2014 wasn’t a great gig year for me, so I decided to catch up in 2015 by getting my cameras along to every gig I could possibly get to. It obviously worked; when I had to pick my favourite five photos of the year, I had difficulty narrowing it down, so I decided to cheat. I’ve seen a lot of female singers this year, so I decided to create a High Five dedicated to them. As always, in no particular order.

Mollie Marriott at The Half Moon – By the time I saw this gig, it felt a bit like I was stalking Mollie. I’d seen her play live three times in three months. This gig was her second at The Half Moon with her full band and it wasn’t quite as busy as the first so there was a bit of space to pick some nice angles and just wait for Mollie to get completely absorbed in her songs and try to catch some special moments. She’s a singer who totally commits herself to the song and all you have to do is press the shutter release at the right time.

 

Elisa Zoot of Black Casino & the Ghost at The Finsbury – I’ve loved this band since I was introduced to them by John O’Sullivan of Red Adore Music. They’re totally original and Elisa has a phenomenal voice. It’s a little bit weird when you suddenly transform from two people talking in a pub beer garden to a photographer and a performer within fifteen minutes, but it’s always good to get a chance to get to know the artist. The lighting wasn’t great, but there was a lot of contrast, so black and white was the way to go. It’s good to know that Elisa likes this photo as well.

 

Rosanne Cash at The Union Chapel – I have to say I got a very lucky break here. When I discovered that Dean Owens was playing as support to Rosanne Cash, it was full-on grovel mode with Dean’s manager, Morag to try to get a photo pass but, as always, Morag came up with the goods. It’s always an interesting shot at this venue if you can get the stained glass window in, but Rosanne Cash happened to look heavenward at exactly the right time to make this work. Maybe I need to rethink the atheism thing.

 

Nova Twins at FTFH, Birthdays, Dalston – FTFH is a monthly event at Birthdays promoting female performers and Nova Twins were topping the bill with their intriguing and eclectic mash-up of rock, hip-hop and punk attitudes. The lighting was decent and Amy and Georgia’s style and stage presence made it pretty much impossible to take a bad shot. I finally settled on this picture of Amy because of the attitude and power and the nice mix of colours in the background, but I could have chosen any one of a dozen shots from this gig.

 

 

Hannah Aldridge at Green Note – Green Note’s a venue where you have to put in a bit of effort to get a good shot. I went along to this gig on the strength of Hannah’s stunning debut album, “Razor Wire” and I wasn’t disappointed. I had just moved around the stage to get a slightly different viewpoint when Hannah introduced a new song “Gold Rush” which was incredibly powerful and completely enthralled the audience. I think the shot just about captures the emotion she was pouring in to that song.

Just click on any of the thumbnails to see the picture at full size.

It’s such a good feeling when you hear a new artist breaking through with an original and powerful songwriting style. Hannah Aldridge’s debut album, “Razor Wire” is an astonishingly accomplished piece of work, and her solo UK live performances this year were perfect examples of the one voice/one guitar approach. We were really pleased when she agreed to contribute not one, but two sets of High Fives from a travelling musician’s perspective. We’re really looking forward to seeing you again next year, Hannah.

 

Top 5 Must See Cities:

 

Venice, Italy

 

 

 

Brighton, England

 

 

 

Oslo, Norway

 

 

 

Deauville, France

 

 

 

Asheville, North Carolina

 

 

 

Top 5 European Traveling Tips for Musicians:

Pack one week of clothes no matter how long the tour is.

Bring strings and picks overseas. They are triple the price in some countries.

Don’t fly your guitar. It will cost you money and in Europe they have no laws requiring them to valet it.

When you arrive,  go to sleep early and wake up very early the next day. You should then push your wake up time by one hour every morning. This will help will jetlag. Also give yourself two days before starting the tour to adjust.

Wash your hands every couple hours. You will encounter a lot of foreign viruses and bugs that you aren’t used to.

