Tuesday

It’s Tuesday, it’s Rue des Lombards and Baise Salé and it’s another jam. I guess that’s the format for early in the week because the weekends seem more formal and with cover charges. This was a jam session with reference to guitar hero John Scofield. The band was a quartet, guitar, organ, drums, percussion, with bass provided by the organ. From the top it was hot. There’s not a lot of chordal variation underlying this music, but there’s drive and heavy groove and sparkling solos and plenty of harmonically and rhythmical diversity therein. It can get a bit samey to my ears, although I’ve played this style with pleasure. And these were some great players all round. Keys laid down the organ bass and constantly twitched organ tones. Along with the percussion and drums there was real drive here. And the blues-oriented but also fusion-speedy guitar was a pleasure, also pulling his own rhythmic weight. And nice solos all round, not least form the two skin players. It’s loud but it’s virtuosic and seriously fun. There were to be jammers but I didn’t see any before I left. These were challenging chops to sit in for. Very well done.

François Constantin (percussion) invited Nenad Gajin (guitar), Fred Dupont (keys) and Loïc Pontieux (drums) to host the John Scofield jam at Baise Salé in Paris.