Credit where it's due…

Tonight was the Doug Wimbish gig at the Bass Centre – Doug always puts on a great show, and tonight was no different. He was in town for the launch of the new Trace Elliot range – Trace, now owned by Peavey (after having been run into the ground by Gibson), have redesigned and relaunched their stuff, which was sounding mighty fine.

Anyway, the amazing thing about tonight was realising how much I’d nicked from Doug the first time I saw him give a clinic, back in the mid-90s. That was at the old Bass Centre in Wapping, and he and Keith LeBlanc played to a packed room. Hearing him again today, using loads of tricks and techniques that are now a firm part of my musical arsenal, reminded me just how pivotal that first clinic was in me getting my sound together.

Which is why the Bass Centre putting on these clinics is such a fantastic addition to bass life in London – if you’re a bassist in London and you’re not yet going to these, YOU’RE MISSING OUT! These are free events, put on by the shop, where we get to see up close what these amazing musicians do, and then ask them questions about it. It doesn’t get much better than that, and there are few good reasons for not being there. That the building isn’t rammed to the ceiling with music students amazes me.

anyway, it was a good crowd, Doug played his arse off, and everyone went away happy.

Some thoughts about Eric

I first heard of Eric when he was teaching at the Musicians Institute, when it was above the Bass Centre in Wapping. I’d seen his name on their literature, and had various people come up to me to tell me about this amazing guitarist they’d heard. Not long after that (late 90s, I guess?) I heard him play at a trade show, doing his arrangement of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ (bassline, chords, melody ‘n’ everything on acoustic guitar, and managing to not make it sound like a gimmick) – it was obvious from that that he was an amazing musician, but trade shows back then for me were a blur of running from one Bassist mag event to another, demoing gear (like Eric) or doing on-stage interviews with the various celeb bassists that had been booked (without any thought for what they might do when they got there).

It was quite a few years before I got to meet Eric properly – he turned up at a gig of mine in California, with our mutual friend Thomas Leeb – I’d met Thomas through Ashdown and he’d been telling me loads about Eric as well. We chatted briefly at the gig. We met up again a couple of months later at another music trade show in London, where Eric was feeling pretty rough, but we spent more time talking. We pretty much instantly hit it off, as we were in a similar place – solo players who taught and wrote for magazines. About a week later I found out that Eric had be diagnosed with Cancer for the first time. No wonder he was feeling rough at the show.

Very soon after that, Muriel Anderson was coming over for some gigs, and she knew Eric from booking him for her All-star guitar night at NAMM, so the two of us went up to see him. The conversation at Eric’s house that day was the one that showed me what a strong character he was – he talked with great honesty about his hopes and fears following the diagnosis, his concern for his family (his partner, Candy, was pregnant with their second child when the first diagnosis came through) and the way it had made him focus on what was important in life.

We swapped CDs, and it was clear from listening to his latest album, With These Hands, that that depth of thought was already there when making the record. It’s a beautiful record, moving in parts, funny in others – the guitar playing is outstanding, but the music and Eric soul shine through. (later on he told me that he had me in mind for one of the tracks on the record – Deep Deep Down – but producer Martin Taylor wanted to keep it all solo. Listening to the end result, I agree with Martin, though it will be a source of eternal regret that Eric and I never recorded together).

After that we kept in touch via email, text and phone calls as his treatment progressed, through the hell of radiotherapy to the joyous news of his first ‘all clear’. After that came plans for a tour together, recordings, all the usual muso stuff – none of it felt urgent, Eric was well again, and we had plenty of time for that.

Met up again at the birmingham music show in November – Eric was not long out of radiotherapy but was playing so well (the version of Bushwhacker – an anti-GWB track – was incredible). After the gig we were chatting and mucking around while Eric signed things, and one guy came up and said ‘what would you say if I asked you to sign this?’ to which Eric replied in his dry caustic way ‘I’d tell you to fuck off’. The reply from the guy (clearly phased by this) was ‘I’ve been praying for you’ – Eric then recognised the guy, who he’d met before, and was mortally embarassed that he’d offended the guy, even in a joke. He’d commented before about how moving it had been for him when people who knew he was ill came to pray for him after gigs. Eric was a Buddhist, and a seeker after truth – that was another connection we had, music with a spiritual meaning.