 

Here’s a contribution from someone I’ve met a few times in the last few years. Pete Kennedy is one half of The Kennedys, along with Maura Kennedy and they are two of the nicest people and finest songwriters I know. This year, Pete released “Heart of Gotham”, his masterpiece and labour of love which has been ten years in the making; it’s a huge Riot Squad favourite already. We asked him to contribute to High Fives for the second year and he’s kept to the spirit of “Heart of Gotham” with this wonderful piece.

These excursions all happen in my neighborhood, the East and West Village…I’m sure the museums further up town, and the goings-on in Brooklyn are great as well, but I’m sticking to my home turf. First of all, don’t go anywhere near Times Square, unless you want to pay ripoff prices at the same shops you already have on the High Street back home. You want to spend your hard earned pounds sterling on the music, food and atmosphere of the real New York, so follow me down below 14th Street.

Day One…Lunch at the Mud Cafe on 9th Street in the East Village, where you can sip local grounds while paging through a worn copy of Howl or On The Road. Don’t have any real books with you? Put that e-reader away, and let’s head down St. Mark’s Place to East Village Books. This tiny basement is that perfect Bohemian environment you pictured in your mind on the flight over…if you leave with a jones for more books, head over to The Strand, America’s greatest bookstore, on Broadway at 12th Street. Browse the outdoor stalls, a la the left bank, and throw a stack of 48 cent used books in your backpack. Dinner is at Rai Rai Ken, another tiny place, on 10th Street. It’s dark and rough hewn inside, and humid from the steam of huge pots of curry ramen. When your bowl arrives, just let the steam wash over you while it cools. Now it’s time for some music. The newest spot in this ‘hood is Treehouse, an intimate little stage three flights up, above Jesse Malin’s 7A and a new basement club, Berlin…

Day Two begins at Veselka, the 24 hour Ukrainian diner/deli where you can get your blintzes, bagels, bialys, and so forth. This is where I wrote the lyrics to the “Heart of Gotham” album, under the big mural of East Village writers. Then we head down 9th Street, stopping at Katinka to say hello to owners Jane and 9th Street Billy, paying silent homage at Jimi Hendrix’s basement flat, and shopping for vintage stuff at Fabulous Fannie’s, where Declan McManus is rumoured to sometimes stop by for a fresh pair of specs. The street is lined with small boutiques…one shop, recently closed, sold only candy and rain gear. For dinner, we go down the next block to Jules, for a salad Nicoise and live jazz with no cover charge. Then it’s a short hike up to the Hi Fi Club. The best juke box in town, the walls are lined with LP jackets, and the music is intimate and always good. Amy Rigby’s three week residency here has already passed into legend.

Day three starts out with Japanese breakfast at Panya, continuing our theme of haunting tiny places that tourists would never find. Pick up a packet of green tea biscuits for quick energy later in the day. Next we head up to the Union Square green market. This is where the city’s cutting edge chefs and foodies gather four days a week, and the perimeter is lined with artists, musicians, booksellers and chess players. Dinner? This will sound like heresy, but I’m going to say Whole Foods. The Indian buffet is by no means Brick Lane, but it’s serviceable, and the upstairs seating area has one of the best panoramic views in the city…Union Square, with the Empire State Building and other iconic structures looking like you could reach out and touch them. all for the price of a samosa. Now it’s music time, and we head down to the Bowery Electric for rockabilly and punk in the basement, or indie songwriters in the tiny Map Room upstairs. It’s at the corner known as Joey Ramone Place, and you can scoot a few doors down the block to mourn the passing of CBGB’s.

