Comin Home baby.

I nearly didn’t go out on Monday night. Who goes out on a Monday night anyway? Who goes out on a rainy, windy, cold, miserable Monday in October?  Every traffic light turned red on me when I got near. Traffic jammed up everywhere I went. I was late, wet, aching and cold. I’ve been ill for three days. Grrrrrh.

Sometimes I get home with pages of notes and nothing to say. Sometimes I’ve got loads to say but there’s no point in saying it. Tonight I just came home after the best of nights. Just a couple of lines of notes and an evening that only seemed to last for three minutes.

Where did that go? Whoa, that was a buzz. Wow, that was a night.

Here’s Derek Nash on Sax and John Etheridge on guitar:

 

 And here he is again after he put the sax through the washing machine without checking the label (Dry clean only):

 

 They started as they meant to go on with Nat Adderly’s ‘Worksong’, a bluesy, rocking number given a real working over.

‘Widow weep for me’ came in slower with a blues guitar and a bluesy piano from Ted Beament.

There were two highlights for me – the first was a Jobim samba ‘The Gentle Rain’, John Etheridge playing an exquisite acoustic guitar, while Derek Nash was hunched low on his sax doing his Bossa thing while Trevor Tomkins was tapping out that Latin rhythm I’m getting addicted to (it happened to me last week too). When the guitar and sax shut up, the back row turned into a trio who showed just how riveting 'quiet' can be.

Then we had Jimmy Smith’s ‘Back at the Chicken Shack’ – the guitar thwacking out the Hammond sound, a wild sax and a stomping beat. The stage area is too small for a dance floor but on the other side of the room some moves were being made and that’s where I wanted to be, but then again…….this was where it was at.

I love this shot, Derek Nash is giving it all he had on            

                 Comin’ Home Baby

made famous by Mel Tormé’s vocal version – you know it – really you do. Tonight all the feet were tapping to the instrumental:

 

                               Mmmmmh that's cool.

We had a bluesy trio of TT, Val Mannix on Bass and Ted Beament’s excellent piano. We had John Etheridge doing a fine guitar solo (with delay pedals working overtime) on Dollar Brand’s ‘Um Sandizi’ (that spelling is such a guess I’m embarrassed by it). We had a lot of whooping and cheering. It was a fine night – the best in London and probably beyond.

On the way home all the traffic lights turned green as I got near and that's really 'Comin' home baby'.

bLdeBrunner

    helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)

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