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Bebop Spoken There

Ambrose Akinmusire: “ I am certainly always aware of what the masses are doing. And when I see too many people going one way, I'm going another way - even when I don't know what's over that way". DownBeat, March, 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

16287 (and counting) posts since we started blogging 16 years ago. 169 of them this year alone and, so far, 41 this month (Mar 18).

From This Moment On ...

March

Tue 19: Jam session @ The Black Swan, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free. House trio: Michael Young, Paul Grainger, Tim Johnston.

Wed 20: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Wed 20: Darlington Big Band @ Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mills Social Club, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free. Rehearsal session (open to the public).
Wed 20: Take it to the Bridge @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free.

Thu 21: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, North Tyneside. 1:00pm. Free.
Thu 21: Castillo Neuvo Trio + Conor Emery & His ‘Bones Band @ The Grove, Ouseburn, Newcastle. 7:30pm (7:00pm doors). £10.00. (£7.00. student).
Thu 21: Remi Banklyn + Chris Corcoran Trio @ The Globe, Newcastle. 8:00pm. £12.50. Chicago blues. An International Guitar Foundation promotion.
Thu 21: Merlin Roxby @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig. Ragtime piano.
Thu 21: Tees Hot Club @ Dorman’s Club, Middlesbrough. 8:30pm.

Fri 22: Vasilis Xenopoulos & Paul Edis @ The Gala, Durham. 1:00pm. £8.00. SOLD OUT!
Fri 22: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 22: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 22: New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band @ The Oxbridge Hotel, Stockton. 1:00pm. £5.00.
Fri 22: Nauta + Remy CB + Last Orders @ Hoochie Coochie, Newcastle. 8:30pm (7:30pm doors). Free.
Fri 22: Vasilis Xenopoulos-Paul Edis Quartet @ Traveller’s Rest, Darlington. 8:00pm. £15.00. Opus 4 Jazz Club.
Fri 22: Redwell @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.

Sat 23: Jambone @ The Glasshouse, Gateshead. 6:30pm. Free (ticketed). End of term performance in the Northern Rock Foundation Hall.
Sat 23: Milne-Glendinning Band @ The Vault, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free.
Sat 23: Red Kites Jazz @ Rowlands Gill Community Centre NE39 1JB. 7:00pm. Tickets: £12.00. (gibsidecommunityfarm@gmail.com). A ‘Build a Barn’ fundraiser. BYOB, tea/coffee available.
Sat 23: New Century Ragtime Orchestra @ Gosforth Civic Theatre, Newcastle. 7:30pm. £20.00. + bf (book in person at venue - no booking fee!). Featuring pianist Martin Litton.
Sat 23: Pete Tanton’s Cuba Libre @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.

Sun 24: Musicians Unlimited @ Park Inn, Hartlepool. 1:00pm. Free.
Sun 24: More Jam @ The Globe, Newcastle. 2:30pm. Free.
Sun 24: Luis Verde @ Queen’s Hall, Hexham. 3:00pm. Verde (alto sax); Joe Steels (guitar); John Pope (double bass); John Hirst (drums). Alto sax brilliance!
Sun 24: Elsie Franklin @ The Globe, Newcastle. 3:00pm. £10.00. Country blues. An International Guitar Foundation promotion.
Sun 24: 4B @ The Ticket Office, Whitley Bay Metro Station. 3:00pm. Free.
Sun 24: Las Vegas Live with the Rat Pack @ The Forum, Billingham.
Sun 24: Ian Millar & Dominic Spencer @ Otterburn Memorial Hall. 7:30pm. £12.00.
Sun 24: Lindsay Hannon: Tom Waits for No Man @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 7:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig. Note start time - 7:00pm.
Sun 24: Bold Big Band @ The Globe, Newcastle. 8:00pm.

Mon 25: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Mon 25: Michael Young Trio @ The Engine Room, Sunderland. 6:30pm. Free.

