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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

17458 (and counting) posts since we started blogging 16 years ago. 732 of them this year alone and, so far, 37 this month (Oct. 16).

From This Moment On ...

October

Fri 18: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 18: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms. 1:00pm. Free.
Fri 18: New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band @ The Oxbridge Hotel, Stockton. 1:00pm. £5.00.
Fri 18: Hot Club du Nord @ St Cuthbert’s, Crook. 7:30pm.
Fri 18: Chet Set @ Seventeen Nineteen, Hendon, Sunderland. 7:30pm. Pete Tanton & co.
Fri 18: Michael Woods @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. Doors 7:30pm (upstairs). A Hoodoo Blues dance & social event. £10.00. class & social (£10.00., £7.50., £5.00. social only). Michael Woods (country blues guitar) on stage 9:00pm.
Fri 18: East Coast Swing Band @ Hexham Abbey. 7:30pm. £9.00.
Fri 18: Ben Crosland Quartet @ Traveller’s Rest, Darlington. 8:00pm. Opus 4 Jazz Club.
Fri 18: Durham University Jazz Society’s ‘High Standards’ @ Music Dept. Music Room, Divinity House, Palace Green, Durham University DH1 3RS. 8:009-30pm. Tel: 0191 334 1419. £7.00., £5.00.
Fri 18: Ray Stubbs R&B All Stars @ Blues Underground, Nelson St., Newcastle. 9:00pm. Free.

Sat 19: Sat 19: Paula Jackman’s Jazz Masters @ St Augustine’s Parish Centre, Darlington. 12:30pm. Darlington New Orleans Jazz Club.
Jeff Hewer Trio @ The Vault, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free.
Sat 19: Howlin’ Mat @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Country blues guitar & vocals. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.

Sun 20: Kamasi Washington @ The Glasshouse, Gateshead. 7:30pm. POSTPONED! New date Saturday 5 April 2025.
Sun 20: Tweed River Jazz Band @ Barrels Ale House, Berwick-upon-Tweed. 7:00pm. Free.
Sun 20: Magpies of Swing @ The Globe, Newcastle. 8:00pm.

Mon 21: Gideon Tazelaar Quartet @ Yamaha Music School, Blyth. 1:00pm. £9.00.
Mon 21: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Mon 21: Gideon Tazelaar Quartet @ The Black Bull, Blaydon. 8:00pm.

Tue 22: Bywater Call @ The Cluny, Newcastle. 7:30pm (doors). Americana/blues/soul excellence.

Wed 23: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Wed 23: Darlington Big Band @ Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mills Social Club, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free. Rehearsal session (open to the public).
Wed 23: Daniel John Martin w. Swing Manouche @ The Old Library, Auckland Castle, Bishop Auckland. 6:30pm. £12.00. (at the door, no advance sales).
Wed 23: Take it to the Bridge @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free.

Thu 24: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, North Tyneside. 1:00pm. Free.
Thu 24: John Garner & Tobias Sarra @ King’s Hall, Newcastle University. 1:15pm. Free.
Thu 24: Gateshead Jazz Appreciation Society @ Brunswick Methodist Church, Newcastle NE1 7BJ. 2:00pm. £4.00. ‘Desert Island Discs’.
Thu 24: Daniel John Martin w. Swing Manouche @ Holy GrAle, Durham. 7:00pm. Free (donations). Thu 24: Jeremy McMurray & the Pocket Jazz Orchestra @ Arc, Stockton. 8:00pm.
Thu 24: Faye MacCalman + John Pope Quintet + Moonfish @ The Glasshouse, Gateshead. 8:00pm. Donations.
Thu 24: Eva Fox & the Jazz Guys @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.
Thu 24: Tees Hot Club @ Dorman’s Club, Middlesborough. 8:30pm. Free.

Reviewers wanted

Whilst BSH attempts to cover as many gigs, festivals and albums as possible, to make the site even more comprehensive we need more 'boots on the ground' to cover the albums seeking review - a large percentage of which never get heard - report on gigs or just to air your views on anything jazz related. Interested? then please get in touch. Contact details are on the blog. Look forward to hearing from you. Lance

Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Sunday night @ the Globe: Graham Costello’s Strata - June 18 (also album review)

Graham Costello, (drums); Fergus McCreadie (piano); Harry Weir (tenor sax, bass clarinet); Kevin Cahill (guitar); Gus Stirrat (electric bass).

(On the album: Joe Williams (guitar) and Angus Tikka (bass) replace Cahill and Stirratt and Liam Shortall plays trombone)

Sometimes a concert is a good way into an act or an album that had previously been beyond reach. (This happened for me with Acoustic Ladyland and Polar Bear. Seeing them live made everything click.) Sometimes it’s the other way round and listening to the album provides a way into a better understanding of the gig you saw the night before. This latter, for me, is the point I have arrived at after seeing Graham Costello’s Strata on Sunday night at the Globe. Listening to Obelisk, the album they were promoting at the gig, you get a sense of where the name, Strata, came from. There are layers to this music and you can spend repeated listens geologically exploring what is going on at different levels. This pleasure is one that, inevitably, is denied in a live setting but other factors usually more than compensate.

First off, I have to say that I think Graham Costello is an outstandingly good drummer and one that would enhance any band he joined. He needs to be in a band, (not leading one), of musicians that can operate at his energy level. The weakness, live, is I think, in the composing and arranging. What works well on the album is lost live. Subtlety is the first and major victim. Live, there are peaks and troughs as climaxes are reached and quieter moments pass before another crash on the spiralized cymbal (see photo) signifies a return to storm and tempest. Very quickly everything started to sound a bit the same as tracks fused into one another and followed the same routine of quiet and loud passages with most of the non-drum solos overwhelmed by the noise.  As William Shakespeare said in his review of the band, 'It is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.' Perhaps it was the fact that I was sat closer than anyone else to the drummer and anything I heard had to get past him first!

There is further frustration in that three of the five musicians on stage are underused. Drum and bass provide some brilliant rhythmic work but it’s astounding to see a pianist like Fergus McCreadie doling out simple vamps with his left hand whilst drinking tea with his right. It was as if Costello had shackled a racehorse to a plough.

I would strongly recommend Obelisk the album and my copy has made it to that coveted end of the shelf where the albums of the year get to live until the top ten is compiled in December. The album was available at the gig and can now be bought HERE through Bandcamp in physical or digital formats. Dave Sayer

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