Oh to have been there among the five or six dozen was it each night who made it in at the Cellar Door, above, to hear Miles, big Keith and co. But hey it’s 2016, Miles is in the sky even if his musical spirit is with us still, and any night of the week you can still hear plenty of great jazz if you are lucky and find yourself in the right place at the right time. All the spills and thrills: notes, undertones, overtones, lots of held notes and dots on the page or remembered, dissonance, free groove, vamps, freak-outs, all the scales, odd meter very welcome, and a few tunes maybe – even a song. The “spaces between the notes,” remain. A few notes from the margins written on a napkin

1 People quietly talking at suitable points at gigs is better than stifling silence when everyone is instead looking at their shoes or for the exits.

2 The ECM sound exists only on records. The missing element live? Manfred Eicher.

3  Standards-based gigs aren’t as involving or immersive as gigs at which the bands play their own songs.

4  The 100 club, not that it does much jazz, is still a cracking venue.

5  Gigs where the band onstage outnumber the audience or near as are too depressing for words.

6  Jams are the best playground of the scene when players can feel at ease and share a communal experience.

7  Corporate jazz clubs always lose more than they gain apart from higher turnover.

8  Eating distracts. Smells funny too for FZ’s* sake.  

9  Leaving a door open while the band is playing is terrible for the sound.

10  Onstage interviews are just too awkward.

11  Twenty-minute breaks between sets are never 20 minutes.

12  Too many leaders name-check the band far too many times. A mantra (even if witty eg “Dylan Bates, the Paganini of Penge”) it is not.

13  Introducing your fellow band member as “the great” followed by Joe or for that matter Doris Bloggs is usually ridiculous.

14  Clapping along is boring.

15  Cloakrooms are great to leave your things in.

16  The sound engineer telling off a gig-goer for taking a picture when everyone is taking pictures and escapes censure is so unfair.

17  Is it more than your job’s worth to allow the audience queuing outside on a freezing night in out of the cold?

18  Piano-tuning is best heard by an audience of piano-tuners.

19  Gig-goers who pretend they are playing the piano (eg playing ‘air piano’) provide easy work for the jazz psychiatrist.

20  People still go to the loo during a bass solo unless the gig is a long bass solo and then they wait for the drum solo.

21 Dogs don’t like the sound of a harmonica. 

22 Knowing the difference between a kalimba and an mbira saves blushes eventually.

23 Afternoon gigs are weird.

24 Singers who forget their words are better to just go “la la la”.

25 Live versions of album tunes are often longer.

26 There’s more room for more intense improvisation live than there’s time or inclination for on records.

27 Support bands shouldn’t play for more than 20 minutes.

28 Few musicians are natural comedians although many are raconteurs and funny.

29 All bands are obliged to laugh at their leader’s jokes.

30 The leader who disappears into the dressing room during performance risks a sense of anti-climax on returning to play.

* Frank Zappa

10 super 2016 gigs attended and reviewed are listed here