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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

17421 (and counting) posts since we started blogging 16 years ago. 695 of them this year alone and, so far, 100 this month (Sept. 30).

From This Moment On ...

October

Sat 05: Maggie Nicols & Tim Dalling: Musical Boxing Training @ The Tute, Ridley Terrace, Cambois NE24 1QS. 2:30pm. Free. Tickets: www.eventbrite.com. ‘A workshop for musical improvisers’. An event in a boxing ring!
Sat 05: Lewis Watson Quartet @ Wylam Village Institute, Church Road, Wylam NE41 8AP. Doors 7:00pm. Tickets £15.00. + £1.50. bf, available from: www.gigantic.com.
Sat 05: Joseph Carville Trio @ The Vault, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free.
Sat 05: Bright Street Big Band @ Washington Arts Centre. From 7:00pm. £12.00. Bright Street Big Band on stage at 7:30pm, preceded at 7:00pm by a swing dance taster session.
Sat 05: J.A.M. String Collective + Tara Cunningham + The Flame @ The Lit & Phil, Newcastle. 7:20pm. £10.00. + bf. NFOJIM in assoc. w. JNE & Lit & Phil.
Sat 05: Heavy Drunk @ Anarchy Brewery, Newcastle. 7:30pm. £15.00. + £1.50. bf. ‘Mississippi Delta Blues Experience’ feat. Heavy Drunk, Watermelon Slim & Leonardo Giuliani.
Sat 05: Maggie Nicols & Tim Dalling: Musical Boxing Night @ The Tute, Ridley Terrace, Cambois NE24 1QS. 7:30pm. Free. Tickets: www.eventbrite.com. Nicols, Dalling ao. An event in a boxing ring!
Sat 05: Milne-Glendinning Band @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Free.
Sat 05: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Red Lion, Earsdon. 8:00pm. £3.00.
Sat 05: Ian Millar & Dominic Spencer @ Swarland Village Hall NE65 9JG. 8:00pm. £12.00.

Sun 06: Smokin’ Spitfires @ The Cluny, Newcastle. 12:45pm (12:30pm doors). £7.50.
Sun 06: Luis Verde Quartet @ Central Bar, Gateshead. 2:00pm. £10.00.
Sun 06: Sax Choir @ The Globe, Newcastle. 2:00pm. Free.
Sun 06: 4B @ The Ticket Office, Whitley Bay. 3:00pm. Free.
Sun 06: Catriona Bourne Quartet + Heather Ferrier + Emma Johson’s Gravy Boat @ The Globe, Newcastle. 2:00pm. £10.00. + bf. NFOJIM in assoc. w. JNE & The Globe.

Mon 07: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Mon 07: Michael Young Trio @ The Engine Room, Sunderland. 6:30-8:30pm. Free.

Tue 08: ???

Wed 09: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free. Wed 09: Jason Isaacs @ St James’ STACK, Newcastle. 5:00-7:00pm. Free.
Wed 09: Darlington Big Band @ Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mills Social Club, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free. Rehearsal session (open to the public).
Wed 09: Take it to the Bridge @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free.
Wed 09: The Tannery Jam Session @ The Tannery, Gilesgate, Hexham. 7:00-9:00pm. Free. A ‘second Wednesday in the month’ jam session.
Wed 09: Shunya, Dudù Kouate & Seb Rochford @ The Cluny, Newcastle. 8:30pm (7:30pm doors). £21.00.

Thu 10: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, North Tyneside. 1:00pm. Free.
Thu 10: Gateshead Jazz Appreciation Society @ Brunswick Methodist Church, Newcastle NE1 7BJ. 2:00pm. £4.00. ‘Collaborations - it happened all the time’.
Thu 10: Indigo Jazz Voices w. the Little Big Band @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:45pm. £5.00.
Thu 10: Side Cafe Orkestar @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Free. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.
Thu 10: Tees Hot Club @ Dorman’s Club, Middlesborough. 8:30pm. With guests Donna Hewitt (sax); Bill Watson (trumpet); Graham Thompson (keys); Ron Smith (bass). Free.

