Jazz, but not as we know it...

Level of conviction in own genius: 7.5
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 3
Reading/Listening: ‘The Piano Tuner’ by Daniel Mason / Seasick Steve’s beat-up album ‘Dog House Blues’
Hair day: Cool! My new man, Barry at local outfit Russo’s has shaped me into much-cooler-for-2008 being, with shorter, spikier and blonder hair...

Forget your ‘contemporary’ music scene, trumpeting its crrrazy innovations and edge-widening when really you’re desperately trying not to cough and counting down the minutes til the interval. It’s all about jazz. Jazz in the loosest sense, but it’s the jazz that is filthying up its image which is the most exciting at the moment. Led Bib at the Vortex last night snatched my breath away, took it for a few stiff whiskies, turned it upside down, stamped on it and returned it unceremoniously to me an hour later. A quintet comprising permanently-gleeful drummer, chord-loving bassist, two lean mean alto saxes and a squelchy acid-eyed Rhodes player crashed into our comfy mist of wine and low-level intellectual chat like the sound of baby wildebeest getting slaughtered by monster trucks. There was everything from steel-jawed rock basslines to crunked-up latino beats, gravity-defying solos and some very avant-garde psychedelia from the nu-rave keys boy who seemed to be about 12. Long live the anarcho-noisecore jazz-punks!

In other news, I’ve finished my carol for OUP so it’s time to start work on the music for juice’s silent film showing at the NFT in March. juice now has a 4th member: Anna gave birth to little Molly Snow this morning – wailing, shrieking and burbling? She’ll fit right in...