Pete Oxley launches ‘Look, Scan, Listen’ distribution service

Look, Scan, Listen (LSL) sounds like a 1960s road safety campaign, but it’s actually a new way of distributing music that combines “the ease of streaming with the analogue satisfaction of owning a vinyl album”. LSL is an initiative undertaken by guitarist Pete Oxley and his business partner at The Spin jazz club, Stuart Miller, and it could earn musicians vastly more for their music than they presently get from Spotify. The idea is based on the premise that while many people no longer own a CD player, virtually everyone has a smartphone.

For £20-25, you can buy a printed booklet containing artwork, photographs and information about the music – and a QR code to stream the music. “The liner notes are even more comprehensive than you’d get with a vinyl album – the book’s got 32 pages,” explains Miller. “We’re not trying to push against the tide, because streaming is here to stay. The problem is that musicians don’t get a fair deal from it. With LSL, you’re not taken to Soundcloud or somewhere else, it’s just immediately streamed from our server, using our own software development to make it really elegant.” Enquiries to stuart@towpath productions.com

BACK IN THE DAY... Dubbed "the first psychedelic jazz group" by San Franciscan hippy promoter Chet Helms early in 1967, the Charles Lloyd Quartet were soaring stateside following the release of Forest Flower, which sold over a million copies, earned him DownBeat's 1967 Jazz Artist of The Year Award and made Miles Davis look distinctly like yesterday's man. Lloyd's highly adventurous young band, including Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette and Ron McClure were shaking up jazz followers across America, Europe and even the Soviet Union and, significantly, attracting a growing new audience of counter-cultural music fans.

Now it was the UK's turn, and with the 'Summer of Love' in full flower the quartet made their UK debut with two shows at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall on 17 June 1967. Their forward-looking composition, mystic modal meditations and firebreathing improvisation stood in stark musical contrast to elegant swing pianist Teddy Wilson, who played the Purcell Room next door two days earlier. Wilson was a much-lauded veteran of the Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman and Sarah Vaughan bands, and like Lloyd a strong supporter of social justice and civil rights causes, where he was dubbed the ‘Marxist Mozart’.

Lloyd had first visited the UK with Cannonball Adderley Quintet in 1964, when they were the Musician's Union exchange act for The Beatles first US tour.. This time however he was fronting the most talked about new jazz group at a time of seismic change in contemporary music. In the following week's Melody Maker, Lloyd's concert was the lead review under the headline, 'Lloyd and the road to flower power', with critic Bob Houston concluding, "It's his superb compositions and often wonderful tenor that the fuss should be about: the 'psychedelic' wrapping will do a lot of good bringing people into the fold, but there's a very tangy jazz package underneath it all." A marketing trend that Atlantic records weren't slow to exploit with their wild, parent-baiting psychedelic advertisement for Lloyd's Dream Weaver and Forest Flower LPs, which appeared six pages later in the same issue. Shame Atlantic didn't have the budget to run it as a full-page ad and send the jazz police into a whistleblowing frenzy! Jon Newey

6 Jazzwise June 2024

FUTURE MOVERS

Highlighting serious talent bubbling under the radar… NAME: Anmol Mohara INSTRUMENTS: Drums and tabla EXPERIENCE AND INFLUENCES: Anmol started playing drums and Eastern percussion instruments when he was eight years old. Already having the opportunity to work with Nicolas Meier, Antoine Fafard, Time Zone, Gareth Lockrane and Ben Waters, he regularly performs with his own band and is currently working on his debut album. THIS FUTURE MOVER SAYS: "I see every style of the music as the same. There are so many crossovers in the devices and approaches used in different cultures and it’s amazing how many different directions they can be taken in. What I love about jazz and improvisation is that it gives me so much freedom to express myself. I enjoy the interaction I have with other musicians when playing this music." See Anmol Mohara play Future Movers Late Shows on 7 -8 June led by Phil Meadows (alto sax) and featuring Lorenz Okello (piano/keys), Dom Howard (guitar) and Stan Woodward (bass), more at www.ronniescotts.co.uk