Month: September 2013

16 July 2012

“The heat, the damned heat!”
I’m not sure who said that originally, but I have visions of a sweat drenched Niven-esque officer type snarling it out through clenched teeth somewhere on a lot in Pinewood done up to look like a rattan bar in deepest Dar-Es-Salaam. Today, in the Home Office, or shed, I was getting similarly Niven-esque myself whilst attempting to do my VAT return in the sweltering heatwave we have upon us at present. I’ve mentioned my propensity for perspiring buckets before, and today I was at it like a good’un. Whilst I won’t pretend that preparing my Profit And Mainly Loss accounts are on a par with either driving an Austin K2 over the Sahara, or constructing a large wooden bridge for the Burma Railway, by the time I had the figures ready for HM Customs and Excise I looked every inch the extra from Tenko. To add to the torment, the new Sun Terrace Swimming Pool, or Tesco’s £7.99 inflatable paddler, we’ve just had built was looking untenably inviting, and so it was with a considerable gasp of relief that as soon as the last entry was tapped into the laptop I was able to don the Flags Of All Nations Speedos and leap into the deep end to do a few lengths, or in fact just clamber in and sit there fizzing, in a manner akin to a knob of butter in a frying pan. Yes, I was a knob of butter, melting in the huge pastry crust of my own humble pie after initially reacting to Her Indoors’ plans for the construction of our new aqua palace with a curled lip. Leisure centre, blood cooler and backdrop for model seaplanes, it has been without a doubt the best single batch of £7.99 that the Domestic Expenditure Control Department (Or Her Indoors) has ever spent.

Summer’s really here. After the last few years’ worth of dismal endurance tests of humid months of drizzle, it’s baking hot again, just like in the good old days. Although for me, as one of Britain’s leading sweaters, this entails quite a bit of skulking in quiet corners in case there’s a raid by the nook and cranny police, there is much pleasure to be gleaned. Especially if you have a gig in Clacton-

I firmly believe that as long as it’s sunny, most places in Britain are as good as anywhere on our planet. Sunday afternoon saw me and the Volvo hacking up the A12 with the Air Conditioning on at full blast to do a show with the genial Kevin Fitzimmons, who does a good line in all things Sinatra. After the bandcall, the weather was so nice that the great law of eating on the road was suspended-inevitable curry gave way to chippy tea on the Front! And what a beautiful front. Someone at Clacton council has really got the right idea. Our chippy was right opposite the entrance to the pier, and like all these seaside areas, it is festooned with arcades, funfairs and light bulbs. In Clacton though, all the music is switched off. By removing the cacophony, Clacton’s classy council completely cleared confusion-causing clattering, leaving the natural sounds of the sea, the seagulls and the breeze in the rather well kept trees bordering the front. Even the seagulls were well behaved. Even though they were the size of Messerschmitts, they were content to perch near us and our chips without going the full Hitchcock nine yards. Tame buggers too. When I got back to the theatre car park (where we were afforded the rare luxury of parking for free near the door where we had to go in) there was one sat atop the Volvo, probably cooling his feet on the air-conditioned roof. It obligingly stood still for long enough for me to get this shot-

Mind you, on the walk back from the Chippy, it turned out that Clacton had more treasures up its sleeve. I wouldn’t normally wax lyrical about civic gardens, but the ones by Clacton pier simply defied description. There was a positive bombardment of colour on offer, and by the time I’d got to the third enclosure, called the 1920’s garden, with an arts and crafts layout which I am convinced would have had Lutyens himself weeping with joy, I became convinced that Clacton will be my Seaside resort of choice. Gary Baldwin, legendary jazz organist runs a B&B up there too. A dark plan of whisking Her Indoors off for a couple of days of Sun, Sea, Fry-ups and Jimmy Smith is forming.

Not to be outdone, it appears that the good residents of Clacton don’t want the council to have the monopoly on Matters Horticultural. On the way down to the front after the bandcall, I stopped and had a chat with a charming old gentleman who was painting a small model windmill to adorn his front garden, which I can only describe as a psychedelic version of Beckonscot. A beautifully laid 0 Guage garden model railway wound around the periphery and over a small gantry bridge which spanned the central water feature. The rest of it was glorious British madness. My resounding memory was of a vignette by one of the pansy beds in which we were treated to the unique spectacle of a Dalek dancing with a Tellytubby. If that doesn’t portray a utopian vision of the future, I don’t know what does. As a diorama man myself, I doff my hat! I’d have taken a picture, but I got a bit shy and didn’t ask. Further down the same road, however, lies this-

Apologies for the grainy image. I think the iPhone has a hair in the gate, or something. What we have here is a corner garden, with, amongst other things, a six-foot ceramic gorilla and an old phone box. There is also a seven-foot elk and armies of small woodland creatures. Whilst Mr Hobbs up the road was honing his view of the future in car-boot trinketry, here was gigantism which even Albert Speer would have been startled by.

Saturday was notable for the sheer amount of it spent at the helm of Her Indoors’ Mercedes Benz. It all started innocuously enough, with a nice Chinese meal in Wigan on the Friday, to celebrate the in-laws’ Ruby Anniversary. We’d decided to have a morning cuppa with Grandma Indoors, and leave Wigan at 1.30 on the Saturday, which would give us plenty of time to get to Yeovil by 7, which is where we had to go and do a wedding job. Now then, the Mercedes-Benz is a very nice motor and all, but just at the moment it has no aircon. On the hottest Saturday of the year so far, I was already in serious nook and cranny peril, and I’m sure that as we left Her Indoors’ Grandma’s house at the appointed hour, a N&C inspector was eyeing the whole operation suspiciously from the end of the road.
Out we swung onto the M6, only to find that the big signs were telling us that things had come to a grinding halt at Stoke, and a quick scan of the BBC travel site in the iThingy revealed that the M5 at Birmingham was gridlocked as well, Not handy if you’re going from Wigan to Yeovil. We swung off the motorway, and as all the internet went down, bought a trusty map and planned a route the old fashioned way. The A roads of Britain and Wales did us proud, no jams and beautiful scenery, but what a long way! We got to our gig at 7.40. Seven hours without a break, a brief bout of Lady In Red and Mustang Sally in a barn in a field, and then back in the warm German Box for another three and a half hours of fun up the A303. I was really creaky by the time I got to bed, I can tell you. Every cloud has a silver lining-on the A49 near Church Stretton we drove past the Copper Kettle Tea Room. It looks amazing. We’re going back. In the Volvo.

