Updates – Page 12 – stevelawson.net

December 1, 2005

'sorry mate, your names not on the list'

I was just sending a message to my mailing list about a gig this weekend (Sunday night in Haverhill, near Cambridge, see gigs page for details), and thought I’d big up the mailing list here, as some of you may not be on it, and may not have thought to join it, thinking I post all the news here…

…well I don’t, so if you want to keep up with gig dates, cd news etc. please head over to the mailing list signup page – there you can join the ordinary mailing list, the street team mailing list or the Recycle Collective list. Or sign up for all three – you won’t get duplicates of messages if I happen to send them to more than one list (PHPlist is clever like that).

The street team, in case you were unaware, are a lovely bunch of people who help me to spread the word about what I do – they post on internet message boards, dish out flyers, put up posters and in some cases promote gigs! They’re a vital part of the stevie-plan for world domination, and I appreciate bigly all they do.

So go on, sign up now!

Soundtrack – Prefab Sprout, ‘Steve McQueen’.

December 1, 2005

another important anniversary

yesterday was one year to the day since we got the Fairly Aged Felines. One very fine year of them bringing much joy into the house, and us building up their trust, them learning how to get us to feed them when they want, dealing with a couple of health scares, and feeling grateful every day for their presence in the house.

Happy Anniversary, boys!

December 1, 2005

Two important anniversaries

Today is an important day for two reasons – one, it’s World AIDS day, and two, it’s the 50th anniversary of Rosa Parks’ monumental decision to not move on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Don’t let either of these days go unmarked in your world.

For World AIDS day, do some research into what’s causing the spread of AIDS, the places in the world where its growing fastest, and how hard it is for them to get the medication they need. Petition your elected officials to do more to fund education initiatives in the places where it’s an epidemic. In Botswana, 30% of children born have the HIV virus. 30%!!!! that’s an inconceivable statistic. The stats on the spread of AIDS across Africa are terrifying, and it’s still rolling on, there are still squabbles over drugs companies refusing licenses to produce the drugs cheaply to keep people alive, still squabbles over Catholic leaders telling men infected with HIV/AIDS not to use condoms to protect their wives – look, I’m generally fairly old fashioned, i think abstinence is generally a good idea – very few people are messed up by not having enough sex – but the idea that limiting access to contraception is more important that protecting people from the AIDS virus is ludicrous. That there are religious and cultural stigmas attached to condom useage across huge parts of the world is a travesty, and one that needs to be campaigned against virulently.

What can we do today to help stem the spread of HIV/AIDS? Check out the DATA website for more info, and ways to help.

And on the anniversary of the bus boycott, let’s not forget that Racism still exists, that Europe is becoming an evermore xenophobic continent, that an unofficial economic colour bar still operates in the US. Today, two Liverpool teenagers are going on trial for murdering a young black guy with an ice axe. That such thinking still exists in Britain today is a tragedy. That racism was ever legal in the UK,US, South Africa, etc. is a blot on all of our consciences.

I was watching a documentary the other evening about forgotten stories from the world war. One of the people mentioned was Walter Tull, who was Britian’s second black professional footballer, and first Black army officer. The tragedy of this is that at the time it was still illegal for a Black man to be an officer in the forces. That he triumphed over the racism is testimony to Walter’s strength of character (he was also from a working class background at a time when the officer’s rank was almost exclusively upper class, with a few middle class people), but it’s a disgrace to the forces that we ever had a time when people were excluded on grounds of race…

Heavy stuff, both AIDS/HIV awareness and racism, I know, but if you’re lucky enough to live a life not directly influenced by either, give thanks and use your oh so privileged position to make a change for those not so lucky…

Soundtrack – Peter Gabriel, ‘Up’.

