RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
Latest editorial
‘He was the other half of my heartbeat’
CHRIS SEARLE speaks to drummer Spike Wells about his experience playing with the great Scottish saxophonist Bobby Wellins
wellins
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
High quality pulp, rollicking online murders, Abnorman Britain, and high skates drama: reviews of The Get Off, Everyone In The Group Chat Dies, Pagans and First To Fall
DENNIS BROE notes what happens to content when the streaming giants incorporate AI and deregulation into their economic models
New releases from The Tenementals, Nik Bartsch’s Ronin, and Kuunatic
SCOTT ALSWORTH hears the call to burn down and rebuild the video game industry from the bottom up
The Chinese language only introduced a feminine pronoun in the 1920s. Now, it might adopt a gender-inclusive one, suggests JANET DAVEY
BOBBY WELLINS (1936-2016) was one of the truly great saxophone virtuosi of British jazz.
Born in the Gorbals, Glasgow, to showbiz parents, he entered the RAF as a musician, and on being demobbed, played in the late 1940s with Buddy Featherstonhaugh and Tony Crombie’s Jazz Inc. In the early 1960s he joined Stan Tracey’s Quartet, making the 1965 epochal album inspired by Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, and the equally fine With Love from Jazz. The break-up of the quartet and almost a decade of struggle against addiction and depression followed, but by the late 1970s he was back again, playing as powerfully as ever with a new quartet, with bassist Adrian Kendon, drummer Spike Wells and pianist Pete Jacobson.
The two limited-edition albums made by the quartet in 1978-79, Jubilation (recorded live at the Hanbury in Kemptown, Brighton), and Dreams are Free, are now rereleased by Jazz in Britain with the title What Was Happening, with several additional tracks.
More from this author
While the group known as the Colourists certainly reinvigorated Scottish painting, a new show is a welcome chance to reassess them, writes ANGUS REID
ANGUS REID recommends an exquisite drama about the disturbing impact of the one child policy in contemporary China
The phrase “cruel to be kind” comes from Hamlet, but Shakespeare’s Prince didn’t go in for kidnap, explosive punches, and cigarette deprivation. Tam is different.
ANGUS REID deconstructs a popular contemporary novel aimed at a ‘queer’ young adult readership