Oct 31
It’s the second-most wonderful time of the year… years 1-6 costumed as evil creatures from medieval folklore, their elder siblings as popular serial killers, the young adults pre-loading for their erotically charged fancy dress parties full of sexy vampires, all manner of unchristian fun n hi jinks on offer for all, even the haggard hollow-eyed parents.. but what awaits at the end of the night? JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH offers you the chance to take a break from the undead, step away from the sugar-fuelled Purge, and enrich your Samhain with an alternative to traditional bagpipes n chanting courtesy of the otherworldly manifestations of man like Luke “Baron Samedi” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “Gilded Splinters” Thomas (drms) as they lay out a five lane highway of hot licks and cool grooves to speed you on your way out of the Upside Down through the toll gate of the mundane everyday and out the other side, where the golden radiance shines down upon the blacktop unfurling under your eager wheels straight into the shimmering horizon and further, further on into the hazy future..I’ll be there as per, Abdul will have some new gesticulations, any manner of special guests may get in and get involved, so don’t get sidetracked by all the real-life ghouls and monsters parading across your tethered screens, battering at the doors of your consciousness, pleading for you to fill their pails with the sticky haribo of your attention, your belief, your human warmth, like the qlippoth, stumbling shells of the dead, like Bolsonaro brooding in his palace, Xi sharpening his axe, Putin mentioning the unmentionable, Cruella phoning her tailors, the passionate conviction of the worst and the feeble good intentions of what we thought were the best, all the little trolls doing their trolling and online creeps doing their creeping … don’t give em an ounce, grab yer axe off the shelf and come and join us, we’ve got spells to keep em at bay for a little longer, keep the faith.
Oct 24
Lost for words? As the Grand Brexit Clusterfuck continues its slow motion crash and burn into the nation’s collective psyche like the Hindenburg or the Death Star smashing into the Forest Moon of Endor and the grinning gargoyles infesting Westminster flap their leathery wings and swivel their bug eyes to welcome their new leader, JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH rides in again to offer sanctuary for your sanity and respite from your ongoing menty B, thanks to those implacable sharpshooters Luke “True Grit” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “For A Few Dollars More” Thomas (drms) as they fearlessly step out onto main street and pick off the villains one by one, armed only with the power of hot licks, cool grooves, and the sliver bullets of swing-to-bop-to-blues-to-whatever…you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be there, and so will the ascended beings of the Bee’s team, Abdul the gesticulator and his crew of Lost Boys, Capn Jack the dandy highwayman, the nameless creatures of the night and the badmashes with their pumped up whips…. step out into the unnervingly balmy night and come and join us, and the crazy reign of Truss and her crew of lamentable ideologically crazed no-marks will seem like the bad dream it always promised to be, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight where ignorant armies clash by night… the clouds swirl and dissolve, the planets shine overhead, the leaves begin to fall, the tide rises and retreats, something’s coming! Can you feel it? Somewhere in sands of the desert, a shape with lion body and the head of a man, a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, is moving its slow thighs, while all about it, reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.. Don’t get caught in the rain, don’t turn your back on love, don’t get mad, get even, get on down and join us, we’ll have a time, another time, another time as the sands run slowly down into the lower bowl, don’t be late.
Oct 17
Swimming in a sickly sea of schadenfreude, grovelling before our financial overlords, sweltering in the October heat, checking the sky for Kamikaze drones, trying to find synonyms for “unprecedented”…. it’s all a bit unrelenting, innit, so give yerself a much needed break and swing on down to JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH where we will be creating an oasis of disorderly calm and topologically transitive, densely periodic serenity thanks to the unflagging commitment to growth emanating in huge pulsating waves from those twin quasars of hot licks and cool grooves manifesting at this octave as Luke “Budgetary Responsibility” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “Fiscal Stability” Thomas (drms) as they get into it and do there thing, aided in some measure by myself on the bottom line, with the ascended beings of the Bee’s team standing by in the velvet shadows behind the well-stocked bar, ready to lend their steadying hand to pour you a libation of fine quality hooch… don’t mooch around in your unheated home, making decisions of eye-watering difficulty, ruefully cancelling your streaming subs, checking under the bed to see if Suella Braverman is lurking there in the fetid darkness, looking in the cupboard to see if Crazy Eyes Truss is hiding among the other dusty useless redundant junk, bracing for cuts to everything, refusing to contemplate nuclear winter, phubbing your significant other in your dreary confusion, as the indifferent planets wheel overhead and down on the beach the night is riven with confused alarms of struggle and flight and ignorant armies clash by night… don’t do that, do this, come and join us, lets make sense of it all.
