Canterbury Legends – Cluny 2007 (original) (raw)

In May 2007 a concert was held in the memory of Jacky Barbier (1936-2002), who ran the legendary A L’Ouest de la Grosne club in Burgundy, and a lot of the musicians who’d be regulars at the club in the years since it had opened in the mid-1970s were invited to perform, including Zao and Edition Spéciale. I offered to get a band of Canterbury Scene musicians together for the occasion. I contacted those who’d played at Jacky’s : Hugh Hopper (Soft Head, Equip’Out, Short Wave, Mashu), Patrice Meyer (his own PM Trio/Quartet, Hugh’s FrangloDutch Band, John Greaves Roxongs), Didier Malherbe (Gong, Faton Bloom) and Phil Miller (National Health, In Cahoots, Short Wave), plus Manu Denizet, a drummer who came from the area and had since played with the Orchestre National de Jazz and in John Greaves’ Roxongs trio, and Alex Maguire, who’d been in Pip Pyle’s Bash and the reformed Hatfield among many others. I booked them a rehearsal room in Paris and a vehicle to transport them to Cluny in Burgundy where the concert took place. The set was a mixture of material from various projects, primarily Short Wave as the band included 3 of its 4 members, Pip having sadly died in 2006. This film of the performance was made by the late Alain Juliac, another tireless supporter of the scene, who’d come to see and film his friends Zao, but also captured the set by the sextet I had – in memory of Pip as this alluded to the original title for his National Health song « Binoculars » – christened « Canterbury Legends (In Their Own Lunchtime) » (Hugh later shortened this to « Lunchtime Legends »). Enjoy !