Crispy Pasta, Autumn Showers and the Thrill of Live Jazz

With a busy morning with my Mum and lunch made by her inside us, we set off for London. At 82 she can still cook and our beef casserole had been filling and delicious. After a fair morning, the weather had become unsettled and rain punctuated our journey. A break in the cloud illuminated very well the joyous stag at the entrance to University of Surrey in Guildford. I had left the A3 temporarily to photograph it. At BP Ripley the rain was both heavy and protracted enough to hinder our shuffles to and from the car for coffee. No-one in their right mind would pay for fuel there. My Tesco 5p/litre voucher had helped with that earlier in the day.

Our passage through the invisible but expensive Congestion Charge boundary was remarkably smooth and we were soon settled in to our suite at the County Hall Marriott. I imagine the unobstructed views of the Houses of Parliament might excite a visitor to the UK but I was able to take them in my stride. From a third floor window I was able to observe the dusk-lit rain bombarding commuter and tourist alike. It fell too on two attractive but unfortunate Chinese wedding couples who braved the inclement conditions to have some of their photographs taken with the HoP as a background.

In the persistent but now less heavy rain, we strode briskly across Westminster Bridge to the underground to start a mildly convoluted journey we might have walked in kinder conditions. This brought us to Piccadilly Circus and the erratic streets of that area to lead us to our Dean Street destination. Jazz at Pizza Express is a bit of an event and has been now for around 40 years. At the risk of sacrilege, I would suggest the atmosphere was better than Ronnie Scott's. On my limited experience so far, I wonder if anywhere makes me happier than a jazz club. I do get similar feelings at transport events and venues but here I was transported into a world far away from the Tuesday commute above us.

I do not normally expect my pasta to be crispy - several pieces were visibly scorched - and I was about to comment as my ire was already fuelled by the downstairs prices which, we had already been informed whilst waiting, were 'different' to the upstairs prices. I will not be offering prizes for guessing the nature of the difference. However, the crispy bits added something to an already good dish of pollo pesto pasta. Whilst the garlic bread with cheese was prosaic Pizza Express fare, the salad of rocket and Grana Padano was excellent. My stomach and brain were now ready for the music.

The musicians, Janette Mason (pianist/musical director), Simon Little (bass) and Paul Robinson (drums and founder member of Art of Noise), were brilliant and that it is an inadequate adjective. Difficult to say then what that makes Lea DeLaria. Singing in her Wall2Wall series the David Bowie songbook, she had, with her collaborators, come up with unbelievably wonderful jazz arrrangements of some of Bowie's (early) best. After an instrumental intro this extraordinary woman, extraordinary I should say in so many ways, bounced and barged onto stage for a memorable performance punctuated with wit worth of Stephen Fry. We heard 'TVC15' as you could never imagine it. Then 'Let's Dance' and 'Starman' before guest Ian Shaw applied his vocal gymnastics and considerable range to 'Man Who Sold The World' with a sly couple of bars of 'Laughing Gnome' before making me cry with 'Life on Mars?'. 'Fame' and 'Suffragette City' were duets to sandwich 'Jean Genie' and 'Space Oddity'. With 'Suffragette' the closer in the main set, the pair returned to stage for a remarkable improvisation in 12 bar blues on a theme of David Bowie with little flavours of 'Heroes' and 'Ziggy'.

A first sight of Lea DeLaria is, frankly, pretty scary and I did not know what to expect. It takes little time though to warm to her personality and considerable talents. She swiftly engages an audience both vocally and verbally. Her aside on her spectacles was relevantly funny to me. After the performance I spoke to all the performers and, whilst Ian Shaw was considerably more reserved than on stage, Ms DeLaria seemed only to have begun to draw on her energy reserves. It was a great evening.