Showing posts with label jazz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jazz. Show all posts
reel around the fountain
well, a fine day out - a last minute decision to head north, and i'm listening to buddy holly on the train looking over stockport... feeling like i'm in a 50's film (thanks to the never changing scenery).
we were intending to do some serious vintage shopping in manchester - and of course started off at afflecks palace, which is/was how quiggins used to be in liverpool back in the early 90's(a maze of stalls selling vintage clothing and contemporary antiques), just before the spectre of gentrification tried to kill off it's individuality... lots of little shops on many levels, selling clothing and stuff that appeals to the hordes of emo-kids... it used to be a bit more individual, but there seems to be a trend now for lots of stalls selling branded alternative wear(£20 for a labelled wallet?) and the actual vintage stuff being sidelined and priced way above it's value(you aint gonna sell it if it's a lot cheaper on ebay, y'know)... still it's always worth spending a few hours in afflecks as the remaining vintage clothing stalls are filled with pure gold and we ended-up having lunch in the top floor cafe... then off to american graffiti, a vintage shop selling mainly ornaments and women's wear, but i thought it was a bit too fancy dress hire(which they sold), so sidled out and into rockers, which sells a lot of stuff that gets sold in the other-half's shop... i did eye-up some lucky 13 t-shirts, out of the piles of black clothing, but nothing in my size... then over the road to cafe pop, which always throws up a good selection of vintage goodies in clothing and furniture(but again, £300 for a vintage dining table that may be repro..?), we had a good look around and i spotted a shirt-jacket i had been after in a certain flannel pattern(the exact one!), but it was way too big, so back on the racks it went...
there was a young hipster girl handing out flyers on oldham street, for blue rinse, so i spotted the sign for tib street, and we were in like flynn... very basic inside, racks with vintage clothing everywhere, no attitude and just more racks of stuff... reminded me a lot about how a clothes shop like this should be... good prices too, and although mostly 80's revival casual clothing, there was a fine selection of denim and hunting jackets(where i picked-up an early version of the Woolrich Lands End hunting coat, for £20... a bargain!).
see photo below(this is the modern version, virtually the same except that the jacket i got is shorter, with a zip and side pockets...), been after one of these items for a good few months now, and i wish i'd had one over this freezing cold winter(i would've had it with me in spain!).
but i liked it in there - thumbs up.
so that was that - a good day's shopping over(the other half got some wool, so happy), and we went off to urbis, for a toilet break and a well-earned cup of tea... and sat in the great little cafe with a plate glass wall that afforded views of yet more groups of emo-kids, all looning about in the mild weather in the open square...
this is a good gallery, and i cant recall having been here before... saw a baulleaqxy exhibition by some lad who had gone to all the trouble of taking urbex shots very expertly with a good looking camera set-up, which he then proceeded to warp and fork around with, spoiling the shots... pity - could've been good.
then downstairs to the middle foor for a look at the art of emory douglas - i liked his stuff, he was Minister of Culture for the Black Panther movement, and his work was very reminiscent of Ben Shahn, who was himself a bit of a revolutionary, who in turn was copied by almost everyone, most especially david stone martin, who did all the great artwork on the early blue note covers... now i used to read straight no chaser and often bought it more for the artwork than the writing(which was usually about some gig in london that about 5 people in the know attended), but at their very best, i can see they drew a lot of inspiration from the art of emory douglas...
so, that was good, discovering how it all ties in with jazz and emancipation...
nice gallery, plenty of indoor space to chill-out in, and i wish we'd gone there for lunch as well, a plate of chips and two teas for £6 in the city centre..?
madness!
we were intending to do some serious vintage shopping in manchester - and of course started off at afflecks palace, which is/was how quiggins used to be in liverpool back in the early 90's(a maze of stalls selling vintage clothing and contemporary antiques), just before the spectre of gentrification tried to kill off it's individuality... lots of little shops on many levels, selling clothing and stuff that appeals to the hordes of emo-kids... it used to be a bit more individual, but there seems to be a trend now for lots of stalls selling branded alternative wear(£20 for a labelled wallet?) and the actual vintage stuff being sidelined and priced way above it's value(you aint gonna sell it if it's a lot cheaper on ebay, y'know)... still it's always worth spending a few hours in afflecks as the remaining vintage clothing stalls are filled with pure gold and we ended-up having lunch in the top floor cafe... then off to american graffiti, a vintage shop selling mainly ornaments and women's wear, but i thought it was a bit too fancy dress hire(which they sold), so sidled out and into rockers, which sells a lot of stuff that gets sold in the other-half's shop... i did eye-up some lucky 13 t-shirts, out of the piles of black clothing, but nothing in my size... then over the road to cafe pop, which always throws up a good selection of vintage goodies in clothing and furniture(but again, £300 for a vintage dining table that may be repro..?), we had a good look around and i spotted a shirt-jacket i had been after in a certain flannel pattern(the exact one!), but it was way too big, so back on the racks it went...
