[Dixielandjazz] Zenith Chapatti & Porridge Tour 2002

[Tom Wood]

Dear All,   

Sorry I missed most of the biogs thread because we have just returned to Sydney from Five Star Hotel residencies at Oberoi Towers, Mumbai, India, (yes, that's right, where the recent bombing was) St. Andrews Bay Golf Resort & Spa, Scotland (where we ate porridge & haggis) and The Radisson, Haugesund, Norway (where we ate raw fish) which included playing jazz festivals with big stage billing at Glasgow, Birmingham and Edinburgh, UK.  All the above festivals were repeat bookings confirming our band and OKOMs popularity.  We will probably produce our 10th CD live from this tour before Christmas.

Considering the youthfulness of the band, and yours truly suffering from "UM" on tour we played much better after a good fight and in future guarantee to play rounds rather than sets or brackets.  When asked how did the trip go?  The standard reply is "Well nobody got killed", Zenith for hire "No fight too small."  In Bombay the jazz club only offered us one free beer for the evening but this was solved when an Indian TV crew, filming the band during a disagreement about bugs on basses was in full pelt on stage.  Suddenly the management provided free jugs of beer which continued to flow freely all evening for the band.  We had to force ourselves away from the audience at this gig, taking the pilot for our plane with us (I don't think he had drunk too much) to catch a 2.50 am flight from Bombay to Frankfurt then another to Edinburgh to play on the Waverley Paddlesteamer for the Glasgow Jazz Festival next day up the River Clyde with a sold out audience of 600 on board.  Our band (average age 65) is a great tribute to the preservation qualities of alcohol but we are now also requiring a fitness and international food eating test before being included for the next tour.  We had F2F with the 10th Avenue at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival Mardi Gras but missed the UK Zenith at the Birmingham Jazz Festival where we had a fairly busy playing schedule and were accommodated outside town at Wolverhampton University.   



However, OKOM is alive and well, we did not stagnate our repertoire, we did play with drive and excitement, (the curry diet made us play hotter?) our audiences continually asked for more, we sold 1000 CDs and we did sometimes play what they wanted including a new request, for us, called either "Casablanca" or "As time goes by".   



Tom (Curried out) Wood

zenith at ans.com.au
www.ans.com.au/~zenith
UM = an Unfortunate Manner is caused by a combined Scottish and German ancestry and living in Sydney.