A jazz breakfast

Now, this is seriously serendipitous...

A couple of days ago I write about the great Chris Spedding – and seeing him play with Roy Harper in 1975, touring the classic HQ album – then, lo and behold, who turns up at a gig billed as 'Herbie Flowers' Jazz Breakfast' at Brighton's Corn Exchange?

Always nice to shake hands with a hero, which his fine playing had made him for me, not only from his work with Roy, but also his time with jazz-rock ensemble Nucleus and a series of excellent sessions for the likes of John Cale. And I also learned today that he'd managed to fit into his career being a (sometimes costumed) member of The Wombles  and producing some early demos for the Sex Pistols, before they were signed to EMI. I know you're wondering and can tell you that he was Wellington, the Womble with the Flying V. The words 'Renaissance' and 'man' spring to mind...

There can't have been many sessions in London in the sixties and seventies that didn't feature either Chris or Herbie Flowers or both. The gig today was not unduly constrained by the word 'jazz' in the title and featured runs through a numbe rof the classic songs they played on - from 'Space Oddity' through 'Ride A White Swan' to 'Walk On The Wild Side' and Harry Nilsson's 'Coconut'.

All very interesting and enteratining stuff, though I was left reflecting on the difference between these self-evidently talented, warm, co-operative musicians and the often bonkers and otherwise unpleasant egotists of front men who - whatever their various musical limitations - had taken those songs by the scruff of their necks and turned them into the classics whose echoes we still want to hear.