To the Cong! …on Saturday evening. We made the shortest of short walks across the road for the latest in the Music Mix jazz series. Having live music right on your doorstep is an opportunity too good to miss.

We rocked up at the Cong and received some very distressing news: We’ve run out of wine. What are we going to do about it? Chin Chin, etc.

We decided on a teetotal evening. Who needs BOOZE when you have some of the finest music in all of Wivenhoe?

The Music Mix club nights are turning out to be a real highlight on the local scene. It’s genuinely a lovely, lovely setup. The tables are arranged in a really informal way to encourage conversation in between the sets. It has the feeling of a genuine jazz club.

A couple of Nina songs over the PA was a great start to get me in the mood for the evening. Mr Bojangless has to be one of the most moving pieces of music in the past century. No shit.

Shortly after 7:30 pm we welcomed the New Conrad Miller Trio on stage. I’m not sure if there was ever an Old Conrad Miller Trio but the new version was certainly a lively outfit.

They are a Dutch touring band, with plenty of stage talk in between songs to highlight some classic Dutch humour. Ha, bloody ha, etc.

The mood of the evening was set with the first song, Tripping. Even without the red wine I was still able to send myself into something of an out of body jazz experience. Steady the buffers, Jase.

All the songs were original numbers. What was quite remarkable is how the three musicians were able to fill the space so effectively. The music was powerful and uplifting.

The highlight for me was the samba rhythms that sporadically came out from behind the drum kit. All three band members were smiling throughout. This is always a good sign.

A short interval took place. You know you’re at the right kind of jazz club when an audience member puts in some eye drops during the interval, rather than injecting anything else.

The second set from the New Conrad Miller Trio picked up the pace. I was impressed by how they play as one, not individually. This is clearly a tight band with some very close friendships.

Some of the music became technically challenging to play in the second set. It certainly wasn’t technically challenging to listen to. The audience was in awe of some of the talent on display with the double bass and keyboards.

This is the end of the current season of Music Mix gigs. There’s a short summer break before it all kicks off again early autumn. You really can’t beat live music, especially when you’re home with a cup of tea, less than a minute later.

The great Gary Crowley was sitting in for Robert Elms on BBC Radio London this morning. Up for your listening pleasure was a four-fer made up of Stiff Records classics. It’s quite a back catalogue to dive into there.

The occasion was 50 years of Stiff. It’s not quite a continuous timeline, but 50 years is 50 years. I still love the Stiff Records mantra from back in the day: If It Ain’t Stiff, It Ain’t Worth a Fuck.

Best not saying that live on BBC Radio London.

Fittingly, the four-fer opened with the very first release on Stiff Records: Nick Lowe’s So It Goes. It’s a perfect power pop song and set the agenda for what was to follow.

Ian Dury’s is My Old Man followed. This is another great London song, as were the next two choices, Kirsty’s New England and Baggy Trousers. What a back catalogue.

A brief online shifty of the Stiff Records Discog, and it’s a case of being spoilt for choice here. Woh! Where to start?

You could have chosen The Damned’s New Rose, the very first punk single, or the Banshee’s Hong Kong Garden, although I doubt that will get any airplay any time soon with some very questionable lyrics.

There’s the whole early Elvis Costello back catalogue including the peerless Allison. And then we have Wreckless Eric with Whole Wide World, Jona Lewie and his Kitchen Song, plus some early Devo.

The label developed a little over the years with Madness always propping it up with their strong singles back catalogue. Every release from One Step Beyond right through to One Better Day came out on Stiff.

The later years as Stiff entered into the mid-80s, included the Belle Stars, Temple Tudor and even John Otway, with a ropey cover of Green Green Grass.

The Freshies also featured as an early incarnation of what would later become Frank Sidebottom. You can see what a diverse label it is when Stiff was also putting out side by side early singles by the Pogues.

Along came Tracy Ullman, Graham Parker and King Kurt. Yello somehow slipped in there, along with an unlikely release by Motorhead.

The very final releases included Furniture’s Brilliant Mind, as well as one of my favourites, the Every Kind of People cover by Mint Juleps.

That would all make for a bloody impressive compilation. There’s various Spotify playlists out there, but nothing covering the entire back catalogue.

Stiff is my new fave old label.

There was a time in the late 90’s when this type of quirky US college rock threatened something decent, but failed to break through. Britpop drowned everything out. Which is a shame, as the likes of They Might Be Giants a little earlier, and Cake are worth a listen. Beck did cut through - he had the style as well as the substance. Fashion Nugget stacks up rather well. Mixing up indie with US hip hop and funk can be a disaster. It’s a delicate task. Cake manage to, erm, have theirs and eat it. Tuck in.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

“I really don’t mind if you sit this one out” …is the opening line. OK, I might just do that, fella. I can’t say I was TURNED ON by the idea of three tracks only, and then an interview bolted on at the end. It’s hardly C86, right? If you ignore the Jethro Tull name, then this is half decent. But I find it hard to escape all the Dungeons and Dragons bollocks. English folk music updated and refreshed can be uplifting. This was probably the case for Thick as a Brick back in 1972. Over forty years later and the folk tradition has developed. No genres should stand still. As a timepiece it’s half decent. As a daily listen in 2026 it rambled a little.