He came to see me play in Colchester with Michael Manring a couple of weeks after the Music Show. I was so pleased to be able to tell the crowd they should buy his CDs, to put him in touch with the guys running CAMM – a local college where he could have started teaching again (he’d been head of guitar at the ACM in Guildford, but living in Cambridgeshire, the drive was beyond him now), to introduce him to the venue for a possible gig.

NAMM in Anaheim this last January was the last time I saw Eric, and it’s another huge regret of mine that I didn’t spend enough time with him there. I spent AGES dragging everyone I knew to come and see him play – he was on a punishing demo schedule for Avalon guitars, playing on the hour every hour, and I must’ve watched him play 20 times over the weekend, but we spent nowhere near enough time talking. I introduced him to friends, made everyone I knew stop by the stand to hear him. He was playing well, though as usual at tradeshows, he was amplified and cranking the top end just to cut through the hubbub of the hall.

When I heard that Eric’s cancer was back, and was inoperable, I couldn’t believe it – Eric, strong, spiritual, clean-living, had beaten it. Surely that was it? The conversation where he told me about it, where it had spread to, what the docs had said was one of the saddest phone conversations I’ve ever had. But he was still so positive. Scared, worried for his family, desperate to keep playing and meet his gig commitments.

Our jam never happened, nor the gigs, nor the recording. I’ll forever be thinking what it would’ve sounded like. We had very similar ideas about the purpose of music, about why we did what we did.

All in, I didn’t spend that much time with Eric. Nowhere near enough. His impact on me was huge, due to his beautiful music and his inner strength when facing his illness. He was an inspiration, and I was really pleased to be able to play my tune for him each night at the Edinburgh festival, pointing people to his website and recommending his music. It made me even more pleased that it was most people’s favourite tune on the gig. He never got to hear it.

I’ll miss him, I’ll miss the possibility of him and I’ll regret that we didn’t know eachother better. He left behind three CDs and a live DVD (I need to get the DVD) – the first two CDs are really good, but it’s With These Hands that is his masterpiece. It’s beautiful. Deep Deep Down is one of the most beautiful instrumentals I’ve ever heard. That he thought of having me play on it is one of the biggest compliments I’ve ever been paid as a musician.

Go and buy his CDs. Please. You’ll get some amazing music, his family will get the money. I can’t imagine what his family are going through now. My thoughts are with them – no matter how much the sense of loss that one has for a friend and musical inspiration, it’s not even close to the pain of losing a husband/dad/brother/son.

Rest in Peace, Eric. Thanks for the inspiration.

Soundtrack – Eric Roche, ‘Spin’.

TAGS –

Two gigs this week (watched) and two days at LGS.

LGS being the London Guitar Show. I was there Friday to meet up with the nice peoples at Bass Guitar Magazine to chat about me writing a column for them, which I now need to sketch out a plan for, and then get writing. Caught up with a few other friends. Went back Saturday to see more friends, and was hoping to check out the Celinder basses which are amazing (Lowell brought one to my workshop in Cupertino , California back in January, and I wanted to see more), but the noise was so loud it was pointless.

However through the din I did get to listen to Laurence Cottle, jamming with guitarist Paul Stacey, and despite the noise and Paul having to play through a bass amp, they made a glorious noise. Fab musicians. Caught up with more friends. It wasn’t a bad show for bass stuff – the Bass Centre had a stand with all manner of bargains on it, EBS, GB Guitars, MarkBass, Celinder, the re-born Trace Elliot, Ashdown, Peavey and a few others were there with plenty of bass toys. It’d be unfair to compare it to NAMM as a) it’s open to the public, and all about selling stuff not launching new products and getting dealers and b) it’s in England.

The two gigs were Nitin Sawhney on Wednesday, and The Bays on Friday.

