Author: Steve

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Is the world really in meltdown??

I dunno, it seems like just about everything has gone to shit of late… Here in the UK, the Police force has been exposed as full of racist scum, the postal service is full of credit card fraudsters, the houses of parliment is populated by the most extreme bunch of uber-losers this side of the white house, bnp euro-candidates are working as school teachers, social services departments fail to communicate and little kids get shot as a result, illegal music downloads are on the increase, 50% of all video file sharing online is now porn, murders in London are up 8%… is the world falling apart? has it always been this messed up, we’re just better informed now? Have I been taken in by the scare-mongering losers at the daily mail?

I mean, very little of this affects ‘me’ on a daily basis – how much of it is happening, how much is blown out of proportion to try and create a story to sell papers in order to get the advertising revenue in? We know most of the reporting on asylum/immigation has been utter bollocks of late (the BBC ran a great story the other day about the amount of people moving in the opposite direction into the new countries joining the EU – not something you’re likely to read about in the mail…), so how can we believe the rest of it. The Channel four doc last night about the postal service was pretty damning – very little staff vetting, crims working on the shop-floor, people with no training delivering letters to places they’ve never been, and up to a million letters a week going missing. Is this yet another example of just how screwed up the selling off of the royal mail has been, or has it always been this bad?

But anyway, at least I’ve got my new webcam to play with – check this out –

a very cool toy – I’ve already taken 200 pictures with it… er, maybe this narcisism is becoming slightly less benign and borderline obsessional… I’m sure it’ll wear off….

Soundtrack – in preparation for recording my new album, I’ve been listening through lots of my old unreleased stuff, as well as some things I recorded yesterday… more recording to happen this afternoon…

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200th blog post!!

So this is my 200th blog post! (in this version – there were a few more in the archive, but we’re not counting those…)

So to celebrate that, and the fact that I’ve just bought a web-cam, here’s a me-montage. What finer way to celebrate my excersise in benign narcisism, than by looking at me!

happy birthday my blog!

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Blessed are the rich…

So Dame Shirley Porter has agreed to pay back 12m of the 40-something million she embezzled from Westminster city council in the homes for votes scandal of the 1980s….

…hang on, AGREED TO??? – she’s guilty of a crime, but she’s bargaining with the courts over how much she should have to pay back?

For those of you either too young or too far away to remember the story, She was iinvolved in a scam that involved selling off council houses in Westminster to people who agreed to vote Tory, thus losing the local council millions and millions in revenue. She’s a multi-millionairess, part of the Tesco dynasty, and is, by all appearances, unrepentant immoral scum. And now she appears to be in negotiations to decide what would be a fair amount to pay back. ‘Obviously she can’t be expected to pay back more than she’s worth’ says some council flunky. Er, why the hell not??? She’s commited a crime, she’s cost a local council millions that then has to be recouped through local taxes etc. (great for a tory, supposedly in favour of lower taxation…), and then fled the country (I gather she now lives in the British Virgin Islands [EDIT – according to the fount of all evil knowledge that is evil harv, she actually lives in Israel…]).

Look, she should be a prison. She’s a criminal. She’s got off lightly because she’s rich, and that’s wrong. Plain and simple. If she’d mugged someone and stolen their handbag to feed her kids she’d be in prison, but mugging and entire London Borough and costing them millions is fine, just pay back what you feel like, love, and we’ll forget about the rest.

So much for there not being a double standard. This case, plus the case of that turd-on-legs Jeffrey Archer being allowed to remain a Lord, despite being convicted of PURJORY AND PERVERTING THE COURSE OF JUSTICE (can their be a much worse crime for someone involved in the nation’s legal process to be found guilty of???), demonstrates that the legal and governmental system really does look differently on rich people who commit crimes from poor people.

Bollocks to the lot of ’em.

Soundtrack – not much of late, though I did just buy the new Sarah McLachlan album, and have listened to the first couple of tracks from that, which sounds very good.

