Go on, go on, feed me.....you know you want to......
Many moons ago, The Hat
was cleaning the lights in the Naafi in the Aldershot
army barracks. Ok, ok – I'll say it for you – 'oh, for heaven's
sake, your point is?' Well my point is that for the young,
momentarily fit and impressionable Hat, the Naafi provided not only a
great source of duty free Scissors cigarettes (note for addicts: just
one small coughy step above Gaulloises), but it was also home to what he
thought was probably The Best Juke Box In The History Of The
World Ever... No doubt you can, like The Hat, think of a few
others you have listened to and loved – your long since closed local pub, the famous Ace Cafe on the
North Circular comes to mind and the Bradleys Bar machine just a
guitar throw from the 100 Club – but for The Hat, Aldershot Naafi got
there First.
At the time, Paul
Anka's 'Diana' was everywhere, being hard pressed by The Diamonds
'Lil Darlin'...but if you took a closer look at that hot juke box you
found – (take an astonished deep breath) - Fats Domino, Elvis
Presley, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis, Peggy Lee, Little Richard,
The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly and The Crickets, Lonnie Donegan,
Chuck Berry, King Creole and, especially exciting, stacks of rare
American imports from Chess records, Freddie King, Muddy Waters,
Howlin' Wolf, Ella, amazing Nat King Cole piano solos and seldom
heard Glen Miller swing band numbers. A veritable extraordinary Top
Of The Pops. For a small coin, you could put your favourite amazing
number on repeat for what seemed like ever.....indeed, you could almost hear the machine begging you for metal food..gimme gimme....
There they all were,
mighty talent, shoulder to shoulder crammed inside that wonderful
glittering and whirling Wurlitzer available at the press of a button.
For The Hat and many others, this magic box was the magic key to the
door of a Musical Wonderland. It is no accident that so many of those
names have stood the test of time and are still crowding ipods, ipads
and media players lists.. It is called talent, originality, musicianship,
songwriting. Now imagine this. Lucy Spraggan, Jade Ellis,
Christopher Maloney, Eoghan Quigg...er....give up? They are X factor
finalists. Unfair? So, try again. Here are all of the Winners: Steve
Brookstein, Shayne Ward, Leona Lewis, Leon Jackson, Alexandra Burke,
Joe McElderry, Matt Cardle, Little Mix, James Arthur. Does that help?
It would be difficult to fill a tiny rack in a very small juke box
with any of their songs.
Yes, of course this is
an easy target. Times have changed, along with tastes and our ways of
listening. Remember those stretchy 90 minute tapes you painstakingly
put together for that Special Someone? You can now burn them all onto
a shiny CD. The personal play list now gives you the opportunity to
filter out the rubbish and we can have 3000 of our favourite tracks
piped straight into our ear on demand...but only for us. The Hat can't help feeling a touch of regret
at the disappearance of that shared experience of loading five of
those favourites onto the machine for a small sum and listening to it in a bar with all and sundry - only to have it
replaced by Musak or the breweries' idea of what might be a cheap and
appropriate continuous loop 'pop' tape.
However, The Resistance
is not dead and in our blues world we are not without our underground
(and overground) movements. The continual flourishing of the Blues
Club – these days it seems, every month or so, amoeba-like, a new
one emerges blinking from its basement - always punching above its
weight, giving a home to talent and originality. For example, welcome, just last
month, to The Old No 7, bursting on to the scene in Barnsley. This
is still one of the great joys and mysteries of the blues - each
slightly mad venture, in its own way taking on that special juke box role where
you can gather together and listen to the best stuff without the
corporate brewer sticking in his jaundiced commercial oar.
And then there is the
rise and rise of the Blues Festival - which, to paraphrase Arlo
Guthrie in Alice's Restaurant - now has enough people for Them to
think We Are A Movement. To anyone who has supported live music over
the years, the (comparatively recent) flourishing of the blues
festival in the UK is like the arrival of nirvana. Putting aside, for
a moment, the mad economics of running a festival (a squillion quid
for a headliner? No thanks), the idea of capturing all that talent in
one place over a few days, making it accessible and sharing it with
like minded people; opening up closed eyes and minds to new stuff;
meeting extraordinary people and listening to extraordinary talent;
being able to dip in and out of styles and skills – is not just a
blast for the audience, but it also gives a huge fillip to the
musicians, singers and song-writers. They hear and sense the response
of their audience, often get to meet and mingle and suffer the slings
and arrows as well as the adoration. A good festival may not please
everyone but for most of us it will provide a moment that cannot be
replicated anywhere else. Yes, of course, it helps if the sun shines,
the organisation is competent and the tickets and beer are cheap but
it is the music that decides the moment. Without that roll call of
talent nobody is going to put their metaphorical coin in the slot and
punch the air in a shared experience. It really doesn't matter if it
is a small bar in Sligo or an open house in Orkney.
There are some great
blues festivals across the country, of all shapes and sizes. The fact
that one of the smallest, The Hebden Bridge Blues Festival should win
the British Blues Award for Best UK Blues Festival perfectly
highlights that quirky love relationship blues followers have with
their music. Like a good blues club, it doesn't have to be large and
shiny – try telling Ealing, Ain't Nothin' or Shakedown or The Boom Boom they are
too small – it just has to deliver the music. I bet if the
Wurlitzer made a come-back, we could on those desolate days without some live music, all get together, fill it with
Fabulous Blues, feed it, share it and maybe Start A Movement....
I wonder if those Naafi ceiling lights have fallen down yet?
Pip Pip!
The Man in The Hat