Tag: last.fm

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Last night's gig

Last night was the first of the Recycle Collective gigs. Usual Darbucka affair WRT to getting there, setting up, dealing with people who are ‘just there to eat’ etc. But all fine.

Music was great – Trip played a fabulous set, as always, and went down supremely well. The sound was great (well, except an earth hum off his bass whenever he wasn’t touching the strings, which was less than ideal…) and his between song banter was funny and engaging too. Good stuff.

After him, our first surprise guest of the series – JazzShark had sent me a link a week or so ago to a guy she’d seen live, called Jeff Taylor – the MP3s on his MySpace page were amazing. a few days later another message arrives from La Shark that Jeff is coming to London. So we exchange emails, meet up for lunch on Monday, and he says he’s coming to the gig, so I suggest he brings his guitar.

He did, and so I got him to play three songs, which were fantastic. A great performer/vocalist/guitarist/songwriter. The whole thing. He really ought to be huge. I’m sure he will be, and the select audience from Darbucka will be able to see that they saw him first.

Then onto Theo and I – we played a mixture of the tunes from Open Spaces and some improvised stuff, including a marvellous improv thing with Jeff on beatbox/vox/weird noises. the sad part of all this (sorry, guys) is that once again, the minidisc has let me down and is blank. It might be that it was still blank from the last time I tried to record a gig, and I’d not formatted the disc. either way, I’ve once again missed out on documenting some marvellous music. Bollocks. It’s getting to be something of a frustration with me – I’ve not been able to record a live gig for lord knows how long, and would really like a document of how I’m playing these tunes now (and I really ought to have had a copy of the Edinburgh show!) I need to come up with a fool proof way of doing it. If I had a roadie I’d get a rack-mountable minidisc deck wired into the rack so I could just put a disc in and go, but I just haven’t got the car space or the muscles to carry it.

So all in all, a great night’s music. The only disappointment was the size of the crowd, which was surprisingly small. I guess there are a few factors, like the Jazz Festival being on, and it not being that long since my last Darbucka gig, but it’s been well publicised… It seems like Theo and I generally struggle to pull a good crowd in London, which is frustrating, as it’s probably the most rewarding musical collaboration I’ve ever been involved in. He does fine if he’s playing with his quartet, and I do fine if I’m playing solo, but together it doesn’t seem to get the peoples in.

The next Recycle gig definitely needs to be bigger. I know these things are meant to grow, but still…

Anyway, it was a fab night, those that were there seemed to love it, Trip got to play London and went down a storm, and we all got to hear Jeff Taylor in a setting that we’ll remember for a long time.

Today, Trip and I are down at the ACM in Guildford for another clinic/masterclass thingie, which will be a lot of fun – it’s a great school, and is always good to go and play for the students there. Hopefully we’ll leave them with something quality to take away.

Soundtrack – Bill Frisell, ‘East/West’ (new double live album from my favourite guitar player – great stuff, a return to form)

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good feline news

After a pretty down day on saturday, the fairly aged feline perked up a bit yesterday, especially when offered tuna for the first time in his life (or at least, since we’ve had him) – that’s clearly a favourite. He was a little more cuddly, slightly more vocal, and generally on the up.

That still didn’t prepare us for this morning’s return to the vets, who on examining his tummy by feel, said the lump had ‘gone’… yup, ‘gone’. Of course that doesn’t mean the cancer’s gone, or that we’re clear or any of that nonsense, but it does mean that the chemo is working its magic and we may have a little longer than the two weeks I was assuming was our time frame until I heard the word ‘gone’ this morning.

So, thanks to those of you who’ve been chatting to God about this. Whether or not it’s miraculous is at this point moot – the result is of more interest to me right now than the method (and, to be honest, the ramdomness of much that is labeled as miraculous just causes more theological and epistemological questions than it answers…

But I digress. Raise a glass to the small furry ginger one!

Soundtrack – Juliet Turner, ‘Live’.

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home from the vets

The Fairly Aged Feline is home now. The vet gave him a chemo injection which has reduced the size of teh tumor considerably already (cats are amazing creatures – far better at getting better than we are!), and a steroidal anti-inflammatary to reduce the swelling in his stomach, and bring down the fluid levels in his body cavity.

And now he’s here, lethargic, but seemingly happy. Picking and choosing when he wants cuddles and when he wants to be left alone. Complaining about the lack of v. tasty food. He and his fellow fairly aged feline are now reaquainted after much sniffing and some tentative mutual washing.

He’s currently sat behind me on the floor of the office, probably waiting to see what strange bass students I’ll be bringing in for him to sniff today. Straight back into his usual routine then.

Soundtrack – Eric Roche, ‘With These Hands’ (not bought it yet? put it on your christmas list!)

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from bad to worse

We were hoping for the best while preparing ourselves for the worst. And got the worst.

According to our lovely vet, the tumor is too big to operate, and anyway the fairly aged feline has got fluid on his lungs that mean they couldn’t put him under the anesthetic. So pretty much as bad as the situation could be.

