More Musical Marginalisation!
Current mood: distractable
Category: Music

More Musical Marginalisation!
 

 
Jenkins challenges anyone to dare to leave the room.....                                  ©Olivia Caussanel 
 

A disturbing and unsettling new social practice is occurring in pubs and clubs throughout England - disturbing for those who like their live music and unsettling for the musician. 

For although the smoking ban means a musician can return home with smoke free clothes, the cost is yet further erosion of the power of music.

We've already had the 2003 Entertainment Licensing Act closing live music premises then the smoking ban in 2007 creating further business casualties.

Ignore the complete implosion of the recorded music industry, or the 2008 EU legislation that forbids noise over 85 decibels in the workplace which is playing havoc with the classical music world - the issue here is aimed at the grass roots performer.

We're not even talking about the guaranteed mobile phone intrusion.....
 

Now, at any venue that does not have designated seating, there is a constant ebb and flow of folks popping out for a cigarette. 

    'This not only causes distraction for the focused listener', says guitarist Billy Jenkins, who has been a bandleader and performer for over thirty five years, 'it erodes the confidence of the performer.' 

    'Is someone leaving because they hate the music? What have we done to upset them? Why are they walking out? They would rather have a fag then respect the fact we've travelled hours to play for them and have hours to get home.....all these thoughts go through one's mind. I've seen troops or four or five people walk past the sight lines of keen music fans past the front of the stage. Bang goes any empathy you've built with those in the room.'

Something to seriously ponder when you have your next cigarette......

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Recording Plans Put On Hold!
Current mood: pissed off
Category: Music

From billyjenkins.com:

Recording Plans Put On Hold!

'Pissed Off Boy!'                           ©2004 Nick Corker

'Bemused' is the only word Billy can offer at the fascinating response to the Songs of Praise Live! CD.

Despite brilliant coverage sourced by the lovely PR stars Seb & Fiona and critical acclaim, sales have been somewhat torrid, reflecting a global move away from purchased recorded sound to free file sharing, a preference for listening to single tracks rather than whole albums, a general overdose of regurgitation and a devaluation in music - as the leisure market is dictated by computer led fresh initiatives.

Billy has already completed 'I Am A Man From Lewisham', using the 'Songs of Praise' musicians plus special guest singers Carol Grimes, Ayanna Witter-Johnson, trumpeter Jim Howard, organist Dave Ramm and violinist Charlie Hart and a 14 strong Secular Gospel choir.

The Lewisham collection has been stewing for a long time and completes the regional survey of the guitarist's home turf alongside 'Sounds Like Bromley' (1981),
'Greenwich' (1985) and 'Still Sounds Like Bromley' (1997).

'It was very hard to capture Lewisham as my creativity is often anger driven', says Jenkins, 'and the problem is I love Lewisham very much. However, I think I've nailed it.'

But will it ever be released, or sit on the shelf as are several other collections - in particularly 'The Semi-Detached Suburban Home - Music For Low Strung Guitar' completed in 1994?

This frustrating downturn in sales, coupled with a few knock on complexities and issues with the Babel Label and a personal shift to a 'small is beautiful' period has meant that a proposed January recording project of 'intense large band blues' has been put on hold.

Jenkins, however, remains philosophical. 

'It's a fascinating time. Banks talk of a major global economy collapse. Musicians are being forced to provide saleable mainstream work and the knock on effects here in England of the recent change in Licencing and Entertainment laws and the smoking ban (which, now the colder weather is here will really effect drinking habits), aligned with increasingly complex bureaucratic obligations plus the aforementioned changes in listening habits leaves me to quote Mose Allison: I'm not downhearted - but I'm getting there.....'

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Abolish ’Musical Style’ Labelling!
Current mood: determined
Category: Music

From the Billy Jenkins Office:


Abolish 'Musical Style' Labelling - Reignite Retailing!!


Selling popular music by style fuels divisions in our society. Whilst diversity is natural herding, a communications medium such as music is the clarion call for potential divisional distrust.

The rocker shuns the rapper, the traditional jazzer despises modernist, and the folk enthusiast abhors Techno.Such differences have a more profound effect when it comes to religious fanaticism - but it is partially the different beats of the drum that are fuelling intolerance and schism.

