29th January
Signs of flux and change are all around.. the streets are full of sad-eyed President’s club regulars, looking for love in their stained and rumpled black-tie, the Tories are in thrall to a spider-toting fireplace salesman like something from Bond as scripted by Partridge, the privileged and connectivity-empowered are flinging hashtags back and forth at each other while everyone else ducks for cover.. let JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH provide you all with a much-needed break from the sheer, y’know, longness of it all, and create a lovingly curated heterotopia where you can forget about your ongoing struggles to zuzh up the meagre collection of tics and tropes that you think of as your identity and just lie back in the rushing torrent of good musical vibrations bursting forth like an ever-flowing stream from the twin creative powerhouses of Luke ‘Timeless’ Rattenbury (gtr) and special guest Tristan ’T-Bone’ Banks (drms), gamely aided along by me on bass, your senses soothed by a healing libation proffered by the spectral avatars manifesting on this plane as the Bee’s Team under the command of their bold leader … as the Trumpkin pretends he’s never even looked at the wedding list or knowingly linked the word ‘first’ with any sovereign nation, as the Maybot squawks and flaps her dusty wings, you just kick back, let dogs delight to bark and bite, let trolls lurk in their smelly rank ditches beneath the virtual bridges over which you once delighted to trip-trap, let the endless round of frantic signalling continue as out there beyond the perimeter things get ugly, ugly, ugly….. don’t get mad, don’t even try to get even, just get down to where the good groove is happening, it’s ok, we’ll be waiting.
22nd January
Here you are, midwinter, huddled in your flimsy heterotopian refuges like flyblown cattle, gazing through giant tear-dimmed eyes at the sorry parade of fatuity as it scrolls across your tethered devices, a carnival of filibustering know-nothings fretting and strutting their little hour upon their media platforms - don’t get mad, don’t try to get even, get down to JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH and let the whole sorry crew go hang, cos we’ll be creating our own plastic-free microclimate thanks to Luke ‘Isobar’ Rattenbury (gtr) generating areas of high pressure, hot licks and imperturbable swing, and Loz ‘Solar Storm’ Thomas (drms) tapping into some deep geothermal grooves, plus me on bass, and the bronzed harbingers of endless summer who comprise the Bee’s team standing by with offerings of the finest liquors known to man... winter’s hired goons may be waiting at your door ready to lay their tiresome seasonal trip on your poor freezing bones, yet out across the darkened fields at the edge of town the sap is starting to rise in the withered hedgerow and in the inky depths of the sea the herring are starting to spawn ... join us, let’s get the fires burning.
15th January
Is this the best that 2018 can come up with? Journos saying ‘shithole’ on the radio? UKIP glamour models expounding eugenics for morons? Waiting for Jezza to say something he hasn’t already said in the 80s? Marillion jokes about Carillion? Jeremy Hunt and Chris F*ckin Grayling? Thank your interdenominational deity (if any) for JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH where we’ll be keeping it so fresh and so clean thanks to those twin titans of good groove Luke ‘The Velvet Fog’ Rattenbury (gtr) and Tristan ‘T-Bone’ Banks as they bust loose with an overflowing cornucopia of hot licks and life-affirming grooves ... if you already feel jaded, if the grey is getting to ya, if all around you seem sunk in pusillanimity and vacuous posturing, if even your most committed signalling on social media just seems like screaming into an empty stinky void, if the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity, if you still can’t say ‘veganuary’ with a straight face and your woke chums are getting totes vexed, then you need to hang up your hang ups, get on the good foot, grab yer axe den off the shelf and come and join us... it’s all to play for, what are you waiting for? Come on, come over...
8th January
G’wan, admit it, you’ve got the winter blues! Even with all 3 TV screens going full pelt, your shirts on the floor, your toothbrush under lock and key and a triple cheeseburger in your chubby little orange paws, you still feel the frigid iron breath of winter whispering over your comb-over, pulling at your heels, messing with your Netflix n’ chill - it’s time to get onto the good foot, and JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH is here right on cue to take your poor frightened hand and lead you into the light, thanks to the matchless skills of Luke ‘Game Of Thrones’ Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz ‘Thermonuclear Sweat’ Thomas (drms) as they unleash a blast of pure healing musical good vibes in every direction, iaded by me on bass and the aetherial beings of the Bee’s team ready to make with the quality liquors… the seasonal family guilt trip of Xmas is past, you’re over pursuing the phantom of pleasure through the guilty maze of dissipation, the frantic search for the ultimate hedonistic fulfilment on NYE has turned out to be a wild goose chase yet again… far away in the stuffy double-glazed corridors of power Brexiteers are sweating and plotting, Ms May is reshuffling her stacked thumbed deck, that kindly old Mr Corbyn - remember him? - is beaming beneficently at everyone while Jon Landesman looks up ‘youthquake’ in the OED for the umpteenth time, Toby Young is leering guiltily at himself in the mirror, like a man farting in a hot car while eating a scotch egg, the usual suspects are psyching themselves up to deliver whatever fresh farrago of bullshit they can spray at us all for the usual tendentious justifications… no need to run, and hide, it’s a wonderful wonderful life, come and grab yer axe down off the shelf as join us as we light a fire, its going to be a fine night tonight.