Issue 83 / November 2017

Anti Social Jazz Club present
a weekend of homage to
the jazz café culture of
Tokyo with a photography
exhibition, and a host of
performances and DJ sets.
This November sees the Anti Social Jazz Club
launch their inaugural temporary space
dedicated to highlighting jazz and its connected
genres in Liverpool, through an experimental
event programme combining music, art and culture.
Located in Buyers Club, Anti Social Jazz Club present
KINKAJOU, a Japanese-influenced pop-up jazz café
inspired by the country’s history of jazz cafés, kissatens
and dance halls which date back to 1933 when Chigusa,
the oldest jazz café in Japan, opened.
The Kinkajou Pop-Up Jazz Café will present a
well-considered blend of live music and vinyl-only DJ
sets by disc jockeys from Liverpool and the North of
England across four days from 2nd to 5th November
at the Hardman Street venue. The first of its kind, the
temporary jazz space by Anti Social Jazz Club is a nod
to the Liverpool jazz scene in the 1940s through to the
60s, which included the The Exchange Hotel, The Majorca
Bar, The Jacaranda Coffee Bar, Mardi Gras Jazz Club,
the Iron Door Club and The Cavern Club. The pop-up’s
name is a hat tip to a former jazz club which, if research
serves us rightly, was opened by Chesterfield-born
painter and printmaker Robert Percival, who spent over
40 years in Liverpool having studied at the Liverpool
School of Art for five years. After this, Robert spent a
year in Paris for a scholarship
in painting Académie de la
Grande Chaumière from 1949
“Japanese jazz
cafés and bars
are often hidden,
insular worlds
where time
ceases to exist”
to 1950 and frequently visited
the Parisian music and jazz
clubs at the time – including the
Existentialist Club of Jean-Paul
Sartre – before opening The
Kinkajou Club on Slater Street.
The opening night of the
run features a TOKYO JAZZ
JOINTS photography exhibition
in collaboration with Weavers
Door and Edwin. Founded
in 2015 by Northern Irish
photographer Philip Arneill and
American writer and DJ James
Catchpole, the Tokyo Jazz Joints
photography project chronicles Japan’s hidden and rapidly
disappearing world of jazz bars and ‘kissaten’ coffee
shops. Arneill explains the ongoing Tokyo Jazz Joints
photography project:
“Japanese jazz cafés and bars are often hidden,
insular worlds where time ceases to exist, spaces
removed from the speed and chaos of the modern urban
landscape. Tokyo Jazz Joints is a visual chronicle of this
world; an attempt to capture and preserve, if only from
our perspective, the transient beauty of these spaces.”
The jazz café culture in Japan grew organically in the
years after WWII, as venues where fans could gather
and listen to the latest records from the United States
and Europe. Imported records – let alone turntables and
speakers – were a luxury few could afford in those days
of recovery from the war. The act of going to a café and
listening to a new release in a social setting became the
norm for a generation of urban Japanese. At its height,
areas like Shibuya and Shinjuku in central Tokyo had
dozens of these cafés and bars scattered around the main
station plazas.
Slowly, the cafés began to disappear as economic
development continued and listening to music at home
became the norm. Some establishments transformed into
night-time only bars when it was no longer profitable to
open for coffee-time. Fewer and fewer customers would
spend leisurely afternoons immersed in jazz, books and
coffee. As of 2015, there are approximately 130 jazz
cafés and bars spread throughout the Tokyo Metropolitan
area alone, a huge number compared to most cities, but
down from the peak of more than 250 in the early 1970s.
“Year by year, the old jazz joints around town close
their doors as the men and women who own them age,
with their children moving on to other more ‘legitimate’
or lucrative occupations,” Arneill says, drawing from his
extensive research into a world hidden in plain sight.
“Tokyo Jazz Joints is our attempt to let you into this slowly
vanishing part of Japanese culture. These are small,
sometimes tiny, intimate locations where you can lose
yourself in the world’s greatest music.”
Alongside the Tokyo Jazz Joints exhibition launch,
visitors will be entertained by Barcelona-based jazz duo
Fishprint, a new outfit from Nick Branton (who recently
relocated to Barcelona from Liverpool), and Catalonian
Pere Xirau. Fishprint’s harmonious blend of folk, noise and
free jazz will be complimented by DJ sets by Black Lodge
Brewery’s Paul Seiffert, Al English and Anti Social Jazz
Club residents ASJC Lee, Tony Seasman and Tiz.
Friday 3rd November is a vinyl-only affair with jazzinspired
DJ sets by Keith Marley, Andy James and Danny
Fitzgerald of Grooveyard, Dig Vinyl’s Carl Emery and
Andy Smith, while Jacques Malchance of Upitup Records
takes us into Saturday morning. The headline DJ set has
been curated in honour of Ritchie Barton (see column
opposite): Barton was one of the Cunard Yanks who
sailed between Liverpool and New York on the Cunard
ocean liners during the 1950s and 60s. Barton, now 85,
fell in love with jazz music during his time at sea and fully
immersed himself in the New York
club scene, seeing the likes of Louis
Armstrong, Miles Davis, Count
Basie and Nina Simone perform.
