Jean Baptiste "Django" Reinhardt was one of the first important jazz musicians to be born in Europe. He spent most of his youth in the gypsy encampments close to Paris, France, playing banjo, guitar and violin. At an early age he started playing professionally at dance halls in Paris. When he was 18, he was injured in a fire in his caravan loosing the use of his 3rd and 4th fingers on his left hand. After this he focused on the guitar and developed an original style of playing that emphasized his undamaged fingers. The man is nothing short of the original guitar god influencing everyone from the Beatles, Tony Immoni, B. B. King, Willie Nelson, and myself. I lost the use of my left forefinger due to an accident. I decided that if Django could do it with 2 fingers then I could do it with 3 fingers!!!!!!
StéphaneGrappelli is quite ...
Advantages: Some of the best Jazz violin playing ever heard Disadvantages: Very few
StephaneGrappelli does jazz like no other. Although he started off as a pianist, studying at the Paris conservatoire, Grappelli soon became one of the pioneers of jazz violin, indeed violin improvisation.
Crazy rhythm is a compilation of some of Grappelli's most well known versions of jazz classics, recorded in the early 70s. What shocked me on the first listen is the real character he gets out of the violin, from youthful exhuberance in tracks like Crazy Rhythm and Sweet Georgia Brown to more conversational, lyrical tones in Ain't Misbehaving. Grappellis bow and strings certainly convey more emotion than many of the world's better singers.
Crazy Rhythm really shows off Grappelli's technical expertise, which is not lacking in the slightest. This is aided by the fact he is unconstrained by a score, as all classical musicians are ...
Advantages: Comfortable, friendly and pretty stylish London hotel Disadvantages: The movie channel didn't work properly. Minor criticism.
turned out to be a group of really nice people who'd congregated from miles and miles away? At the eleventh hour, I decided not to be defeated. Nothing to do with losing £45. More to the point, I'd have missed out on meeting some great people and would have missed out on the opportunity to stick a finger or two up at the most incompetent pseudo-terrorists of the century. Dammit - I travelled on the tube and bus almost out of defiance. But enough of that...
A short tube ride brings you to High Street Kensington station. Probably more convenient than the more obviously named "Olympia", but it's only a brisk walk or bus ride to the hotel and - hey - that's what you really wanted to read about. So here goes. Sorry; no baby Josh element here - just the thoughts of a single traveller; rare, from me - but possibly relevant!
I'd walked from ...
![Kind Of Blue [Remastered] - Miles Davis](http://imagesb.ciao.com/iuk/images/products/small/919/prod_small-41919.jpg)