there was a young hipster girl handing out flyers on oldham street, for blue rinse, so i spotted the sign for tib street, and we were in like flynn... very basic inside, racks with vintage clothing everywhere, no attitude and just more racks of stuff... reminded me a lot about how a clothes shop like this should be... good prices too, and although mostly 80's revival casual clothing, there was a fine selection of denim and hunting jackets(where i picked-up an early version of the Woolrich Lands End hunting coat, for £20... a bargain!).
see photo below(this is the modern version, virtually the same except that the jacket i got is shorter, with a zip and side pockets...), been after one of these items for a good few months now, and i wish i'd had one over this freezing cold winter(i would've had it with me in spain!).
but i liked it in there - thumbs up.
so that was that - a good day's shopping over(the other half got some wool, so happy), and we went off to urbis, for a toilet break and a well-earned cup of tea... and sat in the great little cafe with a plate glass wall that afforded views of yet more groups of emo-kids, all looning about in the mild weather in the open square...
this is a good gallery, and i cant recall having been here before... saw a baulleaqxy exhibition by some lad who had gone to all the trouble of taking urbex shots very expertly with a good looking camera set-up, which he then proceeded to warp and fork around with, spoiling the shots... pity - could've been good.
then downstairs to the middle foor for a look at the art of emory douglas - i liked his stuff, he was Minister of Culture for the Black Panther movement, and his work was very reminiscent of Ben Shahn, who was himself a bit of a revolutionary, who in turn was copied by almost everyone, most especially david stone martin, who did all the great artwork on the early blue note covers... now i used to read straight no chaser and often bought it more for the artwork than the writing(which was usually about some gig in london that about 5 people in the know attended), but at their very best, i can see they drew a lot of inspiration from the art of emory douglas...
so, that was good, discovering how it all ties in with jazz and emancipation...
nice gallery, plenty of indoor space to chill-out in, and i wish we'd gone there for lunch as well, a plate of chips and two teas for £6 in the city centre..?
madness!
almost blue
chet baker.
i've just finished the excellent book: deep in a dream/the long night of chet baker by james gavin
to begin with he was a nasty little tsih at times... in the book he makes the comment about himself that all the goodness in him went into the music.
"He started out as James Dean and ended up as Charles Manson", says an old friend, just in case we're missing the point.
tales of broken hearts, jacking-up, money wasted, opportunities and ambition blown away, heroin, heroin and more heroin...
heavy stuff... reading the first half of it, concerning his rise to fame and popularity - i began to wonder how could someone have everything... and yet blow it all away, to the point where at my age, he looked like an old man, who through self-induced ill-health was incapable of playing anything remotely aware.
he reached the point long before his death, where the music was merely a tool for scoring dope... and the adoring musicians and women who flocked around him became merely conduits for scoring dope - all just puppets to be fleeced(if i may mix some metaphors, badly)
he is in some respects the original kurt cobain, a jazz james dean without a conscience it would seem, most certainly...
baker became an icon for all things cool - i've still got the famous hipsters, jazz and the beat generation book (with baker on the cover) kicking around the house... the book that almost got me into wearing berets(as i had already tried that out, i'm almost afraid to say - but that was more to do with keeping my hair neat whilst riding a bike)...
but it did give me a quick rulebook of all things cool... blue note, penny loafers, ivy league, jazz... i was into astrid gilberto from the year dot - but from reading this book at least i knew something about her and the whole other jazz thing.
that's baker on the cover - when the book was published in 1987, and advertising people wanted to know who the cover model was, could they hire him... they had to be told that his life had just ended...
i always thought his music was a little too easy on the ear, and certainly in his time - he recorded some pretty cheesy sounding albums, droopy love ballads, italian jazzless outings with string sections, endless amounts of live bootlegs(that he would allow to be recorded but would refrain from playing the musicians onstage)... but his 50's material is still worth listening too... i'm not going to get bogged down with the semiotics of a good-looking white guy who copied miles davis and became immensely popular whilst black jazz musicians struggled to earn a living - that's another argument for another time(although it is certainly true enough), but if it hadn't been for the boundary breaking material of the like of baker... then those musicians would have found smaller audiences and a lesser reward for their art in the long run.