Fri 11: Dulcie May Moreno @ The Old Library, Auckland Castle, Bishop Auckland. 1:00pm. £8.00.
Fri 11: The Jazz Quartet + Stratosphonic @ Tynedale Rugby Club, Corbridge. 7:00pm. £15.00. A Rotary Club of Hexham event. The Jazz Quartet (Jude Murphy & co), Stratosphonic (blues/rock).
Fri 11: Joe Steels Trio @ The Pele, Market Place, Corbridge NE45 5AW. 7:30pm. Free.
Fri 11: Crooners @ Tyne Theatre, Newcastle. 7:30pm.

Saturday, May 12, 2018

Three Piece Suites? Triptych @ Gosforth Civic Theatre - May 10

Paul Susans (bass); Rob Walker (drums); Paul Edis (piano/clarinet).
(Review by Jerry)
A very agreeable venue: easy to find, free parking, tables set out in jazz-lounge style and a good bar featuring Pennine Pale on draught. That made me feel at home!
We were promised a splendid set of “genre-busting tunes” and Triptych served up just that. Montage – an Edis original, from his solo CD, Just Like Me, – was first up, and very different in trio format. Louder and more dramatic here: it would still work well in a film but a different kind of film! Sketch 69A was penned by bassist, Paul Susans, resident of Hexham and familiar with the A69 after which the piece is named. A sonorous bass intro then a driving, rhythmic tune helped along, at first, by Walker’s brushes then intensified later when he switched to sticks and cut loose.

Walker’s drumming – I should really say percussion, as so many effects were created not only with the hands, at least two different kind of sticks, brushes and mallets but also with less expected kit such as producing a metallic saw-like “zing” by running a bow across the edge of high-hat or cymbal and, for a long spell in one of the suites, producing rhythms on an udu drum which featured in my notes as “a pot-thingy”! I wasn’t actually that far wrong, “udu” being the word for vessel or pot in Igbo (Nigerian). Being next to the drums isn’t always ideal but here it was a pleasure.

The name, Triptych, is most apt: not a front man backed by two others but three equals working together to make one compelling and varied sound – brilliant!
Paul Susans started on upright bass, as in a conventional trio with brief solos gaining applause in Montage and Moonlight in Vermont, for example. About half way through the set he switched to electric bass and did amazing things with a foot-controlled gizmo which moved the group from standards into funk and beyond, almost to prog-rock. We were promised genre-busting and we got it in spades!

Edis, not content with scintillating piano, gave us clarinet in Moonlight in Vermont and in both of the suites. And all three are composers – numbers by the two Pauls including bassist Paul’s 12th.Moon of Venus being capped by Rob Walker’s Mr. Blister: rousing enough to be an encore and funky enough to be categorised in my notes as “all about the bass”!

Fragmented Suite consists of 3 parts: Murmuration (Edis); Dr. Gonzo (Susans) and Dark Ages (Edis again?).  Murmuration, as with Montage earlier, is so different to the CD version. Here, loud bass and noisy cymbals make the birds less starlings, more Hitchcockian crows! Bass, appropriately, linked us into Dr. Gonzo featuring the aforementioned hand drumming, then we arrived at the most memorably atmospheric “fragment” of the evening, The Dark Age. Plaintive clarinet against resonant bass (bowed sometimes like a wailing wind) with Walker’s udu drum adding weird rhythms all make this dark indeed: think Glencoe (when mallets and loud piano ramp up the volume later it sounds like a battle is in progress), think Macduff’s line: new widows howl, new orphans cry” – it’s powerfully evocative. It quietens briefly as Walker deploys his zinging bow then builds up to a deafening crescendo at the end. No wonder Edis announces: “Now for something completely different” before launching into the two “moon” tunes!

73 is another three-piece, incorporating Cerebral, Beer for Breakfast and 73 Rhythms (?) by Edis, Susans and Walker respectively. Electric bass provided a loud opening and at times, in Cerebral, carried the melody too. At one point (we may have been into Beer for Breakfast now, I’m not sure) Susans was playing so high it sounded like a 6-string lead guitar before reverting to funky bass. Walker with mallets and cymbals held the fort solo while bowed double bass and clarinet reappeared. A low double bass note was indefinitely sustained by the gizmo while its player walked over to his electric bass and the two sounds merged, Edis, meanwhile, was (loudly) back at the keys and from here it was all about the drums with Walker conjuring up a big, crescendo finish!

I had not seen Triptych for about 18 months. I will not leave it as long till the next time: as my grandson would say: “It was awesome!”
Jerry.

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