Rhythm methods

Gossips played at gig last Friday night with singer / blues harpist DJ Gosper sitting in for Gossipist Leanne. It was a great gig. I noticed first off during our take on Herbie Hancock’s Chameleon. It’s a common enough tune and I’ve played it many times, but this felt sharp and tight with that lucid melody over the top of choppy clavinet-style keys from Mike and crisscrossing rhythms from Brenton and me. Great fun. Then some unusual takes from DJ and Goss on any number of well known songs. DJ comes from the blues traditions. She sings with a strong, impassioned voice; she performs with a sense of steady structure and solo form; she solos with blues harp and blues scales. It’s a fascinatingly different take on tunes and I, for one, heard them anew. Great fun.

This was Goulburn and Megan and I took the opportunity to duck down to see friends in Sydney. On the way back, we stopped at a winery for coffee expecting country calm and a Euro-chic cellar door experience. Certainly the surroundings, the gardens and flowers suggested it. But we got something else. We’d happened on a 4-day (!) Taikoz Taiko drumming workshop. This is earthy and elemental Japanese drumming and very far from the synopated Afro-Cuban stuff of jazz. It's simple, heavy, meditative and can be terrifyingly loud. I enjoyed it and other visitors joked of it but, at least indoors, it was too much for these ears. A very different rhythm method.

Gossips played with DJ Gosper at the Tattersalls Pub in Goulburn. The Taikoz Taiko workshop was held over the Australia Day long-weekend at the Elling Forest Winery.