I’ve been on a bit of a jazz binge recently, inspired by JP Bouvet’s Jazz Foundations course.

I stumbled upon this 1989 radio documentary on the History of Jazz. So far, I’ve only listened to the first episode (out of 32!), but I’m really enjoying Mel Lewis and Loren Schoenberg’s insights.

“Loren Schoenberg, senior scholar of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, and Mel Lewis (1929-1990) discuss and analyze the histories, techniques, equipment, and ensembles of jazz drummers in an epic 32 part presentation from 1989.”

The whole series is available on Youtube.

If you haven’t seen Peter Jackson’s Beatles documentary, Get Back, watch it! It’s really great. Even if you aren’t a huge Fan of The Beatles. There is a lot to be learned from The Beatles and Get Back. Tom Whitwell highlights some of those lessons here. It’s a good read.

This is fun… Type a song with just your keyboard

Ipswich, October 2021

This is going to be the last Five Things for now. I can’t quite believe I have done 265 of these, but it feels like the right time for a break. If you’ve enjoyed these posts keep an eye on my blog. Anything that’s worth sharing will be posted there in future!

Here are this week’s Five Things…

1. I’ve rediscovered my love of the game Mini Motorways. It’s available on Apple Arcade and Steam. I recommend it!

2. Richard Osman’s new Thursday Murder Club book, The Man Who Died Twice, is great. If you haven’t read the first one, you should!

3. Amazing photos: The Vatican Under Red Lights

4. An amusing collection of posters.

5. Really enjoying this new podcast series on Fat Leonard. He’s quite a “character”! “It’s the most shocking unknown tale of our era: A defence contractor who bribed navy officers with cash, prostitutes and luxury items in return for multi-million-dollar deals.”

Thanks for reading!

Blenheim Palace, August 2021

This week’s Five Things…

1. A collection of both excellent and terrible reinventions of everyday objects.

2. An interesting episode of The Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast on panic buying: “[W]hen that behaviour is described as panic, blame is easily passed on from those responsible for our shared infrastructure to those who rely on it.”

3. This is clever. A tool for stripping all the words from your writing, leaving just the punctuation. The resulting images look rather cool!

4. Miniature life.

5. 🎵 Silfur by Dustin O’Halloran

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, sign up to get the next one delivered straight to your inbox.