…or to give it its full title – “Things I learned from a Paloma Faith gig that I believe should be implemented in classical music concerts (I’m looking at you Katherine Jenkins)”
Last night, your fearless classical and jazz music podcast guys headed to North London and to the Camden Roundhouse to see Paloma Faith rocking out at the iTunes festival. We’re not so good at gigs in Camden, having been thoroughly confused by Charlie Hazlewood’s Beggar’s Opera earlier this year, and realising five minutes after entering a Big Pink gig at the Electric Ballroom that we were out of our depth, were not appropriately dressed, and that the Big Pink weren’t actually coming on stage until well past our respective bedtimes. Incidentally, it was also at that same moment that Alasdair realised he was old, and Olly realised he was older.
However, not ones to pass up on a free gig, or for that matter a 50% discount on a Nando’s bill (thank you clerical error) we returned to that part of the city we so desperately want approval from, and were treated to a sing-a-long of Faith’s best album tracks along with some covers, including a way over the top cover of Etta James’ At Lastas an attempted throw back to her jazz and burlesque days. Neither of us, I think it’s fair to say, were in the moment. Apart from the fact that the speakers couldn’t seem to handle the volume, and caused a distortion that sounded like tiny vuvuzelas, Alasdair had forgotten his little soap box that he takes to most “standing up gigs” so that he can see over the adults and onto the stage, and Olly had just realised via wikipedia that the singer we were (well Olly was) now watching used to do adverts for Agent Provocateur, and so was in an entirely different place and an entirely different moment.
Not a good start. Alasdair (who has bought these tickets and is therefore responsible) and I are sitting on the cold, hard pews of St. Giles church and my buttocks are aching as very real pain creeps up my spine. Around us people are looking confused as the tortured tinklings of an Icelandic man dressed in black fill the room. This isn’t Jóhann Jóhannsson: Master of minimalist arrangement. This isn’t the man we’ve paid to see and as warm-ups go it’s positively shady. The music is OK. It’s like watching an Autumn breeze ruffling an old oak tree in the calm gloaming of sunset before realising that there are better things you could be doing like watching TV.
I last what I guess are two songs (it’s almost impossible to figure out when the pieces are over, as the piano just sort of dribbles to halt before starting up again with more clunky minor chords) I then rise from the wooden slats designed to remind church-goers of quite how much Christ suffered for their sins and I walk away, Alasdair in aghast tow.
“We can’t walk out!” he hisses as the man in black hammers away at the low notes.
The pub is a bit loud with a cover band lurching between Jason Mraz and The Sex Pistols but the wine’s cheap and it gives me a chance to vent. Alasdair reminds me that he paid for the tickets. I tell him it’s a moot point.
OXJAZZ SPECIAL PART I: We’ve got the first in our roving-reporting-recordings of the splendiferous OxJazz Festival and it’s here NOW for your podcasting pleasure. Featured in this episode are: Alvin Roy, Seb Pipe and Dave O’Higgins. Click here for more info…
BBC INTERVIEW: The chaps at BBC Radio Oxford asked the GetJazzical boys to take care of an interview with Liane Carroll for them and for good measure they also decided to interview our heroes as well, have a gander at the video…
GetJazzical has an uneasy history with Oxford, city of dreaming pretension. It seems (and this all came out in a gush of great heaving sobs) that one of our number was summarily and brutally REJECTED from the canonised seat of education that dwells within the city. Their loss, the big brainy tossers. ANYWAY, GetJazzical has some news that’ll make you fall off your chair, get up, sit down and fall off it all over again…ready?
The city that so cruelly stamped REJECT on us has come shuffling back, mortarboard in hand, to ask for a second chance and being the magnanimous and benign people we are, we said ‘yes’ and gave Oxford a little pat on the head to imply that it wasn’t over but we were being the bigger man.
Of course all of this is immensely exciting and has only been made possible by the gregarious and boundlessly energetic Max Mason, co-founder of the festival (along with ever so talented Alissa and Paul) and more deliciously proprietor of the Big Bang sausage and jazz restaurant in that fair city. As the festival approaches we’ll be bringing you more, but for now book a holiday for the 1st to the 4th of April and have a listen to Max tell you why you should be Oxford-bound for Easter weekend.
Occasionally in life you stumble across someone who’s been doing the same thing as you all along. You then kill that person and hope that the vultures eat them before anyone finds out. For GetJazzical, Nonclassical is that person… Only kidding folks, we have nothing but LOVE in our collective heart (which looks a little like a ying-yang symbol with Olly’s oily black half pervasively oozing hate and mistrust into Alasdair’s pure white and crisp soul) and we are major fans of what they’re doing. Read more…
