The Mitch Mitchell Experience

The 1967 album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced?, featured a virtuoso musician who changed the way we played rock music. His name was Mitch Mitchell. Yes, Jimi was pretty hot. But he never burned as brightly as he did when Mitch Mitchell was by his side, and in particular on that genuinely iconoclastic recording.

Whatever Hendrix could do on the guitar, Mitchell could match on the drums. And like Ginger Baker, Mitchell brought the skills, the attack and the bravado of jazz music to the rock arena.

Mitchell, the longest-surving member of the Experience, died at the end of a Hendrix tribute tour of America. And why mention him now? Because increasingly I feel his ghost present whenever we go out to play.

Unexpected Delights

A church? Yes, but not just any old church. This is St Mary's Church, in the village of Steeple Ashton, Wiltshire. What a little English village is doing with an enormous piece of perpendicular gothic architecture in its midst I am still trying to find out.

It was near here, a few weeks ago, that I met a senior police officer who had agreed to help me with the finishing touches to my novel, Like A Flower.

Researching and writing a novel leads to so many unexpected delights. Not only did the meeting open my eyes to a whole other world (and several possibilities for future stories), but I got to visit this amazing building...

Everything's Gonna Be

A dear friend who is a poet and very wise person passed on the quotation: "Everything will be all right in the end. If it's not all right, then it's not the end."

And another dear friend who is a musician and very wise person pointed out that there are lots of songs telling you that "Everything gonna be all right" when a much better lyric would be "Everything's gonna be".

Everything certainly is "gonna be" whether we like it or not. And I really want to hear that song sung... if it's going to be...

Re-Writing The Wrongs

Writing can be enjoyable. But does anybody actually enjoy re-writing? A published author who has taken an interest in my novel, Like A Flower (an everyday story of life, death, love and gardening), said he thought the opening chapter was great and original and made him want to read more.

But the bad news was that he thought it needed two new pages at the beginning to set it up properly... and to get it past an agent. I don't enjoy re-writing, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that he was right. And I would be a fool not to take his advice.

So I've sat down and produced the required new intro. I was already tweaking the rest of the book, so now I just want to get through to the end one more time.

The problem is that my desire to have nothing more to do with it is almost as great as my desire to get it published. I think the attraction of publication at the moment is that it would be closure.

Rap Writer's Delight

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a workshop for musicians interested in working with young offenders. And the bonus of working with a beatboxer called Marv-ill.

We were split up into pairs to work on the kind of creative things that we, in turn, might be able to get people in prison to do.

After storyboarding some visuals, we were asked to take one scene and turn it into a song. We had half an hour to get it ready.  Thanks to Garageband and Marv-ill, we created a minor classic called Jack and the Beans. I'd never written the lyrics for a rap before, and Marv-ill wasn't used to collaborating. But our temporary partnership worked well, and I think we both got something out of it, including the laughter that some of the rhymes drew from our audience.

Most impressive of all was the range of rhythmic sounds that Marv-ill could produce from his own body. It somehow made lugging a drum kit in and out of the car, and setting it up and taking it down, seem slightly crazy.

Sweetheart Disagreement

An old video of the old Shark Dentists line-up on YouTube has just passed 1,500 viewings. It was our version of Bob Dylan's wonderful song Sweetheart Like You.

The strange thing is not that a lot of people have watched it, or even that only two of them have bothered to comment. It's the comments themselves. One says: "Nice performance, guys." The other says: "Truly appalling."

Since the constant factor here is the video, it does seem the perfect illustration of the difference being in the person watching — and the baggage that this observer brings to the observation.

In the end, the observer is the observed... And there is no right or wrong...

And what's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?

Turn It Up

In my previous post Quiet Please, I made a plea for turning down the background music in just about every public place. But I have to admit that the best thing about the excellent Middle East restaurant that I visited in Brighton the other night was the soundtrack supplied from the above album by Turkish clarinettist Barbaros Erkose.

Erkose has been around for 70 years or so, and I deeply regret my ignorance of his music up until now. His playing soaks up all kinds of influences and comes out in all sorts of styles. But this particular album has a transcendent cool jazz feel that is the equal of any Miles Davis classics.

After my iDrum experience of a few days ago (see my post iDrum, Therefore...), I'm beginning to think the best way to discover great music is just to walk into Brighton and open your ears...

Sober Reflection

What would musicians do without alcohol? I'm not talking about the booze that many of them consume, but about the fact that without clubs, pubs and the profits they make from selling drink, many bands would have nowhere to play.

This was brought home yesterday when we played an early-evening gig at a pub in Sussex. The Sunday-lunchtime drinkers seemed to have no problem carrying on into the late afternoon. And when we took to the stand at 6pm, they carried on drinking, their ranks now swelled by the start of the night shift. By 9pm the place was completely packed and the bar sales showed no sign of levelling off.

