Sunside and Sunset Jazz Club

-->

For my birthday Bev had bought tickets for us to go to the Sunside and Sunset Jazz Club to see a singer, guitarist and song writer called Joe Barbieri.  Neither of us knew anything about him. Prior to going to France I had expressed an interest in going to a Jazz Bar while I was in Paris given that the French seem to like jazz and it would be a new experience.

It was touch and go as to whether I went as I spent much of the day in bed felled by a cold and a very painful ear (all much better now).  The concert was to start at 8:30pm with a recommendation to be there about 8pm.  It was too good an opportunity to miss and I figured that by staying warm all day I might recover sufficiently to go out.  I was feeling a lot better by the time we were dressed and I had taken a panadol to help the head. 

When we walked out of the apartment about 7:30pm it was snowing lightly.  It was magical as it was almost warm.  We both walked to the Metro with big grins on our faces as it looked so beautiful with the snowflakes floating gently down on to us.  We were the only ones looking that way, everyone else was hunched up with heads down moving quickly to get to a warm place.  While there was a bit of it around it was melting on the ground.

The venue was situated very close to Chatelet Metro station.  We had to go through an external area where all the smokers were to get to the place where the concert was to occur - a relatively small room.  We estimated that there would only be about  150 people who could be accommodated.  We were packed in; knees in my case hard against the chair in front of me.  The smoke had drifted in from the smokers out front which gave it the smokey feel of what I think a jazz club might have been like before the smoking laws banned smoking from such public spaces. 

We had good seats although there were three enthusiastic women in front of us who kept forgetting there were people behind and either stood or spent time fluffing out there already full heads of hair.  The concert did not start until 9pm.  By that time the venue was full and it was good we had arrived early as we had secured good seats. 

The concert itself was neat, the acoustics were brilliant and Joe Barbieri was a very good performer.  He is Italian so it turned out (I was really pleased I did not find out anything about him as I had no expectations) and had even less French than me so that when he spoke in French he had them in gales of laughter at times as well as helping him out with his vocabulary.  He spoke at my speed so I was able to translate for Bev.  It was fun. 

He sang in Italian apart from a couple of songs in French.  While I did not understand the Italian or the French songs he was a superb and interesting singer.  The harmonies of the pianist and bassist were stunning and he was superb guitarist.  The concert was two hours long and despite feeling a bit rubbish I thoroughly enjoyed it including  the last song which is a very popular Italian song  - it seemed like half the audience knew it which suggested there were quite a few Italians in the audience. 

Joe was very endearing.  When he had trouble with French he switched to English which as a second or third language he seemed more comfortable in.  It was clearly an honour for him to play in Paris and in the venue.  After the concert finished he stood at the exit and thanked people for coming. 

The snow had stopped when we went back into the cold.  The wonderful metro service was still running and a surprising number of people were on it.  So ended a day of two parts.