June 18th
How will you feel by 9.30 tonight? Like a fearless lion taking back control, setting the agenda, cutting your own deals on the world stage, basking in the fierce heat of the big golden dividend? Or like a miserable cringing loser, cowering and snarling like a whipped cur at the big dogs strutting past and ignoring you as you tremble and piss yourself under the table? Or are you just going to make out like you’re so evolved that you just don’t care? JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH will be there to help you celebrate in ways the clean cut yet manly Mr Kane* can only dream about, or wipe away your bitter tears of defeat, or just generally help you deal with the feels, cos we’ll have the true dream team of Luke ‘The Golden Striker’ Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz ‘Crusher’ Thomas (drms) ready to lay out another hot & spicy gumbo of simmering blues-to-bop-to-whatever to satisfy whatever craving you may be afflicted with, I’ll be doing some kinda something on bass, plus the interdimensional A-listers of the Bee’s team will be ready to lay out the quality liquor at your command, and the usual cast of waifs and strays, hucksters and hipsters, high rollers and low riders, and the nameless denizens of the liminal spaces just glimpsed out of the corner of your eye at the end of the echoing street will be dropping by to check out the vibe… now that gamers can prove that they’re addicts like everyone else and not just regular dweebs or schlemiels maybe we’ll even see some of their pasty little faces as well… come one, come all, grab yer axe and come and sit in with us, the time is now.
*“He does not go to nightclubs, preferring to use his free time to play golf.” Parker, Sam (3 June 2015).Esquire. Retrieved 27 August 2015.
June 11th
As London still reels from the weekend’s triple whammy of Nazis, nudists and suffragettes, like a Lars Von Trier movie in reals, and Brighton resounds to the whisper of chafing flesh and clicking gears as the Naked Bike ride and its display of liberated, predominantly male sex organs on wheels retreats into the bruised collective unconscious for another year, how are YOU on this sunny day? Let JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH take over for the evening, be you chipper, or fearful and tearful, like bad things coming, cos we’ll be here once again in our vibey little heterotopia thanks to those master enchanters Luke ‘Sun’s Out’ Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz ‘Guns Out’ Thomas (drms) as they weave another web of good grooves, hot licks and pure bop-to-blues-to-whatever to wrap yourself in and reconnect with the huge ever growing pulsating brain that rules from the centre of the ultraworld…. I’ll be up to something on bass as per, the nodes of pure cosmic energy that manifest themselves on this plane as the Bee’s Team will be waiting to make with the quality liquors at your weary, hopeful request, the nameless creatures of the night will awaken to pace soundlessly past on the warm, stained asphalt outside, high in the darkening cerulean the swifts will fly in tireless pursuit…. maybe the upcoming footerfest will inevitably descend into yet another example of the UK making a disorderly retreat from an international organisation, maybe Kimmy and Donny just won’t be able to play nicely together, maybe you’ll never be beach body ready, don’t worry, don’t get mad, come and join us, it’s gonna be a stone groove…
June 5th
The festival is finally over, taking it’s ladyboys, ukeleles, and calculatedly artless Shrigleyesque whimsy away with it for ever and ever, and now you’re here in the sorta-sunsine, still nervous about getting trampled underfoot by the whisper-quiet rampaging of the sinister cult-like Silent Disco crew, but alive, that’s the main thing… fill the suddenly yawning cultural chasm in the centre of your life with a visit to JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH, where instead of watching Love Island for the next eight weeks glued to the soiled coverlet of your tawdry sofa you can boost your own internal ratings and recouple with the wellspring of hot swinging bop-to-blues-to-groove-to-whatever that finds it’s physical expression in the sculpted forms of Luke “By Royal Appointment” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “Fire In The Hole” Thomas (drms) as they smash out another evening’s worth of enriching musical good times …. I’ll be doing something or other on bass, the Bee’s team will be attentive, yet respectful, like the multidimensional ascended beings they are, so come and join us all, parents celebrating the end of half term, pedagogues worn and jaded from composing another mountain of admonitory feedback in the relevant boxes in the submission software, nutcases, swagmen, barkers, mountebanks, smugglers, scramblers, burglars, gamblers
pickpocket peddlers, even panhandlers, come and join the carnival, it’s not over, it’s not nearly over, it’s the beginning of the rest of what’s to come.