Sunday Arvo at the Lunatic Soup Kitchen. McCue extemporises, the brat shines

Sunday arvo at the Lunatic Soup Kitchen saw Landlord  Glen in a particularly jovial mood, possibly due to the fact that the pevious day's Grand Final free beer until the first goal was just that – ten seconds in, and only one beer poured. Hortense, as it turns out, would not have been disappointed, had she turned up. . . .

Ah yes, the jam, now let’s see. Started well enough with the usual suspects Col, Frank and Brian, joined shortly thereafter by meself, Al Papa Jazz and Jack the Lad.  Ali (tenor sax) joined the Captain, and then Keef sauntered in, as he does. Very good sauntering from Keef, we all thought, whilst Ali’s friend/sister/complete bluddy stranger got up and sang My Funny Valentine and then the Eva Cassidy arrangement of Autumn Leaves.. McCue played well until  he fell for the old make-it-hard-for-the-piano-player trick, and got lumbered with You Don’t Know What Love Is, played in entirely the wrong tempo by all concerned. You Don;’t Know What the Tune Is, played by all unconcerned,  more like.

Rob recovered by joining meself at the bar to contemplate the sight of four sets of feet tapping away, to four different beats. Music ranged from Naima (Coltrane) to When My Baby Walks Down the Street (tin pan alley). The Jazz was so good on the sticks, we had a struggle persuading Hirsh to take over, but eventually he conquered his nerves (hah!) and positively ripped through Bernie’s Tune, One For My Father, and a coupla others. Somewhere in the middle of all that, a young lady aged about 10 got up and played some confident solo piano. Precocious brat, disgustingly confident, quite good. Shouldn’t be allowed. Then Noriyo from Kyoto (a city full of Jazz Bars and Temples, bit I digress) stepped up and played keys for fine renditions of Ipanema and Satin Doll, and will hopefully do so again.

An entertaining afternoon, with an audience that stayed, drank and gossiped as they should,  ended will the usual riotous assembly ripping out a fine version of  Doxy then comprehensively murdering Route 66, We’ll probably do it all again next week, only better, or worse, or backwards.

Conclusions: My Funny Valentine , by the way, is no laughing matter. We didn’t play Summertime., and most of the other tunes weren’t much better. There is nothing wrong with a jazz waltz chart that a box of matches couldn’t fix. Captain Chaos could organise fours without total confusion resulting, but he prefers not to, and from an entertainment value standpoint, I think he is on to something.

Catchya next week? TW