Tag: london

Posted on

Another magical Jonatha gig

Tonight’s gig was at , a half hour set, opening the evening (don’t know who the other bands were, didn’t stick around). Another stunning gig – the room was packed, but as it holds about 45 that wasn’t hard (they say the capacity is 60, but I can’t imagine getting 60 people in a room that size!)

Playing songs from the new CD, from Steady Pull and from Plumb, it was lovely to hear Jonatha do a slightly longer set than at the Bedford. She even managed to play a piano with no sustain piano and make it work, which is pretty skillful, if y’all ask me.

and Not-At-All-Evil-Dan came along, at my suggestion, and were both mightily impressed. Also bumped into Andy Piercy, who produced one of the Johnny Markin records I played on in the mid 90s, which was a night surprise. He loved the gig too. Everyone loved it, she’s a genius.

So don’t miss the rest of the London gigs!

Soundtrack – Dream Ticket on BBC 6 Music (who just read out my mini-review of the Jonatha gig).

Posted on

After a 10 year wait…

…I finally got to see live this evening. The venue was in Balham, hosted by the legendary Tony Moore.

Jonatha played five songs – Back In The Circus, Red Dress, It Matters Now, Linger and Because I Told You So – all of them incredible, all of them worth the 10 year wait. Fortunately it won’t be another 10 years, as she’s got lots of London gigs coming up, and those of you that are within about 2000 miles of London owe it to yourselves to catch one of her gigs. She really is that good. We talking Joni Mitchell/Bruce Cockburn/Paul Simon good. Up there with the greatest. No shit. This is your chance to see her play in a tiny venue, and say you were there first… well, ignoring the first seven albums… :o)

So, go to her website, listen to the albums (I think you can stream all her albums there…) check the gig list, but tickets and I’ll see you there (except tomorrow, cos it’s sold out and I was too late trying to get a ticket).

Posted on

A like-minded teacher

There are a lot of really really bad bass teachers around. I know ‘cos I end up having to undo their efforts when students come to me with some really twisted ways of thinking about music, and some odd ideas about the student teacher relationship. So it’s great when I find a teacher who is speaking the same language as me.

is arguably the best bass tuition book writer working today. His books are always full of great material, and contain precious little filler material. I recommend them highly. He’s also an amazing player (come on Ed, do a solo album NOW!!), but I’d ever read the page about private teaching on his site before. Go and read it – he says all the right things, and I’m certain he lives up to them. It’s just a shame he lives in Tempe Arizona, or I’d definitely take a lesson or two with him.

Maybe I should start a list of teachers I would recommend. It’d be a pretty short list at the moment, given that I don’t really know that many other teachers, and even fewer whose work I would vouch for.

is another bass teacher I admire greatly, and the only person I’ve had a bass lesson from since I left college. He’s also one of my favourite bassists, and has recently released an amazing CD along with called ‘Get Happy’ – you can get it from Todd’s website – it’s one of my favourite CDs of the last year, and shows just how adept a chordal instrument 6 string bass is – Todd’s bass arguably sounds better than a guitar would along with Kristin’s voice as it stays out of her range, leaving more room for her. Add to that Kristin’s marvellous swinging upright bass playing and Kendall Kaye’s drumming and you’ve got one fantastic record. Again, it’s a shame that Todd’s tucked away in the mountains above Los Angeles, or I’d be getting regular lessons with him too!

soundtrack – McGill/Manring/Stevens, ‘Controlled By Radar’; , ‘Back In The Circus’ and ‘Plumb’ (don’t forget she’s playing a load of gigs in London, starting next Tuesday!!!!); , ‘Grand’; , ‘Entremundo’ and ‘Oriental Bass’ (Renaud is my new bass hero – the most frightening chops and musicality that I’ve ever heard from an upright bassist. Get these CDs!!)

Tags – , .

Posted on

Things to Do In London When You're… In London

A couple of events that deserve a heads up, not involving me (more of those coming in the next day or so…)

Firstly, Jenny Eclair is doing a one-woman show at The Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, called The Andy Warhol Syndrome. It’s a play in which Jenny plays a former reality TV star, and it’s fab. I’ve seen it twice. It’s great, funny, moving etc. Go see it.

Click here for the details. There a couple of cheap ticket offers that look good value…

The second one is that one of my favourite singer/songwriters is finally coming to London! has a whole run of gigs coming up in London in tiny venues. If there’s any justice in the world, she’ll be playing the Brixton Academy in 6 months, so go and see her now while you can – the dates are on the tour dates page on her website – she’s playing the Bedford in Balham, The Betsy Trotwood in Farringdon and the 12 bar in the west end. I’ll be going to as many of the gigs as I possibly can. She’s a genius, up there with Joni Mitchell, , etc. in my list of faves. Truly marvellous. Take friends with you – you’ll thank me, and they’ll thank you.