9 July 2013

The Great Experiment had its first major trial last night. The Great Experiment, as you may know, is an attempt by Richard Pite and me to give Jazz a wider appeal than it currently has. Given that its current appeal is no wider than a camel’s bum in a sandstorm, it may appear to the casual viewer that we have a relatively easy task.

Thus far, the signs are promising. The music room at the Hippodrome down in London’s Glittering West End was open specially, and our chaps had the rare treat of playing to a large audience of normal people. Not a whippet or sandal’n’sock combo to be seen! Sticking rigidly to our format of regular rhythm, short but intense solos and loads and loads of riffs, I’m pleased to say that the large audience of normal people responded exactly as we would have liked, with shouting and hollering in the exciting bits, and even a limited amount of Jazz Dancing. Largely comprised of folks who had either never been to a jazz gig before, or who thought it was unapproachable and deeply tedious, this came as a double-strength victory. The comment we got over and over again went along the lines of “I never knew that Jazz could be exciting like this”, or “I never knew I liked Jazz”. Watch out folks, maybe, just maybe, it’s on the way back.

Here’s a picture of me playing the first eight bars of “Lady Be Good”. You can clearly see a segment of the large audience of normal people, and also a gentleman known as Tall Paul dancing with his new wife. Tall Paul is a stalwart of the London jazz dancing scene, and had just got married on Saturday gone. To celebrate, he and Mrs. T.Paul set a new lindy hop record for staying on the floor for the duration of the whole track, which in this case ran to seventeen minutes! Just for good measure, here’s a great shot from last night of the new Matinee Idol of the trumpet, George Hogg getting stuck in during the big trumpet battle on Sweet Georgia Brown. You can see fellow trumpet heavyweight Tommy Walsh smiling in delight in the middle distance. His appearance has nothing to do with the focal length of the shot- he was enjoying George’s playing so much that he really did go all blurry and fuzzy!

I mentioned in the last edition of the Plog that there was a threat of Her Indoors getting an Argos Paddling pool. It has become a reality, and in the current heat wave her basking evenly-bronzed form is now a common sight in the Home Aqua Park, or Garden. However, as I was sat cogitating in the shed this morning, I had a flash of inspiration.

It turns out that here at the Plog we are doing rather well on the web hits front. Between 250 and 500 a day, so webmaster Phil informs me. Interestingly though, the big spike in the ratings occurred on the episode where I put up a picture of the Blohm & Voss 238, which will form the centrepiece of the Seaplanes Of The Axis Powers diorama. I am curious. This is mainly a curry and music show, so I am surprised that the bit with a tiny sliver of aeroplane nerddom should top the chart. As the theme of today seems to be amateur social experiment, I have decided to post some pictures of the work so far on the Seaplanes Of The Axis Powers diorama. As it has been all Seaplanes and no actual diorama thus far, it suddenly came to me that the calm waters of Her Indoors’ paddling pool would form a good temporary replica of one of the giant concrete flying boat marinas constructed by the Germans during one of her short breaks from her rigorous aqaerobics schedule. From the subsequent examination of the stats, webmaster Phil and I will now be able to more definitely ascertain the power of avionic nerdmusk online. Anyway, here’s the work so far, all made by me in my Home Workshop, or shed.

Arado 196 spotter seaplane

Blohm & Voss 138 MS Minesweeper

Blohm & Voss 138 C Patrol Aircraft

Blohm & Voss 139 Courier Seaplane

Heinkel 115 B Torpedo Bomber

Cant Z 506 Italian Torpedo Bomber

5 July 2013

Am sat waiting at Platform 8 at Euston on the slow train to Bushey on this fine sunny Friday Afternoon, after a sweltering hot jazz session down at the Spice Of Life Friday Lunch shift. It is a new train, and thus it is air-conditioned. This is good news for me, as I am known for being prone to suffering from a mild bout of light perspiration here and there. In fact, at the first sign of moderate watery sunshine I can usually lightly perspire buckets. As it’s been a hot afternoon, and I took the healthy option of walking down into the West End and back rather than the Full Summer Horror of the tube, I now feel that we’re there to be a sudden Nook And Cranny inspection, I would fail with flying colours, and be taken off for a good old to-do with the wire brush and detail. Bon Appetit,

In fact, all in all its been quite a week for jazz and sweating. Last Saturday saw a really nice, if rather sweaty wedding go past, in which the cardinal law of nuptial music was transgressed to such an extent that I have been lying awake at night waiting for The Knock On The Door. All we were doing was innocently playing a spot of cocktail Jazz, which should, if the grand Book Of Rules is being adhered to, the correct procedure for the audience is to ignore us completely, at a safe distance of thirty feet, at which distance we should be in audible anyway. The only times a member of the general public may breach this rule is to- A- tell us that we’re too loud
B- desperately dance with one or more knee-sliding toddlers, making trombone gestures at any member of the band operating any wind instrument. Back to last Saturday, and no sooner had we started trying to break the world record for the quietest ever version of Satin Doll, than a huge crowd had formed, not only to listen, but to-wait for it-applaud. They even asked for more volume, and someone at the back requested some Cannonball Adderley. After having taken a quick look out of the window to see if there were lollipop trees, or a rainbow trout who was directing traffic, or something else to indicate that a breach had occurred in the time-space continuum. Alas, all seemed normal, there were teenagers smoking on the croquet lawn, a woman in a pink dress was weeping drunkenly to her chum. All as it should be. The inevitable conclusion was that all the stuff going on indoors was real as well, and our punters really wanted jazz.

What a brilliant night that was-got jazz being played and a room full of people dancing and clapping. Good topsy-turvy stuff. In keeping with the topsy-turvy feel, upon leaving afterwards drummer Bill and I noticed that we’d got something of an early bath on our hands, and so found our way to the nearest Indian for an inevitable curry. So, to briefly take stock, people liked jazz, curry after work, not before. Should be enough to put us away for years.

