See, it’s all your fault, Tim!

Jazz is a different beast; I know Alun Vaughan (who once played bass for Panic Room), who plays a lot of jazz gigs in Swansea, frequently playing gigs with people he’s never even met until the day of the performance. Seems there’s a tradition of singers or soloists who don’t have regular touring bands, but put together ad-hoc bands with musos from the local scene wherever they play.

Have seen that happen in the world of prog-rock. There are a lot of musicians, especially drummers, who play in more than one band. At the Celebr8 festival in Kingston back in May (remember that?), the opening act on Sunday was Alan Reed and The Daughters of Neccessity. They’ve first met the previous afternoon, had one rehearsal, but you’d never have known from their performance.

I listen to slightly more Jazz than I do Prog (and that still isn’t very much at all) and one of the features of the Jazz world was that any given line-up tended to last for one album.

I suspect that the recording industry were the driving force behind this instability, but the net effect was that it was almost impossible to see (or would hear be a better verb?) any given group live.

Not that I ever went to any, but my impression is that one could never be entirely sure who would be headlining at a jazz club any given evening, as once one had a certain level of reputation, it seemed people could just turn up and join in.

Probably the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of the jazz world at the same time?