Jazzing Up Sundays

"This debate is unconstitutional..."

As Sunday night relaxation a listen and learn to a swinging session with the Jeoff Murphy Jazz Group with modern poetry readings, was organised by the University Contemporary Arts Society last Sunday in the Common room.

With the professional skill of the "big time" musicians in the band the first hour slipped by with "Weird Blues." "Prospecting," "Memories," "Just You ' while Bruno Lawrence beat it out on the drums and Bill Gilbert made quite an impression on the doube bass, especially in "Dew and Mud."

The "Mod" with a different form and a different swing came in the second half with a series of short poems read by David Rude and Rad Drawbridge, The first was announced as a "respectable" poem by Wallace Stephens called "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" in Japanese high style. Then came the not so respectable, the bitter, the bawdy, and the blatent, e.g a maybe brilliant, maybe obscene love dialogue by E. E. Cummings read in a dead pan monotone voice that gave the listener a jolt. Or again Adrian Mitchell's "So don't feed your dog on ordinary meat, feed him on pal, pal meat for dogs enriched with nourishing marrowbone jelly." where the dog becomes the whole stuffed commercial society, your friend, the clergyman, the MP, all enriched with nourishing marrow bone jelly. The other poems read, by Nemerov, Kennedy. Stafford and Cummings, all savoured of the new, the different—of an exciting Sunday night for a change.—P.W.