Inside Ronnie Scott's - Phil King

Ronnie Scott’s has become a byword for top quality music. At least to everyone I know. Sadly, as is often the case in all things musical, I was playing catch up from the moment I heard the word “acoustic.” So here’s the lowdown…

Ronnie Scott’s – One of the Oldest Jazz Clubs in the World

Ronnie Scott, the man, forged a successful career as a tenor saxophonist in the UK before going on to found one of the oldest and most respected Jazz clubs in the world. He named it, er, Ronnie Scott’s.

From 1959, with only one change of address, Ronnie Scott’s, the club, grew to invite stars such as Ella Fitzgerald into its famed Soho quarters. Then, on one dry August evening it invited me.

Inside Ronnie Scott's

Now, technically speaking, the club invited Fitzgerald to perform, whereas I was invited to become a paying member of the audience, but let’s not get bogged down by details!

Built (literally) on the foundation of the original Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club is Ronnie Scott’s Bar, a low-lit, low-ceiling area decked out in faux tiger prints and monochrome photographs of previous jazz superstars.

In true London fashion, Ronnie’s Bar is open seven days a week, showcasing this generation’s talent above the streets of Soho. Its location, as much as its history, gives it that slight thrill of excitement.

In London’s Soho, the streets are narrow but the outlook is not. Fluorescent letters proclaim G-A-Y, an illuminated stiletto announces the latest production of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and despite the threat of traffic, the young, the suits and the trendy spill onto the tarmac.

Soho feels hot even when it is cold, feels alive while the rest of the world sleeps and projects a corner of intimacy in a city that holds 12 million people.

That’s no mean feat.

Phil King at Ronnie Scott's

Of course, it helps when you know people and as it happens, I recognised the first act. Described by London’s Time Out as a “supremely talented, Bristol-based singer,” Phil King also has to carry the rather less flattering epithet of “my brother-in-law.”

Still, the crowd didn’t hold it against him as his soulful voice tumbled through hits from his latest album, They Come and They Go as well as introducing some of his newest work.

Ronnie’s Bar somehow blends standing on hallowed ground with hanging around in a student bar. The prices at the bar, however, set the record straight. Ronnie Scott’s lives in central London – and you must expect to pay the price.

Ronnie Scott's - London

Ronnie Scott - A Legend

Disclosure:  I earned the money for this trip by writing for Most Wanted, a lifestyle magazine that helps you save money on hotels in London and beyond. However, I have absolutely no relationship with Ronnie Scott’s whatsoever.

Dizzee Rascal - Benicassim FIB 2010

Living Like a Rock Star – Benicassim FIB 2010 in Photos is the 4th and final part of a series on the FIB Music Festival in Benicassim. Visit part one, Into the Spotlight with Kasabian here, part to Behind the Scenes at Benicassim here and part three The Prodigy Live here. Enjoy! 

Piercing Kiosk at Benicassim FIB 2010

By the fourth and final day, I am well and truly into the FIB groove. Heck, I am even the Mayor of the VIP area on FourSquare (for those of you care what that means.) FIB has quite a line-up, even if Lily Allen did pull out for the second year running. The Prodigy, Kasabian, Vampire Weekend, The Gorillaz, Ellie Goulding, John Lydon, Ash, DJ Shadow, The Specials, Peter Hook, GoldFrapp and all the others I didn’t manage to see. 

By day I’ve been hiking, kayaking, swimming and flying. By night, I check the permissions list, buy vouchers for beer, grab earplugs and camera and head to the stage. 

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tired, but as the security guards shine a torch on my pass and I stride around that corner, the surrounding screams, swirling spotlights and throbbing baseline energise me. 

For a brief, flicker of a moment – I’m living like a rock star. 

One View from the Photo Pit - Benicassim FIB 2010

Benicassim FIB 2010Opposite the VIP Entrance

Opposite the VIP Entrance

Vampire Weekend

VIP Area - FIB 2010 Benicassim

The Press Room - FIB 2010 Benicassim

Peter Hook Goes Wild - FIB Benicassim 2010

Making Friends at the FIB

Food at the FIB

FIB 2010

FIB 2010 Fan

Chilling Out in the VIP Area - Benicassim 2010

View of FIB from the Mountains

After 4 Days at FIB...

Er, me - FIB 2010 - Photo Credit: Keith Jenkins - Velvet Escape

Benicassim FIB 2010 - My Favourite Photo

“FIB” is a four day music festival held each year in Benicassim in Spain. I attended as a guest of The Land of Valencia but all words, photos and opinions are mine (except for (obviously?!) the photo of me, which was kindly provided by Keith Jenkins of the luscious travel blog Velvet Escape.)

For a brief, flicker of a moment – I’m living like a rock star. 

The Prodigy Live is the 3rd in a 4-part series on the FIB Music Festival at Benicassim. Part One – Into the Spotlight with Kasabian, Part Two – Behind the Scenes at Benicassim, Part Four – Living Like a Rock Star – Benicassim FIB in Photos.

The Prodigy Live at FIB, Benicassim 

“Just piss in the*&*ing pool!” yells a dapper kind of guy to his girlfriend in the queue beside me.

She refuses and waits in line, still in her bikini, skin still wet. “To anyone here who speaks English,” she says. “I can only apologise.”

He throws his hands into the air. “Well, I’m not waiting for you. I’m not going to miss The Prodigy.”

Ah…all becomes clear. The Prodigy. Prodigy, Prodigy, Prodigy. It’s all anyone’s talking about tonight. I’m not a big fan of their lyrics, they’re the only artists at Benicassim restricting the press, and now this. It’s not looking good.

