Simon Little

Hello folks

Just a quick post to let you know about an exciting new night we’re starting over at the fabulous Hideaway in Streatham, which launches tomorrow night Thursday May 3rd!

The idea is to showcase new and emerging vocalists and give them a chance to perform their material in a great venue. If you haven’t been to Hideaway yet, frankly you’re missing out. Recently voted Venue of the Year at the Parliamentary Jazz Awards, this relatively new club is fast becoming the capitol’s premier jazz venue. And the food is bloody excellent…

The Voice shows will be on the third Thursday every month, but we’re launching the night tomorrow (3rd May, and we’ll be back again on the 24th). The band will feature Janette Mason on piano/keyboards, me on bass (obviously) and Frank Tontoh on drums. We’ve got some great singers coming down tomorrow including Polly Gibbons, Fran Lewis and Peter Borthwick. A great mix of jazz, soul and blues. It’s gonna be great so you should all come down. And because it’s the launch tomorrow; it’s free entry!!

See you all there.

Hello folks,

Thought I’d drop a quick post updating you on some recent developments and news.

Firstly my new trio with Lea DeLaria and Janette Mason Triage had it’s first gig last Friday at the Albert Hall’s Elgar Room. This is a brand new project for which we are developing a lot of new material. We tried out quite a few new arrangements on Friday, as well as some of the tunes from our long running Wall To Wall residency at the Pizza Express Jazz Club (Incidentally, we’ll be back at the Pizza on November 15th as part of the London Jazz Festival). The whamola even got it’s first outing in a stomping version of Straight No Chaser. As is to be expected I have duly started a Facebook page and a Twitter account which you can all subscribe to in order to keep up to date with all the news. Needless to say, we’re all very excited…

In other news, I had my first movement session this morning with the cast of A Comedy of Errors at the National Theatre. I am really looking forward to this production and it promises to be something really very special. The cast are a fantastic bunch of people and the band will feature Merlin Shepherd on reeds and the fabulous Ian ‘Squeezy’ Watson (my Divine Comedy colleague) on the accordion. There is an extensive period of rehearsal just starting now and the show opens for previews in November.

Now a little update on my Westminster Parking rant. The response to the post has been incredible. The level of outrage at the proposals really doesn’t surprise me. A great deal of people still have no idea that these changes are still going through; or that they are planned at all. It is therefore very urgent that we spread the news wherever possible; especially amongst the musicians and night workers in the West End that will be the most affected.

The petition against the proposals is still going over at GoPetitions; currently with 4548 signatures. This is still the petition that the Musician’s Union are directing it’s members towards. You can find it at

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/we-are-against-westminster-city-council’s-new-parking.html

Last week I was contacted by somebody from BBC Inside Out London. I will hopefully be doing an interview for the program sometime over the next few weeks detailing the impact the proposed changes would have on musicians working in the West End. In the meantime, there is a demonstration outside Westminster City Hall this Wednesday at 6pm organized by the Musician’s Union in conjunction with other night worker organisations. I urge all musicians who regularly work in the West End to attend; whether or not they personally have to drive. Your bass players, drummers and keyboard players need you too!! And all the music lovers who don’t want to see a lot of their West End venues struggle. Here’s the flyer from the MU for those of you interested in attending:

I’ll keep you posted on the BBC program. We only have until December 1st, so there really is not a great deal of time to make a difference.

Until next time…

Many of you, especially musicians, will already be aware of Westminster Council’s plans to introduce evening and Sunday parking charges in London’s West End later this year. This simply cannot be allowed to happen.

Until now there has always been free meter and single yellow spaces after 6.30pm and on Sundays. Like there are all around the country. Westminster Council proposes to scrap the free parking period until midnight during the week and up to 6.30pm on Sundays. They also plan to put the hourly parking rate up to a preposterous £5.00 an hour.

There has already been strong protest from local businesses, musicians and Westminster churchgoers, many of whom travel from outside the parish to attend services on a Sunday morning. I first heard talk of these proposals at the beginning of the year and assumed the plans had since been quashed but yesterday I learnt the plans were still being pushed through to be implemented towards the end of the year.

In these times of cutbacks in arts funding these measures will have serious impact on the currently thriving music and theatre scene in London’s West End. Many Londoners (especially the elderly) visiting the West End of an evening need to travel by car in order to get home at the end of the night as public transport link shut down and a taxi proves prohibitively expensive, not to mention those who live out of town.

Musicians like myself will find gigs in town (and we’re talking specifically about Soho, Covent Garden and Marylebone here) are no longer financially viable. The average common-or-garden jazz gig in town will pay between £40 and £80 per night. The extended parking charges would cost me an extra £20-£25 per night, not to mention the dreaded Congestion Charge if the soundcheck was before 6pm. Many London gigs would simply be wiped out as musicians and patrons are priced out of the West End by the sheer expense of the visit. I have no choice but to drive to gigs with all the large and heavy equipment I need to carry, plus the fact that I live out of town and have no easy access to public transport. I’m sure the last thing Westminster Council wants is for me to rock up at tube stations with a double bass and an amp. Not to mention the drummers… And at the end of the night when the tube and train services have stopped running, how are we meant to get home safely?

Dave Webster, of the Musicians’ Union, says

Musicians are often required to work unsociable hours and carry heavy and valuable instruments and equipment that makes it difficult and risky to use public transport.

Many of our members are self-employed and are not sufficiently well-paid to be able to afford the proposed extended parking charges.

Westminster Council have justified these planned measures by stating that it will keep traffic flowing through the capitol and raise up to 7 million pounds in additional revenue. They also state that many of the West End’s NCP carparks are empty of an evening. They obviously don’t know how much it costs to park there for a few hours. The amount of available spaces of an evening when you remove the single yellow spots from the equation simply do not add up. The whole plan smacks of money-grabbing with little or no regard for the visitors and workers that make that part of our city thrive of an evening.

This simply cannot be allowed to go through. I trust the Musicians Union and local businesses are doing all they can to prevent the charges coming into force before it’s too late.

The plans are currently set to go into place in December for an 18 month trial period. Just long enough to kill the West End…