Thanks to the miracle that is the iPhone, I’m able to write this on the train, the air-conditioning in which has now mellowed the Nooks and Crannies to a more acceptable level. Pulling out of South Kenton station as I now am, I have remembered that as I left for the Station, Her Indoors was threatening to get a paddling pool from Argos and have her lady friends over for an afternoon of lovely sunny aquatic self-improvement and yoga. Will it be harmony vocals on “Keep Young And Beautiful” whilst gaily throwing the beach ball from fair hand to fair hand, or will it be Vodka and All Men Are Bastards?. It could be carnage. I’ll keep you posted.

19 June 2013

To start where I left off, the do last Friday playing Ellington music in the fabulous acoustic paradise that is the Stables in Wavendon, just down the road from the fabulous architectural paradise that is Milton Keynes, went off extremely well indeed. As well as indulging in some incredible brass gymnastics, Principal trumpeter and hot-as-Hades soloist Nathan Bray (pictured) brought an interesting new strand to the already well documented train of thought that is the Inevitable Curry. Rather than waste valuable post-bandcall-pre-gig time seeking out the nearest Star Of The Raj, Nathan had cut straight to the chase by preparing a Chicken Madras of his own devising (pictured) earlier on that day and then allowed it to infuse on the dashboard of his Volvo in the hot Milton Keynes sunshine while we were all indoors getting to grips with the finer nuances of such jewels as “Diminuendo In Blue” and “Air-Conditioned Jungle”.

Toying even further with accepted form and protocol, Nathan had taken the idea of a home made curry to the extreme, in that all the veg (and there were many) were from his allotment. We’d done the bandcall by 6pm, and here’s a shot of Nathan at 6.02 opening up the foil to reveal what lay inside. I just had time to take this quick shot, before I got into a Volvo of my own to join the other lads at the Wavendon Tandoori. I also spared a moment, in the purely professional pursuit of truth, you understand, to have a quick taste. That lad can cook! When the time comes, as inevitably as curry itself, that we all eventually get replaced by iPods in some form or another, at least he’ll have another trade.

The Ellington job marked the artistic high spot of the year so far, but the weekend was not without other highlights. Her Indoors had a job on Saturday night, leaving me at home in the home workshop, or shed, with a few spare hours to put in on the Seaplanes Of The Axis Powers diorama. I spent most of the time on the Blohm & Voss 238, or in more user-friendly terms, Bloody Great Big Nazi Plane. I mention this only because I reckon it’s so Bloody and Big that it will cross over from the cloud of a chap’s personal nerd musk into the arena of something approaching general interest. When it’s done, I’ll put up a picture. Six propellers and huge great swastikas on the tail. Enough there to fascinate anyone.

Sunday evening was marked with a nice wedding gig led by the golden glottis of singer Iain Mackenzie. It’s not often I get to do a gig now where I’m not at the helm, and the simple pleasure of turning up, operating a saxophone and going home again was not lost on me. Poor old MacKenzie had had a bit of an intense time on the run-up to the do with an amount of emails from the happy couple -to-be which would have brought the central computer at the Pentagon. He’d even had several detailed communications about the song order for the background music on the iPod, and by the time we had to go in, he had shades of the whiskery gibbering wreck about him. I know how this feels, and so I was acutely aware of the joyous sensation of none of it being any of my responsibility! I can only liken it to the feeling I got when I discovered the joy of Compeed, back in the War Of The Ragged Feet earlier on this year. As it turned out, these two were really nice people, the dance floor was full all night and they gave us chocolate cake in the bandroom. A victory.

Mind you, watch out if you ever need to go in a car to the area of London between Whitehall and the Embankment. This hotel was slap bang in the middle of all that, just up a bit from the Liberal Club. What with virtually every building round there being a government office, I guess it’s an anti-terrorist measure or something, but there’s simply nowhere to park. Her Indoors and I had to walk a good mile and a half up from behind Parliament Square, and she had her pointy gig shoes on. A good job we were on business, and not going out for the night, the meal would have been shot before we’d even got close to seeing how her food was going to go wrong.

Things got stranger still on Monday. Once again, I had the luxury of not being in charge. This time, it was a job in a venue called The Crypt, near Hatton Garden. The Crypt is indeed an old crypt, complete with gargoyles and vaulted ceiling, and the party hosts had decided to immerse themselves in the Tudor theme by having a medieval flavour running through the whole evening. This they did by the rather brilliant masterstroke of hiring in a load of suitable hats from Angels and Bermans. It really did the trick- the mind can be easily fooled with a little altered stimulus for the minces- The other thing they did to really seal the deal was to book a five-piece jazz band. Mark Armstrong on Trumpet was in control of this one, and noting that jazz bands don’t feature too heavily in Pepys, had prepared small arrangements for us to play of such sixteenth century classics as “Greensleeves” and “All Burpe Us In Goode Companie” or something. It was great fun. It got more fun when, rather than jazzing up the old stuff, we olded up some jazz. Working on, probably the inaccurate cliché that, the basic rhythm of Olde Englishe Court Music goes Daaa-Da-Da-Daaa-Da-Da, astonishing versions of “Little Sunflower”, “Star Eyes”, and particularly “Caravan”, or “Caravanne” were the result, the latter with some rather fetching nasal group vocals in the Steeleye Span way. Dave Chamberlain proposed a version of “Tudor, Night, And The Music”, but we never got around to it. Luckily.  Here’s a picture of us in our splendid headgear. I think you’ll agree that the clear winner here is Gunther Kurmayr at the piano, in the eerie half-light looking surprisingly like a Holbein sketch of , say, “Hennery’s Codpiece Primper”, but for the record, you see Mark Armstrong as Cardinal Wolsey, me as Archbishop John Whitgift, Dave Chamberlain as Young Henry, and Jerome Davies as Henry VII, or possibly Anne Of Cleves.

Finally, a quick observation. As you may know, I am fascinated by the architecture of London’s underground, and on a recent trip in on the Met Line, I noticed this. It is the end of the line at Baker Street. It has nowhere else to go. So why is it curved?

