Monsieur Dubois ft. Joseph Bowie - 13/10/2005, Brussels

Monsieur Dubois is a Dutch sextet that plays a passable (largely) acoustic version of 90s acid jazz: acoustic double bass vamps, bossa/samba/funk/d'n'b grooves smartly stitched together by the combination of a drummer and a well-equipped percussionist (congas, bongos, timbales, small hi-hat, triangle, sundry), unremarkable soloists (keyboard, trumpet, saxophone) and melody lines drawing on hard bop.

I'd never heard trombonist Joseph Bowie and only vaguely heard of his band Defunkt, but I was pretty disappointed, after the promo and onstage hype surrounding his participation. While his speech-like blurts and occasional high-pitched exclamations made his relationship to Lester quite clear, his playing was rather limited and rarely fitted the context. The music really called for some good, greasy, Fred Wesley-type playing to really energise it, but that didn't happen.

A mediocre concert, then, but enlivened by my experimental hat-wearing. I've always found the hat-wearing men in old films cool, Jason Moran has made it his trademark, lots of rappers/singers have one on in their videos and photo shoots, so I've been thinking about getting one myself for a long time now: it's both fashionable and distinctive on the street. I bought a cheap one on saturday - black, short brim that folds up at the back - to see if I could put it on without feeling too embarassed and last night was the first time I wore it to town. Combined with my brown leather jacket and orange stripy shirt, the outfit might have been too poseur-y, but it was great fun anyway. We're going to Paris tomorrow, I'll see what the French make of it.