First thing I alighted on was the Pete Long Orchestra
playing Shiny Stockings and I noted that 363 people had watched it. Now that
video had been up for around 6 months so it’s not a great total.
The Pete Long Orchestra plays Shinny Stockings
The Jazz Repertory Company's 1956: A Jazz Jubilee
Like a chump, I had to go and make myself feel even worse by
arbitrarily choosing a cat video and seeing how The Jazz Repertory Company
compared. First one I saw was “The Funny
Cats Compilation 2016.” This had been up
around the same time as Shiny Stockings but it had racked up 2,381,238 views.
The Funniest Cats Of 2016 Compilation
Having seen all seven series of Mad Men and having replaced
my fantasy of being Buddy Rich with my very recent fantasy of being Don Draper
I sprang into action immediately. I put
on my Brooks Brothers suit, drank a bottle of scotch, made a (failed) pass at
the woman heading up my accounts department (my wife) – called a meeting of all
my staff (my wife) and proposed that we immediately instigate an advertising
campaign for The Jazz Repertory Company using cats or, possibly
with our somewhat limited budget, a cat.
With the budget being set at six cans of Whiskers, a
Sainsbury’s pack of king prawns and £5 worth of assorted cat toys I was ready
to go. By a remarkable coincidence I
had programmed into our September Cadogan Hall concert “Jazz at Carnegie Hall” Zez Confrey’s
1920’s piano novelty Kitten on the Keys – this would be a perfect
opportunity for a cat to be brought on stage and do something cute like…… oh it doesn’t matter the bloody cat would
refuse to do it anyway.
Zez Confrey's Kitten On The Keys
We had found a cat – he was called Archie. Archie had opened a twitter account a couple
of months back and had already overtaken me with the number of followers he had
– this was clearly a cat with charisma.
I called Cadogan Hall and told them I intended to have Archie come on
stage during Kitten on the Keys and refuse to do something cute. I assured them that Archie’s equally cute
owner would bring him on with a lead and the whole thing would be an amusing
throw back to 1974 and a cross between The Generation Game and Animal Magic.
However it was now 2017 and Cadogan Hall’s answer was that
due to the following, Archie’s presence was impossible.
- Health and Safety
- Countless EU regulations (come on Teresa, pull your finger out girl!!!).
- Their insurance policy and (confusing cats' bathroom habits with dogs) the possibility that musicians could slide on Archie’s widdle then plunge into the front row and squash a handful of OAPs thus instigating a multi-million pound lawsuit (Archie Cattus Domesticus vs Regina).
Not put off by this set back we have continued with our
experiments playing various styles of jazz to Archie to see where his tastes
lie and what may cause him to react in a way that may lead to 9
million views on YouTube.
Archie - Photo by Giles Bracher
The test results thus far are as follows.
Archie’s response:
Nothing
Archie’s response:
Nothing
Archie’s response:
Yawned and licked his genitalia
Archie’s Response:
Nothing
I think Archie so far has been taking the art of cool to
ridiculous extremes – I keep showing him the seating plan of Cadogan Hall with
its sea of unpurchased seats and I explain just how crucial his contribution
is. Archie’s response: Nothing.
We will be publishing an update on progress in August – for
the time being here is a picture of Archie enjoying Diana Krall’s latest CD.
Archie
