Tag: iona

Posted on

quick misc. update

Er, what since last week?

Saturday was Gawain the DJ’s wedding – very nice bloke, very nice wedding. bit of a 50s theme. Even more heartening is that he’s even taller than me, and his now-wife is even smaller than the small person. Good to know we’re not the most mismatched people on the planet!

Sunday went to see Masse play at The Foundry in London’s East End. The venue has a very varied and interesting program of stuff on, but is a bit of a dump… Anyway, Masse – bass and drums duo, both looping, processing, improvising, very good stuff indeed. bass-man jeremy was on top form – lots of Echoplexing, and a great tone from a rather special homemade bass cab. If you get a chance to see them play, jump at it.

Monday was more recording with Theo Travis – the best thing about playing with Theo is that we’re never quite sure what it’s all going to end up sounding like. We re-did one of the ideas from a very early session (when we were recording in mono), and it came out sounding completely different anyway… very nice. We’ve now got about an hour and a half of quality stuff towards the album. We’ll keep going until there’s no filler material at all, though it’s feeling pretty consistent already… We’ve got a gig booked, at the National Theatre in London on June 17th, which you really ought to be at!

Monday night was Jude’s leaving do – leaving do? she’s only going to the US For a few months. But anyway, it was a fun time, catching up with Sarda and The Cheat.

And yesterday was spent teaching and editing the stuff that Theo and I recorded.

That’s all really dull – what else is happening? well, Donald Rumsfeld has finally admitted that they are unlikely to find any WMDs in Iraq – no shit sherlock! Isn’t that what Scott Ritter and Hans Blix said months ago, before you bombed their world to pieces????? Clearly this was realised even before they went to war (why else was the notion of ‘freeing the people of iraq’ only brought in as on of the aims just before christmas when getting rid of WMDs had been the expressed sole intention for the year or so before that???) Anyway, seems that the illegal invasion will soon be recognised for what it was – Blair will spin the whole thing, talk about moral responsibility and all his usual BS. Sincere perhaps but sincerely wrong, sorry Tony. Meanwhile, iraqi kids are stepping on undetonated cluster bombs (possibly containing depleted uranium), and the cleanup is going rather slow. Add to that the Brukheimer-esque makeover given to the ‘rescue’ of Jessica thingie, and you’ve got yourself one seriously morally dubious world situation… Now, who was it who veto’d the instigation of an international criminal court again?

Soundtrack – lots of me and theo, obviously. Right now, I’m listening to Medeski Martin and Wood, ‘The Dropper’ – had heard them before and liked what I heard, but BJ Cole recommended this as the one to get. And very fine it is too… What else? Michael Manring, ‘Book Of Flame’ and Morphine, ‘B-Sides and Otherwise’.

Posted on

Strongbad the good

Ok, if you’re on broadband (and perhaps even if you’re not, I’ve not tried it on dial-up), get thee to www.homestarrunner.com – some very bizarre and surreal cartoons, but totally addictive, especially strongbad’s emails – one of the characters answers emails from the public… Truly brilliant.

What else? Had another gig last night with Tess Garraway and Joss Peach in Brighton, which was fun. Due to a misunderstanding with the venue, it was a shorter gig that had been planned, but was much fun nontheless, especially as I had a line from Tess’ voice into my loop set up, so could layer up loads of vocal stuff…

Yesterday I received a copy of Andrew Buckton’s new album, Rocket Ship, which is marvellous. It was recorded at the tail-end of last year, with me on bass, jez carr on piano and buck on guitar and voice. Tom Hooper then added some drums and percussion. There’s a fair bit of E-bow and looping from me, providing lots of atmospherics, including one tune where I do loads of looping and SFX, while Jez plays the actual bass line (as has been noted before, Jez is not only a mighty fine pianist, but a stellar bassist too…) The album is fantastic. Really great songs, very personal moving lyrics, and I don’t sound bad on it either… 😉

Hopefully it’ll be available online somewhere before too long.

