December
Tue 03: Customs House Big Band @ The Masonic Hall, North St., Ferryhill DL17 8HX. 7:00pm. Free.
Tue 03: Jam session @ The Black Swan, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free. House trio: Dean Stockdale, Paul Grainger, John Hirst.
Tue 03: Bold Big Band @ Cluny 2, Newcastle. 7:30pm.
Wed 04: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Wed 04: Jason Isaacs @ St. James’ STACK, Newcastle. 2:30-4:30pm. Free. Vocalist Isaacs working with backing tapes.
Wed 04: Darlington Big Band @ Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mills Social Club, Darlington. 8:00pm. Concert. Free. .
Wed 04: Take it to the Bridge @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free.
Wed 04: Kat Eaton @ Hoochie Coochie, Newcastle. 8:15pm. Soulful vocals, excellent band.
Thu 05: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, North Tyneside. 1:00pm. Free.
Thu 05: Jazz Appreciation North East @ Brunswick Methodist Church, Newcastle NE1 7BJ. 2:00pm. £4.00. ‘George - named musicians, vocalists & composers (Chisholm, Duke, Lewis, Shearing, Benson, Melly, Gershwin et al)’.
Thu 05: Jools Holland’s R & B Orchestra @ Newcastle City Hall. 7:30pm.
Thu 05: Indigo Jazz Voices @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:45pm. Free.
Thu 05: Tees Hot Club @ Dorman’s Club, Middlesborough. Guest band special with the Middlesbrough Jazz and Blues Orchestra 8pm. Free.
Fri 06: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 06: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 06: New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band @ The Oxbridge Hotel, Stockton. 1:00pm. £5.00.
Fri 06: Sue Ferris Quintet @ The Traveller’s Rest, Darlington. 8:00pm. Opus 4 Jazz Club.
Sat 07: New Century Ragtime Orchestra @ St Augustine's Parish Centre, Darlington. 12:30pm. Darlington New Orleans Jazz Club.
Sat 07: Play Jazz! workshop @ The Globe, Newcastle. 1:30pm. £25.00. Tutor: Steve Glendinning. Enrol at: learning@jazz.coop.
Sat 07: Hot Club du Nord @ St. Cuthbert’s Church, Shadforth DH6 1LB. Tel: 01429 823400. 7:30pm. £15.00. (inc. refreshments).
Sat 07: NUJO Jazz Jam @ Cobalt Studios, Newcastle. 7:00pm. £3.00.
Sat 07: Bellavana @ Revoluçion de Cuba, Newcastle. 7:45-9:45pm. Free.
Sat 07: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Red Lion, Earsdon. 8:00pm. £3.00.
Sat 07: Bluebell Swing @ Repas7 by Night, West St., Berwick. 8:00pm.
Sun 08: The New ’58 Jazz Collective @ Jackson’s Wharf, Hartlepool. 1:00pm. Free. A ‘second Sunday in the month’ residency.
Sun 08: Learning & Participation Showcase @ The Globe, Newcastle. 1:30pm. Free. Multi-genre event followed by a jam session. All welcome.
Sun 08: Zoë Gilby Quintet @ Central Bar, Gateshead. 2:00pm. £10.00.
Sun 08: Paul Skerritt @ Hibou Blanc, Newcastle. 2:00pm. Free. Vocalist Skerritt working with backing tapes.
Sun 08: 4B @ The Ticket Office, Whitley Bay. 3:00pm. Free.
Sun 08: Jason Isaacs @ Hoochie Coochie, Newcastle. 5:00pm. SOLD OUT!
Sun 08: Paul Skerritt @ The Black Candle, South Shields. 6:30pm. Free. Vocalist Skerritt working with backing tapes.
Sun 08: Redwell @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 7:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.
Sun 08: Durham University Big Band + Durham University Jazz Orchestra: Jazzy Christmas @ Sir Thomas Allen Assembly Rooms Theatre, North Bailey, Durham DH1 3ET. 7:30-9:30pm. £7.00., £6.00. concs., £5.00. Durham Student Music member. Durham University Jazz Ensembles’ annual charity event.
Sun 08: Jools Holland’s R & B Orchestra @ The Globe, Stockton. 7:30pm.
Sun 08: Mick Beck, Dominic Lash, Paul Hession @ the Globe, Newcastle. 8:00pm (doors 7:30pm) JNE. £10.
