Jazz Is Dead?

Writing a review when you weren't there?

One sometimes wonders whether a pattern is emerging in the Gold Street Gossip Shop sessions, hailing as they do from the epicentre of cultural alternativeness in the northern wastes of Colliwobble. Most weeks, we seem to start with a bout of amnesia, therefore thinking that we can actually play (and I use the word loosely, as Hortense might say) a couple of numbers in the tempo di dubious from the book of songswotColknows, before settling down to the usual fare of Autumn  66, Summer Leaves and Root something or other…

Each tune becomes more mangled than the last, until eventually we all fall over from exhaustion, pack up and go home to recover. Every week. Every week.

But not last week. In another first, I heard not a single bum note, no five bar fours, nary a peep of complaint from Colonel T (retd) about why we were not playing everything at 220bpm, in three different keys and  four different tempos not counting the guitarist, because let’s face it, not many guitarists do count these days…

No Singers sang, I heard no bars dropped, saxaphones soloed so quietly you could hear a pin drop, at least from where I was listening, drummers could have been heard to murmur ” No, after you, no really, would you like me to play a little quieter?” and even the bass players would have smiled.

Damn, I was getting away with until that last remark, which is recognisably beyond the bounds of possibility. Alright, I might not have been there. Jazz isn’t dead after all, unless the Jam Session really was that predictable.

Which of course, it was not.

I’m off to the pub…