TOP SHELF JAZZ

We wish to protest in the strongest terms about an event last Saturday night in Tunbridge Wells. Arriving at Trinity Church (sadly now apparently a sort of theatre selling the devil's beverages) we expected to enjoy a soothing, refined on clarinet and cello playing a piece of Reinecke, Hummel or Mozart, but what we got was more like a Bender.

The cello was too long for proper music and Professor Tickle-Upright belied the refinement of his name with unconscionably long hair. He looked and behaved much more like Lizst. And like Lizst he played far too many notes. Deplorable.

Meanwhile the clarinettist was generally sensible but was wont to put his instrument down periodically and blow through some metallic parody he incorrectly described as a tenor. Everyone knows tenors sing and make improper advances to ladies. And there was worse to come.

A man with a bugle-like instrument kept blowing it very loudly at inopportune moments and ruined any opportunity for us to enjoy our peaceful sonata. At last a gentleman named Foxaque appeared on stage. We hoped he would put things right but alas, he didn't remove this miscreant, or even disarm him, but seemed to encourage him with suggestive jokes and by launching into risque songs.

That was almost the last straw, however there was some-one at the back who did nothing but bang metal discs and stretched pieces of pig skin the whole time. I began to realise that we had blundered into something hopelessly modern like Offenbach. I joked to my long-suffering wife that we should expect a girl to appear and do something unseemly like the Can Can from Orpheus (once a noble opera). Then would you believe it, one did! And in church! It may not have been the Can Can but her lascivious gyrations were very disturbing to the blood of an elderly gentleman like myself. Tap dancing, they call it.

At the interval in the Bar we upbraided Messrs Foxaque and Tickle-Upright with their licentious conduct. They had the grace to apologise profusely but suggested that if we were to try dancing to their cacophony we might even enjoy it! So we tried dancing, and do you know what, I could almost admit it was exceedingly exhilarating. But I won't admit it.

We need strong government to stop this sort of thing.

Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells

My Dearest Foxaque,

You whey-faced poltroon, you rambunctious bumbuggerer and tempestuous soiler of undergarments. Your continued existence foments a bilious uprising in my very craw and provokes me to ecstasies of loathing, sufficient in their magnitude to register upon the Richter scale. My fondest wish is that you suffer a prolonged, cold and above all lonely expiration upon some blasted heath, beshitted with the foul phlegm of harpies and set upon by fire ants.

Rot, you dog,

Mr Jacob Thomas Evans Esq.
Middlesex

Postcriptum - Additionally, up yours!

Dear Mr Foxaque

I am writing to you to express my gross dissatisfaction with the behaviour and quality of your Band's performance last week.

After reading such splendid reviews of your previous works with Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller and Benny Carter, I was thrilled to learn of a vacancy in your schedule and requested your availability. Your willingness to play at my dinner party greatly pleased me, although I did find your enquiry about the age and "flexibility" of my female attendees disturbing and should have taken this as a sign of things to come.

Your band's subsequent arrival was indeed quite prompt. They arrived a day early. And drunk. I was not quite sure what they meant by the term "How's yer farthar?" and was indeed quite upset when your trombonist was physically ill over my wife's new shoes.

This however paled in comparison to the events of the following day.

I was quite horrified to discover that the chorus of "ain't got no pants on" in the sheik of Araby has been taken quite literally by both yourself and your band. Indeed there were no pants, but no undergarments either. The female members of the party were blushing for days afterwards.

Mr Plunkett has also complained to me following your performance of "My Silent Love". He felt it was highly inappropriate for you to focus on his daughter while singing this, to the point where the young mistress felt the need to leave the room. That you also felt the need to leave the room shortly after completing the song was deplorable.

Finally the continuous consumption of alcoholic beverages that resulted in your drummer falling asleep midway through the final act showed a level of professionalism that I have previously unseen. That the bass player felt the need to flog him with his belt to wake him up disgusted both myself and the guests.

Never before have I witnessed such a horrific display of out of tune instruments and off-key singing that has been attempted to be passed off as music. The amount of effort displayed in your performance was quite clearly lacking and I severely hope that you reconsider your career as a musician.

Please do not contact me seeking remuneration for your performance. Any such contact will result in a restraining order from my solicitor.

Yours, etc
Mr Ben Short (Esq.)

Dear Mr Foxaque,

You, sir, are the apish figurehead set upon the prow of a ship of dancing fools. Your suit is ill-fitted and your trousers stained, but this is the least of my argument with you.

