KENT JAZZ NEWS INTERVIEW K J N:  Growing up in Liverpool must have hard, but fun what do remember most about growing up there apart from its football? Mark :Well, we do have suburbs in Liverpool . Being born there doesn't make you automatically a stereotypical scouser.I grew up in the green pleasant part where John Lennon went to school so I've always found his 'Working Class Hero' pose to be bogus. Having said that the Beatles would be my happiest memory of Liverpool . But if you detest football, as I do, there's no point living in Liverpool. K J N :  what was the first record you bought if you still have it do you play it?   Mark:It might be an early Beatles single. I haven't had any records for about fifteen years. The Beatles sound sickly sweet now although I love hearing Brad Mehldau expanding Beatles tunes. I never grew out of Miles Davis though. My admiration deepens the more I hear. My earliest jazz record would have been an Alexis Korner LP, a very jazzy blues group featuring Alan Skidmore and Chris Pyne.  Fierce, innovative music.   KJN: What made you take up music as a living there must have been times when you thought there must be easy way of making a living and why jazz when other styles make more money?   Mark: I didn't have a choice as I was rather wild as a teenager, and society was itself in turmoil. I was a long haired hippie then, I'm  a shaven headed beatnik now... I was in a successful pop group for a while, it's me playing the saxophone solo on Tom Robinson's War Baby, ancient history now of course. I've done a lot of purely commercial music work, theatre, functions, restaurants plus sessions and tours with Bert Jansch, Roy Harper, Jimmy Witherspoon and Kiki Dee. Most of the time it has indeed been a struggle. I told my son Raphael on the back of "Tribute to Paul Desmond" 'Be a lawyer'. Maybe Mike Brecker's Dad had the right idea, he was a lawyer and a musician. According to Brecker, "He sued by day and swung by night."   KJN: After studying in Leeds you spent some time in Munich, and Hong Kong before coming to London . How did you find the jazz scene in Munich which is in tune in to jazz than in Hong Kong?   Mark: Munich and Germany itself has a marvelous network of jazz clubs which is supported by the state. Hong Kong was difficult as I was playing the music of Glen Miller five hours a day for six months with just one day off, during a typhoon. As a result I've always agreed with one of Glen's friends who said, "Glen should have lived and the music should have died."   KJN: When starting out who was your inspiration and did you model why your style on this musician. Later on in  career did you develop a style or playing that was more you?   Mark: I had a bit of a Coltrane phase on tenor but I eventually found my own voice on alto and soprano, trying to play melodically rather than a stream of pre planned licks. Trying to get my own sound and play from the heart.   KJN: Mark as you, are involved in teaching  do you think that standards are getting better, and if so are students becoming more technical at the cost of playing from their soul and making mistakes?   Mark: It would be hard to disagree that standards are improving all the time. I've always listened to emotional players rather than the more correct technicians. I just can't find any reason to listen to Wynton Marsalis as he's so stiff and cold. Give me Miles any day. Some people are able to reach inside themselves and project something and some don't even try. It's their choice. Not sure if it can be taught.   KJN:  How would you describe your new CD and will you planning any new CDs?   Mark: It's the first time I recorded live then programmed words and music on top. It's a lot livelier, much more intense than my previous albums. A number of tracks were generated purely on my laptop so it's more funk and groove oriented than some previous studio albums. There's some fine guitarists featured like Dominc Ashworth, Jim Mullen and Dave Cliff and the brilliant groove drummer Rob Brown. There is a little poetry from John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester , Shakespeare and excerpts from a Martin Amis interview on Jihad and masculinity mixed in with the music. Some of the tracks are a tribute to the lush 1970s Creed Taylor productions and some is full on dance, eclectic house pushed to the max. It's different...either the relaunch or a noisy suicide note... I still want to make another quartet CD capturing some of the more intense live playing of the quartet.   KJN:   The new  CD   "Gease in the Groves " features  many of your friends, can you tell us who will members of your new quartet?   Mark: I just had a fantastic gig with drummer Winston Clifford and guitarist Nigel Price. We're all au fait with funk, soul and bebop and, hopefully, we can take the soul jazz tradition forward. The hammond organ/keyboards player could be anyone from Neil Angilley, Dave Frankel, or John Donaldson.   KJN : Quite a number of  the material is on "Gease in the Groves" is from your pen,  How do you go about composing, do you just sit down and start, or do you get an idea in your mind and keep worrying at it till you get it right , or can you go into a recording study and just compose  at will?   Mark: I still compose on the guitar, it's my second instrument. This Mac Powerbook is very addictive whether for composing, writing or surfing the net.   KJN: What made you move from London to Kent, and do you miss the jazz scene in London?   Mark: My landlord needed his flat back which shifted us down to Farningham, which is a very pretty village. Since then I've been outsourced to a houseboat with a view of Rochester Castle . The jazz audience here is less blase than in London .   KJN: Can you see jazz developing new styles or keep going back to its roots in the future?   Mark : It would seem that jazz, like classical, has mostly become a repertoire music. People will continue with various fusion styles as I suppose I have done with Grease in the Grooves but you can't beat the modern jazz canon. Some critics complain about the Great American Song Book but they're the best songs ever written. Why should we deprive ourselves of this magnificent resource?   KJN:Do you have any other interests other than jazz, in other words how do you relax?   Mark: I've written five books, four for Serpent's Tail including a black comedy murder mystery trilogy and recently a young adult/ fantasy book called War School for Troubadour. My son gave me the idea when he said he'd like a war game scenario based on "All the armies from the past, the present and the future. In space!" By the time I've done that and some journalism, there is only time for watching Peep Show, The Wire and Family Guy.  Or maintaining my website MarkRamsden.co.uk