He’s going on chemo to see if it will reduce the size of the tumor to the point where it’ll be operable, and also he’s being treated for the lung thing, so that if it does shrink they’ll be able to do the operation. But all in, the future doesn’t look that bright for the furry ginger one.

And we’re heartbroken. After the pain of losing The Aged Feline just over a year ago, we thought we’d have these two for years and years to come – they’ve settled in fantastically well, and become a vital part of the life of the house, having their own routines that we have to fit round, and their own novel ways of communicating. the tiny ginger one had a few delightful idiosyncrasies and was one of the clingiest cuddliest cats I’ve ever come across, never happier than being bundled up in someone’s arms for a big cuddle.

So we’re still hoping for that miracle, hoping that the chemo will work better than it ever has before, hoping that our genius vet can remove the tumour, and that our little guy will have years of happy life left. But it’s really not looking likely at all.

Soundtrack – Prefab Sprout, ‘Steve McQueen’.

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destroying all musical boundaries

A student turned up yesterday morning having been working on Jaco‘s arrangement of ‘Blackbird’ by The Beatles. He was making rather a nice job of it, but one of the things I often witter on about in lessons is the notion of active and passive learning – passive learning being just the copying by rote of a particular piece of music (or scale or interval study, or whatever) without taking it any further. Active learning would pull it apart into its various musical components, why does it work, what are the chords, how can I take that style of arrangement and apply it to other tunes, are there any new techniques that come up in this piece that I can absorb into my playing, and how else can I play this same tune?

In answering this last question, whenever anyone is doing this tune (it’s a standard for bassists to have a go at), I play them Bobby McFerrin‘s solo voice arrangement of the same tune, from his album ‘The Voice’. Which happens to be one of the greatest solo performer recordings of all time. The lovely thing about it is that conceptually it rips the roof off of what’s possible on any instrument – if one man can do all that with one unprocessed voice, how much more can I do with my bass than I am currently doing? What kind of leaps of logic, what kind of seemingly insane musical experiments have lead to Bobby being able to perform like that? It’s clearly not a style that one stumbles into, and I’ve no doubt that his arrangement of Blackbird took months and months to perfect, though he makes it sound so effortless on the CD.

If I were to draw up a list of most inspirational recordings for solo performers, this would be right up there at the top.

Oh go on then, here’s my top some, in no particular order –

Bobby McFerrin – The Voice
Don Ross – Passion Session
Michael Manring – Soliloquy
Kaki King – Legs To Makes Us Longer
Eric Roche – With These Hands
Pat Metheny – One Quiet Night
Keith Jarrett – Scala

a lot of these are solo acoustic guitar records, which I guess just reflects the fact that more people are experimenting with interesting music on solo guitar than on other instruments… or at least, I’ve been exposed to more solo guitar music than anything else…

Any others to add to the list? Stick ’em in the comments section at the bottom.

When I’m working towards a new album (as I am at the moment) I tend to ‘use’ music in a more knowing way than at any other time – I put things on to consciously take me out of my comfort zone, to re-orient my ears towards another space, to offer up possibilities for my own playing. I’m very much at the mercy of the things I listen to. in the last lot of recording I did, I recorded tracks that were heavily influenced by Morphine (the band, not the drug), M83 and Eric Roche. Bobby’s music takes me into another space altogether.

Soundtrack – Bobby McFerrin, ‘The Voice’.

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Emotional music day…

I’m having an emotional music day… well, two days, actually.

It started last night, with a song called ‘Freedom’ by a band that I think are called ‘The Wrest’ – I’ve just got this one MP3 that I was sent, cos it features the marvellous Julie Lee on vocals. It sounds just like something that would’ve cropped up on a mid-80s Fleetwood Mac album, like a lost last track from Tango In The Night. And it really moves me. It’s eminently hummable, though I’ve not really listened to the words in any great detail. Part of it is just Julie’s voice – she’s in that category with singers like Michael McDonald and Joanne Hogg where it doesn’t matter what they sing, it works for me.

After that I was listening to Kris Delmhorst’s ‘Songs For A Hurricane’ album, which is just perfect. It just gets better with every listen. Some amazing lyrics, beautiful metaphors, and another really great moving voice.

Today I ratcheted up the emotional content, and in the car on the way to Birmingham was listening to ‘Diesel and Dust’ by Midnight Oil. Now, the Oils are from that brand of serious 80s rockers who had a message and no sex appeal – a combination that would see them disappear without trace were they to emerge now, but as a reaction to the rancidness of yuppy life in the 80s, such bands appeared all over the place (remember U2 before the Anton Corbijn make-over?)

‘Beds Are Burning’ by Midnight Oil is one of the most spine-tinglingest top 10 hits ever – can you imagine a song about paying reparations to Australia’s aboriginal people making it into the charts now? Pete Garratt sang like a cross between Mick Jagger and Henry’s Cat, but packed his odd croaky/whiny voice with so much intent and meaning that it moves me to tears. The rest of the album packs a punch too – ‘Sell My Soul’, ‘Bull-roarer’ – stunning stuff.

