Tag: last.fm

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A Saturday doing not much

I so rarely get a saturday off! I’m really relishing this one – it’s nearly 3pm and I’m still not dressed, just sat here faffing about online in my dressing gown. Actually, does uploading gig dates to MySpace.com count as work? If it does, i’ve been working, but it certainly doesn’t feel like work compared to my usual 5/6/7 hours of teaching.

The reason for the day off was that there was a possibility that I was going to be flying out to Verona to play at a bass-day gig there, but it didn’t come off, so I’m here and happy and mellow and enjoying the rest.

Especially as yesterday was a bit of a frantic day flyering (echoes of Edinburgh in that sentence). Headed into town late morning to meet Dweez from the forum for lunch and to give him a big pile of flyers to dish out (gotta love them street-team lovelies!), and then off up Upper Street in Islington putting flyers and posters in all the little cafes along there that have flyer racks and walls devoted to posters for local events. The split between the corporate and the family-run couldn’t be more stark. All those places where decisions are purely made on their financial efficacy wouldn’t be seen dead allowing flyers for events not associated with the brand to be put in them. All the little funky family-owned cafes/bars/restaurants etc. are more than happy to help promote events in their local community. Good peoples, one and all.

After that, it was up to the Gallery in Camden to deliver more posters and flyers, and to see Alex who works there. A fun visit, for sure.

Where else for flyers? Ah, there’s Mole Jazz in King’s Cross. Back on the tube (via my lovely new Oyster Card) and head off to King’s Cross. Who’s this coming towards me carrying more camera equipment than your average hollywood film set? Why, it’s Steve Brown, photographer extraordinaire, and carrier of much photo-gear. Serendipity like this definitely calls for a coffee break. So we head off in search of Mole Jazz, which no long exists and is now a ‘Subway’ sandwich shop, so we find nearby little cafe and stop for lovely chat. It’s coincidences like this that make London special – bumping into your friends when you all live in a village of 30 people isn’t a surprise, it’s just called ‘going outdoors’. In a city of 11 million people, it’s a bit less likely, and therefor to be treasured.

It occurs to me while chatting to Steve that the commuter jazz series at the QEH (where it has transplanted from the RFH while the renovations are taking place) would be a great place to hand out some flyers, as well as to see some of the old RFH commuter jazz peoples. So i head down there, only to discover that it’s not every week, and this is an off-week. Ah well, at least I got to see the new shops ‘n’ cafes development on the Riverside bit of the RFH – it’s lovely, and I’ll have to investigate there further.

So, where next with flyers? Darbucka, of course! Posters and flyers delivered, time to head home. A knackering day, and one that earns me a mellow Saturday, fo shizzle.

Soundtrack – Sam Phillips, ‘Fan Dance’; Renaud Garcia-Fons, ‘Entremundo’; Prefab Sprout, ‘Steve McQueen’.

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I really need a 'important papers' folder

Just spent the last few days panicking about not being able to find the paper part of my driving licence. (for not UK readers, we have a two part driving licence – credit-card sized photo card like everyone else, and then a bigger paper bit that has loads more info on it, including any endorsements… so mine says ‘proudly uses modulus basses, accugroove amps and elites strings’ on it… or something.)

Anyway, the reason I was looking for it is that I’ve got a speeding fine, and need to send off my licence to have the points put on in (points being the real endorsements – they don’t really list your bass gear on your licence here… honest).

The way it works is that if it’s an ‘SP30’ offence (not very much over the speed limit) then you get a £60 fine and 3 points. If you get 12 points in 3 years, you get a ban, and I think, a £1000 fine. At the moment I’ve got 6 points on my licence, but they cease to be there after three years, so my first three are coming off, and the new ones are taking their place. So I’ll still have 6 after this. Which is OK. if I had 9, I’d be panicking a bit. And I was panicking, though not because of the points.

ah, we’re back to my lost driving licence. Yes, turned the room upside down… well, the room’s already upside-down, so I guess I just fluffed some bits of paper around a bit. But couldn’t find it. Then was thinking ‘when did I last have it’ which was clearly a trip to the States, which was before I bought my wallet, so what would it be kept in? My bag. I check all the pockets and there it is. So while I’ve been looking for it, I’ve been carrying it around with me.

So now I need a folder for such things – driving licence, passport, etc. Somewhere labeled clearly and easy for a loser like me to find.

At least I’ll know where it is for the next few weeks, while it’s off having the points added to it at the police station.

