To the Conga! …on Sunday evening for the return of the autumn series of the Music Mix jazz events.
There is something of a secret club ethos around these superbly curated local gigs. It’s not so secret in that there is a half-decent marketing push, but secret in that, on a Sunday night, you have high quality jazz musicians visiting your local church village hall. It’s got to be better than stupid Songs of Praise.
Appearing at the Conga on Sunday was the Simon Spillettt Quartet. This is a collection of musicians who follow the lead from Simon and his love for all things Tubby Hayes. We all love Tubby Hayes, right?
Tubby had something of a reputation for enjoying the finer things in life. I felt it only appropriate that upon arrival I bought a bottle of the house’s finest red wine and sat back to enjoy the jazz.
Chin chin.
The only problem was I almost came a cropper before even the first notes were played on Simon’s sax. I narrowly avoided a red wine incident over my lovely recently purchased women’s sheepskin fur white gilet.
Whoops.
I took a little time to take in the surroundings. It appeared that we had Donald Trump sitting in front of us. I never had him down as a Tubby Hayes fan.
As the evening developed I realised it wasn’t the dickhead dictator himself but just someone who liked a good old-fashioned comb-over blonde haircut.
The Quartet took to the stage bang on 7:30 pm. They looked the absolute bollocks, suited and booted, and ready to put in a classic jazz performance.
I’m never entirely sure what happens with jazz music with regard to how it’s played. Maybe I don’t want to peek behind the magician’s curtain. Do the band make it up as they go along or are they playing note for note Tubby Hayes' songs?
Either way it looked bloody tiring up there on stage. I was also impressed to see Simon Spillettt never failing to run out of breath with some of his stretched out saxophone solos.
In between the wonderful songs we had plenty of stories. Simon is something of a storyteller and also the world renowned fountain of all knowledge when it comes to Tubby Hayes.
This was a very suave and sophisticated performance. It certainly wasn’t a crappy tribute act.
The band even ventured into some of Tubby’s ballads, which can always be a problematic choice. You can get away with the anarchic nature of the faster arrangements, but not so with a ballad.
“Scorecards at the ready”
…remarked Simon before the Quartet pulled it off with a plum.
The pace picked up a little for the second half of the show. In particular Don’t Fall Off the Bridge had all the energy and rumbling drums, as the song title suggests.
I do love the freeform nature of this music. Even the count ins for the rest of the band were a little odd.
“1, 2, 3, 2, 2.”
What’s that all about?
And so a pretty special evening with high quality musicians appearing in the local church hall.
Talk about blowing your own trumpet, etc.
