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Harmonise the World

Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Events, Gigs and Concerts, Information No Responses »

Sep 302011

With Thanks to Linda Allan.

The lilting strains of “Harmonise the World” with its powerful musical message for today’s world, can be heard at the close of every gathering of the body of women singers called Sweet Adelines International.
Audience members in Deeside will be treated to an example of this international spirit this autumn, when the Jazz Group Conference-of-Swing from Dresden and Aberdeen Chorus of Sweet Adelines team up for two evenings of lively Jazz vocals and superb close harmony.

This all came about when Riki Gohrbrandt one of the German Jazz Group, found an outlet for her musical talent by singing with the Aberdeen Chorus in her spare time while working for a year as a Foreign Languages Assistant in Aberdeen.

She enjoyed the experience so much, and had become such firm friends with the singers, that she was determined to keep up her links with the Chorus and encourage her fellow singers in the Jazz Group to consider a trip to Scotland culminating in a joint concert with her musical friends from last year.

Several months and many reams of emails later, this plan has come to fruition.

The Aberdeen Chorus – fresh from their success at the Edinburgh Fringe and their Show in the Music Hall Aberdeen – is soon to play host to the group of 25 talented singers from Dresden, and provide accommodation with lots of sightseeing opportunities, culminating in two concerts in the Banchory area.

On Monday 3 October at 7:30pm the two groups will make music together in Peterculter Church. Both groups are particularly excited not only about the chance to hear each other, but also the chance to perform together as one and demonstrate to audiences what is so near to all singers’ hearts in the lyrics of “Why we sing” with its echoes of “Harmonise the World”.

On Tuesday 4 October at 7:30pm, Riki will sing with her group Conference-of-Swing at the Woodend Barn Banchory. 4 Quartets from the Aberdeen Chorus, Vocal Zone, Shindig, Chimaera and Singularity are also excited about sharing the stage then and this promises to be an entertaining and very harmonious event.

Tickets £8(£6) for the Peterculter Event from Peterculter Church, Riah Hair Design, Bridge St. Banchory, Kathy Davis 01330 823967, and at the door.

Tickets £10 (£8) (£5) for the Wooded Barn Event from The Woodend Barn Box Office 01330 825431, from the Website www.woodendbarn.co.uk, and at the door

Jock Kerouac And The Beet Generation On The Road Again

Aberdeenshire, Articles, Creative Writing, Featured, Satire and Humour No Responses »

Jul 152011

Charlie Mingin, the Auchnaclatt Bugle’s ‘Weel-Chilled Chiel’ columnist, guests for Voice this week, giving the bebop lowdown for hep cats and byre tabbies, doffing his hiply-angled Panama in the direction of The Fast Show’s Louis Balfour. Fingerprints on Cattle Cake’s ‘bone believed to be those of George Anderson….

Jock Kerouac and the Beet Generation on the road again after sell out concert in Daviot

Within twenty minutes of going on sale, both tickets for Coos in the Park had been snapped up amid fears that a surge in demand might crash Ticketmaster’s system.

I was one of the lucky ones. The minute the ticket tumbled through my letterbox, a vibe in these old jazzman bones of mine told me that something crazy was about to go down in Daviot.

And was I right, Daddy-O?

The concert in The Byre, the north east’s premier teuchter-jazz club demonstrated that Jock Kerouac and The Beet Generation were right back on top where they belonged. On the night, their fusion of bothy ballads and sixties jazz really razzed my berries.

Yes, there were mistakes. Somewhere approaching the middle eight of the opening number, Lousin Time, and half way through his third reefer of the night, Jock realised that the double bass he thought he’d been playing for the last half hour was actually still in the tipper truck that ca’d neeps during the day and transported the band to gigs in the evening. Undaunted, he rattled off the piece’s twenty minute double bass solo on his galuses. Beat that for improvisation.

I’ve been a fan of The Beet Generation since I first saw them perform at Gamrie’s Clockin Hen nightclub in 1987. Granted, nobody asked them to play but they managed to knock off their own rewrite of a Billy Joel classic, In the Midden of the Night before the bouncers got Jock in a headlock, huckled him head first out through the fire exit and into the car park where they pinned him down until the police arrived.

The band’s line up hasn’t changed since the Gamrie gig:

Jock Kerouac on double bass
Ronnie ‘The Rooser’ Roberts on Stylophone
‘Cattle Cake’ Collins on slide trombone
‘Sheep Dip’ Danny Dawkins on trumpet, electric bongos and steam harpsichord.

The first set was an intoxicating blend of old and new material, kicking off with three of my favourites: Lousin Time; Let’s Get Yokit! and Fa Cut Yer Hair an Cried Ye Baldy?

