1-2-3-4

Are we rolling? The given theme is Playing In The Band. Okay, I've done that, still have the t-shirts with the DeadBeats emblazoned across the front, and I'll get to why I enjoyed it so much in a paragraph or three. But first a bit of social commentary.

It feels like we've taken a few retrograde steps recently. During lockdown I've re-watched some of my favourite music films/documentaries. Earlier this week it was the turn of 'Jazz On A Summer's Day', shot at the Newport Jazz Festival (as in Rhode Island, USA) in 1958. It's a stunning piece of film-making that captures the whole spirit of the town and the festival as well as key performances, some of which are sheer brilliance, from the likes of Anita O'Day (pictured below), Gerry Mulligan, Chico Hamilton, George Shearing, Dinah Washington, Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Thelonius Monk and Chuck Berry. That's right, Chuck Berry and his band ripping through the likes of 'Sweet Little Sixteen' at a jazz festival.


Anita O'Day, Newport Jazz Festival 1958

What a great vibe - so multi-discipline (trad and cool West Coast jazz, swing, gospel, soul, r&b, rock & roll) and so multi-racial (white, black, brown and red) as to make colour an irrelevance in face of the force of the music, for performers and audience alike. It could only have happened in the liberal North at that time, never in the Southern States.

All credit to The Beatles that they refused to play to racially segregated audiences when they toured America from 1964. For places like Jacksonville Florida, this was a first time gigs had whites and blacks in the same audience.

The multi-discipline/multi-racial ethos of Newport Jazz took off in the following decade in the liberal music scenes of the counter-culture, where organisers would deliberately put rock, jazz, classical, blues, Indian music on the same bill, open ears and open minds being the mantra of the day and music being the international language with which to break down barriers.

When I said I think we've been a bit retrograde recently, it's because that overt eclecticism doesn't routinely hold sway anymore (except at a few notable festivals) and I think that's a great loss. As I look back, without exception all the gigs the Deadbeats played, be they clubs, pubs or local arts festivals, were the preserve of white rock music with primarily white audiences - not by choice but that's how it worked.

As for playing in a band, it has to be my favourite team sport, for unlike a game of football, there are no losers, only winners. For some years I swapped writing poetry for writing songs, and it is a different discipline, as is playing music with other people as opposed to solo. I enjoyed all of it, the rehearsing, the playing live, time spent in the recording studio. The biggest buzz of all was when everything locked into place and we found ourselves doing things we didn't know we could do, letting the music take us places we didn't know we could go.

Back in my bass-playing days

However, that's a closed chapter. The band disbanded. I still have my Trace Elliot bass rig and bass guitars, plus a semi-acoustic six-string in what I laughingly call my music room, for I haven't played any of them seriously in over a decade and certainly not since moving up to Blackpool. One day, maybe. In the meantime, my friends in White Denim (that's a band, not a fashion fixation) have managed to record and release the first album of the pandemic, 'World As A Waiting Room'. They pulled it off during lockdown in just 30 days. When the muse comes calling...

I've not written a poem this week, but here is a link to one I wrote back in 2014 about my favourite band of all time and how Beatlemania originated in Blackpool. If you've not read it before, do have a look. It's racked up over 30,000 views as well as being anthologised  and I hope you might just like it too. Click on the title and you'll be whisked there: >>> Beatlemania

Thanks for reading. Have a good week everyone, S ;-)