Employing the unfair advantage of being sober, it’s actually quite easy to get near the front. With the stage bathed blood-red and smoke filling the air, The Prodigy arrive and the crowd combusts. The opening bars of Firestarter creep into the rhythm of my brain…but it’s no good. I just can’t stomach Smack My Bitch Up.

When the guy next to me picks my pocket, it’s the final straw. Sorry, Prodigy, and I know you won’t care, but I’ve had enough.

The Prodigy - Live at Benicassim

I meander back to the press room, checking my pockets as I go. My only consolation, I realise smugly, is that the thief will open up his grubby palm to find that he’s stolen my business card holder instead of my wallet.

The final instalment on the FIB at Benicassim coming soon…

The Prodigy - Well, Everyone Else Liked Them...

View from the Photo Pit - Benicassim FIB

A FIB-er

 The FIB Photo Pit

Nights at the party, days by the beach. That’s the hedonistic promise made by the music festival in Benicassim. Forget the mud of Glastonbury, forget that FiberFIB sounds like a constipation product. Grab a ticket to Spain and party for four days, both beneath and in front of the stars. 

From where I’m standing, of course, that’s only partly true. The spotlights blind out the stars overhead but those on stage are only a metre away. Tom Meighan, Kasabian’s lead singer, comes within reach of my hand as I’m leaning on a speaker, trying to get a shot. 

It’s a surreal feeling, to come this close. For although the eyes of thousands are watching him, someone now watches me.

Work Above the Stage

Intently.

Forget about the party, in the few square metres of the photo pit, everyone has a job to do – and that includes security. 

As for me, I have only three songs before the outstretched hand of security clamps over the lens of my camera. In the Spanish summer heat, between darkness and disorienting sapphire light, I feel as though I am swimming in music. What the earplugs dampen, the reverberations amplify and the screams of the crowds mash up. The occasional thump from security adds an improvised note of percussion. 

“I told you to look out,” yells a giant of a man in a fluorescent jacket as he almost drops a dehydrated and damaged girl onto another photographer. Both shrug and continue, ducking around cables, lenses, and each other to get on with the job at hand. 

Sweat glistens, no-one smiles. Security pull the vulnerable from the crowd, pour water over their heads and then frogmarch them away. They never relax for a moment – and I can understand why. Every year, at some concert or another, someone dies in a crush –and no-one wants that on their watch. 

The Crowd 

Someone Is Watching - Thankfully

Of course, not all bands attract so much attention. FIB has at least another two stages (plus a dance hall that I never venture into), where audiences sway rather than stampede. Scattered across the grass and tarmac, young faces smile, wearing glitter on their cheeks and flowers in their hair, oblivious to the hard work and strategy going on around them. 

And these faces are young, with dreamy eyes and innocent enthusiasm, something that can’t be said for most of the performers (nor photographers when it comes to that!) John Lydon from the Sex Pistols snarls and snarks with Public Image Ltd, while Peter Hook rocks and rolls with a tricky looking hip. Even The Prodigy, Saturday’s headline band and general crowd-pleaser, first screeched Firestarter while I was still at school. 

With the exception of perhaps Vampire Weekend and Dizzee Rascal – where is this generation’s music? Where are the older generation’s fans? Tucked up in the VIP area, perhaps, having earned a few more pay cheques and lost all desire to sidestep the odd pile of vomit. 

The VIP Area 

Watermelon FIBer

The VIP entrance stands next to the piercing kiosk and opposite a giant glow-in-the-dark Doc Marten. Inside, there’s an illuminated swimming pool, violet-glow trees and white leather mattresses that lounge in front of panelled screens. 

This is the way to watch a music festival – with easy access to the stage and then a comfortable and quiet place to sit afterwards. I must be getting old. 

Or am I? With the exception of the media lurking in the shadows, the bona fide VIPs look as though it’s their very first time around the block. Perhaps lazy and chilled really is the new black and these days people party within this capsule of sophistication. 

The trip to the Portaloos brings me back to reality. 

Continues with The Prodigy Live and Living Like a Rock Star – Benicassim in Photos.

Peter Hook at FIB

Lydon Snarls at FIB

Benicassim - Kasabian

The air in Benicassim throbs with heat, with screams, with expectation. Overhead somewhere, the sky must be thick with darkness but right here, right now, everything is bright. We hurry through a makeshift corridor, flanked by security, and burst into open space as the crowd goes wild.

Sixty thousand people applaud and scream, their outstretched hands rippling like stalks of corn in a hurricane. We’ve arrived at the same time as Kasabian and we stand in the few metres that separate the stage from the audience.

This is the Benicassim 2010 Music Festival and we’re just getting started.

 Continues with Behind the Scenes at Benicassim, The Prodigy Live and finally Living Like a Rock Star – Benicassim FIB in Photos.

Benicassim 2010 - Kasabian

Benicassim - KasabianBenicassim 2010 - Kasabian

Kasabian - Benicassim 2010

Benicassim 2010 FIB - Starting the Right Way!

FIB – the 2010 Benicassim Music Festival

started today (or last night, depending on your point of view!) It runs for four days and I’ll be there as a guest of Land of Valencia, although, as ever, editorial control is all mine.

Last night, for example, I headed out for some tapas and musica (see, this learning Spanish thing should be easy with words like that around, right?)

Tonight’s unusual journey involved a group of young men who design aeroplanes by day and play jazz by night.

Working in English, living in Spain, singing in French…no, hang on, singing in French, English and Spanish…Oh, I give up.

Talented and hard-working at languages – and yet putting together an easy-going, entertaining night out at El Perro Andaluz. This is Buscando a Jazz.

I think this melting pot was best summarized by the Frenchman singing Englishman in New York. In Seville.