More from the shed soon,

14 June 2013

The more acerbic amongst you will have of course already noticed the rather loose interpretation of the notion of Thursdayness in this week’s Thursday Plog. I was all set to do it yesterday afternoon when, before I even had time to realise what was going on, there was a surprise trip to Mr. Kong’s. Ostensibly this was to discuss new research on the quest to popularise jazz, more of which later. A good ten rounds with standard menu #1 and a solid night’s sleep later, here I am on Friday morning, surrounded by a small residual bubble of Thursday Afternoon. It’s a weak excuse, but it’s probably better than getting my mum to write in explaining that “Peter Has a Verruca and won’t be at Blog today”. Just by the by, I reckon that Kong has got a new seafood supplier- the razor clams last night were of absolutely Olympian standard- fibrous without being stringy, and tender without losing firmness. Completely bloody marvellous. For the stat counters, Her Indoor’s grub arrived and was eaten without any technical mishaps. It can and does occur. Douglas Adams was right when he said the worst thing about time travel was the hell it played with grammar. For example-“In three month’s time, I went and bought myself a nice new time machine. I like it, but they’re not what they’re going to be”. Similarly, earlier on this morning, when I was still in today and not, as later on, back in yesterday afternoon, I found myself in my home sheet music archive and sorting office, or shed. The reason for this is that once I finish here in the creative writing study, or kitchen, this morning on Thursday afternoon I then have to go back forward to Friday afternoon, and a real gem of a gig. This will be the end of the time-travel-syntax fun now.
I’ve banged on at length about Duke Ellington in the past, and I feel another nugget of it coming on now. Tonight, I am the richest chap in the world, because I have a gig with the Echoes Of Ellington at the fabulous acoustic paradise that is the Stables in Wavendon, just down the road from the fabulous architectural paradise that is Milton Keynes. It’s all good- we’ve sold out, and I have a really strong team of chaps on. I am hoping that it’s going to be delicious, making all that amazing noise. It is also a little bit poignant, because the Stables at Wavendon has at its heart the room which John Dankworth had built specially to display amazing noise like that to its best advantage.

The stakes, therefore are riding a little bit high, and I want to do a good job. Therefore, this morning in the home sheet music archive and sorting office, or shed, I was wading through all my Ellington music deciding which ones to pull out. I have two one-hour sets to fill, which is about twenty two tunes. Ellington wrote about five thousand, of which I have access to around four hundred of the better known ones. In the shed, these are sorted into files according roughly to vintage, or in the case of, say, the Newport Jazz Festival, according to concert programme. Here’s the rub. Every piece in there is a masterpiece. I’ve got to leave 378 of them behind. It was easy for Ellington- asked which of his pieces was his favourite, he would say “The one I’m working on today”. Elegant old flanneler. If you check through a live Ellington record, you see that this was pretty much the case. He’d use a few of his massive hits as cornerstones of the programme, and then flesh it out with all his current stuff.

Using this as the model, the cornerstones of tonight’s show will be Ellington tunes everyone expects to hear- Take The “A” Train, Solitude, Perdido, I Got It Bad. The agonising bit is deciding on the rest. It’s all brilliant. If someone gave me a 10 day festival to fill with Ellington, I could do a different programme every night with no duplication, and each one would be The Best Music You’d Ever Heard. I’ve not got twenty hours, I’ve got two. The first thing to do is to look and see who I’ve got in the band tonight, and think of which pieces will really show them off best. One of the strengths of Ellington’s music is that it is largely a layered conversation between all the solo voices in the band, rather than taking the more usual approach of having the sections in the band hunt in packs. If you’ve got great soloists, you can really let the music breathe. Luckily, tonight, I’ve got a lot of the very best. This means that I can go to some very exotic corners of the repertoire. For the anoraks, it means I can have Jay Craig play the breaks in “Jumpin Punkins”, or Ryan Quigley re-create “El Gato”.

This narrowed the choice down to around 150 must-hear numbers for tonight. I needed to get rid of another 128. I then considered the rise and fall of the gig . Ellington wrote so many beautiful ballads that if you take your eye of the ball for a second, you can lose yourself in the beauty and end up with nine slow ones in a row. Balancing fast against slow helps, but in the end you just have to get arbitrary and leave a load of gems in the shed for next time. It’s just a bit of a shame that next time’s on December the 8th, In Welwyn Garden City! Still, infinitely better than no next time at all!

Excitement is running high at the Sales And Marketing Department (or Her Indoors’ laptop) here at The Gables. The Peggy, Duke And Benny CD is now off at the factory being pressed, and sometime in the middle of next week a lorryload of cardboard cases will turn up to be safely stored in the merchandise warehouse, or shed, where they will obscure the view of the Seaplanes Of The Axis Powers diorama until they are sold. To that end, expect vulgar advertising to appear here shortly.

There’s been a bit of development on the Croydon Popular Jazz Front. Here in the jazz promulgation think-tank, or Pub, various schemes for central London venues are being examined, and negotiations with a leading venue have started. Given that most jazz gigs look like this-

We are going to attempt a weekly slot which will hopefully look a bit like this-

This will largely depend on the structure of the advertising. I am confident that the music formula will be fine, as earlier discussed, since the things jazz lacks to the ear of the casual listener are hooks, coherence and a regular beat. Research is currently being conducted amongst that most unfamiliar demograph for jazz musicians-Normal young people. Let’s see what happens.
More from the Shed (Or Home Studio) soon

6 June 2013

Many thanks to everyone who emailed into the consumer help and support desk here at The Gables about last week’s Plog regarding the parlous state of the jazz business. Two broad themes emerged. Firstly, there is no young blood turning up into the jazz clubs in significant enough numbers to make a difference commercially. Secondly, the preponderance of the mass media and internet is channelling all forms of the music business into huge centrally controlled retail conduits, thus stifling and ultimately suffocating any kind of grass roots activity. Since Jazz (and folk, and prog rock and a trillion other idioms) all exist on the grass roots, the future under the vast cultural Flymo of Mr. Cowell and his ilk could be considered to be looking rather bleak. It’s a vicious circle. Jazz won’t get popular because no-one wants it on the telly. The reason for this is those responsible for these things feel it is at best arcane, and at worse, repulsive. It’s a vicious circle. Circles can be broken, though. I have a notion of a plan. Watch this space. Probably for a very long time.

However, I feel that the Plog should represent more things than me ranting on about the perils of earning what is laughingly referred to as “A Living” operating musical instruments. Things aren’t all bad. As Alan Barnes says- “Not having to get up until eleven in the morning is worth forty grand a year to most people”. We will return to the British Overall Long Life Operational Career Kinetic Structure, or BOLLOCKS, in later Plogs.

