The Bowie Project - Paris Cat Jazz Club

As a huge fan of Bowie, and a relatively new fan of Jazz as a genre - I'm still rather on the fence at times about this - I was going into this particular event with sheer excitement. I am delighted to announce I was not disappointed.

After the usual struggles with google maps and a rush to find the venue, which is blissfully hidden down a typical Melbourne lane way we stepped down into the cellar of the Paris Cat Jazz Club and were greeted with a packed out venue. The room was the right amount of intimate without feeling cramped at all. The walls are decked out in crushed velvet and the small round tables beautifully lit by a single candle lamp. The perfect atmosphere to pop my live jazz cherry!

After a dash to the bar to grab a bottle of red we promptly took our seats in a prime spot next to the piano. Nothing quite encapsulates the madness of Bowie like a Jazz Quintet covering some of the more obscure ends of the sprawling back catalogue. The Bowie Project presented an assortment of songs from the instantly recognisable to the more obscure numbers from Labyrinth. The absolute pinnacle of the set though has to be the collectives rendition of Aladdin Sane. The sprawling insanity of the song written during arguably Bowie's most artistically fascinating stage of his career and certainly the most worrying for his health, combined with the haphazard arrangement of Jazz as a genre was just perfect. 

Paris Cat Jazz Club will certainly be somewhere I frequent whilst I'm here in Melbourne, if only to sample their menu of anti pasto, pizza and cheese board (for two?! pfft!)