January 23
So easy to overlook the little things that make up life… a child’s laughter, the login for your bank account, your sense of moral identity, the odd £5,000,000 of unpaid taxes when the reminder fell down the back of the sofa… in today’s busy busy world who has time for the details, or the big picture, or anything at all? Time to fight back against the blue meanie time thieves by carving out a temporal refuge in the entropic zone known as JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEES MOUTH, that Kefahuchi Tract of possibilities both synchronous and diachronous, so if the promises of Something For Nothing Britain seem to have passed you by, relieve your disappointment by getting Something For Something and exchanging your esteemed material presence down in our little corner of meatspace for the cornucopia of riches pouring forth from the hearts and minds of man like Luke “Synecdoche” Rattenbury (strings) and Loz ‘Metonym” Thomas (thunder) as they whip up a blazing tornado, a whirling burning bush or biblically accurate whirling many eyed wheel within a wheel of hot licks and cool grooves, ready to warm you up your poor shrivelled under-resourced overworked Austerity-issue soul and get you back on the good foot and digging it, you dig? I’ll be there, of course, doing whatever it is, the shining seraphim of the Bee’s team will be in attendance, ready to make with the quality hooch at your slightest whim, the heating will be turned on for the duration, the hunched and tattered denizens of the outer darkness will huddle by against the cold, winter's sere breath will graze your fading cheek, the deep waters will stir, opaque but not for long, the thrush will sing from deep within the ivy, the teeming mackerel scour the deep, your breath will cloud the mirror, what were you worried about? It’s all here, here it is where it always was, right here, here where you are… come and get a little, why not?
January 16
Its not getting any better, is it? Crushed against the freezing earth by the bitter wind, lashed by the stinking rain, pinned down, coshed into submission, listlessly scrolling thru old-style influencer lies of the perfect vacation, sliding deeper into the attention economy’s insatiable maw with every TikTOkReel… but wait! It doesn’t have to be this way, cos JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH is at hand, for even in your darkest hour, as the globe tilts furthest from the sun and all your so-called life seems to be irretrievably mired in a morass of pointless boring misery, man like Luke “Tiny Skeffern” Rattenbury (gtr) and Loz “Atalanta In Calydon” Thomas (drms) will have their own personal Centauri Devices locked and loaded and ready to explode in glorious cascades of shimmering melody rhythm and harmony, right in front of your compromised earholes and your dulled, bedazzled eyes, bringing the spring back into your step and the juice back to your juicer … out there across the sodden blackness evil things may be stirring, bills get bigger, wages get smaller, no-one dares get sick or be born or die any more, Sunak and Braverman squabble aimlessly about what to ban next, Sir Kier looks like a puzzled cardboard box, a creeping madness continues to spread through the body politic, trickling down from under Andrew Bridger’s special village idiot haircut and out from Nigel Farages’ froggy jowls to infect the susceptible, as the sun is spent, and now his flasks send forth light squibs, no constant rays, and the world's whole sap is sunk… it’s a bummer for sure, but don’t get all hung up, it’s not a bad old game if you don’t weaken, so Blue Monday get stuffed, let’s get along, get along, get along… join us and we’ll do a thing.
January 2
Citizens, un-persons, cyborgs, semi-demons, droids, sentient code-based beings, qlippoth and cacodaemons, loonies, lightworkers, chattels and chatbots of Airstrip One, we stand here poised upon the brink of 2023 as on the rim of a smoking CGI volcano, waiting for the mists to clear to reveal … wait… it’s… it’s… it’s JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH, suckas, cos we’re a beacon of reliability as the extended period of instability quakes and heaves under your branded sneakers like a horrible blancmange of emergent bullsh*t, economic turmoil, digitised culture wars, toxic pizza boxes, clapbacks and snapchats and TikTok eviscerating whatever remains of that thing we used to know as ‘the media’ … fear not, for even as today may labour under the empty promise of a Bank Holiday that we all know is only delaying the inevitable return to the disappointments of your so-called life, so is relief at hand in the form of those fearless Ronin of hot licks and cool grooves known in this lifetime as Luke “Rashomon” Rattenbury (gtr) and the thunderous manifestations of Loz “Throne Of Blood” Thomas (drms), aided and abetted by me on the ol’ doghouse, as we convene to lay out a magic carpet of musical enchantment for you to climb aboard and float high high high above the bitter rooftops of our coastal town where the only fishing that goes on is the fishing for compliments, up and away towards the planets hovering overhead, the bitter stars, the black bream multiplying in the kelp rich darkness, the earth turning, all that, you dig? What horrors may lie ahead, what triumphs, what slight returns, what unholy beasts whose hour comes at last, what tired CGI sequels, what variants multiplying, what twits tweeting and what crypto crashing and what else, what else? Only time will tell so in the meantime grab yer axe off the shelf and come and blow some tunes, down some quality hooch, chat some sh*t, spread the love, make a friend, tell a tale, let’s do it before they shut it all down, let’s keep the faith.