What else has been happening? Ah yes, yesterday before the gig with Tess, I was recording more stuff with Patrick Wood – if you have a look at the MP3s page, you see there’s a duet track with Patrick. He’s very good, very very good, and we get together every few weeks to make a good noise. More mad loopy stuff, as you’d expect. Will no doubt be releasing a duo album with Patrick at some point. Still editing the stuff I’ve recorded with Theo… there really ought to be lots of this stuff online, but at the moment, I maxxed out on my webspace, so really need to change servers before I get to add any more. Was all set to move to a new host when sarda said he was planning to get a server. So now I’m waiting for that…

Anyway, when it finally happens, you’ll get to hear lots of what I’ve been up to.

Oh, and on the subject of me and Theo, we’ve got a gig at the National Theatre in London on Tuesday 17th from 6-7.30pm. And then on the same day at 9pm, Rick Walker – the percussions that I play with in California – has got a solo gig at The Klinker, so it’s a fine evening for music – well worth coming to see us, grabbing some food, and heading over to Rick’s gigs. I’ll be at both, anyway!

Er, what else? ah yes, Matthias Grob came to stay. Who’s Matthias? He’s the inventor the Echoplex, that rather amazing looping tool that I’ve got four of. And a great musician in his own right. And an all round top bloke. We’d arranged to meet for lunch with a friend of his up town, but he was late, so I had a very nice lunch with Jenny at the ICA, and then Matthias turned up at my place a bit later on. We went for curry. and he gave me a copy of his brand new CD, which is coming out on my label! Yup, Matthias is the first non-me Pillow Mountain Records release. How does that work? for someone who doesn’t like record companies… well, he’s using the name. Doing all the leg-work himself, but using the Pillow Mountain name out of recognition for the fact that our music bears a similar meditative quality I guess. The looping connection, and just that he’s a top bloke. I’m sure people who like what I do will like what he does. So he’s on PMR. It’ll all be official soon, and on the website etc…

Soundtrack – right now, it’s Andrew Buckton’s album ‘Rocket Ship’ (see above) which has been on all day. It’s great. you need to get it when it’s available. Yesterday I was listening to the new album from Andy Sheppard and John Parricelli, ‘PS’, which is great – guitar and sax duets, some looping/processing from John. All good. Recommended.

Posted on

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…

Posted on

A gig, a wedding and some very sad news

So what’s been happening?

Well, friday night was a very fun gig. Remember Ragatal? Possibly not, but it was a quartet that I played with for a time a few years ago.. It was started by Jason Carter and Nick Beggs, along with Steve Bingham on Violin and Sanju Sahai on tabla. Shortly after that, Nick became too busy to continue for a while, and I took over, recording the one album that the group did – Fragments Of Grace – on ARC (it’s not bad, though I’d advise against getting the re-released version, titled Elements, as there were a load of additional percussion overdubs by Hossam Ramsay that don’t add anything to it, IMHO…) Anyway, Friday night was Steve Bingham’s birthday, and he had a gig to celebrate, including some ragatal tunes! What a treat it was – it was great fun to get back playing with all those guys, especially Sanju who is quite possibly the most outstanding musician I’ve ever sat on the same stage as.

Saturday was another fun day, and a fine friends reunited success story. About two years ago, I got in contact with an old school friend, Dawn, met up for a drink, and then she arranged a bigger get together of old chums. Andrew came to that one. He’d always fancied Dawn, and apparently the intervening 17 years hadn’t dampened his adour at all. fast forward 18 months, and yesterday I went to their wedding! What fun! It was a fine day, they both looked great, and everyone seemed to have a great time. It was fun meeting up with some other old school chums too…

On an altogether much different emotional plane, I got an email today from the husband of Rana Ross, a fine bassist and someone I’d met at the NAMM Show in LA and emailed ona few occasions, to say that she’d been in an ICU after a series of heart attacks, and they were switching the life support off. I can’t even imagine what he must be going through – even at this stage he was giving thanks for the time he’d had with her, and described himself as the luckiest man in the world. She was only in her 30s, was working on a new album, and had a whole life ahead of her. what a terrible story. There are various threads on the bass discussion groups around the web, if you want to post condolences to John…

So what’s coming up? More recording with Theo, who came round last week to listen to rough mixes of the duo stuff so far, which are sounding spiffing! And hopefully some more playing with Sanju very soon…

soundtrack – right now, I’m listening to ‘and nothing but the bass’ – was teaching one of the tunes to a student earlier and it’s stayed on. Before that, and most of the day yesterday, I was listening to Athlete, ‘Vehicles and Animals’, which is great – best new british band I’ve heard in quite a while. The gig last week was great, and the album lives up to expectations. Also been listening to more stuff on kvmr.

