Claire alerted me to a jazz band called Kansas Smitty's who run and perform in a bar of the same name in east London.  During lockdown they are presenting what they proclaim to be the only vitual jazz bar in the world on Saturday nights.  That's a payable event but they are a presence on Youtube where you can catch them for nothing.

They happened to be doing a livestream gig from Ronnie Scott's which is where I heard them.  A handful of personable young men led by the charming reeds player Giaccomo Smith playing mostly their own compositions which I'd call modern but mainstream.

They provided a pleasant curtain raiser to the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival 2020 which faute de mieux was also an online experience.  I thought they did exceptionally well in putting togethere a varied and interesting programme.  It consisted predominently of videos of previous events but there were a number of lockdown performances including three Italians playing a mix of acoustic and electronic material in the woods near Turin.  I liked the music but not the soft focus filming.

I loved Playtime's gig from the Pathhead village hall and Aku performing in some cavernous underground space in Glasgow.  In another guise the Aku players appeared with others in a wildly crammed Glasgow flat giving it laldy while a pot plant spun round on a record deck. Tolerant neighbours on that stair.

Some of the reruns I'd seen live but not Lorna Reid.  I'll make a beeline to hear her when live performances reappear.

I haven't seen much else in the way of online entertainment.  I've watched a bit of TV without much enthusiasm or memory of what I've seen, inched a few episodes further through Narcos on Netflix and finished off some books.  The Whitehall Mandarin was a forgettable spy story.  At last year's Book Festival I heard the author of The Orchestra of Minorities speak at an African novels event and made a mental note to read it.  Now I have but didn't much care for this sorry tale of woe.  In parentheses The Old Drift  which featured in the same event and which I characterised as potentially the Great Zambian Novel I read some time ago but failed to enjoy.  Unnatural Causes is the professional autobiography of a forensic pathologist who's slit open every notable violently deaded body in the last forty years - absolutely fascinating.  The Way We Live Now which I read as a coda to watching its TV adaptation on DVD was equally fascinating.   

Of course being set in the 1870s it's the way they lived then but snobbery, greed, hypocricy, spendthrift sons, struggling mothers, lovers' misunderstandings, unrequited love, good samaritans and financial scams are with us still.