Tag Archives: Music

Brighton Festival, Brighton Life, Brighton music scene, Great Escape

Four days, 450 artists, 35 venues…

Leave a comment


Alex Hill takes his pick of The Great Escape

“Yeah, I saw  them a few years ago at The Great Escape”. Everyone likes to be ahead of the game, everyone likes to catch the New Big Thing before they become the new big thing. And there’s no better place to do that than at The  Great Escape. But so many bands, so many venues, so many names, so many… places to go and have a drink. What do you do? Where do you go? Who do you see? 

Man/Woman/Chainsaw 

A fascinating band with an intriguing and unrevealing name. They’ve been described as ‘one of the most exciting and unpredictable young acts in the town’, and with their mix of atmospheric indie style, joint vocals, melodic guitar and bass and haunting violin playing, you can understand why. It’s not their first time in Brighton either – they put on a brilliant show at Green Door Store a few months ago and I’ve been awaiting their return ever since.

Rizzle Kicks

OK, not new, but they’re Brighton legends – yes they are – and we love them. This local hip hop duo grabbed national attention with their fresh sounding, early 2010’s hits ‘Down With The Trumpets’ and ‘Mama Do The Hump’ encapsulating a groovy and upbeat spin on hip hop which incorporates elements of reggae, funk and jazz – they’ve even sampled classic punk tracks for their tunes. These guys definitely have the knack needed to get a crowd moving with their unique and catchy feel-good sound that’s immediately recognisable. It’s great to have them back. 

Heavy Lungs 

One of the heaviest bands playing this year’s festival, as their name might have led you to believe, and their hardcore punk sound immediately grabbed my attention. With riff driven songs, relentless drumming and Johnny Rotten-esque vocals – they pay homage to classic punk while making it their own; I’d liken their sound to an intriguing mix of Black Flag and The Damned brought to the modern era – which can be heard in their most popular ‘(A Bit of a) Birthday’.

Peter Doherty 

Again, not new, but am I looking forward  to this. The daring, yet loveable frontman of The Libertines and Babyshambles is one of the headliners for this year’s festival and an obvious choice for first place on this list. He plays Brighton beach on the 14th May championing the release of his new album.

I saw Doherty play live last year in a grotty industrial estate in Wolverhampton. While perhaps an unlikely location, this intimate acoustic set with Doherty playing a mix of Libertines and Babyshambles songs along with his solo material was a fantastic gig. He has the brilliant ability to captivate an audience with just his guitar, oftentimes accompanied by Bob Dylan style harmonica playing. Doherty maintains the poetic songwriter charm that made him famous.

Queen Cult

One of the newest acts around are one to keep an eye on. With a high energy indie rock sound and heavily distorted instruments, Queen Cult have hints of garage rock greats Royal Blood and Queens of the Stone Age and are unforgivingly loud and proud. Just the thing we need to see. Their new single, ‘Figure It Out’, last month is hard not to like.

Check out https://greatescapefestival.com/

Caraline Brown, Mrs Wilson's Children, The Welly Club, Hull

Mrs Wilson’s Children: The Welly Club

Leave a comment

When stars such as Katy Perry, Coldplay and Enter Shikari, along with the current Government and Brighton and Hove council rally to the same cause, we have to pay attention. After successful lobbying by the Music Venue Trust, they are all supporting grassroots music venues. This is a real issue across the country as venues are regularly under threat from developers, gentrification and the cost of living. Here, the iconic Prince Albert was not so long ago battling closure.

As Brighton-based author Caraline Brown says, “Music is life. It is the blood in our veins. It’s what made us and will keep us sane”. Her book, Mrs Wilson’s Children: Adventures at the Welly Club, Hull 1979-81, tells the story of why these venues are crucial to the social, cultural, and economic life of our cities. Think what Brighton would feel like without The Hope and Ruin, The Green Door Store, Chalk and so many others.  

Stuffed with rare, fascinating pictures, tickets and posters of the gigs, Brown’s book illustrates the enduring importance of these venues through the prism of the punk/ post-punk/ 2-Tone moment (1979-81) and tells us about life away from the bigger cities such as London, Manchester and Liverpool. The Welly – which could be the Concorde or, well, pick your own favourite venue – became the centre of a community, a place where fans, bands and promoters could meet and chat and drink and ferment ideas. These places provided a space to build a scene. As Welly regular Jon Nelson says: “We had to build our own revolution, one gig at a time”.  

“I owe my whole career to those early days at the Welly”, says Brown. Managed by the formidable Mrs Wilson, like a “stern ward matron”, the Welly opened as a working men’s club in 1913, and was still hosting darts matches when Brown was promoting gigs there. A proper sweaty venue with character and sticky floors. However, it didn’t appeal to everyone. Bauhaus were supposed to support Magazine, but their singer Pete Murphy took one look at the stage, pronounced the venue a “shithole” and refused to play. His loss.  

Another highlight was the reproduced pages from Brown’s contemporaneous notebooks with the phone numbers of music industry executives such as legendary Factory Records boss, Tony Wilson, as well as the costs for the gigs. Refreshingly, there’s no sign of a mobile phone or an Excel spreadsheet. Local musician, Vince Coulman says that, while the gigs might not have made much money, the real benefit “might lay, not in cash, but in the thrill of bringing an ace band to our favourite place in the city. In short, making stuff happen.” 