November 30, 2005

today was meant to be looperlative day…

OK – here’s how my first draft blog post looked this morning –

Finally, last night Bob and I (well bob, really – I just pushed the buttons I was told to!) got the Looperlative updated and working. I’m now vaguely conversant with the ways of Windows Hyperterminal, and have typed lots of numbers into it to make the box work. Just don’t ask me what the numbers mean, or ask me to repeat it without Bob talking me through it…

Anyway, it’s working, my MIDI pedal board is hooked up and I’m putting it through its paces. I’m going to go through my tunes and see which of them I can do on here with the software as it stands. Even at this level (with software revisions happening all the time) the feature set is great. Just having stereo in/out and 8 tracks of stereo independent loopage is fantastic, and programming a midi controller to have it do whatever you want it to do is really easy.

sadly, at that point, I think I blew it up… loose end of a power supply cable came into contact with the board… schoolboy error on my part, bit of a major f***-up, which has changed my day’s plans somewhat.

Such a shame as I was just getting to grips with what the box could do. Here’s hoping it’s mainly a software problem (at the moment I can’t tell, as not long after that happened, my rubbish power supply blew up… am off out now to get a new one).

All in all, a dreadful start to the day.

Soundtrack – Martyn Joseph, ‘Deep Blue’.

November 29, 2005

Dudley Philips at the Vortex last night

Yesterday day time was spent finishing off the mastering of Julie McKee’s live album from the Edinburgh Festival. Julie’s a fabulous singer – we’ve been working on some duet ideas between doing the mastering, the latest of which is to do the entire soundtrack to ‘Bugsy Malone’…! the mastering went pretty well, considering the source material. Sadly, the guy who recorded it didn’t send the multitrack sessions, just his own mixdown, so we were limited in terms of what we could do, but some compression, stereo expansion, judicious reverb and the tidying up of the bits where the recording had clipped have made it just fine. We compared it to a few other live recordings, from Donny Hathaway’s live album to my first album, and it stands up well, despite the odd pop ‘n’ crackle. Anyway, isn’t that what live albums are all about? There’s squealing feedback in the middle of Bob Marley’s live version of ‘No Woman No Cry’ and that was released as single!

Anyway, that was the daytime. Yesterday evening involved a trip down to The New Vortex in Stoke Newington to see Dudley Philips launch his album Life Without Trousers. I’ve had a copy of the album for a few weeks, and am loving it, so was excited to go and see the gig. The place was pleasingly full, lots of musicians in – Julie McKee, Orphy Robinson, Filomena Campus, John Parricelli and others, as well as friends of Dudley’s there to celebrate the album coming out.

The gig was marvellous – Nic France, Mark Lockheart and Carl Orr were the band, along with Dudley on 4/6 string electric and upright bass. great tunes, great playing, all in all a fab night out. The Vortex is such a great venue, and a vital part of the london jazz scene. I’ll be back down there next Thursday to see the Works – Patrick Wood’s band who played such a spellbinding set at Greenbelt in the summer. Please come down if you can! While you’re at it, check out the rest of the programme for December on the Vortex website, they’ve got so much great stuff on!

I also picked up a new CD while I was there, which was playing before the gig – it’s a collection of hymns sung in welsh, by LLeuwen Steffan, Huw Warren and Mark Lockheart. A truly beautiful album, on the oh-so-cool Babel Label – Babel are putting out so many great albums of late, go and check out their website and have a browse around. Marvellous stuff!

Soundtrack – Steffan/Warren/Lockheart, ‘God Only Knows’.

November 28, 2005

wise and learned ones, I salute your solo bassness…

Just taken a big-ass pile of CD and t-shirt orders over to the post-office. Seems like solo bass goodies are this year’s must have christmas pressie! I salute your musical taste and sartorial discernment!

For those of you still stuck for what to buy your Gran, head over to my online shop – if she’s already got all my CDs (highly likely), then a Michael Manring or Trip Wamsley CD, coupled with a ‘bass: the final frontier’ skinny tee should keep her happy well into the new year.

Go on, shop til you drop. 😉

Soundtrack – John Martyn, ‘Solid Air’.

November 27, 2005

Improv inspiration

Last night’s gig made for a fantastic companion piece to the night before… it’s a shame nobody else was able to be at both!

The gig was an improv performance, featuring music, dance and video projections. The musicians were me, Rowland Sutherland on flute, Roger Goula on guitar and loopage, and the organiser, singer Filomena Campus.