Your music, could I summon the grace to name it thus, is reminiscent of a handful of blithely grabbed pebbles bouncing around an antique colander. Your frankly offensive lack of talent truly represents all that is worst in our society; and I beg you to end this farce once and for all by throwing 'Top Shelf Jazz' onto the pyre of a prime-time gameshow such as 'Britain's Got Talent' or the 'X Factor', where your delusions of grandeur could be swiftly and decisively laid to rest for the good of all involved.

The so-called band you perform with are nothing more than a band of louche miscreants better suited to entertaining the emotionally disturbed upon occasions such as Christmas or Easter, when God might be looking the other way and be more inclined to let you away with your musical sins.

At least that way, your dreadful clamour would be inflicted on someone with the time to make a meal of it; in any case, it simply won't do. Please desist.

Kind regards,
L. Morgan

Dear Sirs.

I fear I must put in a report to the Office of Fair Trading - or indeed to the Prime Minister Himself - for your wanton and reckless disregard for the Laws pertaining to False Advertising.

You see, I happened upon your Company whilst inquiring into the purchase of a Second Hand Garden Swing for my young Niece, Arabella. I was reliably informed that your Company were "Fine Purveyors of Filthy Swings" and was overjoyed at finding just the Product my dear Niece desired. I thought perhaps a little Elbow-Grease and a Lick of Paint would have the thing looking like new in no time.

On further inquiry, however, it became clear that your Company was NOT in the business of selling Filthy Swings; rather: a form of lively Jazz Music.

Needless to say, I was most disappointed, however my interest remained piqued, since I am somewhat partial to an evening of Jazz Music on occasion. Thus, I decided to purchase a Ticket to your next Concert, hoping the bitter disappointment I had previously suffered would be quelled by an uplifting Performance of Filthy Swing.

Alas: the story does not end there. Your second failing was much worse - and, to my mind, thoroughly unforgiveable.

Whilst the show itself was mediocre and eventless, it was only after the frivolities of the evening were over, that the Heinous Crime occurred. Or, rather, did NOT occur.

I had, through the medium of your Web Site, been given to believe that your music would be (and I quote): "followed by a wild romp in the back house with the boys." - I suppose I should confess that it was this promise of "a wild romp with the boys" that truly compelled me to purchase the Concert Ticket; consequently, the absence of said "romp" left me feeling nothing short of bereft.

However, never one to be easily disheartened, nor afraid to stand up in the face of Adversity, and being what some might call a Resourceful Young Lady, I followed your unobliging Band Members to their Dressing-Room, to demand and insist that my Statutory Rights be fulfilled.

Whereupon I was told, in no uncertain terms, by a haughty Tap-Dancer, that no such "romp" would be taking place. I protested, of course, but the door was flung shut - quite rudely, I fancied.

I left, unwilling to be the cause of an Unpleasant Scene, but intent upon some sort of Recourse.

And so, my dear Sirs, it merely remains for me to appeal to your sense of Decency - or rather INdecency - and urge you to ponder the implications of your ill-considered Advertisement Copy upon the well-being of your unsuspecting Audience, the reputation of your Band, and, indeed, the sorry plight of this Nation of ours.

In short: the indifference displayed to the expectation of your fans requires a thorough and well-placed hand in the direction of satisfaction! Lip service is an understatement.

Yours Sanctimoniously,
Ms. E. Darling

Dear Mr. Foxaque

I am writing to you more in sadness than anger. I very much regret the philosophical and moral stance you are taking in front of easily influenced young people. Your apparent espousal with enthusiasm of a life of drink, drugs, and sexual excess does you little credit.

I pray daily that you should see the error of you ways and seek the warm embrace of the holy mother church where guilt and forgiveness are so intimately enshrined.

Yours, etc
Reverend P.D. O'Phiall (retired), Dublin.

Dear Mr. Foxaque

We have been keeping you under cuntstant surveillance. You are out of cuntrol. Please cuntain yourself before you cuntaminate the larger population. If you cuntinue to behave in the same manner, a cuntingency plan will be enforced to cunteract you: the cuntstabulary will detain you, you will quickly encunter a judge and jury in one of the highest crown cunts in the land, and you will end up cuntemplating your fate behind bars in a detention cuntre. You can cunt on it.

YOUR CUNTRY NEEDS YOU...
to stop being such a c*nt.

Sincerely,
N. Allsopp, Oxford University

Dear Mr. Foxaque

For SHAME.

I dont care if I'm a little late with this letter, I'm PISSED ORF and you need to know about it, you uncivil, rancid turds. I've gotten angry and now I'm getting eloquent.

