The Guinness Jazz Festival

The Dean of St Finbarr's Cathedral, the Very Rev J.M.G. Carey, said prayers for jazz musicians and their festival during Sunday Service. Not that the corkers in the Metropole Hotel would have been in a position to notice the extra surge of grace. For them it could have been anyone of the "highs" of the Hallowe'en bank holiday weekend which Cork and Guinness' have transformed into a dithyramb of unparalleled abandon. By Lyn Geldof
Fortunately for jazz, its audience has grown up and prospered in like measure to itself, with the result that there is usually a few bob circulating among the greying, paunchy, middleeaged and largely male aficionados of the genre. They drink pints, smoke pipes and steep themselves in the cool and easy ambience beloved of the beatnik generation of the fifties. It is their time of. year; a capsule timeewarp permitting them take five from the pressures of life as they know it.

Fresher generations with open minds and hearts, throw themselves into the spirit of the occasion with youthful enthusiasm. They love live music anyway. They. probably can't tell if it is quality or not. Intuition rather than intellect guides their disscrimination and limited finances also imposes a criterion all of its own. It's a question of balance and syncopation.

To be sound of wind, limb and pocket, therefore, are prerequisites of the jazzfest. One can chain-drink through the weekend. One can imbibe music all· weekend. For fans from the capital, it starts and ends with the jazz train.

To alight at Cork station is like .J. ~tepPing into an elaborate musical set for a West End production. Allready there are knots of people with straw festival boaters forming currents in the weekend traffic. Steamy bar windows and the cheery sound trad band intoxicate before a gets near your lips. Over 30 bars participate in the Jazz Trail - there can be no ambivalence about being in Cork this weekend.

Stumbling across the Lee," eterrnally decorated with swans, the knots and kernels of friends thicken. Now, nearer the Opera House, where the big stars shine, serious roues smile at each other in silent harmony. The bar at the Opera House is packed, and decently enough, there is no fuss about taking one's beverage into the inner sanctum. No ceremony attends these performances, no dimming of main lights or overblown intros. We're in this gig together. The mood in the auditorium gently shifts and moduulates with each performer, assisted by a superbly subtle and versatile backkdrop.

Astrud Gilberto entertains and is no more. And there is Honor Hefferrnan, Brian Dunning, Noel Kelehan. Ronnie Scott plays his regular slot, but the Count Basie Alumni Big Band, The Countsmen, draw the collective breath. It is during this band's perrformance that Georgie Fame and Co give an impromptu looside (gents only) Barbershop concert. Eurojazz, the EEC's youthful big band of only three years, woo a big afternoon crowd. Late night ramblers are torn . by choice.

Invoking powers of bi-location, one wrenches oneself from Root Jackson and the GB Blues Company - "I'm from Grenada. All foreign troops out now" - to take in the theatrical and wondrous George Melly at the Imperial Hotel where the mass swarms, and on to Georgie Fame's true early hours venue at the Metropole. Meanwhile, they so tell, Acker Bilk and Kenny Ball keep the fringes of the vortex swirling at Moore's Hotel and the Country Club~

The informality of the festival spills over into one's eating habits. Trail blazing is punctuated by brief forays into fast food joints where speculation about the identity of fouls on sale ranges from fricasse of signet to delicacy of seagull.

Everyone knows in their hearts that the "Met" is the HQ. There are bars and bands at all possible locations and times. Discomfiture is an accepted part of the price for a dusk to dawn debauch. You queue outside and you queue inside. You may never even clap eyes on the perrformer of your dreams. But you dance and flirt and are oversympathetic to good-humoured waiting staff. You reveal innermost thoughts and wax philosophical in some stranger's ear. Tomorrow, fortunately, never comes at that stage. Then, hilarity attacks and you bay like a hyena for indeterrminate spells. Thankfully, the pattern seems common to all mortals.

Dawn breaks in. Bemused corpses occupy chairs and stairs. Abused throats hoarsely rasp for more. And there always is. Sleeping is an inciidental, and by no means integral, part of this time of day. Keep talking and Louis Stewart's brunch gig will catch up with you or you with it. Bars open, close, open again. Play your cards right and order in bulk.

It is arrant nonsense to expect to rest in the city centre while droves of jazzcphiles roam free. They cut continuous capers and japes though rarely lose touch with civilisation. Age and wisdom eventually suggest a leafy retreat, if only to allow one's wristwatch recover. So, to the connfines of the Hotel Blarney-on-Castle where sweet quietude, by contrast, sharpens the delights of Cork's commprehensive, autumn blues alternative. _