The perfect city for music (except for the terrible jazz)

SWEDE MUSIC: Stockholm jazz bar

BEN GROUNDWATER post and photo
Last updated 05:15 03/07/2014
I want to like jazz, I really do. I fancy the idea of being an aficionado of the genre, of hanging out in dark bars wearing a cool hat and listening to cats playing tunes as the night cruises by. That's what I should be doing tonight in Stockholm.

Enjoying it. The bar is dark and cool, no doubt about that. It's a tiny little place near the downtown area, the Glenn Miller Cafe, one of the Swedish capital's handful of excellent jazz bars.

I'd arrived early, while the summer sun still shone outside, grabbing a space at the tiny bar and ordering some food, smoked salmon with a caper cream sauce.

Around me, the place had slowly filled up with Stockholm's hardy jazz fans, Swedes young and old who filled the tables and began to crowd the meagre floor space as we waited for the band to perform.

Now the time finally comes - there's an all-female six-piece on stage, a group of saxophonists and pianists and drummers and bassists. They pause for a second, shyly introduce themselves in Swedish, and then begin with the jazz. Well, some kind of jazz. Maybe contemporary jazz, I'm not sure. But to this philistine it sounds like six people playing completely different songs, before they all miraculously end up on the same climactic note five or six minutes later. It's a racket.

OK, so I'm not a jazz fan. Probably never will be. But that doesn't mean I'm not having fun in Stockholm. I'm on something of a musical pilgrimage here, visiting the homeland of so many bands I love. The jazz band is a bit of a failure, but at least I tried.

And I'm not here for ABBA, either, before you ask.

It might be 40 years since Sweden's ultimate pop stars won the Eurovision Song Contest and launched themselves to fame, but that's not the pilgrimage for this guy. You can keep the ABBA Museum; you can save the sing-along musicals.
read more: http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/destinations/europe/10223674/The-perfect-city-for-music-except-for-the-terrible-jazz