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Black Coffee

About Me


Black Coffee: The Life Story...


The Band started some time in our deep and distant past as Ben, Eddie and Alex playing 'Europa' by Santana. Until, by a random coincidence, Andy missed his bus on the same day as having his trumpet in, and thus, the band was born.
These guys began by playing 'Everybody Needs Somebody to Love' which soon became a favourite song. They were quickly joined by singers Stevie and Lauren as backing singers, who then moved to take the main vocals. Simon was introduced to the band as the piano player (Ben playing predominantly sax and guitar at the time). This group developed and perfected this song until one day, in the beginning of year 10, they realised that to make the song just right they would need harmonica. By random coincidence (nothing to do with having seen the band play and really wanting to join) George had recently taught himself how to play harmonica. However, there had been another event in the mean time: Simon had quit the band. So when it came to George's first ever practice with the band he was presented with Ben's sax and told how to play 'Everybody'.
Shortly after, Gabe was invited to join to play sax, therefore creating a stronger, better sounding horn section. We started to play another song, 'Funky Nassau' by the Blues Brothers. We soon found ourselves playing in the Christmas Concert (where we wore silly hats and strange moustaches... but that's a story for the blog!). The week before the concert we had a new addition to the band: Anthony (L'anth) who had recently started the guitar. He was thrown (metaphorically speaking) into the deep end when we asked him to learn a complex guitar part in a week! . Anthony, being a legend, picked up the guitar part perfectly and we went down a storm at the Concert.
The band continued in a similar manner until the following Easter when there was a controversy with a Battle of the Bands competition. This "controversy" lead quite promptly to our singers quitting the band in a cloud of feeble excuses.
In June of 2007, Lauren was invited into the band to play Alto Sax. She fitted in extremely well and helped make the Wooton Basset, our first ever Gig, sound great! (read blog 1 for further details). Now with a band of 8 members, Black Coffee started to sound like a real R&B/Funk band.
Now, in 2008, it is fair to say that we have progressed very well and our band now after a few trials have found a suitable singer for the band: Emily. (More details coming soon)
Thanks for viewing our page.
Wake up and smell the Coffee!

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 19/05/2007
Band Website: www.MySpace.com/blackcoffee0
Band Members:
Ben- Piano (arranger)
Alex - Drums
Eddie - Bass
Anthony - Guitar
George - Tenor Sax (junior arranger)
Andy - Trumpet
Gabe - Alto Sax
Lauren - Alto Sax
Influences: We all have our seperate influences when playing in the band, however we were originally influenced by the Blues Brothers, as we played alot of their songs.

However, individually it is fair to say that we have a range of influences.

Ben is very influenced by Jools Holland and such blues and boogie pianists such as Daniel Smith and Oscar Peterson.

Eddie is his own influence and has a very individual playing style. He is a fan of The Blues Brothers, Stevie Wonder and Jools Holland. In fact, he likes all the artists that The Band cover.

Alex is classically trained but he is big fan of swing and that is definetly his forté. to

Lauren, like Alex, has also been very much classically 'trained', and as a result, isn't really influenced so much by improvisations.

Andy and Gabe don't really go in for listening to jazz and blues and have not really been influenced by it, though Gabe could be said to be influenced in some ways by funk.

George has been mostly influenced by the older stuff, like Miles Davis, and the solos from songs on the radio and his blues harmonica skills (few) have been influenced by a great harp player named Sonny Boy Williamson.

And to finish, there is Anthony, who plays classical organ and taught himself guitar in about a week and as a result has his own style, yet since then has been influenced by lots of rock and blues guitarists.
Sounds Like: Our style of music is quite diverse and as what we mostly do is cover songs, we would hope that we sound like the artists that we cover.

Stevie Wonder
The Blues Brothers
Jools Holland and his Rhythm and Blues Orchestra (but slightly smaller...)

Our sound really depends on the type of song we are doing. Sometimes we do funky, up-beat songs, but we also do slower, softer sounding songs.
Record Label: Unsigned

My Blog

Malmesbury Abbey Gardens (or- taking cool jazz to the limit)

So we arrived, on the day we were supposed to have torrential rain, and found it to be warm, sunny and most agreable. So we sat in the sun and chatted. Most lovely.Then the sun went in, and what, when...
Posted by on Sun, 09 Mar 2008 10:41:00 GMT

Malmesbury Scout Hut (or- something in the water....)

After a frantic days practise we arrived, stoked up to the eye balls and raring to play to yet another ecstatic crowd who just couldn't get enough of our music! We arrived on a high, fresh from the fi...
Posted by on Sat, 22 Dec 2007 15:47:00 GMT

Jazz musicians

Here are a couple of things that I have discovered about jazz musicians over the years....1) It is perfectly acceptable to not be able to do something 'at this time of the morning' until about 12:30&n...
Posted by on Tue, 04 Sep 2007 09:15:00 GMT

Lea and Garsdon School Fête (or- Serious Cream Tea)

Just got back from the Lea and Garsdon school fête, where we were doing our bit for the community (and getting some exposure) by playing some music for them.Somehow I managed to be the first pers...
Posted by on Fri, 06 Jul 2007 08:51:00 GMT

Kingshill School (or-The adventures of Pand's fan club)

We played a gig last Thursday at a school in Kingshill School for a bands night to send some kids to Iceland (are they not wanted here then?) and we had such a great time! They are great at ...
Posted by on Thu, 14 Jun 2007 21:59:00 GMT

Groupies...

It was nice to find out yesterday that our band seems to have got lots of groupies! Way!If we can get this many after one gig, we cant be doing that bad! 
Posted by on Wed, 06 Jun 2007 19:13:00 GMT

Our First Gig! (or- the terrorising of Wootten Bassett)

By George...but then this whole blog is.The time is 7:55, and in a back room of the Wootten Bassett Memorial Hall, eight figures wait exitedly for their first ever curtain call....It was pretty exitin...
Posted by on Sun, 03 Jun 2007 11:32:00 GMT

Lauren!

Congratulations to our newest band member!!!We've had a big practise today in preparation for the gig tommorow, and due to Me, Ben and Eddie thinking that we were going to have no horns for said ...
Posted by on Fri, 01 Jun 2007 06:15:00 GMT