And after that, James Taylor Live – it’s hardly news-worthy ‘man moved by James Taylor’ – I guess the only surprise was that I wasn’t wearing a nice wooly jumper at the time. Particularly noticed the lyrics to ‘Slap Leather’ from his ‘New Moon Shine’ album, which are a stab at the materialism of US government policy in the early 90s – not what you’d expect from the writer of some of the greatest relationship songs of all time…

And now, back at home, I’m listening to ‘Now, But Not Yet’ by Andrew Buckton – the launch gig for this album was, I think, the only time I’ve actually cried during a song on stage – Buck’s songs are all about people he knows going through all manner of crises, and some of them were in the crowd for the gig. Hearing him sing these beautiful, poignant, painful songs to the people they were written for was too much for me. It’s time like that that I’m glad I’ve got enough hair to hide behind – I must’ve looked like cousin-it from the Addams Family for the duration of that song.

So it’s moving songs day – join in, what are the songs that really move you? (warning, if you list anything by Whitney or Celine, I’ll be banning your IP from ever viewing this blog again. 😉 )

Soundtrack – Andrew Buckton, ‘Now But Not Yet’.

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Tomorrow is going to be a MAD day…

Right, so during the day I’m heading up to the Music Live show in Birmingham. I then come home to do two hours teaching between 7 and 9, and then I’ve got a gig! Oh yes, I just got phoned up by the marvellous Ronnie Golden, asking me to play at Club Senseless – now, I’ve been to Club Senseless a couple of times, and seen some very very funny people there – namely Rich Hall and Rob Deering. While i can be pretty witty between songs, I’m not really in either of their leagues… So I’ll do my thang, and hopefully endear myself to the Club Senseless faithful.

The house band is Ronnie And The Rex, fronted by Ronnie Golden. I first met Ronnie at The Kashmir Klub many years ago, and gave him a copy of ‘And Nothing But The Bass’. Then at last year’s Edinburgh Festival, we were on a radio show together, and since then i’ve been to a couple of ‘senseless nights, and have been to see his double act with Barry Cryer a few times too. A very very talented man.

I think after that day, my no. 1 skill of the night will just be staying awake!

Soundtrack – Kris Delmhorst, ‘Songs For A Hurricane’.

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So long, David

From the BBC News Site –

“Work and Pensions Secretary David Blunkett has resigned after a meeting with Tony Blair in Downing Street.
Mr Blunkett had been under pressure after breaking the ministerial code of conduct over paid work he took while he was out of Cabinet.”

Oh well, see ya David – will we miss you? Er, no. Blunkett has for a long while been one of the scarier members of a particularly scary cabinet. His track record as home secretary put him closer to Michael Howard as Tory home secretary than it did any Labour predecessor. His draconian pronouncements about immigration, asylum and the like were horrific to anyone with any sense of compassion for the people fleeing persecution or destitution in their country of origin. ‘Lock ’em up in camps’ says David. Er, thanks.

And now he’s gone – the catalogue of screw-ups over this ministerial code thing is a pretty huge. The scariest one was him accepting the directorship of a DNA testing company – a company that was in the line to apply for contracts with both his previous department, the home office, and his current one, the departkment of work and pensions. No conflict of interests there then. And he bought 15 grand’s worth of shares in the company… but clearly his professional conduct as a cabinet minister would never have been compromised by that. No siree.

Daft bastard – he’s screwed up (again), and is out of the cabinet (again). And I’m rather glad to see the back of him. His appt. in the early years of the Blair government was seen by most as a good thing – he had a fab leftie track record, and being blind, it meant that there was now at least some disability representation on the front bench. No enough, but there was some. But he turned out to be a mad dictator, ranting about law and order and passing all manner of laws designed to turn Britain into a police state.

It remains to be seen who takes his place at Work and Pensions – Charles Clark hasn’t done a great job at Home Secretary; again, we were hoping he’d back pedal on some of Blunkett’s more fascistic pronouncements, but sadly not… Clark was doing a better job in Education…

Soundtrack – Ralph Towner with Glen Moore, ‘Trios Solos’.

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Great bassist with a great bass resource…

Stefan Redtenbacher is a bass-buddy who’s head of bass at the ACM in Guildford, fronts his own kick-ass funk band, and does lots of sessions. He’s also a very funny man indeed.

He’s just redesigned his website, and included as part of it loads of great funk transcriptions downloadable as PDFs for free! Seriously, this is about the most useful resource online for bassists that I’ve come across in years. Loads of fantastic classic lines for free. If you’re a bassist you need to check it out – funkbassonline.com will also redirect to the same page.

And while you’re there, check out his last album, ‘Falling From Insanity’. It’s great, and exceedingly funky.

Soundtrack – Ralph Towner, ‘Ana’.

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