Posted on

Stations Of The Cross

Last night’s ‘gig’ went really well… The event was called ‘UpLate’ and is a sort of alternative worship service at a lovely old church in Thame, Oxfordshire. Once a month they take a theme and set up a whole load of different artistic/musical/poetic ‘stations’ for people to wander round and look at/listen to/read/meditation on, etc. All very inspiring stuff – it’s a great building, and the quality of the art is top notch – it’s kind of like a themed multimedia art-gallery, with good coffee, and a glass or two of wine… ;o)

Anyway, last night, with it being their easter edition, Evil Harv, Jez and I were asked to come up with 14 improvs based on the stations of the cross to soundtrack the whole evening, we were set a time, and given 14 works of art to help inspire us – well, scans of them anyway… The list of station titles is –

(1) Jesus’ agony in the garden
(2) Jesus is betrayed by Judas and is arrested
(3) Jesus is condemned by the Sanhedrin
(4) Jesus is denied by Peter
(5) Jesus is condemned by Pontius Pilate
(6) Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns
(7) Jesus is made to carry the cross
(8) Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus with His cross
(9) Jesus meets with the women of Jerusalem
(10) Jesus is crucified
(11) Jesus promises paradise to the repentant thief
(12) Jesus speaks to John and Mary on the cross
(13) Jesus dies on the cross
(14) Jesus is buried in the tomb.

So for each of those we did an improv. As you can tell from the subject matter, it wasn’t going to be a happy-jazz sesh, and some of what we played got really dark and atonal – trying to express in music the image of Jesus being whipped and having a crown of thorns rammed onto his head is always going to be a pretty brutal sonic experience! But it’s amazing the way having a concrete theme like this can focus the music way beyond just noodling. Often Jez and I when we’re doing duo stuff will latch onto a particular mood and work with that, in a more abstract, but still just as compelling (for us) way. This time, it was obvious to all three of us what the theme was before we started, and the beginnings of some of the improvs were particularly interesting while we settled into how we were going to tackle that particular image – was the music going to be mournful, confrontational, pain-wracked, hopeful. etc… the tension worked really well at dealing with the many many mixed emotions that the easter story brings up…

The good news is we’ve got some of it on minidisc. The band news is that the batteries ran out after about half an hour, so we didn’t get enough… We played for about two hours (only overran by about 45 minutes! :o) – and it would’ve been great to have it all, as there were some really special moments, so hopefully we’ll be able to do it again next year in a different setting…

Soundtrack – last night and this morning, I’ve been listening to some new recordings by a fabulous bass playing singer/songwriter called John Lester. John’s a californian, who until recently was living in Paris, but is now in London, and will hopefully be gigging all over the place pretty soon. He’s great, check him out. And before that yesterday, was listening to Michael Jackson’s ‘Thiller’ – another tune that was being done in a lesson (PYT), and then staying on the turntable (ahhhh, vinyl) for a few hours… It really is a very good album indeed.

Posted on

Coming Up – a weekend of delicious improv!

I’m really looking forward to my gigs this weekend – I’ve got two, tomorrow night I’m playing at an alternative worship service called ‘Up’ at an anglican church in Thame (St Mary’s maybe?), where Jez, Evil Harv and I will be improvising 14 pieces based on the stations of the cross – for each one, we’ve got a painting or image to represent it and hopefully trigger some ideas. It should be really good, and probably quite emotionally involving, as the stations take us from Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemene through to his burial…

Then on Sunday, I’m playing at the Barbican ‘ere in London – on the free stage from 6-7, with Orphy Robinson, who is best known for his vibes playing, but on this one will be playing Marimba, Steel Pans and misc. percussion, with us both looping and processing our sounds (and I’ll be looping orphy’s loops too!) – we had a bit of a play this morning just to see what was possible, and it sounded great, so I’m really looking forward to this one too. We were going to be joined by top pedal steel player, BJ Cole but he’s got a gig he can’t get out of… I’m sure we’ll get to try the trio version soon. Instead we’ve got a singer coming to sit in one a few numbers, which should be a lot of fun too… Please come down if you’re in London, it’s a great way to spend a sunday evening in London…

