Having started out as “really good for someone who can’t do it” then progressing to “rubbish for someone who can do it”, today I promoted myself to “OK for someone who can do it” which was a major breakthrough IMO.

This is me attempting it

This is it done really properly…

Some time ago I bought some timbales and I’ve spent lots of the last three years trying to get people to jam with me. I’ve been to some latin jam nights, but I wasn’t good enough to feel confident, and I got a group together a few times to try to get some rhythms going, [...]

Hmm, the saxophone may not be beyond reprieve after all! Quinteto Mambo Jambo played in Hull last night, and I went over to check ‘em out… partly because it’s interesting to see how Latin music can be played with fewer than six people, and partly just because. Mambo Jambo are essentially a duo of [...]

Yesterday we gave a rhythm & timing workshop at a salsa weekender in Garforth.  What a buzz!  Got the dusty timbales out and got to whack ‘em properly, had a play of the bongos and the various cowbells.  Gareth brought his formidable congas and we gave a one-hour class explaining the rudiments of salsa rhythms [...]

So anyway I found myself singing more bits of That Song. They went:

Such a lone-ly girl
I think it’s time for you to look and see
That the way you think
No longer seems to work on them and me
‘Cos your ways are quite disgusting,
And they amount to nothing!
What am I sup-posed to think of you———?

Then it’s [...]

Yesterday afo was another go at making convincing Latin noises. This time we had bass, keys, bongo and timbales, and it was sounding good! Need at least one, maybe two, more percussionists, and a couple of brass players / violin / flute and we’ll have a band! It was really starting to [...]

Back in the ’80s I had a cassette of music that a schoolfriend thought would be good for my musical education. There was a tune on there that might have been by a band called Sheriff Jack but might not have been, but I can’t find anything about it on t’internet at all. [...]

Last night was another Descarga! Night at 1331. A bit of a funny one - at the start of the night there was only half a band and no audience… But the rest of the band shew in the end (though with a couple of personnel changes) and we got treated to some [...]

The North ‘Merkins have some cool shops.
In Canadialand, in Kingston, is As The Plot Thickens - a Mystery Book shop with a wonderfully evocative atmosphere. The front door gives way into a dark-cornered, wooden-floored space filled with shelves and an armchair placed where Holmes might sit, voraciously absorbing the contents of the [...]

Last night I went down to Bobolobo’s Latin Jazz night again, this time armed with 3 cowbells, güiro, and claves. It were really good.
The güiro has an amazing ability to turn heads all on its own. Who would have thought that in this age of in-car DvD, massive-scale online multiplayer games, [...]