So nice to come home to

It seemed a strange experience to hear James playing with Dial M.  I play with him frequently and yet I heard more when I was in the audience than when I'm playing.  Maybe I'm usually too busy with my own playing although hopefully responding in kind, or maybe he was just playing differently in this context.  Maybe it's a comment on my listening.  Whatever, he played wonderfully and hugely enjoyed  the complex and shifting colours in his harmonies and clear flows and structures in his solos.  Blues pianist Leo was there and commented on harmony and talked of more studies with more time and we both commented on the shelves of books we each had that probably held guidance on all this.  But back to Dial M, they were playing a Cole Porter tribute entitled Songs of love and Loss with five lovely players and some guidance from charts and just the pleasure of the Cole Porter songbook.  Melody Neilsen was singing, strong, involving, so intimately phrased.  She mentioned at the end that she'd dropped the refrain from Night and Day into the start of I've got you under my skin.  I knew both but just felt some incongruity; Megan had recognised the tunes.  Mostly the songs were played with the quintet of Melody and James and Barnaby Briggs and Stephen Richards and invited friend Rouslan Babajanov from Sydney.  Melody obviously enjoyed the interaction and we all felt the joyous playing and presence of Baba: not showy but beautifully smooth and expressive and nicely responsive, including between Melody's sung lines.  Then Barnaby on bass, fluent and beautifully tone (playing with a mic rather than pickup) and sometimes quite explosive with lines that floored me and one solo accompaniment for Melody in Love for sale and Steve, so nicely solid and present and delightfully fluid in one solo with brushes.  The backgrounds of these people showed, capable and easily understated but just delightfully right and apt for the night and the music of Cole Porter and just occasionally explosive for a solo or two.  Such a great songwriter and such a worthy tribute.

Dial M played a tribute to Cole Porter at Smiths.  Dial M comprised Melody Neilsen (vocals), Rouslan (Baba) Babajanov (tenor), James Woodman (piano), Barnaby Briggs (bass) and Stephen Richards (drums).

Various frim fram

They are all (I guess) from the RMC band and I've heard them mostly doing more fusion-styled music before, but this was standards. Melody said it almost apologetically, but that's never necessary. This is the Great American Songbook (capitalised for a reason) and some of the best and cleverest popular music ever written and a great pleasure. And this done with a trio (vocals, guitar, bass) expanded to a 7-piece band with drums and a horn section. And with some clever arrangements and varied formats. The trio is Dial M and so was the septet. They were playing with a sound man and considerable reverb on vocals and a heavily effected sound on guitar (reverb and echo and drive, I guess) and mixed with the background of harmonised horns and varied solo sounds and Melody's very nicely controlled, experienced voice, perhaps somewhere in alto but comfortably managing some higher notes too, this was a great pleasure. Too bad there weren't more to enjoy it at Smiths, but so be it. The songs were a wide range, from Days of wine and rose as and Comes love and Alone together and Yesterdays and Love for sale through to some less common ones like Sinatra's Small hotel and If I only had a brain from Wizard of Oz and a strange one from Nat King Cole about what he eats, Frim Fram sauce (something local and remembered from childhood, I guess) and a few '90s swingers from Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (jokey 12-bar dance throwbacks to '50s swing dancing). And two unexpected choices: a nice take on Jimi Hendrix Wind cries Mary and a love-struck ballad from Barney called All I am. Now I didn't know he could sing, but he did a very decent job with a touch of Elvis and others (see YouTube for Al Jarreau and George Benson doing this). And to top it off, some interesting arrangements, especially on the stock standards: Alone together was a syncopated 8-feel; Yesterdays had starts and stops and various time changes; Love for sale was just vocals and bass; Small hotel was not much bigger with just vocals, guitar and bass. So nicely trained players with some interesting, sometimes challenging arrangements playing a string of great songs. Well done.

Dial M are Melody Neilsen (vocals), Luke Greenhalgh (guitar) and Barnaby Briggs (bass). For this gig at Smiths, they added Julian Fung (alto, tenor), Ben Bonney (trumpet), Steve Davison (trombone) and Blair Fairbairn (drums).