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Bebop Spoken There

Wendell Brunious: "Because the blues is not 1,4 and 5 or 1,4,5,2,1. You could wake up with a flat tyre or a headache this morning, that's the blues, man" - (DownBeat, Oct. 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

15878 (and counting) posts since we started blogging 15 years ago. 885 of them this year alone and, so far, 83 this month (Sept. 30).

From This Moment On ...

October

Sun 01: Smokin' Spitfires @ The Cluny, Newcastle. 12:45pm.
Sun 01: Dulcie May Moreno sings Portrait of Sheila @ Central Bar, Gateshead. 2:00pm. £10.00. Moreno sings Sheila Jordan with Giles Strong, Mick Shoulder & John Bradford.
Sun 01: Middlesbrough Jazz & Blues Orchestra @ Saltburn Community Hall. 2:00pm.
Sun 01: The Easy Rollers @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 7:00pm. £13.70., £11.55.
Sun 01: Brand/Roberts/Champion/Sanders @ Blank Studios, Newcastle. 8:00pm. A Newcastle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music event.
Sun 01: Papa G's Troves @ The Globe, Newcastle. 8:00pm.

Mon 02: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm.
Mon 02: FILM: Wattstax; 50th Anniversary @ Forum Cinema, Hexham. 8:00pm.

Tue 03: Paul Skerritt @ The Rabbit Hole, Hallgarth St., Durham DH1 3AT. 7:00pm. Paul Skerritt's (solo) weekly residency.
Tue 03: Jam session @ The Black Swan, Newcastle. 7:30pm. House trio: Michael Young (piano); Paul Grainger (double bass); Sid White (drums). CANCELLED!

Wed 04: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm.
Wed 04: Darlington Big Band @ Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mills Social Club, Darlington. 7:00pm. Rehearsal session (open to the public).
Wed 04: Paul Skerritt @ Vespa Italian Bar & Steakhouse, Primrose Hill, Jarrow. From 7:00pm. To book a table - 0191 483 3355.
Wed 04: Take it to the Bridge @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm.

Thu 05: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, North Tyneside. 1:00pm. Free.
Thu 05: Sound the Trumpets @ King's Hall, Newcastle University. 1:15pm. Free.
Thu 05: Hot Club du Nord @ The Lubetkin Theatre, Peterlee. 7:00pm. £10.00. POSTPONED!
Thu 05: Thursday Night Prayer Meeting @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm.
Thu 05: Tommy Bentz Trio + Mark Croft Duo + George Shovlin & George Lamb @ The Harbour View, Sunderland. 8:00pm. Free. Harbour View Speakeasy's USA blues double bill + Shovlin & Lamb!
Thu 05: Merlin Roxby @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Ragtime piano. A 'Jar on the Bar' gig.
Thu 05: Tees Hot Club @ Dorman's Club, Middlesbrough. 9:00pm.

Fri 06: Alcyona Mick @ Lit & Phil, Newcastle. 1:00pm. A Newcastle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music event.
Fri 06: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm.
Fri 06: New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band @ Oxbridge Hotel, Stockton. 1:00pm. £5.00.
Fri 06: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms, Monkseaton. 1:00pm.
Fri 06: WORKSHOP: Philosophy of Arts & Entertainment @ Lit & Phil, Newcastle. 2:00pm. A Newcastle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music event.
Fri 06: Balo @ Lit & Phil, Newcastle. 6:20pm. A Newcastle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music event.
Fri 06: Paul Skerritt @ 3Sixty Champagne Lounge, Hadrian’s Tower, Newcastle. From 7:00pm. To book a table - 0191 933 8591.
Fri 06: Lexer/Mayes/Noble + Semay Wu + Miman @ Lit & Phil, Newcastle. 7:20pm. A Newcastle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music event.
Fri 06: Dulcie May Moreno @ The Vault, Hexham. 7:30pm. £20.00. Book in advance. Moreno with Alan Law, Paul Grainger & John Bradford.
Fri 06: Dean Stockdale Quartet @ Saltburn Community Hall. 7:30pm. 'Celebrating Oscar'.
Fri 06: Nu Brass Sounds: Big Brass Bash @ Billy Bootlegger’s, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Free.
Fri 06: TBC @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Blind Pig Blues Club. A 'Jar on the Bar' gig.

Sat 07: WORKSHOP: Philosophy of Arts & Entertainment @ Lit & Phil, Newcastle. 10:15am. A Newcastle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music event.
Sat 07: Hot Club du Nord @ St Augustine's Parish Centre, Darlington. 12:30pm.
Sat 07: Bugge & Niccols + Moore & Fairhall @ Lit & Phil, Newcastle. 1:00pm. A Newcastle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music event.
Sat 07: Play Jazz! workshop @ The Globe, Newcastle. 1:30pm. Tutor: Steve Glendinning - All the Things You Are. £25.00. Enrol at: www.jazz.coop.
Sat 07: Abbie Finn Trio @ The Vault, Darlington. 6:00pm. Free.
Sat 07: Rie Nakajima @ Lit & Phil, Newcastle. 6:20pm. A Newcastle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music event.
Sat 07: Paul Skerritt @ 3Sixty Champagne Lounge, Hadrian’s Tower, Newcastle. From 7:00pm. To book a table - 0191 933 8591.
Sat 07: Samuel Blaser Trio + Toxvaerd & Zeeberg + Muramatsu & Welch @ Lit & Phil, Newcastle. 7:20pm. A Newcastle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music event.
Sat 07: Anth Purdy @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm.
Sat 07: Rendezvous Jazz @ Red Lion, Earsdon. 8:00pm. £3.00.

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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