Soundtrack – Martyn Joseph, ‘Whoever It Was Who Brought Me Here Will Have To Take Me Home’ (what a great title. what great music!)

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Dropping bombs on the moral highground…

over in The forum, Cryptic just posted a link to This article in the Independent by Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan. He highlights the complicity of the UK government in torture round the world, both by using the ‘evidence’ gleaned in such a way, and by actively aiding the torturers by shipping off suspects to be tortured.

Now, how embarrassed are you to be British right now? This morning I was listening to the radio, hearing Billy Bragg interviewed about a project writing songs with terminal cancer patients – Billy is one of a handful of things in which I take pride as an englishman – he couldn’t have come from anywhere else, and is a national treasure. So I got out of bed feeling better than usual about being from here.

Then I read this article, and it’s catalogue of state-sanctioned abuse, torture and murder in Uzbekistan, with the tacit blessing of the UK government.

That we would be silent on the subject of torture would be a great evil. That there are people actively pushing to change the law in favour of using confessions acquired under torture in British courts is so unspeakably foul that I’m at a loss for how to describe it. And we have the audacity to invade Iraq over claims about Saddam’s human rights record. Yes, he was a sick, twisted murdering scumbag, just like the rest of the sick, twisted murdering scumbags we’re now treating as allies and friends in the ‘war on terror’. It’s unbelieveable.

thank God for people like Craig Murray – his own website looks like a great repository of information on the sickness of the euphamistic crusade that is ‘the war on terror’.

Time to contact your MP?

Soundtrack – Jonatha Brooke, ’10 cent wings’; Dave Matthews Band, ‘Under The Table And Dreaming’ (was there ever a more blatant case of a band getting hugely successful making vibrant interesting music and then going very bland very quickly in a quest for even greater commercial success?? UTTAD is such a lovely record, such an interesting album to listen to, so much going on, and it’s successor, Crash, was pretty damn fine too. After that? Forget it.)

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More reasons to adopt elderly cats…

Despite being a huge cat-fan, I’ve long been concerned about the numbers of birds and tiny mammals killed by domestic cats in the UK. So this article in the guardian, forwarded to me by BDB, was scary in that it puts a figure on it – up to 300 MILLION birds killed a year by domestic cats! That’s a terrifying number, especially when some of our song birds are endangered.

So what to do? Well, there’s some obvious advice in the article about not feeding birds in places where the cats are going to jump on them. It also talks about belling them, but there are counter arguments that it’s pretty distressing for the cat to have a bell tinkling away round its neck all the time (as it would be for us, I’m sure).

The best alternative for cat lovers is to a) get all their cats neutered – there are too many cats around anyway, way more than there are responsible owners – and next time you get a new cat, instead of getting kittens, adopt an older cat, preferably a ‘house cat’ – one that for whatever reason needs to stay in-doors, or is a proper aged feline and thus can’t catch anything anyway. They are harder for the rescue centres to home, but make MUCH better pets than kittens do – more mellow, friendly, cuddly, less skittish, less likely to destroy curtains etc.

While the Fairly Aged Felines do go out, they don’t go out much and certainly don’t go far, and in the year we’ve had them have so far brought in one bird between them, which was most likely dead before they found it. In the winter, when birds are most likely to be feeding in our garden on the bird feeders, the boys stay inside anyway.

So, there you go – aged felines are not only the cat-friendly choice, they’re the bird-friendly choice too…

Soundtrack – Mark Lockheart, ‘Moving Air’.

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I really don't get this…

From the BBC news site –

“Defence secretary John Reid is “keeping an open mind” about whether a World War I soldier shot for cowardice should be pardoned, the High Court has been told.”

How can someone be shot for ‘cowardice’???? Apparently the bloke in question refused to fight, was court marshaled, and then executed. The case hangs on whether or not he was shell-shocked.

I’m really really troubled by a world in which someone can be shot for choosing not to kill. I appreciate that the middle of a war is probably not the best place to decide that, but to force someone to fight seems just as barbaric as shooting people in the first place.

I don’t know what he reasoning was, or if he was actually up for a scrap but was indeed shell-shocked. Either way, the lack of a pardon now seems sick in the extreme. That his family were punished by having his pension taken away so they ended up homeless is another injustice.

