the soundtrack to the day you wish you'd had
arghhh!!!
way too busy – loads of great gigs, shedloads of Cds sold, thousands of miles covered, stadiums sold out, war averted due to solo bass loveliness, much fun had, muchos laughs had, many good people met. all fun – full report at 10
and now the weather
lovely
NAMM over for another year – it was insanely busy, evidenced by my not being able to get to a computer to blog.
oops, just been told I’ve got to get off the computer!! i’ll write more later… suffice to say, it all went well, the two gigs went very well, saw loads of friends, sold a load of CDs, and generally had a great time…
sorry for the delay posting – I’ve not had that much computer access while I’ve been here.
anyway, the flight was fine, if a little long. and I arrived with all my gear intact (it’s always a little hairy flying with two Echoplexes and my Lexicon MPX-G2 as well as having my bass on the plane as hand luggage!) – anyway, I arrived, and Dan (tour promoter) picked me up at the airport, and took me back here, to where we’re staying. The weather is lovely (sorry for rubbing it in) – it’s hot even by southern californian standards. I could quite easily go outside and get sunburnt in a hour or so…
so what have we done so far? well, we picked up the amp stuff that I need for the tour from Ashdown, I had lunch with my chum Tanya, who lives here but is from Essex and used to write for Bassist. We went to the Baked Potato last night (we being Dan, me and Gene – a veteran chum of all my trips to the States – I stayed wtih Gene and his wife Linda for my first three or four visits to the states, and they’ve become really good friends over the years…)
Today Dan was off doing his gear rep bit, while Gene and I went to SWR to pick up some gear for Dan for the Bass Bash that is happening on Friday night (see gigs page for details), and then went shopping for CDs (now there’s a rare one for me…)
so haven’t done any gigs yet, but have just been getting aclimatised – I fell asleep on Monday evening at 5pm, and didn’t wake til 5am the next day – the worst case of jetlag I’ve ever had coming out here.
needless to say, I’m missing the small person and aged feline loads, but such is the peril of being a touring musician I guess – there has to be a down side somewhere, I ‘spose, and that’s it for me. It’d be great if I could bring them both with me… :o)
Soundtrack – I bought a few Cds with me – Jonatha Brooke ‘Steady Pull’, Joni Mitchell, ‘Travelogue’, Prefab Sprout, ‘Jordan’ and ‘From Langley Park To Memphis’, Unamerican ‘Unamerican’, Kelly Joe Phelps, ‘Sky Like A Broken Clock’, Phil Keaggy ‘Acoustic Sketches’, David Sylvian ‘Secrets Of The Beehive’ Gary Peacock and Ralph Towner ‘A Closer View’… right now I’m listening to one of the CDs I just bought – ‘Stanley Climbfall’ by Lifehouse.
Right, all packed, checked, double checked etc.
The Small Person just cut my hair, which was getting a little unruly. It looks rather nice at the moment, we’ll see what it’s like in the morning when it has ‘settled down’… :o)
Four weeks seems like an awfully long time to be away. I’m kind of looking forward to it, and kind of wishing it was slightly shorter. The opportunity is great, but I will be missing the small person and aged feline a lot…
Anyway, time for bed – I’ve got to leave the house at 7 tomorrow and drag my HUGELY heavy suitcase to Heathrow – you wouldn’t believe how heavy it is! Customs are going to be thinking I’ve got a stow-away!
anyway, I’ll write more from the opposite side of the atlantic… :o)
Yippee – tax bill paid, tax return sent off, which for you lot means no more fist-chewingly dull stuff about my tax return! :o) Now I can lull you to sleep with Bonsai talk instead… although, as I’m off on tour tomorrow, there should be plenty to talk about for the next four weeks!
Yesterday was another big teaching day – exhausting but rewarding.
Today will involve teaching from 12-2, then driving my CDs over to Chelmsford to be shipped off to LA on Monday morning. Then I’ll be packing, repacking, remembering things I’ve forgotten and repacking again, tidying up here to try and leave the house in a reasonable state for the rest of the household to inhabit for the next four weeks (not really fair to bugger off and leave the poor aged feline with all the cleaning duties – his lack of opposable thumbs makes filing a nightmare…)
I’ll be moving my ickle Bonsai tree out of the office so it’s not ignored in the plant watering ritual of the next few weeks. I’ve been unsubscribing from the myriad mailing lists and discussion lists that I’m on so as to reduce the volume of email traffic while I’m away (just the 50 bits of spam and viruses to deal with each day then…) – does anyone else get as many viruses sent to them as me? Is this intentional and malicious, or just that I’m on so many people’s email lists that whenever someone with my address gets got I get sent a copy? Norton picks them up OK, and the ones that get into my inbox without being deleted are easily recogniseable (I just delete most things with attachments unless I’m expecting them – so warn me first if you’re trying to send anything, and don’t send me unsolicited MP3s!! Nothing is more likely to put you on my email s**t-list than sending me a 10 meg file with no warning… grrrrr (evil harv!)
anyway, better get started on the tidy, before the teaching, before the CD delivering, before the packing, before the sleeping before the journey to LA, before the tour!