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St George's Day…

Well, it’s St George’s day, patron saint of England. A day to celebrate all things english… seems fitting that St George himself was actually a Palestinian. If he tried to get in today, he’d be put in a camp for asylum seekers. As it was, he was brought here after the crusades, that fine act of British slaughter with some weird moral angle… or is that the current occupation of Iraq, I always get those mixed up? Bugger me, it’s both…

Anyway, things I like about england –

walking round london in summer, knowing that rain will only last about 15 minutes, the language, indian restaurants, the BBC (yay!), 240v power and sensibly shaped plugs, the NHS royal mail and the education system (or what’s left all all three), our collective history of dissent, comedy post-python, the scarcity of guns, the lack of a constitution, the university system, our literary tradition, the newcastle metro, the lake district, regional accents, the high percentage of vegetarians here, the Church of England (and our groovy archbishop), car boot sales, Lincoln Cathedral, the British museum, natural history museum, the tate, tate modern, national gallery, The New Statesman, Ethical Consumer, The Guardian, Mulitculturalism (no idea what Trevor Philips was on about the other day), the mersey sound poets, greenbelt, Wimbledon fortnight, Cornwall, The Stables in Milton Keynes, Hampstead Heath, Wimbledon Common, The Devils Punchbowl country park, village pubs, billy bragg, protest marches, traidcraft, cafe direct, Show Of Hands, North Norfolk coast, Lindisfarne, The Otter Trust, and loads of other stuff. to be updated…

I shan’t list what I don’t like about england – save that for another day.

So what’s been going on? Been trying to make ‘And Nothing But The Bass’ available for download via my shop, which seems to have worked, except that I can’t seem to bypass the ‘postage’ costs function… I’m sure people would feel pretty hacked off at having to pay

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3 gigs in three nights

that’s going to gigs, not playing them this time.

Monday night was Carleen Anderson at the jazz cafe. I’ve see her there before now, and it’s always an amazing gig. Her band is wonderful – Ben Castle on Sax, Andy Hamill on bass, Winston Clifford on Drums, Mark Edwards on keys, Mark someone on guitar (didn’t catch his surname, but he was very very good), and a backing vocalist I think was called Natasha. Anyway, a great gig – Carleen’s voice is amazing, her songwriting is really strong, the grooves were exceedingly funky, and a fine time was had by all.

Tuesday night involved going to hear Duke Special at Sound Acoustic in Leicester Square, which is a lot better than the Sound venue upstairs in the same building, which is horrible. Duke Special, AKA Pete Wilson, is brilliant – dread-locked piano-playing singer-songwriter with a stellar voice, beguiling stage presence, and some fantastic songs. His EP ‘Lucky Me’ is brilliant, and he was one of my top three favourite acts from Greenbelt last year. He’s on again at The Barfly in Camden tonight, but I’m teaching til 9, so don’t think i’ll be able to make it. I’ll have a mooch around online and see if I can find a stage-time…

Then last night (wednesday), I spent a very pleasant evening listening to the JazzBerries in the Crypt at St-Martins-In-The-Fields, in Trafalgar Square. It was a rather lovely set of vocal standards, well played and sung. Good stuff.

I love wandering round London on balmy evenings – the centre of london is such a gorgeous historic place, brimming with culture and marvellousness. Theatres, restaurants, street musicians, historic buildings and monuments, groovy cafes and swanky celeb bars. Add to that the majesty of the museums, and you’ve got one amazing city. OK, so we’ve got one of the worst recycling records in Europe, the public transport infrastructure has gone to shit, the hospitals are being sold off to people who don’t want to do operations that aren’t ‘cost effective’, the government are happy to ignore democracy in action, gun crime is rampant… etc. etc. but it does have its upside too… :o) I tend to walk around with a big grin on my face at this time of year.

Over the last couple of days I’ve been listening through all the tracks that I recorded for ‘Not Dancing For Chicken’ that didn’t get used, and some of it’s really good! I obviously did a really strong stylistic selection job on what went on and what got left off, and there’s tonnes of stuff here I really like. So it might be time for a downloadable extra and live tracks album… I’ll get round to that ASAP!

– right now, more of the out-takes. Before that, Carl Young, ‘A Few Sides Of Myself’; Ben Castle, ‘Blah Street’ (which is out next Monday, and is fantastic); St Germain, ‘Tourist’; David Sylvian and Holgar Czukay, ‘Flux and Mutability’.

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ooh, aren't we the indie-friendly corporate rock star!

So Korn decided to do a video about how screwed up the record industry is, about how usurous record deals are, the evils of the FCC etc. etc.

