Just for laughs....

F. Scot Fitzgerald once said that the mark of a first-class mind was the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time.

Oscar Wilde said that consistency was the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Perhaps this is why jazz musicians can simultaneously be amongst both the most miserable and funniest people I know. One thing is for sure, jazzers love nothing better than to sit around telling jokes and funny stories. On a gig last week, we were all laughing at something and the bass player said 'somebody should write a book filled with all these funny music stories and jokes'.

I don't know about a book, but as the rain pounds against the window, the wind is blowing a gale and I've had to put a light on at 11.00am as it's so dark and gloomy outside, it occurred to me that it couldn't hurt to have a bit of a laugh really.

So today, a new series is launched to collect anything jazz related and funny. From personal anecdotes to jokes and quotes, if it makes me smile, in it goes. The only thing I'm struggling with is a suitable name for the series - any suggestions would be welcome by comment or email...

In the meantime, to get the ball rolling here is my favourite (albeit lengthy) musician joke - and I think you've definitely got to be a musician to appreciate it fully!
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Two musicians bump into each other in a bar and the conversation goes like this...

Musician 1: "Wow, hello John! I've not seen you for...well...it must be ten years. How are you? What have you been up to?"
Musician 2: "Hello! I'm good thanks. What have I been up to? Let's see, I think the last time I played with you was when I was playing trumpet in the local scratch bands round here wasn't it?"

"It was, but it's been a decade since then!"

"You're right. The thing was I just wasn't happy with my playing at the time so I decided to take a year off and do some serious wood-shedding to get my chops together"

"Oh really? I hadn't heard about that."

"Well I didn't make a big deal out of it, it was just something I felt I needed to do. Anyhow, after a year or so I wanted to test my mettle and do more playing so I decided to move to the city where there'd be more opportunities."

"Oh right. I hadn't heard about that."

"Yeah so I moved to the city and did alright for myself. The playing was going well and I went to all the jam sessions and so on and started getting called for a few gigs. Anyhow, the work slowly built up until one night I was playing in a club and Diz Astor, the famous bandleader walked in. He liked my playing and offered me a gig so I spent a couple of years touring Europe with his big band."

"Really!? I hadn't heard about that."

"Yeah, and while I was with Diz, I started to write the odd arrangement for the band and discovered I really enjoyed it. I found that slowly I was arranging more and more and one day, one of the guys in the band told me that his friend was making a low-budget movie that needed a score. There wasn't much money in it, but I thought I'd give it a go because the arranging had made me want to try composing too."

"Oh, I hadn't heard about that".

"Well I did the score and the movie was a surprise hit - especially in the States. The next thing you know, completely out of the blue one day I get a phone call from a hollywood producer who had seen the movie, loved my music and wanted me to work on his next blockbuster."

"Amazing! I hadn't heard about that."

"That first job went well and then suddenly the film work just started flooding in - so much so in fact, that I ended up quitting the band, moving to Los Angeles and living there for five years writing music for Hollywood blockbusters. I even won an Oscar for one of my scores."

"Unbelievable! I hadn't heard about that. So what happened then?"

"Well one of the things that I'd always enjoyed about the film work was conducting an orchestra during recordings. I really fancied having a go at conducting some classical stuff so I started to get into that. To cut a long story short, I seemed to do ok and I eventually got the opportunity to spend a couple of years as guest conductor of the New York Philharmonic..."

"Incredible! I hadn't heard about that. So what are you doing back here?"

"You know it's funny, after all the things I'd done, I found that I'd come full circle and just wanted to play jazz again. I haven't played the trumpet for a while and expected to be a bit out of shape. It seemed to make sense to come back to where I started and get the old jazz chops up to scratch again. In fact I had my first jazz gig for 7 years last night."

"Did you? How did it go?"

"Terrible. I was even more out of shape than I thought. I knew what I wanted to do but I couldn't execute it. I was flubbing entries, splitting notes - and my solos? Don't even get me started on how terrible they were."

"Oh yeah, I heard about that..."
http://playjazz.blog.co.uk/2009/11/23/f-scot-fitzgerald-once-said-that-the-mark-of-a-7442643/