A fast blues for a blue Monday.

This week turned out a disappointment – after last week too, which was a candidate for the Hall of Fame of all-time great weeks. I was getting greedy – and the great Soul Cat in the sky decided to take me down a peg.

I spotted that ‘The James Taylor Quartet’ were down to play a nightclub in Brighton on Saturday night and he doesn’t tour much these days so it was probably my last chance to see the  king of kool, one last time.

Hey, that’s not so very far, really it isn’t. It was clearly time for a roadtrip.

Hey, he’s so cool they serve anti-freeze in the bar.

L Mmmm, that’s nice.

All planned out like a military operation; all the daily grind sorted out by the afternoon then a sharp drive down to the coast. Park up on the seafront, a lungful of fresh air, a cough and then an evening showing all the young folks how it really should be done….MOD Night.

Then;

           SHOW CANCELLED

It’s gone over to next month but that’s too far ahead for me. Plans are too much of a luxury these days.

And it’s gone over to another club which looks a lot bigger. Glowering bouncers and not a lot of patience for an old guy with attitude and an Ian Dury Walking stick.

Monday saw me down at my very own Jazz Club, The Red Lion, Isleworth. Not quite the same excitement, not the same kind of buzz but fairly good – really packed out this week because the line-up was about a third of the late, great and irreplaceable Ronnie Scott’s Band.

And they were good.

Dick Pearce’s trumpet and flugel horn and Mornington Lockett’s (yes that really is his name) Sax tore apart the melody of any number of standards, shredded them up and then pulled them all back together again – just in time, with John Critchinson playing some very fine piano, Tim Wells on Bass and Trevor Tomkins on Drums – the glue holding it all together.

 

No photo of Dick Pearce – he disgraced himself by playing a big fat Tuber some of the time. He tried to call it a ‘Baritone Horn’ as if that was ever going to help. It didn’t. I think he ‘borrowed’ it from a Salvation Army hall.

But between them all they were very good indeed. It was one of those couple of hours that flew past in a few minutes. Good hard Bop and ending up on a fast blues for a blue Monday.

But it was never going to be as good as a raid on Brighton.

Then again, I have spotted the chance of a little (ahem) Adventure  on Sunday.

 

`SPIDERMAN SAYS

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Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)

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