606 Club

90 Lots Road, Chelsea, SW10 0QD

Dinghy, cramped and a bugger to find: exactly what you’d expect from a perky little jazz club. That, and Osama Bin Laden’s hideout, maybe. Jazz nuts often allude to that crucial element of ‘cool’ when referring to their preferred pastime and 606 has just that, by the bundle, piled up in big stacks marked ‘Excess Cool’. With a pedigree that pre-dates the invention of Darth Vadar, Freddie Lundberg and Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols, 606 is New Orleans soul transposed to the industrial back alleys of Chelsea Harbour. And in doing so it pokes a knowing finger into the shoulder of homogenised jazz-joints like Ronnie Scott’s, saying ‘Hey you. Be cool’.

You will not find the curious archway entrance. It will find you. Just don’t be late. There’s an air of mystery upon entry: intercoms, buzzers, gates, ominous stairs that look like they want to kill you. A beatnik basement is waiting just around the corner to clobber you with the Speakeasy stick. Bare-brick walls, low ceilings, red drapes and tatty tables cluster in a space the size of this sentence. Roughly 100 people squash onto tiny tables congregated around the magic. How in the name of Thelonious Monk they managed to squeeze a grand piano (et al) in there as well is beyond me. This is cosy, but not in a Northern Line sort of way. More a snug jazz blanket sort of way.

You couldn’t get more up-close-and-personal with the artistes as they practice their musical sorcery without being forced to comment on their body odour. Which is highly likely as even a sumo wrestler taking an Egyptian sauna in the middle of summer doesn’t sweat as much as these guys. No wonder; they play at speeds that could’ve only been taught to them by aliens from the future. These musicians finish their set weighing half as much as when they started it. That translates to pure rabid passion, for any simpletons out there.

The worshippers in the crowd are sub-zero cool. These are the people you want to BE. These are real people. Their diversity embarrasses you. Their lack of pretension seems almost newborn. It’s like you’ve stepped into the university of “You Dig?” and expect to come out of it with a honours degree in Inner Beauty. Perhaps if you sit close enough their aura will rub off on you. Couples get intimate, a chap in a hat at the back taps his lap, everyone sips wine. There’s clapping and laughing and chatting and smiles and reactionary dancing and prancing and love floating all around the room.

The food and drink on offer are adequately fulfilling and you should appropriately get involved. However, physical sustenance plays second fiddle, trumpet, trombone and piano to the true nourishment: jazz. Plush decor and fine dining, on your bike. Who cares what shade of egg shell-white the walls are, this is all about life, so light that music up!!