Mixtapes and old friends

I come from a small town in Northern Spain, in the Basque Country. Although we had a good jazz festival nearby, in San Sebastián, music-wise there was not much going on. A neighbour ran the only bookshop in town, and I spent many idle hours at the best of two tiny record shops. This was a time before the internet, before mp3, before recordable CDs. Any music sharing was made through borrowing of actual records, or dubbing on cassettes.

Amy Winehouse, Frank, and all that jazz

Amy Winehouse died a few days ago. A lot has been written about the many extra-musical aspects of her career and death, so I won't add anything on that, although there are quite a few things from her story that I don't understand.

The first time I saw her was on Jools Holland's programme, on BBC2, back in 2003. For those who don't know it, former Squeeze and currently boogie-woogie and big band pianist Holland introduces—briefly—all sorts of bands playing live, one tune at a time, in a circular set, so each band is facing all the rest. By all sorts of bands I mean anything from new artists to old stars: in one ocassion he had "bad boys of jazz" The Bad Plus playing beside masters of 21st century rumba catalana Ojos de Brujo.