(Come tomorrow) May I be bolder than today? from ‘Shapes of Things’
The Yardbirds
At your Beck and call
A Kentish deeply carousable good noise this week. Get this via Lee Grimshaw, Dave and the posse’s Spinout Nuggets. No fear of hangxiety whatsoever in the aftermath crucially given the organic skill at play and lack of pretentiousness and the lupine groove above all that rebottles the thrill of early JTQ from James Taylor himself and some of his Medway homies.
Step forward artist Billy Childish (real name Steven John Hamper) he of the Stuckist movement no less on guitar here.
But the main interest for readers of marlbank is James Taylor, Medway jazz icon and UK acid jazz Hammond B3 organ legend playing some storming and quite loud by hush laden jazz volume settings anyway featured lines here.
Last we whipped out his work was Taylor’s marvellous Man in the Hot Seat featuring Gareth Lockrane in some choice bits.
This has its merits too on a far grittier level.
It includes Childish tunes and a well aimed instrumental cover of The Yardbirds 1966 hit ‘Shapes of Things’ and the Graham Gouldman belter from the year before, ‘For Your Love.’
The album artwork is modelled on a classic Thelonious Monk Genius of Modern Music cover but that’s where the comparison screeches to a halt.
Instead this is for the mods among us. The Hampers owe their roots to Childish and Taylor’s days in 1980s band The Prisoners. Later Childish opened for JTQ in his blues band The Natural Born Lovers. Childish’s wife Julie Hamper makes a half decent noise on bass. And there’s even original JTQ drummer Wolf Howard (who was later in Childish band The Stuckists) also in the line-up. The anon trumpet I’m a bit meh about.
Deep down and dirty it’s more of a stoned soul jazz picnic of an affair but it’s got a lot of non-bullshit vérité about it, pardon my French, like the sort of proper Brit pub band that should but doesn’t exist any more.
Check them in session above on the BBC.