The main thrust of this week’s activity has largely involved sitting around. My work last weekend was heading up the house band for the Boisdale Tent at the Epsom Derby. We had to start at 11.30 in the morning, play cocktail music for the reception, and then a few short spots in between the races. Towards the end of the day we ramped things up into a kind of Vegas rat pack thing and ended up with a full on cavalcade of party classics for the seriously refreshed. Therefore, lots and lots of sitting around. Sunday was spent driving to Malvern for an early rehearsal for the Benny Goodman show, which followed Sod’s law of bandcalls in which a rehearsal for which hours have been allocated will take minutes, and a rehearsal for which minutes are available will need hours. As we had hours to rehearsal, the result was more sitting around, interspersed with an inevitable curry. By the way, should you find yourself in Malvern and in need of Indian Food, I can strongly recommend the Flute Signature Indian restaurant- they have a unique menu with such tasty delicacies as “Chicken N. Morris”. Fabulous. The Nargis Kebab was of Olympic standard. Ed Richardson’s girlfriend was with us in our group. It goes without saying that her dinner went wrong.

Back to the phenomenon of at-gig-loitering, and I could be wrong, but I think it was Ronnie Wood who came up with the basic formula of a musician’s existence, which is that for every hour spent playing music, there are around eight hours hanging around in cars, trains airports, poorly lit back rooms, outside locked gates, at inevitable curries and, of course, pubs. Now, I’ve been doing this for over twenty years, and I’ve noticed that there are distinct trends, or categories in the nature of the chit-chat that goes on. It’s a funny thing, bandroom chit-chat, because by the freelance nature of what we do some people will know each other very well, some may have been close chums a few years ago but haven’t seen each other for years, there may be someone there who doesn’t know anyone, and a few will have a passing acquaintance. It is not uncommon for a couple of chaps to have to share a drive to Leeds and back who have never met before, and who are of wildly differing ages. It’s a nice thing that a man of twenty-two can have a pint with a man of seventy-four as an equal, as the process of organising noise into music is a great leveller. I can’t see this happening in Estate Agency, for example. However, it does seem that this odd backdrop for conversation will make those involved behave by certain patterns. Over the years these have been codified into-

THE FOUR CATEGORIES OF BANDROOM BANTER
Before I begin the description, I need to say that it seems that the categories are loosely dependant on age. You do see variation and exception, but this is by and large how it is. Category 1 –
Generally the province of the young blade from the age of 18 up to about 26, Category 1 banter reflects the energy and optimism of youth. It will be concerned with the latest developments in music, who’s doing what gig, how “Killing” their phrasing was, how many hours of practice are done a day, drinking and sex. The current figurehead in Jazz for the Category 1 exponent is a Trumpet player from New York called Tom Harrell. He is capable of weaving melodies with his trumpet in, around and out of the underlying harmony with a unique poise and beauty. Your Category 1 Johnny will nod solemnly whilst listening to this, quietly murmuring “Killing” to himself. It was the same back in the 1980’s, in my Category 1 days, except that we had Mike Brecker to idolise, and quietly murmured the word “Serious”. Back in 1947 it was Charlie Parker and “Groovy”. In 368,000 B.C it would have been someone called something like Rok-Bonk who still had a tail and the word “Nnng”. You get the picture.

Category 2–

This sets on in the middle to late twenties, and is usually the result of moving out of the eye-deep morass of Kentucky fried chicken boxes, threadbare carpets, faulty immersion heaters and Tom Harrell CD’s in their component parts which characterise the student digs phase of one’s existence. It’s all white goods and DIY here in category 2. Young George Hogg, trumpeter extraordinaire and matinee idol to boot, who could quite easily have spent his whole life in a descending spiral of George-Best like Category 1- based activity is now quite happy to discuss grouting his new bathroom on the band bus all the way to Southport and back. Jazz journal has given way to the B&Q catalogue. However, do enjoy Category 2 while it’s here, as it quickly gives way to the real biggie, the top of the bandroom pops, the lion’s share of the great pie chart of chat, yes folks, its…
Category 3-
Illness and discomfort. As a breed, we seem to be interested in little else. From your early thirties to the MU gold card arriving in the post, Category 3 takes care of 95% of your conversational needs. You first notice it when you catch yourself complaining about a spot of post-inevitable curry indigestion during the interval of a show and it spreads out and down from there. Whole days in cars can be gleefully spent discussing rashes and sores, back pain and wheezing and stiffness in all parts of the body, except those already covered by category 1. It is all things discomfort, so recently there has been an amendment to the constitution to include complaining about traffic, especially if the concomitant overlong period of sitting down has led to a spot of back pain, or a numb foot.
Category 4
Some maintain that this is really the logical end of Category 3, and it involves conversations which start like “I suppose you’ve heard about Norman?” . The current record for a Category 4 conversation is held by Tony Fisher and Roy Willox at a hotel breakfast in Spain, in which the roll call of departed chums would have comprised at least a couple of battalions before they’d even finished the Weetabix.

As I mentioned earlier, it is quite possible to flit between categories not normally associated with the regular age group. Anyone driving home from IKEA with a flat-pack bed (called Shagon or something) and thirty tea lights in a paper bag immediately assumes ownership of Category 2. I recently mentioned an Epic trip to Mr Kong’s after a Duke Ellington rehearsal with young Callum Au, Pitey, Lucas Dodd and a few others. Now then- Pitey and I are fully paid-up cardigan-wearing, Radio 4 listening, slightly rheumatic members of the Category 3 club. Callum and Lucas are still in the full flush of Category 1, and can sing you any of Tom Harrell’s recorded repertoires at the drop of a hat. Consequently, for Pitey and me it was as if someone had attached jump leads to our frontal lobes to be exposed to that much fizzing young energy. Pub, Kong’s Pub again- it was like the good old days. But it was only like the good old days. By 10pm we’d had enough and were pining for the armchair and Horlicks. Category 1 thundered ahead without us- It turns out that Callum and Lucas then stayed at the pub until closing time, then went to hear the late set at the Pizza Express, and then went to Ronnie’s for the graveyard shift where there was a big jam session happening and they had a play. At some point during this, Lucas had attracted the attention of a new ladyfriend, and finished the evening off by vigorously showing her his etchings. Somebody needs to buy that lad a dishwasher.

