Jam Session goes off at the Colliwobble Chop House and Basement di Bossa

It is always best not to think, but if you did, you might wonder why we can never assume that many people, some of them musicians, some delusional, most both, and the rest in search of social lubricant and light but essentially malicious gossip, will turn up on any given Sunday.

The Vicar’s sermon must have run to a few extra pages at Matins, because we started with very few in the Gossip Shop, and it stayed that way for quite a while. Then, as can happen, they started pouring through the door, all deserving of extra playing time and getting it – until we could, as is now habitual, entice Glen (Il Duce to those in the know) from behind the bar to tell us to turn it down. In anglo saxon.

So . . . by the time we had five saxes (Laurie, The Captain, Tony, Peter C back from Europe and Alan) joined by a rampaging Ruiz on flugel, it would be fair to say that this had become one of the busier sessions – 24 musos in all, and quite a different line-up to the previous week. It certainly got noisy.

Highlights? Perhaps Cathy Connor and Laurie’s romp through Sugar, Cardinal Pell’s stint on bass and Annie Smith reprising the infamous Dreamer, then singing I was doing Alright. In between was the usual cacophony of leaden swing tunes, off tempo drums, guitars turned up to 11 (actually a couple of good solos in there) and saxophones made to sound like sick parrots in a tin bucket. Takes a different order of skill to get a sound like that . . .

I haven’t checked with Gentleman John Curtis, but I am sure he would agree that the piano playing was impeccable all afternoon. Not that we are biased . . .

So, we never assume people will turn up, even though they do… the last month has been the busiest since 2008, with close to 50 musos taking part, and nobody can remember further back than that.

As Nietsche once said “In der Musik genießen die Leidenschaften selbst.” I haven’t a clue what he was banging on about.