28th January
As the freezing winds of Brexmas swoop down across the glassy sea and into your personal space, like Mr Putin’s icy fingers down the back of your neck, as your emotions are all still a-quiver from trying mix the feels of a weekend combining Burns Night and Holocaust Memorial Day, as you contemplate necking a load of tide pods and yeeting into traffic just to show em all, JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH comes riding in just in the nick of time to get you back on the good foot and into it, man, so quit trying to gaslight yourself back into happiness or at least some kinda resignation to Fortuna’s wheel and get some symmetry and geometry back into your life by digging on special guest Paul ‘Fist Of Fury’ Richards (gtr), keeping you safe from harm as he’s equally at home swinging the changes on his pearl inlaid fretboard as he is disabling an assailant with a single body blow, plus Loz ‘The Last Dragon’ Thomas on the drums of thunder, plus me as per on the ol doghouse keeping Argos out of the chill as he waits for master to get back from his trip, while the shimmering sylphs and dryads of the Bee’s team wait poised in the scented shadows behind the well-stocked bar to make with the quality liquors and whatever guests spin by to shake it loose with us limber up to do their thing, and so can you, so can you, say it loud whatever it may be, don’t go voiceless into the black night, derevaun seraun, derevaun seraun.
21st January
Here you are, deep into the chilly heart of cuffing season, the super blood wolf moon overhead like a Roger Dean prog dream, harbinger of some tide of earthbound f*ckery that’s waiting to overwhelm us all as our elected representatives bray and bellow like the venal lacklustre lollygaggers we all suspected they might be … regular transmissions of mediated nicompoopery won’t divert us sufficiently from the incoming mediocrapocalypse, but luckily JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH is back with a big uncut slice of the reals thanks to the warp-speed talent of special guest Mr Al “Crazy Legs” Scott on the virtual piano and Mr Loz “Osmium” Thomas (drms) to take you away from all this boring madness on a magic carpet ride of hot sweet swinging music, aided in some manner by me on bass, with a host of potential participants all ready to chip in with their esteemed contributions, rockabilly rebel Sean ‘Flicknife’ Stapleton presiding sharp as a blue steel blade behind the well-stocked bar, the Bad Boys laying out the tasty burgers, badmashes pulling up to the kerb outside, ice crackling on the windows of your draughty overpriced accommodation, Phil the Greek burning it up like Birdbox in his new German whip, stars wheeling overhead, while far away in the cold distance up on the black frozen hillsides lurking like Grokes at the edge of town, deep under the frozen loam, something is stirring, the sap is ready to move in the blasted hedgerows… get ready, as some shitty little AI program gets ready to convert your living pulse into predictive data and flog it to some other numpty, this is the rhythm of the night, this is the rhythm of my life
14th January
When parliamentary process is just too lit and u just wanna chill, when dogs-in-sunglasses memes are simply no longer enough to express your admiration for correct adherence to legislative precedent, when your enthusiasm for reading other people’s furious explanations of what ‘democracy’ means on fb just dies….. let JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH take the tension out of your Brexit extension and get the spark back into your tired lil eyes, cos all you have to do is come down, kick back and chill out to the heavy heavy monster sound as our resident experts Luke ‘Freedom Of Movement’ Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz ‘The Eternal Backstop’ Thomas (drms) lay out another feast of musical good vibrations to bring the people together, aided as ever by me on bass plus the promise of special guests galore… as Jezza and Tezza both try to pull off the ultimate sick chirpse on each other while everyone else yells themselves into a state of hyper-osmatically exacerbated inertia, as the wokest post-millenials yell at each other in Hisbe, as Trumpkin picks his nose and stares at the snow outside his lonely window, we’ll be laying out a bunch of smoking hot jazz-to-blues-to-bop-to-latin-to-beats-to-whatever for the people to enjoy just for kicks, so just block all your dreary collapsitarian mates, pull on yer coat n shoes and get down, don’t be all sad like poor Andy, get happy like you’re laughing at salad, come and join us, join us, get in.
7th January
New Year came in with a smash and already your poor little head is spinning into a vortex of discombobulation, kids are back at school, you’re back at work or something, China is on the dark side of the moon, what’s to do? … slough off your ideologically ambiguous Yellow Jacket and slouch on down to JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH where we’ll be setting things up for whatever 2019 can throw our way with a shedload of internationally unconstrained blues-to-bop-to-latin-to-groove-to-whatever thanks to the boundary-defying majesty of Luke ‘Unity’ Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz ‘Equity’ Thomas (drms) and they lay out a fresh platter of jazz-related musical goodness for you to load up your extra-size buffet plate with, aided in some manner by me on bass, while the interdimensional entities of the Bee’s Team stand by, waiting in the alluring scented depths of the shadows behind the well-stocked bar to make your guilt-ridden compromised attempt at Dry January as painlessly empowering as possible; as Tezza is ‘seeking further assurances’ and Jezza is ‘biding his time’, as online brexitty yelling reaches fever pitch, as we all prepare to set sail on a fleet of imaginary takeaway ferries, as Greggs continue subvert the patriarchal hegemony via the medium of pastry snacks, who knows what the hell will happen next? Let’s face the music and dance, or something.