pm.
Sat 21: Baghdaddies @ Two by Two, Albion Row, Byker, Newcastle NE6 1RQ. 6:00pm.
Sat 21: Milne-Glendinning Band @ The Northumberland Club, Jesmond, Newcastle. 7:00pm. SOLD OUT!
Sat 21: Jude Murphy & Alan Law @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.

Sun 22: More Jam @ The Globe, Newcastle. 2:00pm. Free.
Sun 22: Jason Isaacs @ St James’ STACK, Newcastle. 2:30-4:30pm. Free.
Sun 22: Dulcie May Moreno Quartet @ Queen’s Hall, Hexham. 3:00pm.
Sun 22: 4B @ The Ticket Office, Whitley Bay. 3:00pm. Free.
Sun 22: Richard Herdman @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 7:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.
Sun 22: Remy CB Band @ Blues Underground, Nelson St., Newcastle. 8:30pm. Free. Remi, 2024 Newcastle Uni graduate, superb soul/blues voice!

Mon 23: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Mon 23: Paul Booth with the Paul Edis Trio @ The Black Bull, Blaydon. 8:00pm. £10.00. A Blaydon Jazz Club 40th anniversary concert! SOLD OUT!

Tue 24: Dulcie May Moreno Quartet @ Newcastle House Hotel, Rothbury. 7:30pm. £12.00. (£10.00. adv. from Tully’s of Rothbury). Coquetdale Jazz.
Tue 24: Sarah Gillespie @ The Cluny, Newcastle. 7:30pm (doors). £16.50. Duo performance with Chris Montague.

Wed 25: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Wed 25: Darlington Big Band @ Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mills Social Club, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free. Rehearsal session (open to the public).
Wed 25: Take it to the Bridge @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free.
Wed 25: Moonlight Serenade Orchestra UK: Glenn Miller & Big Band Spectacular @ Middlesbrough Theatre. 7:30pm.

Thu 26: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, North Tyneside. 1:00pm. Free.
Thu 26: Gateshead Jazz Appreciation Society @ Brunswick Methodist Church, Newcastle NE1 7BJ. 2:00pm. £4.00. ‘Contemporary Jazz & the Piano’.
Thu 26: The New 58 Jazz Collective @ Hops & Cheese, Hartlepool. 7:30pm. Free.
Thu 26: Jo Harrop & Friends @ Hexham Abbey. 8:00pm. ‘An Evening with Jo Harrop & Friends’. A Hexham Abbey Festival of Music & Arts event. £20.00., £5.00. child/student.
Thu 26: Neil Yates & Tom Remon @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.
Thu 26: Loco House Band @ Bar Loco, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Free.
Thu 26: Tees Hot Club @ Dorma’s Club, Middlesborough. 8:30pm. Free. Mark Toomey, Neil Brodie, Graham Thompson, Adrian Beadnell.

Monday, September 22, 2014

Jazz North East & Splinter @ the Bridge present The Dors. Sunday Sept. 22

Christophe de Bezenac (sax & electronics); Chris Sharkey (guitar); Eve Risser (keyboards & vocals); Yuko Oshima (drums); Paul Miller (audiovisual projections).
(Review by Steve H/photo courtesy of Ken Drew.)
A jazz hating friend of mine has just visited New Orleans where he encountered the music in its birth place and seemed to thoroughly enjoy the experience. I patronizingly informed him that the sort of Jazz he was listening to belonged  in a museum. Quite where Sunday night’s performance at The Bridge Hotel ‘belonged’ to was anybody’s guess.
The upstairs room was kitted out in such a way as to resemble a cross between Miss Haversham’s  dining room and a venue for an early Halloween party. The room was in darkness and suspended from the ceiling in various strategic places were white drapes which were used as multiple screens to display the  dazzling audiovisual  art of Paul Miller. The stage itself looked like a section of the control room at  the Cern Hadron Collider  littered  with   computers, keyboards and miles of cables. The band took the stage and proceeded to perform an unbroken set of manic electronic experimental music accompanied by a kaleidoscopic interactive light show. Keyboards, vocals, saxophone and guitar were all embedded in a constant computerized whirlpool of beats and sci fi effects. The brutal and ferocious drumming of Oshima was a particular highlight. Personally, I feel this type of music would be far more appropriate if staged at somewhere like The Tusk  festival (held next month at The Star and Shadow in Newcastle http://tuskfestival.com/). It was an exhilarating experience but I am not entirely convinced that I was attending a jazz gig. Do four musicians frantically improvising primarily with electricity constitute jazz no matter what the eventual output sounds like ? As a piece of modern performance art it was commendable but for those attending with no prior knowledge of what to expect it may have left them at best bemused and at worst misled. This gig really did push the boundaries even of this most eclectic  art form.  Perhaps if it had been billed as Frankensteinian Punk Jazz meets Kraftwerk Electronica no one could have complained if it didn’t quite transport them form Newcastle  to New Orleans 
Steve H.

1 comment :

Russell said...

Great review Steve. One thing rankles...your suggestion that New Orleans jazz resides in museums. No it doesn't, it is alive and well, played all over the world from Preservation Hall to the Oxbridge Hotel in Stockton on Tees (the New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band, Thursday nights). Is swing dead? Nope - you should have been at Hoochie Coochie on Sunday. Is bop dead? Nope - Jazz Café last Friday. Is free jazz dead. Nope - it just smells funny. Jazz Lives!

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