Gastown!

We went to a jazz concert last night, Richard Savoie Quartet: saxophone, piano, bass, drums. They played all original material and were very fine. The bass player had one of the funniest instruments I have ever seen. For 15 years he played bass with the MSO, invested his money wisely, then about four years ago retired from the classical-music world to play jazz. He bought a very funky bass. Imagine if you will a regular double bass with the sides cut away, curving gently into the bridge and away again. There is a shaped piece added on where one would normally lean against the instrument, and of course it is amplified. But it didn�t have a bad sound, and since the player is not actually leaning against it and absorbing some of the sound into his body, the reduced body size seems to work. I just couldn�t see any F-holes as where they would normally have been was right where it was cut away. Maybe they were in the sides.

For supper I made a pressure-cooked bean and barley soup which was delicious, but proved to be an excellent catalyst for methane production. You see, normally one would soak the beans and discard the soaking water. Pressure cooking precludes that first step, and all the lovely non-digestible proteins end up roiling around in your gut, making sitting still in a concert surrounded by attentive listeners rather interesting, to say the least. Hubby leaned over to me at one point and said, �Never again!� You must understand that we had tofu for supper the night before, and it was the same story during the Musica Nova concert. It was a gas!

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