Soundtrack – yesterday I got ‘Jordan – The Comeback’ by Prefab Sprout. I’m increasingly convinced that Paddy McAlloon is one of the all time great British songwriters – I don’t think as yet I’ve heard a duff song by him. Right now, I’m listening to Calamateur again – this is so so beautiful and haunting, you really have to get it – the juxtaposition of FSU beats, ambient sounds, acoustic guitar and loads of samples of speech/interviews/news etc. all relating to cars, car accidents, traffic police. It’s awesome – Andrew – make sure you send a copy into The Late Junction on Radio 3, they’ll LOVE this!
BTW, I’ve just seen that the BBC Radio 3 Website has all the previous week’s Late Junction programs archived for listening on demand – GO AND LISTEN, it’s brilliant – a fascinating mix of world music, new music, eclectic pop and prog, bits of jazz, ancient music – all kinds of stuff, and now you can listen any time of the day! There really is no excuse…
Another very busy teaching day today, which was very good.
What wasn’t so good was that my CDs didn’t end up on the Ashdown pallette going to LA, so I’ve got to sort out alternative shipping for them. Fortunately, Ashdown are helping me out with that, via DHL, but with all the teaching I’ve got booked in tomorrow, last minute shopping, packing, picking up my car from the garage where it’s just had it’s MOT done and snipping my new bonsai tree (photos soon), I’m gonna be rushed off my feet!
And what’s more, I need to get some practice in, so as not to look a fool in LA…
Looks like Gibson may be able to lend me a couple of Echoplexes while I’m there, which would be very nice, not having to fly with mine. I did buy a bigger suitcase anyway yesterday… I’m there for four weeks, after all!
Anyway, time for bed now.
Soundtrack – ‘autocity ep’ by Calamateur – this is BRILLIANT!! It’s a mini CD, for a fiver, by one half of Scottish alt-noise-ambient-geniuses Old Solar. Lots of weird speech samples, and fantastic atmospherics. You have to check this out. go to www.calamateur.co.uk to find out more, and buy the CD; it’s a very limited edition, and will become a collectors item very soon. Lots of other good stuff on the site (no MP3s yet though, so you’ll just have to take my word for it and order it. And while you’re there, look out for the Old Solar album, cos that’s magic as well – it’s called ‘Many Visitors Have Been Gored By Buffalo’)
Bleedin’ heck, it’s COLD!!!!! Freezin’, even!!
Our central heating still isn’t fixed, so we’ve got the electric heaters and the gas fire on full, trying to defrost our frozen tootsies… and my new slippers are helping too! See, I’m 30 now, so slippers are de riguer…
It’s ages since I last blogged, what have I been up to? Well lots of teaching – this week is, in fact, my busiest ever private teaching week (as in, I’ve done more teaching than this, but only when private stuff was combined with college teaching) – it all comes in very handy for going to the US…
Saturday evening was fun – first off went to ‘Up’ – a mellow and ambient alternative worship thingie in Thame, Oxfordshire – lots of candles, guided meditation things, mellow music, strange sensory things to ponder. All very chilled out, and a fine way to start the new year. Went straight from there to St Luke’s, where I was on duty overnight at the Homeless night shelter we have there for three months a year… all very uneventful, though it was great getting to talk to Becky, who was on duty with me, who I’d seen at church but not really had much of a chance to chat to.
Got one hour’s sleep overnight, so not surprisingly, I went straight to bed when I got home at 7am…
Watched a very interesting TV program last night called ‘without prejudice’ – basically a game show with no game, where instead of answering inane questions to win the prize, a panel of ‘normal’ people get to choose who they want to have the prize money (50 grand) based on a range of information, and their first impressions… the bizarre thing was that I found myself thinking that non of the people deserved the money… which is odd when contrasted with quiz shows, where apparently guessing the catch-phrase, keeping ‘out of the black and into the red’ or not being the weakest link are perfectly valid ways for people to receive silly amounts of money. Odd one, but worth watching.
Today I finally got round to buying a Bonsai tree – something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I bought a part-grown one, and if this works out, I may have a go at growing some from seed. What I do need though, is a name for my tree! so I need suggestions, and the winning suggestion will receive a CDR of ‘Beauty and The Beast’ and the new version of Highway 1 that are in MP3 form on my site – proper CD quality versions of them! So, name that bonzai – email me with your suggestions, please! I’ll try to post a picture of it as soon as I can, to help inspire you…
Soundtrack – just now been listening to Prefab Sprout, ‘From Langley Park To Memphis’, which is great and of curio value as my sister used to live in Langley Park… :o) Also been listening to Thelonius Monk, ‘Monk’s Greatest Hits’, which is fantastic – the writing and his melodic phrasing are out of the world; Duke Ellington and Ray Brown, ‘This One’s For Blanton’, Metheny/Haden, ‘Beyond The Missouri Sky’, Anita Baker, ‘Rapture’.