I’m often amazed at how far the world has come in the last century. Even in the last 10 years. A documentary on last night charted the relationship between the emergence of pop culture in the 50s and the changing attitudes to sex, drugs and gender politics. Some of the thoughts and ideas that were common place in the 60s and 70s seem so bizarre now. Others seem quite attractive. The huge leaps forward in terms of equality for women, gay rights, racial integration etc. are counterbalanced by the way the world has been divided up by the growth of a consumer culture and a transnational business model where entire countries are turned into sweatshops. I doubt the concept of fair-trade was much of an issue back then (though apparently the Salvation Army started a fair trade match factory in London in response to the dreadful treatment of match-makers by Bryant and May in the late 1800s, paying them four times as much and changing the work to protect their health).

Some things about the modern world are frightening – gun crime, the massive rise in teenage pregnancy and STIs, etc. – but on the whole, I’d rather be here now than there then. I’m a modern at heart. I don’t want to live in world where women are oppressed, black people are enslaved and people who refuse to fight in wars are executed. Sadly, all three things still exist. There’s still work to be done.

Soundtrack – Cathy Burton, ‘Speed Your Love’ (a really really lovely album – it’s a strange world where Charlotte Church’s crap attempt at being a popstar results in top 10 hits, but Cathy hasn’t got a deal… Buy this, and feel smug that you’re one of the chosen.)

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One thing to improve your life…

I occasionally get asked by students what the most important skill I’ve learned since I left college and went professional as a musician is. The answer often surprises them – learning to touch-type. I can’t even begin to imagine how long it would take me to do all my admin/web/email/etc. stuff if I couldn’t touch-type. Even keeping a blog would be unfeasible given the length of time it was take to get any thoughts down on the page.

The method I used was Mavis Beacon’s typing course – it’s only $20, and will save you that much in work-hours in the first three days after you’ve finished the course.

Go on, learn to type properly!

Soundtrack – listening through a load of the old duet sessions that inspired the idea for the Recycle Collective – earlier on it was stuff with BJ Cole, now it’s stuff with Andrew Booker.

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A recycled week!

This has been a busy week of recycled collective stuff – I’ve done the flyers and sen them off to the printers, written the press release, been tweaking the website (no doubt to be tweaked further as I change my mind about how I want to pitch the whole thing), and sent out the first gig date to all the listings people with the press release.

Now I’m trying to get some radio interest, and get the web-promo moving.

the thing I’m most proud of thus far is the look of it all – from the website to the flyers to the press release, there’s definitely a unified look and feel that says what I want it to say. What fun!

Tonight I’m playing a benefit gig for the Pitstop Ploughshares people, who disarmed an american plane that was on the runway at Shannon airport, bound for Iraq, and are in court for it next week. The whole area of civil disobiedience is a fascinating one – what actions are worth breaking the law over? – and I think protest at the illegal invasion and occupation of a country is as good a reason as any.

Hopefully the court case will raise the profile of the anti-war feeling in Ireland, where a lot of people are livid at it being used as a stopping off point for US planes on their way to Iraq. see warontrial.com for more details.

Soundtrack – Jenny Scheinman, ’12 Songs’; Shaun Colvin, ‘Cover Girl’.

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All is well with the world

OK, so the labour party is run by fascists, public transport is a disaster, London’s getting set to be ruined by the Olympics… But Danny Baker is back on Radio London so all is well with the world.

Oh yes, for the last few months, the radio dial has been Bakerless – in his place the broadcasting car-crash that is Joanne Goode, and now the antipodean waste of oxygen that called himself Jono Coleman. But now Danny is back, in the afternoons, and the BBC London 94.9 running order is looking a lot better. Vanessa Feltz is on from 9-12 – she was dreadful in the afternoons, but seems to handle topical serious phone-in better than celeb gossip nonsense. Robert Elms still has the lunch time slot, which he does so well, and now Danny in the afternoons. What’s more, he has Amy Lame back on as well.

All is indeed well with the world.

Soundtrack – David Bowie, ‘Reality’ (marvellous stuff – it’s been a while since Bowie last did two really good albums in a row. Let’s hope he keeps this up); The Pixies, ‘Bossanova’ (one of the Pixies albums I never got round to buying first time out – genius is parts, but it’s no Doolittle).

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A very fine Big Idea

never let it be said that Britain doesn’t have a vibrant and burgeoning jazz scene.

Mark Lockheart is one of the busiest and most respected sax players in the country, and for his current tour he’s assembled a fantastic group featuring four marvellous saxophonists with a killer rhythm section. It’s pretty rare to see four sax players in a contemporary jazz setting in the UK – it’s not often that anyone can afford to take that kind of project on the road, but Mark has managed it.