We took our money and headed into the night, all of us stone-cold sober. Alcohol pays my wages. But the booze doesn't get its money straight back that easily...

Thanks To Monk...

I love jazz. There, I've said it. It's taken a long time, but now I know it's the real thing. One of the turning points for me came when I was stuck for five hours at Miami airport on the way back from a writing job in the Canary Islands. The bookshop was filled with books I preferred not to read... but I was drawn to the one pictured above, because I'd recently finished reading Composing Himself, the Jack Bruce biography, and Bruce had mentioned the inspirational qualities of Thelonious Monk.

Robin Kelley's book is one of the best I've ever read. And this brilliant telling of Monk's all-too-human story led me to the man's music, which now never ceases to lift my spirits. I won't attempt to convey the tragedies and triumphs of Monk's personal, musical and mental life... go get the book and listen to the music. I just wanted to express gratitude to Thelonious and his genius. I was late getting there, but thanks to Jack Bruce, Robin Kelley and Miami airport, I made it in the end...

Satisfaction Not Guaranteed

There were some lovely people in the audience last night. And one not so lovely person too. A woman came up to Russ Payne mid-set, informed him that she didn't like the blues music we were playing and asked: "Can you do some Rolling Stones?"

Russ politely explained that we didn't do Rolling Stones numbers. And she then, not quite so politely, told him to "F*** off, then".

Fortunately, everyone else in the place seemed more than happy with the Shark Dentists' set list, and there was much dancing and encoring.

The incident with the Stones fan was hardly Altamont... but it always leaves a nasty taste when someone gets aggressive.

A Long Road

By chance, I heard that unmistakeable piano intro to A Hard Road by John Mayall last night and got the proverbial shivers. Although his previous album, Bluesbreakers, with Eric Clapton is the one everybody talks about, it was this one, with Peter Green replacing Clapton, that really was the manifesto for Mayall's blues.

The idea of a young white singer openly dedicating and committing his life to the blues may have sounded preposterous in 1967, but Mayall did just that and is still touring, aged 78.

And many of us whom Mayall, Clapton and Green inspired are also still playing. Something we never could have forecast. If Mayall can go to the end of the road, maybe we can too.

iDrum, Therefore...

Yesterday in Brighton I had the good fortune to stumble upon a street performance by two young drummers performing under the banner of iDrum. These guys prove that you don't need top-quality gear to produce a great sound.

One played a pretty basic drum kit (plus assorted street furniture) while the other played plastic buckets and bowls. But what a groove!

From what I can gather, iDrum are popping up all over the place (on the street, in clubs), so if you get the chance to see these percussive guerrillas, take it. Anyone who says drum solos (or duets) are boring should have been there yesterday, along with the huge crowd of appreciative passers-by, who couldn't pass by.

No Sleep Till Tooting

For six years, with the help of many people, I've organised a modest little music festival in Tooting, south London. Its original name was SummerFest but it soon became known to regular attenders as Tootstock.

Last year's event was the best ever, thanks to some great musical performances, and thanks to my teenage daughter's friends who provided a new, younger, bigger audience. Despite the success, it had been so stressful to organise that I put a note at the end of my diary for 2011 saying: "Do NOT organise Tootstock 2012... "

But so many people asked when it was going to be and said they wanted to take part that, well, it's more or less set for Saturday June 30, 2012. And I also noticed that just after that diary entry was a PS that I had written to myself. It read: "But if you do, here's a suggested line-up... "

Rage Against The Machine

Has anybody out there tried playing hip-hop drum grooves? I thought they might be easy, but after two nights trying to pin one of them down, I can testify that they really are not.

Today I've seen a website where you can buy all the pre-recorded machine-generated grooves you want, so why bother playing them anyway? One groove-buying producer's testimonial says that his client was so impressed with the results that they thought he'd used a top session musician... Amazing...

So would you like to climb Everest? Or would you like to buy a fake picture of yourself at the top of Everest?

Back to the kit...

Workin' Man Blues

Another day, another gig has come in. A music gig, that is. On the writing front, there isn't much coming in at the moment. After an endless run of commissions since leaving The Sunday Times four weeks ago, I'm on my last writing gig for a while. A big job, it will take me into next week and then... it's wait and see.

There is work to do on re-writing the book, Like A Flower, before it goes to an agent, and work to do on my new website, too. So there's no possibility of being idle.

As with music, you can despair of ever having another booking and then suddenly the diary is so full you don't know how to fit everything in.

They say you should play every gig like it's your last... but at this stage of the game, you never know when it might be just that.

Man Talk

The only man apart from Robert Zimmerman (www.bobdylan.com) to instil such power into the phrase "rolling stone" was McKinley Morganfield, aka Muddy Waters: "I'm a man. I'm a full-grown-man. I'm a man. I'm a natural-born lover's man. I'm a man child. I'm a rolling stone. I'm a man child. I'm a hoochie coochie man..."

