Jazz night @ Bar Dynamo

I played support to a Jazz group at Dynamo in Koenji last night. Drums, guitar, bass and keyboards, with female singers on some standards. Here are the first three sets I played, as best I can remember them. It’s all a bit of a blur after that, but I seem to remember there was some more TBM action and a Dave Pike sitar track, and I finished the night with the B-side of Snake Hip

Quincy Jones - Comin' Home Baby
Tubby Hayes - Voodoo Girl
Ann Young - Speak Low
Dudley Moore - Song For Suzy
Lorez Alexandria - Send in the Clowns
Mike Westbrook - Original Peter
Quincy Jones - The Sidewinder

Salah Ragab - Latino in Cairo
Henri Guedon - Afro Blue
Hino Terumasa - Snake Hip
Dudu Pukwana - Diamond Express

John Cameron - Troublemaker
Sergio Mendes - Crystal Illusions
Letta Mbulu - What's Wrong With Groovin'
Gabor Szabo - The Beat Goes On
Imada Masaru - Spanish Flower

Peter Barakan @Sound Cafe Dzumi

Had been looking for an excuse to go to Kichijoji to check this place out and wasn’t disappointed. Dzumi is a small venue and was packed to capacity for this talk show event featuring PB and master Izumi-san playing tunes back and forth  and yakking about music in general. We were treated to some pretty eye-opening (for me at least) stuff including this John Handy track and Louis Sclavis covering Archie Shepp’s Blasé as well as some questionable ECM numbers, but it was all good. The wine went down a treat and I would have happily stayed longer. Looks like becoming a regular post-Disk Union stop-off in Kichi.

New Year Cinema Triathalon 2012

Well, we did it. Three movies in three different parts of Tokyo. Didn’t quite manage the three different languages rule, but that’s OK.

First up was Gus van Sant’s Restless in Hibiya. Surprised this wasn’t a bigger hit as it has all the ingredients for prime melodrama … plus Dennis Hopper’s son. Not a classic, but a good way to start the day. Would like to see this in a morbid double bill with Harold and Maude

Next, after a ramen refueling stop, was the latest Mission Impossible in Shinjuku. I’m not a great fan of the franchise, but this was quite passable. We even had the bonus of a real live earthquake halfway through. It was scary enough, but luckily it wasn’t the big one. Might not even have noticed if it had happened during a car chase or other action sequence.

Finally, we caught the interesting, but overlong, Saudade in Kichijoji. I’ve never been to Kofu, where the film is set, but despite the fairly bleak view of the city it piqued my interest.

Other than the Triathalon, we’ve been ploughing through some DVDs over the break. Honorable mentions to Charlie Varrick (unreleased Lalo Schiffrin soundtrack), Monsters, and Seijun Suzuki’s Yumeji. Is there such a thing as a bad Suzuki Seijun film? If so I’ve yet to see it.