Au Privave

The red light glowed hollow over his name—white thin typeface—all around, little lampshades red on the tables—stiff figures sat listening, waiting. A had invited me out with her friends after I’d told her how much I loved jazz, ‘Come along,’ she said, ‘It’ll be fun.’ And a few of us headed out to a little bar in Shoreditch where these young experimentalists played conceptualised, fast rhythms—each one sounding like he was trying to outdo the other. After two or three whiskeys, I began to get into the rhythm—but it was far too easy to lose your patience and you got the impression they were doing it for the sake of doing it, rather than for feeling.

Afterwards, I went with A and J—this being the first time I’d seen him in over a year, not since S’s birthday at our place last October—to Ronnie Scott’s, where we caught the late show. There was a quartet when we went in—guitar, bass, drums and vibes. The moment I heard the vibes I felt a mellow relax all through my nerves and remembered I was home. Deep into the early morning, we bounced in our seats, smiling at all the guys going at it—from somewhere, a sax, a Rhodes, there was even a tall, thin guy playing trumpet towards the end—he seemed in his own world compared to the other guys all playing sax, who were feeding off one another—this tall guy with a little blueblack hat stood blowing into his trumpet—following the rhythm and the ideas of everybody else—but firmly sticking to his own thing. And I knew right there—that jazz isn’t dead! It’s alive and it’s here in London or there or wherever you want it to be.