Music makers often claim to have a benevolent, liberal and compassionate outlook, yet they are obliged to perpetuate difference as market forces target niche audiences within which to exploit their work.

Musicians should be respected as musicians, not just as a type of musician – in the same way that ethnic classification can create suspicion, accusations of favouritism or indigenous ostracism amongst what are primarily human beings.

If all recorded work was displayed in retail outlets alphabetically artist by artist (rather than segregating into various musical styles), not only will this diminish unintentional diversification by aural artists, it will also stimulate and reignite the excitement and discovery of visiting a record shop.

You may be looking for Mozart, but what's that dirty but interesting looking bunch Motorhead? Those '60's mop tops The Monkees? What's this 'bluegrass' from Bill Monroe? And what does Monk (Thelonious) sound like?

Browsing the record shop whilst appeasing 'differences' - sounds like music to my ears!

Contact fiona@sebandfiona.com /+ 0207 377 9868 for more information.

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Jenkins Claims Music Has become Impotent
Current mood: cynical
Category: Music

From the Billy Jenkins Office:


Musician Claims Music Has become Impotent


Musician Billy Jenkins, a Visiting Artist at the Royal Academy of Music and an influential performer, composer and polemic on the British jazz scene for over three decades, has declared that "music is ceasing to have the power and spirituality it once had".

The musician blames television, radio and broadband downloading.

Says Jenkins: "It is quite simple. To broadcast requires the signal to be compressed to maximise the signal. Thus, soft sections become loud and loud sections become soft, which totally negates the intent of the composer and performer."

Jenkins feels that this is not a problem with popular music that has been recorded with the broadcast medium in mind, but totally destroys the nuance and intonation of jazz, classical and acoustic music.

Explaining how he feels downloading music has diluted subtly even further, he goes on to say: "A six minute jazz quintet track at CD quality would need about 60MB to retain the essence. To speed access, this might be reduced to as little as 3MB and that is done by removing aspects of the sounds that are arbitrarily deemed 'unnecessary'. All finesse is destroyed. To top it all, most download music is now listened through tiny earphones or poor quality computer speakers – usually as a background soundtrack whilst attending to other issues. It is making the consumer aurally lazy and indifferent."

Throw in what Billy calls "the absurdity of continual background 'music' to accompany almost any link, advert or television programme and the ease that people today also switch off their 'spatial awareness' when in earshot of someone speaking on their mobile phone", and it is not hard to appreciate Jenkins' concern.

His final statement is directed at the authorities: "This government went out of their way to placate the broadcast industry with their recent Entertainment Licence Bill. They want music tempered, compressed and controlled. Fortunately, it seems there is a growing awareness that television and the making of programmes are, in fact, a rather corrupt, manipulative and deceitful medium, which includes the abuse of music - society needs to reclaim it's true nature and spirit."

Billy Jenkins has been performing for over 35 years. His prolific and revered career takes in 32 album releases and several thousand live appearances. He is widely respected as an avant garde jazz guitarist, bluesman and art rock iconoclast.Billy Jenkins is available for interview.

 Contact fiona@sebandfiona.com / 0207 377 9868 for more information.

12:12 PM - 3 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

Songs of Praise Live! CD Now Out!
Current mood: happy
Category: Music

NEW CD AVAILABLE!

get it from

www.billyjenkins.com

'Featuring one of the Bromley bluesman's most inspired bands, this album preserves what sounds to have been a great gig, at Leeds's Wardrobe, for posterity. Like much of Jenkins's work, Songs of Praise is deadly serious at heart.'
  Chris Parker / Vortex Jazz CD Reviews

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Dreaming of a Blues Christmas gig review
Current mood: confused
Category: Music

Blues voodoo struck with a vengeance (7th Dec 2006) as a hardly ever known before tornado ripped through a North London street causing an estimated £20 million pounds of damage, several injuries and a whole host of suddenly homeless people.

Together with a damp gloomy day it was all to be expected. The Blues Collective were town. North London to be precise. In Lauderdale House, Highgate - the very same building where only hours before had played host
to the wake for poisoned former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.....

'Our audience is a walkup crowd', organiser Brian Blain cheerfully informed bandleader Billy the night before, which made it all the better that the (Lauderdale) house was about 75% full to witness Billy's final live performance of 2006.