Before that, I’ve got a full day’s teaching on Saturday, and am playing in church on Sunday morning, so it’s going to be a pretty full weekend playing-wise! And I must remember to change the batteries in my bass, as they’ve just run out…!

soundtrack – right now, Donny Hathaway Live. Earlier on, Bill Frisell with Elvin Jones and Dave Holland and while teaching today I was using Joni Mitchell – ‘Hejira’, Pat Metheny – ‘Bright Sized Life’ and Anita Baker ‘Rapture’… Also had a listen to ‘Beauty And The Beast’ earlier – the improv piece that Jez and I uploaded to my site as a Christmas pressie a few months back. If you’ve not heard it, head over to the MP3s page and have a listen…

Posted on

In the fight against international terrorism…

Photoshop has become the ultimate weapon of mass distraction… ;o)

check out some of these very creative anti-Bush spoofs and subvertisments.

So the ‘allies’ rained down a 1000 missiles onto Baghdad last night – so much for attempting to minimise civilian casualties…

to keep track of just how many civillian iraqis have been killed, check out
www.iraqbodycount.net…

Soundtrack right now, Prince’s ‘Diamonds And Pearls’, before that Brian Houston’s ‘Good News Junky’ (very fine album, and he’s even better live, if you get the chance…), and before that ‘Quartet’ by Pat Metheny – possibly his finest album, and Steve Rodby’s bass playing and tone are exceptional – Steve really is one of the most gifted bassists I’ve ever come across. An outstanding musician, rarely given the credit he’s due…

Posted on

Bloglessness…

Blog posts seem to be getting rarer – sorry about that. This time the reason is that I’ve been away for the last couple of days, recording at dB Studios in Lincoln. The session was for the next album by Chris Bowater – he’s a gospel singer/worship leader, who I used to gig with a lot when I lived up in Lincoln, and I’ve played on his last three CDs (this one being the fourth). It was a really interesting session to play on in that it ran the whole gamut of bass playing from ‘duck eggs’ (one note in each bar) through to E-Bow and looped atmospheric stuff (on one track I did a ‘normal’ bass line, fretless melody line, and then three layers of twinkly, sparkly ebow loveliness!) – it was a lot of fun to be playing at both ends of the spectrum, very arranged and very open. On the fretless melody tracks, it was largely a case of playing a meandering melody through the whole track which will then be cut up and used at the basis for some other themes (doubled by the string quartet or whatever). Chris’ music is interesting in that even though his main ‘gig’ scenario is leading congregational singing in churches, his albums are far far more ‘music-led’ than most of the stuff written for that setting – the church music scene in general is pretty stagnant and normally at least 5 years behind anything else that’s happening in music, but Chris being a very highly qualified and experienced pianist and writer tends to put a lot more emphasis on the creativity of what he does, which is quite inspiring when it comes to coming up with bass parts…

Much fun was had as the producer/engineer was Dan Bowater (Chris’s son, and the owner of the studio), who I’ve known for 10 years and have toured with on a number of occasions, and the drummer was Gabriel Alonso, who produced and played on Chris’s last two albums, so it was a pretty comfortable setting…

Then today, I was back recording with Patrick Wood again – Patrick is the keyboardist on the MP3 track based on Highway 1 that’s over on the MP3 page – he’s a marvellous musician, and it’s always a treat to play with him. We recorded two very long improvs (improvs, I’m finding, are rarely short… :o) – and I’m hoping to get mixes of them soon to put up on the site, as they were both some of the best stuff that Patrick and I have played together… Me thinks there may be a limited edition album release coming up before too long… ;o)