he also decided that at the peak of his career as a trumpet player, to release a vocal album... which the jazz-cats all scoffed at, but i suspect he didn't give a fcuk about their opinion... which always endears me to an artist!
it has to be remembered that he was also one of the coolest motherfcuker who ever walked, but i've read a lot of words over the years about the velvet underground/the factory et al, and nothing prepared me for such a fall from grace like this story.
the book is littered with the names of other jazz musicians who wander in and out of focus, taking drugs, playing great or terrible music, and lining-up to join the great gig in the sky.
course it helped that i had this book to hand:
contained within are the career-defining images that william caxton took of baker, who was then at the peak of his fame and only just about to start on the slippery slope of heroin addiction... and the stories behind those images and how much friction caxton had to endure are certainly eye-opening...
most of the time, especially in the 60's and 70's, baker comes across as the spoiled child, ruining everyone's party and demanding that the world should still treat him like a star... but towards the end, the tone of the book becomes more compassionate and we realise that baker isn't punishing anyone but himself, spending the latter years of his life seemingly aware of what a mess he's made of everyone else's life around him, and taking out of himself by ingesting even more heroin and cocaine.
he ends his life, just a junkie.
i also had this on the stereo whilst reading the book chet baker - the early years a four cd boxset released by the always excellent proper records.
almost blue.
deep in a dream though, a great book, i couldn't put it down for the whole week it took me to finish reading it to the bitter ending.
here's a review from the independant from back 2002 when the book came out, which expands even more on the james dean of drugs theory....
i chanced across it waterstones, while i had 30 minutes to kill waiting for my mate in town.
after flicking through it and being fairly impressed, i went back after lunch and bought the sucker...
since then, i've made a point of watching "let's get lost"... the excellent film by bruce weber on chet baker... piecing together classic footage and music and up to date interviews with baker and some of the people around him, in glorious black+white... it's very loose and pays homage to the cinematic myth of baker whilst showing the reality was not such a healthy spectacle... this was a man who imported thousands of pills in one year(via his wife - who didn't know she was breaking the law, but did time for it anyway...).
cool film, i will return to it for inspiration.
here's the man himself, singing over footage of some stock cars from the 50's...
i've just finished the excellent book: deep in a dream/the long night of chet baker by james gavin
to begin with he was a nasty little tsih at times... in the book he makes the comment about himself that all the goodness in him went into the music.
"He started out as James Dean and ended up as Charles Manson", says an old friend, just in case we're missing the point.
tales of broken hearts, jacking-up, money wasted, opportunities and ambition blown away, heroin, heroin and more heroin...
heavy stuff... reading the first half of it, concerning his rise to fame and popularity - i began to wonder how could someone have everything... and yet blow it all away, to the point where at my age, he looked like an old man, who through self-induced ill-health was incapable of playing anything remotely aware.
he reached the point long before his death, where the music was merely a tool for scoring dope... and the adoring musicians and women who flocked around him became merely conduits for scoring dope - all just puppets to be fleeced(if i may mix some metaphors, badly)
he is in some respects the original kurt cobain, a jazz james dean without a conscience it would seem, most certainly...
baker became an icon for all things cool - i've still got the famous hipsters, jazz and the beat generation book (with baker on the cover) kicking around the house... the book that almost got me into wearing berets(as i had already tried that out, i'm almost afraid to say - but that was more to do with keeping my hair neat whilst riding a bike)...
but it did give me a quick rulebook of all things cool... blue note, penny loafers, ivy league, jazz... i was into astrid gilberto from the year dot - but from reading this book at least i knew something about her and the whole other jazz thing.
that's baker on the cover - when the book was published in 1987, and advertising people wanted to know who the cover model was, could they hire him... they had to be told that his life had just ended...
i always thought his music was a little too easy on the ear, and certainly in his time - he recorded some pretty cheesy sounding albums, droopy love ballads, italian jazzless outings with string sections, endless amounts of live bootlegs(that he would allow to be recorded but would refrain from playing the musicians onstage)... but his 50's material is still worth listening too... i'm not going to get bogged down with the semiotics of a good-looking white guy who copied miles davis and became immensely popular whilst black jazz musicians struggled to earn a living - that's another argument for another time(although it is certainly true enough), but if it hadn't been for the boundary breaking material of the like of baker... then those musicians would have found smaller audiences and a lesser reward for their art in the long run.