Delicately asking rhythm (or is it 'best' lead guitarist) Richard Bolton to sit this gig out on account of the delicate acoustic, it was expected to be a'low key' recital. Not.

From a 'Little Drummer Boy' entrance (superbly played by a one tom tommed Mike Pickering) with violinist Dylan Bates and bassist Thad Kelly almost coming to blows over 'who's the oxen and who's the lamb', Jenkins laid out his
Xmas Fayre - suggesting 'I Like Rain' should be the first of a new generation of yuletide weather themed songs, encouraging the whole room to enact ice bound heat seeking calisthenics, a passionate diatribe against dogs for christmas presents and enforced holiday DIY.

A surprise guest was harmonica player Jessica Lauren, who shared with Billy a mutual appreciation of each other's skills in the 1970s. It really had taken that long for them to come together onstage and she graced the evening with a delicate wispy charm that perhaps added the finesse that the leader promised but was unable to control.

The second set seem to start in the deep freeze department of a successful food store - with Mr Bates supplying what must have been a seven minute single high octave E - transforming himself into an aural fluorescent tube. This led onto the issues of overeating, the horror of the parents coming to stay, pantomime icons, christmas shopping for perfume and a cabaret finale that would not have been out of place at one of the several weddings that Jenkins and Pickering had played in the same room in the distant past. In fact, several times the band seemed to get confused whether it was indeed a 'jazz recital' or some upmarket nuptials.

Finally, Billy blessed the room and all present with secular tap water as he marched up and down the thin rectangular room amongst the not-quite-singing-along born again blues congregation as he bade farewell to the blues for this year.

For those who braved the elements and made 'Dreaming of a Blues Christmas' such an 'end of term' pleasure, here is the set list. What, with Christmas just around the corner, why not skip to the Recordings page at billy.com page and treat yourself or loved ones to a Billy CD! Help him earn enough to pay some tax!

SET 1

1. Little Drummer Boy
( Simeone, Onorati & Davis)

2. sadtimes.co.uk
- from sadtimes.co.uk VOTP VOCD 002

3. I Like Rain
- from 'When The Crowds Have Gone' Babel BDV 2450

4. Stranded
- from 'Here Is The Blues!' Blues Abuse CDR-50

5. I Hate Dogs

6. Pointless Adornments
- from 'Suburbia' Babel BDV 9926

7. Crazy Mixed Up World - (LIttle Walter)

SET 2

1. Down In The Deep Freeze
- from 'Blues Zero Two' VOTP VOCD 024

2. Don't Eat That Cake
- from 'Blues Zero Two' VOTP VOCD 024

3. When The Parents Come To Stay

4. Cliff Richard Spoke To Me
- from sadtimes.co.uk VOTP VOCD 002

5. I Love Your Smell
- from sadtimes.co.uk VOTP VOCD 002

6. One More For The Road (Arlen & Mercer)

7. I'm Dreaming of a Blues Christmas (Berlin)

encore:

Deep thanks go to the ever supportive Brian Blain, Lauderdale House manager Katherine, tireless worker Alex and a charming crowd for a truly perfect blues conclusion to 2006!

1:07 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The music you’re listening to.......!
Current mood: crazy
Category: Music

         Summer Flowers!  	2 tracks  from the CD I AM A MAN FROM LEWISHAMavailable for Licenceplus a golden oldie...!        	



 I Am A Man From Lewisham
(Billy Jenkins PRS/MCPS)
 unreleased
 
 Deptford Market( Billy Jenkins PRS/MCPS)
unreleased
 
 
(Not) Close To You
( David/Bacharach - Carlin Mus. Corp)
from CD  'East/West'  Babel  BDV 9601
 



info & available from the Recordings page at
www.billyjenkins.com

 Purchasing Billy's music on CD helps him to continue
his work - documenting fellow aural
travellers and kindred folk. 
And you can hear & feel it  properly. 
Broadband takes out the nuance, intonation and subtly.The stuff that makes music music!

 Thank you!

2:53 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Billy Bowled Over !!
Current mood: ecstatic
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

Originally published at www.billyjenkins.com September 2006
(c) 2006 billyjenkins.com


Jazzwise Magazine Salutes 'Ain't Going Yet!'!