29 May 2013

I was in the Golden City of Croydon yesterday, mainly to visit the model shop they have down there in order to get some extruded plastic rod for the Seaplanes of the Axis Powers Diorama, but also to do a gig. The Jazz scene in Croydon exists in a converted high street branch of Nat West which is now a rather splendid boozer called The Green Dragon. Wisely realising that the target audience for this sort of thing now almost entirely has a free bus pass, they do it on Tuesday lunchtime. This ensures that the target audience can all get home in time for tea, draw the curtains and have a nice settle down. Very wise. I need also to mention that while playing jazz in the Green Dragon is never going to earn a chap enough for the new Jag, they do feed you there, and give you as much access to their magnificent selection of real ale as you can shake a stick at. I must also say that after three pints or so of the Dark Star Brewery’s “Erse of Beelzebubbe” or whatever it was called you’d be hard pressed to shake your head, let alone pick up a stick and discernibly wiggle it around.

This was a return booking for a project of mine which is also partly an experiment. It resulted from a chat with Alex Garnett during an inevitable curry back in January. We were indulging ourselves in an enjoyable moan about why the audience for jazz gigs in theatres and pubs seems to be in sharp decline, and being a bit beery as we were, introduced the strand of “Of course in the good old days, gigs used to be packed- couldn’t get to the bar-air thick with fag smoke-playing jazz for money was a workable career option-Club Eleven- Tubby Hayes etc etc”. Then the penny dropped. One of the reasons, if not the main reason itself is that since the Golden Days of, I suppose, the early 1960’s, Jazz has become progressively less and less easy for the Man In The Street to get hold of, and as he doesn’t have to, he doesn’t bother.

If we look at who was around in those days, Jazz here in the Golden Days was split into two clearly defined camps – the modernists, featuring such luminaries as John Dankworth, Tubby Hayes, Ronnie Scott and Stan Tracey, and the traditionalists, most famously Acker Bilk and Kenny Ball, all of whom earned a very decent living from playing the kind of music which they chose to play. As someone who has had to bash together a living playing “The Lady In Red” and “The Lambada” at weddings for the first fifteen years, and still is no stranger to the harmonic structure of “Tequila” when the need arises, I can tell you now that to be able to survive playing music of your own choice as a mainstream option is a luxury afforded to only a tiny minority now’ if at all. Ask any of the notable jazzers down a theatre pit next time you go in! Flautist Gareth Lockrane, one of the most invigorating and astounding jazz soloists this nation has ever produced, pays his way mainly by teaching. The fact that he’s teaching the complexities of contemporary jazz to an endless supply of volunteers who will, in their turn have to survive by either teaching, playing Tequila or roasting away for Sir Cameron is another matter entirely.

Back to the traders and the cool cats of the early ’60s, each camp had a clearly defined image- your modernist was all about the sharp suit, shades and looking cool. Your traddie sported a kind of proto-hippie get-up, built for comfort in order to withstand the long hours of dancing to the band. Either way, it was about a group look, belonging to a new gang, and going out. In Britain, music is fashion, and it was fashionably the thing to be interested in jazz. I’m not so sure if this is the case these days. The thing is though, if you listen to early 1960’s British jazz of any kind, it is immediately apparent why it had a much broader commercial appeal than it does these days. Broadly speaking, the reason is regular rhythm. Tubby’s great drummer Phil Seaman is not mainly remembered for his amazing technical facility on the drums. Ask anyone about Phil who remembers, and they will tell you about the time and the feel, and the fact that when he played, the whole room swung. . It’s the same with the trad bands. Last Friday, BBC4 had on a broadcast from 1965 of Acker Bilk’s band. His drummer, Ron MacKay played bar after bar of glorious swinging drums, and it was instantly obvious why this music had a wide audience. Modern or trad, being strongly rhythmic, it was fun to listen to. Once you’ve got that in place, the fashion can follow. If we look into all the times in history when jazz succeeded commercially, it is generally because the rhythm was regular. Benny Goodman and the swing era was all about that. I guess that you could argue that the only jazz musician today who is anything like a global household name is Diana Krall. Virtually every Krall recording has the lilt of the rhythm guitar gently, and most importantly ,regularly stating the beat. I remember in the late 1980’s there was a brief resurgence of Jazz in the wake of the Absolute Beginners film. Once again, something had happened to make jazz a little bit fashionable. Bands led by drummers Tommy Chase and Clark Tracey were able to go on well-paid national tours. This time the focus was on hard bop, and particularly that of Art Blakey and Horace Silver, but what do we find here? That’s right- a good heavy swinging backbeat. Put on Horace Silver’s record of Sister Sadie and try and keep still. Just try it.

Anyway, back to Croydon, Alex and the inevitable curry griping session. The upshot of it was that we would have an experiment to put some old fashioned 1960’s British jazz out there to see what would happen. I had a Tuesday lunchtime quartet gig in my book for a week later down at the Green Dragon, and reasoning that as the playing fee was bugger all already, and that half of bugger all was still bugger all, why not double the size of the band and have a proper old jam session in the style of the great Jazz At The Philharmonic concerts of the 1950’s? Armed as we were with a selection of hotshots on Saxes and brass, it was an absolute smash hit. A Jazz at the Phil concert is highly structured. For a general music listener, structure and regular rhythm are the things. Despite looking like a collection of soloists taking it in turns to blow over a rhythm section, there are in fact lots of rules. No solo is longer than three choruses. On the third chorus of each solo the other blowers set up a riff. By doing this, the performance has variety, pace, and perhaps the thing which your average chap in the street needs most, but which jazz has least of – hooks. I remember on that first gig whole rows of people in the audience singing along with the riff we’d set up on Lady Be Good as Mark Armstrong took his trumpet into the stratosphere- he was amazing, but our riff made him inclusive. There are no bass solos. Sorry, bass players, but you already know all the gags-“Marriage Counsellors are now employing jazz bass players in their premises as it has been proved scientifically that nothing gets people talking as efficiently as a bass solo”. To be fair, on that gig the bass solo situation was addressed when Paul Morgan got “In a Sentimental Mood” all to himself. With his sound and virtuosity, he brought the house down.

