Mo Hippa has just (November 2008) received a 4 star review in Mojo Magazine. Check out the review below the soundfiles: All tracks taken from Jon Cleary and the Absolute Monster Gentlemen's album "Mo Hippa". The copyright of all recordings is owned by FHQ Records/Jon Cleary. © 2008 FHQ Records/Jon Cleary, all rights reserved. "Cheatin On You" Lo-Fi | Hi-Fi "When U Get Back" Lo-Fi | Hi-Fi "Mo Hippa" Lo-Fi | Hi-Fi The copyright of all recordings is owned by Jon Cleary. © 1997 - 2007 Jon Cleary, all rights reserved. "So Damn Good" MP3 "When You Get Back" MP3 "Unnecessarily Mercenary" MP3

Jon Cleary and the Absolute Monster Gentlemen "Mo Hippa" CD Available to purchase from this site for £10.99 including postage and packaging. Click here for sterling cheque orders Click below for credit card payments

JON CLEARY - MO HIPPA REVIEW

4 Star Review, Mojo Magazine, November 08 Issue.

"From the Garden of England, breathtaking New Orleans-style piano."

Crazy story - a guitarist from Kent ditches his instrument en route to New Orleans and compensates by doing it Steinway. That was a good few years ago, since when Cleary has become a pianist whose name is ranked alongside those of Professor Longhair and James Booker, even by Crescent City locals. On this live date, recorded in Australia last year, he and his trio excite and enchant, turning up the heat to full power on Longhair’s Go To the Mardi Gras and The Meters’ People Say before easing the tempo back to early morn downtown for Port Street Blues. The band stay tight throughout, providing the perfect surround-sound to Cleary’s rugged vocals, Eddie Christmas proving a drummer of particularly musical ability, aware of light and shade, while guitarist Big D Perkins and bassist Cornell G. Williams add an array of licks to savour.

By Fred Dellar

JON CLEARY - CD REVIEW's

Jon Cleary, a British pianist who moved to New Orleans, swept out nightclubs and slept in closets to study at the feet of the master, Professor Longhair, has cropped up recently playing in Bonnie Raitt's band and backing Van Morrison on Martin Scorsese's "The Blues" PBS series. On "Pin Your Spin," his second album with his crack two-man band, Cleary gives his spare, Meters- style funk some fresh twists, sings 'em like he means it and plays his posterior off. People are going to find out about a talent like his. - Joel Selvin

Once in a while, a great album falls into your lap that makes you wonder, "Who in the hell is that and where have they been hiding?" Grooves that could only emanate from the Big Easy are oozing out of this disc from a chap born and raised in jolly olde England. (The last two decades that Mr. Cleary has lived in N'awlins certainly rubbed off on the man.) From the nazzty clavinet that opens up the album on the title track, this thang is shtanky like Bootsy - if he was sittin' in with the Neville Brothers. "Oh No No No" sounds like something straight out of the Dr. John songbook, and "Ain't Nuttin Nice" is a groovin' instrumental that wouldn't be out of place on a Meters' album This is definitely a Crescent City album, but other influences creep in as well. "Funky Munky Biznis" sounds like it came outta tha' Mothership; "Best Ain't Good Enough" is an a capella doo-wop number; and the closing tune "Zulu Strut," is straight Salsa. Need your voodoo funk? J.C. is your man. - Steve Pandis

Move over Jelly Roll, Fats, Professor Longhair and Doctor John. There’s a new Crescent City piano master in town. Standing firmly in the time-honored tradition that has produced piano geniuses for close to a hundred years, transplanted English keyboard maestro Cleary and his Absolute Monster Gentlemen create a glorious groove on Pin Your Spin. Combining doo-wop, gospel, the Cuban Son tradition, blues and – above all – a heavy dollop of P-Funk bass-quake, Cleary and his band stomp through a dozen tracks that considerably spice up the already-rich N’awlins piano gumbo.

"Singer-pianist Jon Cleary is English by birth but Dixie by nature, with a low steamy croon and a pumping-ivory drive as funky as the city he has long called home: New Orleans. Cleary can be an absolute monster on his own; I’ve seen him pin a full house to the back wall at Tipitina’s with an explosive solo charge through Professor Longhair’s "Big Chief." But Cleary’s full combo R&B is as broad, deep and roiling as the Mississippi river, the combined swinging product of local keyboard tradition, Cleary’s vocal-songwriting flair for moody Seventies soul and the spunky-Meters roll of his Gentlemen. Pin Your Spin is fragrant with the mixed pepper of classic Stevie Wonder, vintage Allen Toussaint, Dr. John’s Gris-Gris, the Average White Band’s "Pick up the Pieces" and, in the closing instrumental "Zulu Strut," the energy and memory of the late piano god James Booker. It’s a heady mixture. The Cuban polyrhythms of “Zulu Strut” and “Oh No No No” recall Buena Vista Social Club piano master Ruben Gonzalez, while “Ain’t Nuttin’ Nice” recaptures the groove and grit of southern-friend fusion bands like Sea Level and The Dixie Dregs. “Smile in a While” is a gospel-influenced soul workout, while “Doin’ Bad Feelin’ Good” and “Funky Munky Biznis” compare favorably to Stevie Wonder funk-pop classics like “Superstition” and Livin’ for the City.” The Absolute Monster Gentlemen are spectacular throughout. Derwin “Big D” Perkins’ impossibly syncopated stop/start guitar and Cornell Williams’ popping bass particularly stand out, and Perkins, Williams and gust Ivan Neville sing up a gospel storm behind Cleary on nearly every track, tossing in revelatory whoops, asides and swooping glissandos. There’s no denying the righteous funk at work here. - Rolling Stone Magazine

Cleary is a solid, if unspectacular, vocalist, and a couple of his songs are generic Mardi Gras party tunes designed to get the Midwestern housewives up-and-dancing on Bourbon Street. “Agent 00 Funk” (with a license to chill, no less) is particularly egregious, leaving me neither shaken nor stirred – only annoyed by the kitsch. But these quibbles aside, this is an absolute monster band, as funky as the come, and they’ve created an album that is an absolute joy to hear - Andy Whitman

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