BLACK WAX - VIGOR

I had to do a lot of driving last week and played this CD over and over again. It invigorated me in the morning and exorcised the stresses of the day as I drove home.

When I started playing the saxophone I searched out Youtube clips of some of my jazz heroes from way back in the 60s and 70s. But as much as I loved them, they didn't speak to what I wanted to achieve. One that did speak to me was Cannonball Adderley. So in that fortuitous way of the internet, Youtube offered me a video of Black Wax playing Mercy, Mercy, Mercy. It was something I wanted to play, and was played in a way I wanted to play it.

Black Wax hail from Miyakojima, a small island that's about as far as you can get from Tokyo and still be Japan. The band members are the Ikemura sisters (Marino on Saxophones and Ayano on keyboards), Tetsuya "88" Ogino on bass and Mikio Okuhira on drums. They play funky reggae and bossa nova versions of classic standards along with some of their own compositions and jazzed-up versions of traditional Miyakojima folk music.

Vigor is Black Wax's fourth album and all these elements are there. The band seamlessly weave their own numbers between Dizzy Gillespie's Manteca and A Night in Tunisia, plus Bobby Hebb's Sunny and Jackie Mittoo's Drum Song. Then they hit you with the traditional Agaizato - an arrangement that is so full of love for their island home, it brought tears to my eyes. I think it was John Coltrane who once said that Sonny Rollins could take any tune and make it his own. Black Wax seem to have this talent.

There are about 30 Youtube videos of the band out there - you can track their progress from being a bunch of talented young people in 2011 to today's formidable ensemble. As a starter, here's a link to their newly established Youtube channel, which includes a trailer for this album. And if you want to buy it, I've found CDJapan to be a pretty quick and reasonably-priced supplier.

A case of sax abuse

Well, I'd got a tenor saxophone that could play. The question was, how did it sustain the damage to the thumb hook and Eb guard? This wasn't an idle question, cuz you know what they say about lightning striking the same place twice? If you don't do something about it, it probably will.

It wasn't long before I found my first clue. I shut the horn back in its case and lifted it by the handle. There was a clunk as around 4 kilos of brass slumped into a more comfortable position. Not a reassuring sound. It wouldn't take much of a drop to cause the damage.

My first thought was to follow the example of this guy and re-engineer the innards of the case. It involves cling-film and polystyrene spray, but isn't quite as kinky as it sounds.

Anyway, I went for the lazy man's option and bought this second-hand case.

I've seen some older Trevor James horns in cases like this, so thought it would probably do a good enough job. As it turned out, it's a nice snug fit.

It did require a small amount of work however. It had taken a knock to one of the bottom corners and the plywood sides to the inner shell had come adrift from the corner post. And it was missing all but two of its little feet. Plenty of glue and a piece of sheet aluminium around the bottom end of the shell made a nice repair and gave me a base to screw some replacement feet to.

I haven't bothered replacing the feet along the long side. I don't think it needs it.

As it was cheap and slightly shabby I will have no qualms about pimping it which I will no doubt post about in due course. And the ABS case the horn came in has been boxed up and put in the loft to be offered in pristine condition when I come to sell the horn.