The nights that Brown had organised at the Welly were still being talked about reverently when I arrived in Hull in the mid-1980s, even though Brown and the Wilsons were long gone. 

Thankfully, The Welly is still going strong playing host to the new generation of alternative groups. Music is indeed life.

l ‘Mrs Wilson’s Children: Adventures at The Welly Club, Hull 1979-1981’ by Caraline Brown costs £14.99 plus postage and is available from http://www.karibrown.uk

Johnny Hopkins 

Brighton music scene, es Mouth, Jazz in Brighton, Peter Chrisp, The Verdict

Jazz on a summer’s day

Leave a comment

Is Brighton the UK’s best city for jazz? Peter Chrisp, who’s been going to jazz gigs here since the 1970s, gives his Verdict. (Verdict. It’s a jazz club. Oh, never mind) 

Ever feel like the sun is spent, and now his flasks send forth light squibs, no constant rays, the world’s whole sap is sunk; and you are every dead thing, re-begot of absence, darkness, death: things which are not? Jeez Loueeze lighten up buddy, it’s just the usual January bullshit of darkness…Get your dispirited ageing meat envelope along to JAZZ NIGHT AT THE BEE’S MOUTH and feel the surge of molten Vril coursing back to put that spring back in your step…”

That’s from bassist Eddie Myers’s ‘beat’ifully written weekly posting promoting the Monday night jazz jam he hosts at the Bee’s Mouth in Hove. Here Eddie always contrasts the misery of the season or the bleak news cycle with the life enhancing pleasures of listening to, and playing live jazz.

The Bee’s Mouth jam is just one of more than thirty regular weekly jazz gigs across our finger-popping city. On a typical Sunday, there are eleven of them. As an experiment, you could try sampling a few minutes of each Sunday gig, starting at the Walrus at 12.45 and ending at the Hand in Hand at closing time. When I posted a list of Brighton gigs online, even the musicians were surprised at how many there were. Saxophonist Arabella Sprot said, “I’ve never seen this density of jazz gigs anywhere else I’ve lived and that includes Bristol, Birmingham and Berlin.”

To make a jazz city, you need venues, musicians and appreciative audiences, and we have all three. A big turning point took place in March 2012, when Andy Lavender turned Drury’s tea and coffee shop in Edward Street into the Verdict, our city’s only purpose-built jazz club. Managed by the drummer Tristan Banks, the club hosts jazz jams on Thursdays and international acts on Fridays and Saturday. In 2024, the All Party Parliamentary Jazz Group gave the Verdict their Jazz Venue of the Year award.

New Generation Jazz, set up in 2015, is an Arts Council funded Brighton organisation whose aims are “to help young artists develop audiences outside the capital, and introduce young people in Brighton and the South-East to jazz and demonstrate what a vital, living tradition it is today.” Partnered with the Verdict, they run the September Brighton Jazz Festival, with sold out shows in Horatio’s Bar on the Palace Pier.

Brighton has always been a great place to hear jazz in pubs. Growing up in Essex, I thought that modern jazz was something that happened in the past, on an old Charlie Parker LP my dad bought by mistake. Soon after I moved here as a student in 1976, I came across Geoff Simkins playing lyrical alto sax in the King and Queen. Geoff is still regularly gigging, and I make it a rule never to miss him if I can help it. 

More than twenty pubs now have regular jazz, and most of them are free. The pubs pay the musicians, to bring in pubgoers. Several are organised by guitarists Jason Henson and Paul Richards, trumpeter Chris Coull, saxophone player Alex Bondonno and bass player Nigel Thomas. You can also hear jazz in churches, such as All Saints and St Andrews’ in Hove, where Chris has an early Friday evening concert. The audiences at these gigs listen attentively and applaud the solos. The jazz community is also a good place to make cross-generational friendships. I love listening to the old timers’ stories of magical nights at Ronnie Scott’s in the 1960s.

As for musicians, we have loads, the most numerous being the bass players, followed by guitarists and keyboard players. There aren’t so many drummers, so Angus Bishop, Milo Fell and Joe Edwards are kept busy. Look out for the female singers too: Sara Oschlag, Sam Carelse, Lucy Pickering, Rachel Myer, Ela Southgate and Imogen Ryall. There’s a shortage of male singers, apart from swinging crooner Dave Williams.

Once a month, on Sundays, big bands play in the back room of the Brunswick, and everybody should listen to the mighty sound of a big band playing in a small room at least once. 

Another thrilling sound to hear in a pub is that of the massive 1964 C3 Hammond organ, played by Bobby Aspey with his band the Lost Organ Unit. Their tunes sound like 1960s classics, yet they’re all Aspey originals. Check Bobby’s feet, always in red socks, bouncing over the bass pedals as he plays.

