Live music listings: June 2007

Doors 7.30
£7 via WeGotTickets
£9 door

Gary Lucas established his reputation during five years spent playing with Captain Beefheart. He joined the last incarnation of Beefheart's Magic Band, distinguishing himself as an interpreter of Beefheart's difficult music and recording solo guitar pieces on 'Doc at the Radar Station' and 'Ice Cream for Crow' , which featured his solo renditions of 'Flavor Bud Living' and 'Evening Bell'. Of the latter, Esquire wrote "Gary Lucas apparently grew extra fingers in order to negotiate his way through it".

He's still a member of the ongoing reunion of Captain Beefheart alumni The Magic Band. Their album 'Back to the Front' was chosen as one of the best albums of 2004 by The Wire.

So; a world class guitar hero, a Grammy-nominated songwriter, an international recording artist with over a dozen acclaimed solo albums to date, and a soundtrack composer for film and television, Gary Lucas

Dubbed the "legendary leftfield guitarist" by The Guardian, "Guitarist of 1000 Ideas" by The New York Times, "a true axe God" by Melody Maker and "the thinking man's guitar hero" by The New Yorker, the British world music magazine Froots recently hailed Gary Lucas as "without question, the most innovative and challenging guitarist playing today." Rolling Stone’s David Fricke just wrote: "Gary Lucas is one of the best and most original guitarists in America" in a rave review of Gary’s new album Coming Clean.

Gary was also cited recently by the editors of Downbeat Magazine as one of their “Hot 66 6-Stringers” alongside John McLaughlin, Richard Thompson, B.B King, Pat Metheny, and other greats.

Gary Lucas has toured the world relentlessly both solo and with several different ensembles, including his longtime band Gods And Monsters, whose ranks once included the late, great singer Jeff Buckley. Gary co-wrote two of Jeff Buckley's most famous hits, 'Grace' and 'Mojo Pin', from his million-selling album 'Grace' (which Mojo just named as their #1 Modern Classic Album in their March 2006 issue). Gary and Jeff's early collaborations can also be heard on the recent Jeff Buckley and Gary Lucas album 'Songs To No One'.

Gary Lucas & Gods And Monsters is his current focus, with Ernie Brooks [Modern Lovers] on bass, Billy Ficca [Television] on drums and Jason Candler [Hungry March Band] on alto sax.

Time Out New York recently wrote: "The group is mindblowing!" and The New Yorker called them "an underground-rock fan's dream team".

The Alan Wilkinson, John Edwards & Steve Noble Trio - main support - will be revealing their new album 'Obliquity' on Bo'Weavil Records.

'Obliquity' is a free jazz record, if you'll forgive the use of such a hoary, old fashioned phrase. Its scorching, heads-down momentum, rhythm and drive places it in direct line of descent from the fierce originators of the genre: Ayler, Sanders, Graves, Frank Wright. It also swings. At times it dances.

'Obliquity' is a free jazz record through the prism of the improvisational movement in Europe, though. This is no attempt at polite revivalism or looking back/up to the 1960s. Wilkinson/Edwards/Noble are producing new, vital music of and for now. You need form to work at this level of spontaneity and certainty and any frequenter of the outer limits of the European music scene could vouch for the jazz porridge these three have put away.

Opening is C Joynes, who brings riginal and traditional tunes, cover versions, improvised pieces, hill recordings - all instrumentals, all home recorded, all brought together under the neat sub-heading of Anglo-Naive and Contemporary Parlour Guitar.

"An outstanding guitarist." [Andy Kershaw, BBC Radio 3]

"Without doubt the most promising post-Takoma guitarist doing the rounds right now." [Second Layer]

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