Jason Lyon Music

Category: e) Rants & Ramblings

  • Don’t Shoot Yourself, You’re the Pianist

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    Jason
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    Somebody got me Ronnie Scott’s Some of My Best Friends Are Blues for Christmas. It’s a fun little read, and there are bound to be some anecdotes that will be new to you, even if you think you know all there is to know about that long-ago scene. (Incidentally, the shabby downstairs hangout used to be…

  • Sign of the Times

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    Jason
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    Here’s an amazingly creative, fluid and expressive British Sign Language rendition of Uptown Funk. Just knocks me out. Take it away, Sarah Jane… Well, I suppose a purist might say it’s more SSE (Sign-Supported English) than BSL. But damn cool in my book. My signing is pretty rudimentary and plodding – New Year’s resolution to work on it. It’s a…

  • Merry Christmas

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    Jason
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    Here’s a little festive shout out to some Czech friends of mine. Long before Pixar, long before there were Wallace & Gromit, there were Pat & Mat. If you’ve never come across these little guys before, they were sort of like the animated equivalent of Laurel & Hardy, but with an extensive collection of dangerous…

  • Hark All the Herald Things You Are

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    Jason
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    Christmas is upon us. Festive thingies to you all, and may you realise that something you’ve always wanted is something you already have. In what is starting to become a welcome little tradition of our own, we have the fabulous singer Anita Wardell with us again for our yuletide special on 21st December at Brasserie…

  • Smoke Gets in Your Ears

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    Jason
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    or Being Yourself Interesting experience recently. I spent a fair bit of time working on live sound and recording for a band with another pianist (a really very good one), then went straight out to do a gig of my own… Well I rather struggled to click somehow. It was only halfway through the gig…

  • Brasserie Toulouse Lautrec

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    Jason
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    A while ago, in a brasserie far, far away… THE FOURTHS AWAKEN Darth Vegfryer – Head Chef Florent Regent Count Orderticket  – Oliver Regent Kylo Knobtwiddler – Maitre d’ Nolan Regent Cantina Band and crew of the Millennium Lazybird: Dave O’Higgins (tenor sax) Steve Fishwick (trumpet) with the Jason Lyon Trio, featuring Alan Gibson (bass), Joel Prime (drums) Also featuring: Viviana Zarbo &…

  • Herding Cats

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    Jason
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    …an expression I often use about running a jam session. It does have an idiomatic jazz-related connotation, and as you’ll hear at the conclusion of the video: “it ain’t an easy job, but when you bring a herd into town and you ain’t lost a one of ’em – ain’t a feelin’ like it in the world”……

  • Take Four

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    Jason
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    Bit of fun this week. I’m not down on pop music at all, but I can be forgiven (I hope) for noting that a lot of it sounds suspiciously similar. Well there you go, some harmonic progressions just work and… well… they’re popular. Which is the object of the exercise, after all. Nor is this…

  • Quite Frankly My Dear…

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    Jason
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    I was chatting to a musician the other day about nerves. She was horribly afflicted (visibly quivering) and eyeing the awaiting stage with a sense of dread. The conversation ranged a bit, but ultimately boiled down to a rather glib sounding piece of pep talk. In my view, the secret to a good performance is……

  • Bill Dunham

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    Jason
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    A little tribute to a lovely man, who I hope is still with us and going strong. Anyway tributes are no bloody use to you when you’re dead, are they? You pick up all kinds of influences and inspirations as you go through life, and on the flip-side you never know how a casual meeting…