So what else has been happening? Ah yes, we’re at war. Well, I say we, but it’s not in my name, as the saying goes. Despite opposition from the UK population, the UN, and his own back-benchers (culminating in the biggest labour back bench revolt in recent parlimentary history), President Blair has seen fit to send British troops into battle in Iraq, without UN sanction or backing, and without any kind of clear plan for a post-Saddam Iraq, or any kind of scenario regarding the future of the Kurds in Northern Iraq, who are shitting themselves given that the Turks who have a history of killing lots of them but are currently in a four year cease-fire are at present in diplomatic talks with the US regarding the use of Turkish air-space and land for accessing Iraq, and who may use the opportunity to cross into Northern Iraq (allegedly, they already have 20,000 armed soldiers stationed there) and resume hostilities. Have I heard mention of this from Blair or Bush? nope…

So, if this does end as quickly as it’s likely to (250,000 ‘allied’ troops? methinks this won’t go on and on, though I guess they thought that about Vietnam…), who’s next? Iran? Yemen? Saudi? Sudan? North Korea? They have been talking about trying to broker peace in Palestine – surely that’s a higher priority right now, given the numbers of Palestinians that have been slaughtered, and the number of suicide bombing retaliations that there have been (is suicide bombing retaliation or just an act of insane desparation??)…

…and what on earth is Britain doing in Iraq anyway? didn’t we bollocks it all up last time we installed a puppet king there? and what about sorting something out in Zimbabwe (a former collony that we are clearly more responsible for, and should be able to apply a lot more diplomatic pressure to), which also has a crazed dictator who is sanctioning extra-judicial killings and other atrocities…

I’ll keep praying for peace, whatever happens.

Soundtrack – during the few moments that I’ve not been listening to news reports on the radio, I’ve been listening to myself (just downloaded Fruity Loops Studio, and have been recording some stuff with it – a bargain at $49 for the update…), also listening to The Cure’s Greatest Hits (very very fine), and now am listening to Lifehouse – ‘Stanley Climbfall’, the opening track on which (Spin) is breathtakingly good.

Posted on

Weapon Of Mouse Destruction

Just been up to see my mum for a few days – very nice it was too. My mum’s cat is called Gizmo. Well, technically, he’s my brother’s cat, but he’s moved out, and the cat stayed… anyway, Gizzy is the cutest friendliest cuddliest little beasty on the planet… so long as you’re human. If you happen to be any kind of warm blooded furry or feathered thing, and smaller than a tiger, she views you as potential dinner. Mice, rats, voles, moles, rabbits, hares, pheasants, and all manner of garden birds. She’s lethal. A one-feline environmental disaster area. How can one so seemingly cute be such a cold-blooded killer?? Guess the various smiling faces telling us about how they plan to rid the world of evil, whilst perpetrating muchos evil of their own have been taking lessons… Indeed, she’s a veritable Weapon Of Mouse Destruction…

(BTW, Tonight there’s a round-the-world candle-lit vigil for Peace, called for by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Check and see if a church near you is involved and head along there…)

Anyway, whilst in Berwick, managed to catch up with Heath – first known as ‘the boy next door’ when we first moved to Berwick (1986), soon became the drummer in the first band I was in (called various things, I think Mother’s Legs was the longest lasting name, though we never did a gig.) Heath then went to the same college as me, and now works in a theatre just north of London. He’s a very nice bloke, and it was a lovely surprise that he was ‘home’ at the same time as me…

Got a couple of days in the studio this week, with Chris Bowater (gospel singer/worship leader guy from Lincoln that I used to do loads of gigs with) – very much looking forward to that. Playing with Chris was always a fun challenge – he’s got an amazing sense of harmony, and is a great piano player. Other than that, it’s lots of teaching, and getting to grips with Fruity Loops – been programming drum beats, and learning how to automate effects changes and mutes etc… all good stuff…

Hang on, forgot to mention rather fabulous and eventful gig last Tuesday night – I was playing at Delicattesen in Reading (see link on left hand side), with Julie Lee (who I played at Greenbelt with last year), and with Pierce Pettis (who I’d not played with before, but who is marvellous) – I was only doing a couple of songs with each of them… That all went well, but half way through Pierce’s set, some poor bloke collapsed, fell off his chair and had a fit! Didn’t look like Epilepsy, and he came out of it pretty quick. We sat him up, and tried to talk to him, but he was still pretty out of it, and couldn’t stand up to leave the room. So we called an ambulance which arrived in LESS THAN A MINUTE!!! – you can say what you want about the national health service, but that’s what I call speedy response!! They took him in for observation, but the medics said he was in no immediate danger. Anyway, if by some quirk of fate you’re reading this, Mr-Looks-Like-Kenny-Rogers-And-Falls-Over-At-Gigs, I hope you’re feeling much better…

Aside from that it was a stunning night’s music – same line up as the 12 Bar Club gig the week before – Julie and Pierce, with Brian Houston on before them. All three are seriously world-class headline act stock, and if you get any chance at all to see them, jump at it!

