For Sale: Waving Goodbye To The Drum Kit That Drummed For Kylie

I’m selling a drum kit.  Quite an extraordinary drum kit too.  It’s a Trixon Speedfire  - have a look at it here.  It’s lovely isn’t it.  It looks like something that would be played by a band in a groovy night club in The Jetsons.

 

Here it is being played by me in the gym at Harrow School.  (the first time I’d been in a gym for about 35 years).

This was for an advert for a motor car made by Lexus.  I featured in the ad for 0.00007 of a second but in this film (just before Kylie appears) you can admire the beautiful eccentricity of the drum kit’s design for quite a bit longer.  You can also admire the Prince of Wales check on my second hand Armani suit.

Back in 2003 I fancied buying myself an unusual drum kit.  A chap in Munich was selling one so I decided to motor down and purchase it.  I took along my old drumming mate John Sutton so that he could keep me amused on the autobahn.  It was a freezing night and inevitably my clapped out Nissan Prairie broke down – we had conked out by a little emergency telephone box and so I whimpered in English and in five minutes a big burley mechanic turned up and asked me to open my bonnet.  He then proceeded to start bashing something underneath the bonnet with a very large mallet.  I have no idea what he did but the engine started immediately and we made it all the way back to Leytonstone with the Trixon and with no further trouble and they didn’t charge me a penny. We love those Germans!

So the poor Trixon has been living in the cellar for quite a few years now – it’s absurd design hidden away in its cases.

Now I wanted to buy a painting.  My wife Joy thought this would be a perfect opportunity for me to raise the funds by selling my ridiculous mid-life crisis car.

But as I’m still going through the mid-life crisis – (so far I’ve clocked up 15 years and have about another 5 to go)  I said I’d sell the Trixons instead.

Here’s the painting

This is lovely too and we can look at it all the time rather than have the Trixons unused and hidden away.

So, before it goes on ebay is anyone interested?  It’s £2,900.  (a drum shop in central London had one up for sale at £5,000 – it had been used by the drummer in Bill Haley and the Comets but the condition was rotten – not a patch on mine).

You don’t have to be able to play the drums just have the room for a little bit of modern art – you could use it as a coffee table.

Why A Jazz Vacuum Cleaner Sells Better Than A Concert

Pitie's Mini Musing:

As someone involved with marketing jazz, I’ve been aware for some time of the desirability of avoiding the “J” word so as not to put off a large chunk of the paying public.  However if you’re selling any other product but the music itself it seems to be a positive advantage.  I don’t know who compiled the list (otherwise I’d give them a credit) but a hell of a lot of surfing hours must have gone into proving the point:

It is not jazz, it is an economical car. 

It is not jazz, it is a vacuum cleaner. 

It is not jazz, it is a case for an electronic diary.

It is not jazz, it is a child's toy that switches from being a car in to a robot. And back again. 

See the rest of this amusing article here.

Going All Tarantino On Cadogan Hall

Jeep's Blues.  Choosing the right tracks for your movie.

Quentin Tarantino doesn't use film composers on his movies - he takes great records and matches them to the action with an impressively adroit touch.  It made me think that I'd love the job of combining my favourites with the upcoming movies of the modern masters (but not dealing with the endless legal wrangles to get permission to use them!).  Here is my short list of some of the finest matchings  of sound and visuals.

2001. A Space Odyssey

• The Blue Danube.  Johann Strauss.  2001.  A Space Odyssey. Stanley Kubrick 
• Natural High. Bloodstone.  Jackie Brown.  Quentin Tarantino. 
• Up Up and Away. The Fifth Dimension.  Born on the Fourth of July. Oliver Stone

Woodstock

• Wooden Ships. Crosby Stills and Nash.  Woodstock.  Michael Wadleigh
• Funeral Canticle. John Tavener. The Tree of Life. Terrence Mallick 

The Tree Of Life

And from TV:

• On a Clear Day.  The Peddlers.  Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad

Now what brought this on was thinking about Jeep's Blues - The Duke Ellington number which opens our Newport Jazz Festival tribute concert on November 18th at Cadogan Hall.  This was used in the terrific movie 'American Hustle'; and what an inspired choice.

Jeep's Blues, Duke Ellington, American Hustle

See it here (I also love the use of Chicago's 'Does Anybody Know What Time It Is') - so I'll stick those two on my list.  I'd be interested to hear of any other particularly brilliant choices that you love - I hope to discover some more memorable moments.

Jackie Brown

Sax Exploits: Saving Duke Ellington

We're staging a 60th Anniversary Tribute concert to The Newport Festival at Cadogan Hall on November 18th as part of The London Jazz Festival, heavily featuring some of the finest work of jazz luminary Duke Ellington. Here's a tremendous piece from a few years back by The Guardian's jazz critic John Fordham. He succinctly sums up just what an important gig this was for The Duke, re-booting Ellington's flagging career.

Fordham: "In an electrifying performance by the band, Gonsalves – who hadn't played the piece in a while, and was initially uncertain of his way around it – played 27 improvised choruses in a raunchily R&B and gospel-inflected manner. It was an astonishing example of a musician playing way out of his skin – and one who had never been in Ellington's front rank of star soloists."

The 1956 Newport Jazz Festival appearance helped keep him and his band in clover till Duke left us in 1974. Follow the link for the full Fordham article.