'Scratches' a Top Twenty Re-issue of the Year in Jazzwise...Billy Takes Over BBC R3.....Music
Sn-Apps Emerge.....Vortex Jazz Club Celebrate Billy.......London Jazz
News Features Billy....Humanism, Blues & Bereavement....'Violent
Lewisham' Confuses Billy...One Step
On from the Blues....Austerity
Aural Art.....Jenkins Hanging Round Pub
Toilets.....Billy with Ginger Baker CD
emerges.. ..and much more!
Access the
News Archive by spanking your mouse here.
30 Years of 'Entertainment USA'
Mike Gavin writes:
I suppose if Billy was still able to play, a new name would be added on
the 5th November 2024 to the track list of his 1994 masterwork
documenting ‘the madness of the USA’ - Entertainment USA, " a collection of bilious and affectionate tributes." (The Penguin Guide To Jazz).
As he can't, we'll just have to imagine it, and reflect on the
imponderable circularity of things. In the words of the great Glen Ford,
"Nothing ever changes as far as Westerns are concerned. They are the
same today as they were years ago."
Billy's Squire Stratocaster with whammy tremolo bar, still "weaves an
accurate aural cartoon depicting the person, purpose and being of each
portrait in a weird-monster-paste-up of all things American as seen by
the disinterested but inevitably inspired and curious English person".
Enjoy some three decade old music, still sounding as fresh and relevant as ever, on Billy's Bandcamp.
Understandingly, having time on his hands and thus rummaging aimlessly
about his office, the now involuntary retired self-unemployed musician
has come across a few remaining vinyl albums from the 1980's - Beyond E Major, Uncommerciality, Piano Sketches 1973-1984, Greenwich and Motorway At Night.
Now, the guitarist's wonderful long time involuntary administrator and business guru, Mike Gavin, has made them available for vinyl collectors on Billy's BandCamp page.
And, for those whose ears do not sit comfortably with online audio,
there are also five of Billy's CDs now available to purchase.
Drumming with Billy for over twenty years, including the guitarist and
bandleader's final live music performance with the BBC Big Band in 2010,
it is not easy to acknowledge that drummer Martin France
recently slipped away from his son Luka,
family, friends and the many hundreds of musicians who had the honour of
having him accompany them and the many students that he taught.
Born on the 29th February 1964, being a Leap Year baby, he died aged just 15.....
And Marv, the most honourable, professional and inspiring of musicians, was the first call drummer for the VOG Collective live shows during those two decades.
Tributes and short obituary written by Nick Smart, head of jazz at the Royal Academy of Music can be read on the London Jazz News website.
Oliver Weindling, who collaborated with Billy and Marv for many years, serendipitously expands on these words on billy.com on the Vortex Jazz Club website.
And you can listen to Billy and presenter Beowulf Mayfield talking about the wonder that was Marv on Series 4, Ep.1 of The Billy Jenkins Listening Club.
Your sticks are rested Marv, but your rhythm of life drum rolls on forever.
September 2023 saw the publication of 'Before It Went Rotten', a fascinating book written by Simon Matthews that 'traces the evolution of what was quickly labelled 'pub-rock' from rock
and roll revival acts via late blues bands, country rock, funk, soul and
art school bands to the sound that eventually burst on the scene as
punk rock in 1976'.
Billy and Burlesque were very much part of the pub-rock scene and Mr Matthews has included a chapter in which the guitarist and co-bandleader
Billy expands further on the issues that the arrival of punk created
for the working musician - a topic he vented his thoughts on in a
polemic written towards the end of the last century, which can be read on Billy's Webzine here.
Having spent several evenings engrossed in the book and as good as
inhaling the smell of beer and tobacco reeking from every page, the
guitarist has concluded:
'Absolutely extraordinary... The work of a master. So beautifully
constructed with so many elements and angles woven together seamlessly.'
British Library Release 2001 Billy Audio Autobiography Online
In 2001, the British Library dispatched Andy Simons to interview Billy
for part of their Oral History of Jazz in Britain collection, which they describe as:
'An
informal and anecdotal history of the music, venues and people that
defined jazz in the UK. This collection comprises hundreds of interviews
commissioned by the British Library Sound archive seeking to reveal, in
the words of those who were there, the development of the jazz scene in
the UK. The interviews were conducted between 1984 and 2007 and are
unedited.'
Previously only
accessible for educational purposes, the 2hrs and 40 minute recording of
the guitarist discussing his musical life up to the start of the 21st Century can now be enjoyed......