Nitin’s gig was a bit of a disappointment – the tunes he did with the Asian singers, Nina Bhardwaj and some guy whose name I can’t find online, were amazing. Great vocalists. The other stuff came over like a load of Urban Species mid 90s mellow hip-hop grooves with some OK tunes. Nothing special. Maybe it’s just that I had high expectations. It was enjoyable, just not the mind blowing experience I’d expected. Still, Orphy Robinson came with me, and an evening out with Orphy was enough to make it all worthwhile (and I didn’t pay for the ticket – ’twas a present from Dweez, who couldn’t go due to work commitments – thanks John!)

The other gig.. actually, there were two other gigs, as I went to see Roger Beaujolais play with his sextet in the Foyer of the Festival Hall before going to see The Bays in the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Roger’s band were very fine – London really does have some fantastic jazz players!

The idea behind The Bays is that they play completely improvised club-tastic dance grooves. The feel can change from night to night – sometimes its more house-y, sometimes more Drum ‘n’ Bass-ish. Friday night sounded like Gong remixed by Daft Punk. Top notch. The addition of a third keyboard player and a guy playing synth stuff on guitar was fine, but hardly necessary, as they make enough noise as a quartet. Still, the gig was fab, and I’d recommend the Bays to anyone who can cope with the volume (it was loud!).

SoundtrackEric Roche, ‘With These Hands’ (Eric’s had to cancel a few gigs again recently due to being ill, so if you’ve been playing to buy this fantastic record, now would probably be a good time! Head over to Eric’s site to have a listen – he’s one of the finest solo acoustic guitarists I’ve heard, one of the nicest people I know, and an indie artist that you really ought to support by buying his marvellous CDs!)

Tour blog Pt II

So Thursday – started out with a seminar/workshop/clinic/masterclass (I really out to work out different definitions for each of these so I know what it is we do) at the British Academy Of New Music – run by Access To Music. The National Events Co-Ordinator for ATM is Jono Heale – a fantastically resourceful guy, and a bassist, who has all manner of wonderful ideas for getting interesting bass playing out there to the public, and ideas on interesting bass playing out there to bassists.

The seminar/workshop thingie went really well – at the beginning, for whatever reason, no-one spoke at all. Just sat there, which was slightly un-nerving. But as the students loosened up and started asking questions, it was great. Some really good questions coming up.

So we set off from the school in Bromley-By-Bow and headed over to Petersfield for my fifth (fifth!) visit to Traders this year, and second one with Michael. This was another gig organised by Stiff Promotions – Iain Martin, who runs Stiff is one of those people who if there’s any justice in the world, will be the next Harvey Goldsmith. He books great music, looks after artists, does great promo, loves what he does and has developed a bit of a reputation in Hampshire for only booking quality stuff. Exactly what a promoter should be like. If you’re in that area, you should get on his mailing list, and support the gigs – he promotes shows in Southampton, Petersfield, Portsmouth, Brighton, Winchester – all over that bit of the South of England. support the shows, take your friends, and help it grow!

Anyway, the gig went really well as always at Traders, though there were a couple of flies in the ointment – first was that they’ve installed a pole-dancing pole on the stage at the venue… now, even putting moral and feminist considerations aside (which we didn’t), it made it impossible to play on the stage, and we set up in front of it. Add to that just the fact that it’s a pole-dancing pole, not some root support, and it becomes a real problem in what is otherwise a great venue. I really hope that at the very least make it removeable. I’d hate to see a band try and set up around it.

The other thing was that on the way out of the venue, somebody stole a framed, signed poster of Michael and I that belonged to the venue. Geoff and Patch who run Traders are big supporters of live music, really enjoy it, and have a collection of signed posters from all the shows that they’ve had at the venue, so having one of them stolen off the wall is particularly shitty for them. Please, if it was you, or you know who it was, send it back. It’s signed to someone else! All you had to do was ask and we’d be able to find a poster to sign for you. Please, take it back.

Friday was a day off, so we did what any self repecting bassist does on a day off in London – went to the Gallery – as I’ve said many times before, we’re really really lucky in London to have the two finest bass shops in the world in the one city, with The Gallery and The Bass Centre. Michael had been to the Bass Centre before, when we did our clinic there a couple of years ago, but this time we visited Martin Peterson at his Camden hide-out. It’s a real Aladdin’s cave (particularly apposite in Pantomime season… maybe Martin and Alex should dress as Widow Twanky and Aladdin??) So we spent a good few hours talking bass and trying out toys there.