Due to my having a gig on the same night, I won’t be able to make it to the London gig next thursday, so last night, Orphy and I headed out to Oxford to see ‘Mark Lockheart’s Big Idea’ play at The Spin, a weekly jazz gig at The Wheatsheaf in Oxford. I’d heard a lot about the gig from friends who’d played there, so was looking forward to checking out the venue too.

The gig was fantastic – playing mainly music from Mark’s latest album Moving Air, with Mark, Julian Siegel , Steve Buckley and Rob Townsend on saxes and bass clarinets, Martin France on drums John Parricelli on guitar and Dudley Phillips on bass.

Mark has a very distinctive writing style, that can be traced all the way back to the tunes he wrote for seminal british jazz outfit, Loose Tubes in the mid 80s. The horn arrangements are stunningly beautiful, and he made full use of the dynamic possibilities of having four horns on stage. Parricelli was on rare form, playing beautifully and blending with the sound of the horns magnificently.

Fortunately, the room was packed, and the audience were hugely appreciative. It’d be mad to suggest that Britain was in any way deficient in the jazz world – I guess the problem, as it is in most parts of the world, is a lack of places to play anything other than standards. The main jazz gigs in London are restaurant gigs, with venues like The New Vortex and Ronnie Scott’s doing their bit to promote interesting vibrant music. It’s still tough to find a gig, moreso now that the foyer gigs are the Festival Hall are on hold while the renovate the building.

So, in the spirit of last night’s gig, I’m going to offer you a beginner’s guide to the British Jazz scene – a handful of essential CDs that prove our place alongside the Americans and Scandinavians, while still all sounding uniquely British…

– The obvious place to start is with Theo Travis – his last two quartet CDs, Heart Of The Sun and Earth To Ether are both outstanding.
– Next up would be Ben Castle – his last album Blah Street is marvellous – clever, funny and intelligent in all the right ways.
– Of course Mark Lockheart who inspired this list in the first place – his latest, Moving Air is fabulous.
– And then there’s Mo Foster – any of his records are worth getting, but particularly Time To Think is gorgeous.
– Another one featuring Mark Lockheart, the Works is Patrick Wood’s amazing quartet – what Weather Report would have sounded like if they’d grown up in London. Beware Of The Dog is one of my favourite instrumental albums from any part of the world, not just the UK.

If you were to buy that lot (and I think you should), you’d have a pretty decent representation of why I’m excited about the future of British music, rather than wallowing in the despair that would ensue from burying yourself in the world of X-Factor, Pop Idol and the lame faecal mountain that is the pop charts.

Soundtrack – some tracks that I’ve been recording over the last three days with american fretless guitarist, Ned Evett – some really really cool stuff (to add to the stockpiles of other really really cool stuff that are sitting here waiting to be released!) – hopefully I’ll have an MP3 taster or two for you soon from this lot…

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'Forward With Technology'

or ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik’, as advertising men speaking cod-German say.

I’ve just bought meself an Oyster Card – prompted largely by the announcement that the cash price of tube tickets is going up, but oyster tickets are coming down. I guess the plan is to get more people prepaying for tickets, topping up either automatically or online, and therefor not clogging up ticket-halls with huge queues, and getting people in and out of the tube network quicker. Either way, the price decrease is welcome, and the increase isn’t, so I’m getting an Oyster card.

And what’s more, Oyster cards make a great bleeping noise when you go through the barriers. Very satisfying.

Britain’s public transport is currently a shambles. Well, not all of it, but certainly the london tube, and the national rail system are nowhere near of the standard they could and should be. Both are pretty much crippled by PFI, or the threat of PFI… The selling off of the Tube was one of those things that nobody, save people managing investment portfolios, wanted. Everyone except the government recognises that what’s needed is huge investment, on a level that won’t be profitable to the tube enough for it to work under private investment. That’s because the benefits won’t be felt by the Tube itself. it will be of benefit to London, make it more attractive to tourists, render cars a pain the ass, and generally improve access for all Londoners, but the necessary renovations will cost billions of pounds.

And I haven’t even started on just how far short of the legal requirements for disabled access the Tube system falls. Somewhere less than 10% of the stations are wheelchair accessible. What it must be like traveling by tube for a disabled person I dread to think. There’s no way that the PFI funding is going to prioritise disabled access – there’s no money to be made in helping cripples get round London, of course. They can just get their mobility busses, and rely on friends to ferry them around. Clearly their independence means nothing in this most modern of modern capital cities.

Anyway, I will soon be Oyster-boy, swanning in and out of tube stations without a care in the world.

Soundtrack – KD Lang, ‘Ingenue’.

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