Many,
many years ago I was invited to a wedding on the same day as an important
relegation fixture between Brentford and Portsmouth. I came up with the
Hitchcockian idea that one could be in two places as once. After getting my
wife’s blessing ‘do what you think you must’, I snuck out of the wedding
reception while no one was watching, drove to Griffin Park and then returned to
the wedding party after the match. My hopes of no once noticing my absence were
shot down in flames as soon as I bumped into the first person who asked if I
enjoyed the match. Funnily enough, despite getting what I thought was
permission to go, this episode is still used against me by my long-suffering
partner to this day.
Roll
forward a quarter a century and I thought I would try this manoeuvre one more time,
albeit in different circumstances. A young colleague was drumming at a gig for
his heavy metal band Wild Thorn at Trillians in town and a large group of
workmates had gone along to support him. My dilemma was that there was a gig at
the Jazz Café on the same night. Time to unroll the Hitchcock manoeuvre once
more, surely nothing could possibly go wrong this time. I turned up early at
Newcastle’s finest heavy metal emporium saw the first number then snuck out of
the now darkened venue down to Pink Lane to enjoy a very enjoyable set from AlexanderBone’s Jam Experiment (see photo courtesy of Mike Tilley). I returned with impeccable timing to Trillians
and was able to catch the encore of the rock outfit. Mission accomplished - or
so I thought. Unfortunately, the drummer
had clocked me leaving. He was singularly unimpressed. I think the fact I’d
gone to a jazz gig added insult to injury.
What is
it with the younger generation and jazz? It is a feature of most jazz gigs that
I attend that the musicians are the youngest people in the room. In fact, a
contemporary jazz audience has so many older attendees I’m surprised Saga don’t
get in on the act and start sponsoring gigs. Clearly there is no shortage of young
people coming through the UK jazz scene. I doubt if the variety and quality of
playing has ever been better. It’s just a shame that so many of their peer
group seem to shun the music.
Three
months prior to ‘Wild Thorn Jam Gate’ I took a group of young work colleagues to see The Dead
Hedge Trio at the Jazz Café a few years ago. It wasn’t a bad gig (see review)
but they hated it; half of them couldn’t wait to leave after the first set. A post-mortem
on the gig seemed to focus more on the occasional spittle which had left the
enthusiastic saxophonist’s mouth rather what they had listened to. These were clever
bright professional people. One of the admirable traits of this generation is
their obsession with physical fitness. Obviously, this is a good thing - it’s
just a shame they aren’t prepared to exercise their minds in the same way they
do their bodies. It is not just music they are blinkered to. Rarely do they
visit art galleries, see anything other than Marvel movies or read serious
literature. Harry Potter and his Game of Thrones seems to be the cultural zenith
for these young professionals. What is wrong with the younger jazzanation?
Something
needs to be done to entice these future captains of industry to gigs. Unlike the
standard Victor Meldrew style jazz audience, these people drink. So rather than
the venue selling at best a single drink each set per customer, bar sales could
be exponentially lifted if only we could entice the more youthful element
through the jazz doors. Just as one
begins to despair, there appears to be a resurgence of interest in the big
cities. Artists such as Kamasi Washington sell out and Camden’s Jazz Café is
frequently packed to the rafters with young groovers so maybe all is not lost. Jazz will never have mass appeal (we wouldn’t
like it if it did) but along as enough new people keep on dipping their toes in
the improvised waters maybe there is a future for this finest of musical art
forms to prosper.
By the way,
for anyone interested in the result of the football match we lost one nil and
were relegated at the end of the season but as Miles Davis would say ‘So What?’
Steve H
1 comment :
Kind of blue then?
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