Birmingham Jazz Festival

Just a little fragile today after an afternoon, evening and night imbibing at the excellent Birmingham Jazz Festival.
First up at lunchtime was the splendidly named ‘Baghdaddies’ who hail from Newcastle but play some terrific Balkan and middle eastern flavoured music. Loads of energy, innovation and humour. Look out for them, there are links to some gigs on the website, but they are far too few. Anyone familiar with the Balkan Beat Box would know what to expect.
After that it was down to the City Inn in Brindley Place for a couple of pints and a joyous gig by the Teens Jazzband Velke Losiny, from the Czech Republic. They play dixieland, which is not actually my preferred jazz form, but they play the likes of Jelly Roll Morton and Sydney Bechet with such an infectious sense of fun and enthusiasm that makes it impossible to dislike them, particularly the splendid Iva on honky tonk piano and vocals. They played so many encores for the audience they were in danger of missing their flight home.

The Teens Jazzband Velke Losiny looking like they weren’t having fun… but they were!
Then a trip across Brum to the Crown, and the Alan Barnes quartet. Unfortunately the Crown was rammed, and we couldn’t get anywhere near the music, but what we could hear floating over the heads of the crowd in to the bar sounded pretty good.
A trek back across the City to Symphony Hall where my favourite bass player, Tom Hill was playing the commuter jazz gig in the foyer. And finishing up with a trip back up to The Garden House where we had kicked off six hours earlier to hear the Dixie Ticklers, who are a young band who hail from somewhere down south, but that shouldn’t be held too much against them because they play some neat jazz and blues. In passing I must mention The Garden House food, though. Never, never, ever dare to eat one of their disgusting veggie burgers, which looked like a lump of cat shit between two pieces of cardboard, and tasted bloody worse (I imagine). On top of far too much beer… it was the wrong choice, and I’m sure it was the burger, not the gallon of ale which left me feeling queasy today!
Anyway, I spend quite a bit of time knocking Birmingham, probably because it is run (in the loosest sense of the term) by the truly useless Tory-Lib Dem ‘regressive partnership’, but the Jazz Festival was an absolute delight. So much so, I wouldn’t be surprised if they axed it next year!