Over his time spent in New York,
Barton collected vinyl which
returned with him to Liverpool. To
relive the good old days in New
York, the ASJC x Ritchie Barton DJ
set will be presenting Barton’s vinyl
collection (the majority of which
remains unplayed), selected by
Barton himself and spun by ASJC
Lee for an evening of New York jazz
vibes.
Saturday 4th November
sees a selection of DJ sets in
the Buyers Club bar, while
upstairs is an evening dedicated to live music with
exciting performances by Blind Monk Trio, who will
be showcasing music from their forthcoming album,
plus Harambe Maoni and the launch of the Anti Social
Jazz Band, an experimental outfit with special guests
lead by Liverpool-based musicians James Warren and
Luke Bennett. DJ sets in the Buyers Club bar include
Liam Flanders, Roger Williams and John Clement (Tuff
Love Soul Club), Mick Jones (Madnice/No Fakin), James
Zremba and Josh Aitman (Melodic Distraction) and Elliot
Hutchinson (Dig Vinyl).
The final day of the Kinkajou Pop-Up Jazz Café takes
visitors on a musical journey from jazz to world music and
everything else in between, with DJ sets from Alfred Lion
Appreciation Society, Melodic Distraction and Sisbis. They
also bring Manchester-based jazz duo Skeltr (Sam Healey
and Craig Hanson) and their high energy, electrifying jazz
to Liverpool. Sunday ends with a takeover by Liverpoolbased
Wide Open, with DJ sets by Dr Harvey, Louis
Gardiner and Josh Cherry Disco, plus a live performance
from Ranga. Headed by Wide Open’s Ranga, it’s the
evolution of his Ranga & Harambe project. The DJ
and producer, who has produced remixes for Afriquoi,
Nuybian Twist and Flamingods is the perfect fit to bring
proceedings to a close at the Pop-Up Jazz Café. !
Words: Lee Fleming
Photography: Philip Arneill
antisocialjazzclub.com
Kinkajou Pop-Up Jazz Café takes place from 2nd to 5th
November at Buyers Club
FEATURE
RITCHIE
BARTON
The founder of Anti Social Jazz
Club, Lee Fleming, speaks with a
personal hero and inspiration for a
whole thread of the Kinkajou Popup
Jazz Café series.
Every now and again you meet someone who fascinates
you, a colourful character with so many stories to tell
you’re scrambling for a pen and paper to make sure
you don’t miss out on any of the details. This happened
recently for me when I met born and bred Scouser RITCHIE
BARTON, a former merchant seaman and jazz aficionado.
Introduced by a mutual friend because we’re both ‘jazzers’, it
didn’t take long for Ritchie and I to find common ground in the
form of the New York jazz scene during the 1950s and 1960s. As
a personal fan of Thelonious Monk, Dave Brubeck and Stan Getz
to name only a few it was easy listening when Ritchie described
his time as a Cunard Yank, sailing the Cunard ocean liners
between 1952 and 1962.
Ritchie, now 85, has never smoke or drank, meaning that
when he and his fellow sailors docked into New York, Ritchie
opted for the theatre, opera and live music over the bars and clubs
of New York. As we sit at the Naked Lunch Café on Smithdown
Road, Ritchie explains how most of the jazz he likes is from the
late 1940s through the 1950s into the 1960s. Big bands are
particular favourites of his and he names great soloists such as
Stan Kenton, Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw and Count Basie. For
Ritchie, the key is keeping the melody, something which couldn’t
be said for many of the other jazz men at the time.
Amazingly, the likes of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charles
Mingus, Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins didn’t interest
Ritchie, though he saw some of them in New York – he much
preferred the cool West Coast jazz by the likes of Dave Brubeck,
Gerry Mulligan and Shorty Rodgers. During his time at sea, which
spanned over a decade, Ritchie was sailing in and out of New York
each week between 1958 and 1962. When in the States, Ritchie
visited iconic jazz venues including Birdland, The Blue Note, The
Hickory House, Metronome, Basin Street and The Apollo.
At the same time, a nascent culture for jazz cafés sprang up
in Liverpool as forerunners of the skiffle (and then beat) scene,
of which The Kinkajou on Duke Street was just one. It is with this
history in mind, and partly as a celebration of Ritchie Barton’s life
and passion for jazz, that this series of pop-up events has been
put together. And who knows, we may even inspire the next
generation of jazz pioneers right here in Liverpool.
Photography: Hannah Cassidy / @hannahcassidycreative
Friday 3rd November sees Ritchie Barton selecting some of his
all-time jazz favourites to perform in a two hour ‘vinyl only’ DJ set,
as part of the Kinkajou Pop-Up Jazz Café.
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