The quality of Brighton rhythm sections and the enthusiasm of audiences attracts visiting horn players. Saxophonists Alan Barnes and Simon Spillett both regularly make a 100 mile journey to Brighton to play gigs here, and Simon has been known to stay for mini tours. Following them from one pub gig to another, I like to imagine that I’m not in Brighton in the 2020s, but bouncing to bebop along 52nd Street in 1940s New York, and that the Brighton pubs are clubs like the Famous Door and Birdland.

Most locals I know don’t realise that they’re living in a jazz city. But wasn’t that probably true also of most New Yorkers in the 1940s?

https://thejamboreebag.blogspot.com/2024/12/brighton-jazz-listings.html

https://www.verdictjazz.com

Gigs
Gigs

https://www.newgenerationjazz.co.uk/about

Brighton music scene, Hope and Ruin, Spill

Music Review: Spill

Leave a comment

By Tallulah Gray

Slap bang in the middle of their UK tour promoting their latest single ‘Mr Blue’, Spill stopped in Brighton to headline Hope and Ruin alongside Brighton’s Divorce Attorney and Torus from Milton Keynes, and the second Spill hit the stage it was clear that the crowd was ready for the psychedelic metal grunge hybrid the band has become known for.

Having seen Spill play many Brighton shows over the last year (their headline in Dust a particular highlight), it’s so clear to see their strength and progression from being a band that already put on a spectacularly tight and dynamic show, and this gig blew the doors off any previous perception of the band.

From their driving rhythm session of drummer Tom Williams and bassist Alain de Gouveia, Spill commanded the audience, highlighting lead singer Sophie Cawtheray’s vocals in the quieter moments equally.

de Gouveia’s bass tone – the best in Brighton? Go on. Argue with it – serves the kind of music Spill make excellently, balancing their more heavy influences with the psychedelic riffs of guitarists Kieran King and Charly Turpin.

While every member has their moment to shine in their setlist, lead vocalist Soph Cawtheray’s vocals were stronger than ever before at Hope and Ruin, leaning into the gravelly belt she uses oh so sparingly alongside the powerfully soft and subdued vocal melodies she has become so known for in the Brighton scene.

Spill has proven time and time again that they’re a band with serious potential and a strong sense of identity. Their journey on the Mr Blue tour seems to have done nothing but strengthen the already solid base they’ve built for themselves in Brighton and I can’t wait to see where they go from here.

Call My Franco, Green Door Store, Nel Blu, The Wrong Trousers

Music Review: Flavours, Nel Blu, The Wrong Trousers & Call Me Franco

Leave a comment

By Alex Hill

Friday night was a busy one down at The Green Door. Nestled underneath Brighton train station lies the tiny, cobbled floor venue which always seems to be absolutely packed. The hoards of people on the night were justified by the lineup of four fantastic bands.

The first to take the stage was Nel Blu, the grungy looking five-piece delivered a barrage of classic 2000’s indie sounding songs with a math rock twist with the keyboard and gentle, melodic guitar breaks. Fighting through the crows to see what they looked like, Nel Blu’s jangly indie bangers sounded exactly as I imagined they looked. Even if you’re staring at the back of someone’s head, you can tell these guys are a talented bunch, with songs sounding similar to massively popular indie bands like The Killers which easily got the whole room bopping along.     

As I finally managed to secure a view, The Wrong Trousers – a high energy, heavy punk band – hit the stage, and took it by storm . I loved these guys and their hardcore sound, the very fast drumming, wrist-achingly fast guitar and screeching vocals from their attitude fuelled frontman who bounced around the stage made a headbanging result. It’s refreshing to see a band which are keeping the punk sound alive while also combining it with some surf or shoegazey guitar parts to keep it interesting and put a modern spin on the genre.

Call Me Franco are, right now, perhaps the most original band in Brighton, and their set left me utterly impressed. The trio has no singer, instead opting for strange sound effects and voices – which sound like aliens attempting to make contact – acting as an introduction to their songs. With the guitarist and bassist using a range of effects pedals to create a unique result which they use to their advantage when alternating between heavy riffs and isolated instruments, using a lot of noise – or lack thereof – to their advantage.

Complimenting the rest of the band is the extremely talented drummer whose hard-hitting technique and rhythm drove the songs. Call Me Franco demonstrates clearly how a singer isn’t at all necessary in their arty rock style. The band that came to mind as a comparison is Muse, with their similar effects driven heavy rock, and yet at no point in the show did I feel vocals were missing or needed. Their unique sound kept us enthralled. A very cool instrumental band which you don’t see the likes of very often.

Following on from Call Me Franco were headliners Flavours, a four-piece modern sounding rock group championing the release of new single, the aptly named ‘Still Heavy’. With the two guitarists playing a mix of heavy riffs and very cool sounding melodies on their twin guitars while trading vocals, followed along closely by the bassist and backed perfectly by the drums; these guys solidly pay tribute to classic psychedelic rock, while making it their own with their atmospheric sound. They saved their new single until later in the set, delivering on the anticipation with a great tune which starts off with a jangly, soothing guitar intro and melodic singing before going into a brilliant guitar solo and heavy riff, which live up to the songs name and was a treat to experience live. If you want to see a current band exerting heaps of high-energy talent; these guys won’t fall short.