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Bebop Spoken There

Kurt Elling: ''There's something to learn from every musician you play with''. (DownBeat, December 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

17630 (and counting) posts since we started blogging 16 years ago. 904 of them this year alone and, so far, 49 this month (Dec. 20).

From This Moment On ...

December

Fri 20: Edison Herbert Trio @ The Lit & Phil, Newcastle. 1:00pm. 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: Jason Isaacs @ St. James’ STACK, Newcastle. 1:00-3:00pm. Free. Vocalist Isaacs working with backing tapes.
Fri 20: Baghdaddies @ Cobalt Studios, Newcastle. 7:00pm. SOLD OUT!
Fri 20: Smokin’ Spitfires @ Platform 1, East Bedlington Community Centre. 7:00pm.
Fri 20: Pete Tanton’s Christmas @ 1719, Hendon, Sunderland. 7:30pm. CANCELLED!
Fri 20: Alligator Gumbo @ Saltburn Community Hall. 7:30pm. SOLD OUT!
Fri 20: Abbie Finn’s Finntet @ The Traveller’s Rest, Darlington. 8:00pm. Opus 4 Jazz Club.
Fri 20: Brass Fiesta @ Revoluçion de Cuba, Newcastle. 10:30pm. Free.

Sat 21: Lindsay Hannon Quartet @ Central Bar, Gateshead. 2:00pm. £15.00. ‘Swinging with Christmas Songs’.
Sat 21: Jason Isaacs @ Seaburn STACK, Seaburn. 3:30-5:30pm. Free. Vocalist Isaacs working with backing tapes.
Sat 21: Jackson’s Wharf Xmas Party @ Jackson’s Wharf, Hartlepool. 7:00pm. Free. Featuring the New ’58 Jazz Collective.
Sat 21: Brass Fiesta @ Revoluçion de Cuba, Newcastle. 10:30pm. Free.

Sun 22: Hot Club du Nord @ The Globe, Newcastle. 1:00pm. £15.00. + bf. Xmas party. SOLD OUT!
Sun 22: Red Kites Jazz @ Gibside Chapel, nr. Rowlands Gill. 1:00pm. Admission charge applies.
Sun 22: Paul Skerritt @ Hibou Blanc, Newcastle. 2:00pm. Free. Vocalist Skerritt working with backing tapes.
Sun 22: Ruth Lambert Trio @ The Juke Shed, Union Quay, North Shields. 3:00pm. Free.
Sun 22: 4B @ The Ticket Office, Whitley Bay. 3:00pm. Free.
Sun 22: Revolutionaires @ Tyne Bar, Ouseburn, Newcastle. 4:00pm. Free. Superb rhythm & blues outfit.
Sun 22: Laurence Harrison, Paul Grainger & Mark Robertson @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 7:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig. Line-up TBC.
Sun 22: The Globe Xmas Party @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:00pm. Free. Live music (musicians TBC).
Sun 22: Ray Stubbs R & B All-Stars @ Zerox, Sandhill, Newcastle. 7:00pm (doors).

Mon 23: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Mon 23: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Wheatsheaf, Benton Sq., Whitley Road, Palmersville NE12 9SU. Tel: 0191 266 8137. 1:00pm. Free. CANCELLED!
Mon 23: Edison Herbert Trio @ The Vault, Darlington. 4:00pm. Free.
Mon 23: Jason Isaacs @ St. James’ STACK, Newcastle. 4:00-6:00pm. Free. Vocalist Isaacs working with backing tapes.
Mon 23: Milne-Glendinning Band @ The Vault, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free.

Tue 24: Lindsay Hannon & Mark Williams @ Ernest, Ouseburn, Newcastle. 11:00am-1:00pm. Free.
Tue 24: Paul Skerritt @ Mambo Wine & Dine, South Shields. 1:00pm. Free. Vocalist Skerritt working with backing tapes.

Wed 25: Wot? No jazz!

Thu 26: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, North Tyneside. 1:00pm. Free. TBC.
Thu 26: The Boneshakers @ Tyne Bar, Ouseburn, Newcastle. 4:00pm. Free. The 17th annual Boneshakers’ Shindig.

Reviewers wanted

Whilst BSH attempts to cover as many gigs, festivals and albums as possible, to make the site even more comprehensive we need more 'boots on the ground' to cover the albums seeking review - a large percentage of which never get heard - report on gigs or just to air your views on anything jazz related. Interested? then please get in touch. Contact details are on the blog. Look forward to hearing from you. Lance

Friday, October 21, 2016

The Musical Box play Genesis 'Selling England by the Pound' @ Newcastle City Hall October 20.

