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Who’s The Boy With The Lovely Hair by Jakko M Jaszyk

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I’m sure Jakko will be familiar to at least a few members of the parish. It’s an absolutely fascinating memoir – one of the few where the “I was brought up in a terraced house…” is as fascinating a journey as the later “…and then I auditioned for” chapters. Eminently readable – not least because of the exquisitely parsed text, which is broken down into bite-sized paragraphs throughout. Inevitably he comes across heroes and legends early on in his career (So far we’ve been introduced to Ronnie Scott, Bill Bruford, Allan Holdsworth, Dave Stewart – no, the other one – and, er, Nicholas Lyndhurst) and his recollections are framed just the right side of wry to land perfectly. I’m only up to his time with 64 Spoons (nope, me neither) and I’m absolutely hooked.

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Jazz : A Force for Good

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I am not a jazzer. No way. Expose me to pure jazz, and I will run a mile. It just doesn’t work for me, and I have tried (as have friends). It really came home to me when I went to see Bill Bruford some years ago. There I was looking forward to this alumnus of three of my favourite bands but, No! This wasn’t right at all. It was all clarinets and marimbas.

Yet, when the music in my comfort zone gets exposed to jazz, that’s when it really gets exciting. Joni when she gets Jaco. Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major. My favourite folk dance thrives when Andy Cutting’s melodeon, the hurdy gurdy and the bagpipes, get cut with multiple saxes and it swings. Above all, at the recent live reincarnations of King Crimson, what has got me on the edge of my seat with delight, what has enthralled me and kept me guessing, has been the syncopations, the flights of fancy, the vaulting instrumentals setting off at tangents. I have to concede; it’s the jazz which makes it.

Given the recent expose from the Daily Mail that a love of jazz renders suspect the credibility of Scottish » Continue Reading.