The lads ended the set with the title track from their latest album, We’re Aa Up the Wrang Dreel Noo.

Haste ye back, Jock, we can hardly wait for your next concert.

At the risk of rekindling the trad-bebop wars of the early sixties, Sid Rawlins, music critic of the Crovie Chronicle has given Voice an alternative view.

Bad Tunes A Go-Go as Kerouac’s Beet Generation Bomb at the Byre

Hepcat Harrison and the Kittlins were treated for shock at Turriff hospital last night following the murder of their teuchter-jazz classic, Let’s Get Yoakit! at the hands of jazz fraudsters Jock Kerouac and the woefully unmusical Beet Generation who somehow managed to make this classic track sound like a badly-tuned piano falling down a spiral staircase.

The scene of the crime: The Byre Club, Daviot.
Time of death, 7:30 pm Formartine time (GMT minus seventy years).

Bad jazz stands out like a toonser wearing nicky tams. And make no bones about it, this was jazz at its worst. The evening was not helped by the fact that Cattle-Cake Collins stopped mid-honk during Lousin Time to spray WD40 on his trombone slide.

I sort of liked the Beet Generation’s new project, We’re Aa Up the Wrang Dreel Noo. Yet overall, a lacklustre performance by over-rated musicians.

As Ray Charles would have said had he hailed from Kemnay, ‘Hit the road Jock, and dinna come back ony mair.’

Image credits:
Trombone © Chris Johnson Dreamstime.com,
Double Bass Scroll © William Davis | Dreamstime.com

Hypnagocic, Shoebox Memories – CD Reviews

Articles, Community, Information, Opinion No Responses »

Jun 102011

From time to time, CDs released by artists from the local area well worth a listen. Our David Innes contributes regularly to R2, a publication we like and recommend. The editor, Sean McGhee, all-round good guy and punctuation expert, has kindly agreed to allow Voice to reprint two reviews of local interest from the latest R2, dated May/June 2011. More on R2 here
http://www.rock-n-reel.co.uk

First up, The Moonzie Allstars, from somewhere near Brechin, it seems, with ‘Hypnagocic’ (SKELPAIG MUSIC) www.moonzieallstars.com.
Moonzies’ pipes and whistles man David Adam claims Hypnagogic is, “a bit schizophrenic, but there might be something for everyone”, and he’s right.

The opening ‘Hypophant’ is structurally and tonally African, but the pipes add a Celtic element to both feel and melody.

Hotfoot behind is ‘Hey Mr Bongo’, the Moonzies again raiding the dark continent’s melodic and rhythmic jauntiness, but with its Caledonian tongue firmly in cheek as deadpan raffle announcements and appallingly obvious rhymes show what happens, as Adam says, “when you let the drummer loose with guitar and mic”.

Hypnagogic has gone some way to curing me of my fusion aversion. Despite my addiction to genre-defying southern soul stews, country-gospel or other labels applied to those delicious Tennessee grooves, less natural, ‘manufactured fusions’ have always left me suspicious. I’m sure Bitches Brew is to blame because it isn’t Kind of Blue.

The musicianship is outstanding and the production flawless. Overt Eastern and jazz influences bubble up and vie for space with potential movie scores; there are delights galore in the more traditional Celtic vein. If that’s a Frank Zappa t-shirt being proudly worn by an Allstar on the sleeve, he’d have approved, I’m certain.

From the Hebrides, but becoming well-known around the city, ‘Shoebox Memories’ (SELF-RELEASED) www.arkpr.com is Fiona Mackenzie’s impressive debut effort…

On paper sometimes, there are collaborations that one would expect not to work too well. That was my initial thought about Shoebox Memories when I read its background press release.

In NE Scotland, guitarist Graeme ‘Bug’ Stephen is a revered jazz guitarist. Fiona ‘Bosie’ Mackenzie is not yet as well-known, but given her Hebridean background, it is easy, not to mention lazy, to categorise her immediately as a Celtic artist. Not so, and for making that assumption, I apologise.

Shoebox Memories works, and it works because Mackenzie has taken a range of influences to craft songs which are pleasingly unclassifiable and sung in her own way, with fleeting nods to Eddi Reader and Suzanne Vega.

It works also because, as Fiona notes on the sleeve, the musicians have “breathed life into my wee songs”, none more so than Stephen who gives a masterclass in understated chromatic accompaniment and subtle soloing, never better illustrated than in the guitar/strings interplay on ‘In Your Hands’ and ‘Dress Me Up In Blue’.

Offering thirteen tracks, Shoebox Memories may be on the long side, but credited to Bosie (a hug in the local patois), it is akin to being enclosed in a warm, comforting melodic cuddle.

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