The evening started with me playing a low droning loop as people were coming in the door, which served to punctuate the beginning of the gig really well, as it stopped just as the first bit of poetry was read (a TS Eliot poem), from which I surreptitiously sampled the line ‘Before the beginning and after the end. All all is always now’ – which I then used to feed into the rest of my opening solo piece. So end of poem, into a 5 or so minute improv of me, and I was then joined by a dancer, Sofie Arstall, who was responding to what I was doing, and to the projections that were happening on the wall behind me (I’m told they were amazing).

Filomena joined us, and her voice was fed into the sample collage of my stuff and the TS Eliot line. All in all, a fab lil’ improv.

following that Roger and Rowland played a duet – both are great players. in these kind of situations Roger and I think quite similarly, in that we juxtapose weird noises with tonal elements – he created a mad loop of heavily processed and mangled guitar scrapes and squeaks, and then added a lovely jazzy chordal thing over the top, while Rowland played some of the most amazing flute work I’ve ever heard, using a whole load of extended techniques I’d not really come across before. Lovely stuffs.

Roger and I were then both employed to loop a load of noise from the audience as part of the next guided improv, which errupted into a (staged) argument amongst a load of audience members (this again was looped and processed), which blended into another improv piece…

I love gigs like this – I always come away with new ideas for places to go, musically. It’s also really unusual to do gigs where I don’t get to connect with the audience by chatting with them as well. It’s got to the point where the chat is as much a part of allowing the audience to know what I’m about as the playing is, so going back to just playing is another interesting challenge, and a good one.

Hopefully we’ll get to do all of this again soon – Roger is going to be at the Recycle Collective in March, and I’m sure Filomena will be involved very soon too – maybe I’ll do a trio gig with her and Rowland at some point…

Soundtrack – Bill Frisell, ‘East/West’.

November 26, 2005

Cambridge gig

Last night’s gig was a lot of fun. It was in St Ives, which until a couple of weeks ago I thought was in Cornwall. There’s one in Cambridgeshire as well, dontchaknow. Anyway, it was a benefit gig organised by The Free Church (URC), who are celebrating 25 years since the building was done up and the church was reborn, and instead of raising money for themselves, they’ve picked 25 local, national and international charities to support. A good thing.

The lineup for the gig was Alias Grace, Rob Jackson and me. Alias Grace is a duet of Peter Chilvers and Sandra O’Neill, playing lovely folky piano/vocal stuff. Rob toured with me on the Grace And Gratitude tour, and is always a treat to listen to. So even if it’d been rubbish gig for me, it would’ve been worth going to see the others play. As it was, it wasn’t a rubbish gig for me at all. The church hall was a lovely space to play in, and the audience seemed wonderfully attentive. I didn’t play quite as well as I did last Sunday in Manchester – not badly, just not quite as sharp, but I did get to play my new ‘Scott Peck’ tune, which will be on the next album. Ran out of time all-too-soon and wasn’t able to play the one request that I’d had (for Highway One, from Catherine Street-Team) – will play it at next Cambridge gig, I promise!

Tonight’s gig will be lots of fun – it’s an improv thing with Filomena Campus, Roger Goula and Rowland Sutherland – all great musicians, and the last time we did it it was magic. Plus there’ll be dancers and video projections… should be v. interesting.

In other news, the TV and radio have been blanketed by the news about George Best’s death, which is undoubtedly a tragic moment for his family, and an important milestone in the history of British football. However, as a dispassionate observer, it’s tough not to feel some anger at him having started drinking again after liver transplant. 70 people on the transplant waiting list died last year before they were able to get their new liver – these are very precious things, and for someone to squander their second chance like that is terrible. The people who served him may also need to do some soul-searching. I guess it’s partly a testimony to the power of addiction, but is it also the stubbornness of Best that he thought he could go there again and not die??? I dunno, I’ll never know. right now I’m very sad for his family and those who loved him, and for those who have lost people on the transplant waiting list – I’m guessing this news isn’t doing much for their pain.

