Jam House

Just got back from The Jam House - Jools Holland's club in Birmingham, to finish celebrating my 21st with guys up here, and because I'm finally old enough to go there - just as I'm about to move far too far away from it.

I say I'm old enough, but that's actually a lie, as it's over a week till I'm 21, though the doorman very kindly let me in - I think it was the suave cravat I was wearing that tipped his decision, you can't say no to a man in a cravat.

The place itself was gorgeous, and things kicked off at about 9 with an amazingly good pianist playing and singing, with a drummer backing him. Lots of swing and blues, with some classics played a bit uptempo made this one very fun.

Being so brilliant, everyone stopped dancing when I started, making me look lovely and cool, until the pianist said "...and I hear it's Ina's 21st birthday - is she here?" - ouch. One of the girls did ask me afterwards if I was a professional dancer though, but I couldn't find any compliments to return to her, she was rather fat.

Once this guy was done, the DJ (who could only say "It's Friday night", seriously - he told us that more than ten times) put on some very bad music, which got the drunken section of the audience dancing - enough about that though.



Red Lemons were the main band, described as 'a group of highly accomplished musicians, playing soul and funk classics'. I can vouch for every word of that being completely true - they were all fabulous instrumentalists/vocalists, and I don't think I need to say anything more when I tell you that their second song was Rare Earth - Get Ready. They even played Love Shack ^^

The break inbetween Red Lemon's two sets was, for some reason, populated with cheesy disco music from 1984, which was fun, though rather annoyingly out of place.

Great venue, great fun, but only very, very loosely a 'jazz club' in my opinion. I'll still be going back though. Off to bed now, Reading tomorrow to try and find a new house, the nice one I'd booked to see got let this afternoon :(