Jazz Bakery

It's hard to sit in my open air Spanish courtyard fortress style apartment complex knowing that there is a whirl of activity just on the horizon in any direction.


I could not let idleness win the night, and found myself at a non-profit club called the Jazz Bakery in Culver City, a 35 minute bus ride from my place. The Bakery is in an indescribable, only-in-LA type of drive through stip mall neighborhood zoneage thing. It was an awkward approach to landscape architecture and spatial planning, but probably perfect if you're driving. Once inside my door, however, the scene was cozy and welcoming, and the crowd that mingled was small and friendly. There was a great photo exhibit going on about jazz artists in action from the mid 1980s. Many were names I'd never heard, but there were a few leftovers from the golden years. Playing that night was a piano/upright bass/drum trio with Aaron Goldberg on piano, Reuben Rogers on bass, and Eric Harland on drums. Rogers is a big, smiling, dancing, Israeli guy with a 1960s Fidel Castro beard. Harland is a powerful Texan drummer who didn't miss a beat. And Goldberg is a Brazilian/American pianist whose compositions at times reminded me of a mix between the Charles Schulz Peanuts theme song and John Lennon's later years. Besides being amazed by the professional skills and execution by Goldberg and Rogers, I was most enthralled by Harland's ferocious drumming. One of his crash symbols had some rattlers on it so that whenever he tapped it a sizzling ring would go on for about 20 seconds. It created a nice background for whatever else he was doing at the time. He also was not afraid to go Bonham style, using the four sticks when appropriate, but alternated with soft brushes and padded mallets. The room was not a bar, but a mini concert hall with about 100 plastic lawn chairs set up. There were only around 30 people there, so I was able to stretch out and get close to the stage. I discovered that many of the audience members were students or teachers from the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in LA. I like the oven metaphor of the Jazz Bakery a lot. You mix up the musicians and the audience and the sound in a room, heat them up slowly, and what comes out is likely to be good. It reminds me a lot of playing with Armadillo. On the bus ride home I witnessed a man having a real live conversation with himself about absolutely nothing. He was clear and eloquent and made no sense whatsoever.