On the Beat

I went walking around town this afternoon, doing a couple of chores.

I then dropped into the Ingleby Gallery to see what their latest show was like; neither of the two artists on show – Richard Forster and Ruth Claxton particularly impressed: with Forster, I thought “I could do that… And I have, many times! Just as successfully!”, whilst Claxton made me think, “fun idea, but so what?”

However, they had several items by other artists which I really liked: I had to stop myself buying an original, lifesize Anthony Gormley print (cheap at £6,000…), which I’ll probably regret doing (I still regret not buying a Howard Hodgkin print fifteen years ago – when I could have afforded it, too! I wish I had!).

(By the way, the floor of the gallery still had dribbles of mother of pearl embedded in it, left over from their festival show… I didn’t particularly like the exhibit, but there is something rather lovely about the inlaid stones still being there.)

Walking back, I managed to avoid being sucked into Waterstones – I have several unread books and a pile of Granta still to read, too.

However, the siren within Fopp drew me in. I couldn’t help it.

I picked up…

• Heaven Seventeen – The Luxury Gap, largely because Let Me Go is just great dance music, and I remember bopping about at discos in the 80s to it… (Temptation is pretty good, too!)
  
• New Order – Low Life to add the many other New Order CDs I have because This Time Of Night is just a fucking brilliant example of mixing drums and electronic rhythms, and I can’t understand why I didn’t have on my iPod before
  
• Spiritualized – Songs In A&E, since I thought they sounded pretty good when I saw them on Later… a while ago
  
• Lee Morgan – The Sidewinder – mostly because I realised I didn’t have any Lee Morgan as himself (he is on several Art Blakey CDs I have), and The Sidewinder itself is a quintessential Blue Note track
  and…
  
• Horace Silver – Song For My Father, because I don’t have any Steely Dan on my iPod, either…

And all for less than £20!

I nearly picked up a couple of Dexter Gordon CDs, too - Go and Our Man In Paris - I didn’t because I know I have them both on vinyl, and I couldn’t remember whether – or which – I have on CD. This was a good move – I do actually have Go; I might go back to pick up Our Man In Paris tomorrow – I mean, for £3? Jeez!

It was my birthday recently - well, three months ago.

Yesterday, I received three birthday presents from my brother.

These were a couple of CD reissues - Ken Hyder's Talisker's "Dreaming of Glenisla", and the Chris McGregor Group's "Very Urgent" - together with a DVD set of The Wire a tv series set in Baltimore. (Whilst I know that my brother will have sent me this because, when in the States, he lives near Baltimore and once talked of moving there, I can't help thinking he maybe thought it was actually back issues of a jazz magazine I used to read, edited by the late Richard Cook, or maybe even a post-punk band I must once have seen...).

The Talisker CD is very interesting. I remember my brother having this on vinyl when it first came out in the early seventies, and hating it. Really hating it. My tastes have changed; now, I love it: a mix of jazz improvisation and Scottish themes, more experimental and less ceilidh than John Rae's Celtic Feet, more jazz and less folky than Colin Steele's Stramash

So good they named a whisky after it...

Last week, I received a CD in the mail. I had expected it - this one.

The nice thing is, it was sent to me free - because they have used one of my pictures on the sleeve. This one:

Actually they've used a couple, but that one is big, taking a whole page of the inside sleeve notes.

It was rather strange seeing one of my pictures like that. I felt really rather proud. Plus I felt like I was doing my bit to support British jazz, too. And very pleased they liked the pictures so much that they wanted to use them!

And on top of all that, it is a great CD, too.

For some reason, I felt like dancing this weekend; repeatedly.

( It started on Saturday... )

In November, I wrote a post about the London Jazz Festival, and I included some photographs I had taken.

Later, I wrote how one of the trumpet players had seen my pictures of him on flickr, and had emailed me about them. (Sorry, I can’t find that post.) He was asking for permission to put my pictures on their website, and to quote what I had said about the gig.

And now the leader of the band - Mike Westbrook, one of the luminaries of the British jazz scene - has emailed to ask if he can use the pictures on the band’s new CD.

I am very pleased. No money, but hey, a free CD. And I feel it is a great compliment. And I like the idea I am doing something positive to support British jazz!

Oh, and I said yes!

So there I was in the record shop, looking for the new Lloyd Cole CD, when another release by the Bunnymen caught my eye. This time, it is “Crocodiles”, along with bonus tracks, most notably the excellent, wonderful, exciting “Shine So Hard” EP. For a fiver. So of course, I had to buy it – I mean, how could I not?

I was amused to see that there is a recent live Bunnymen CD called “Me, I’m All Smiles”. I have always loved that line (and it probably crops up fairly regularly in LJ posts! Old habits…) – and I was most amused to see that, just like naming “Shine So Hard” after a line from a song which doesn’t appear on the recording, the line me, I’m all smiles won’t be on “Me, I’m All Smiles”, either.

I found the Lloyd Cole, which I have now played a couple of times. I don’t find it as addictive as f4f3 and others have found it – it is ok, but I am not wholly convinced. It could just be that it would be hard to surpass my favourites of old.

Whilst in the record shop, I bought some books, too. I bought “Anansi Boys” by Neil Gaimen, because everyone else seems to rave about him, and I have never read any of his stuff (and it was only a fiver); “We Need To Talk About Kevin”, by Lionel Shriver, which I had been looking at in Waterstones a couple of weeks ago (but it didn’t feel suitable holiday reading), and it was only a fiver; and “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell, because I found “Blink!” very interesting (and it was only a fiver).

I can see a pattern emerging here.

There are lots of Fopp shops. Most of them are in Scotland; but there are also branches in London (one of the streets around Covent Garden), Bristol (main road near the Wills Building) and I think Manchester, too.

Actually, a quick look on the web shows me they are all around the place... http://www.fopp.co.uk/stores.php

Now we know.