It Don't Mean a Thing |
By: Roger Hansford |
It don’t mean a thing if . . .
you don’t say strawberry, strawberry, strawberry.
Apple, apple, apple rhythms just aren’t jazz, she said:
drawing attention to her pink drag-queen shoes;
disciplining the drummer; telling the xylophone player,
for the umpteenth time, to ‘take the C and F off’.
*
It felt like playing on the moon. The drum kit a lander,
drop-kicking towards me over the stage; brass bursts
swirling sexily like inter-stellar winds.
Just which two bars were we on? The beat
nearly beat me up in Harlem (Nocturne);
took me down the street and . . .
round the corner, as
we patrolled with the Americans, and
sang with a nightingale in Berkley Square.
I was just a stranger on the shore.
Was it my fault they hardly clapped?
We played the encore anyway, in Blues Brothers hats.
At last, we were Home, Sweet, Home (Chicago).
*
Trouble is, I just ain’t got that swing.
I listened to Classic FM on the way home.
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