It’s a funny thing with drummers, especially those at college level, in which they will be perfectly content to sit on a rock or funk groove for hours on end, enjoying the accumulation of vibe in the room which ensues. Ask for a jazz groove, and all of a sudden a Need To Be Inventive steps in, and no two successive bars are the same, thus not permitting the accumulation of vibe. Maybe it’s a fear of the jazz turning into Rock and Roll. However, Elliott Henshaw was at the kit that day, and being a massive Buddy Rich head he understood the task immediately. By half time the whole room was shaking and quivering with regular rhythm. The whole room was also packed. Not only was the room packed, but everybody was smiling. Everyone in the place, band, puntes, barstaff and Molly the greyhound was included in the jazz. Ken, who puts the gig together, had never seen anything like it. I had- film of Humphrey Lyttleton’s band in the 100 club in 1952 had audience shots which looked like that.

Now then- please don’t think that I’m on a one-chap crusade here to turn the hands of time back because The Good Old Days were better, or that I’m becoming a rhythmic and harmonic luddite in warning of the perils of contemporary twenty-first century jazz. Oh dear me no! If music is to survive, it has to grow. However, what does seem to be the case is that it was certainly easier to earn a living playing Jazz in the Good Old Days, and I think that making jazz accessible and trying to reach new audiences with it is as crucial to its survival as the efforts of those on its cutting edge. To play it with regular rhythm, structure and hooks is by no means dumbing it down. If anything, it makes its execution rather harder, as a sense of discipline has to be introduced into the mix. A well-rounded jazz musician should be able to work happily in either context, and be able to really enjoy both parts of the spectrum. Having your music connect with a couple of hundred cheering people in a pub is a very different pleasure to really making the changes on “Heyoke” in the reverend hush of a concert hall, but if as a business we aren’t connecting with the public and drumming up interest in jazz, it is possible to imagine a situation in which there won’t be either pubs or concert halls to play in. Big Jazz Festivals now have to import turns from the world of Rock & Roll in order to survive. Montreux this year is boasting an appearance by ZZ Top on its main stage.

Now I’m as big a fan of ZZ Top as the next chap, but headlining a jazz festival? The reason that there’s not a jazz big hitter of the magnitude of Louis Armstrong, Errol Garner or Duke Ellington these days is that as a breed, we as jazz musicians have largely shut the pub door on our potential audience in the interests of driving the outer limits of our craft to new and unimaginable heights. It is well documented that Einstein would run courses in classical music appreciation, and the first item on the listening list would be a spot of Mantovani. He, with his atom-splitting intellect, that you can’t serve people heavy-duty contemporary music without getting their ears and minds accustomed to the sounds it makes. Recently there has been a campaign “Creating Opportunities For UK Jazz Musicians”. I think we need to re-jig it and bring out “Creating Opportunities For UK Jazz Audiences”.
What do you think?

23 May 2013

It would appear that the main item on the agenda this morning is a mild but persistent hangover. Not the full head-in-a-Black-And -Decker-Workmate whilst the tongue has been magically transformed into a portion of Bombay Dak stuck to the side of the mouth affair, but more like a feeling of having one of those things for getting stones out of horses hooves being held against the back of the skull. In this case just a shade too tightly.

Last night, there was beer, you see. Mitch, my chum from school had come round to play. Often, where beer goes, inevitable curry follows. We are blessed locally with beer and inevitable curry facilities on offer. The beer was furnished by a little two-up two-down pub called The Swan, in the middle of a row of terraces up in Bushey. Quite the finest pub I’ve ever been in, The Swan has a plaque on the wall stating that it is the only unreconstructed Victorian boozer (my words) within the M25. It’s got the lot- shove halfpenny, darts, fags for sale over the bar at shop prices, no music, a roaring fire when it’s cold, lovely beer and no poncy blackboard advertising such items as “Oak-Smoked Corn-Fed Oven-Baked (this last one really gets me- where else can you bake something?) Breast of finest hand-reared Watford chicken in organic rosemary Jus with finest Sicilian polenta in lemon and anchovy sauce”. Not in The Swan, mate. If you do want a bite, Sue behind the bar will run you up a roll. She has cheese, ham and tomatoes. You can therefore have a cheese roll, a ham roll a tomato roll, a cheese ham and tomato roll, a tomato and cheese roll, a plain roll, a plate of ham and cheese or a plate of ham or cheese. . The list is endless. No wonder there’s no blackboard, you’d never fit all that lot on. Bloody brilliant. There are no Ladies’ lavs either, but as a concession to equal rights modernity, one has been installed outside the back, accessed via the ginnell. Apparently, to cheer the ladies up, it is festooned with images of topless firemen from the Watford Fire Station charity calendar. Her Indoors is particularly fond of Brendan, 24, from Hemel. The Gents’ lavs are similarly enhanced with a quite extraordinary series of images furnished by the Jolec electrical supplies company. Clearly boasting an all-female staff, if the calendar is anything to go by, this is an organisation which apparently serves the electrical needs of tropical beach life and has a unique minimalist attitude to protective clothing. Some would even argue that they are coming down quite hard on the anti-clothing side of things. I can’t imagine one of their girls turning up at The Gables to sort out the outside front light dressed like that, if you get my drift.

We finished in the Swan at closing time. As I intoned earlier, we are very lucky up this way with the combined beer and inevitable curry infrastructure on offer. Just a short stumble away lies the India Garden, which has been patiently furnishing the hungry, needy and drunk of WD23 with inevitable curry for the last 35 years. Quite happy to remain open well after the pubs have shut, Mr. Garden is always polite, incredibly good value for money, and inexplicably, really really tasty. It was the Tuesday night banquet special, which essentially meant that you could have two courses of anything you liked with side dishes for a tenner! And it still tasted good. Somebody should get the lads in there a Queen’s award for outstanding services to Curry.

Back to the hangover. I’ve noticed that when a hangover is in residence, the laws of physics change a bit. Lying in bed this morning, going over the body checklist-arms-present, knees-present, etc etc, it came to me that birdsong was somehow about three times louder than normal. Maybe the skeleton crew working the hangover shift on the bridge of the U.S.S. Plong have to have all the sensors turned up to help them run the ship on 5% of the normal complement. Out in the garden, there was a woodpigeon in extremely fine voice, going “W’Whoo Whoo” as they do. As well as everything being louder, time seemed to be running a bit slower than normal, and this led me to really focussing on the bird’s song. After quite a while, it struck me that this woodpigeon had a perfect sense of rhythm. In about fifty or so “W’Whoo Whoo”s she didn’t budge off the beat an inch! She was an avian metronome. It made me wonder how a woodpigeon’s perception of music would work. Would Mrs. W. Make a good conga player? Was it just her, or are all woodpigeons, and by implication, the whole animal kingdom demons for rhythm? There was once a drummer called Des who was, quite simply, awful. He said birds never came in his garden. Makes you think.

