Jazz Party
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Jazz Party

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“Monday night has always been my favourite,” says saxophonist and Jazz Party founder Darcy McNulty. “No one’s ever got anything on – anyone in music or hospitality – and you don’t get the Saturday night vibe.”

McNulty began his career busking on the streets of Brisbane. Before long, he was playing alongside the city’s cutting edge jazz musos, but his greatest inspiration came during regular visits to Melbourne.“I’d see Paul Williamson Hammond Combo play on a Monday night,” he says. “That was free and that was my favourite gig anywhere. You could just walk in and you’d hear this unbelievable music.”

After moving to Melbourne himself, McNulty seamlessly integrated into the local scene. Yet, despite being populated by stacks of quality musicians, he identified a strange uniformity in the Melbourne jazz scene. “You just go to so many gigs and they’re all the same,” he says. “It seems like very little thought ever goes into them.”

Thus, with help from Wondercore Island’s Si Gould, Jazz Party was born. Over the last few years, Jazz Party have held month-long Monday Night residencies at a range of Melbourne venues , and every Monday in May, Jazz Party are taking over St Kilda’s recently re-furbished Memo Music Hall.

McNulty’s core associates in the Jazz Party collective are vocalist, pianist and co-leader Hue Blanes, bassist Jules Pascoe and guitarist Aleister Campbell. As the name suggests, McNulty and co. are devoted to generating an inclusive good times atmosphere.

“It’s a pretty easy formula,” he says, “having it free and not having a stage and having a piano and having it on Monday night. There’s such a different vibe when a gig’s free – it just loosens people up a lot more. Also you get a lot more young people if the gig’s free.”

Given Jazz Party’s emphasis on loose, uninhibited fun, it comes as no surprise that their repertoire consists of high-energy hot jazz, straight out of New Orleans. “We play anything that’s danceable and anything that’s fun,” McNulty says. “Like Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton. Kermit Ruffins – who still plays every week in New Orleans – is one of our heroes.”

There’s still two weeks left to catch Jazz Party at the Memo, but if getting out on a Monday night just isn’t feasible, they’re also playing at Melbourne Bowling Club this Friday night for Stonnington Jazz Festival. Meanwhile, all those people eager to engage in Monday night revelry needn’t worry about missing the first two weeks at the Memo, as the best is yet to come.

“Usually the first ones can be a little bit quieter then it’s always cranking by the last one,” McNulty says. “There’s always people there and the people always dance. We’ve never done one where people haven’t danced, which is great especially for a jazz gig. We’ve had the bar staff dancing on the tables. Generally it gets pretty raucous. I mean, we haven’t had everyone take off their clothes yet, but we’re getting there. [Perhaps in St Kilda], no one knows what goes on down there.”

BY AUGUSTUS WELBY