Finally, the second half of August is upon us. Not that it shows, the weather is miserable and even yesterday the day was mostly rainy. Really nice on a national holiday…
Anyway, I was still able to catch a little bit of sun late in the afternoon when I took a book with me to the beach (I like reading in the sand, even if I’m not actually “at the beach”) and I found myself having to take off the shirt as there was actually some sun there. Go figure…
Before that I made good use of the rainy day by watching (for the N-th time) Woody Allen’s Melinda And Melinda. Always a nice choice.
In fact I’ve been slowly going over my collection of Woody’s films and strangely enough it has been a rather effective pick-me-up. Who would have thunk it?
But then I still have a long way to go on that front (the man has quite an impressive filmography) and I’ve been picking the lightest films so far…
Also, I never did have all of his films and now I only have half of what I had, so I need to fill in the wholes. Ahh, consumerism…
One thing that’s definitely nice about the second half of August is that some of the places around here start to open up after the vacations and so life starts to seep into the smaller music (mostly jazz) venues.
Speaking of which, just yesterday I had a really nice surprise when I went to see TGB playing at the Lux Jazz Sessions.
Now I had read a few good reviews of their music and so I was expecting something interesting (and of course the whole concept of a band consisting solely of a Tuba a Guitar and Drums is interesting enough to begin with), but I must say I was really blown away by what I saw and heard.
Their original work is very good (parts of a few songs reminded me bit of that Fishermen Tittot’s sound I’m so fond of) and the… well, I’m not calling it “covers” because they’re so much more than that, so the adaptations of songs from other bands and artists are just so much fun to listen to!
Also their execution is practically flawless and in a small space such as the one in Lux, we were so close to the band that we could feel the joy they were having while playing and it was just fantastic to be there and to be able to share that moment with them. I’ve definitely become a fan of TGB.
Can’t wait to go see the Tora Tora Big Band playing there next Wednesday!
The worst part of it still being August is that even the few friends I had left around here are now going away for their vacations, so now I don’t much in the way of company (or even squash partners at that).
But it will end soon enough, all this “vacation” folly. It will! :-)