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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

17346 (and counting) posts since we started blogging 16 years ago. 630 of them this year alone and, so far, 35 this month (Sept. 11).

From This Moment On ...

September

Sat 14: Jeff Barnhart’s Silent Film Fest @ St Augustine's Parish Centre, Darlington. 12:30pm. Darlington New Orleans Jazz Club.
Sat 14: Customs House Big Band w. Ruth Lambert @ St Paul’s Centre, St Paul’s Gardens, Spennymoor DL16 7LR. 7:00pm (6:45pm doors). Tickets £10.00. from the venue or tel: 01388 813404. A ‘BYOB’ event.
Sat 14: Emma Wilson @ Claypath Deli, Durham. 7:00pm. £12.00. Acoustic blues.
Sat 14: Rat Pack - Swingin’ at the Sands @ Billingham Forum. 7:30pm.

Sun 15: 4B @ The Ticket Office, Whitley Bay. 3:00pm. Free.
Sun 15: Jude Murphy, Steve Chambers & Sid White @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 7:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.
Sun 15: Tweed River Jazz Band @ Barrels Ale House, Berwick-upon-Tweed. 7:00pm. Free.
Sun 15: Panharmonia @ The Globe, Newcastle. 8:00pm.

Mon 16: Swing Manouche @ Yamaha Music School, Blyth. 1:00pm. £9.00.
Mon 16: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Mon 16: John Hallam with the James Birkett Trio @ The Black Bull, Blaydon. 8:00pm. £10.00. A Blaydon Jazz Club 40th anniversary concert!

Tue 17: Vieux Carré Hot 4 @ The Victoria & Albert Inn, Seaton Delaval. 12:30pm. £13.00. Tel: 0191 237 3697. ‘Indian Summer Afternoon Tea’.
Tue 17: Jam session @ The Black Swan, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free. House trio: Joe Steels (guitar); Paul Grainger (double bass); Abbie Finn (drums).

Wed 18: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Wed 18: Darlington Big Band @ Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mills Social Club, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free. Rehearsal session (open to the public).
Wed 18: Take it to the Bridge @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free.
Wed 18: Hot Club of Heaton @ Elder Beer, Heaton, Newcastle. 8:00pm. A ‘third Wednesday in the month’ session.

Thu 19: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, North Tyneside. 1:00pm. Free.
Thu 19: Merlin Roxby @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Ragtime piano. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.
Thu 19: Tees Hot Club @ Dorman’s Club, Middlesborough. 8:30pm. Free. THC with guests Kevin Eland, Dan Johnson, Jeremy McMurray, Ron Smith.

Fri 20: Lindsay Hannon’s Tom Waits for No Man @ Gala Theatre, Durham. 1:00pm. £8.00.
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.

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Echoes Magazine Celebrates its 40th Anniversary

Russell posed the following questions to magazine editor Chris Wells:
Q: If our [Bebop Spoken Here] memory serves, Echoes started out as a tabloid-sized newspaper with the reader ending up with messy fingers from the news print!
Tell me about it! I bought the very first copy as a spotty teenager [and soul fan] up in York, and have had filthy fingers ever since. Actually, I’ve been up in the loft this past month… er, I mean, sifting through the extensive Echoes archive, and the memories [of grubby finger-ends] came flooding back. But we’ve been a glossy monthly since 2000 and, of course, we have a lovely website: echoesmagazine.co.uk, now. Very modern. 
Q: What was your initial motivation forty years ago? 
Money. Well, it was for the guys who started it – two magazine publishers who spotted a hole in the market for a kind of ‘NME of black music’. They were not fans of the music, even though the writers were. Soul, funk and reggae were all over the pop charts back then and they thought a weekly paper would be more instant than any of the competitors, which were then fortnightly and monthly.
That’s not why I got involved back in ’84 however – I gave up a career in the law to have some fun and let my hobby become my job. Haven’t worked a day since. 
Q: Then, the paper had an underground street feel to it. When it changed to a glossier, ‘professional’ publication did the readership demographic change? 
Not much, no.  We still have a load of readers from the eighties and nineties – they write us letters about how it used to be green fields round here, all the time. The difference between then and now as a publication is that, then it was instant, newsy and a fish & chip wrapper within days, whereas, since it’s been a mag, I’ve gone for us being a more grown-up, intelligent [I hope] take on black music across a wider spread [we were here when hip-hop was born, for example]. It’s actually loosely based on the old Black Music magazine that IPC used to put out in the mid-seventies, which was by far my favourite mag as a young ‘un.
Q: Echoes has always promoted soul music and other related genres. Jazz and its various hyphenated offshoots – jazz-funk, acid-jazz etc – feature regularly. In editorial meetings does it (jazz) have to fight for space in each issue?
Everything has to fight for its space. We only have a limited number of pages and we split the coverage roughly equally between soul, R&B, reggae, hip-hop and jazz [with news at the front, reviews at the back, plus a bit of Northern soul]. I’m actually a massive jazz fan myself [old and new], although I let our main jazz guy [and Dep Ed] Kevin Le Gendre do most of the big features, simply because I can’t do everything, and, of course, he’s a great writer on the subject. 
Q: A cursory glance at recent front covers shows that, from time to time. major jazz artists take pride of place – Cécile McLorin Salvant (Aug 2015), David Sanborn (Apr 2015), Gregory Porter (Sep 2013). Do circulation figures hold up when the great jazz names appear on the front cover? Is it a risk?
Doesn’t seem to make any difference, really. Our readership is incredibly loyal – never goes down, hardly ever goes up. We need to change that last bit. Must make a note.
Q: Forty years! Michael Jackson, the stellar name. Any names – jazz or otherwise – Bebop Spoken Here should be checking out in future?
Well, bearing in mind who’s asking, we currently love Jarrod Lawson, Kamasi Washington and Laura Perrudin. Oh, and over in sort-of souly world, a trio called King. But there are new, mostly indie artists popping the whole time. It keeps us very happy. 
Q: Talking of the future – Print or Online or both?
Both. Our print model still works – just us and Private Eye, then! But we do plan to expand the website and do a lot more there this year. Being old farts – old farts with a mag that still pays its bills, mind – we weren’t the quickest or the most enthusiastic to embrace social media, but we’re getting there. So we’ll be doing that too. Honestly.
Chris Wells.
Editor Echoes Magazine.

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