he also decided that at the peak of his career as a trumpet player, to release a vocal album... which the jazz-cats all scoffed at, but i suspect he didn't give a fcuk about their opinion... which always endears me to an artist!
it has to be remembered that he was also one of the coolest motherfcuker who ever walked, but i've read a lot of words over the years about the velvet underground/the factory et al, and nothing prepared me for such a fall from grace like this story.
the book is littered with the names of other jazz musicians who wander in and out of focus, taking drugs, playing great or terrible music, and lining-up to join the great gig in the sky.
course it helped that i had this book to hand:
contained within are the career-defining images that william caxton took of baker, who was then at the peak of his fame and only just about to start on the slippery slope of heroin addiction... and the stories behind those images and how much friction caxton had to endure are certainly eye-opening...
most of the time, especially in the 60's and 70's, baker comes across as the spoiled child, ruining everyone's party and demanding that the world should still treat him like a star... but towards the end, the tone of the book becomes more compassionate and we realise that baker isn't punishing anyone but himself, spending the latter years of his life seemingly aware of what a mess he's made of everyone else's life around him, and taking out of himself by ingesting even more heroin and cocaine.
he ends his life, just a junkie.
i also had this on the stereo whilst reading the book chet baker - the early years a four cd boxset released by the always excellent proper records.
almost blue.
deep in a dream though, a great book, i couldn't put it down for the whole week it took me to finish reading it to the bitter ending.
here's a review from the independant from back 2002 when the book came out, which expands even more on the james dean of drugs theory....
i chanced across it waterstones, while i had 30 minutes to kill waiting for my mate in town.
after flicking through it and being fairly impressed, i went back after lunch and bought the sucker...
since then, i've made a point of watching "let's get lost"... the excellent film by bruce weber on chet baker... piecing together classic footage and music and up to date interviews with baker and some of the people around him, in glorious black+white... it's very loose and pays homage to the cinematic myth of baker whilst showing the reality was not such a healthy spectacle... this was a man who imported thousands of pills in one year(via his wife - who didn't know she was breaking the law, but did time for it anyway...).
cool film, i will return to it for inspiration.
here's the man himself, singing over footage of some stock cars from the 50's...
whole lotta somethin'
another book bought this afternoon...
"ace records - labels unlimited" blackdog publishing ISBN13: 978 1 906155 03 2
i've communicated with ace records in the past as a music fanzine editor, and they were very accommodating to me... as i'm a fan of the label and spent an awful lot of money on their albums (the mod jazz series is still a staple on the stereo...), buying ace albums always means you're buying quality - which is rare thing these days.
all killer no filler...
i even had the opportunity to take a very bad photograph of dean rudland once(see picture below), much to his (much deserved) ridicule.
i was using the famous "crap cam" my first ever digital camera... and a justified piece of shit it is too - he said i made him look like a corpse...
(sums it all up really - i was in a london club with the opportunity to take photos of some of the formative heads in my musical history(the acid jazz man eddie pillar was there too...), men from the music industry who have shook hands with some of the legends of soul and r+b and rockabilly... and i have the shittiest camera in the world instead of my olympus om10 or the myriad compact film cameras that we had lying around the house doing nothing...)
my life is in this book, everything from whirlwind to booker T thru punk to blues.
if you don't know ace records - they are a re-issue catalogue label, who put out only the best and most original music from the last 40 odd years, no cheesey re-runs - just gritty soulful, jazzy, bluesy, punky rock and roll tracks from some of the best and mostly under-rated artists you may have never heard of, but will wish you had.
i'm going to enjoy this book a lot for a good few weeks of dipping in and just being there... reading about all the trials and tribulations of setting up a record stall, then a record company... meeting all the legends and lesser known musicians of some damn fine music... plus there are loads of photos of memorabilia, albums, people, places.
for a music geek like me, this is heaven.
still on a retro tip for today, i went down to the bullring market in the city, to my favourite hair-product stall in the foodhall... they sell mostly afro-caribean hair stuff, which means of course they do these beauties:
on the left is blue magic... for the ladies, to use with hair-curling styles, so that's for the missus who's obsessed with the hair books she's got in the shop(and why not.. they are very good...), i might convince her to buy up a load of this and put it in the shop.
and on the right is the awesome royal crown... i use this stuff every day(if i "do" my hair... not if i'm wearing a hat!), basically just petroleum hair oil and olive oil...
