jazz – Robert Garnham

Rekkuds

This is a poem about a man who’s obsessed with his record collection. Taped live at Exeter’s Taking the Mic, November 2023. I hope you like it.

Rekkuds

Rekkuds

I like my rekkuds
I’ve got one or two
Playing my rekkuds
Is something I do.

They’re mostly jazz,
The rekkuds I play.
Whenever I listen
The world melts away.

I went to the rekkud shop and I said to the chap in there, I said,
I thought you liked jazz?, and he said, I do like jazz,
And I said, if you like jazz so much,
Then how come you ain’t bought any of these rekkuds?

I like my rekkuds.
33 rpm
I go home at night
I’m surrounded by them.

I went to this party and this bloke says to me, got any
Kylie Minogue?
I said, bugger off with your Kylie Minogue.

I like my rekkuds.
They’re mostly jazz.
I play them loud
So I can hear them
When I’m having a wazz.

I went to the hardware shop the other day and I bought a bucket,
Just a plain ordinary bucket, and when I paid for it,
The bloke behind the counter looked at my bucket
And he said, ‘Enjoy’.
How the bloody g hell am I meant to enjoy a bucket?

I like my rekkuds.
Of that I’m quite certain.
I play Frank Sinatra in the shower.
I face the vinyl curtain.

I saw a friend of mine, I asked him what job he had now,
He said, beefeater. He meant the restaurant but I said, oh,
You mean the Tower of Lunnon? Nobody laughed.
Why didn’t you laugh, I asked my mates, you miserable lot.
They said,
We would have done, if we’d have known it was funny.

I like my rekkuds.
I left a Thelonious Monk rekkud in the car.
Someone broke in
And added two more.

I treat my body like it’s a temple.
Shame it’s been
Converted into a Wetherspoons.

I like my rekkuds.
I like this poem.
I’ve made it to the end, for once.
Must be some kind of
Rekkud.

Robert Garnham and Shadow Factory present : In the Glare of the Neon Yak

Jazz rock band Shadow Factory have joined forces with performance poet Robert Garnham to create an unforgettable show which marries music to spoken word. Based on Robert’s Edinburgh show from 2018, In the Glare of the Neon Yak will be debuted at the Barrel House in Totnes on October 12th.

‘I first heard a jazz band in Totnes called Shadow Factory a couple of years ago’, Robert Garnham explains, ‘and I was immediately hooked by their style, their experimentation, their reinterpretation of classic songs and by their wonderful original material. They sound absolutely amazing and they are lovely people.

‘So I was completely blown away when they asked if their could write some original music for my show from last year, In the Glare of the Neon Yak, with a view to a live performance’.

The band has been rehearsing over the last couple of months and creating original music for the show, which they describe as ‘a fantastic journey of poetry and music with a kaleidoscope of colourful characters, reaching a magical destination’.

According to Robert Garnham, ‘In the Glare of the Neon Yak is a riproaring piece of spoken word storytelling set on a sleeper service in the middle of winter. A train full of circus performers are being stalked by a mysterious entity which seems to mean more than just its eerie manifestation. A portent, an omen, the Neon Yak symbolises dark times. Will our hero find love? Will Jacques, the tight rope walker, get back together again with his ex, the circus clown? Does the secret of the Neon Yak lie in the hands of a randy old lady? Has the buffet car run out of sausage rolls? Will Tony the Train Manager find where they’ve put Carriage F? Come along to the Barrel House and find out!’

Tickets are £6 and can be purchased at https://www.totnespulse.co.uk/product/in-the-glare-of-the-neon-yak/

Tickets can also be purchased on the night. Doors open 7pm.

You can find out more about Shadow Factory at http://www.shadowfactory.co.uk/

You can find out more about Robert Garnham at https://robertdgarnham.wordpress.com/

Jason Disley’s new book

Jason Disley’s new book Songs of Benevolence and Rage will be released very soon and I was very chuffed indeed to write the introduction for it.

I first came across Jason Disley over twenty years ago. His book, The New Beat Generation, was full of exciting poetry which spoke to me, as a young man interested in literature and the power of words. I shared his enthusiasm for jazz and the beat poets and I must have read the book about ten times, cover to cover. His was one of the first poetry books I ever read for pleasure.

Fast forward twenty years and for reasons which I’m still not quite sure about, I’d become a comedy spoken word artist and my work was invariably described as ‘poetry’. One day I received an email from someone, asking if they could perform at a night that I was organising at an art gallery, and I thought, hmmm, that name sound familiar. Jason Disley. Jason. Disley. And then it struck me, Jason Disley! The Jason Disley!

Meeting him was an absolute joy, and the years slipped away hearing him perform. Here he was, jazz poet, beat poet, doyen of the new Beat Generation. Did that mean that I, too, was now a part of the new beat generation? Was he Kerouac, was I Burroughs? I felt cool just replying to his email. Hey you kool kat, I wrote. And then I deleted it and wrote, Hello Jason Disley.

I’ve got to know Jason over the last couple of years and I was completely blown away when he asked me to write a foreword for his new collection. The poems are exactly as it says on the cover. Jason is a laid back performer, a lover of jazz, but these poems have an anger seething beneath, a social conscience and a deep concern for our world and its people. ‘Oh, pressure!’, he writes, ‘Explosions, anarchy in the ether’, in a poem titled ‘It Rajns When It Pours’. These are poems against tyranny, poems which howl, poems, indeed, of rage.

Jason’s love of jazz is evident in the ‘Poems of Benevolence’ section. ‘Its benevolence’, he writes, ‘Enveloping you in a sphere of hope that is like an overwhelming validation ‘. In this section he states that it is music that heals us me helps us, music that can set us fee, and a belief in the goodness of words and deeds.

This is a fantastic collection of heart and feeling, which leaves the reader genuinely uplifted. Jason finds joy in the world in spite of his rage, and, as he writes, ‘I do not look to the future, nor back in anger, I breathe the now’, which is as good a philosophy as any. It’s great to know that the spirit of the Beat poets, the jazz mystics, the dreamers and the believers, is still going strong in the work of Jason Disley. Luxuriate, dear reader, in this book, and let him take you to ethereal places.