Here's the latest hot gigs in Mill Hill Plus a bit of music Biz gossip and a round up of last weeks Mill Hill Music Festival and also the Harrow gig in the Park. No rants today I'm sorry to say.


Mill Hill Jazz Club, Graham Park Way
Wednesday 2nd July
Phil Mead Quartet featuring Frank Griffith Members
Top Jazz sax Player
£2/ Non £4


Mill Hill Jazz Club, Graham Park Way
Saturday 5th July
Soul'd Out
11 piece Soul band - Motown & Stax
£5 on the door. 9.00 - midnight

----------------------------------------
I went for a beer last night with Boz Boorer. Boz is Morrissey's guitarist and has been for the last 12 years. he has a stack of Gold discs on his wall for co writes. He's playing Hyde park at the weekend with Morrissey and last weekend they were in Dublin, being supported by the New York Dolls (it's a hard life!!!). Boz is an old schoolmate of mine from Orange Hill School. He first found success with the Polecats in the early 80's before teaming up with Moz when the Smiths split. The Polecats at St Pauls Church School hall was the first gig I ever went to in Mill Hill !!!

An evening with Boz is always a pleasure as he'd the one guy I know who is even more obsessed with early Punk rock vinyl than I am. A typical topic of conversation last night was what colour label was the copy of "suspect device" by Stiff Little fingers which I swapped with Pete Conway for Patti Smith's 12" version of Gloria (B Side My generation).

Boz has a studio out in Portugal and one in West Hampstead. He is looking to do residential recordings for bands (sort of creative holidays) when the current Moz world tour ends. If you are a band looking to get away from it all and record an album in a great setting with a musical genius, you couldn't do better than get in touch with Boz.

I also caught up with Sarah Davies today. Sarah is one of those people you come across occasionally who you just have to admire. She is an organiser of the Harrow gig in the park. This took place last weekend and approx 4,000 people attended. It is supported by the Met Police and the theme of the gig is to turn young people away from knife crime and violence (check www.giginthepark.org).

They are looking to improve and expand the gig. She has a team of about 70 mostly young people working on it virtually all year round. They are looking for about £40,000 funding to secure the next 3 years, so if you are in a position to way in with some cash, get in touch with her. They are looking for major sponsors. She was telling me that the gig was a great success and that they really want to build on that. Nothing inspires me more than people working to change people's lives for the better. I'd love to see Barnet follow their example and do a similar anti knife festival.

Finally a report on the Mill Hill Music Festival long jazz weekend. This was a great success. The highlight for me was the John Dankworth Quintet on Thursday. This was the biggest quintet in the world as they were actually joined by an excellent violin player. The standard of musicianship really was as good as it gets. I'm not a big fan of drumming, being more of a guitarist myself, but the Steve Taylor big band's tribute to Buddy Rich on the Saturday night was also truly awesome. A few of our studio customers who are drummers came along and were really blown away. If you missed it then you missed a treat. At the end of the festival on Sunday afternoon at the Rising Sun I was completely cream crackered, but in a very pleasant way. Our aim is to deliver quality music on your doorstep and I think we succeeded with flying colours !