Day four begins in the West Village, with strong espresso at Cafe Reggio. The legendary template for all American coffeehouses, it features the first cappucino machine to emigrate here, and it is indeed imposing, resembling a navy cruiser dominating the small room. Reggio is featured in the film Shaft, when mobsters crash a car through the plate glass. No telling how many songs, poems and novels have been written on the semi-darkness of this place. Speaking of legends, we head up the block to Washington Square. In a way, there’s little need to pay a club cover charge for New York music, because it is happening here en pleine aire all the time. Folk jams, of course, but you will also hear classical pianists and cellists, rappers and poets, and everywhere the sound of Coltrane style sax in its natural element, the streets of New York. For dinner, let’s grab a quick burger at The Kettle of Fish, where someone will probably be playing Robert Johnson on an old Martin over in the corner. Music time…we’ll check out Le Poisson Rouge. Last show I saw there was a rare dbs reunion. Always something interesting going on here in Bleecker Street.

Day five, the last day of our excursion, begins at John’s Pizza in the West Village. Early for pizza? I forgot to mention that, in the Village, the day begins at noon. We will have to split a pizza, because following a deal hammered out long ago with Al Capone, there is no pizza by the slice at John’s, Lombardi’s, or Patsy’s, America’s original pizza joints. Apres pizza, we head across the street to Matt Umanov’s, the venerable guitar shop where every six string slinger you’ve ever hero-worshipped has bought at least one axe. After ogling the vintage Martins and Gibsons, we head around the corner to Carmine Street Guitars, where Rick Kelly caters to the working class guitarist, and specializes in building Telecasters out of hundred year old wood from demolished buildings in Brooklyn. You will want to take home a piece of twanging New York history. We’re getting peckish now, and the major bit of local cuisine that we haven’t sampled yet is pasta, preferably with a simple salad, cheap house wine, and a checkered tablecloth. That can all be taken care of right on the corner, at Trattoria Spaghetto. For our final night of music, we travel just one block to the Cornelia Street Cafe, where musical polymath David Amram has held court for years, with an eclectic mix of jazz, classical and folk combined with tales of his exploits with Kerouac, Ginsberg and Charlie Parker.

In the morning, we share a refreshing egg cream, which contains neither, at Gem Spa, the favorite deli of the Beats, and then, under the Keith Haring sculpture at the corner of St. Mark’s and The Bowery, we put you in a taxi headed for JFK, sated with music, food and the great vibes of our little neighborhood, Greenwich Village.

 

In December 2014, I made a conscious decision that I would get to as many gigs as I possibly could during 2015. Not all of those gigs became reviews or picture galleries, but I certainly broke my previous record, which has stood since my second year at university. I love those moments at gigs when something happens which is either so unexpected or so exceptional that the hair stands up on the back of your neck and you know that you’ll remember it forever. Here are five of those from 2015:

Sound of the Sirens – In mid-March this year I was at The Half Moon in Putney to see Mad Dog Mcrea. I’d just reviewed their “Almost Home” album and thought they would be good to see live. I hadn’t heard of the support band, Sound of the Sirens, but I like to see support bands because you never know when you’ll make a great discovery; this was one of those nights. Abbe Martin and Hannah Wood grabbed my attention from the opening notes with superb songs, perfect harmonies and counterpoint and a huge dynamic range combining to create a set of acoustic anthems for the twenty-first century, all of it completely new to me. The entire set was stunning, but “Faith in Fire” had me transfixed; I had to just stand and watch, open-mouthed as the song progressed from the quiet intro to a rousing finale. Just perfect.

Graham Parker & Brinsley Schwarz at The Union Chapel – My first visit to the lovely Union Chapel and I was there with Phil Burdett to see one of my teenage heroes play a stripped-down set with Brinsley Schwarz (who was in the first proper band I saw live). Graham Parker has such a huge catalogue of songs that it’s impossible to predict which ones would make the cut on the night. Over the pre-gig pint, I came up with a small wish-list; one of which was almost a certainty, and the other a bit of an outsider. The opening song “Watch the Moon Come Down” ticked the certainty box, but it wasn’t until much later in the set that the harrowing “You Can’t be Too Strong” completed the list. The audience reaction of awed silence throughout the song and an explosion of applause at the end showed that I wasn’t the only person waiting to hear that one. I think I may have had something in my eye at that point.

