Testify at Hip Joint

On Friday 02/12/11 I will once again be joining El Nino on the decks this time at Joe's 78 -79 Chalk Farm Road, London, NW1 8AR , it's free before 11 and only £2.00 after.

I will be in a rootsy-soulie-bluesy-woozy kinda mood.

You dig?

Testify at Cat Beat

24th of November see's Testify join the Grand Poobah of London's Retro scene, El Nino, to spin the best vintage rockin' sounds around.

It takes place at Slim Jim's Liquor Store

112 Upper Street, London N1

The fun starts at 10.00pm...

Bande A Part at the V:Room: Rompin', Stompin' Rock 'n' Roll

Well, we enjoyed it so much last time we are doing it all again.
Testify and Cousin Benson get the joint jumpin' with the finest Rockin' Blues, Rock 'n' Roll, Rockabilly and Vintage R&B.
All on vinyl, all on 45,all good! The hottest night of the year! You won't wanna miss this!
Be sure to bring your dancing shoes, last time the sweat was runnin' down the walls and feet were a- slappin' on floor!
FREE ENTRY!
at The Strongroom 120-124 Curtain Rd EC2A 3SQ, London, United Kingdom

(as seen in Time Out : http://www.timeout.com/london/clubs/event/244082/rompin-stompin-rock-n-roll )

Testify Returns To The Buzzsaw Joint

Buzzsaw Joint will be back for their regular slot at The Haggerston.

Join regular Buzzsaw DJ Fritz & guest Testify for a high octane night of

50s Rock 'n' Roll, Tittyshakers, Rhythm & Blues, Surf & 60s beats.

20 October at 20:00 - 21 October at 01:00

The Haggerston

438 Kingsland Road

London

Free entry

Expect a load of this and more.

://www.mixcloud.com/Buzzsawjoint/buzzsaw-joint-vol-2/ (mix by DJ Fritz)

Born Bad at Bethnal Green Working Men's Club

Testify will be spinning the platters that matter Saturday 24/09/11...

BORN BAD 'UNOFFICIAL' LONDON INTERNATIONAL TATTOO CONVENTION AFTERPARTY! @ BETHNAL GREEN WORKING MENS CLUB! SAT 24TH SEPT, 9--LATE! DIRT-CHEAP THRILLS AND, DIRT-CHEAP ENTRY FOR CONVENTION TICKET/WRISTBAND-HOLDERS....

Hell yeah, folks.... Brighton's Legendary Rockabilly-Garage-Blooze-Trash night, Born Bad again host the totally UN-Official London Tattoo Convention Afterparty, at the equally legandary Bethnal Green Working Mens Club, just a stones-throw from the Convention itself! In addition to the usual booze-sodden rocknroll debauchery, hip-grinding rockabilly-garage-punk'n'trash vinyl, and live-mondo-exploito-visuals, playing live will be:

The Ladykillers! - Red-hot Roackabilly-Garage from Essex!

Bad Bad Whiskey! Dirty Skiffle-Billy-Blues from Brighton!

Plus Born Bad DJ's and guests spinning 50s RNR, Rockabilly, RNB, 6Ts Gals n Garage, Punk Trash, Surf, Sleaze and Exotica...

"This legendary club night is renowned for its quality excursions into the seedier, clammier corner of rock'n'roll, and this red hot martian bop, threatens to be up there with the wildest...." -- Guardian Guide.

Bande A Part at the V:Room: Rompin', Stompin' Rock 'n' Roll

Testify and Cousin Benson get the joint jumpin' with the finest Rockin' Blues, Rock 'n' Roll, Rockabilly and Vintage R&B.
All on vinyl, all on 45,all good! The hottest night of the year! You won't wanna miss this!
Be sure to bring your dancing shoes, last time the sweat was runnin' down the walls and feet were a- slappin' on floor!
FREE ENTRY!

at The Strongroom 120-124 Curtain Rd EC2A 3SQ, London, United Kingdom

Vintage 2011

Imagine a time before the internet. Before Social Networking sites. Before contemporary music, and access to it, was so darn easy.

Imagine it is 1978.

Imagine two men, armed only with a guitar and a kazoo, going into a recording studio and recording a three track EP.

Imagine this wilfully amateurish endeavour being issued as a record and imagine that that record remains one of the great visceral glories of its age.

Thankfully we needn't just imagine.

6000 Crazy by Spizzoil, a two man group made up of Pete Petrol on guitar and Spizz on vocals, was issued in 1978 by Rough Trade records.