smells like gumbo to me!
big handfuls of it on your head... feels healthy and much better than brylcreem, which has to be said is a bit too slippery and smells of old men... even if it was and still is made in birmingham.
i have a back-up tub of teh bryl for emergencies - as it's easy to get a hold of, but i'd sooner use the fish hybrid wax as it has more hold(it's basically a modern version of the old pomades without the nice smell...), and because teh cream does make you smell like your grandad which sends you down a long road of psychology....
pluko black+white is still the mother of all pomades( i may even go to northfield to get some of the pluko black+white orange lite - which they sell in a hairdresser's shop in the market there).
and if you do go for pluko btw... search out these little stalls in markets where you can buy the big ol' tub for less money than what high street chains will charge for the stingy little tub that's half the size with the false bottom (where they pack in some good ol' southern air, but no product grrrrr....)
elvis wore pluko black+white.
i also got these other pomades when i was at the stall.
on the left is murrays pomade which i haven't used yet but it smells of toffee, and then there's sweet georgia brown... always a favourite - the red one smells of butterscotch-toffee and the purple on smells like raspberry/blackcurrant... just feels great on the hair.
why use these old products... well they have bugger all chemicals in them, so won't strip the goodness and life out of your hair... they have a lot of "give" in them, as in they don't set like glue and will keep nice and flexible - if you're in a hot club or sunny weather.
and of course another reason for wearing them is the aroma... i used to be addicted to using bodyshop coconut pomade(they called it "hairshine"....) for years as it had a cheery smell of coconut about it( the coconut smell is used in aroma therapy to make you happy btw), great little metal tins of the stuff that had the same texture as pluko(which has it's own unique play-doh smell), until they discontinued it (along with the ice blue shampoo and banana condition...).
i have heard rockabilly betties admit they they go around the rooms at a do, sniffing the air for nice pomades... sounds good to me!
today i shall be mostly listening to excellent rare buddy holly tracks...
"ace records - labels unlimited" blackdog publishing ISBN13: 978 1 906155 03 2
i've communicated with ace records in the past as a music fanzine editor, and they were very accommodating to me... as i'm a fan of the label and spent an awful lot of money on their albums (the mod jazz series is still a staple on the stereo...), buying ace albums always means you're buying quality - which is rare thing these days.
all killer no filler...
i even had the opportunity to take a very bad photograph of dean rudland once(see picture below), much to his (much deserved) ridicule.
i was using the famous "crap cam" my first ever digital camera... and a justified piece of shit it is too - he said i made him look like a corpse...
(sums it all up really - i was in a london club with the opportunity to take photos of some of the formative heads in my musical history(the acid jazz man eddie pillar was there too...), men from the music industry who have shook hands with some of the legends of soul and r+b and rockabilly... and i have the shittiest camera in the world instead of my olympus om10 or the myriad compact film cameras that we had lying around the house doing nothing...)
my life is in this book, everything from whirlwind to booker T thru punk to blues.
if you don't know ace records - they are a re-issue catalogue label, who put out only the best and most original music from the last 40 odd years, no cheesey re-runs - just gritty soulful, jazzy, bluesy, punky rock and roll tracks from some of the best and mostly under-rated artists you may have never heard of, but will wish you had.
i'm going to enjoy this book a lot for a good few weeks of dipping in and just being there... reading about all the trials and tribulations of setting up a record stall, then a record company... meeting all the legends and lesser known musicians of some damn fine music... plus there are loads of photos of memorabilia, albums, people, places.
for a music geek like me, this is heaven.
still on a retro tip for today, i went down to the bullring market in the city, to my favourite hair-product stall in the foodhall... they sell mostly afro-caribean hair stuff, which means of course they do these beauties:
on the left is blue magic... for the ladies, to use with hair-curling styles, so that's for the missus who's obsessed with the hair books she's got in the shop(and why not.. they are very good...), i might convince her to buy up a load of this and put it in the shop.
and on the right is the awesome royal crown... i use this stuff every day(if i "do" my hair... not if i'm wearing a hat!), basically just petroleum hair oil and olive oil...
smells like gumbo to me!
big handfuls of it on your head... feels healthy and much better than brylcreem, which has to be said is a bit too slippery and smells of old men... even if it was and still is made in birmingham.
i have a back-up tub of teh bryl for emergencies - as it's easy to get a hold of, but i'd sooner use the fish hybrid wax as it has more hold(it's basically a modern version of the old pomades without the nice smell...), and because teh cream does make you smell like your grandad which sends you down a long road of psychology....
