Wednesday 19 December 2018

Horace Panter at 100 Club

Soul Groves with Horace Panter was a fundraiser for Tonic Music that took place at the 100 Club on Wednesday 5th of December. The show was a delight from start to finish. The band played tribute to musical heroes such as George Benson and Ray Charles.  I particularly enjoyed their covers of Lee Dorsey's Ya Ya. Dave Keech was a great master of ceremonies and Eddie Piller was the perfect choice for post show D.J.
Above: Horace Panter on Bass
Above: Dave Keech on Trombone
Above: Jim Hunt on Sax
Above: Nikolaj Torp Larsen on Hammond Organ 
Above: Chris Cobbson on Guitar.
Above: Kenrick Rowe on Drums.
You can see the band perform Green Onions and Tippi Toes on You Tube.

One of the patrons for Tonic Music For Mental Health is Horace's band mate, Terry Hall.
Terry says:
“I'm proud to be a patron of Tonic Music for Mental Health. They're a great organisation that run music and art projects that anyone can get involved in.One of the things I did when I became ill, because I couldn't communicate, was to start painting. My therapist had said it was a good way to express yourself, so I started to paint The Jackson 5, except the first one I drew ended up with six of them on it! Anything that gives you a voice is really good. Art and music are a great outlet and have been such an important part of my recovery.”
For more info about the charity visit:
http://www.tonicmusic.co.uk/about-tonic-music
Photos and Text by Harry Pye December 2018

IT'S BRIIIIIIXMAAAAAAAS! The Brixton Hill All-Stars reviewed by Patrick Nicholson

Charity Christmas album’: a phrase to rouse the most jaundiced lapsed-socialist into raging, at Dickens’ brutal London winter Fortnum-ed into the Season of Goodwill; and carolling Tories, cleansed and ready for the next fully-exploitative 51-and-a-half weeks.

Yet Christmas pop is its own steadfast twinkling pantheon. For some artists, their Christmas song is their immortality: Greg Lake, Shane, Mariah, John &Yoko…you’d have to be impossibly pure in heart to resist their sweet mawk, and if there’s still a pulse of deluded hope in you, here’s something to jolt it, with musical quality to match.

Brixton Hill Studios is a rehearsal space at the heart of the South London rock renaissance led by Goat Girl and Black Midi. Six of the the studio’s regular clients here contribute new December songs, with proceeds going to Brixton Soup Kitchen, which was helping the local poor and homeless long before Jacob Rees-Mogg branded such things ‘uplifting’ .




First in this winter set is the suitably titled ’Ice Cream’ in which crooner Jerskin Frendrix’s sublime hymnal piano opens like Nick Cave singing Judee Sill singing ‘It’s always Christmas-time when I’m with you’, planting a melody in your head that you heard at birth. This then builds and merges before your eyes into Black Midi doing a thrash-King Crimson Prog Second Coming. It’s a great dramatic coup, but at the root is a true contender for a Christmas classic.

Next, Hammersmith’s Alessi’s Ark bring us ‘Winter’s Grace’, an effortlessly pretty poetic tune evoking warmth and safety: ‘nothing’s stopping me from being by your side’. Sounds awful doesn’t it? But it’s lovely. 

Track 3 is Ham Legion continuing the mad-prog with ‘We’d better start dinner’, complete with lead-synth, choir and bells. Sort of Colosseum over 90s indie drumming. Good fun but two helpings is plenty.




Then come Bad Parents with ‘Christmas Present’, very Kevin Ayers via Graham Coxon, with the killer line ‘it’s just another day in December to stay in bed watching YouTube’. Whoever can sing ‘I bought a Christmas present for you’ and make it sound new has something going on. A grower.

Two great titles close the cd: ‘Christmas Crime’ is a pun worthy of old punk, like something off the 80s Oi!-comp ‘Bollocks to Christmas’ EP (rubbish, don’t bother), but thankfully it’s Scud FM’s dub tale of desolation and robbery, with a moral weight reminiscent of the Specials. Somehow the circular trumpet summons the burden we all carry at Christmas. ‘Friends and family come over, I’m completely done over’.  It’s genuinely affecting.

Finally we have Hot Sauce Pony - part Beefheart, part Banshees - in a characteristically muscular creeping piece ‘Christmas in Prison’. ‘What do you do when the bars won’t bend?’. HSP have a natural timeless feel, like their songs could go anywhere, and an intimate, involving singer in Caroline Gilchrist.

Overall a great listen, something different at Christmas and definitely allowed in the other 51-and-a-half weeks.
Listen to Bad Parents: here
Buy the album here:
Text by Patrick Nicholson
December 2018