Loose Tubes, the anarchic big band that blew British jazz wide open in the 1980s, acquired mythical status in the years following their demise, not least because all their recordings promptly went out of print.
The title of this third instalment from their valedictory performance at Ronnie Scott’s in September 1990 refers, says the collective’s instigator-in-chief Django Bates, to that bittersweet moment when Loose Tubes had to depart the stage so that the individual careers of its musicians could begin.
In light of the music that has flowed from ex-Loose Tubers over the years, not least Bates himself, it was probably worth it, but to hear again those joyous African grooves and that boisterous horn section, it’s hard not wonder what might have been if Loose Tubes had hung tight.
