June 24th
What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us, time and time over. They are to be happy in: where can we live but days? Days are also for battling hayfever, for getting those beach pix on ur socials, for filming your dodgy neighbour’s dodgy doings, for shooting down drones over the Straits Of Hormuz, for toning up your summer bod, and when all that exhausting stuff is finally over, for JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH cos everyone needs a little time to get away from the angry shouty voice in their frontal lobes telling them to get more woke or to take back control or whatever tiresome confabulation you’ve half-convinced yourself is the solution to the Prolonged Period Of Uncertainty, as the juggernaut of collective idiocy continues on it’s hectic path crushing all before it into a bloody pulp… let the musical magic carpet laid at your poor bunioned feet by Luke “The Magic Stick” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “Cash Is King” Thomas (drms) sweep you away to a calm inner space where you can realise that it’s all, like, just your opinion man, that nothing matters in the now except hot licks, cool grooves and mellifluous blues-to-bop-to-whatever, that there’s still time, still time… I’ll be doing something or other on bass as per, the peerless Bee’s Team will be waiting, their eyes gleaming like amethysts in the velvet darkness behind the well-stocked bar, thunder will rumble over the deepening green hills outside of town where the equinoctial twilight seems to linger forever, up by the chartered streets beside the chartered Thames Bozza and the other one nobody likes will be doing something unspeakable behind their closed doors as May trails wailing folornly down an endless dusty corridor and Stevie Bannon picks his scabs and pours another glass of hemlock, but we’ll be doing nothing but good things, come and join us, join us, See, cause that's where the party's at, And you'd find out if you do that
June 17th
Are you growing old? Does your face in the morning seem rucked and seamed with alcoholic and sexual excesses, and does the rest of you appear to be a grayish-pink lump, covered all over in brindle hair? Is your sense of smell fading, is your fear of heights increasing, are your sexual drives as ravening and intense as ever and does your beloved partner look more and more to you like a sunken-cheeked stranger who has wandered into your bedroom by mistake? JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH won’t fix any of that, pardner, but you can put aside your monkey glands and facial botulism, discard your blue-green algae and your huel, forget about your CBT and meditation, throw your evil spying fitbit into the toilet’s eager vortex, toss your healing crystals and other equally fallacious gee-gaws, and generally cast loose from the whole cloying paraphenalia that’s currently cluttering up the beautiful verdant spaces that wait, still fresh, still pregnant with dewy promise, in the furthermost reaches of your poor chartered consciousness…. let Luke “The Invisible Worm” Rattenbury (gtr) and special guest Javier “The High Roller From Fuengirola” Forero (drms) be your guides back to being you, let the music take you higher, free your mind and you assets will follow… so what if we’re being softened up for government by an unelected empty lectern supported by a carnival of popinjay grotesques, so what if the State Department are busy trying to cross the ‘Q’ off their dodgy dossier and write an “N” instead, let the Prolonger Period Of Uncertainty continue to demoralise and defeat, as long as there’s music and moonlight and me doing something or other on bass, join us in the manoir de mes rêves, let’s face the music … wax on, wax off! paint the fence, up, down, up down!
This post in tribute to the master John Cheever May 27, 1912 – June 18, 1982.
And in memory of STEVE ASTON
10th June
So much uncertainty, in the macro and the micro! Will your outdoor social event be blessed with sunshine or cursed with freezing boring rain? Will your neighbourhood gak dealer move to a new market as their product finally loses all cred? Is the Moon part of Mars? Will your newly rented Citybike be boxfresh, or will its saddle still bear the angrily puckered roundel imprint of a Naked Rider’s protesting, sweaty anus? Let JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH be a beacon of consistency in a changing world, let the consolations of symmetry and geometry pour like soothing balm upon your poor hunched shoulders, all mashed up by Fortuna’s relentless wheel, let man like Luke ‘Boethius’ Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz ‘ The Anatomy Of Melancholy’ Thomas (drms) create a magic neural network of hot licks and cool grooves to envelop your bruised senses, let the irresistible ascended beings of the Bee’s team pour you a refreshing libation of quality hooch from their eyrie behind the well-stocked bar, let your troubles slip away as I play something or other on bass and tonight‘s mystery guest gets ready to sculpt the air with shapes of burnished sound that express the innermost truth of their current state of existence on our spinning rock, not part of Mars now or ever..…. don’t let the sads take coercive control, don’t let the spectacle of a ‘leadership race’ in which everyone loses, especially the country, get you down, don’t let your hay fever take back control over your compromised eyes, where we’re going we won’t need roads.
3rd June
You draw a lot of water in this town, but where’s YOUR invitation to the palace? Where’s your effigy as a giant inflatable baby, where are your jeering crowds, why hasn’t Boris done a reverse ferret about your mental capabilities, how come Sadiq isn’t throwing shade on you? Don’t feel down, just get yourself along to JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH and be welcomed like the international statesman and grand pu-bah that you really are, as the guard of honour Luke “Dr Strangelove” Rattenbury (gtr), terrifying piratical marauder on the high seas of rhythm Tristan “T-Bone” Banks (drms), and me contributing something or other on bass, will all be ready and waiting to whisk you up to the highest heights in our own Airforce One of hot licks and cool grooves, while outside on the teeming pavements the thousands of imaginary Hells Angels, attendant hustlers, movers, shakers, smugglers, scramblers, burglars, gamblers, pickpocket peddlers, even panhandlers, all pass by on their own journeys to the end of the night, and out over the darkling sea the stars gaze down impassively upon your little lives, while the susurrus of the shingle’s returning roar carries on its endless litany….. don’t be a stone cold loser, be excellent to each other - party on, dudes