The example you set to the youths of today, poncing about town nefariously in your art deco cars, with your filthy, ribald monickers, your course, smutty, amoral clothing and hairstyle choices, and the obscene vulgarity of your language and ideals trailing behind you like a cloud of environment-destroying pollution (which, incidentally, makes an apt metaphor for the verbal pollution which is your music - and I use the term in its loosest sense - and its unwelcome degradation of our society's ecosystem from its very foundations: our young people), is nothing less than condemnably disgraceful decadence.

Shame upon you and your fusty philistine claptrap tripe. You are quite frankly a danger to the future generations of respectable, taylor swiftian wits whose innocence you threaten with your lavishly corrupting glorification of squalor, languor, and liquor.

I un-cordially entreat you and the rest of your cheap-piss-drinking, sin-indulging, vice-cultivating, demimondaine-adoring and/or strumpet-soliciting, gutter-dwelling miscreant associates to return to the festering sewers from which you crawled. The ideals and standards (both musical and political) you promote through your musical propaganda and online pampleteering are a stain on humanity's cultural history, you shameful putrid scabs of musicians.

Top Shelf Jazz? Top Shelf SHIT, more like.

good DAY.
Miss Victoria Vitriole

P.S. The only time I see you in my dreams is when I'm murdering you all with your own instruments.

Sirs,

Stumbling from the Club I frequent to a local hostelry of middling repute one evening last week, I was confronted not with music in the traditional sense, but what I can only term as a form of Moral Dissonance I had assumed long dead.

As A Pillar of The Windsor Community, my instinct should have run to outrage. But the Dark Magicks in your Carnal Rhythms drove me to a fit of such Heated Discomposure, there was simply no space in my id for reason. You tickled opened my sensibilities like a flower, inflamed my Most Intimate and Immoral Accoutrements, then cast me aside, as one might a Wilted Poppy.

This cannot - must not - continue. If you are spotted lurking within the environs, I have instructed the local Gendarmerie that you be pilloried, and ejected from the city.

I have also written a letter.

Yrs. & C,.
Alexander Bickerstaffe.

I heard that you were a bunch of Ladykillers... Girls take one look at you and die of shock.

i r awesome.

i h8 top shelf shelf jazz coz i r mintah dan yoo!

Dale is the greatest person EVA

This Hatemail seems to have originated from A Youth. If anyone can provide an English translation, we would be much obliged.

If I really wanted to hear squawking and honking I'd go to the zoo.

Top Shelf Jazz barred from all Louisville Episcopal Churches: "Under no circumstances should they be permitted in any church or parish house under Episcopal control."

Right Rev. Charles E. Woodcock,
Bishop of the Diocese of Kentucky.
The New York Times, September 1921

We, here at the Ladies' Housekeeping Journal, espouse the notion that immoral music, especially jazz, must be kept at bay from polite and decent society and good church going folk. The recent tour of visiting band, Top Shelf Jazz, served further to highlight the social malaise of Jazz that has taken hold of our youth and virtuous young ladies.

We agree with the Rev. Dr. J Louis Beaven of the Methodist Church in Illinois, whose recent sermon was published in the Chicago Newspapers speaking of vice, liquor and Jazz, "that abominable Top Shelf Jazz orchestra with its voodoo-born minors and its direct appeal to the sensory centres brings the corruption of youth! To permit jazz music and immoral dance of any kind is worse than the effect upon society of the unspeakable creatures who live from the scarlet earnings of women. Abolish Foxtrot. Abolish one-step, toddle and Shimmy. Abolish Jazz music!".

Dancing and Jazz, he says, has become a greater menace than Liquor, segregated vice or "the brothels from which much of it sprang." He declares that many of these couples that choose to perform these dances to the stains of this new hot style peddled by the likes of Top Shelf Jazz, should "have a marriage license before stepping on the ballroom floor to enjoy the sensual stimulation of Top Shelf Jazz and their 'Filthy Swing'" He continues, "Jazz may be analysed as a combination of nervousness, lawlessness, primitive and savage animalism and lasciviousness. It has gotten beyond the dance and the music and is now an attitude toward life in general. We are afflicted with a moral and spiritual anaemia against which the Church has the only transfusion that will cure. Jazz music, is the very foundation and essence of salacious dancing. The words also are often very suggestive, thinly veiled immoral ideas. we appeal to the music publishers to eliminate jazz music altogether."

This immoral cacophony must be censored, curtailed and banned outright and we sincerely hope bands like Top Shelf Jazz never return and muddy the clear waters of decency in our communities, towns and cities of this great nation.

Ladies' Housekeeping Journal, USA,
December 1925.