DECEMBER 2025
Sat 06: Sarah Spencer’s Transatlantic Band @ St Augustine’s Parish Centre, Darlington. 12:30pm. £10.00.
Sat 06: Play Jazz! workshop @ The Globe, Newcastle. 1:30pm. £27.50. Tutor: Steve Glendinning. Minor Swing. Enrol at: learning@jazz.coop.
Sat 06: Jeff Hewer Trio @ The Vault, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free.
Sat 06: NUJO Jazz Jam @ Cobalt Studios, Newcastle. 7:00pm (doors). £3.76 (inc. bf).
Sat 06: Kaberry Big Band @ The Seahorse, Whitley Bay. 7:30pm (7:00pm doors). £15.00. (inc. hot buffet). ‘Christmas 1945’. Kaberry Big Band, formerly Vermont Big Band.
Sat 06: Smokin’ Spitfires @ Platform 1, Bedlington. 7:30pm. £6.00. Rhythm & blues.
Sat 06: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Red Lion, Earsdon. 8:00pm. £3.00. Xmas Party with buffet.
Sat 06: The Jive Aces @ The Witham, Barnard Castle. 8:00pm. £22.00., £20.00.
Sat 06: Brass Fiesta @ Revoluçion de Cuba, Newcastle. 10:30pm. Free.
Sun 07: Ian Bosworth Quintet @ Chapel, Middlesbrough. 1:00pm. Free. Feat. special guest Donna Hewitt (sax, clarinet).
Sun 07: Finn-Keeble Group @ Central Bar, Gateshead. 2:00pm. £10.00.
Sun 07: Sax Choir @ The Globe, Newcastle. 2:00pm. Free.
Sun 07: Paul Skerritt @ Hibou Blanc, Newcastle. 2:00pm. Skerritt w. backing tapes.
Sun 07: Michael Young Trio @ The Engine Room, Sunderland. 2:30pm. Free. Trio + Ruth Lambert.
Sun 07: 4B @ The Ticket Office, Whitley Bay. 3:00pm. Free.
Sun 07: Jason Isaacs Big Band @ Pilgrim, Newcastle. 5:15pm (4:00pm doors). £21.50 (inc. bf).
Sun 07: Paul Skerritt @ 3 Stories, High St. West, Sunderland. 6:30pm. Skerritt w. backing tapes.
Sun 07: Lindsay Hannon: Tom Waits for No Man @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:00pm. Support set from Play More Jazz! course participants. Note earlier start.Mon 08: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Tue 09: Jazz Jam Sandwich @ The Black Swan, Newcastle. 7:30pm
Wed 10: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Wed 10: Darlington Big Band @ Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mills Social Club, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free. Rehearsal session (open to the public).
Wed 10: Jam Session @ The Tannery, Hexham. 7:00pm. Free.
Wed 10: Mike Lindup Jazz Trio @ Pilgrim, Newcastle. 7:30pm (doors). £26.50 (inc. bf). Lindup, Yolanda Charles (bass), John Sam (drums).
Wed 10: Bold Big Band @ Cluny 2, Newcastle. 7:30pm. £12.00.
Thu 11: Jazz Appreciation North East @ Brunswick Methodist Church, Newcastle NE1 7BJ. 2:00pm. £4.00. Subject: West Coast (cool ) / Wordsearch (cool) Cool Jazz or ‘Cold’, ‘Cool’, ‘Hot’, ‘Warm’ in the title or lyrics.
Thu 11: George Robinson @ Prohibition Bar, Albert Road, Middlesbrough TS1 2RU. 7:00pm (doors). £5.42 (inc. bf). Vienna’s Voice charity evening featuring ’15 year old singing sensation the ‘Redcar Crooner’ George Robinson’. Over 35s only.
Thu 11: Paul Skerritt @ Chakh Dhoom, Jesmond, Newcastle. 7:00pm. Indian restaurant. Skerritt w. back tapes.
Thu 11: Ransom Van @ The Black Swan, Newcastle. 7:30pm.
Thu 11: Down for the Count Swing Orchestra @ Middlesbrough Town Hall. 7:30pm. £37.70 (inc. bf). ‘Swing into Xmas’.
Fri 12: Pete Tanton’s Chet Set @ Bishop Auckland Methodist Church. 1:00pm. £8.00.
Fri 12: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 12: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 12: New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band @ The Oxbridge Hotel, Stockton. 1:00pm. £5.00.
Fri 12: Milne Glendinning Band @ Northumberland Club, Jesmond, Newcastle. 7:00pm. £15.00. ‘Xmas Soiree’.
Fri 12: A Jazzy Xmas @ St Cuthbert’s Centre, Crook. 7:30pm. £15.00. Paul Edis (MD, piano); Jo Harrop (vocals); Vasilis Xenopoulos (tenor sax, soprano sax); Matthew Forster (alto sax, clarinet); Sue Ferris (flute, piccolo); Graham Hardy (trumpet, flugelhorn); Jason Holcomb (trombone);Emma Fisk (violin); Andy Champion (double bass); Matt MacKellar (drums). SOLD OUT!
Fri 12: Tony Hadley: Xmas Big Band Tour 2025 @ The Glasshouse, Gateshead. 7:30pm.
Fri 12: Alexia Gardner @ The New Ship Inn, Newbiggin-by-the-Sea. 8:00pm. Gardner, Alan Law, Jude Murphy, Abbie Finn.
Fri 12: Jive Aces: Swingin’ Xmas Show @ The Witham, Barnard Castle. 8:00pm.
6 comments :
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.
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.
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.
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?
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!
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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