DECEMBER 2023 UPDATE: Due to the British Library website having been hacked, the link to this interview is currently unavailable online..... return
to top of page
Vinyl Into Digital
Three Billy albums, originally released on vinyl in the 1980's - Piano Sketches 1973-1984, Motorway At Night and Beyond E Major - are now in the digital domain and available on Billy's own Bandcamp page!
In keeping with the guitarist's distrust of digital audio quality, all three have been especially remastered by Andy Le Vien at RMS Studios for digital download direct from virgin vinyl.
With 'online friendly' covers artfully redesigned by Mark Wallis,
these three albums collectively cross reference and aurally inter-weave
with the twenty other albums now available on Billy's Bandcamp page.
Local media legend Peter Cordwell (a very close associate of Mercury Man) has managed to get a few quotes from the silent musician for theSouth London Press.
It's the first public quotes from Mr Jenkins for the first time since the 'pandemonium' started and well worth a look.
The guitar albums were created with a focus on frequency and pitch. Now,
the composer takes to the piano to address changes in the listening
habits multi-use technologies have inflicted on our ever evolving modern world.
It was created as a music for background listening, but it comes towards you, the ear drawing in, becoming mid- field music.
And then, as one starts to appreciate the overtones, ambient noises and
piano mechanics, it ends up as near- field music. Music that will haunt you.
For after several plays, you will start imaging you’re hearing it in the background.
But it’s not playing....
Imbibe Beowulf Mayfield's evocative 90 second promotional video here:
'Ghost Music' is available from his own bandcamp site and by purchasing, you'll be
helping Billy to continue his life's work.
BBC Music Jazz Radio
'Greatest Ever Jazz Albums' Puts Billy At
#36
As part of the 2016 EFG London Jazz
Festival, the BBC and Jazz
FM ran a five day pop up 24 hour
digital radio station.
Four programmes were dedicated to The
50 Greatest Jazz Albums,
as nominated by the jazz community -
including BBC and Jazz FM presenters, jazz
musicians, critics and journalists.
And, in amongst jazz legends like Benny
Goodman, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk,
Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong
and many other 'greats' - up popped Mr
Jenkins and his 1998 release 'True Love
Collection'!
Listed as the 36th Best Ever
Jazz Album!!!
A fitting tribute to all the brilliant
musicians that contributed to the 'True
Love Collection'.
An excellent overview on Billy's recorded
work is now online at allaboutjazz.com.
Comprehensively penned by that most astute
writer Roger Farbey, the 1,500 word
article pretty much covers the guitarist's
recorded output over the last thirty six
years.
Spank that link now to enjoy Mr Farbey's
excellent writing.
With 2016 being Billy's 60th year, we at
billy.com had some fun sprucing up Ian
Bolton's beautifully built
'digital cavern of curios and
Billy-ness'!
Music
activist, promoter and writer Ian
started the Webzine towards
the end of the last century.
Although it's been pretty much a
locked site for several years,
this impressive labour of love
contains a treasure trove of
Billy-ness - all created to
increase your enjoyment and
understanding of his work over the
last four decades and counting....
Find out just how
many musicians Billy has been
compared to....
Just what did
the guitarist do to get chased out
of Bilbao...?
Enjoy thoughtful
and learned essays on Billy's work by
musician Richard Russell...
Pick apart epic
verbatim interviews by respected
anthropologist Matthew Engelke and
painter Maxwell Jay and others...
Read public Vox
Pop response to some of Billy's artistic
rants.....
And much, much
more!
An 'old school' web page layout and
deliberately designed as a 'get lost in'
site, there is now a page looking
at the sixteen years of Big Fights!
A
new recently released download album
highlights the marginalisation of
musicians in this technological age.
The
nuances composers and tunesmiths bring to
their art is rendered impotent by digital
sound which is more often these days
relayed through narrow audio range
earphones.
‘To
truly appreciate the power of music’, says
57 year old guitarist and composer Billy
Jenkins, ‘it has to be a whole body
experience. It needs air to breathe.
Headphones offer no more than reference –
much like a post card of an oil painting.’
Jenkins,
over the last thirty years, has written
his critically acclaimed gloriously
idiosyncratic jazz and blues tinged music
especially for the sound carrying medium.
Certain things recorded
music lovers may not know:
Vinyl
- did you know that there is less bass
frequency as the groove nears the centre
of the disc? On his 1988 vinyl album
‘Motorway At Night’ he actually
incorporated ‘surface noise at motorway
exit’, by widening the groove during the
disc mastering).