Saturday, I was playing at The Captain and Tenille’s wedding, which was great fun. The rest of the band was Cathy Burton‘s band. Sadly, my Neuralgia kicked in just before the service, so I had to rush off at the end, to get a Vit B fix before my vision started to go… which was a downer, as the reception would have been cool too.

And Sunday was the gig at The Headgate Theatre in Colchester. The Headgate is a fantastic amateur run charitable venue, with the best acoustics of just about any venue I’ve ever played. Everything sounds great in there.

This was the second of the gigs where we added a Q&A/Masterclass to the beginning of the gig. We did this for Petersfield and Colchester for a number of reasons – firstly, so that we could have a chance to explain a bit about what we do; inevitably, after a gig there are a thousand questions from people about how the hipshots and detunable bridge work on Michael’s bass, about the Ebow, about looping, about my processing, about what strings we use etc… So the chance to answer those in a more structured way proved very helpful. It also meant that we could make the gigs slightly more economically viable. It’s great to be able to play gigs like the Headgate and Traders and make it pay, and this is one way to make it a bit easier on everyone. For both venues, money taken over the bar is a big factor in it working for them, so people arriving early is good for the venue too.

The live music economy is a tricky balance, given that venues need to make money on food and drink, so artists and promoters need to think of ways to give a gigging audience ample time for ordering at the bar! That way everyone wins.

So that was that. Tour over, some great gigs, some fab new friends, great clinics, CDs sold, and the mortgage paid for another couple of months :o)

Then, today, Michael left, about 10 minutes before the postman delivered a box of CDs for him to sell on the tour… DOH!!

Soundtrack – Iona, ‘Book Of Kells’; Cuong Vu, ‘Come Play With Me’; Nick Harper, ‘Double Life’; Patrice Rushen, ‘Straight From The Heart’.

two fine gigs in one day. (oh, and a really hideous guitar show…)

So last night (well, actually two nights ago now, seeing as how it’s 1am Thursday…) – anyway, on Tuesday night, The Cheat and I went to two gigs in one night. Firstly to see Iain Archer supporting Paddy Casey at Scala in Kings Cross. Scala’s a really nice venue – I’ve seen Spearhead and the Dum Dums there before – and Iain was on top form. He had Paul and Phil Wilkinson from The Amazing Pilots on bass and drums, and the trio was incredible. Loads of energy, big grooves (I’ve been a big fan of Phil’s drumming since I first saw the Pilots play, and he just gets better and more inventive…) And Iain’s guitar sounded particularly good. He’s a megastar in the making. It’s been really interesting to watch his music evolve, from his days as a gentle acoustic pop songwriter (his debut album, ‘Playing Dead’ is marvellous, but very different from where he’s at now), through a mid period of experimentation, to where he’s at now, absorbing all kinds of interesting influences and being genuinely brilliant. His new album, ‘Flood The Tanks’ is just out. I’ve got it on order, and from what i’ve already heard, it’s great stuff and highly recommended.

After that, we walked up Pentonville Road to ‘Bar Academy’ in Islington. Got lost twice (once due to me, once due to The Cheat), to see Nick Harper. Nick’s great. I was introduced to his music by Catherine Streetteam (thanks!), and then saw him play at Greenbelt last year. His is the highest energy one man acoustic show I’ve ever seen. Great guitar playing, great voice, hilarious stage presence, and apparently, tourettes syndrom (someone who swears more than me – is this possible??). Anyway, he was bloomin’ marvellous.

All in great contrast to Sunday – The London Guitar Show was on at Wembley. In case you don’t know, the basic premise is that lots of big companies pile in there, and loads of apparently dreadful guitarists and bassists arrive and playing badly, loudly and incessantly for a weekend. The joke is that people go there to buy guitars, even though trying one out would be like sound-testing it on the hard shoulder of the M25 in rush hour. there’s no way to check things like sustain, quality of tone, noise floor etc. You just can’t hear anything.

The various artists actually playing on the stands had a hard time being heard, so turned up and just became part of the general mush.

