Category: All that JAZZ

A live performance (audio above) – (fortunately?) captured on tape:

This recording from Joe Lane’s cassette recorder at a pub in South Melbourne in 1992 has a notorious reputation among musicians who’ve heard it.

I was sitting in on Mike Jordan’s drums with Joe ‘Bop’ Lane (vocal) and Serge Ermoll (piano) on tour from Sydney,  Mark Simmonds (tenor sax), all now ‘late’, and Jeff Kluke (bass). 

After the first tune, Serge, a Russian maniac and freejazz pioneer, full of mind-altering substances including vodka, decided to give the audience a jazz history lesson — after requesting, or allowing one of my spontaneous end-of-song solos, which Joe had abated. — and then it became edgy ‘street theatre’ when a woman in the audience dared to heckle him, so we retaliated with Miles Davis’ “So What.”

A piece of Oz Jazz History, which, as Joe explained at the end, I was a part of. It could even be seen or heard as a precursor to later trends of musical mayhem.

This included YouTube video of a Joe Lane performance in Sydney may help you to visualize him onstage, with Al Turnbull on drums.