Giack Bazz: Live at Bromley-by-Bow's 'The Beehive'

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Giack Bazz: Live at Bromley-by-Bow's 'The Beehive'

Headlining last Friday (21st, Jan) for an ‘Underground Sound’ event in Bromley-by-Bow's ‘The Beehive’ was Italian-British indie hero, ‘Giack Bazz’. Sudden mid-song interjections of Giack’s random thoughts, everyone sitting on the pub-venue floor and stunning displays of vocal talent are just a few things fans should expect from future Giack Bazz gigs.

Jeeni were invited to this special event after the first two Giack Bazz blogs were published to the Jeeni website. Jeeni feels honoured to have Giack a part of the team and we're thrilled to hear that he's been loving what Jeeni has been doing for him so far as well, "I'm overwhelmed by the continuing support from the Jeeni music blog".

Giack opened his headlining spot the same way he opens his ‘Giack Bazz Is Not Famous’ album, with the drunk and jangly ‘Beetle’. The track was performed sleepily, roughly and loosely, in the best possible ways. Giack was not sleepy or low-energy at all, but the studio track is, and so he adopted a tired, melancholic delivery style despite his upbeat and jovial mood, because that's what the recipe called for.

His performance of ‘Morning’ was prefaced with a darkly humourous exclamation, “This song is about depression!”. Perhaps it says a lot about the audience when this proud announcement was met with uproarious applause and cheering. A theme across all of Giack’s projects is mental health and emotional transparency and ‘Morning’ is a prime example of his mature and weirdly reassuring expression of said themes.

The middle section of Giack’s set was spent with both, Giack and the audience sat down in an intimate and close commune, all connected by Giack’s compositions. This simple invitation of comfort and informality took Giack’s serenading to another level for the gentler and more sentimental tracks like the stunning rendition of the title-track of his debut album, ‘Childhood Dream’.

Considering the arsenal of instruments Giack typically uses to convey his vision, the emotive power that he communicated with just his voice, a guitar and a pedal board was astonishing. Giack’s singing at times came across as a therapeutic ‘Primal Scream’, but it was always perfectly in pitch and in stylistic accordance with his guitar work. He also displayed the mic etiquette of a seasoned performer as he gave varying distance between his mouth and his mic depending on the power and input of his voice.

I used to think that the vocal emotion and power in Giack’s studio projects were enhanced with production techniques and after-effects. However, the performative persona that Giack displayed in that tiny, humid box of a venue in East-London was an honest, primal and raw spectacle, unaided by double-tracking or artificial reverb; this made me realise that Giack has been enhancing the effects with his vocal power, not the other way around.

We strongly suggest following Giack on socials to see when an opportunity to see this man live comes up again.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/GiackBazz

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/giackbazz/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Giack.Bazz

Check out Giack’s showcase on Jeeni, now: https://jeeni.com/showcase/giack-bazz/

How can Jeeni support artists like Giack Bazz?

JEENI is a multi-channel platform for original entertainment on demand. We’re a direct service between creatives and the global audience.

• We give creatives, independent artists and performers a showcase for their talent and services. And they keep 100% of everything they make.
• We empower our audience and reward them every step of the way.
• We promise to treat our members ethically, fairly, honestly and with respect.
• Access to artist liaison and a supportive marketing team.