Still, it was nice to see some friendly faces – Franck Vigroux, Stuart Clayton, Dave Marks, Bernie Goodfellow, Martin Simms, Svetlana Vasileva, the Bass Centre people, BassTech people, Bass Guitar Magazine People (who got me in for free as well – thanks very much!), and a few old friends.

Also managed to catch a few minutes of the Scottish Guitar Quartet, who even with the din in the background were fantastic. Well worth checking out.

SoundtrackPeter Gabriel, ‘Up’; Jonatha Brooke, ‘Steady Pull’; Calamateur, ‘The Old Fox of ’45’ – this last one is fantastic ; I’ve posted about Calamateur before, and this is just released – great new album, reworkings of some of the tracks that have been on EPs before, and some new stuff. Andrew’s songwriting, singing and production just gets better and better, and it’s no wonder he’s had airplay from John Peel and The Late Junction, amongst others… a lo-hi gem, highly recommended.

A week in the life of…

…yep, sorry evil harv, I’m just going to write about what I’ve been up to again… ;o)

Main event of the week was another recording session with Theo Travis – I’d invested in a few new studio toys (a pair of powered monitors which make mixing a lot easier, and a new mic for recording flute/percussion etc…) so the session was better than ever, with some rather groovy results. The album’s really coming along – we’ve got loads of recordings to choose from already, but are in no hurry to just release anything. We’ll keep recording until we get a full album of stuff we love with no fillers. It’s slightly different to the way I normally work, in that we’re allowing ourselves to edit some of what we do (on one of the tracks we recorded on Thursday I removed an entire solo that I’d played, cos it was a bit dull…) but what you end up with at any one time is still just the two of us playing and looping in real time, with no additional overdubs… Theo was playing Soprano Sax as well on this session, which added a lot to what we were doing. It is, I guarantee, going to be a stellar album.

Thursday night, Evil Harv, Jimbob (AKA Sarda) and a couple of other chums went down to the Kashmir Klub – possibly London’s most important music venue, in that it costs nowt to get in, no-one gets paid, but the quality of the acts on is (usually) very high, (I played there with Susan Enan once) with occasional high profile people there (Lewis Taylor played there a lot earlier this year, and I’ve seen Nick Kershaw, Imogen Heap, The Dum Dums, Nerina Pallot and Doctor Robert (from the Blow Monkeys) play there). Anyway, Thursday wasn’t a great line up (better than most acoustic nights around, but not really up to The Kashmir’s usual standard) so we went off for coffee instead. The sad news is that the Kashmir is closing, at least for a time – the guy who owns the venue is doing something else with it, and despite them filling it night after night, he’s kicking them out. They are looking for a new venue, but who knows how long that will be. Please visit the website, and if you can sign petitions, write letters or just offer moral support to Tony Moore who’s been running it for 5 years, please do. It’s a great club, he’s a great bloke and London needs it.

Today, Evil Harv and I went to the London Guitar Show, at Wembley Conference Centre. It was fun, though alongside the NAMM show, it feels a little small and parochial. As most of the people there hadn’t been to NAMM, it was fine (I remember loving shows like that when I was a kid), and it was great to catch up with some friends I’d not seen for a while – Nick Beggs was playing on the Bass Guitar Magazine stand, doing his rather fabulous stick thang. It was fun to see the rest of the guys from BGM too. I had a nice chat and a coffee with John East, who makes the U-Retro preamp that I’ve got in my 6 string fretless, and bumped into Svetlana, who used to teach at BassTech, and is now playing bass for Moby! Also saw the Ashdown people, Nick Owen from the Bass Centre, lovely Hoda who now works for SWR and The Bass Centre, and all manner of other people that I only ever see at trade shows!

