Jazz from Geoff

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Jazz from Geoff, The Blog

The Blog is late again this week. I have actually been OUT 2 days in a row! Old friends and what were once familiar faces. How we have all slipped into the routines of shutdown, whatever level we are or will be in.

I sat down last night and played the last recording I made at Hedsor Jazz. March 5^th 2020. Do YOU remember that night? There was only one more to come a week later, but March 5^th was the last that I recorded, and it now seems so strange that then we were all used to going out to Hedsor on a Thursday evening, meeting familiar faces and as well as having the amazing social contact that we took for granted, listening to amazing jazz, which we also took for granted.

On March 5^th we listened to Ian Smith and Ollie Wilby. We talked with them in the interval; we shook hands with them at the end of the evening. We enjoyed the banter with others as they left. “Thanks Geoff for doing the tables and PA, see you next week”. The sort of evening and evening end that we had enjoyed every week for umpteen years at Hedsor Jazz. Almost every Thursday evening this century in fact.

But in this past 7 months that normality has died. In that 7 months we too have all changed and, I for one, don’t want the Hedsor Jazz habit to be allowed to die too, which is why I have attempted to write something every week in order to keep the memory of our previous normality alive.

This hasn’t been helped by computer hackers. My address book was got at by, I am told, a Russian. I have had to think hard about how to email again to let you know about my weekly typing's, and I have still to solve that puzzle. More than one antivirus program has scanned my PC, and they all tell me it isn’t infected, and that I am protected. But do please be aware, all of you who read this will now be known by someone else.

On the music front this week I have seen no new live jazz. Scour the internet, use some of the links I have put out in this blog in previous weeks and you can see live jazz broadcasts that you can stream for a price and there are also many streams and films from the past can be had for free via YouTube, which is great.

I understand that the musicians need to keep in practice and also to gain some income, but sitting in front of a screen listening through relatively small loudspeakers is nothing like the live vibe of club or concert. Even the glass of beer isn’t quite as good, even though Rebellion Beer have been brilliant in keeping me supplied!

No I haven’t an answer, or date to give you a hope of a return to live interaction (I was tempted to say “live social intercourse” but thought that might be misconceived!!). We are almost back were we were in March. Covid 19 isn’t going away, and I don’t want to risk lives by offering the temptation of live jazz. What I am going to do this week is put the whole of our last concert at Hedsor up on DropBox and let you all grab it for your self, and for you to have that funny nostalgia feeling for yourselves.