Blogs I follow…..

Just on my way to a journalists’ dinner in Oxford…..I’ve made a few new additions to my list (way down there on the right) of interesting blogs:

1) Sunday Times jazz critic Clive Davis’s blog on the Spectator site. Davis wrotes to me that he is currently in Cape Town (above) for a music press trip – I’m guessing it’s the Cape Town jazz festival coinciding with the Masekela 70th.

(The picture above comes – by the way- from the Cape Town Daily Photo blog. Finding a nice angle to photograph Cape Town from- now there’s an agreeable way to spend part of your life.)

2) Also today a jazz resource of videos, transcriptions, improvisation lessons etc from David Valdez.

3) The next most recent, added on April Fool’s day, is Tommy Pearson’s One More Take blog. He sent in the Spike Milligan video. Interesting angles on the music and film industry.

4) I also added musician/composer Angus Moncrieff’s wonderfully named Cylindrical Bore site. He also draws attention to unknown gigs in London.

5) For the UK jazz scene I find now that I can’t be without Peter Bacon’s superb blog from Birmingham, Chris Parker’s assiduous gig reviewing from the Vortex and CD reviewing, Oliver Weindling’s musings, and Jennifer (Euphbass)’s thoughtful blasts from Glasgow. I also have a link through to Art Mead’s Jazzorg site, and Hamish Birchall’s dogged pursuit of the continuing saga of the 2003 Licensing Act.

6) Brits writing about jazz from farther afield are saxophonist Frederick Bernas in Moscow, and Tessa Souter’s (a Londoner in New York) classily-written stories of life on the road. I recently put Fredrick and Tessa in touch with each other and they met in Moscow. Plus the inimitable Mike Zwerin from Paris 11e.

7) From the US there’s : 100 Greatest Jazz Albums from Ken Watkins , there’s ArtsJournal’s Rifftides by Doug Ramsey, the Jazz Standards site from Oregon which has loads of information,
and Straight No Chaser – Jeffrey Siegel from Massachusets.

8) I also like The Independent’s Jessica Duchen’s assiduous and highly professional bloggery about classical music.

What a lot of comment out there!