Cassette
- was the consumer ever aware that no
tape machine ran at exactly the same
speed? Jenkins underlined his introduction
to the 1993 première at the National Sound
Archives of his ‘Actual Reality - Music
For Two Cassette Machines’ by stating that
‘no playback is ever the same’ – he had
composed it building in a plus or minus
10% speed and pitch variation).
CD
– the wider than vinyl frequency range
has meant that two many albums mastered
for CD have been mastered at such a
volume, the compression necessary to iron
out highs and lows reduces the emotional
resonance. Mr Jenkins’ many CD releases
have minimal compression.
Digital
sound – it has been said that
‘analogue recording approximates
perfection. Whereas digital recording
perfects approximation’.
Digital
processing - arbitrarily ‘takes’
what it wants of the sound source. Music
made wholly by machines works well in the
digital domain. But when it comes to music
where every single note comes from the
heart, hand and ear of the player – chip
technology just doesn’t ‘get it’.
So,
as social and economic lifestyles evolve
at high speed, how does the musician
reinstate their art?
For
Jenkins, it means bringing out an
unreleased album he recorded nearly twenty
years ago.
These
days, after a lifetime on and off the road
and in and out of the recording studio,
leaving him with an intense dislike of
travel and a sensitivity to noise, he now
scratches a living creating and conducting
humanist funerals (‘nothing’s changed
really’, the guitarist notes dryly, ‘I
stand up in front of folks and they all
start crying..’).
Uneasy
with the sound of digital download,
Jenkins feels that the album ‘The
Semi-Detached Suburban Home –
Music For Low Strung Guitar’ (VOTP
Records) is actually one that works on
tinny headphones.
Captured
in close microphone by long time Jenkins
producer and engineer Tony Messenger,
listening to it, one becomes the musician
– every nuance can be heard - wire, wood,
skin, nail and breath – all thrown into
silence to create invisible audio images
of everyday household objects and events.
‘We, the music creators, need
to make folks understand, ‘states
Jenkins, ‘that trendy coloured
headphones are just fashion
accessories.
And
by using them, especially when out in
public, you are not only tempering the
wonder of the world around you, but also
consigning the wonder of music and
musicians to history.
And
just like Neil Young and many other
musicians have stated, I too agree that
Apple, who led the digital revolution
with their iPod, stand guilty of helping
to destroy the spirituality of
music.
And
with it, musicians’ livelihoods and
purpose’.
We
have no shame in continuing to flag up an
article about Mr Jenkins and his work
which appeared in the prestigious Financial
Times in November 2010.
Written
with depth, great sensitivity and
understanding by fellow musician and
writer Mike Hobart, it is very
flattering that Billy was chosen as one of
only two artists to be previewed for the London
Jazz Festival - the other musician
was jazz legend Herbie Hancock.
It
is delightfully ironic that a man for whom
commerce, marketing and business remain
'black arts' should be worthy of such
microscopic attention by one of the
world's leading financial newspapers.....
Mr
Jenkins is currently in the habit of
apologising to to interested live
promoters saying that he is 'unable to
accept your kind offer as I am fully
focused on a distant journey to Planet
Recording, Planet Marketing and Planet
Conducting Humanist Funerals...'
Browny
teased lots of little 'out of this world'
thoughts from Mr J. in his secret garden
and there are four short clips posted on
YouTube.:
1.
Browny Meets Billy Jenkins
2.
When Did You Leave Heaven?
3.
On White Van Man
4.
On Composing
Two
tools...
Planetbrowny
is 'one man’s quest for the ultimate
waste of time…because wasting time is
not the same thing as time
wasted'.
The site
is dedicated to "how we all waste time
or what we do when we’re not
‘working’." Created by a group of
like minded middle-aged men, Planetbrowny
aims to be a place where they can have
everything they want under one roof.
They like
music, sport, fast cars, bikes and
technology. They also like poker, great
days out, flying and much more. And the
music of Billy Jenkins......
Mr
Jenkins can be heard partaking in 'lively
and diverse conversation on the
flagship BBC R4 'Midweek'
radio programmewith Libby
Purves and other guests writer and
naturalist Sir John Lister Kaye,
fashion designer Caroline Charles
and former Masterchef winner Thomasina
Miers.
The
live discussion, with Billy talking about
his music and conducting Humanist funerals
took place on Wednesday 24th February2010 and can still be listened to
and enjoyed by spanking this 'Midweek'
link!