Mon 09: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Mon 09: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Wheatsheaf, Benton Sq., Whitley Road, Palmersville NE12 9SU. Tel: 0191 266 8137. 1:00pm. Free.
Mon 09: Michael Young Trio @ The Engine Room, Sunderland. 6:30-8:30pm. Free.
Mon 09: James Birkett Trio @ The Black Bull, Blaydon. 8:00pm. £10.00.
Tue 10: ???
The pandemic put paid to April's Record Store Day. The annual event sees large numbers of music lovers scrambling to get their hands on sought after items (limited edition albums, completist 'must-haves', signed merchandise etc). As lockdown measures began to ease this year's promotion was rescheduled to August 29. That's this Saturday and it is likely to prove as popular as ever. 
23 comments :
If the weather's good you may find all the people who the record companies and media persuaded to go back to vinyls are sunbathing on the beach at Bournemouth. We really need to stop calling vinyls worshippers music lovers; they're vinyls lovers, it's not the same thing.
That's one hell of a bee you've got in your bonnet about record buyers. And another thing...don't let media types or wannabe cool dudes persuade you it is 'vinyls'. Vinyl it was, vinyl it is!
LPs and singles it was, the media types and wannabe cool dudes came up with vinyl, but vinyls it is. It's all just lies. Do the math; if everybody who's gone back to vinyls (which just so happened to coincide with the period the media started telling them to) get one for birthday, one for Xmas, one for fathers day, one for vinyls record shop day and one for the new grandparents day, that's the population of the Bournemouth Beach. Vinyls outsell cassettes (an even more absurd contraption) by about five to one, CDs outsell vinyls by about five to one and streaming outsells CDs by about five to one, yet if you believe the media, you'd think ninety per cent of the population have gone back to these antiques. Lies are never good for music; just go to a soul night where nobody cares whether the music's any good, as long as it's vinyls.
Not for the first time I'm finding it difficult following your argument! If on Record Store Day people buy vinyl (singular) what's wrong with that? They're not obsessed with industry 'numbers' as you seem to be. Finding a vinyl (singular) album, be it new or second hand, that you instantly know you want to buy is a joy, a bit like browsing in a bookshop and coming across a title you really want to read. Kindle or paperback? No contest! Download or vinyl? No contest! I imagine a non-vinyl soul night, if there is such a thing, is rather soul-less.
ON WHAT BASIS IS A NON-VINYLS SOUL NIGHT SOUL-LESS? TELL THAT TO A SOUL SINGER WHO WANTS TO SELL CD's AND STREAM HIS MUSIC TO FUTURE GENERATIONS. FEEL FREE TO PUT EMOTIONS IN MY HEAD.
We have to call out whatever nonsense comes from the media, whether vinyls, Beatles, Bowie, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley,punkrock, Glastonbury, Paul Gambaccini, Wigan Casino, the swinging sixties etc etc etc. If people want to buy vinyls, go for it: just do it quietly like the rest of us when we buy music, don't wave your yellow bags around, don't go on the telly and tell us you're more into music than the rest of us cos you've just bought the Frankie Goes to Hollywood album on vinyls, don't leave your sealed Bowie and Beatles vinyls laid around to show your visitors how cool you are as you play the CD or stream it. Despite what the telly tells you, vinyls (like 78s, cassettes and 8 tracks) are an out of date format - like steam trains, bed warmers and typewriters - and the record companies (backed by the media) brought them back to make money and to make it easier to market a smaller number of artists and product. Vinyls never did and never will match CDs for availability and I fear streaming will be the same. This is about the very future of music. This might come as a surprise but generally, when people talk about vinyls, the first response is that they laugh. Nobody thinks they're more into music than them. Finding a CD you've been looking for for years is every bit as wonderful as it was finding a vinyls when they were still relevant. The first time I went on Amazon I ended up with eighty albums in my basket; all stuff I'd been looking for for years, sometimes decades. How terrible.
SOUL MUSIC AND JAZZ MUSIC DESERVE BETTER THAN THIS.
Vinyls is what young people call them. When we were kids we called them records, LPs and singles and old people didn't go around telling us we should call them record, LP and single.
The speakers are more important... A CD will sound better than vinyl if the CD is through a better speaker than the vinyl.
And vice versa. A stream can also sound better than both if it's put through a better system.
The availability issue is a tough one... If more music is available on CD (and sadly probably more on stream), then that's a definite positive, aside from the financial issues that come with streaming.