Oct 10
Hang on…. what if…. what if it actually doesn’t mean anything at all? The adults have left the room, there’s no captain on the bridge, the driver clocked out and never came back, there’s no-one watching, all your yesterdays were just lighting fools the way to dusty death, now there’s no-one home and we might not even be able to afford to keep the lights on? What then? JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH is what then, buster, and then some, coz despite the continuing parade of matchless bumfuckery now passing before your horrified mediated gaze, despite the best efforts of the cavalcade of nincompoops that now pass for some form of representative oversight to U-turn us all into the smoking wasteland of some final free-market catastrophe, despite the rising tides of bullshit threatening to spill over the sandbags and engulf us all, those tireless paragons of hot licks and cool grooves known at this octave as Luke “Grand Pu-Ba” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “Actor-Network Theory” Thomas (drms) will be taking it to the people again as they close the gap between what you want and what you are with a torrent of hot licks and cool grooves to ease your way through the century, put a spring back in your step, shake out the worm from your apple, get the light back into your eyes, help you float above the overwhelm and zorb your way back to happiness… I’ll be there doing something or other on bass, any number of special guests may drop by to sit in enhance proceedings, the nameless creatures of the night will pass upon their unknowable errands, as the last crickets fall silent upon the hill, the moon heaves itself above the ravaged fields, Kwasi “Bad Boy” Kwarteng retires to his budget hotel room to headbutt his reflection until the bathroom mirror runs with blood, Crazy Eyes Liz watches reruns of Homes Under The Hammer in search of innovative policy ideas, ReesMogg smirks himself into a puddle of oily sebum and the rest of their crew of no-marks gibber and twitch from the shadows… don’t mess, get down, we’ll do a thing, spin a web of meaning here in the dark, it’ll be very.
Oct 3
As the mighty splendour of BRIGHTON JAZZ FESTIVAL sails away over the shining golden horizon with a fanfare of shining golden trumpets, fireworks, choirs of biblically accurate seraphim etc, it’s time to revisit the plan for growth! Oh dear. Oh dear, what a shame. Who, apart from everyone, could have foreseen it? Best just leave em to it and step out for JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH, since words cannot possibly do real justice to the bottomless depths of moronic incompetent over-reach now on display across all channels, so try your very hardest not to U-turn on the way, avoiding all possible turbulence real or imaginary, keeping incredibly energised and defiant and staying the course, until you arrive at the violently swinging door under the neon sign and get into it, man, cos we’ll be there with man like Luke “Budget Responsibility” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “Medium-Term Fiscal Plan” Thomas (drms) as they spin a web of future possibilities through the wonderful medium of music, a resource impervious to short sellers or champagne swilling financiers or any of those other colossal assholes currently f*cking everything up as quick as their greedy little hands can twitch… avoid awkward silences, Govian levels of oleaginous clandestine disloyalty, insistent BBC local radio hosts, cretinous Tufton street fantasists and all the other new hazards of daily life here on Airstrip One and instead come with us on a journey into sound, bathe your troubled frontal lobes in a fountain of hot licks and cool grooves, marvel at whatever special guests may appear, clashing their hooves of brass and rattling their brazen wings as they cross the threshold to sit in and do their thing, drink deeply from the healing libations prepared just for you by the ascended beings of the Bees Team, join us, dear reader, join us, let’s cock a snook at the lot of em.