Smoke gets in your eyes (inspired by Ann Alex’s thought-provoking post)

Ann, your musings on masked saxophonists prompted a random series of thoughts, tragi-comic as it happens. Many years ago at a JNE Corner House gig a jazz-punk, power trio from NYC took to/invaded the stage wearing, from memory, face coverings somewhere between pointy-hat KKK get-up and Dr Who cybermen outfits. 

The trio (reeds, bass and drums) proceeded to shake the foundations to the point of collapse (it was loud!), shocking many in the audience that they upped and left, never to be seen again (at a JNE gig) - I kid you not!

At around the same time a band from Chicago played the Corner House. This was in the days before the smoking ban (1 July 2007) came into effect. Younger readers may not believe this but way back then jazz clubs were frequented by antisocial types (yes, I know, little has changed!) who thought nothing of forcing you (the non-smoker) to inhale the noxious fumes of their 20-per-hour (yes, 20-per-hour, not 20-a-day) cigarette (in lowlife company that’s ‘tabs’) habit. The Chicagoans were ahead of the game. As they took to the stage they requested/insisted that no one should smoke during the performance.

Wow! The cough-splutters coughed into their pints and Babychams. Of course the air was already thick with their antisocial pollutants but, hey, this was an enlightening moment! Throughout the evening the cough-splutters regularly stepped outside to cough and splutter, no doubt whining that they were being made to feel like lepers. Little did they know it that in a few short years that is exactly what they would become and some of them would relish it, whining on the pavement outside their local that it was ‘health and safety gone mad’.

Fast forward to the twen-teens, not quite the new 2020 Jazz Age, and the hard-done-to antisocial brigade thought they’d discovered the panacea to their life-long addiction. Enter (muffled drum roll, in keeping with Ann’s muted horns)…vaping! Yes, this was what they’d been waiting for. They wouldn’t poison themselves or others…or so they thought! And there they were huddling in the doorway of ‘their’ local (it’s my pub, I’ll do what I like). Oblivious to generating enormous clouds of sickly-sweet noxious gases, the deluded continue to walk the lockdown streets merrily puffing away without thinking that their recently acquired ‘must have’ accessory produces water droplets (vapour) which could, just could, be helping spread Covid-19. So, when you’re next in a jazz club consider yourself in a safe environment. It’s the lockdown streets - or rather those walking them - you need to be wary of.  

          

Ann wondered if musicians would be blowing the virus out through the aperture. Which aperture is that, Ann? In America an expert in the field of disease control and prevention said it was unlikely that your farts could spread coronavirus. Beware the ‘expert’ - they could be talking out of their aperture.  

Russell