May 23
Quick! Only a pitiful week to go to cram your head with as much Art as possible before the Festival ends! And all you’ve done is lolled about playing World of Warcraft or flicking listlessly though the endless stream of unfeasibly fit funfilled monocultural youthfulness of tiktokreels... it’s time to straighten up and fly right, Jack, or if you just can’t get it together, get it to JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH where we’ll be putting the high into highbrow and the party into arty thanks to the 100% cask strength super reserves of man like Luke “Feynman” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “Feuerbach” Thomas (drms) as they lay out another existential episode of their endless quest for meaning truth and beauty via the medium of hot swinging blues-to-bop-to-whatever… I’ll be there, reliable as a can of super-strength lager resting lightly on the middle shelf of an antiquated chiller cabinet in the numinous off-licence of your dreams, the Bee’s Team will be manifesting on this earthly vibrational level just for you, shimmering in the velvet dusk behind the well-stocked bar, and any number of esteemed special guests may well enter recklessly through the violently swinging door from out of the night, turbulent and troubled with the uneasy birthing of another summer, and gift us with their unearthly improvisations…. it’ll be some kind of a vibe for sure, and so you should stop listening to True Crime podcasts or Jacob Collier on youtube or similarly culturally vacuous pursuits, put aside your open-mouthed gaping wonder at the combination of malice and incompetence that currently passes for government, send them all to the Rwanda of your imagination to share their Netflix passwords with whatever unclean benighted fiends they encounter there, and get your own bad self down to where the good stuff is happening… Don’t get mad, don’t even get even, just get down, get down, get down, and then get up, get up, get up.
May 16
As the soft gloaming descends upon the town, the mechanical bird-bots trolling in the trees, the streets full of the evaporating dreams of ten million Great Escapees staggering home under the weight of their indie guitars and unrealistic expectations, spores of monkeypox blowing through the mellow sea air, the whole town staggering under the Festie burden of Kultural capital and general artsy-fartyness… keep it real with JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH cos we’ll be making a virtue of consistency and staying on the good foot thanks to the hard, gem-like flame burning bright whenever man like Luke “Right On For The Darkness” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “The Stig” Thomas (drms) unleash their awesome talents and let rip with another roaring torrent of talent to delight your overburdened senses and make you feel whole again… I’ll be there on bass as per doing whatevs, various esteemed guests may put in an appearance as the night progresses, weaving their way along the shadowed streets, wading through the pools of bitter tears of weeping Crypto bros, dodging past the Fringe performers with their grimly inevitable tutus and ukeleles, giving a tip of the hat and a cheery wave to the streetcorner gin bottle don, swerving past the highbrows and their chitter chatter and jibber jabber… it doesn’t take the killer instincts of a Wagatha Christie to tell that there’s evil aplenty afoot out there beyond the sea, across the hills, but out here beyond the perimeter there are no stars, so come and get involved whydoncha, there’s really no time like the present, is there?
May 9
Hey Kats n Kittens! We know it’s a tough gig out there, trying to upsell your new vibe… when your Victory Day speech tanks (geddit!!) and you can’t get the troops out on parade because they are dead, and the whole de-Nazification metaphor just seems stretched too thin to really, y’know, be rockin’… or when your forensic moral integrity gets blown up by a simple curry.. or whatevs .. all you guys get along to JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH where all disappointed tyrants, next election’s failed Labour leaders and everyone else are welcome regardless of race, creed, gender identity, sexual preference, twitter position on culture wars hotbuttons, emotional stability, mental capacity assessment or any other contemporary markers of identity, as long as you still have the capacity to lose yourself within the river of creativity endlessly flowing forth from the twin Ur-sources manifesting at this octave in the chiseled forms of Luke “Skywalker” Rattenbury (gtr) and Special Guest Tristan “T-Bone” Banks (drms and barbecue) as they pour forth a limpid gushing torrent of sparkling swing-to-bop-to-blues-to-whatever, assisted to some degree by me on bass, as the re-emergent stars swing by overhead and the bass swarm in the glistening sea… don’t hunker in your bunker, slurping listlessly at a depressing puddle of Hot n Savoury Huel…. don’t flick listlessly through Netflix, once so full of promise, now so empty of delight…don’t weep over your deflating crypto… save that boring podcast for your next delayed train journey and instead come and join us where the air is heavy with the magical scent of possibility and the Bee’s team wait, quivering with interdimensional potential, in the velvet shadows behind the well-stocked bar… come and join us, we’ll do a thing.
May 2
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? No matter how sincerely rural constituency representatives try and convince us that they just googled “deep ploughing” and were as shocked as everyone else with what came up on their screen, no matter how much Bozza and Lil Lord Mogleroy and the rest of his goons try to draw a line under it and move on, the fragrant airs of spring seem tainted wth the stench of sleaze… let JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH act as a Febreze upon the soiled ticking, clotted velour, tainted chenille or smeared leatherette that upholsters your soul, as you find odors eliminated and the freshness brought back into your life, riding upon a tireless surging swell of good vibrations and positive affirmations in musical form that pour forth as waves upon the endless sea from those ascended octagons of shining light known on this earthly plane as Luke “John Deere” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “Massey Ferguson” Thomas (drms) as they cut the shit and get right down to it with a whole heap of straight-up blues-to-bop-to-swing-to-whatever to delight your senses and make you feel clean again… I’ll be participating to mixed effect upon the bass as per, the Bee’s team will be offering alluring glimpses of other dimensions via their libations of the intoxicating beverages imported direct from the Mountains of Madness, and there’s always the possibility that various honoured guests may make their way in thru the swing door past the welcome committee of gibbering street people to enliven proceedings with their esteemed contributions…when all the tennis pitches are closed, there are no more things to downstream, the UK internet still hasn’t been made the safest in the world, what will you turn to then? Music will still be there and so will we, until they shut everything down forever, so get cracking.. As princes do in time of action get new taxes, and remit them not in peace, no winter shall abate the spring’s increase, so Happy Beltane, don’t get lazy, get down.