Another bizarre coincidence – was chatting to Barry Moorhouse from the Bass Centre about wanting to do more support slots. ‘You know who you should support’ says Barry, ‘The 21st Century Schizoid Band!’ – ‘I already have’ says me, and as I’m saying it, up comes Jakko Jakszyk, guitars from the Schizoids. which was a lovely surprise, as I’ve not seen Jakko since I did the tour with the them at the tail end of last year… We caught up on news and then I came home.

soundtrack – yesterday was the St Luke’s May Fayre, so I’ve got the usual haul of CDs, though it’s rather fewer than some years… Right now I’m listening to Lucious Jackson, ‘Fever In Fever Out’, which is rather good. Yesterday it was John McLaughlin, ‘Que Alegria’, which is also rather good, if a little note-heavy in places. Theo leant me a marvellous album – Arild Andersen, ‘The Molde Concert’, feature Bill Frisell on guitar – gonna have to buy that one. And in the car I’ve had Talk Talk, ‘Laughing Stock’ on regular rotation. And of course, in between all that, lots of the duo stuff with Theo…

Normal Service Has Been Resumed

Apart from a slight residual sore throat, it seems life is back to normal… or maybe touring is normal, I’m just not used to normal yet…. who knows. Whichever, I’m settled back in at home. The last couple of days have involved a fair amount of teaching, some tidying, though not much, lots of cuddling the aged feline, who appears to have pretty refined taste in vegan food – mushroom pate, Quorn sausages and vegan bacon to be precise!! Today I’ve been sending out CD orders, which keep rolling in, reassuringly, then went down to the Gallery, originally to see Martin Peterson who makes the Sei basses, but he’s away, so I spent some time chatting to Alex, who now runs the shop there – very nice chap, who used to work at the Bass Centre. Nice to see that they’ve got a Lexicon MPX-G2 in the shop (the same effects processor that I use, in case you were wondering) – so if you’re looking for one, that’s the place to look!

My E-Bow has broken! I mean, it still works, but the catch on the battery compartment has gone, so I’ll have to keep the battery in place with an elastic band. What with that and my mobile phone, which has the battery gaffer taped in place, it’s a bit of a heath robinson life I lead…

It’s nice to be back playing a four string bass again – on the US tour, I borrowed a 6 string fretted bass from Modulus, and has my own 6 string fretless with me, so coming home and playing my four string is like picking up a toy – it’s so easy… and what’s more, I’ve been doing loads of tapping stuff since I got home – a technique I almost completely dropped about five years ago, but one that I’ve been showing to a couple of students recently, and which has been presenting some fun musical options… watch this space to see where that ends up!

Was reading ‘Further Along The Road Less Travelled’ by Scott Peck on the train, which is a fascinating book. Basically, it brings together psycotherapy and spirituality. Scott’s a christian, but arrived at where he is now on his journey via 20 very valuable years as a zen buddhist, and his zen thinking still informs much of his life and writing, leading to a fascinating take on where his training as a psychiatrist and his spirituality meet. Reading this follows on nicely from a great section in Frank Skinner’s Autobiography that the small person read to me the other day, where he talks about his Catholic faith, and a very very powerful experience he has at a Catholic church in Japan, which lead his to talk about the strangeness of being a person of faith in contemporary society, where most people cringe if you mention God, and also have a pretty skewed view of what it is to be a christian… I tend to avoid the label, for the most part, at least on first meeting people – primarily so that people’s experience of me will inform their thinking of what a christian is, rather than their misconceptions of what a christian is prejudicing them against me… This can be particularly a problem in the US, where much of what happens in the name of ‘the church’ is pretty seriously f-ed up, and where ‘christian’ is synonymous with a certain type of right-wing, republican, moral conservatism that doesn’t really reflect anything of what I perceive the life and teaching of Jesus to be about… always seemed a lot more radical than that to me… Anyway – the point being, it’s always interesting to read stuff -be it Scott Peck or Frank Skinner – by people who are struggling with the same questions about integrating faith and life that I, and just about every other ‘normal’ christian that I know is dealing with… It’s hard not to end up embarassed by the horse-shit that happens in the name of God – poor thing, She’s got the worst PR of anyone in history, and it’s our fault…

Er, where was I?? oh yes…

Soundtrack – been listening to Dave Pomeroy’s ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ album – all bass and voice, very good indeed. Dave was playing at the NAMM Bass Bash, and was brilliant. Also been listening to Mike Watt, another guy who played at the Bass Bash – his CD, ‘Contemplating The Engine Room’ is stunning – like a punk Tom Waits. Great story telling, some amazing guitar playing from Nels Cline, and Mike’s bass and voice doing baritone duets with eachother. outstanding.

