The B Team

Jam Session 12th Feb

This Sunday, all the real musicians will be tootling away in Port Fairy, and it is only us lesser mortals who will have the run of the Middle Park RacketHaus to play whatever we feel like. I always rather enjoy the change - and it is quite possible that a few of us will get out, get up and boogey, hopefully with wild abandon, because, let's face it, jazz is not meant to be serious all the time, if ever....

So, with any luck, a few jammers will front and centre, trainwrecks, debacles and catastrophes will be encouraged, the racket will be, on occasion, enough to make yer ears bleed, and we can all gossip maliciously about the absentees: the poor darlings at The Port Fairy Jazz Festival who will have spent 750 km worth of petrol getting there and back, have to fork out for food, accommodation and, not unreasonably, rather more social beverage than yer mum would approve of... and possibly end up with less playing time than the jam session anyway. And a hangover. Go figure.

And once you have gone figured, drop in on the Vic Wine Centre, 22 Armstrong Street, Middle Park, 3.30pm to around 7.00pm.

Last week's Jam, the third at the RacketHaus saw 24 muscians get up and play - we settled for indoors and were rewarded with another noisy jam - nobody noisier than the Bounder and his henchpersons, most of whom subsequently blamed the racket on the other members of the set and/or the glass window behind them. Hmmm. David Hardy the first trombonist we have had for a while.

Coupla singers to mention: Kevin Rolf produced some better charts, notably a near legible rendition of Rockin' Chair. Sang well, and made it easy for the backing musos. Jane similarly with You Don't Know What Love Is, and Janet Arndt back for another session - but the pick of them was Ruby, who tackled Black Coffee and made sense of one of the harder ballads around.

Newcomer Peter Walsh played some good piano - he seemed a little nervous to start with but soon realised that the entire band was on his level or something. Hope he comes again. Tony Luxmoor in hot form.

The saxophones got together and tried, they really did, to blow the windows out: Jeff blew most notes, Michael Holt blew the loudest ones. And the Good Captain sounded particularly smooth this week. All good.

Of the six guitarists, we accidentally managed to limit Mike to just a few toons: whoops! Am hoping to rectify that this week. Ilya dipped in and out, Roger back in the saddle, and Mike the Pom becoming a regular, all of which is good to see. Neville the pick of them this week.

It felt like a smaller jam session than the previous week (it wasn't), and we got the RD700 back in action. The sound was a bit off on occasion, but we will work on that and should have it completely off all the time, in no time.