November 23, 2005

the myspace survey…

Lots of people seem to have answered these questions on their myspace page… lots of the questions are rubbish, but here’s mine…

*TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF – The Survey*
Name:	Steve
Birthday:	December
Birthplace:	Wimbledon
Current Location:	southgate
Eye Color:	brown
Hair Color:	brownish… some grey, some henna
Height:	6′ 2″
Right Handed or Left Handed:	left
Your Heritage:	?
The Shoes You Wore Today:	deck shoes
Your Weakness:	vanity searching
Your Fears:	a Tory government
Your Perfect Pizza:	mixed veg
Goal You Would Like To Achieve This Year:	next solo album
Your Most Overused Phrase On an instant messenger:	lol
Thoughts First Waking Up:	post? email?
Your Best Physical Feature:	height
Your Bedtime:	after midnight
Your Most Missed Memory:	going to the beach during school lunch hour
Pepsi or Coke:	neither, ever
MacDonalds or Burger King:	to burn down or put a brick through the window? tough call…
Single or Group Dates:	single
Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea:	neither
Chocolate or Vanilla:	vanilla
Cappuccino or Coffee:	either decaf, but preferably mint-tea
Do you Smoke:	no
Do you Swear:	swear to what?
Do you Sing:	yes
Do you Shower Daily:	no, don’t own a shower
Have you Been in Love:	yes
Do you want to go to College:	I went, it was fab
Do you want to get Married:	yes
Do you belive in yourself:	yes
Do you get Motion Sickness:	not often
Do you think you are Attractive:	define attractive
Are you a Health Freak:	healthy – yes, freaky – clearly not
Do you get along with your Parents:	yes
Do you like Thunderstorms:	yes
Do you play an Instrument:	yes
In the past month have you Drank Alcohol:	no
In the past month have you Smoked:	no
In the past month have you been on Drugs:	no
In the past month have you gone on a Date:	depends on how you define date
In the past month have you gone to a Mall:	no
In the past month have you eaten a box of Oreos:	no
In the past month have you eaten Sushi:	no
In the past month have you been on Stage:	yes
In the past month have you been Dumped:	no
In the past month have you gone Skinny Dipping:	no
In the past month have you Stolen Anything:	no
Ever been Drunk:	yes
Ever been called a Tease:	no
Ever been Beaten up:	yes
Ever Shoplifted:	yes – an onion when I was 7
How do you want to Die:	in my sleep aged 90-something
What do you want to be when you Grow Up:	I’m still working on the growing up part…
What country would you most like to Visit:	somewhere in southern africa.
*In a Boy/Girl..*
Favourite Eye Color:	no preference
Favourite Hair Color:	” “
Short or Long Hair:	” “
Height:	” “
Weight:	” “
Best Clothing Style:	” “
Number of Drugs I have taken:	prescription or illegal?
Number of CDs I own:	too many to count, but thousands
Number of Piercings:	3
Number of Tattoos:	none
Number of things in my Past I Regret:	none

November 23, 2005

this toddler is learning patience

I forgot that beta-testing is all about ironing out hiccups.

rough outline of the day –

power supply arrives, box is working, box isn’t working, talk to bob, get box working, attempt upgrade, upgrade fails, reboot, upgrade half worked, retry upgrade, fails and buggers machine. Was it something I said?

So tomorrow is more techie-geekery in order to get loop-toys working to potential. And it all means that the trouble-shooting process for the end result will be that bit more secure and organised, more bugs will be ironed out, and the whole thing will be more stable.

It’s just that I want it working NOW! So I’m going to sulk of to bed instead.

Soundtrack – The Bears, ‘Car Caught Fire’ and The Psychodots, ‘Terminal Blvd’ – two amazing bands with 3/4 the same members – The Bears is The ‘dots + Adrian Belew. Stunningly great guitar pop in a very british early 80s Elvis Costello/XTC/Joe Jackson sort of way, filtered through american guitar bands like The Rembrandts, Husker Du and with Belew sounding just like Belew on the Bears album. highly highly recommended.