Of course most new music won't come out on vinyl... It's only done now a days as a gimmick really.
Listening to music is more important than how you listen to it anyway...
David
Like Lance, sound quality is not necessarily a big issue for me, though CDs greatly enhanced the sound of country blues and Studio One.
With CDs, something very strange happened that I haven't yet seen with my limited experience of streaming; both the floodgates and the heavens opened and it became possible to buy almost every great soul record ever made. Had the record companies held off their vinyls revival for a couple more years, I think we may have had everything that was contractually possible to put out.
I'm extremely concerned that some jazz CDs are vinyls only, pampering to the people who just do whatever the telly tells them, to the exclusion of people who just want the music.
Sorry yeah, but the soulfulness of soul music has nothing to do with the medium it is heard through. That's insulting to singers- it's effectively saying they only sound soulful if they're heard through vinyl. Lies.
To 'Anonymous' (anonymous by design or by inadvertently clicking 'anonymous'?) - my comment 'a non-vinyl soul night' refers to the night (the DJ lovingly taking the disc from its sleeve and queueing it up etc) and is not an implied criticism of the singer, nor indeed the instrumentalists. The charge of 'Lies' is worryingly Trumpian, a 'fake news' dismissal of valid comment.
It's grossly insulting to soul music, soul fans (not vinyls fans), soul singers, musicians, promoters, journos and everybody else to say soul nights are only relevant when it's dinosaurs playing antiques. You're right, it's the disc they like, not what comes from it which just doesn't matter. I'm trying to stop the soul scene referring to it's followers as soul fans; they're not, they're vinyls fans; and stop people calling the music they play soul. No other genre attempts to play the very worst music available and music at soul nights nowadays is the worst music I've ever heard besides punkrock, which at least had the (rather lame) excuse it was supposed to be rubbish.
It's widely accepted that the best soul night ever was at the Fleetwood Weekenders (specifically the second one), followed by the first Southports, then Morecambe. Ostensibly, these were created by Alex Lowes but Alex had no idea about the soul music being played at that point and the person who did was none other than yours truly.
I used to DJ at a venue in Bishop Auckland where I was up in a balcony. People from the scene would say how brilliant the music was (generally featuring emphatic, enthusiastic expletives) until they found out I was playing CDs. How so!
I was DJing in a second room at an all-dayer in Spennymoor recently and a chap came and asked me if I had a regular night. I informed him I refuse to use vinyls and he looked at me as if I am mad. I told him some people don't listen to soul music unless it's vinyls and he looked at me as if they're mad. He told me him and his wife were completely blown away by the music I'd played and that they'd been in the other room (which was exclusively vinyls) and it was all complete rubbish. And this is better than most, where the organiser at least attempts to get the music so it's audible. I remember one night a barmaid called the manager because she thought the speakers were going to blow up, the sound quality of the vinyls was so catastrophic.
That's good, that's clever, that's real love.
There's a famous article from the sixties by Marshall McLuhan called the Medium is the Message where he argues the means of transmission is more important than what is being transmitted, but even he could not have foreseen this complete and utter nonsense.
Trumpian indeed.
When I was studying music from the point of view of cultural studies at a college in Leeds during the nineties, one of the subjects we discussed was the 'grain' in the voice; in other words its soulfulness. Billie Holiday was given as an example of a singer with 'grain' while Kylie Minogue was used as an example of a singer who doesn't.
I wonder whether Kylie on vinyls has more 'grain' than Billie on CD. Silly, silly, silly!
Interpret McLuhan as you wish (next time I see you at a gig you can loan my copy of The Medium is the Massage). It could be argued the consumer (the music lover) has been massaged into believing the latest technological development is the 'thing'. I've spoken to several people who've consigned vinyl collections to the garage/loft and bought the same stuff on CD. Silly, silly, silly!
Thanks Russell, but I covered McLuhan on the access course before I did my degree. Just in case anybody's still taking notice, I leave them to make their own mind up whether a book called the Medium is the Message is about - erm - the medium being the message.
I met somebody in Malta last year who'd gone back to 78s, so maybe he's got it right and vinyls are just too hi-tech.
Nobody laughs harder, louder and longer at the people who've gone back to vinyls - like the telly says - than the people buying cassettes, but at least that has come from musicians and listeners and not just the record companies and the media. Maybe they're right.