Hannah Aldridge at Green Note – This is another gig that came out of hearing an album and deciding that I had to see the artist. Hannah’s debut, “Razor Wire”, is a wonderful piece of work featuring some brutally honest and sincere depictions of her life and I was keen to hear how these songs would strip down to an acoustic format. As expected, the songs worked perfectly in their original forms with Hannah’s pure, clear voice and acoustic guitar; Hannah was engaging between songs, giving some background to each piece, explaining the inspiration behind it. The song which completely silenced the full house at Green Note was “Parchman”, a song that, uncharacteristically, isn’t autobiographical; it’s the story of a woman on death row for murdering her abusive husband. I swear you couldn’t even hear anyone breathe as Hannah pulled the maximum emotion from the song by playing it completely straight; no vocal tricks or adornments, just a perfect song and a beautiful delivery, leaving the audience emotionally drained.

Dean Owens at The Union Chapel – It’s fair to say that Dean Owens is a bit of a Riot Squad favourite and it’s great to see that he’s having some very well-deserved success this year. Landing the support slot for Rosanne Cash at The Union Chapel gave Dean a chance to play in front of a full house and an appreciative audience in London with only his guitar and a bunch of great songs. He had the audience with him from the start and got a great response for the whole set but saved something very special for the end. He went completely unplugged; no amplification for guitar or voice. I’ve seen this done in smaller venues (Hannah Aldridge did it at Green Note) but it was big moment in a venue this size, however good the acoustics are. Dean hit the ball out of the park; he pulled out a rip-roaring version of Buck Owens’ “Love’s Gonna Live Here” which rightly earned him a huge response from a slightly stunned audience. A magical moment.

Rosanne Cash & John Leventhal at The Union Chapel – I know, I’m just being greedy here; two epiphanies on the same night. Rosanne Cash featured a lot of songs from the award-winning “The River and the Thread” and, with husband John Leventhal, was superb throughout, taking time to tell some of the stories behind the songs and establish a warm rapport with the audience. Strangely enough, the entire set seemed to come into sharp focus on someone else’s song, Bobbie Gentry’s enigmatic “Ode to Billy Joe”, which pulled all of the other threads together. A very simple arrangement and heartfelt performances pulled the audience into the song and generated a response that was part acclamation and part relief at escape from the song’s interwoven strands of tragedy and banality.

And I suppose that’s one reason that we go to gigs; we always hope that we’ll see those moments that you can’t capture on film or record/CD/MP3; the things that only happen once. I think five in one year’s pretty good going. Thanks to Sound of the Sirens, Graham Parker, Hannah Aldridge, Dean Owens and Rosanne Cash for those fabulous memories.

It’s time to get the High Fives under way for 2015 and, in a break with tradition, I’m handing over the opening slot to one of our guests, Neil Sheasby, bass player and co-songwriter with one of The Riot Squad’s favourite bands, Stone Foundation. The band have had a great year with the release of their superb album “A Life Unlimited” (guest vocal from Graham Parker, no less), a Japanese tour and some high profile UK gigs. Neil’s observations on music are always interesting, so it’s a pleasure to let him have the first High Five this year.

 

KAMASI WASHINGTON – “THE EPIC”

A record that pretty much defined my summer, for a few weeks I didn’t play much else. It is actually one of those albums that the more you listen to it, the more it will give you in return. It’s quite a sprawling, challenging recording set over three discs and clocking in at around three hours so it’s hard to digest all in one sitting but its depth, beauty and sheer ambition is unlike any other album I have heard in recent times. It could easily sit alongside the jazz heavyweights such as Coltrane’s output for impulse & Atlantic. Probably more accessible though. It has a timeless quality to it and an underlying spiritual vibe, funky too. I was lucky enough to catch his recent London gig and the playing was just on another level, astonishing stuff. Inspiring. He also led me to Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly” album (Kamasi plays on it) which is a great modern hip hop record again pushing & re-defining the boundaries of that particular genre.

