King Size Slim

I saw this character at a party last weekend, really impressive slide/blues guitar, wild trancey vocals, unbelievable energy levels. He's Brighton-based, a friend of Anton who I jammed with at the equinox, called Toby. He's got a MySpace profile (just one track at the moment), and there's also a little clip from last summer's Bestival, where you get some sense of what he's about:


Dave and I cycled down to the Orange Street Music Club to see him again last night for their "Tuesday Bluesday" session. The host, a soprano sax player called Jim, who I saw leading the fabulous (but awfully-named) "Mr. Lovebucket" at the Lounge of the Farm festival this summer, sat in for some of his set, perhaps unnecessarily, but it was all good. I love his rendition of "Pressure Drop"!

Charles Gayle

It was over three weeks ago, and Radio 3 seem not to have made the recording available, but definitely worth a mention - I heard a late night radio interview with free jazz pioneer Charles Gayle, together with some excerpts from his recordings (despite being active since the 50's, he went unrecorded until 1988 - even the free jazz labels considered him "too free", and he spent quite a few years homeless). His saxophone playing (which he's best known for) was phenomenal, but his piano playing just staggering. In the Sun Ra/Thelonious Monk/Omar Sosa tradition, but even more so... In one of the most interesting moments in the interview, he suprised interviewer Kevin LeGendre by mentioning that there had been free music going on in the American black community long before Ornette Coleman emerged and the genre was identified by outside observers - it was going on largely in the churches, he said (bringing to mind African spirit-possession ceremonies) and in the bars, where you'd find "free blues players".


He spoke briefly about his homelessness, and his struggle to not only play free music, but also to "live free". All very inspiring.

Apparently Thurston Moore and Henry Rollins are fans. If you can track down any of his sounds, you'll hear why.

English Rebel Songs

A few nights ago, I found myself sitting around a wheelbarrow full of burning twigs and cardboard with a few friends, including Miriam, who lives in the same house as Dom (the singer/guitarist who I met in the most remarkable circumstance) in Tyler Hill - another drama person. She sings, jazz standards mostly. She and Dom were in "Eric and the Acoustic Alliance" which had a residency at the Orange Street Music Club in Canterbury for a while, but then crumbled.


I had my saz and asked if she knew any folksongs. It turns out that some of the Kent University drama people put together a play about the Luddites (Ludd, I think) a little while back - Dom's not only been Puck, he's been Ned Ludd, too. The director chose to involve a lot of the songs from Chumbawamba's English Rebel Songs 1381-1984. She knew it as a CD, whereas I remember it as a 10" vinyl album with a rough card sleeve - quite an amazing cultural artefact altogether, and very much part of the scene I knew around Canterbury in the years following it's (1988) release - Poll Tax riots and all that... So she sang, and I played, "The Cutty Wren" (1381) and "The Bad Squire" (mid 1800's). A bit rough, as I hadn't heard them for years, but we got into it - excellent stuff.