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03
Sep

7 Of The Best Music Sites and Blogs

We have scanned the internet and asked members what they think are the 7 of the best music sites and blogs. Basically, what's hot and what's not! Our choices may well differ from yours, so let's have the debate. Many things have changed in recent months and will change at an even greater pace now. With online streaming services we can enjoy our music for free or at a low cost. So let's get started with the ones we love. 1. Water and Music We love Water and Music which is an audio companion to the email newsletter of the same name, dedicated to unpacking the fine print behind big ideas in music and technology. The title comes from a conversation between Quincy Jones and Kendrick Lamar, in which the former declares: "The last things to leave this planet will be water and music." Host Cherie Hu is an award-winning freelance journalist and analyst focusing on the intersection of music, media and technology, with regular bylines in publications including Billboard, Forbes and Music Business Worldwide. 2. vampr We love Vampr. Vampr is an app that helps you discover, connect and collaborate with fellow musicians, the music industry and music lovers alike. Vampr stats show 33,798,736 swipes and 5,017,135 connections made in 198 countries worldwide. 3. Pitchfork We also love Pitchfork. Pitchfork has some awesome features such as best new music, and we really like the music reviews. The writers seem to be in the know and very much "thought leaders" in the music industry. They are continually updating the website with the latest information related to the music industry. In addition, Pitchfork hosts its own music festival which will be held in Chicago this year. 4. Hypebot We also love Hypebot. Hypebot is one of the most well-known online music sites in the industry, and there is good reason for that! The site is updated very regularly, so you know you are getting all the latest information possible. They also cover other areas such as “Music Tech”, “DIY” and “Charts”. You can also sign up to the Hypebot newsletter to get the daily lowdown on everything happening straight to your inbox! Hypebot covers a wide variety of topics in the music industry, so no matter what you are looking for, you’ll probably be able to find it here. They also have a charts section where you can filter by “emerging artists” or “established artists” as well as the country and city. And of course you can play artist tracks. 5. YourEDM Our next site is Your EDM, dedicated to Electronic Dance Music. Everything you need to stay up to date with the latest in electronic music can found here. This includes all the latest news as well as featured articles and sub-sections/ genres of EDM, like house and bass. On this site you even have the ability to download free songs, from a variety of different artists trying to make a name for themselves in the industry. All the different sub-genres are listed on the site, so even if your taste is really narrow in EDM, you can still find some great information. New info almost daily. Make sure you follow them on social media to get updates on the latest information. 6. All Music Next on our it's-gotta-be-hot list is All Music. All Music doesn’t really have as much news on the music industry as the others listed here, but their focus is mainly on providing information in new music and helping visitors discover their next obsession. They also provide recommendations if you create an account, and once you have rated albums, you will get recommendations on what to listen to next. Covering from all common genres including pop, rap, electronic, classical, blues, country and more. They provide an in-depth review of all the latest albums and give options on how to stream the tunes if you want to. There are three different ratings available to view, “All Music Rating”, “User Ratings” and “Your Rating” so you can have a more detailed view on what people think about a particular album. 7. JEENI Last but not least we love Jeeni, a new platform for Independent Musicians and Performers. JEENI is a multi-channel streaming service for original and unsigned talent. Jeeni provides a showcase for musicians and performers to put their talent in the spotlight, giving superfans the power to make them stars. The Jeeni promise is to treat their creative talent ethically, fairly, honestly and with respect. Additionally, Jeeni publishes its own blog, all about Jeeni and current industry news. Most importantly Jeeni commits to – No hype. No adverts. No rip-offs. No Fakes, and making sure that the artists get 100% of their direct sales. Find out more here That's all Folks!

10
Jun

The Death of Letitia

Jeeni has returned to Crowdcube to raise more funds for helping new talent. Jeeni founding director Mel Croucher says, “We’re ahead of our original schedule, but there’s still so much more to do. We need to scale our online platform globally now and build our mass artist showcases. Jeeni raised £100K in 6 days and we're working hard to get more investors on board. Then we can hit all our targets, and give our new artists the recognition they deserve.” If you want to see our pitch click HERE. Mel has been writing the best-loved column in top-selling tech magazines for over 30 years. Now he’s agreed to share his work with all our members. He’s a video games pioneer and musician, and to to find out more about Mel check out his Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Croucher. Here’s one of Mel’s latest! Black lives matter. Unless black lives feature in a videogame, in which case they don't matter a toss. I still remember the feeling of hope and despair when I played Daley Thompson's Decathlon for the first time. That was way back in the Olympic year of 1984, and it was a primitive sports simulation from Ocean software for a little home computer called the 48k Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Daley Thompson was an Olympic gold medal winner from Notting Hill. He had a fine body, and a great moustache, and according to his skin he was the son of his assassinated Nigerian dad. Anyway, I fired up the game and there on my glowing colour monitor was the pixilated figure of Daley, the great black athlete, running along a red cinder track. The thing was, the programmers had made him white. No, I couldn't believe it either. A huge crowd of spectators also appeared in the gameplay, and every one of them was as white as a Ku Klux Klan convention in a chalk pit. It's not as if no black characters ever appeared in videogames. Almost all the assassins, hoodlums, terrorists, monsters and mobsters were black, and their purpose was to be killed off willy nilly. Apart from Michael Jackson. He was the hero in a Sega videogame called Moonwalker and his role was to rescue kidnapped children and take them home. So there was nothing creepy about that, was there. Mind you, wee Michael was mostly as white in the game as he was in real life. For a real black and white issue from the early twenty-first century, I have revisited Ethnic Cleansing, developed by Resistance Records for PC desktop machines. That's the one where the white player gets sent off on a quest to murder blacks. It is equal opportunity racism, because you also score points for killing Latinos and Jews. And speaking of equal opportunities let's hear it for the computer character Letitia who appears in an update of Deus Ex, which is set in a cyberpunk future. Letitia lives on a rubbish dump, she is as horny as she is simple, and she speaks minstrel drivel in the sort of deep-South accent last heard in a Mel Brooks parody. You couldn't make it up. Except that's exactly what they did. And shame on you Mary DeMarle for writing it, Amanda Strawn for acting it, and Square Enix for publishing it. In the USA, over 70% of all African Americans play video games, but they make up less than 3% of game developers, which tells me quite a lot about the state of the play over there. This side of the pond, things are much better, where we have over 10% of people working in game development of a BAME demographic. That's a higher percentage than their number in the national working population, and way higher than in UK publishing, tv and music. This is good news, but it's where the good news ends. Last time I visited a major gaming studio in pre-lockdown, I did see several black faces. One was on security at street level, one was behind the reception desk, two were behind the counter in the canteen, and one was swilling out the bogs. The number of black and minority ethnic decision-makers in the UK computer gaming industry is shockingly low. As a result, race has lagged way behind gender and sexuality when it comes to stereotypes in gaming. Mainstream game designers tend not to question a norm, and they rarely rock the boat by refusing to carry out a questionable storyboard handed down to them by predominantly white hands from above. Most game designers I come across have less creative imagination than Rufus my Irish Setter, not to mention a much poorer sense of loyalty and the inability to lick their own genitalia. Video games have always followed movies in characterisation, and they are painfully stiff with stereotypes. Historically, lazy, myopic creatives have allocated blacks four roles - the violent black, the servile black, the sidekick black and the comedy black. I am removing sports games and music games from my list, since they exhibit no imagination whatsoever, but simply copy real people from the real world, unless you happen to be Daley Thompson or Michael Jackson, of course. The blame for all this lies squarely with the course leaders who purport to teach video game creation in universities and colleges. I have never met a creative course leader who is darker skinned than me, and I'm a sort of mottled puce. They may well instruct their students to bung in a character of the negro persuasion as if to fill some sort of racial minority quota, a bit like when those tv adverts suddenly started to feature blacks doing non-traditional things. Like working in building societies, and driving new cars. The change is coming through the independent video game creators, the so-called home-brew developers, and the change had begun in the UK way before the Black Lives Matter movement gathered such momentum. Creative change always comes from the mavericks and rarely from the corporates. As for the people who play the games, next time you come across a racial stereotype you know what to do. Take a knee. To the groin of the writer, programmer and publisher. The Death of Letitia, from Deus Ex: Human Revolution Click HERE to visit or return to jeeni.com