 

THE NU-NOSTALGIA !

I think 2015 has been a strong year for new releases and new music in general, it’s been encouraging.I’ve really enjoyed new albums from artists I hadn’t previously heard of like Ryley Walker whose “Primrose Green” album evokes traces of John Martyn & Tim Buckley; also the Julia Holter record is an interesting listen but I must admit the real surprises of the year have lain with the rejuvenation of established arists that have made really unexpected returns to former glories. New Order’s “Music Complete” album was a real eye opener, easily their best since 1989’s Technique. It’s a real triumph; Peter Hook free too! They should be proud of  such a complete piece of work after all these years, it was a bona fide pleasant surprise to my ears, I’d about written them off.

Also this year there’s been great new albums from Joe Jackson (“Fast Forward) and Squeeze (“Cradle to the Grave”) that are fit to stand alongside any of their previous highlights.

 

“A MAN IN A HURRY”

This is a film about the relatively short life of British Jazz genius Tubby Hayes. It was made by two good friends of mine, Mark Baxter & Lee Cogswell and it’s a fascinating profile and made with much affection for its subject, narrated by Martin Freeman and it includes commentary & interviews with Sir Peter Blake, Spike Wells, Robert Elms, Simon Spillett and Ed Piller amongst others. I’ve known Mark for several years now and from day one he always had a burning desire to create a fitting documentary as a testament to Tubby’s life & music, he’s more than succeeded, I’m so pleased for him & Lee. It’s a fantastic little film and one that had me running for the records again.

Me and a mate recently attended the London launch party for its DVD release and on the train home it had us talking passionately about London & the Soho jazz scenes through the years, the clothes and the clubs, the DJ’s, bands, singers etc.That’s the tell-tale sign that “A Man in a Hurry” film had served its purpose all right.

 

THE ISLEY BROTHERS BOX SET

Released earlier this year The RCA Victor and T-Neck albums all housed together in a 22 CD box set. It spans the Isleys career from 1959 up to 1983 taking in all those classic mid 70’s albums as well as a previously unreleased live album recorded at Bearsville Sound Studios. It’s an absolute beauty and really highlights the often overlooked genius of The Isley Brothers. Ronald, Ernie and Rudolph began with Doo-wop roots and evolved marvellously through classic Soul, Funk and even disco

It’s an incredible collection, once I get immersed in it, I’m in there for days on end. Brilliant stuff.

 

YOU KNOW MY NAME: THE LOVERS, THE DREAMERS AND BOBBY SCOTT

A compelling & fascinating read by one of my favourite writers, Kevin Pearce. It’s actually the first book I have ever read from start to finish on my phone, it was my companion whilst on holiday this summer. Not many will be familiar with the name of Bobby Scott but it’s probably safe to say that you would have certainly heard his work.

Bobby composed, arranged, sang, produced and performed with countless artists including Marvin Gaye, Bobby Darin, Timi Yuro, Aretha Franklin, Chet Baker, Quincy Jones, Roland Kirk, Deodato, Stan Getz, Astrud Gilberto and a cast of thousands more. Bobby Scott songs include “A Taste of Honey”, recorded by the Beatles, and the epic “He ain’t Heavy, He’s my Brother” which The Hollies struck gold with (also check Donny Hathaway’s miraculous version) The only downer to reading this book is that it will seriously have you running back and forth to You Tube checking out song after song and of course in my case, being a hopeless music junkie, I ended up spending a small fortune on chasing up some of these spectacular sounds for my ever expanding collection.

I also read great autobiographies from Robert Wyatt, Bernard Sumner, Nile Rodgers, and somewhat refreshingly the Italian footballer Pirlo. I was a tad disappointed with the Grace Jones book, thought it would be more telling I think, then again Paul Morley was involved so no surprise I was underwhelmed.

I’m just about to begin Elvis Costello’s “Unfaithful music and Disappearing Ink”; looking forward to it…..