THEO CROKER

THEO CROKER AT TURNER SIMS CONCERT HALL, SOUTHAMPTON – 12/5/22

Some days, I think as I drive up the M3 this evening, I wonder how we all manage to convince ourselves that we are who we say we are. And how reality seems to hold, somehow, together, and not just come apart at the seams. It’s one of those kinds of days today, when you wonder how it all works, and why. It’s a beautiful evening and everything looks greener that it normally does. Sometimes, I think, I’d like to be surrounded by green all the time, like a squirrel, and I wonder how many shades of green there are and whether it’s even possible to quantify such a thing, and think that even attempting to do so would be missing the point somehow. I take a moment to admire the view from the petrol station parking area. That’s the kind of mood I’m in: the kind of mood in which you take a moment to admire the view from a petrol station parking area.

The view from a petrol station parking area

The TURNER SIMS CONCERT HALL, with its white-haired staff, its ushers who escort the band from the dressing room to the stage and back again, its front row seats and sedate background music, is rapidly becoming my musical comfort zone. I think it’s nice to be able to sit down while you enjoy some music. It certainly saves my feet and legs from aching, which they certainly do a lot at the moment. And the gigs always finish at a reasonable time, so you can still get home for a decent night’s sleep. It’s perfect, really. 

  Behind me a man and a woman are discussing THEO CROKER’s penchant for appearing bare-chested in photographs. “I think all the photos I’ve ever seen of him he’s been bare-chested,” says the woman.

  “Maybe he’ll be bare-chested tonight,” says the man. 

  When the band do ‘finally’ appear (their dinner has been “delayed”, the manager informs us, so they won’t be ready to play until at least half past eight) Croker is the last to appear, and to the inevitable disappointment of some has his chest covered for tonight’s performance. Frustratingly, for the first ten or fifteen minutes of the gig I am unable to stop thinking about the form of words I will use in response to an email I received today from the neurotic parent of an anxious student, words that will need to be carefully chosen in order to reduce, or hopefully eliminate, the need or possibility of further correspondence. Even after ten to fifteen minutes of concentrated thought, I still haven’t quite nailed it and try instead to lose myself in the music, which shifts from a sort of cosmic calm to a kind of skittering urgency. It’s an expression of the struggle and a call to the future. Croker seems, at first, to be a fidgety and restless performer, but relaxes as the show progresses, even indulging in a little yawn at one point, which is not something you see too often these days. Croker’s big idea is that ‘Jazz is dead’. And why not? Lots of things are dead nowadays: the novel is dead, truth is dead, reality is dead, conversation is dead, family lunches are dead. We live in an undead culture. More things should die, definitely. Why not jazz too?

Croker’s big idea

“I don’t like the word ‘Jazz’,” says Croker, “it’s a dirty, demeaning word. The music we play isn’t jazz. It’s so much more elevated than that. Jazz is dead; long live music.” It must be terrible, I think, being described as something that you are so strongly opposed to. The words ‘Set Black music free’ is one of the slogans being projected on the screen behind the band tonight, and it seems that Croker is trying to move beyond jazz in both a musical and conceptual sense. But jazz has a strong gravitational pull and is holding on tight. Good luck Theo Croker. I hope you make it. Godspeed.

Trying to break free