Korn? er, yes – signed to Epic (a Sony subsidiary), spending record company money like they’re going for a world record. STILL signed to a major label

this article at RollingStone.com contains the line “For a platinum band that allegedly spent $4 million on its 2002 album Untouchables, fighting its label and MTV may seem hypocritical.” – MAY seem hypocritical??????? Dude, if they had an ounce of integrity they’d jack it in, go indie, release their own records, deal with the fallout of dropping out of the label and use it as a chance to highlight the evilles of the industry.

But no, they just do the faux-rebellious thing, and the tragedy is that in the US it’ll be lapped up. Lots of losers will be outraged (ex-ref everything from Britney and Maddy kissing, to Janet Jackson’s boob-thang, to Prince writing SLAVE on his face…) – the industry thrives on this kind of crass controversy. The only way to fight it is opt out. You try and fight it from within, you just make more money for The Man. If you bail out, they lose. Prince did the right thing – cut loose, made records for himself, but recently blew it by signing to Sony!! – the purple one is clearly more of a maroon these days…

Where were ‘the rebels’ when Pearl Jam attempted to subvert TicketMaster’s hold on the live scene? Where are the rebels boycotting Clear-Channel events? Nowhere – they just make crass protest vids, that make them and their record companies even more money.

Bollocks to Korn. I wouldn’t buy their records anyway, but if I was going to, I’d have boycotted them.

(thanks to The Captain for the link)

Soundtrack – nothing right now, but I’m about to put on the Jughead album – Greg and Matt Bisonette with Ty Tabor – amazing Foo Fighters/Lit/Rembrants-esque stuff. Marvellous.

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More magic from the BBC – the 2004 Reith Lectures

The Reith Lectures are now one of the high points of the BBC’s broadcasting each year – the breadth of subject matter and emmenence of the speaker each year is pretty much beyond challenge.

This year’s lecturer is Nigerian thinker/poet/playwright, Wole Soyinka, and can be read and listened to online here – his theme is ‘A Climate Of Fear’, drawing on his experiences in Nigeria though the civil war and the traumatic political climate across Africa in the last 50 years.

Marvellous, challenging and inspiring stuff.

Soundtrack – Juliet Turner, ‘Season Of The Hurricane’ – hugely gifted Irish singer/songwriter. All three of her CDs are marvellous.

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Photography is the new Rock 'n' Roll

Well, not really, but we did go to two stunning photography exhibitions today.

We’d only planned to go to one, as a birthday treat for the small person, but when we got to the Natural History Museum, there was a second free exhibition displayed outside.

The free exhibition was ‘earth from the air‘ – an exhibition of aerial photography by Yann Arthus Bertrand. His work focuses on the twin poles of the majesty of the natural world and the influence of mankind upon it. Lots of pictures of bizarre natural phenomena and of man’s impact on everything. Seeing it on Good Friday, it acted as a kind of devotional tool – amazing to see the wonder of creation, and the fallen-ness of the human race in its abject inability to fulfil the mandate to protect the planet.

For there we moved onto the Wildlife Photographer Of The Year exhibition – clearly these people get to glimpse through God’s letter-box, and then come back and show us their holiday snaps. Some of the most startling images I’ve ever seen, beautiful, moving, illuminating, awe-inspiring. It’s only on for another week, so if you can get to it, do. After that, it’s on tour, so check it out!

London’s museums are one of the things that give me hope for the city. Some things about living here are so f***ed up, it’s frightening. Other times, there are glimpses of magic. The museums are some of those magical places – free to get in, brimming with information and inspiration about the world. They went through a few years of charging to get in, but fortunately went back to being free. When I was a lil’ kid and we had no money, the museums was one of our favourite days out – Sundays were really really cheap on the underground, and the museums were free to get in. I was captivated by the blue whale in the Natural History Museum, and developed a fascination with whales and dolphins as a result. The British Museum is another fave london haunt.

So the funding for them now comes from the shops, restaurants and from donations, so I always make a point of buying food and books when there – today we had lunch there, and bought the catalogues to both the exhibitions. If you go, and can afford it, do support the museums – helps to keep it free for the people who can’t afford it.

Soundtrack – Rebecca Holweg, ‘June Babies’ – went to see Rebbeca play yesterday in the foyer at the Royal Festival Hall – her hubby is bassist Andy Hamill, whose solo CD is fanastic too. Rebecca’s gig was great, as is the CD. Highly recommended jazzy singer/songwriter.

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