17 October 2013 — Jazz on the Tube
Festival de Jazz de San Sebastian 2011. Filmed in Plaza de la Trinidad, Donosti, Spain. Beautiful music
Personnel: Abdullah Ibrahim, piano, Cleave Guyton, alto sax, flute, Keith Loftis , tenor sax, Andrae Murchinson, trombone, Toni Kofi, baritone sax, Belden Bullock, bass, George Gray, drums Continue reading
16 October 2013 — Jazz on the Tube
I think I could have been no more than 13 or perhaps 14 when I bought my first jazz album and it was the 1957 classic, ‘Duke Ellington Presents – The Bethlehem Years Volume 2’ made I think after his epic return to fame at the Newport Jazz Festival, after some time in the doldrums. It blew me away, and to this day, whenever I play it I am astounded by the sheer perfection of the arrangements and by the virtuosity and soul of the soloists. Each track on this album, from the opener, ‘Summertime’ through to the last, ‘The Blues’ is a gem with Ray Nance (trumpet, violin, vocals) on ‘I can’t get started’, the Gershwin classic is total perfection. This is the classical music of the 20th century.
It was around this time I got to meet the man himself, backstage at the Gaumont Cinema in Kilburn. I even shook the master’s hand in his dressing room. In the concert I would stand right at the front, my elbows on the stage, glued to the orchestra as they joked and laughed but never missed a beat, like some kind of soul machine. It was heaven to a kid like me, addicted to jazz.
This trio of songs was recorded in 1959 in Switzerland probably the time I met him. The recording sucks but so what, it’s the Duke…
2 Otober 2013 — Housmans
NEWS UPDATE
1. Housmans Peace Diary 2014
2. Special Offer for Housmans supporters – half-price tickets to a benefit gig for our sister organisation Peace News
‘COME OUT! WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED: A Celebration of People Power’
14 August 2013 — Jazz on the Tube
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers – Tokyo 1961 – Lee Morgan, trumpet – Wayne Shorter, tenor sax – Bobby Timmons, piano – Jymie Merritt, bass. I grew up listening to this man and his music, it just blew me away!
6 June 2013
Weaving together progressive jazz, early-American popular styles, Balkan folk musics, and the sounds of Brooklyn’s diverse contemporary music scene — from the dance-punk of LCD Soundsystem and experimental indie rock of Dirty Projectors to Missy Mazzoli’s blend of post-rock and quirky minimalism — Argue creates a vividly evocative musical narrative that is at once timeless and unlike anything heard before. Argue’s Secret Society is one of the most admired ensembles in contemporary jazz, having toured in Europe, Brazil, and North America and been twice featured at the Newport Jazz Festival. Its members include in-demand instrumentalists such as John Ellis, Ingrid Jensen, Ryan Keberle, and Sam Sadigursky. Continue reading
3 June 2013
The greatest Salsa band to come out of Nueva York! Recorded here in Kinshasa, Congo in 1974 as part of Mohammed Ali’s ‘Rumble in the Jungle’. One and a half hours of fantastic music.
28 May 2013 — Youtube
One of my favourite artists, this track is from the ‘Stay Human’ album recorded in 1991. Conscious music.
22 May 2013 — Media Lens
Introduction
I caught up with an old friend, after many years, on a muggy afternoon in Camden. Outwardly, he seemed the same wonderfully ebullient character he had always been – I got the usual bear hug and bristly smacker on the cheek. But as we talked, it became clear something had changed.
1 May 2013 — Jazz on the Tube
The song that hooked me forever on Gillespie’s groundbreaking work that combined big band jazz with Cuban rhythms. Fantastic music. Who would guess that it was created nearly seventy years ago!
14 April 2013
‘Jazz 625′, recorded at the BBC Studios, London, on March 19th, 1965. Bill Evans – Piano, Chuck Israel – Bass, Larry Bunker – Drums. 1 hour ten minutes of Bill Evans’ sublime music.
11 April 2013 — Dissident Voice
Of all the words uttered by a person, only a few remain unforgettable to any listener, for these can charm, haunt, humiliate, annoy or terrify even decades later. My friend Lan, for example, is reduced in my mind to a single joking sentence, “This time I’ll probably have to sell my body,” and I’ll never forgive X for sneering, “I ain’t got none!” With a public figure, the lingering words can even be misquoted, or conjured up out of malice or adoration, as likely the case with the incipiently subterranean Margaret Thatcher (the Milk Snatcher). Though there’s no record of it, she’s repeatedly cited as having intoned, “A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure.” The public likes this faux quotation because it neatly sums up Thatcher’s disdain for the bottom half, for “losers,” so to speak, and also because it sounds pretty funny.
3 April 2013 — Jacob Collier
Got sent this by a companero: a clever video by Jacob Collier performing his version of the title song from ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’, ‘Pure Imagination’ with Collier singing six-part harmony and also on melodica. According to his website, he’s 15 years old and all his music was recorded in his own music room and he plays all the instruments as well. Lots more like this here. Enjoy!
28 March 2013
An excellent documentary on Latin music, ‘Calle 54’ by Spanish director Fernando Trueba. Michel Camillo plays ‘From Within’. Also in the video: Paquito De Rivera, Bebo y Chucho Valdes, Eliane Elias Trio, Chano Domínguez, Tito Puente & Amigos.
24 March 2013 — Jazz on the Tube
A masterpiece of documentary film making by French writer/director/cinematographer Karim Dridi.
Seventy-six-year-old Cuban street musician Miguel Del Morales, known as El Gallo (The Rooster), travels around Cuba with his guitar, making music in the homes of friends, in bars, and on street corners, in courtyards and stairwells. His rich voice, colored by a lifetime of cigarettes and rum, weathered by the sun and rain, bespeaks the joys and sufferings of his countrymen. An urban troubadour, Del Morales has been called “a living memory of Cuban bolero.” — Internet Movie Database
26 February 2013 — Media Lens
There is an emptiness at the core of our being. The ego’s great task is to fill that emptiness with evidence that we are ‘someone’ rather than ‘nobody’, that we are ‘special’. But no matter how hard we try, our achievements continue to fall and vanish into the void.
8 February , 2013 — The Real News Network
Calls from within government to fully criminalise squatting gather momentum. It could have serious implications for political occupations, and will it backfire on the government’s plans to reduce its welfare budget? (inc. transcript) Continue reading
When it gets cold like this—(‘How cold is it?’ the disembodied voice of Ed McMahon asks in my very much embodied brain)—like well below thirty degrees (Fahrenheit), and twenty nine is well below thirty when we get down in this range, I know what to do. At least, I know what I do.
10 January 2013 — Youtube
10 January 2013 — Jazz on the Tube
Maxwell Lemuel Roach was born on January 10, 1924 in the Township of Newland, North Carolina and moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn when he was four years old. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 