Rough Trade was an independent record label which grew out of a West London record shop, inspired by the D.I.Y ethic embodied in The Buzzcocks Spiral Scratch EP from the previous year. 6000 Crazy was their sixth release.

Spizz would undergo several name changes and the line up would expand and contract throughout the years but when the first weekly Independent (indie) Charts were published in January 1980 Spizz sat atop the singles chart with his glorious anthem Where's Captain Kirk?

Spizz were only one of multitude of bands that tested the very boundaries of what music could be in a glorious rush to be heard in the wake of Punk rock.

In much the same way, twenty years earlier men and women had driven from their farms to store front recording studios in through out the US having heard themselves in the noise of Elvis Presley and anxious to continue the dialogue .

Like Spizzoil, many of these hillbilly cats had little more than a couple of instruments and a need to be heard.

Also like Spizz, who's lyrics drew on science fiction imagery from 2000AD comic and Star Trek, many of those early rockers were also inspired by sci fi. Spaceships and aliens abounded from Billy Lee Rileys Flying Saucer Rock 'n' Roll to Gene Vincent's Spaceship to Mars.

But it wasn't just aliens that rocked in the immediate wake of the Memphis Flash, if the huge outpouring of records that followed are to be believed everyone and everything began to rock, from Grandad (Grandaddy's Rockin' Mac Curtis) to Grandma (You Oughta See Grandma Rock Skeets McDonald) to animals (Jungle Rock Hank Mizell) to inanimate objects (Uranium Rock Warren Smith), nothing was safe.

Of course with so many records being made and with so many of them being issued on tiny local labels it is not surprising that some would lay unheard for so long, what is, perhaps, most surprising is the sheer quality of some rockabilly gems that didn't see the light of day until some thirty years later when European collectors unearthed them.

The 1976 UK chart success of Hank Mizell's Jungle Rock inspired enthusiasts to explore what else may lay in the vaults. It's strange now to think that such rockin' classics as Put Your Cat Clothes On were not even deemed worthy of a release in rockabilly's short lived fifties heyday.

The Rockabilly Scene that grew up in Europe in general and in the UK in particular around these unearthed gems came to fetishise not just rockabilly's crazy beat but also second hand cars and clothing.

It was called the Rockabilly Revival but in fact it was more of a re-imagining.

Today's rockin' enthusiasts would have looked bizarre to citizens of the 1950's, with girls sporting tattoo's and boys bleaching their hair. The look of the new rockabilly owed more to a British imagination fired by B- Movie bad guys and burlesque than it ever did to mainstream fifties America.

Still that sound, that urgent wish to communicate that can't be denied, that can do spirit that is shared by Spizz and by those early rockers is what pulls me toward Let It Rock at Vintage 2011.

Then, of course, there is the Soul Revue featuring Percy Sledge and Booker T .

Denied an official voice Black American's had for a long time found a voice in the entertainment industry. This voice was recorded by small label's, operated by white guys who saw a market, or perhaps heard the art, before they saw the skin colour.

Phil Chess in Chigaco, Syd Nathan in Cincinnatti and in Memphis Sam Phillips, who would bring Elvis to the world, would all record what was then called race music.It was another white guy, Jerry Wexler, that would rechristen it Rhythm and Blues.

It was the same Wexler, who as A&R for Atlantic Records, would help bring twenty five year old hospital orderly Percy Sledge' s first great hit When A Man Loves A Woman to the world.

Peter Guralnick, that great chronicler of American Roots music wrote of it:

"Here was a song uncompromised, I thought at the time (many thought at the time), by concessions to the marketplace, unbleached and unblemished by the endearing palliatives which Motown always brought to bear, an expression of romantic generosity and black solidarity(I thought again). I didn't even like the song all that much,but I took it as a harbinger of a new day, when a mass audience could respond to black popular culture on it's own terms." (from Sweet Soul Music)

Legend has it that, blown away by this records success and the rigours of touring that followed it, Sledge, suffering from nervous exhaustion, booked himself into Colbert County Hospital, the same hospital he had worked in as an orderly before the record that had made him a star.

Sledge would never repeat the commercial success of When A Man Loves A Woman but that doesn't mean he didn't still cut some of the finest soul sides you could ever wish to hear. I for one would love to hear him doing Something Wonderful or his 1974 release I'll Be Your Everything when he plays the South Bank on Saturday night.

