that’s going to gigs, not playing them this time.
Monday night was Carleen Anderson at the jazz cafe. I’ve see her there before now, and it’s always an amazing gig. Her band is wonderful – Ben Castle on Sax, Andy Hamill on bass, Winston Clifford on Drums, Mark Edwards on keys, Mark someone on guitar (didn’t catch his surname, but he was very very good), and a backing vocalist I think was called Natasha. Anyway, a great gig – Carleen’s voice is amazing, her songwriting is really strong, the grooves were exceedingly funky, and a fine time was had by all.
Tuesday night involved going to hear Duke Special at Sound Acoustic in Leicester Square, which is a lot better than the Sound venue upstairs in the same building, which is horrible. Duke Special, AKA Pete Wilson, is brilliant – dread-locked piano-playing singer-songwriter with a stellar voice, beguiling stage presence, and some fantastic songs. His EP ‘Lucky Me’ is brilliant, and he was one of my top three favourite acts from Greenbelt last year. He’s on again at The Barfly in Camden tonight, but I’m teaching til 9, so don’t think i’ll be able to make it. I’ll have a mooch around online and see if I can find a stage-time…
Then last night (wednesday), I spent a very pleasant evening listening to the JazzBerries in the Crypt at St-Martins-In-The-Fields, in Trafalgar Square. It was a rather lovely set of vocal standards, well played and sung. Good stuff.
I love wandering round London on balmy evenings – the centre of london is such a gorgeous historic place, brimming with culture and marvellousness. Theatres, restaurants, street musicians, historic buildings and monuments, groovy cafes and swanky celeb bars. Add to that the majesty of the museums, and you’ve got one amazing city. OK, so we’ve got one of the worst recycling records in Europe, the public transport infrastructure has gone to shit, the hospitals are being sold off to people who don’t want to do operations that aren’t ‘cost effective’, the government are happy to ignore democracy in action, gun crime is rampant… etc. etc. but it does have its upside too… :o) I tend to walk around with a big grin on my face at this time of year.
Over the last couple of days I’ve been listening through all the tracks that I recorded for ‘Not Dancing For Chicken’ that didn’t get used, and some of it’s really good! I obviously did a really strong stylistic selection job on what went on and what got left off, and there’s tonnes of stuff here I really like. So it might be time for a downloadable extra and live tracks album… I’ll get round to that ASAP!