Sydney Festival 2006

Be jealous. Be very jealous. Saturday night the Sydney Festival organized Jazz in the Domain. Feature groups included the Preservation Hall Jazz Band , and theDirty Dozen Brass Band , from New Orleans. At least 80,000 Sydney syders sat on the lawn to hear some of the best music imaginable, in real New Orleans humidity.
PHJB were good, a bit ragged, but they had just flown in from New York. Outstanding was the trombone player –raucous enough sound to blast barnacles from the hull of a ship. The short time they played was a little disappointing.
The DDBB were sensational. They started by marching through the crowd and that meant marching through the picnics and random wine glasses.
Feel sorry for the broadcasters, ABC, who sent the concert out live. The poor sound technician, trying to keep up, shoving through the crowd with a boom mike. Listening on the radio might have been a bit boring, because it was a fairly monotonous march they had to play through the crowd, especially when band members became separated in the pushing and shoving melee, before they fought their way back onto stage and started playing for real.
Many years ago I was astonished at hearing Blood Sweat and Tears for the first time at a live concert; The Dirty Dozen were wilder and a whole lot louder.
The baritone sax dominated, how the sound people even got close to balancing the noise from the other instruments is a wonder.
Pity about some of the stuff they played; this was a quick introduction to the sound of New Orleans for those who had grown up with comparatively tame local “trad” jazz. I would like to have heard some of their great tracks, like “ Take your hand off my leg”, but I can’t expect too much in one night, for free.

pub at Cronulla Beach

This is the scene, a popular bar at Cronulla Beach, deserted, on Saturday afternoon, a week after the summer riots in December 2005.