The September issue of Jazzwise magazine carried a most wholesome review of the lawn bowls documentary 'Aint' Going Yet!' - featuring Billy's music and made by filmakers Dave Eyre and Peter Cordwell.


Reviewer Mike Flynn notes: 'Jenkins' shambling blues style is a perfect soundtrack for this utterly unpretentious pastime and turns the almost slow-motion scenes of the bowling match into an unlikely pop video. Lovely, gently eccentric and utterly charming'.Referring to Jenkins' voice over narrative he says: 'As for Jenkins' presenting style he gets my vote as Humph's [Humphrey Lyttelton - longtime BBC jazz presenter] replacement when the trumpeter finally gets that great gig in the sky.'

He also describes the film's contents at some length with a turn of phrase that deserves to be read fully. Jazzwise is available from WH Smith and most magazine retail outlets.


Three Jenkins compositions are featured in the 45 minute film:

The title track 'Ain't Going Yet' is taken from the Blues Collective CD 'LIFE' (VOTP 2002) and the first half of the match itself is accompanied by 'Benidorm Motorway Services' from 'Scratches of Spain' (reissued by Babel 1994) - featuring Bollywood Brass Band trombonist Dave Jago and keyboard gymnast Django Bates.The second half of the match is edited to 'The Perfect Lawn' from 'Suburbia' (Babel 1999), which features Polar Bear lynchpin Mark Lockheart on tenor saxophone, Dave Ramm on keyboards and drummer Roy Dodds.


The DVD, which can be purchased via the billy.com Recordings page, also has three stand alone music videos minus the voice over.

Before ordering from outside the U.K., check that your machine can read Zero region discs!





Picture shows Mayor of Lewisham Steve Bullock posing on the green
carpet with assorted bowls stars and starlets at the recent premiere
of 'Aint' Going Yet!'. Jenkins is third from the left.

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Welsh 'Big Fight!' A Big Hit!!
Current mood: quixotic
Category: Sports

Originally published at www.billyjenkins.com September 2006
(c) 2006 billyjenkins.com



Welsh 'Big Fight!' A Big Hit!!


This cheekily lifted from the Monmouth Town Crier:

Take a boxing ring, a referee, timekeeper, glamour girl and three improvising musicians from each country and you get a maelstrom of musical and theatrical creativity juxtaposed with one of the all time grudge matches in our history. Choose your sides, support your champions, barrack the opposition in this no-holds, mean and dirty face-off of nine bouts.

A surreal symphony; three movements of exquisite new music carefully refereed to avoid any foul playing .. no gouging, no musical quotations. The Big Fight, originally conceived by ..anarcho-guitarmeister.. Billy Jenkins, has been staged in various European locations and now comes home for THE big national showdown.

This was The Big Fight and boy, what a night....


The Big Fight: Friday 15th September 2006

The Cast

Lyndon Owen, saxophones
Dave Stapleton, keyboards
Simon Pugsley, trombone

Billy Jenkins, guitar
Rod Mason, saxophones
Paul Hession, drumkit

Referee: Pete Martin
Timekeeping: Marietta Bell
Hostess: Sally McLeod


Pictures taken by Alfie Goodrich




Billy on the ropes.....






Lyndon Owen gets advice from Dave Stalpeton between rounds.....





Referee Pete Martin gives a standing count to BJ, whilst Rod Mason claps.....




Beautiful music from drummer Paul Hession and Dave Stapleton....



Simon Pugsley studiously ignores round glamour girl Sally.....

5:45 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Blues Collective on YouTube!!
Current mood: happy
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

Blues Collective on YouTube!!

The 2001 Blues Collective spoof documentary 'Virus Called The Blues', made by Squaredog & Roundcat and directed by inspirational maverick film maker Craig Duncan can currently be viewed on YouTube!

Neatly edited into three sections, there's also a three minute promo short to be found!

Based around the band's 2001 Blue Elephant Theatre season, there's a host of factual and 'did that really happen?' action. Only problem is, after five years, no one really remembers ....

It's great fun and features such classics as 'I Hate Dogs', 'A VIrus Called The Blues' and 'sadtimes.co.uk'.

PART 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vQLuzjkFBo

PART 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsm3P5BSw40

PART 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO9LycSWs7c

5:37 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment