"...AND MONKEY MUST SCORE."

Like a lumbering centre forward with no goals for a while, I’m suffering from a lack of confidence. Chances are being teed up but instead of smashing them in, I’m bottling it completely or laying off a little sideways pass to a team mate. Just about keeping up with play but the fans are getting twitchy. Let’s think back to those wasted opportunities.

There was the Angelheaded Hipsters morning at the National Theatre where the Beat Generation was discussed by a panel including underground figures Barry Miles and Michael Horovitz; actors read Ginsberg, Kerouac, Cassady and Corso; and even a trumpeter had a sad horn to play. Horovitz was incredible. He could’ve spoke, given half the chance, for 90 minutes without pausing for breath and kept the audience entertained with his staggering array of anecdotes, quotes, cultural references and razor sharp wit and intelligence. He then popped up last week to wax lyrically on Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service show on 6Music (listen on BBC iPlayer).

Also last week I bought, amongst other things, the new LP, Hunger, by Frankie & The Heartstrings and an old LP, Free Jazz, by The Ornette Coleman Double Quartet. The plan was to discuss and contrast the formulaic, backward facing, rattling three minute pop song approach of the Heartstrings to the challenging, groundbreaking, and – let’s be honest - patience testing of one 37 minute piece of jumbled improvised free jazz. It would of course have been like comparing an ear to an eye, and the conclusion being I’d want to keep them both.

A new interpretation of Graham Greene’s 1938 novel Brighton Rock his hit local picturehouses. I must ‘fess up to having not read it but I like the 1947 film version. This new one is set to the backdrop of rioting mods in 1964 and gave me a chuckle spotting mates as extras. Sam Riley as Pinkie, the young upstart attempting to “run” Brighton, was unconvincing (his firm consisted of an elderly Chalky from Quadrophenia and the lanky Wigan Casino dancer from SoulBoy - hardly menacing) and trying to pass Eastbourne off as Brighton was distracting. There was one sequence where Pinkie was sitting in a London café, ran down an Eastbourne street, and then ended up in Brighton, without even breaking into a sweat. Yeah, I know, it’s a film not a documentary. Those things apart it wasn’t the worst way to spend an evening and moved Greene’s book further up the to-read list.

A couple of offshoots from The Horrors should’ve got a mention. Rhys and Joe as part of The Diddlers gave Bo Diddley the full throttle, echo laden, Cramps-rock stomp treatment at the 100 Club, and very entertaining it was too; whilst Faris has turned up to sing at the Vatican (yes, the Vatican) with his new project Cat’s Eyes. The result is as spectacular as it is surprising. See it on YouTube.

Morgan: A Suitable Case For Treatment has been on DVD before but is out again, in shoddy cheap packaging, with no extras, and at a unjustifiably high price. But, it is a smashing film as the words Vanessa Redgrave, David Warner, 1966, Arthur Mullard, Irene Handl, Karl Marx, monkeys, gorillas, King Kong, sanatorium and John Dankworth testify.

So, no goals but hopefully a boost to the assist column.

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ORNETTE COLEMAN and THE MASTER MUSICIANS OF JAJOUKA FEATURING BACHIR ATTAR at the MELTDOWN FESTIVAL

“From the mountains of Morocco, please welcome, the Master Musicians of Jajouka featuring Bachir Attar” goes the introduction to the rarefied splendour of the Royal Festival Hall. “Bet they don’t live there now” says some geezer behind me. He’s probably right of course but it misses the point.

William Burroughs described the Master Musicians as “the primordial sounds of a 4,000 year old rock ‘n’ roll band” and Brian Jones navigated his way to their secluded rural village hidden in the Jibala hills, 50 miles south of Tangier, to record them for Brian Jones Presents The Pipes of Pan at Joujouka. Brion Gysin - creator of cut-ups and inventor of the Dream Machine - introduced their music to both Burroughs and Jones and used the musicians as house band for his restaurant “The 1001 Nights” in the 1950s to enable him to listen to them every night. As hip patronage goes, that’s some trio.

Tonight the musicians are trimmed down to an eight piece unit; four ghaita pipes and four drums of varying sizes. Whether they actually needed the house PA is questionable and they certainly tested the expertise of the sound engineer. Those pipes squealed and wailed at such a volume I thought my ear drum was about to rattle clean out of my head. Hundreds of hands cupped ears in unison. Was as funny to watch as it was painful to listen to.

Fortunately that soon settled down and they got in their groove. Its clear why they sounded so incredible to those first Western discoverers – they still do, although we’re more savvy to “world music” now so there’s less a wow factor. The musicians, historically, have been supported by the farming toil of their fellow villagers and in addition to playing religious festivals their music is said to cure mental illness. The loony locals are tied up and the music banishes the madness. Although this can take “one month, or if someone is more sick he can stay two months, or three” according to Bachir Attar. Attar is the son of El Hadj Abdesalam Attar (see photo, with the different spelling of JouJouka ), who led the Musicians in the Brian Jones period, and who perhaps controversially has now trademarked the name “The Master Musicians of Jajouka featuring Bachir Attar”. It’s extremely hypnotic, trippy stuff (even without the aid of humungous quantities of hashish); repetitive but with subtle multi rhythms. Like ancient shoegazing.

They can play for up to ten hours, which would surely send folk mad not cure them, but tonight it’s a disappointingly short half an hour before they shuffle off to make way for headliner and Meltdown curator Ornette Coleman.

What is it about old jazz dudes? Coleman hunches on, barely inching one foot in front of the other, clambers on to his stool and wheezes something unintelligible into the microphone. Yet stick his white sax in his mouth, or a trumpet, or give him a violin, and it’s akin to pumping him with oxygen and shooting him with speed.

The concert was billed as “Reflections of The Shape of Jazz to Come” so I was expecting a good proportion of the set to be from that groundbreaking album of fifty years ago but Coleman, forever his own man, had different ideas. It was all enjoyable enough in a far out hipster jazz kinda way but as nifty as Coleman is you can’t expect him to be on the top of his game aged nearly 80. It did encourage me to delve deeper into his back catalogue though, so, job done. Patti Smith wandered on unannounced and rapped some crazy free form beat poetry on one number, and the Jajoukas came out for a lengthy jam on another.

Jajouka translates as “something good coming to you”, and it did. Never thought for one moment I'd ever get to see them. Next time - on their turf.

APRIL PLAYLIST

April, come she will. Some songs.

1. Muddy Waters – “Diamonds At Your Feet” (1956)
“She’s got to take sick and die one of these days/ All the medicine I can buy, and all the doctors she can hire/ She’ got to take sick and die one of these days/ When she dead I’m gonna bury her very deep/ I’m gonna bury her very deep, rubies and diamonds around her feet”. Muddy sounds suspiciously upbeat about the prospect.

2. Arthur Alexander – “Go Home Girl” (1962)
After knocking off his best mate’s girl, Arthur suddenly has an attack of the conscience and tells her to go on home. The sly old fox.

3. Ornette Coleman – “Eventually” (1959)
From the LP The Shape Of Jazz To Come, “Eventually” is notable for a three note motif that Coleman employs ten times during his solo. You’re right – I nicked that from the sleeve notes.

4. Banny Price – “You Love Me Pretty Baby” (1965)
Taken about four, five, years to nab a copy of this brilliant bluesy dancer since hearing Roger Banks spin it at the Rocket. What strikes me now is how loaded everyone sounds on it. Price can barely slur the words out, the brass is woozy and wobbly, and when the end is in sight (after a whole two minutes) they all lose whatever concentration they had in the first place.

5. Chris Clark – “Don’t Be Too Long” (1965)
Motown recorded the backing track in 1962 and it sat there for over three years until Clark added her sumptuous, smoldering vocals. Deserved more than the flip side it eventually became (of “Do Right Baby, Do Right”).

6. The Isley Brothers – “This Old Heart Of Mine” (1966)
Talking of Motown, doubt it’s escaped your attention that 2009 is their 50th Anniversary, and all and sundry are being asked what their favourite track is. I must’ve been out when they called, so I’ll tell you anyway - it’s this. Brenda Holloway’s “Starting The Hurt All Over Again” is in second place and maybe Kim Weston’s “Helpless” in third.

7. Patti Smith Group – “Rock N Roll Nigger” (1978)
Never quite “got” Patti Smith as much as I thought I should, but “Rock N Roll Nigger” turns up the heat to a riotous inferno. Honorable mention to Birdland for their 1991 version (which is the one I heard first and occasionally appropriated for the Electric Fayre in 1996).

8. Antony and The Johnsons – “Kiss My Name” (2009)
There’s nothing Mrs Monkey enjoys more than me sticking on Antony and The Johnsons and warbling along at full volume. Loves it she does, loves it.

9. The Rakes – “1989” (2009)
Although a bit Television and a small part Joy Division, the jagged, all-elbows sound of The Rakes comes equipped with dollops of wry observational humour serious lacking in those other miserable bastards. They’ll never match the perfection of “22 Grand Job” but, three albums in, “1989” is the closest they’ve come.

10. The Low Anthem – “Home I’ll Never Be” (2009)
Oh My God, Charles Darwin starts like Fleet Foxes, morphs into Tom Waits, and by the time it gets to track four it’s this moonshine swilling, pistol whipping, mule scaring, railroad rave-up. Yee-fucking-har.