In a small space, it punches you in the face and then whacks you in the solar plexus, leaving you astonished and thrilled, like you’ve just stepped off a fairground ride.
There I was, enjoying a nice relaxing lunch with a delicate Gewurztraminer 1982 matured in Black Forest oak barrels, at the Aussie Hotel last Sunday, when this 14-piece jazz band starts up with a Duke Ellington number loud enough to blow the grilled Barracuda off my plate.
How these few local teachers, students, retirees and brass heads produce such a big sound I have no idea, but they do it with just four small microphones and two speakers which seem largely redundant because the engine of this sound is wood, metal and human lung power.
As they roll through more Duke Ellington, Johnny Mercer, Art Pepper, Benny Goodman and a barrel full of other fat brassy numbers I’m transported to a dance hall with a polished floor and a pressed tin ceiling packed with Brylcreemed young men in Oxford bags slinging whooping girls with pencil-lined calves under red dresses over their shoulders through a smog of Woodbines and rum cocktails.
Singer Rachel Howard has enough sweetness and sass in her voice to make it all come alive.
But where does all this thrilling nostalgia come from?
This is not the era of my youth.
I grew up with the frenzied shout of The Beatles, followed by the swaggering blues fuzz of Cream, Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin.
There were also few examples of subtlety in verse-chorus-verse-chorus pop songs, except perhaps for some Lennon/McCartney and Brian Wilson beauties.
I remember my dad putting the Hoagy Carmichael song Skylark on his radiogram and telling me to sit down and listen to its beautiful melody and lyrics.
All I could hear was a mush of peaches in syrup.
It was the same when he put on anything more upbeat with drums and trumpets.
All I could hear was old man noise.
That’s what the teenage brain does to beauty and nuance, I suppose.
Anyway, here I am 55 years later, listening to the lyric, ‘Is there a meadow in the mist where someone’s waiting to be kissed?’
And it moves me in a way for which I’m surprisingly unprepared.
That’s what age does.
It burnishes the flashy, brittle splinters of the world until they become soft and lovely pools of light.
The older I get, the more I want to wallow in quiet beauty and push away loud ugliness.
Beauty is what Skylark’s lyric and melody bring to me now, especially if they are delivered with a sweet voice.
Anyway, after this dreamy interlude, the band played on, punching its way through the brass and spittle of big-city traffic and the swing of the dancehall.
My ears and my chops were thoroughly belted, my feet hung by sinews and my neck needed a surgical brace.
If you get a chance to hear the Shepparton Jazz Orchestra live, check your health insurance and be prepared.
In fact, I’d put in a good week of cardio and strength training, then throw in a dose of yoga stretches afterwards.
And that’s without dancing. You might just get through unscathed.
But you will remain uplifted.
John Lewis is a former journalist at The News.
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