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** We regret to inform you that Little Bob's London date has been postponed until the spring. (Bob had a bad fall in Le Harve yesterday and broke his arm in two places). **

Legendary French rockers Little Bob Story see their classic 1977 album "Off The Rails" reissued this month and to celebrate, their frontman plays a super-rare London show with his new band Little Bob Blues Bastards at the 100 Club.

2014

We continued exploring Bob Thiele’s fascinating Flying Dutchman label, putting out Gil Scott-Heron’s second and third albums on CD and vinyl. Those records were as important as Marvin Gaye’s and Curtis Mayfield’s in the new wave of black awareness and commentary emerged in the US in the early 70s. Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong may not be the names that immediately spring to mind when talking about this surge of black politically inspired music but the albums they made for Flying Dutchman were, in their own way, part of this new movement. Ellington’s album was a live celebration of a century of inspirational black figures. Armstrong’s was a celebration of the jazz pioneer himself, including ‘Give Peace A Chance’ and a re-cut of ‘What A Wonderful World’ - which Thiele co-wrote.

If you’re reading this with no prior knowledge of the Porretta Soul Festival – which is unlikely, as I have been gushing about how good it is pretty much since Ace got its website up and running – you have just missed the 29th edition.  Quite a big ‘miss’ if you are a soul and R&B fan, as the weekend of July 21-23 2016 was exceptional to say the least.

Both myself and Ace Records were deeply saddened to hear of the recent passing of Ron Kavana, one of the label's former recording artists and compiler of a series of heritage Irish CDs for the company's Globestyle imprint.

 I very much regret not having had any thoughts of interviewing the man during the twenty or so years I followed his music and got to know him to some extent, so the following piece as the heading suggests is written largely from memory with more than a little help from album notes and credits and retained scraps of conversations with the man himself. The likes of Wikipedia have been purposely avoided. It also helps that I was privileged to work at both Rock On and Ace Records.