pluko black+white is still the mother of all pomades( i may even go to northfield to get some of the pluko black+white orange lite - which they sell in a hairdresser's shop in the market there).
and if you do go for pluko btw... search out these little stalls in markets where you can buy the big ol' tub for less money than what high street chains will charge for the stingy little tub that's half the size with the false bottom (where they pack in some good ol' southern air, but no product grrrrr....)
elvis wore pluko black+white.
i also got these other pomades when i was at the stall.
on the left is murrays pomade which i haven't used yet but it smells of toffee, and then there's sweet georgia brown... always a favourite - the red one smells of butterscotch-toffee and the purple on smells like raspberry/blackcurrant... just feels great on the hair.
why use these old products... well they have bugger all chemicals in them, so won't strip the goodness and life out of your hair... they have a lot of "give" in them, as in they don't set like glue and will keep nice and flexible - if you're in a hot club or sunny weather.
and of course another reason for wearing them is the aroma... i used to be addicted to using bodyshop coconut pomade(they called it "hairshine"....) for years as it had a cheery smell of coconut about it( the coconut smell is used in aroma therapy to make you happy btw), great little metal tins of the stuff that had the same texture as pluko(which has it's own unique play-doh smell), until they discontinued it (along with the ice blue shampoo and banana condition...).
i have heard rockabilly betties admit they they go around the rooms at a do, sniffing the air for nice pomades... sounds good to me!
today i shall be mostly listening to excellent rare buddy holly tracks...
two fisted threads
my new ad for the webshop.
sometimes, i forget just how much i like neville brody's artwork, then i produce an image like the one above...
someone at work was asking about the shop today, a very nice but straightlaced lady, who liked the sound of the clothes we have there... i warned her slightly about the gallery - which has little to do with me(i have a couple of photos on there, on the whole it is other people's work and is organised by H. as is most of the website... in general, i only take pictures of german mannequins in shirts!).
we are putting men's shirts in the shop now though... new bowling shirts and lounge shirts, plus i did spend a good few hours washing and ironing some vintage tikki shirts... which was actually quite enjoyable for a retro-fanatic.
and we are branching out... can't give any details away at this point, new names have been mooted and researched - and ideas have been aired successfully.
it's quite exciting though - the possibilities are endless, and if it all comes together, then some damn fine "stuff" will happen... as you know, there is always a shortage of good stuff happening around these days.
as for models - i'm crap at arranging them anyway, much too scattergun in my approach... i have two who are quite keen and with the arrival of some new equipment for the studio i will be able to do them some justice... a lamp rig and a decent backdrop frame... no more pinning the drape to stuff on the wall by the door... even if the results so far have been pretty good, it all adds to the stress of setting-up and impinges on my images when the backdrop is too short.
hopefully the models will still want to work with me... after all this time.
luckily i'm able to tell them that i don't do creepy stuff, as it's not where i'm at(you'd be surprised to learn just how many people associate shooting models with basic underwear shots... i'm not down on photographers who want to do that, good luck to them... its just that i'm into hurrell's hollywood style, or richard heeps or levis dexter's images of his wife... there's so much more to it all...).
i advertised on a modelling forum that H. recommended and these two were probably closest to the sort of model i was aiming for... i did get quite a few professional models asking if they could do some photos... but i want to work with people who know where i'm coming from, who like the same music i like... etc... etc...
anyway, as well as new stuff arriving for the studio, i have my new organ to work with:
a roland vk09, basically a hammond b3 clone.... sounds fairly jazzy on it's own and it stands up well against the crumar composer i've been using(and better than my hammond did, oddly enough!), but add some gain from my amp, and it turns into john lord from deep purple... i may have to try "smoke on the water" just for the sheer screaming sounds i can get... it's about time i did something HEAVY.
although, i am content to be the next booker T or jimmy smith as usual.
i have finally got round to recording and releasing a new track for the first time in about a year... entitled blue shack... which is quite well... bluesy for want of a better description, just me taking a phrase and running with it, i like it a lot, and you can hear it here on the helvatones site.
is this the time to mention my regard for hammond organ party albums... and maybe list some of them... maybe not, i'll stick to mentioning blue note albums i think, and not blow my cool just yet.
anyway here's carmel's great album from the early 80's that i like, which has some very subtle hammond on it:
i'll save that organ thing for another time, but here's something wot i wrote back in 2003 about the genre
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