Wobble

I saw Jah Wobble at The Cinnmaon Club in Altrincham yesterday evening- a night of improvisational jazz, and dub with Jah Wobble and friends. The Cinnamon Club hosts a regular jazz club, a small room in a Rotary club building, holding about 100 people with cabaret style seating. Very civilised- the most civilised gig I’ve ever attended. Jah played with a drummer and jazz keyboardist (‘Get a good keyboard player’ Jah told us, ‘saves a lot of time’). They opened up with some skittering jazz and- surprise, surprise- loud bass, Jah shouting instructions and changes out to the band. From there they played an extended version of the theme from Get Carter and then some earthshaking Augustus Pablo dub. A Bagging Area treat came with the drummer playing didgeridoo while also hitting his kit and Jah tripping out with some droney, trance stuff, not a million miles away from his early 90s records. Later on he got Cara, a young girl who played some songs on acoustic guitar as support act, to come back up and the band fleshed out her last song (Here), followed by a young clarinetist brought in from a local music shop. Two young kids who will have woken up on Sunday morning thinking ‘OMG I played with Jah Wobble last night’. Finally Jah summoned Bonehead from Oasis and Dermo from Northside (WTF!!! etc) to romp through Public Image.

The whole thing was organised by South City Music and Beatnik Shop (both based in Altrincham)- and what a good job they did. Let’s have more of this type of thing in Altrincham please. I’ll happily bring some records down to play.

Tales From Outer Space

Beatnik Time

Altrincham used to have a couple of record shops but in recent years has had none. Last Saturday, Record Shop Day, a new record shop opened- Beatnik Shop. I popped down yesterday with the wife and kids in tow. It’s a cracking little shop, opposite the covered market and next door to the Belgian Bar (which could be handy). In their first week they’ve been in The Guardian and been visited by Mike Joyce. Not only does Beatnik Shop sell records (mainly second hand, a few RSD ones hanging around- mostly Aerosmith, unsold for some reason) but it also does coffee, tea and cakes, which bought me ten minutes rummaging time. There’s a good amount of 80s indie and punk, 60s and 70s psych, folk and weirdness, pots of funk and soul, some wooden boxes with cds in and several boxes of 7″ singles (Northern soul, indie etc). The range and quality shows it’s stocked by people who know their stuff. They’re promising in-shop performances and this Friday an evening in conversation with music journalist and writer Paul du Noyer. All in all a welcome addition to Altrincham, a town which has been on it’s arse for a couple of years to be honest. I hope they manage to make it work. I will be back regularly I suspect. After a while I found a vinyl copy of John Betjeman’s Banana Blush lp and scraped together the three quid required. The last song on it is this…

A Child Ill