June 27
Ok, so you did/didn’t go to Glasto and you were delighted/exasperated by the array of world-class global talent/overhyped chancers and their life-affirming creativity/dreary cultural slurry that you watched riding your partners shoulders, hands in the air/squinted at on your phone on the bus on the way to your soul-crushing non-index-linked employment… time to relinquish the exhausting burden of your opinions and get back downhome with JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH where you’l be able to chillax, step off the wheel, put aside the increasingly complex business of maintaining your supposed social persona in which you’ve invested so, so much time, and just BE for a bit, without even having to maintain a studiedly nonchalant facade of disinterested ennui with the whole festival concept, cos we all know music is life, right, and that’s what we’ve got for you thanks to man like Luke “Fields Of Avalon” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “The Dark Knight Arises” Thomas (drms) and me on the other thing, and the ever-present possibility of a visit from the whole exotic menagerie of special guests arriving thru the swinging door from out of the warm, gritty Kefahuchi Tract darkness at the edge of the sodium glare, stomping their hoofs or shaking their brazen wings, their echoing feathers of verdigris, ready to get involved, as the Shadow Operators of the Bee’s team hover in the multi-dimensional space behind the bar, ready to make with the quality hooch at your hoarse, eager request… as the world drags itself slowly and painfully like a spavined horse ever deeper into a black spiral of pestilence, famine, war, as mighty winds lay low the mountains of the earth, as America begins to unstitch itself, one at a time, the Norns plucking with their withered fingers at the weft of whatever it is that we thought we were, what’s a body to do? Grab yer axe down of off the shelf and come and join us, don’t delay, why, Beaver, why?
June 20
The line keeps going down, your crypto mastery has somehow inverted, sentient AI can do your job better than you and has a more engaging personality, no-one liked your TikTokReel of , trains into town all rekt, FUD all around, wtf? Is it over? What drear fate awaits you at the end of the golden road, once so full of promise? Cheer up, buttercup, we’re all waiting for you down at JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH to put a spring back into your step and get you retuned back into your true vibrational level via total immersion in the energy fields emanating from the dark stars known as Luke “Stepping Razor” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “Cash Is King” Thomas (drms) as they rock the joint and set the scene… the pasty faced denizens of the darkeness may scurry past on their journeys to the end of the night, the reeking pavements slither underfoot, your socials feed alive with the idiotic doings of idiotic idiots and their inexhaustible idiocy, but screw them, we’re here, the Bee’s team are in full effect, the door swinging open for esteemed guests, the air heavy with the scent of possibility this is where we are, it’s June, the mackerel crowded seas, the swifts keening high overhead, the moths on their missions, the cry of the whitethroat alive in the bursting hedgerows, it’s all happening all around you… get on the good foot, grab yer axe off the shelf, come and let’s do a thing and get on down, you absolute legend you, hesitare perditus est.
June 13
Summer’s finally here, binches, so time to get your guns out, just hop right off that flight to Rwanda and kiss the hot stinking home tarmac cos we’re going to slip into something that’s as revealing as a congressional hearing, go buck-wild with our beach-bodies all over the place and just TEAR IT UP like it’s an EU import/export protocol… but what when the sun slips below the horizon and all seems suddenly dark and hopeless? Why, hasten yourselves to JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH of course, coz the gang will all be there, Big Fruity, Abdul the Gesturing Maniac, “Canoe” Albert and his canoe and tales of the South China Seas, Cap’n Jack Rowan the dandy highwayman, the super-hip ascended masters manifesting within the buffed and perfect bods of the Bee’s Team as they hover, vibrating imperceptibly in the velvet shadows behind the well-stocked bar, all the freaks and monsters, angels and demons and in-betweeners, and leading the charge, those doyens of hot grooves and cool licks Luke “Axel F” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “John McLane” Thomas (drms) making things shoot up faster than a litre of E10 Unleaded on the forecourt of your shattered dreams… I’ll be somewhere or other on bass, esteemed guests may materialise from out of the unquiet night, up above the stars will wheel ahead on their uncaring chilly courses through the trackless lifeless wastes of space, the velvet darkness, the mutter of the sea on shingle, the screams of the foxes hunting through your unclean leavings, the future crouching behind the looming darkness of the hills like a giant unclean beast waiting to spring when you were least expecting it, waiting for the swifts that never came… it’ll be a vibe and we all need some vibe don’t we? Come and get it while it’s hot.
June 6
See how the mighty are broken before the winds of time and chance, even as broken reeds in the wind shall they be shriven and cast down… hereditary nonegenarians and their venal, conveniently COVID-ridden offspring, bringers of false oven-ready prophecies, wearers of pathetically affected top hats and their attendant rabble of unclean Moabites and wash-pots of Moab, all that rotten mob… where will you build your citadel, safe from shifting sands? Let JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH be your rock cos we’ll be there irrespective of the committees and their letters and all that, regardless of the rain-washed sodden celebrations of medieval political structures, despite the blood-soaked clouds in the East, thanks to man like Luke “Lazarus” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “The Darkseeker” Thomas (drms) as they raise a joyful noise of blues-to-bop-to-whatevs to rise above the wailings and lamentations of the crypto bros, the weedy sycophancy of the royal correspondents, the measured impotent discourses of the tenured analysts and guardians of the public conscience, the endless flickering of the impossible lies beaming from TikTokReels straight into your poor aching frontal lobes, the hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed… I’ll be there on bass, the majestic beings of the Bee’s Team will be on hand with libations of prime quality hooch, special guests may well drift in out of the slightly sub-par summer night with it’s traditional British atmosphere of a promise not quite delivered, monarchs may come and monarchs may go but the music continues so get in, come thru, what are you waiting for? The end of the world, governments to fall, war pestilence and famine? It’ll all here, jack, so don’t delay, join us, join us.