18 May 2013

Not too much to report this week on the saxophone-operating front this week, as we are in the usual mid-month slow bit. On the kitchen wall at The Gables there is one of those year at a glance wall calendar thingies, made, I believe, by the rather splendidly named Nobo corporation. Upon this is put the mighty display of the year’s engagements partly as a backup for the diaries held in crash able form on various hand-held electric devices around the home, and partly so that we don’t organise an appearance at the Bell and Sideboard in Gripton with the local trio on Her Indoors’ Mum’s birthday or similar. After a few years of keeping the engagement schedule in this way, you get to notice trends, and for reasons I cannot fathom, beginnings and ends of months tend to be busy, and the middle weeks are, in the main, rather slacker. Maybe it’s just the way people think when they are organising a do- I suppose you often hear the expression “We’ll aim at having the Dockets Inwards Department Cocktail Party at the end of June”, or similar, but rarely “Do you know, I’ve always had a thing for the number 17. Let’s have the reception then”.

However, in The Shed, or Home Studio, things are seldom quiet. Taking advantage of not having to spend the usual seven hours a day in the car in order to play Days Of Wine And Roses, I got really very busy on the Seaplanes Of The Axis Powers Diorama. I actually finished the pair of Blohm & Voss 138’s I’d been fiddling away at since Xmas, and commenced work on the large and exciting Blohm & Voss 238. I’ll stop this now, as I can feel a cloud of e-tedium building up on your end of things and I don’t want to lose my audience. Suffice to say, there was a great deal of Geek Musk in the air. The lull in proceedings also permitted a spot of work to get done on the forthcoming “Benny Duke & Peggy” album, where the idea is to present the songs of Duke Ellington and Peggy Lee in a sort of Benny Goodman-ish way. Why? Because a client asked us to for their annual do (On the first weekend of a month, I hasten to add,) and we liked the sound of it so much that we kept it on. As you’d expect, it largely features Her Indoors singing songs with me in the role of The Dennis Thatcher Of Jazz sorting the band out and operating the clarinet. There have already been some free clips of this on the Plog, and these are nestled away over on the Benny Duke & Peggy section of the Band Directory page of this site. Tempted though I am to put another track on today, I’d have nothing left to sell when the CD finally emerges, and I’ll need to get some dough in to pay for the bloody thing in the first place!

It’s always exciting when you enter the final stages of a project. Instead of various tracks in various states of completion lying around in the highly organised infrastructure of the various laptops in The Gables, there is now a finished fully mastered CD, where the tracks come on in the right order one after another, just like on a real record. I’m particularly jubilant about the first looks I’ve had of the sleeve design from my man Phil. Phil is particularly good about boiling a concept down until just the original zeitgeist remains. I’d asked him for a spot of late 1960’s chic to sort the mood of the jazz on the disc, and when I saw what he’d come up with I could swear that I was back at the record counter in Woolworth’s in Oxted in 1971! Won’t be long now, folks. It’s Phil who’s done all the work on this site too. Have a look around- he’s a very clever boy!

My best friend at primary school was called Dave. Dave was Australian and therefore, in terms of an eight-year old from Croydon, impossibly exotic. He knew about stuff like Vegemite, poisonous snakes and spiders and had different words for wee and poo, and a very liberal un-British attitude to fizzy drinks. In 1973, we were just out of the Austerity years, in real cultural terms. I know we’d had the swinging 60s and the Summer Of Love, but I reckon that that only happened to about 800 people around Chelsea. For us down in Croydon it was The War, Rationing, Austerity and then all of a sudden, aspirational 1970’s chic as personified by Bob and Thelma in the Likely Lads. Round my neck of the woods, you got one can of fizzy pop to share with your sisters every other Friday. Dave, coming from tropical colonial areas, had a supply of the stuff virtually on tap. It was like the introduction of whisky to the Navajo, I can tell you! His mum was the first woman I ever saw in culottes, and his sister had a cello. Aside from the recorder, and to quote Molesworth, “The old skool piano wot go clang”, Dave’s sister’s cello was the first musical instrument I’d seen up close and personal. Extraordinary droning sounds emanated from it whenever she operated it with the stick thing. I was fascinated. It was also the first time I’d seen anyone in my peer group doing something other than playing on bikes, making Airfix or eating, and so it came as quite a shock. It was the first time I’d seen someone my age doing something grown-up. It’s just dawned on me now that eating, Airfix and musical instruments is all I do now. That’s quite a shock as well.

Back to Dave, though. Co-incidentally, at the end of primary school in 1976, Dave’s dad got transferred back to Oz and so that was the end of Dave, Vegemite, Coca-Cola cut 2/3 to 1/3 with orange squash, and the hypnotic sound of the cello. Thanks to the gift of the World Wide Facetweet thing, Dave appeared out of the interweb ether to say hello about a year ago. It would appear that he’d survived the ravages of all the domestic creepy crawlies he’d waxed so lyrical about as a lad, and appeared to be quite normal, despite ingesting as a child (as we all did) enough sugar to keep the south American economy afloat for a year. More excitingly, two weeks ago he got in touch to say that he was coming over to London on a business trip, and would I like to meet up. It would, after all, be our first opportunity to have a beer together.

Naturally, as any right thinking chap should do when faced with a visitor to these shores, I whisked Dave off to Mr. Kong’s for the standard menu. It was odd in a good way- we were still the same mates, but with a 36-year gap in the conversation. Dave is now an accountant, and I’d guess a pretty good one if they can send him over to the other side of the planet to drum up trade. Evidence of this was the terrifying memory which a financial chap needs to squirrel away all the tiny minutiae of their craft- he could remember virtually everything about our Primary School, right down to the names of the dinner ladies! Apparently, one of them had tattoos. I wouldn’t even have known what a tattoo was then. A very strange phenomenon, talking in great detail to someone about stuff you’ve not even thought about for all that time, and then not having to pay them and book another appointment! Hopefully it won’t be another 36 years!