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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

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.

Fri 27: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 27: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms. 1:00pm. Free. Business as usual!.
Fri 27: Jason Isaacs @ Seaburn STACK, Seaburn. 3:30-5:30pm. Free. Vocalist Isaacs working with backing tapes.
Fri 27: Michael Woods @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig. Country blues guitar & vocals.

Sat 28: Jason Isaacs @ St. James’ STACK, Newcastle. 11:30am. Free. Vocalist Isaacs working with backing tapes.
Sat 28: Fri 20: Castillo Nuevo @ Revoluçion de Cuba, Newcastle. 5:30pm. Free.
Sat 28: Jude Murphy, Rich Herdman & Giles Strong @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.
Sat 28: Ray Stubbs R & B All-Stars @ Billy Bootlegger’s, Stepney Bank, Newcastle. 9:00pm. Free.

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

Sunday, January 08, 2017

Zoe Gilby (vocal)/ Alan Law (piano) @ The Jazz Café - January 6

What a lovely way to start the New Year. It seemed like only Yesterday that This Boy Alan and the Girl Zoe performed a selection of Beatles and Antonio Carlos Jobim songs with great charm and invention. Something was really in the air on Friday night maybe not Across the Universe but certainly in the packed Jazz Café. I was sat next to Sexy Sadie when I said to her I Want to Hold Your Hand she flew off like a Blackbird so I guessed there was no point of asking my supplementary question Why Don’t We Do It In The Road. Now we all know How Insensitive The Jazz Café audience can be shouting at each other as if they were at the Gallowgate End but on Friday you could have heard a pin drop which just shows how captivating the duo were.  The end of the evening came so there was to be No More Blues all that remained to be done was to Wave goodbye.
Steve H.

6 comments :

Lance said...

Sounds like it was anything but a Hard Day's Night and you certainly didn't need any Help to write the review but as regards Sadie, She Loves You and sends All Her Loving even though you're Back in the USSR.

Steve T said...

Thought about it but I'd have to drive my car. Somebody said all you need is love for the Beatles but if I were to list my favourite bands and songwriters the Beatles would be nowhere man. They're here, there and everywhere eight days a week. Zoe was on and I love her but if big Andy's around you've got to hide your love away, especially if she loves you.
Also Uni started back up so Number One (only ever considered a recommendation when it's the Beatles) Son had to get back and we weren't sure when so I said let it be Friday. When we got there we saw one of the staff who knew I'd done the Southport preview and said here comes the son.
I don't have room for the Beatles in my life, maybe when I'm 64 and give up on the revolution. Til then all my loving is for soul, jazz, blues, rock and reggae; proper singers, proper songwriters and proper musicians. Not a walrus in a strawberry field with diamonds.

Lance said...

So, you didn't have a Ticket to Ride and she didn't say Baby You Can Drive my Car plus the threat of Lovely Rita Meter Maid put you off your Magical Mystery Tour. Well it would have been a Hard Day's Night without any Help but, With a Little Help From Your Friends...
Seriously, at the end of the day it's the interpretation as much as the material and many a performer has made a purse out of a sow's ear and I'm sure that Zoe and Alan wouldn't have gone into the purse-making business (musically speaking) if they regarded the Fab Four's songs as 'sow's ears'.
From Me To You - The End.

Steve T said...

I agree entirely; Arun Ghosh played a stunning version of TNK at the Sage. Mind that is a brilliant original; Phils Collins and Manzanera both did decent versions as well. I saw Andy Sheppard do And I Love Her and it was brilliant; way better than the original. JJ Barnes did a decent version of Daytripper, I think it was Stevie Wonder who did We can work it out and the Impressions did Fool on the Hill but, as my second favourite Fabs track, it should have been better. MJ did probably the best version of Come Together.
But how did they become SO over-rated?

Lance said...

Obviously, marketing. If you'd been on the scene in the early '60s you couldn't escape them. Mainstream press, TV, pirate radio. "We're greater than God" said Lennon and in the eyes of the young they were. And many of the tunes are still excellent (did they really write all those numbers in such a relatively short space of time? They probably did although the jury's still out on that one.)
The fact that so many of their songs have become standards and performed across the genres is proof of their quality. I think Ray Davies is one of the few of their contemporaries whose material displays the same longevity.
I was unfamiliar with 'And I Love Her' until I heard it by Roland Kirk. Imagine my surprise upon discovering it wasn't by some revered name from the (then) past. As I type I'm listening to José Feliciano playing the same tune and, if I'd heard it first I'd have probably thought it was by Jobim!

Steve T said...

I was born in 61 so I remember them being everywhere, like the Spice Girls 30 years later only more so. For my generation they weren't even teenybop songs but nursery rhymes.
I'm not sure artists, and particularly jazz artists, covered them because they thought they were great but, as Dylan said when Joan Baez covered Yesterday, 'it's the thing to do to tell the teenyboppers you dig the Beatles'.
Certainly they had a knack for writing catchy pop songs only matched by people like Abba and the Beegees, but were more prolific. In my view that doesn't put them with the great songwriters.
I'm pretty sure the quote was 'we're more popular than Jesus' but this was among the young. Nobody really cared much about them in the seventies and in the eighties they became the most unlikely cult band for the growing number of fans of a growing number of dead popstars with, give or take Marvin Gaye in soul, the best death story.
Young people think we've all been listening to them since the early sixties but it's only really in the nineties, with their army of original fans grown up: parents, grandparents, teachers, lecturers, reporters, media executives, authors etc that they, and particularly John Lennon, became all things to all people; like Mozart, Beethoven, Shakespeare, Churchill, Leonardo, Picasso, the Dali Lama and Jesus rolled into one. The reason the sun rises, the sky is blue, water falls, flowers grow and wilderbeast sweep majestically across the Torquay skyline. If this sounds over the top, it's probably because we've had so much of it, we accept it as normal. Van Morrison claimed the media made it all up and the bands - though not all of them - just went along with it and so-called British Blues artists still think of them as teenyboppers; I recall one comparing them to Westlife and Steve Wright spluttering, though he had to agree.
George Harrison became a huge critic of the mythology in his final years, referring to it as Beatle-lore.
I expect something similar to happen with Bowie in the coming years - I call it the revenge of the teenyboppers.
On Ray Davies, I knew you liked him and wondered whether it was his heavy riffs and/or English (rather than American) lyrics.

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