Watching TV with the sound blocked out by Jazz...

Albums of the Day
Cloudland Blue Quartet – Five New Songs
UK – Best of UK
Freddie Hubbard – A Soul Experiment
Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers – Free For All
Freddie Hubbard – Backlash
Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers – With Thelonius Monk
Reeves Gabrels – Rockonica
Various – The Wire Tapper 15

I start the day listening to CBQ’s “Five New Songs” with the intention of going along and playing three of them at Out of the Bedroom tonight...

Listening to them is a bit like rehearsing them – certainly it’s the closest I’ll get to that task today...

Of course I should possibly play “The Crocodile Song” or “Half A Lifetime Away” as they’ve both been nominated for Song of the Year at Monday’s annual “Acoustic Idol” awards. Apparently I’m also nominated as Best Solo Artist and my last album, “Deeperdown” is up for best album...

Since I’ve not sent out any newsletter to my, ahem, “fans” regarding these nominations and how to vote, I don’t expect to actually win anything – but I’ll go along in any case...

In 2004, my previous album “Anotherhappyday” came 4th overall and was the top album by a male artist...

Uptown, a kind of semi-sale at the moment at HMV prompts me to purchase two discs, Freddie Hubbard’s 1967 album “Backlash”, in which he moves away from his previous role as hard bop trumpeter and makes his way into a bit of a soul trip...

Cracking stuff....

While I wait to get home to hear it, I spin his later album “A Soul Experiment” on the Jukebox to get me in the mood...

Second disc is Art Blakey’s 1958 album “With Thelonius Monk” which is described in the Penguin Guide to Jazz as “indispensible”, receiving five stars and a coronet no less...

To tee me up for this, I set the jukebox to play the Jazz Messengers’ “Free For All”...

I love jazz – except Dixieland, Trad Jazz and anything with vocals....

Not content with me adding these two to the collection, fate leaves the recently successfully bid for on e-bay Reeves Gabrels album “Rockonica” on the doormat for my return to Crispycat Towers, along with the latest edition of The Wire magazine, which, this month, comes complete with an eclectic selection of new music...

Dr Prog has phoned today to invite me along to two concerts, one tonight, a selection of South American Guitar Music at a Church on Princes Street, and one tomorrow night, Markus Stockhausen, trumpet playing son of Karl-Heinz, playing some improv jazz at St Giles cathedral on the Royal Mile...

I forego tonight’s thinking I’ll be at OOTB but give a tentative affirmative to tomorrow – I’ll need to check with Executive Producer, Anne, re any clashes in the social calendar...

Back home and, by the time we’ve had our tea, it’s a wee bit late to get along to OOTB to get a slot, so, with all the new music which has made its way into my life today, I decide to crack open a bottle of red, get the headphones out and have an evening of classic jazz, metal and weirdness on one settee, while Anne watches the telly from the other...

We are accompanied by Meg the Black Cat...

We watch Jimmy McGovern’s drama for BBC, “The Street” (I don’t have sound of course) – this week re a particularly nasty wife-beating bastard who, rather satisfyingly, is himself battered to death in the street by his wife and her sister, having just beaten up the sister’s husband, causing his mother-in-law to die from a heart attack – rather fittingly, the girls dump his body in the freshly prepared mother’s grave where it is covered by her coffin...

Excellent – even without hearing the dialogue!!

This is followed by “Newsnight”, by which time my listening evening is over. Labour take another kicking at the hands of the audience and panel. They don’t realise of course that Gordon Brown will be even worse than Tony Blair...

Then “This Week” in which Stephen Fry, a luvvie whom I’ve never liked, makes an arse of himself with some, seemingly drunken, spouting about how Labour and politicians in general are ok (even though they fail miserably to do any of the things they said they’d do in order to get elected) and in fact, we, the public at large are to blame for all woes currently plaguing the country...

Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys also makes an appearance to give his opinion of the 80’s. He has a new album out on Monday you see (which I will be buying no matter the man’s politics)...

To bed at 12:30...

Highlight of the Day : An evening of listening