One Sunday in 1962 the aforementioned rockabilly singer Billy Lee Riley was meant to be at Stax's Memphis studios to cut a jingle and Booker T &the various musicians who were beginning to coalesce as the house band of that great soul label were sitting round waiting for him. he never showed.

'We just started jamming,' recalled Booker T (the other head liner at The Soul Revue on Saturday at Vintage) 'It was an idea Steve an I had worked on, and we just cut it.'

You and I know this jam session as Green Onions.

Green Onions was a number three hit in the US in 1962.

It didn't hit the UK charts until December 1979.

The release of the film Quadrophenia and it's soundtrack, which featured Green Onions, that year saw a huge explosion of interest amongst post punk punters for all things Mod. DJ's at The Wigan Casino saw more and more punters arriving on scooters and sporting mod styles. So Casino Classics, the record label wing of that legendary Northern Soul night spot, attempted to licence Green Onions from Atlantic for reissue. Atlantic refused but assured the Casino Classics crew that they would not be reissuing it themselves. Using a session band called The Nicky North Band Casino Classics released a version in December which they dubbed Mod 79. It reached the lower parts of the UK charts. Then Atlantic did to reissue the original which hit number 7 in January 1980 and remained in the charts for 12 weeks, killing the Wigan boys effort stone dead.

Much has been made of Vintage being a different sort of Festival, as much a celebration of design and fashion as it is anything else but that shouldn't blind us to the fact that Vintage also affords one the opportunity to see and hear some of the great musical artists who have helped shape the world we live in now.

The Filth and the Furry 2

Some may recall I posted a picture of The Sex Pistols as knitted by my wife...turns out a neighbour of Paul Cook's saw them...one thing led to another and here is Paul Cook with the knitted Sex Pistols!

Saturday 4th June 2011

	The Victoria 110 grove road Mile End E35TH June 4th from 8 til late
	Once more we open our doors for free for some more very special live entertainment with Testify providing some rockabilly and RnB Florence Joelle's Kiss of Fire sound like... Blues merged with gypsy jazz exotica and sprinkled with a hint of rockabilly.... Members Florence Joelle: Vocals, rhythm guitar, harmonica Chris Campion: Bass Arthur Lager: Drums Huck Whitney: Lead guitar Whilst their inspiration draws from the past, they have carved out a sound that lives in the present, bringing their own slant to the likesof Chick Webb’s ‘40s reefer blues ‘When I Get Low I Get High’,and the ‘50s R&B staple ‘Unchain My Heart'. Of Joelle’s own compositions, ‘Stardust Merchant’ echoes early jazz standards and the melodrama of the post-war French songbook, whilst her ‘Watermelon Gin’ is a wistful, calypso-tinged serenade to love lost. onstage around 10pm contact alf@thevictoriae3.com for more info http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=227421773934828

The Filth and the Furry

My wife knitted The Sex Pistols...somebody somewhere is writing a dissertation on Punk, the D.I.Y aesthetic and women; now they have the perfect illustration!

Testify at Diddy Wah

At The Haggerston on Kingsland Road in Dalston (E8 4AA), 9pm to 3am, free entry.

You can expect to hear tunes from the 50s and 60s, including Rhythmic Blues, Strange Soul, Sleazy Surf and Rockin' Roll. The Haggerston now also do very nice and reasonably priced pizzas, I think up until about 10pm. If you're around, do drop in...

Friday the 4th of March, with guest Testify.

You don't want to miss this!

Testify Back at the Troy Bar for Bande A Part: Juke Joint R&B

50s & 60s RnB, ROCK n ROLL, JUMP BLUES & SKA FLOOR FILLERS

DJs: COUSIN BENSON, TESTIFY, KIMIHIRO, MICHAEL JEMMESON (JUKEBOX JAM), GAVIN HOME

TROY BAR, 10 HOXTON ST, N1 6NG

HEAVY SOUND SYSTEM

8pm-2am, Free before 11, £3 after

Nearest Tube: Old Street, take exit 2, walk down Old Street, turn left at Hoxton St, opposite Curtain Road.

JUKE JOINT R&B ALL NIGHT

Facebook here

Myspace here

Testify Returns To Club Intoxica

	14 January at 21:00 - 15 January at 02:00
	The Black Heart 3 Greenland Place, Camden, London NW1 0AP Camden Town, United Kingdom
	FREE ENTERY!!! 9-2AM GUEST SPINNER, ROCK'N'ROLL MOTHERKUTTER MR DUCKTAIL PLUS REGULARS: DJ TESTIFY GAVIN A GO-GO Facebook page here Myspace page here