Curry, Theatre and the run up to Christmas

The Deep 2 Deep curry was great fun – organised by Wulf (and yes, he has brothers called Magnus and Leofrick…), 6 of us went out for curry. a fine time. Is having curry ever not a fine time? Wulf also had a CD of his bootleg of the Bass Centre clinic that I did with Michael Manring last month – not bad quality, so I’ll see if I can clean it up in Soundforge and put some of it on the website… We’ll see…

Anyway, Saturday was a great day too – not-at-all-evil-Dann proved his not-at-all-evilness by inviting me to the theatre to see The Play Wot I Wrote, at the Wyndhams theatre near Leicester Square (has evil harv ever taken me to the theatre? I think not… proving his evility) Anyway, the play was brilliant – lots of marvellous physical comedy, top gags, Morcambe and Wise routines (that’s the major theme of the play)… all great stuff. Why don’t I go to the theatre more often? It’s great! I really ought to… there’s new year’s resolution number 3 (the rest will be revealed at new year…)

Anyway, theatre followed by dinner with Dann and his not-at-all-evil family. Then home.

Also started reading Further Along The Road Less Travelled again – what a great book – a fantastic followup to ‘The Road Less Travelled’, sort of a bringing together of thinking on physcology and religion… fascinating stuff. I do like the way Scott Peck’s mind works, and will have to work my way through the rest of his stuff in the next year (Resolution #4?)

Found another cool 80s computer game on line – this time it’s Bomb Jack – not as addictive as the Helicopter Game (I’ve now got about 1760 on it, and the addictiveness of it is testified to by the thread that has been going on in the Miscillaneous forum at www.activebass.com about it!!

Today was the St Luke’s Nativity at church – always a pretty anarchic affair (particularly a couple of years ago when it was re-written to reference psycho half way through, Norman Bates having become the inn keeper!!!!) – the kiddies were on top form, and a fine time was had by all.

Then home to do the Christmas Food Shop. Asda was packed (shouldn’t have gone there…)

Soundtrack – a bit more of Gary Peacock/Ralph Towner, then the new Joni Mitchell CD, ‘Travelogue’ which is a series of orchestra + voice versions of her back catalogue. Her last album was her doing a load of standards with a couple of her own tunes thrown in which were the best tunes on the CD, heralding the way for this. It’s gorgeous, lush, sumptuous and a slight shame that there’s no new material on it at all. Very lovely indeed, and beautifully packaged, with lots of Joni’s paintings on the sleeve. And now I’m listening to Beauty And The Beast by Jez and me, which is also very good – you can download it from the MP3s page on the site, if you like, as a christmas pressie from Jez and I. It’s not available anywhere else…

So much to do…

Teaching Schedule is now filling up, which is good… I asked my
students to get back in touch in early December, so the eager ones
are on it already and my diary is taking shape, which is nice…

Still feeling jet-lagged from the tour, sleeping late, sitting up late…
need to get back round the right way by the weekend.

Just found the site of a band called Dapp Theory
– jazz outfit based in NYC who have collaborated with Bruce
Cockburn on their album that’s out in January… very interesting
stuff. have a listen to the track Trickle Down on their website…

Right what now? need to go and post CD orders (mail order
ones, CC orders from evinsol.co.uk and from gemm.com
– it’s getting harder to keep track of what’s happening where!
Gemm seems like a very good set up though. I’ve only had the
stuff listed there a day or two and am already getting orders
daily from them, so I guess people must be looking for it! That’s
heartening… :o)

Also need to mail out all the review copies that I bagged up yesterday
– it’s going to be a fun trip to the post office with 40 jiffy bags or
something this afternoon!

Oh, and at some point soon I need to take the flight case back to
the Bass Centre that they so kindly lent to me for the L42
tour – this little Ashdown rig of mine, with the 4×8,
1×10 and 500W head, all fits into one normal 4×10 cabinet flight
case!! A whole rig in one medium sized case.. how cool is that?

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