ROAD-WORKS

There are tyre tracks all over Billy's work.
The Blues Zero Two CD adds another couple of vehicles to the Jenkins motor pool
and ends saluting a highway hero in the post-gig rider of 'I Want My Tea.'

"Some tea and milko,
Watching Sgt. Bilko...
A cup of green,
Reading about the great Barry Sheene."

This is the man who fused jazz and Scalectrix onstage. He's got oil in his miasma. "Eff John Coltrane, that's art," said BJ on Resonance FM of the Brands Hatch roar. The zen other-bit perhaps, to his appreciation of silence, which is also on that rider. It goes right through BJ's recordings. The rhythm of engines, the percussion of crashing, the melody of motoring, the maelstrom of metal. Not to mention the politics and the social implications. So, a quick butch through the oeuvre reveals a hypothetical compilation double CD of BJ road-works begging to be bootlegged.

The Billy Jenkins Canon of Road Compositions

High Street / Saturday (Sounds Like Bromley)
Parking Meters (Sounds Like Bromley)
Greenwich One-Way System (Greenwich)
Benidorm Motorway Services (Scratches of Spain)
White Van Man (Blues Zero Two)
I'm Staying in the Car (Blues Zero Two)
Motorway at Night I (Motorway at Night)
Motorway at Night II (Motorway at Night)
They Built A Ring Road (Still Sounds Like Bromley)
High Street/Part Pedestianised (Still Sounds Like Bromley)
Girl Getting Knocked Over (Uncommerciality 2)
Commuting (Uncommerciality 3)
The Unknown Car Across Your Drive (Suburbia)
Silence Stalks the Sleeping Streets (Suburbia)   
Driverless Cars (Ghost Music)








ROAD-WORKS

A selection of BJ's road compositions was performed
at the Royal Academy of Music in London (April 2002)

The Fourth Year RAM Jazz Ensemble presented a fitting finale to their academic careers,
as Billy Jenkins directs the seven piece through an hour of some of his rarely heard back catalogue classics.

As the Congestion Charge celebrated its first birthday and Marylebone Road is officially the most car polluted street in London,
Billy selected some of his 'road works' to send the soon-to-graduate students on their way.

    Pieces included:
  • Benidorm Motorway Services (from Scratches of Spain 1987),
  • Motorway at Night (Motorway at Night 1988),
  • Parking Meters (Sounds Like Bromley 1981),
  • Girl Getting Knocked Over (Uncommerciality 2 1988),
  • Commuting (Uncommerciality 3 1991),
  • The Unknown Car Across Your Drive (Suburbia 1999),
  • High Street/Saturday (Sounds Like Bromley 1981)
  • and others.











Photo by Nick Corker

See also

The BJ Canon of Buildings Composition
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