It was five o’clock. I’d had a hard day at the office, albeit air-conditioned. I walked out into blistering heat only to find I had a flat tyre. I called the RAC. I am a woman of a certain age after all and my days of changing my own tyres are now over.
The delay would have been fine save that I was some 11 miles from home and still had to eat, change and get to The Green Man, (6 miles) for 7.45pm, where I had an evening of Tina May ahead of me in the company of your favourite blogger, Lance.
I just realised that these distances seem like nothing, but I’m talking London traffic here and on a good day that 11 miles (Stanmore to Crouch End) takes an hour and that 6 miles (Crouch End to Central London) takes three quarters of an hour. Then I had to find parking, walk to venue – living in London is a headache at the best of times.
The RAC had quoted me a good hour to hour and a half and I had to sit in the car, twiddling my thumbs while I waited for him to arrive and change my tyre.
The band were half way through Daahaud when I finally arrived. It sounded perfect. Tina did a weeny bit of scat and I have to say that at that early stage it fitted just right. I agree with Lance – You go to my head, whilst a lovely song (I’m thinking I might sing it myself) didn’t work as a fast samba. I did like Lucky to be Me. What a great song! Bit of scat, not much, great. Not so as the evening wore on. The scat to lyric ratio increased exponentially. As you will have guessed by now I’m not a great scat lover. Not for nothing is it the term we give to animal faeces.
Tina’s French Autumn Leaves was lovely, and her choice of songs well balanced but oh that scat! I really don’t know that many musicians who actually like singers scatting so why has it become de rigueur amongst British female singers? There comes a point in a gig when it just starts to get embarrassing for the instrumentalists.
Tina’s co-conspirator in this scat attack was the NYJO’s Sarah Hughes, who chose to sing Route 66 and A Train. They were admirably sung, save for that damned scat again! Sarah’s voice was not as rounded as Tina’s but then she was a sweet young thing with a life ahead of her and plenty of time to develop as a singer. Tina May, on the other hand, had perfect intonation, good delivery, a little bit of soul and used her large range to good effect. I was pleasantly surprised at just how good she was – save for you know what.
Just to fill in a couple of details – bass player was Arne Somogyi, whose myspace site
http://www.myspace.com/arniesomogyi is more interesting that his playing was last night. At one point he held his head in his hands and rubbed his eyes hard. I think he was tired. It showed. The drummer was Stephen Keogh, who extremely good, if a little overeager. Robin Aspland I’ve seen several times. Apart from gigging with his trio he seems to specialise in accompanying British female jazz singers – Anita Wardell being one of them (another demon scatter!). I favour the more boppish type of playing rather than the free form ‘let’s try out a bunch of notes that don’t bear any relationship to the tune’ but then I guess that’s jazz!
It was lovely to meet Lance – he gave me a copy of his book of stories: Something Cool, and we had a nice long chat about this and that – and of course jazz. I can’t believe how fast he blogged about it! Good on you Lance!
(I felt this was too good a piece to get lost among the comments - Lance)
Tom-Mix - 3 to 1 sets hard as Akenside bakes On the Outside sweats on the inside - Olie Brice bowed bass solo overheard in deep conversation with kittiwake heaven - Tony Marsh - named after Tom's wonder horse - from dressage to full gallop - flushing birds from cover - wing beats flutter - escape the snare - settle in the reeds - pots of them marinading in the gloop but not for the soup says Mark Hanslip who choses carefully - this one's Konitz leaving town on a Coltrane - skipping the light fantastic by Rollins Toc-H Lamp - yet no dimness here - when we close our eyes we hear. Go on, go on, go on, go on..........
