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Bebop Spoken There

Kelly Sill: "Just because everyone is playing through the changes in the same time doesn't mean they're actually playing together" - (JazzTimes March/April 2023).

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!"

Postage

15260 (and counting) posts since we started blogging 15 years ago. 279 of them this year alone and, so far, 92 this month (March 29).

From This Moment On ...

April

Sun 02: Smokin' Spitfires @ The Cluny. 12:45pm.
Sun 02: 4B @ The Exchange, North Shields. 3:00pm.

Mon 03: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm.

Tue 04: Paul Skerritt @ The Rabbit Hole, Hallgarth St., Durham DH1 3AT. 7:00pm. Paul Skerritt's (solo) weekly residency.
Tue 04: Jam session @ Black Swan, Newcastle Arts Centre. 7:30pm. House trio: Bradley Johnston (guitar); Paul Grainger (double bass); Abbie Finn (drums).

Wed 05: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm.
Wed 05: Darlington Big Band @ Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mills Social Club, Darlington. 7:00pm. Rehearsal session (open to the public).
Wed 05: 4B @ The Exchange, North Shields. 7:00pm.
Wed 05: Take it to the Bridge @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm.

Thu 06: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, North Tyneside. 1:00pm. Free.
Thu 06: Thursday Night Prayer Meeting @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Donations. Feat. John Pope, Marie Shreer, John Garner.
Thu 06: Merlin Roxby @ Prohibtion Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Ragtime piano. A 'Jar on the Bar' gig.
Thu 06: Darlington Big Band @ Dorman's Club, Middlesbrough. 8:30pm. Note earlier start time.

Fri 07: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm.
Fri 07: New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band @ Oxbridge Hotel, Stockton. 1:00pm. £5.00.
Fri 07: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms, Monkseaton. 1:00pm.
Fri 07: Gaz Hughes Trio @ Saltburn Community Hall. 7:30pm.
Fri 07: Mark Toomey Quartet @ Traveller's Rest, Darlington. 8:00pm. £8.00.
Fri 07: Finntet + Zoë Gilby & Andy Champion @ Bobik's, Punch Bowl, Newcastle. 8:00pm. JNE.
Fri 07: TBA @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. A 'Jar on the Bar' gig. Blind Pig Blues Club.

Sat 08: Me Lost Me + Ceitidh Mac + Heather Ferrier @ Bobik's, Punch Bowl, Newcastle. 7:30pm. JNE.
Sat 08: Joseph Carville Trio @ The Vault, Darlington Covered Market, Darlington DL1 5PN. 6:00pm. New venue, live jazz!
Sat 08: Rendezvous Jazz @ Red Lion, Earsdon. 8:00pm. £3.00. RESCHEDULED from last week (Sat 01).
Sat 08: Robbie Reay @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Acoustic blues. A 'Jar on the Bar' gig.
Sat 08: Anth Purdy @ Mr Tighe's, Bebside, Northumberland. 8:30pm.

Friday, June 16, 2017

Chaka Khan @ 02 Academy, Newcastle, June 12.

(Review by Steve T)
The last time Chaka Khan played in Newcastle, you wouldn't get a Hoochie Coochie round with change from £200 so, at just under £40, I couldn't afford to miss this and clearly, others felt the same with this spacious, greater capacity, venue crammed.
It was always my intention, with number one son gone, to get back to some good ole rock n soul, but does she have any credibility or anything to do with Jazz? I've all but given up trying to second guess what else people listen to besides Jazz. As fellow Black Musics, blues and soul seem to me to be the most natural bedfellows, though I also get modern classical music and experimental rock. Hatred of all things charts and media strike me as given, but it seems young people and people with different routes into Jazz have entirely contrary sets of givens.
First question about Chaka is does she do Rufus? The short, easy answer is yes but the longer answer was swiftly confirmed when the second song was Tell me Something Good, their first hit, from 73. This was followed by a run of Rufus cuts, but the sound was so poor it was often difficult to discern what they were beyond they weren't any of my favourites, but served as a reminder of what a stonkin, fonkin band they were in the early/mid-seventies.
All on stage sat for a song she wrote for the film Clockers, which was followed by What you Gonna do for me, perhaps her best solo track (the album includes a version of Night in Tunisia) and the finest moment of the three sides live album Stompin at the Savoy which reunited her with Rufus.
My Funny Valentine, which wasn't but could just have easily been on the album of Jazz standards she made with Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and Lenny White.
The announcement of a woman’s song was greeted by an explosion, the ladies, dominant in the audience singing their collective hearts out I'm Every Woman. Easy to look back and dismiss it as disco but it was her first post Rufus track and really didn't seem like a 'sell-out', but was one of the last credible disco records before the inevitable appropriation by whitey, the charts and media.
Encore Aint Nobody, centrepiece of the aforementioned one side studio album by Rufus, upped the anti a little further, the ladies once again, vocal and loud. Strangely no I Feel for You, particularly given Prince’s recent acquisition of genius status.
Never one of the great soul singers, she squawks and wails and gargles and yells and screeches. Her band were hot, despite a second guitarist doing Hendrix style posturing while you couldn't even hear whether he was any good. The three backing singers were all better than her and I think when they arrived many wondered which one is Chaka Khan. A friend of mine had pizza with her following her appearance on The Tube many years ago so I already knew that she's tiny.
Just about worth the effort and expense.
Steve T.

3 comments :

Patti D (on F/b) said...

Oh, wow - I saw her at Hoochie a couple of years ago ...... one of those unforgettable nights too! I missed this one though ....... silly me!

Lance said...

Like everything in life it's subjective. One man's meat etc... Jazz/blues is the basis for all modern music and, probably, although I'm in left field on this one. contemporary classical music. Or to sum up. all music is influenced by all music. To digress, I wonder, when Joshua fought the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down, who was playing lead trumpet?

Steve T said...

Possibly should have used the capital M but on a Jazz site, I prefer to save it for Jazz. Like modern Jazz is the forties, modern soul the seventies, modern classical music is early twentieth century (contemporaneous to modern art)and is hugely important for Jazz and experimental rock.
I prefer to think of it as discursive rather than subjective (taste and opinion become excuses for anything and everything) based on bodies of knowledge constructed in power, nowadays generally in the hands of the media.
Currently we're subject to the discourse of Kind of Blue being one of the 'great' albums, talked about in the same breath as albums by people like the Beatles (who by their own admission, didn't make albums), Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Bowie, Clash, Nirvana etc.
My background is in black music and this stuff is all a complete joke (maybe not Dylan but he's monumentally over-rated). I was talking to somebody at the first Durham Jazz Festival who claimed to be into blues, and claimed that he didn't distinguish by colour, but was unable to come up with one artist he listens to who is black, even get out of jail free card Hendrix.

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