Here’s our very own end-of-the-year gift for you guitar players with time on your hands over the holidays and looking for new ideas in jazz. With it comes where to go next time and get free jazz stuff to help you outrun the plateau thing!

We know JimNewport, aka Jimmy Fame is jamming at Tokyo Joe’s on Sukhumvit Soi 26 Tuesday night at 10 with his edi-mentor Dr Blues.

Just a note! You heard it here first. The former Italin restaurant Roberto’s on the Patpong 2 mezzanine is to re-open on the 23rd of the month as a hot new jazz venue! More as my spies get closer to the story!

Ace Japanese jazz fusion combo SATORU SHIONOYA play here for the King’s birthday and to celebrate 120 years of Japan-Thai formal relations. Do not miss this dynamic funk fusion machine dragging rock to bed with blues and jazz and all we gotta do is celebrate!

Some visitors complaining the site is nothin’ but the blues but we are aware of this innocent bias. But we do need input from bands and others - venues included - who need the space to tell the world what’s on and to pull in the punters!

It would be too much to say all of Bangkok fell in love with the Blues Gangsta Glenn Patrik when he touched down a few weeks ago and stayed to deliver a truck load of genuine American blues to willin’ crowds. But shit, we miss the man and his rare authenticity.

Not so easy to find perhaps but well worth the trouble most nights, you can find this very special live blues bar on Sam Saen Road, just where the Norarat Sathan Bridge crosses the Bang Lamphu Canal and right next door to the Baghdad Cafe too.

They sell Paul McArrtney CDs without flinching but made up for that horror by offering Joni Mitchell’s latest too, so the Jazz Taliban can forgive them. Starbux that is.

In this business we do get around a bit and often give our stories to others in the interest of keeping the good news coming. Here’s a ‘pick up’ - as we call them in the business - we’re proud to pass on

“Watts plays in a virtuosic post-Coltrane style, with a fine, distinctive tone and an expansive technique that permits him to generate long, cleanly articulated lines that dance along confidently even at challenging tempos …”
JazzTimes Magazine

And don’t forget Asia’s best blues jam Sundays from 9 pm, following the stellar jazz open floor from 5:30 pm until 9, headed up by Golf T-Bone and his Mighty Jazz Warriors.

This is one tres musical joint and there ain’t nothing quite like LIVE music!