A festive mood descended on Jon’s and my last evening of vinyl and vino for 2023, beginning with the impossibly groovy Moog Party Time LP (1972) that Jon had secured at Woburn’s market the week before. A post-JaM Session text conversation with my friend Bryan led to the acquisition of The Moog Machine’s Christmas Goes Electric LP (1969) from Discogs, so next year’s final JaM Session looks set to be wild.

From Moogs to Men At Work and their 1982 album Business As Usual, then onwards like an out-of-control sleigh ride to Frank Sinatra’s A Jolly Christmas From Frank Sinatra (1957). Old Blue Eyes’s version of ‘Jingle Bells’ is, to this writer, nothing short of perfection.

Dexter Gordon’s Go! (1962), with its seminal opening cut ‘Cheese Cake’, took things in a hard bop direction, and we concluded the night with Phil Spector’s A Christmas Gift For You (1963).

Conversation topics included sandwich thievery, Jon’s experiences of working at a Royal Mail sorting office as a student, and the disappointing fact that Milton Keynes is not named after economics titans Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes but rather the medieval village that was swallowed up by MK’s creation. Breadsticks, pitta, olives and a Christmas Eve hangover’s worth of red wine provided the snack and drink accompaniment.

The eagle-eyed will note that the write up of JaM Session VII is missing. This is because I forgot to write that one up and can no longer remember what we played – but it definitely included Supertramp’s Breakfast In America from 1979 and an album of New Age electronic music that I’ll be writing about here in 2024.

Words: Mat Smith

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