Vincent Walden's not-so-professional reviews: The Jazz Night @ The Bessie Boyd

I made a playlist of the tracks I could find from last night, so I recommend that you pop this on while you read this.
https://open.spotify.com/user/vincentiooo/playlist/62AN864IS6EloT0pVOAiVt

So if you are playing that playlist, it is a bit short because I couldn't find some tracks, couldn't remember some and just didn't hear the name of some. What you hear on the playlist will give you a flavour of what was played last night, but really because it was mostly a pianist and a trumpeter, these tracks had their own style on them and won't sound too much like the original.

So last night I attended the very first Jazz Night @ The Bessie Boyd, Carlisle and it was flippin' lovely! Hosted by Paul Edis and Graham Hardy, two jazz musicians who trekked over from the foreign exotic land of Newcastle to play us a fantastic gig.

Last night was brilliant; the sound was mastered very, very well—the musicians were on point and all the tracks seemed to seamlessly blur into one another making a strange gradient of musical loveliness. If it wasn't enough that these two gentlemen were putting on great gig so far, they then introduced and invited their friend onto the stage to join them playing Alto Sax on the world famous 'Work Song', also including a brilliant jam session at the end.

If you look at the playlist I slightly mashed together, you'll see artists such as Miles David, Duke Ellington, Bud Powell, Clark Terry and Louis Armstrong; all of which were played to a superb level and done well beyond justice.

I spent the evening slightly slumped in a chair sipping away at Bombay Sapphire, nibbling on home-made pulled pork sandwiches and being carried away on a river of soft B Minors. I would give the evening a full 10/10 but I'm afraid it has to have a 9.5/10 instead and this is not due to the band, nor the venue. This is due to the overly-enthusiastic man of whom sat in front of me and constantly tapped his old, worn fingernails on the 12" LP placemat in some horrid, out of tune and annoyingly loud fashion. If this gentleman was trying to fill the space of the drummer, it was like giving Keith Moon a Jazz band, 26 larger shandies and knocking all his rhythm out of him—it was annoying, in no sense of timing and horribly distracting okay.

But besides all that—Brilliant performance guys, thank you very much.

Charlie also agrees.