JAZZ – That horrible oobly doobly stuff!!

As most of you know, we at Blaydon Jazz Club reached our 25th anniversary in Sept. The reason we have survived this long is, I think, by keeping the music very accessible. It may not always be the jazz purist’s cup of tea but this is our niche and it’s what our particular audience seem to want. We hoped that it might bring in new people whose appetite might be whetted for jazz in all it’s styles.


As we received a small amount of funding (a new experience – thanks to Gateshead MBC/Grass Roots Grants) we took the opportunity to undertake a lot of promotion – posters all over the Tyne Valley area in shops, libraries etc, listings in Gateshead Council News (goes to every house in the borough) and A4 posters to all Gateshead MBC arts groups/network contacts. This as well as the usual jazz networking sources of info.

We have had some great concerts this autumn well supported by the regular jazz aficionados but, amazingly, all the effort to bring in new people to give jazz a try has resulted in not one single ‘new’ person arriving at the door. I don’t know – we have to be thankful for the wonderful loyal folk who support us through thick and thin, and I guess we do it for them, but it makes you wonder.

So tomorrow I’m going to buy 20 cans of lager and spend about 10 hours watching football on the telly, then some real talent on X-Factor, then I’ll probably go for a curry takeaway and ensure I throw the polystyrene carton and half eaten contents on the pavement somewhere before throwing up a bit further along the road back home English culture eh? You can’t beat it.
Roly