Dadaaaaaaaaa – it’s only Jan 2nd, and I’m already well stuck into my resolutions. Well, one of them anyway… the tax one, mainly out of desparation, I guess, but still, I’m well into it (would be further if it wasn’t for Excel deciding to crash my computer earlier. seems ok now though…)
clevermecleverme
was distracted from my graft for about 20 minutes just now by the chat room at thedudepit.com but managed to claw it back, and am now back into work… well, not right now, I’m writing this, but you get the idea.
On an altogether more outward looking note, the world must be a damned scary place for kids these days – I’ve been listening to Radio London today, and we’ve got the story of the nutter in Camden who hacked up a couple of women and dumped the body parts in dustbins, the mad gunman in Hackney who’s holding someone hostage (been going on for more than a week), and a couple of girls shot dead in Birmingham at a party last night! What’s going on? shootings?? Blimey, it’s all gone a bit wrong, somewhere along the way…
The track called ‘Regretting The Rainbow’ on ‘Not Dancing For Chicken’ was so called when I was thinking about the story of Noah, in the bible, and how at the end of the story God gives man (and woman) kind a sign that he won’t flood the world again, and that’s the rainbow… And I wonder if God thinks ‘Oh bollocks, wish I hadn’t done that, I’d get rid of ’em all again, and start a new, once more, third time lucky…’ but there doesn’t seem to be a divine plan B. This is it, we make the best of it, do what we can. In the worlds of Raskolnikov from ‘Crime and Punishment’, we ‘contribute out stone to the building up of universal happiness’. But then, he was a murdering nutter as well, so what would he know.
Anyway, the news is full of murders, and it must be a bit frightening for little people, growing up with all that kicking off. Statistically, we’re told it’s no worse now than it was years ago, just that media has got quicker and more salacious in reporting it. Doesn’t make it any easier for the 9 year old kid who thinks they are next…
what was the point of all that? nothing – that’s the joy of a blog, no editor saying ‘but Steve, that’s totally inconclusive, please rewrite your last paragraph’… :o)
Soundtrack – just the radio.
(sounds like a whisper)
It’s that time of year again, when we realise that we kept very few of our resolutions from last year (though I did set myself one goal of doing 30 solo gigs, and I did over 60, so that was good… :o)
anyway for this year, here’s a few muddled up ideas for what I’m planning/aiming for/wishing for/etc.
So there you go – that’s my year mapped out… a bit.
what are yours?
The Small Person and I had a lovely quiet new year – watched ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ yesterday, and ‘Monsters Inc’ today – both highly recommended, fine fine films. Went for a drive up to Crews Hill today – lots of garden centres there – but the whole world was aparently under about three feet of water – blocked roads ‘n’ everything…
Soundtrack – I’ve spent a lot of time these last couple of days listening to a couple of improv sessions that I did with keyboardist Patrick Wood during the first half of 2002 – one extract from that is now up on the site, as the new version of Highway 1, though I’m not sure it was even called Highway 1 back then… It’s an interesting comparison to listen to it alongside the version on ‘Not Dancing For Chicken’ (which of course, you have already?), and the live version from the Bartok gig that’s also on the MP3 page. Go on, you know you want to…
Other than that, I’ve been listening to ‘Free’ by Peter Chilvers, which is, as it says on the tin a ‘free’ album – you burn a copy, and your only commitment is to make sure you burn two more copies and pass it on! It’s a fascinating experiment in the pure power of exposure – loads of people will have the CD, and hopefully lots of them will go and buy other CDs by Peter (his first solo album ‘He Wrote This’ is excellent, and available from burningshed.com) – there’s been a lot of discussion of late on the whole merits of ‘free’ music, whether it be CDR copying or MP3 downloading. Singer/Songwriter Janis Ian wrote this article for Performing Songwriter magazine last year, and it’s brilliant – she’s my new hero! Read the article and her follow up – both very good. Then, download the MP3s, and if you like what she’s doing, buy the CDs, and prove it works…
Anyway, what else have I been listening to? oh, Anita Baker ‘Rapture’ – often when I get something out to play to a student during a lesson, it stays in the play for a few days, and this did.
Happy flippin’ new year!
I’ll post more stuff about the coming year tomorrow, but just to say that I hope it’s a peaceful one for the planet, and a blessed one for y’all – thanks for reading this in 2002, and for being patient when I get boring… hopefully the glimpses of interesting stuff that crop up here every month or so make it worthwhile… :o)
Anyway – big love from me to you for 2003!
God Bless
xx