Don't shoot me but the song I've chosen to embed a version of at the beginning of this article is not jazz at all. Dave Grohl's 'Times like These' goes back to a 2003 release but the new pop star socially distanced version put out on TV during the first Lockdown certainly struck a chord with me at the time stumbling upon it stuck at home flicking on the box and the lyrics still resonate and have become meaningful in this new context of the year we have all gone through.

By complete contrast stylistically stepping instead into the jazz bubble it is tempting to write that the jazz scene has been close to the verge of extinction this year. Delete that: the whole music scene has seemed in terminal danger. Because at times yes like these with everything shut it certainly seemed that way. But we have been there in different circumstances many times before given that jazz has always seemed to be in permanent recession with such flakey jazz-is-dead pronouncements all of which made a good headline or click bait but were always at odds with the reality. The only Jazz is Dead I'll go for comes with 'Desert Rain'. We're still here! Don't get me wrong however there have been bad times for jazz in the past. This year things got a helluva lot worse.

Rather than think about prematurely pronouncing the last rites instead a sense of place is more the point and the way that has disappeared this year is worth thinking about. We need to get it back. As a prologue, the idea of a jazz scene has never been a monolith even within a particular big city. And yet talk turns to the ''London scene'', the ''US scene'' the ''Irish scene,'' the ''West Coast'' scene and so on. As music-making is a collective endeavour then the sense however fanciful of a large community of similarly located players especially in terms of geography forming a scene is actually very useful.

Problem is in 2020 with most jazz clubs shut for long periods, festivals cancelled, live performance cloistered away from the public gaze for the most part gone ''in person'' the sense of place has melted away entirely as we have migrated online to watch jazz like we used to watch jazz in actual places that came provided with an entrance and an exit. All the mod cons. Yes we do however belong to a global online community which is worth remembering. However, even if the online organisers mention the place of recording the actual venue is not that place where it was made whether recorded in New York, London, Berlin or Ulan Bator but in the anonymous ''space is the place'' utopia (''nowhere''!) online. So the sense of a scene being online has very little to cling on to in terms of real connection.

There is yes more of a level playing field. Any residual snobbery about the quality or otherwise about the latest killing sounds from the monster players of the Reykjavík scene goes out the window. Hey instead there's this incredible sound coming from the computer: your ears are doing the influencing. Who knew. You'll be keen to find out who that player actually is and then maybe how they got there. I for one have always been less interested in where a player is from and more about what their music says and destinations they are going to Tripadvised or not inside our hearts and minds.

Online there are fewer of the human qualities we all find when we go to hear jazz live. Distance imposes a barrier. You never really think about a sense of place until it is taken away. So, for example, one of my favourite clubs of all the Pizza Express Jazz Club had a certain identity. It still has even though it is closed. In that case place was important: it is located in one of the most cosmopolitan parts of a very cosmopolitan city. There is always a bustle around the place when you travel to the venue. When you get in, there is a certain theatre in being shown to your seat, getting settled, having a look at the programme, grabbing a bite to eat, waiting for the welcoming words from the sound engineer in his booth and then eventually the musicians emerging, the show beginning and the dreaming above all as you begin to listen and enter the sound.

Only the most hardened anti-romantics would deny themselves a rummage in the classic imagery and people of the music that we have all picked up knowledge about over the years. Jazz clubs do not try to fake this even if doubters think they do. It just is a factor that accumulates. For instance sitting in Ronnie Scott's upstairs the other night checking out Dom Pipkin for the first time live I was thinking about how often that second lesser-known space with an identity all of its own in the great club often presents jam sessions and how a guest performer drops in whose name you may not even know but for sure want to get up to speed with if you like what you are hearing.

Sometimes at places like Ronnie's and the Spice a few streets away over by Cambridge Circus you'll look around at fellow audience members and you'll see musicians who like you are there checking out who's playing and digging the vibe. You might look at the pictures on the walls or just stare into space and think of someone long departed this mortal coil who once played in the room. You might chat to someone in the break. You'll get ideas. You'll hear a tune or a song you know you want to learn about and get to know properly. I don't get any of that at all online so far. Perhaps I will in the future. Let's hope because needs must for a good while yet until we are all vaccinated.

The language of music last word does not get lost in translation. Going virtual keeps up the flicker of it all. Fact remains jazz needs a bricks and mortar home though again. That universal vibration somehow continues in times like these. SG

Along Dean Street, Soho, photo top: marlbank