Not Peter Gabriel (lead vocals, flute, percussion), not Steve Hackett (guitars), not Tony Banks (keyboards, acoustic guitar, backing vocals), not Mike Rutherford (bass, guitars, backing vocals), not Phil Collins (drums, vocals).
(Review by Steve T).
At the risk of young Russell observing another 'essay' on prog rock and Lance adopting his gruff, husky, crackled whisper to tell me to 'take the pen out of my hand', I thought I'd risk another.
Jazz now seems to encompass any ambitious, experimental music and most emerging Jazz musicians have some familiarity with prog rock and many incorporate it. Prog was of its time in the late sixties/ early seventies when it seemed anything could happen and generally did. When pop wasn't rock and rock wasn't pop.
  It's often said bands like Genesis were just like the Beatles but heavier and with longer pieces, which is like saying Jane Austen novels were like the Beano but heavier and with longer words. It's perhaps pertinent to say the prog groups took Beatles-type songs and embellished them in the same way that Jazz artists do with the Great American Songbook.
Jazz was always adrenaline to rock: Cream, widely considered the first great British rock band, were a blues-obsessed guitarist with a drummer and a bass player who considered themselves Jazz musicians; Hendrix was into Albert King but also Roland Kirk; Zappa listened to black r+b but also Eric Dolphy, Beefheart sang like Howlin Wolf but played like Free Jazz and Santana liked BB King but worshipped John Coltrane.   . 
Genesis were quintessentially English so the classical outweighs the Jazz though they share many traits common to both: multi-suite pieces, extended instrumental passages, complex time signatures, frequent tempo changes and some virtuosity, most notably from Phil Collins who had been bitten by Buddy Rich, loves Weather Report and played in Jazz-rock group Brand X in the late seventies/ early eighties.
Perhaps most significantly, Peter Gabriel maintained a roving imagination, constantly evolving through innovation and experimentation and is, to me, what the mass media constantly tell us Bowie was, reinventing himself every five years or so.

Genesis hold an integral place in the narrative of tribute bands. Many think Marillion were the first tribute band, so close was the Fish era to the Gabriel era Genesis. Some are more cynical and think Genesis were the first tribute band with Phil singing Gabriel.
Although there are lots of Genesis tribute bands, most concentrating on the Gabriel years, Musical Box are significant because they bought the props, costumes and stage sets from Genesis including the vast multimedia production of the final Genesis album with Gabriel, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
Tonight was from the previous tour, last seen in the City Hall forty-three years and twelve days earlier. It had a massive impact on me, and remained my favourite gig for almost a decade and, with Roxy Music featuring Eno and the original Mahavishnu Orchestra in the preceding months, assured the inevitability that I would, sooner or later, come to Jazz.
Watcher in the Skies, Dancing in the Moonlit Knight and Cinema Showfor me the best record they ever made and Peters' greatest ever vocal performance. Check out the live version on Seconds Out and the drum partnership between Collins and Bill Bruford, two of the great rock drummers who both consider themselves Jazz drummers. Incidentally, Bruford was replaced by ex-Weather Report, Mothers drummer Chester Thompson.
I Know What I Like and even the staff and Collins fans wondering what the flip was going on knew this ode to lawn mowers.
Musical Box which gives them their name and the Peter person returned for the finale wearing an old man mask. Horizonsa solo guitar piece once played by number one son, never a big keyboard heavy Genesis fan, at secondary school, followed by The Battle of Epping Forest.
Some say prog was all twenty-minute mellotron and lute solos but Genesis only ever made one side (vinyl/cassette) long piece but it's one of, perhaps the best of the genre.
Supper's Ready had the staff hot on the trail of anybody after a snap of the Peter person while his head was 'a flower' and even I was tempted by the exploding spaceman outfit.
A chap in front of me seemed curled in a ball, his company clearly instructed not to speak to him (which people do at rock gigs) and I remembered the first tribute band I saw do this sprawling epic (Liverpool’s Carpet Crawlers) and just about crumbling when the Peter person got to the final lyric The New Jerusalem.
Inevitably, The Knife was the encore, a pre-Collins/ Hackett piece and the rockiest of the night, strobes lasting longer than I think they're supposed to nowadays.
No Carpet Crawlers or In the Cageah well. No Selling England by the Pounfillers either.
Steve Hackett is bringing his hugely successful Genesis Revisited back to the Sage again next year but, until Gabriel finally agrees to go back, the tribute bands are the best way to listen to Genesis live.  
Steve T.


1 comment :

Steven T said...

Lance was concerned by the length of this review so I thought I'd better add a couple of bits.
I hope anybody who knows the album doesn't think I class Firth of Fifth as filler. I assumed they would do the album in full and in order so I didn't even take a note pad. This track is one of four killers off the album and if you like Gabriel era Genesis you'll agree and if you don't you won't.
One group who maybe should give it a listen are guitarists. Hackett has made loads of solo albums over forty years but this is still unanimously considered his finest hour and he has never not played it live.
He ain't a flash guitarist like in Jazz or the best rock players but it's a fine solo.
Also the flute playing was quite good and more important in early Genesis than even I had realised. They all have a go but some are terrible.
The Carpet Crawlers do a set of Gabriel and one of Collins (including some Gabriel stuff Collins recorded live) and he plays flute and drums, the latter quite well, so that's real devotion.
Los Endos, another tribute band are playing Whitley Bay on Friday and Consett on sat. I've seen them before and they're good - Genesis music doesn't have the same virtuosic challenges of Yes - and on Saturday they're doing Trick of the Tail, first and best Collins album (closing with the track with which they share their name), much in the same vein as it's predecessors. At the time many didn't realise it wasn't Peter.

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