Imagine, if you will, or can, a cutting contest between Oscar Levant and Humphrey Lyttelton, duking it out for the chance to star in an eight-month world tour of Hello, Drolly. If you can pull that off then my work here is done, for it’s clear that you’re match-fit and ready to go mano a mano, best-out-of-three, with all 149 pages of Benched, the new slim volume by Bill Anschell, coming soon to a bookstore near you.
If, on the other hand, you’re still as bemused as Donald Trump in a Quaker meeting house, then my coach may have to bring me off the bench for extra time, and it can get messy, even end up with blood on the carpet, as I unleash examples like – depending on whether you support City – Last Exit To Brooklyn “re-imagined” by Lewis Carroll – or United – vintage Punch “re-imagined” by Lenny Bruce.
To indicate the book’s intention, the author says “What happens when a jazz pianist spends his career bouncing between high-profile concert halls, hellish wedding gigs, major festivals, cruise ship disasters, recording dates, and insane jam sessions? Bill Anschell turns it all into comic gold. His debut book, Benched, releases on November 25th, offering satirical stories that pull back the curtain on the absurd realities of jazz life. Drawing on four decades as a working musician, Anschell finds humor in the audiences, industry, and artists that make up jazz’s singular universe. Fellow jazz artists will recognize themselves on every page, while newcomers will find it the perfect comic introduction to the jazz world. Benched features eight original short stories – all inspired by actual events—interspersed with highlights from Anschell’s previously anonymous jazz advice column, Mr. P.C.’s Guide to Jazz Etiquette and Bandstand Decorum (now in its 16th year at AllAboutJazz.com). The stories are revised, updated, and expanded from previously published versions.”
Those two opening paras were an endeavour to replicate perhaps one-tenth of the flavour of Benched and now I’ll continue in my own voice. In his day job, Mr. Anschell is a jazz pianist and a well-regarded one. If, like myself, you have yet to experience his work in that field (e.g., musical director for vocalist Nnenna Freelon), and you form the opinion that if he plays as well as he writes, we’re looking at either the next Winifrid Atwell or the next Erroll Garner, dependent upon at which end of the spectrum you make your home. Reader, I enjoyed it.
And no, I am not easily pleased and/or on medication. It may, in fact, be more accurate to say I enjoyed it with reservations, or to put in another way, one minute I felt I was back in the school playground, and the next that I was sitting at the feet of Socrates in 5th century BC Athens, which is another way of saying the book is a blend of curate’s and Carl Fabergé’s egg. In short it represents Mr. Anschell’s slant on the world of jazz, a world of which he possesses a working life’s experience. Alas, unlike Mr. Anschell, I am not a not a jazz musician, nor indeed a musician period; to be brutally honest I’d have a tough time handling triangle in infant school. I am, however, more than happy to accept Mr. Anschell’s word on the subject, i.e. Benched, which I find highly readable, sporadically laughable, entertaining on the whole, and even, in spots, informative.
Benched, by Bill Anschell. Blow Hard Music, 147pp, $15.99 paperback/$7.99 epub, available through Amazon. ISBN 9798270830021