⭐ ⭐

Higher Power CD by Big Audio. By this time in the B.A.D. timeline, the band had morphed into something completely different and had dropped the Dynamite part of their name. I should really look this up, but I think the Big Audio phase comes slightly before the B.A.D. II incarnation.

But anyway, you can never go wrong with a bit of Big Audio, whatever they’re called. Mick Jones has such a way in crafting pop melodies and then working them into whatever he sees around him at the time.

Big Audio was the natural progression from punk, moving into something a lot more dance-based. He then took it full circle around a decade or so later with his production duties for the Libertines, etc.

I know little about the Higher Power album. I’m going for the completest set of BAD CDs. I make it now just the rather elusive PUNK album that I’m missing. The only track I know is Looking for a Song. Maybe I’ll find some more buried away once I finally get round to playing this,

I made it track 3, The Wrong Way:

“I’m staring at her tits. It’s the wrong way”

This is a song about a 12 year old girl. I bailed.

⭐

This was a weird one. For some reason I always thought Barenaked Ladies were indie lite shite. But wait! Whats this? There’s a nice breezy start to the opening. I thought Spotify had fucked up, and had served me up the new Paul Heaton album. The accent certainly seemed to suggest this. The first track then even segued into Happy Hour. I was quite enjoying the ex-Housemartins latest release. But it turns out that it was in fact Barenaked Ladies from back in 1992. Blimey. How odd. The album then became very goofy. That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore, etc. I bailed on the stupid Yoko track. Barenaked Ladies sound more like a pub band.

⭐ ⭐

Blimey. The new album by The Coral is bloody decent. They’re a band that I’ve always liked, but one that I’ve also not always known too much about.

I managed to keep up with them for the first four or five albums. They then became so prolific that any new music seemed to pass me by.

But here they are, back for the summer of 2026 with an absolute banger of an album, 388. I’m not sure what the 388 stands for. Maybe it’s their 388th album?

I was first alerted to it via the always excellent Gary Crowley on BBC Radio London, and then the new Q Online despatch this morning had an extensive interview as well as some useful links for the album. This included an impressive Spotify playlist that clocks up almost five hours.

At first I wasn’t quite sure of some of the track selections that were curated around the album. Most of it appeared to be early to mid-seventies reggae, a lot of it centred around Lee Scratch Perry. I know The Coal are quite a diverse bunch, but even that sounds a little odd for them.

I fired up the 388 album. Straight in there with the first track, and it sounds like it could have come out of Scratch Perry’s own studio. There’s an incredible amount of detail that has clearly been paid to the production and trying to sound old school analogue with that early ska beat.

The band are a real anomaly. I’m not even sure they know which universe they exist in. You can always blame the hard skunk, but I prefer to view The Coal as being musical geniuses that haven’t exactly slipped underneath the radar, but they should be a lot bigger than what they actually are.

There’s also some genuine soul moments on the new album. It sounds like they had a lot of fun recording it. To their credit, it’s not one of those albums that is a deliberate head nod to all their influences. Springsteen fell very short with his soul covers album from a few years ago.

The Coal are so unpredictable that it might be that their next release is a death metal album. It’s probably already been recorded and will be out next week, soon to be followed by a Disco Anthems classic.

Blimey. The new album by The Coral is bloody decent. They’re a band that I’ve always liked, but one that I’ve also not always known too much about.

I managed to keep up with them for the first four or five albums. They then became so prolific that any new music seemed to pass me by.

But here they are, back for the summer of 2026 with an absolute banger of an album, 388. I’m not sure what the 388 stands for. Maybe it’s their 388th album?

I was first alerted to it via the always excellent Gary Crowley on BBC Radio London, and then the new Q Online despatch this morning had an extensive interview as well as some useful links for the album. This included an impressive Spotify playlist that clocks up almost five hours.

At first I wasn’t quite sure of some of the track selections that were curated around the album. Most of it appeared to be early to mid-seventies reggae, a lot of it centred around Lee Scratch Perry. I know The Coal are quite a diverse bunch, but even that sounds a little odd for them.

I fired up the 388 album. Straight in there with the first track, and it sounds like it could have come out of Scratch Perry’s own studio. There’s an incredible amount of detail that has clearly been paid to the production and trying to sound old school analogue with that early ska beat.

The band are a real anomaly. I’m not even sure they know which universe they exist in. You can always blame the hard skunk, but I prefer to view The Coal as being musical geniuses that haven’t exactly slipped underneath the radar, but they should be a lot bigger than what they actually are.

There’s also some genuine soul moments on the new album. It sounds like they had a lot of fun recording it. To their credit, it’s not one of those albums that is a deliberate head nod to all their influences. Springsteen fell very short with his soul covers album from a few years ago.

The Coal are so unpredictable that it might be that their next release is a death metal album. It’s probably already been recorded and will be out next week, soon to be followed by a disco anthems classic.

This isn’t the hippy shit I feared. As the title suggests, it’s actually rather, erm, electric. There’s more of a blues feel than all the peace and love bullshit. I can’t quite place it culturally, but I get the impression that it’s a bit of a piss take in places with plenty of comedy. A pleasant surprise. Still a crap name for a band.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