Monday, August 23, 2021

Jimmy Jazz, included in ‘The Guts’ by Roddy Doyle (Vintage Books, 2013)

Jimmy Jazz is a short story appended to the end of The Guts, a 2013 novel by Roddy Doyle and features several of the same characters from the principal novel. It’s a ‘hidden track’ like Her Majesty at the end of Sgt. Pepper’s by the Beatles or English Rose by the Jam at the end of Setting Sons (I don’t know of any examples from the jazz world).

The protagonist is Jimmy Rabbitt, whom we first met as the manager/fixer in The Commitments. Jimmy is now working in the field of vintage Irish rock, assembling compilations and organising reunion tours. He hates jazz; as he says “He wasn’t a bigot, he was just right”. This goes back to a case of teenage sexual frustration when, as a teenager, Jimmy’s girlfriend told him that her parents were out for the day, but they arrived at her house to find her father very much at home and listening to Charlie Parker.

In an attempt to open his mind to jazz his wife buys Jimmy tickets to see Keith Jarrett in Dublin. Jimmy will take his pal, Outspan, (guitarist in the Commitments), with him. Outspan hasn’t heard of Jarrett and the conversation goes: -

“Keith Jarrett”

“The one out of Boyzone?”

“No”

“I’ve run out of Keiths”

“He’s a piano player”

“Like Richard Clayderman?”

Jimmy does his research. Jarrett sounds like a terror; he’d walked off stage because some ‘sham’ in the audience couldn’t stop coughing. This was all part of the Jarrett experience – “the tension, the terror. This wasn’t a gig, this was a concert.”

At the concert someone coughs, ‘The applause was dying. So was Jimmy’

The descriptions of the concert itself are, of course the high points of the story and serve as wonderful descriptions of the improviser’s art.

‘Jarrett was staring at the piano keys. His head was moving from side to side as if he was making his mind up.... Then he started playing. And it was incredible. Like he was composing the piece Jimmy was hearing and throwing it away at the same time…. And it was brilliant. Never played before. And it would never be played again… something so brilliant, gone… He wanted to stand up and catch a note and take it home’.

It’s a very short story, just 12 pages but it builds the tension and creates a release, like a good jazz piece and I’m jealous of a fictional character because he got to see Keith Jarrett live and I never did (I assume that Doyle was writing from experience).

I doubt many people from the jazz world will read Jimmy Jazz unless they are already Roddy Doyle fans, although, you never know, it may turn up in a collection of jazz writing one day.

The Guts is available from the usual online retailers, some second hand shops and selected branches of Oxfam. Dave Sayer

4 comments :

Lance said...

Great minds think alike Dave, as the saying goes. I have been thinking for awhile about posts/references to jazz in non-jazz literature although sometimes, with writing, there's a jazz feel to it even if it has nothing to do with music!
What do others think? Have you got jazz quotes from non-jazz books?

Anonymous said...

Interesting one, Doyle's a master. Hmmm but what's a ''non-jazz'' book? Conundrum of the day in this regard ponder this, isn't it demoralising when some ''bona fide'' jazz books, of the interesting-as-paint-drying direction aren't jazz even when the subject matter seems to deem it so? Perhaps every book is jazz except when become dull. But again into the mystic you can't improvise a book and have it consumed by a reader in real-time. More's the pity.

Lance said...

I should have been more specific. By non- jazz I mean novels that aren't jazz themed but have jazz incidents in them e.g On The Road.

Anonymous said...

OK, again ironies about how about Jazz (1992) by the Nobel winning Toni Morrison.

It's a ''non-jazz'' book because even though set in the Harlem of the 1920s when you might think jazz is centre to the time the narrative also extends back to the pre-jazz of the mid-19th-century American South.

In it the character Alice however does digress to comment according to the narrator that jazz ''disturb (s) her peace, making her aware of flesh and something so free she could smell its bloodsmell.''

Great idea for a thread!

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