Oh, woe! Only a few weeks after my long-time French jazz favourites the No-Name Trio called it a day, Beijing Daze announces that Black Cat Bone - the dirty blues rockers who have been the city's pre-eminent laowai party band for the last 6 or 7 years - are also retiring. This has been on the cards since they lost their original drummer, Jon Campbell, at the end of last year, and perhaps for rather longer; their collaboration had become a little more intermittent as the band members developed various side projects of their own. Jaime and Tobi, of course, are still going strong with their metal band Bad Mamasan, and the irrepressible Des McGarry will get up on stage and sing any time someone asks him to... but I worry about how I'm going to get a fix of Royce's soulful harmonica from now on. That I'm really going to miss.
Still, you can check out a few clips of the boys in action at 2 Kolegas a few years ago on their YouTube channel; not great sound quality, unfortunately, and disappointingly short excerpts of each song. [There used to be quite a lot more performance videos of them on YouTube, but they all seem to have disappeared - or else they're impossible to find, because 'Black Cat Bone' is such a common band/song name!!] You can also sample some of their complete songs at Last.FM, or buy their one-and-only album Drinkin' Alone from CD Baby.
Here's the best bit of them I could find - a performance at Jianghu about 4 years ago, part of the awesome 'Blues Harmonica Blowout' party organised by another fine harp player, Woodie Wu. [More of BCB playing at that here.]
So long, boys - and thanks for all the good times, great times.
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