11
Mar

A Legend, A Bus, A Fan and A New Chapter

A Legend, A Bus, A Fan and A New Chapter. In 2018, our chosen charity ‘Arms Around the Child’ reached out for Jeeni’s help. In their efforts to help their cause, the charity had acquired a vehicle with history, was completely unique and of significance to its previous owner and his fans. However, at this stage it needed serious help. That help sadly, became a burden to the charity and its finances, so the vehicle had to be sold. Here the story unfolds............... A Legend Back in 1970, Sir Paul McCartney had a life-changing moment. We’ve all had them. Life takes a turn and you find yourself going in a slightly, or very different direction. For legend Sir Paul, it was one door closing and another opening. A year later, he formed a band called Wings, with Denny Seiwell and Denny Laine, plus his wife, Linda. After an initial album release and some university gigging, McCartney was enjoying his simpler life away from the fast lane. He decided to take the band on the road for the summer, touring Europe. Sir Paul McCartney - A Legend Wings on their Tour Bus A Bus In 1972 the ‘Wings Over Europe’ tour took place – 25 dates over two months and 7,500 miles. All fairly standard stuff for any band, apart from the mode of transport. McCartney decided the band would be travelling in style, in the form of a vintage 1953 Bristol Double Decker ‘Open Topped’ bus, registration WNO 481. Carnaby Street boutique owner, Tom Slater was charged with fitting out the bus, giving it a bright paint job and livery announcing the tour and band had arrived. The band ate, slept and practiced on the bus, lying in the sun on the top deck writing their next album ‘Red Rose Speedway’ and even the track ‘Live and Let Die’ for the first James Bond movie for Roger Moore. WNO 481 - Wings Tour Bus A Fan(s) After the successful tour, a handful of other worldly adventures and a 2017 tweet from Sir Paul asking if anyone knew where the bus might be, WNO 481 (as it’s affectionately known) ended up being rescued and returned to the UK by ‘Arms Around the Child’ trustee Justin James. It was his difficult decision in 2018, to have to sell the bus and relieve the charity of the financial burden it had become. However, for Super-Fan Tom Jennings and his wife Rose, it was a dream come true and a life ambition fulfilled. Tom has since set about completing the restoration of the bus, bringing in fans from all over the world and setting up a fabulous site www.1972wingstourbus.com giving regular updates on progress of WNO 481, as well as the bus’s colourful history. It’s a fabulous read! A New Chapter On the back of this new connection, Jeeni are very pleased to have created a working partnership with Tom and Rose, and their merry band of ‘Busketeers’. We hope to work with them, their amazing bus, Sir Paul and our hefty music connections to create new and positive adventures for WNO 481. Jeeni have been granted access to the bus for a certain number of weeks per year and our intention is to use these weeks to create events and gigs for our Jeeni artists to perform. For Jeeni SuperFans there will be the chance to secure early tickets and memorabilia for the events and the bands performing. As with the emergence of Wings, the band and their music, we would like the bus to play a part in the launch of new music talent, giving performers the chance to thank supportive fans, share the experience and excitement of live performing, as well as creating new fanbases. Jeeni as a platform, has a large, growing audience of music lovers, as well as performers. The instant opportunities offered with their engaged social media, allows for followers to be ‘teased’ with where upcoming venues may be, before official announcements and tickets are released, creating a buzz and anticipating excitement. This cool, utterly unique piece of British rock and roll and engineering history has much to look forward to, as do the generations of music fans past and present, who will have the opportunity to be entertained by the Jeeni and ‘Wings Over Europe’ bus and events. www.jeeni.com www.1972wingstourbus.com www.armsaroundthechild.org

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