the music
This brew of music has jazz at its core. But it wanders into funk, blues, swing, reggae/dub, latin and other ‘world’ music feels. It’s fun to play and to listen to - after all jazz is dance music. It requires an intelligent connection between the musicians and the audience to work. The musical conversation between the band members to produce a Column 8 sound also involves riffing with the listeners. And if we get it right, we have a conspiracy to perpetuate further musical conversation.
the band
Like a great jazz number, the band evolves continuously. Members chime in and shimmer and shine for a while, and chime out too. The current line up:
StuSax (sax)
Adrian (percussion)
Zac (guitar)
Christy (vocals)
Ken (keys)
Jesse / Beck (drums)
Pete (bass)
THE NAME
Growing up in Sydney, Stu would buy the Herald and leap straight to Column 8 and get the "real" news on what was going down in Sydney. Fascinated by the micro and macro theories that would build and build endlessly in the daily reporting of the Column 8 readership, these were the cultural threads and rabbit holes that are now so familiar to the internet generation. In this space, so many conspiracies, so much amusement. In all, the perfect name for a new band to play jazz in a large band format. A nod and a wink to all C8 contributors and fans, many of whom it seems, also like jazz.
C8CT HISTORY
From jams at open mic nights at The Naked Bean Cafe, Stu created the Column 8 Conspiracy Theorists as a jazz fusion workshop with a focus on playing live - which they did on the 3rd Thursday of every month exclusively at the Naked Bean. Pretty soon the collective was Stu and a bunch of Year 11 age kids keen to play music they'd never encountered. The crowd got it, passed it on, and within a few months the joint was packed.