Live Performance Reviews - Hugh Hopper Benefit: 100 Club London, 14 Dec 2008

A lot of music was packed into the period when the 100 Club's doors open at ~7.20pm and throwing out time at ~11.05pm (NOTE: Tottenham Crt Rd tube station had just closed when we got there!). The Bash Quarter kicked off and supplied ~20 min set of fairly main stream Brit jazz, cool but not that special (or that Canterbury). French free jazz trio respectively piano and drums, give an interesting set of counter rhythms. Yumi (recently release with Hugh Hopper on Moonjune Records: Humi), when not selling CDs or DVDs or making a video gave a solo performance, performed on piano and vox humana. The former was most intriging whilst the latter seemed to a few of us of the Yoko Ono school - nice touch at the end of her set was an interpretation of Machine's Box 25/4 (thanks to Brian Hopper for telling me that!) . Delta Saxophone Quartet gave one of the best sets of the night, based for the most part on their Moonjune release Dedicated To You. Although advertised as the headliners for the night on a number of sites, Soft Machine Legacy were substituted by a unique(?) line up of John Etheridge, John Marshall and Roy Babbington, who were impromptually named "Soft Trio" by the night's MC (also Jazzwise editor) Jon Newey. We got one longish number from the trio with some excellent short solos from each of the trio - making this performance special - at the end of the tune there were many calls for an encore, to which John Etheridge told the audience that was the ony number they knew!!! A special light show awashed the trio during their performance, strongly echoing the light shows that once could be seen behind Floyd or Machine in the 60's. A surprise addition was the legendary British beat(?) poet Michael Horwitz - one of the UK's underground's originals. He organised the Royal Albert Hall poetry event in 1966 or '7, which included Allan Ginsberg, and he related he had worked with Robert Wyatt, Hugh Hopper and (possibly) Mike Ratledge, before they called themselves Soft Machine. I guess from the noise from the bar, Horowitz soon outstayed his welcome, although one member of the audience's slow hand clap was not joined by anybody else: hey man these artists are giving their services free!!!!! After some time for setting up, what turned out to be the stars of the evening Phil Miller's In Cahoots, took the stage. This was most certainly worth waiting for. Some excellent (and I might add, good old fashioned) jazz rock fusion was played by this quintet, which In Cahoots' studio albums only hint at. We got 3 or was it two numbers from Miller and co. and the house lights went up just after 11pm - all too soon. ~3 hours of largely classic range of Canterbury music that just shot by. A grand night, when all the musicians floated about the club and talked to anybody (I learnt from Fred Baker bassist of In Cahoots, that Soft Machine Legacy should be in Leicester this week - not seen any publicity locally), and from the attendance Sunday night hopefully plenty of funds are on their way to help Hugh on his mend.