I left the church and made my merry way across to the Rugby Club which was hosting the band FiddleBop, who were originally scheduled to play at the Boathouse down on the waterfront but due to bit of a mix up down there it appeared that the gig had clashed with a private wedding party, so naturally the Jazz had to be reassigned to another venue... mind you I would love to see a version of reality where the owners of the Boathouse phoned up the bride and groom and told them "sorry, we'll have to cancel your big day because we are double booked for a singular Jazz gig."
I entered the Clubhouse and purchased a bottle of Ludlow Gold and found myself a comfortable position to see and hear the band. There was quite a reasonable crowd for the gig and part of me was slightly worried about excessive audience noise based on past experiences where an acoustic string based band has got drowned out by the idle chitter-chatter of people in the audience, which is one of the primary reasons I stopped going to Remi Harris gigs at the Harp in Albrighton back in the day, but I needn't have worried here. Despite having a large proportion of the audience seemingly not specifically in for the Jazz, the crowd was very well behaved, evidently the thought of having entertainment on was a nice change of pace for them.
I am not sure if I have seen FiddleBop before or not, but from the description in the programme I had a fair idea as to what I was expecting from the band, a sort of mix up of Django style gypsy Jazz with a flavour of folk to it, kind of reminiscent of what the Water Gypsys had played at previous festivals. The line up for FiddleBop featured Joanna Davies on Spanish guitar and vocals, Dave Favis-Mortlock on violin and vocals, Ian Jones on cello and vocals, and finally, Graeme Lamble on bass and vocals and the programme describes them as creating music sophisticated but not stuffy, danceable and exciting but not rhythmically boring. From my short attendance of the gig I saw no examples of people getting up for a bit of a jog, nor any evidence suggesting that they had, but I suspect this might be different in a more olde world type pub setting later on the day, particularly if the beer has been flowing all day. Certainly in my case, I certainly had not imbibed enough to consider making that much of a prat of myself, especially in a gig open to the public with out the comfort of a hundred plus people dancing and thus be able to be obscured. As stated above, my arrival was at the very end of the first set so I only saw the band perform three numbers and while they were enjoyable enough and the band had good chops, they weren't really drawing me in for the time of day, so I probably wouldn't have stuck around for the full set anyway, had they been at a late afternoon/early evening gig it would likely be a different story and a nice little bit of hang time after being on the go for the afternoon and before a the big night session. The first number I heard was called "Morrison's Jig", and as you might have guessed from the name, this wasn't the jingle for a high street supermarket but a number mixing Club de Paris style swing with traditional Irish folk roots. The next number was from a different background entirely, one far removed from the Hot Club de Paris and the Emerald Isle, a song born from the sounds of Merseyside and weaned in Liverpool's Cavern club, a song from the Beatles songbook, and perhaps not one of the more obvious tracks like "Yesterday," "Norwegian Wood" or "When I'm Sixty-Four", all of which have had some traction in the Jazz worlds, there choice of Beatles' song was "Here, There and Everywhere" and it was certainly an interesting take on the source material. This number went down with the general audience and as they went in for the final number of the set I wondered if they were going to go further a field in choice of tune or return into more familiar territory, the answer was quickly given and unsurprisingly the band return to their Django Reinhardt and Hot Club de Paris roots with probably Django's second most while known composition, "Minor Swing." With the gig over I made use of the facilities of the Club, then checked the programme and found that due to the set slightly over running and other factors the it was about the halfway point in the first set of the gig I intended to see, and when a gig heavily features a vocalist I always feel a bit uncomfortable wandering in mid-set for a whole multitude of reasons, many of which if I told you what they were, you would probably look at me with the "ohhh okay....." look. I did toy with catching the tail end of the Alan Barnes gig at Memorial Hall, but I am very aware of the limiting seating at the venue so I might night be able to gain access anyway, plus add the (not excessive) extra walk time to the venue I suspect there would have been very little set left to hear, so instead I decided to give the newly revamped pub The Crown, formerly the Little Upton Muggery, a visit to see how much it had changed.
Had it changed? Very much so, this wasn't just a case of giving the place a deep clean (though by heck it definitely needed that a long time ago) and a fresh coat of paint, this was a complete overhaul with the interior completely remodelled, and I suspect a few bits and pieces here and there to still be done but they wanted it open for the festival as there was the recognisable aroma of sawdust in the air. To be fair, there's always going to be a few teething troubles to begin with, and there was certainly one when I arrived. Namely part of the cellar cooling had failed, so the cellar wasn't cool enough for the cask ales so it was only Keg beers and ciders available much to the landlord's annoyance. I get it though, I've worked in a couple of pubs newly opened and things go wrong, but you need to start opening at some point because if you do leave it too long or keep pushing the date back, you end up losing interest. To be honest because work was still being done right up until the doors opened, I wasn't expecting there to be any cask ale on at all due to settling times and potential disturbances to the barrels. The landlord was cheerful enough, think he might have been South African but I never was good at accents, and was quite chatty. I enquired about the previous owner, had she retired, died, forced out, or had the Health Inspectors finally paid a visit? It appears she was had to be retired due to health reasons and was living in a nearby care home, there was no really elaboration but he the landlord did do a subtle couple of taps to his head when mentioning care home... The famous mugs were gone and apparently there was an incident during cleaning the mugs which is why they were no longer there. The gossip regarding the mugs that I heard was that the people involved did not realise that many of the mugs pre-dated the invention of the electric dishwasher.... However this is purely gossip I heard and it could be something as simple as the new owners wanted a completely new look for the pub and they decided not to return the mugs. Due to lack of cask, I settled on a pint of Thatcher's Gold Cider (as in the British sense of the drink Cider) and went to plan my day. The landlord was evidently cashing in on the Jazz festival as the unmistakable intro to "So What" began to blare out the speakers in the bar, the playlist selected featured a reasonable selection of mostly post-50s modern jazz including Bill Evans, John Coltrane, Stan Getz, Freddie Hubbard, and Ronnie Scott amongst others. I was joined in the bar by a German family who were evidently here for the jazz as we had a very brief conversation about the forthcoming gigs. Noting that it was almost time for second half of the gig at Bar 7, I finished my drink and thanked the landlord, I had intended to return to the Crown over the course of the weekend but I never got round to it.
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| Some of the infamous mugs from when the pub was called the Little Upton Muggery |
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