It may have passed you by but CD's are no longer considered hi-tech. In fact kids tend to think them entirely passe, though they haven't yet acquired the 'antique' status of vinyls.
Many people retrieved their glam-rock and new-romantic vinyls from the attic when the telly told them to and that was silly, silly, silly. Next time they should put them in the skip so they won't seem quite so ridiculous.
You mentioned fake news/ post-truth/ alternative facts. So the media thought they could convince large swathes of the population to revert to a ridiculous contraption (where you actually drop a needle on to a lump of plastic) and virtually nobody obeyed apart from the usual uber-gullables: Beatles and Bowie worshippers, Brit-poppies and northern soul dinosaurs, so they just continued pretending they had anyway.
Whenever something ridiculous happens, that's being passed off as normal, natural, obvious, common sense, universal and inevitable, we have to ask (to deconstruct) why it has happened. What's the agenda? Who stands to benefit? Who's getting rich? Who's articulating power?
Let's indulge in a spot of deconstructionism. You met someone who'd 'gone back to 78s', CDs are old school (indeed they are), cassettes - and those utilising the format to get their music out there - escape your wrath but vinyl and the 'ridiculous contraption' by which the music is heard is for 'uber-gullables'. In recent times I've been to a gig and a festival where 78s were the format of choice - people playing, listening/dancing to, discussing and trading items. Vinyl records are but a fraction of music industry sales - perhaps the influence of the 'telly' isn't as great as you imagine. Whatever the format - 78, vinyl, cassette, CD, digital - embrace it. I'll see you on Saturday in the queue outside JG Windows for a bacon butty and before you set off don't forget to switch off the telly!
Strange, you say you're going to do a spot of 'deconstructionism', then don't. The real agenda for everything the record companies do is streaming - we're just collateral damage - and, while I've no doubt the media is in meltdown over the damp squib that has been their vinyls revival (they had far more success with the Beatles in the nineties), perhaps it shows just how ludicrous it is; but don't doubt they'll have another go on saturday.
Anybody who doubts the power of the media to invent 'normal'- and especially the telly, where the queue is there for all to see in glorious technicolour - believes way too much of what they see on it. It used to be religion, and why do you think the powers that be are so desperate to get kids back to school? To teach them to think for themselves or to tell them what to think.
I have a better idea. When I was a smoker (I used to think it was cool, watching Bogey in black and white), I stopped every day - sometimes twice a day - but on the day the telly nominated as no smoking day, I smoked as many and as visibly as I could. I shan't be buying a CD or streaming an album on saturday, but normal behaviour will be resumed on sunday.
How's about we call a truce? Personally I regard an LP as a painting and a CD as a print. However, being lazy, I like the idea of not having to get off my backside and turn the record over. But, if it's worth it I will. Streaming take even lesser effort but, at the end of the day, listen to the music in which ever format you prefer and enjoy.
I think you missed the point Lance, or perhaps part of one of my posts. Listen to the music in whichever format you prefer, but do it quietly like the rest of us. Not a lot of point in listening to vinyls if you don't tell anybody is there.
I just like the music, so the painting and print comparison isn't relevant to me. Word processors and typewriters, steam trains and electric, bed warmers and electric blankets; one of each is good at what it's for and the other isn't. People who like steam trains don't use them to get to work.
Absolutely! QUIETLY like the rest of us!
Thinking about your painting / print analogy Lance...
Are albums that come out on CD only (i.e everything these days) prints of something that doesn't exist? Similarly are albums that are put out on vinly after they are put out on CD prints of the original CD format?
Analogy doesn't really hold.
David
Live music is a painting. Vinyl, CD, Casettes, YouTube and streams are all prints. Be grateful that there are so many ways to hear music. Seems pointless in 2020 to argue about what the best way to listen to music is. Is there really a way that is better? The music itself is enough for me.
Yea, and vinyls that came out of albums originally on 78s. Which is the painting and which is the print? Nice analogy Lance; we'll get you to the Gaza Strip.
But don't treat this as a joke or a game; the record companies don't and won't care whether our descendants get to hear any jazz other than Kind of Blue or any soul other than Songs in the Key of Life or any reggae other than Bob Marley Legend or any rock other than Led Zeppelin 4 etc etc etc.
Here's a bit of irony for yah. As CDs are withdrawn, I'm increasingly finding I have to buy vinyls and get them put on to disc, not because they never came out on CD, but because they've become far more expensive on CD. Telly doesn't tell you that either.
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