London Jazz Action 1987

Look what London had to offer over one month in 1987 – yes, London Jazz Action! I feel it should have an exclamation mark, although that makes it sound more like a hip 60s album featuring Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott. Aye, they were the days, when you could walk upstairs in an ordinary boozer to a little room with a few uncomfortable chairs loosely organised around a tiny stage onto which would walk (from the bar behind you) such legends as Lol Coxhill, Keith Tippett, Clark Tracey, Derek Bailey, Harry Beckett, Evan Parker et al. I didn’t see Gilles Peterson once – perhaps because IDJ could not have managed dancing to most of this music - meow! That was OK, I didn’t expect to see him there. The Jazz scene was as fractured as it’s always been and most who attended the trendy clubs wouldn’t been seen dead in a pub listening to Lol Coxhill – no congas! It’s not Fusion! And so it went. I’d travelled a long way from earlier forays into the easier side of things to watching, open-mouthed, as Parker circular-breathed his way through a solo...