Grrrreat. It’s so true, we’ve got to be able to laugh at ourselves! I love listening to and playing jazz, and a whole load of the stuff on here is wonderfully listenable!
That Jamiroquai parody at the end is brilliant. Jazz Club was the best thing about The Fast Show. It's surprising how much post-bebop jazz actually does sound this way.
I remember studying musical arrangement in college, our teacher was a big Jazz Club fan. On a listening exam once we had to write either "correct or plausible" artists for a piece of Avant garde Jazz music he played us (to demonstrate we had done some independent listening/research into Jazz in our own time). I had no absolutey no idea what I was listening to so I remember I just listed "The James Danz Quartet" and "Louis Balfour" as 'plausible artists' .... and he gave me the marks! 😂
Howled with laughter back in the day, Jazzzz club was always one of my fave sketches from the incomparable, extremely funny Fast Show! Still makes me laugh! I miss these comedy shows so much.
I was reading a story in an old British comic of the Billy Bunter mould, it said the school band was better than other bands because "those bands gave you the tunes one after the other, our band plays them all at the same time!"
I LOVE the bit from 05.50 where Caroline Aherne plays one note on the keyboard and he unplugs her, and she looks around not knowing what to do! Have been waiting to see that for years!
Needless to say, as with most on here, I watched The Fast Show many years back. The Jazz Club sketches were my favourite. Watching these sketches again has me nearly wetting myself! Nice!
This still cracks me up all those years later and were perhaps the best sketches in show. John Thompson's facial reactions during the Jackson Geofrey Jackson sketch is comedy gold! 😂😂😂
I'm a guitar student at the Academy of Contemporary Music in Guildford and we can get enough of Jazz club. When you study Jazz for a bit these sketches are made all the more hillarious. Fucking love Jackson Jeffery Jackson.
There are soooo many jazz jokes running through all of these sketches. I'm a fully fledged jazzer. Played jazz for years, and all of these jokes are right on target. The Caroline Aherne joke was brilliant. When the band leader tries to get his girlfriend into the band. It gas happened so many times, most muso s will be familiar with it, and the obvious results it incurs.....
True talent. Those guys can really sing - especially Paul Whitehouse. When I am recovered from hurting from laughter I will watch Bob Fleming's country favourites - again.
I remember a guitarist friend of mine went through a jazz fusion phase and a lot of the stuff he was listening to was a lot like 'Desolate Shore' lmao.
As a Brit, I would like to say thanks👍...but to be honest “amazing” may well be pushing things abit....knowing our love of understatement, I’d say “moderately droll” would probably be a more apt description.
You got inhalation, you got exhalation, but they're two different things, you screw up you got mutilation - you see what I'm sayin'? Jackson Jeffrey Jackson
If my brother hadn't continually played Mile's 'Nefertiti' when I was a child in the sixties, the Fast Show's take on modern jazz is exactly how I would view it today-great!!!
I love how Desolate Shore starts a fraction too early, that tiny "toot" always makes me laugh. Also, thank heavens, I though I was the only one who got Theydon Bois.
Learning the trumpet under a Jazz musician right now, and the stuff he says in the beginning actually makes sense and sounds interesting. And then they follow up with that shit lmao this is brilliant 😂😂😂
"And in an inventive new arrangement, where although it follows the original thirty two bar AABA structure, instead of providing a harmonic departure from the A section, the bridge resolves the rising chromatic pattern - great? - Won-der-ful..."
The pianist in one of them is Philip Pope, who is a legend in comedy music - loads of theme tunes to his name and all the musical parodies in Radio Active, and more.
I always thought thats who it was but on a rewatch, I think she's meant to be Brix Smith (ex The Fall)! At the time this was done, Brix was dating Nigel Kennedy and I think did some kind of limp live performace with him.
This is still my favourite comedy bit ever. It may take the piss out of a genre of music I love, but it's all done in a fair and true way, so I can't help but love it. There IS a lot of pretentious twaddle in jazz. There's no way around that. I also love Mikki Disco, but when I think of the Fast Show, it's "Great" and "Niiice" that immediately comes to mind.
Nah, an expose of some frauds and a pastiche of some of the difficulties of getting in to Jazz. I apologise that my comment is sucking some fun out the sketches, but you did refer to Jazzers as 'Jazz wankers'. These sketches are amazing.
I love the way he's winking at the end of 'desolate shore' and Paul Whitehouse is just hilarious as the guitarist. Thanks for a great post and nicely edited btw.
Absolutely amazing! Thanks for posting this one, especially loved the "Desolate Shore" (the only time freeform jazz has sounded great), the sucking trumpet player Jackson and the Jamiroquai clips. :) Cheers.
Paul Morris Heh, yeah, that was probably one of the funniest lines. I also liked it when the MC disconnected the cable from the woman's electric piano and the stick flew out of the drummer's hand. Really funny.
Presenter of Jazz Club, Louis Balfour is a man whose mission is to bring 'you all that's best in the world of jazz'. Every obscure and bizarrely named jazz combo who join him in the studio will be greeted with the Louis' particular brand of cool reverence. Louis Balfour - Nice,,The music is uniformly terrible, and Louis is always enraptured. His highest accolade is an aside to the camera - 'Nice!' or 'Grrrrreat'. John Thompson calls Louis a cross between Whispering Bob Harris and Roger Moore. He's one of the most memorable of the Fast Show characters, with one of the best haircuts. 🎷 🎸 👏 😎
Video cuts out many of the best lines. "My father was a Polish Brocken Franko Austrian Jew, and my mother was and is the wind. Can you hear her on the breeze?"
