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…
This episode almost never happened because Olly just had to go and go to Rome didn’t he? The combination of girls, gelato and grappa were very nearly too much to resist and we almost lost him. In fact on his last day in the ancient city he was found, his arms wrapped around a Corinthian column, screaming that they’d have to prise him loose. They did and he’s back. On an aside, do you know how many tourists there are in Rome? F’ing loads of them! Absolutely everywhere like a dirty smear on a silk dress – if you’re the kind of person who clings to your sense of superiority to keep you buoyant in this world of chavs, bursting hospitals and early releases then Rome can be hard to get along with cos it’s really hard to feel elite when you’re being jostled by an overweight Texan man who inexplicably keeps trying to smell your hair as you admire the Sistine chapel.
But the episode… Golly gosh, gee and wow – this is something else. In the runup to the OXFORD JAZZ FESTIVAL your friends at GJ have pulled out the stops with a luscious playlist including:
Adam Rafferty – Chameleon: This guy beatboxes whilst he plays the guitar and he covers Herbie Hancock. Now read that again. Yeah, I know. He is spectacular and he’s playing at OxJazz so you and I get to see him LIVE! Lucky us. Tickets and more here.
Carly Commando – Bear: Olly loves this chick. She made a new album called ‘One Take’ and it’s available on her MySpace right bloody now – smooth and rhythmic, listen to it naked. In the bath, obviously.
The Fauxharmonic Orchestra- Beethoven Symphony No. 1 in C 1st Movement: So much more to say about this incredible guy. Paul Henry Smith takes control an enormous library of musical notes played by real orchestras and ‘conducts’ them live with two wii-motes. Seriously incredible and just the sort of thing that gets our engines running here at GJ. Check out this video for more:
Peter Gregson- Omina: Very daring, very avant-garde, Peter uses beats, licks and harmony more like a DJ than the professional cellist that he is. Peter is currently ‘genius in residence’ at The Hospital Club which has become a new obsession for us here at GJ and we often recline and dream of planning our next podcast whilst sipping a cool G&T in cool surroundings with cool people at the club. One day. One day
Clara Sanabras & The Real Lowdown - Love for Sale: ANOTHER OxJazz artist and a doozy at that, we have a feeling she’ll be incredible live and can’t wait to find out if we’re right. Tickets here.
It’s big, it’s clever and it doesn’t care who knows it – send us a tweet, buzz us and BOOK YOUR TICKETS TO OXFORD NOW! We got a pretty sweeet last minute hotel deal here and you should too, you can even stay in a prison which looks super foxy.
What some of you may not realise is that we have been doing what we do for quite a few years now. For those of you who have noticed there are more pages than the front, you will have learned that while at St Andrews University, Oliver decided to do the radio equivalent of one of those 0900 phone lines that charges 50p per minute and DOESN’T come up on your mobile bill. With what was known in the streets of that fair town as his sexy/pervy/predator voice, Olly educated the masses with his three CDs worth of Classical Music from the Movies and Miles Davis compilation. It was called the Jazz and Classical show, and was pretty much the best damn jazz and classical show on STAR FM at the time.
In 2007, a terrified new member of the radio committee mentioned a love for Yo-Yo Ma and the rest is our relatively short history. Well, last week Olly and Alasdair sat down to listen to an early broadcast. It wasn’t a vanity exercise, believe us. In fact, it was a bit like replaying a bad first/last date. Moments of “Oh, did I really say that?!” “Somebody say something, this is getting awkward” and the belief from only one side of the table that there was definite chemistry in the air brought dark, lonely, memories flooding back to both presenters.
However, what we did realise (and this was the real reason we were listening (honest) – is that we played some pretty good music. Before the days where we had to “ask” and “get permission” to play the music on our show, we went nuts. And after a tweet from one of our fans, asking for a GetJazzical Spotify playlist, we thought we’d oblige by archiving the music we used to play on a show we once called “Jazzical“.
So, to all of you who wonder what kind of music we’re really into, or just generally fascinated by the story arc that is (Get)Jazzical, have a listen! It’s on Spotify so if you don’t have Spotify GET WITH THE PROGRAM, JEEZ!