One of the best things about the evening was Pierce’s between song banter, which is excellent – very very funny indeed.

so here’s my top 5 banterers (in no particular order)

  • Pierce Pettis
  • Michael Manring
  • Ben Castle
  • Martyn Joseph
  • Mo Foster

In fact, Mo’s stories are so good, he’s written a book – 17 Watts – full of his marvellous rock ‘n’ roll anecdotes, which is required reading for anyone with an interest in the birth of rock ‘n’ roll in the UK, and the growth of the music industry here through the 60s and 70s…

Soundtrack – currently, listening to more of the stuff by me and theo (hopefully the street-teamers will have some of this to listen to soon…), and whilst away, the soundtrack was Michael Franti – ‘Songs From The Front Porch’, Scritti Politti – ‘Cupid and Psyche’, Francis Dunnery ‘Man’, Lifehouse ‘Stanley Climbfall’, ‘Pierce Pettis ‘Everything Matters’ and ‘Making Light Of It’, and Juliet Turner – ‘Burn The Black Suit’ – all very fine stuff. The drive home from Berwick was mostly soundtracked by Radio 4 (always fun to learn new stuff just by sticking the radio on – doesn’t happen too often with the TV), and then a documentary about Elvis Costello, ensuring that sometime this evening ‘Armed Forces’ will go on…

Posted on

Improv…

I’m feeling rather lucky at the moment – Tuesday night, lovely Jez came round, went out for a curry, then had a jam for an hour… playing music with Jez is always a treat – he’s a very very musical chap, great listener, and exceedingly creative improviser (as those of you who have conversations will no doubt be aware) – the kind of stuff we play changes depending on our mood, the instrument (normally he’s playing an electric piano, here he was playing a real one), the room, whether I’m looping or not (I wasn’t), and whatever we’ve both been playing recently. So it really is very conversational, and quite revealing as to how we’re feeling…

Then, last night was the radio broadcast for LCR, which included lots of duo improv with Antoine Farfad – a bassist who was using a V-Bass processor to get some great synth sounds. More improv, very different context, and with someone I’d never met before let alone played with. So the whole thing was very different from the jez setting, but just as rewarding. Antoine’s playing was marvellous – something you’ll be able to check out next week when the show gets archived at the radio station website. I’ll add a link as soon as it’s there…

Then, this Sunday, I’m off to Brighton to play with Tess Garroway (see gigs page for details) – a jazz singer with a heavily improvisational slant. Just got a CD of her stuff yesterday which is excellent (listening to it right now). What fun – all this improv is great for developing listening skills, new approaches, learning new ideas, and finding new contexts for stuff that I already do…

What fun!

What else has been happening? er, lots of teaching, which has been great – new students, old students, lots of very interesting people with a desire to learn.

Got the new copy of Q through… very disappointing. Christina Aguilera on the cover? Q? huh? not good. And, in their 50 most outrageous people in rock article, GG Allin doesn’t get a look-in. And frankly, if there were a more outrageous person in the music industry, they’d probably be dead by now… GG made Marilyn Manson look like Cliff… a true nutter, very sad case, and now dead, which wasn’t a surprise to anyone. Supposedly there’s a documentary about him somewhere, but I’m not sure I’d have the stomach to watch it… dark stuff…

but I digress.

So today – teaching, and a workshop for a church band down in Kent tonight, which should be a lot of fun.

Soundtrack – lots of Mike Watt, mainly ‘Ball-Hog Or Tug Boat?’, which is marvellous. Also, this Tess Garroway CD, which is a mixture of live and studio stuff, and is very good. what else? ah, Lewis Taylor’s first album, which is unbelieveably good. Amazing. Genius.

© 2008 Steve Lawson and developed by Pretentia. | login

Top