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it's about time

in a couple of months, i will once again be occupying the best seat in the house at the islay jazz festival, when i'll have the opportunity to fool myself into thinking there's a direct line of descendency between yours truly and art blakey. to those less than enamoured with this particular musical genre (and that unfortunately includes the bulk of islay's population), it can seem a particularly difficult music to comprehend, displaying none of the trappings exhibited by daniel o'donnell, alvin stardust or adele.

as one whose introduction to jazz was by way of 1960s max roach and john coltrane, i can, to a certain extent, sympathise with any potential misgivings. but i'm pretty sure that even those who declare an affinity with thrash metal have one or two bands with which they are less than enamoured. similarly even the anodyne world of pop music about which i thankfully know very little.

however, the latter style of music displays a commonality in its almost ubiquitous choice of four beats to the bar as the underlying rhythmicality. four beats are easy for anyone to understand, whether the soing occupying the space is to their liking or not; four beats, even at speeds hitherto unheard in polite company, make it easy to dance to. the advent of so-called jazz-rock in the 1970s, more recently dubbed fusion, brought a whole host of obscure time-signatures to the attention of the great unwashed, predominantly, in my opinion, to demonstrate a musical versatility on behalf of its practitioners that ultimately became an end in itself, rather than a means to an end.

in other words, showing off.

the result was a perceived need by drummers, guitarists and keyboard players of the 1970s to acquaint themselves with numbers other than two and four. though i have since come to see this faux complexity for what it truly is, i cannot deny that my former familiarity with odd time signatures looks as if it might become my friend for at least one of the tunes that we, as the islay jazz quartet intend to offer on the evening of 9 september.

i will only offer the clue that it involves five beats to the bar.

it is a factor that straddles both my percussive machinations and the two cycling disciplines which i treat with the same disdain as thrash metal, namely time-trialling and triathlon, for both are similarly (sort of) concerned with time. the latter discipline i consider in the light of velominati rule #42, while the former is probably outside of my limited abilities and thus not to be taken seriously (by me, that is). yet, though many bicycle distributors stock only minimal numbers of any cyclocross bicycles, it seems the same cannot be said regarding time-trial bicycles, machines that have a remarkably singular purpose.

this was all brought to my attention by the arrival of planet x bikes' announcement that they can now offer the world's speed merchants and those who care not one whit for rule #42, three new slivers of carbon fibre on which to practice this need for speed.

essentially the same bicycle in three different flavours, i'm probably not the only individual arguing with myself over whether time-trial bikes such as the planet x exo3 are a delight to behold, or simply the cycling world's ugly ducklings. those of us in thrall to the minimal tubes featured on a steel frame such as an eddy merckx liege 75 might point mockingly at the faired head tube adjoining a down tube on which council tax is probably due. but then time-trial bikes have a need to slice through the air in a manner that would ultimately lead to the top step of any podium you care to mention. and that apparently calls for drastic aerodynamic measures.

like many a bicycle these days, the existence of three distinct frame builds caters to varying depths of pocket, so to speak. thus, the race edition at a penny under £2,500 features sram's force eleven speed, while the most expensive (£3,999.99) pro edition has shimano's dura-ace to aid targeted victories. frankly, there's not much other than triathlon or time-trialling these assemblages of carbon composites and lightweight alloy can accomplish. i think it less than likely i'll see a member of the velo club arriving at debbie's of a sunday morning riding a planet x exo3 pro edition time-trial bicycle anytime soon.

but, on the other hand...

planet x | islay jazz festival

friday 8 july 2016

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