I can’t get started

I might have bought this just for the cover but I forgot to look at the record condition before I handed over 59p at my favourite local charity shop. Just about any version of ‘I Can’t Get Started’ is worth a listen but when I slipped this disc out of the sleeve I found that someone had made a fairly determined effort to render the A-side unplayable.

I tried some mild solvent but this adhesive tape glue was ancient and immovable. I had just changed the stylus on my deck so still had the old one…it seemed like too good an opportunity to waste…

Return to the Found Tapes

I was thinking about making a mix from the cassettes that I photographed in a previous post. The first box I lifted out was this one. According to the notes on the sleeve, one side has 5 tracks by Free (+ Layla) and the other is a selection of songs by Brian Ferry and Roxy Music. I wasn’t sure of my strategy for making a mix but thought I would just listen and work it out as I went along. The ‘Free’ side – Side 1 – has a couple of songs then the music cuts out to be replaced by what follows. This is an edited version. I have taken lots out (including a burst of the aforementioned Layla) but I have not put anything else in. I have not yet listened to all of Side 2 though it begins with ‘Where do you go to my lovely’…

Atomic Bomb! play the music of William Onyeabor. Meltdown, Royal Festival Hall.

Charles Lloyd

My second big band experience of the week after the Arkestra  at Cafe Oto on Monday night. This time round, virtually the whole audience was on its feet 2 numbers in…something I have not witnessed before at the RFH. The sound here could never compare with the intimate clarity of the Arkestra at Oto but there was certainly an electric atmosphere to the proceedings as guest stars did their turns to wildly enthusiastic response from the dancing masses. But who were these guest stars? Introductions were lost in the aural blur of the sound system…I got Charles Lloyd (who played a wonderful solo introduction on sax), Alexis Taylor and David Byrne but other names escaped me…maybe all will be revealed by others in the days to come. Not really a night for drawing; here are two from early on and a photograph of the entrance of the 200 piece choir during the finale…

Atomic Bomb!

Line up update:

Sinkane

David Byrne

Amadou and Mariam

Charles Lloyd

Sarah Jones

Money Mark

Alexis Taylor

Mahotella Queens

Voicelab Choir

Moses Sumney

Sun Ra Arkestra, Cafe Oto, 17. viii. 15

A wonderful earful at Cafe Oto…

Marshall Allen on alto saxophone.

Tyler Mitchell on double bass and , on piano, George Burton.

Cecil Brooks on trumpet.

Cecil Brooks on trumpet.

Dave Davis – trombone.

Drawings on a 1939 copy of the British Red Cross Society Nursing Manual no. 2, 1939, 5th edition. Good semi-gloss paper surface.