Jazz At The Prince Of Wales

I still haven't really got my head around the idea that our kids are now old enough for us to go out for an hour or so in the evening without having to arrange baby-sitters; so when I had a pig of a working day Thursday it felt good to be able to say to BlackLin, "How do you fancy popping down to the Prince of Wales to see what their new live jazz evening is like?". And then just go.

Actually I didn't find the jazz that exciting. Jazz comes in a lot of forms; if I'm in a pub I prefer the music to be either 'mood' music - quiet enough to be an interesting background for conversation - or exciting enough to be worth focussing on. This was what I call 'twiddly jazz' - the sax plays a melody line, then the guitar does lots of clever twiddly stuff, then the keyboard has a twiddle, then the drum, then the sax; repeat three or four times and end. Too loud for easy conversation and not (to me) that interesting. The beer (Brakespear's ordinary bitter) was spot-on - as it usually is at the Prince of Wales - but we moved on after a while, down to the Clifton Arms. That's the nice thing about Caversham: there's lots of pubs in easy walking distance. The Clifton looks like it has been redecorated since I was last there - it looked very smart, and we got a seat near an open fire (gas through artificial coals, but still very pleasant). They had an organic bitter from Brakespear, Oxford Gold, so I tried that. It wasn't quite right, but still okay.

Even though the live jazz wasn't my cup of tea, I'm still glad the Prince of Wales is featuring it. There's really not that much live music around here, and it did bring in several people who clearly were getting into the music. If you live near Caversham and this is your sort of music, I do urge you to give it a go: Thursday evenings 8:30 to 11pm, at the end of Prospect Street (just a little north of the arrow on this map). I'd like to see The Covers back one night though. 

tags: music  jazz  prince of wales  clifton arms  

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