No apologies for reproducing the whole of the chorus of Mannish Boy. When Muddy sang this, his whole being seemed to quiver with passion. For a black man in 1950s America to point out that he was not a B - O - Y but an M - A - N was as much a revolutionary political statement as it was a sexual provocation. You don't call me "boy" and you don't kick me around any more... was the sub-text.

I saw Muddy in the 1960s and he was part of my own growing-up process. We weren't going to be kicked around any more, either.

In June this year Russ Payne and the Shark Dentists (www.sharkdentists.co.uk) will play support to Mud Morganfield (www.mudmorganfieldsite.com), eldest M - A - N child of Muddy Waters. The phrase "bringing it all back home" springs to mind...

Good Nights

Just back from a couple of days on the road... beginning to realise that it isn't just playing with the band and trying to be a better musician that matters. Playing (like many other things, no doubt) brings you into contact with so many great people...

Like the mum bringing along her 15-year-old guitar-playing prodigy (ex-Britain's Got Talent) to sit in with us... like the sax player whose conversation is impenetrably obscure and yet whose playing is soulful beyond all words... like the little boy wondering quite seriously why his blues-guitarist dad needs quite so many guitars... like the lone drinker in the audience who says there was one song we played that really "blew him away"...

The Shark Dentists have lots more gigs coming up... and lots more people to meet...

Sharks In The Snow

When you play in a gigging band, the first reaction to the sight of snow is not "Oh, how magical!" but "Are we all going to be able to get to Oxford/Bristol/Cheltenham/Salisbury or wherever?"

With a gig booked in Oxford tonight at the Port Mahon, I was already out first thing yesterday clearing snow from around the Sharkmobile and checking conditions on the hill leading up to the main road.

Today things look okay for making it to the gig. But then the next thought tends to be: "But if it snows tonight, will we get back?"

Travelodge Man

The bass player with Russ Payne and the Shark Dentists (www.sharkdentists.co.uk), Mez, pictured above, is the master of booking Travelodge rooms at the right moment at the right price — an essential skill when the band is playing away from home (which it does with increasing regularity).

In fact, there have been so many discussions about B&B and Travelodge prices at soundchecks recently that I decided to write a new song for the road called, almost inevitably, Travelodge Man. I would really like JJ Cale (www.jjcale.com) to record it, because he would just do it so well. Failing that, I am still hoping that Russ Payne and Mez will agree to giving it a try with the Sharks.

And when it is finally recorded, whether by JJ or the Sharks, my master plan is to sell it to Travelodge (www.travelodge.co.uk) as a soundtrack for its web pages. Altogether now... "Travelodge man, he knows a good deal... "

Pure Webshite

A fellow journalist helping me with some research this week accidentally softened a sybillant and referred me to a "webshite" that might be helpful. Shurely shome mishtake, I thought. But no, "webshite" does seem to be a particularly apt description of a lot of material on the internet.

Travel sites, packed with "unique experiences", "romantic escapes", "paradise islands", "turquoise seas", "bone-white beaches", "the ultimate in pampering", all inevitably "nestled" somewhere, especially come to mind, because I've spent much of the past few years having to go through them. It's all cliched and meaningless webshite.

Of course, I know I run the risk of being accused of adding to the webshite pile. But as I said at the beginning of this blog, at least I'm keeping it brief.

The Last Farewell

I've now lost count of the number of farewell parties in recent weeks for people leaving The Times and The Sunday Times as a result of redundancies, voluntary or enforced. The amazing thing is that these events always seem to have a great atmosphere, with people being upbeat, positive and happy.

Journalists not only seem capable of great optimism, but they also, even now, long after the demise of Fleet Street, still have a tremendous camaraderie that is stronger than any barriers or competition between different newspapers.

In the old days, rival newspaper offices were situated side by side or just a street or two away from each other. Their journalists met and mixed in the local pubs, and created a real feeling of community. Most of that was destroyed by the moves out of Fleet Street to soulless office blocks. Farewell parties have revived that community spirit with colleagues old and new gathering to honour their friends. But what happens after the last farewell party?

A Lot Of Front

Russ, dynamic frontman with Russ Payne and the Shark Dentists (www.sharkdentists.co.uk), pictured above, hit the airwaves yesterday to talk about our latest venture — a monthly blues night at the Port Mahon, Oxford, at which we're inviting local players to come and sit in with the band.

I set up the interview on BBC Radio Oxford, but Russ did the business in the studio. He's a great front man. And, like most drummers, apart from the likes of Buddy Rich, Keith Moon and Ginger Baker, I'm mostly happy to be in the background.

Wasn't it a bit arrogant, asked the BBC interviewer, for Russ to put his own name in front of that of the band? "Yes," said Russ. "But I'm a guitarist."