Both of these shows are not to be missed. Great stuff. Go on, go and book tickets now, I dare you.

Tags – ,

Posted on

Tour diary vol II

So, we were up to the Espresso Garden gig, which was lots of fun. The following night (Thursday) was another gig with Michael Manring, this time at The Brookdale Lodge – this place has a heck of a lot of weird mythology around it, involving mobsters, prostitutes, ghosts and god-knows-what-else. Very odd place.

As a gig venue, however, it rules. Firstly because dinner is served in the restaurant, which has a river running through the middle of it (I kid you not), and secondly because the music room has a great PA, a marvellous soundman, and a nice stage to play on.

Thanks to a borrowed mixer, I was able to do my ‘proper’ setup for the first time on the tour, with the Echoplexes in an auxiliary channel and the MPX-G2 in stereo. The sound was fantastic. Accugroove had lent me two identical cabinets to the ones I use at home, and a poweramp, so I was pretty much rocking.

The gig went well, though the big storm outside meant the audience wasn’t huge (brookdale is up in the Santa Cruz mountains, a pretty hazardous drive in the rain!)

So we’re up to Friday – Friday I set off from Santa Cruz, called in at the new AccuGroove world HQ (very nice it is too!) on my way up to meet Jeremy Cohen in Berkley. Jeremy and I have been chatting online for years, and have met up at past NAMM shows and last year in London when he and his wife were visiting. Now it was my turn to hang out on their turf, and then take Jeremy to see Kaki King at Freight and Salvage, a fantastic acoustic music club, with a lot of history, great sound and a fab view from everywhere in the room.

Saturday was masterclass day in San Jose – after Bob the original host falling ill, Mark Wright at AccuGroove became Mr Fixit and organised for the clinic to move to the Koinonia coffee shop, which was where the AccuParty in the evening was going to be anyway.

The day was a big success, the guys who came all asked lots of great questions, played well, and seemed to take lots away from it (if you were there, don’t forget to keep the discussions going over at the forum).

The clinic was followed by the AccuParty – a fun little hang out, time for people to try out the AccuGroove cabinets, and a chance for me to play some cool duets with Edo Castro.

Sunday – breakfast with the Turners, then left their lovely home and headed north to Novato to see more of my favourite people in California, Anderson Page, who works for Modulus and has been a good friend for many years, and Laura. After all the driving around gigging and teaching of the previous week, an evening in watching Pink Floyd live at Pompeii, drinking gorgeous wine (a present from Jim at the masterclass – future masterclass attendees take note!) and catching up was just what the doctor ordered. A marvellous evening on every level.

Monday morning I took my basses into Modulus – Joe Perman, who used to work there, has come back, and in the interim, my carved top fretted 6 was built, so he wanted a look at that, and while there sorted out the set up and intonation for me (thanks Joe!).

From there, I drove up to Sacramento to see Mike Roe. Mike’s the singer/guitarist in the 77s, who I’ve opened for in Sacramento before, and also in Orbis, an ambient side-project who opened for Michael Manring and I a couple of times. Dinner with Mike and Devon followed by watching about half of ‘Standing In The Shadows Of Motown’ made for another great evening.

Tuesday following breakfast I set off back to the Bay Area, calling in to see Michael Manring on the way, to discuss the next step in our plan for solo bass world domination. And then it was back to AccuGroove-land, for dinner with Mark Wright and family, and talking long into the night before flying home Wednesday.

All in all, a great trip – meeting up with so many great people in such a short space of time give me faith in the world. It often seems like a crappy place with the good people few and far between, but there are loads of ’em around. Much fine music was made, and much fun had.

Soundtrack – the CDs I took with me included – Talking Heads, ‘Stop Making Sense’; Athlete, ‘Vehicles and Animals’; Iain Archer, ‘Flood The Tanks’; Peter Gabriel, ‘Greatest Hits’; The Cure, ‘Greatest Hits’; Jing Chi, ‘3D’; Prefab Sprout, ‘Steve McQueen’; Julie Lee, ‘Stillhouse Road’; Pierce Pettis, ‘Everything Matters’; The Dum Dums, ‘It Goes Without Saying’; John Scofield, ‘Up All Night’; Bruce Cockburn, ‘Live’.

Posted on

Jerry Springer – The Opera

No, that’s not just a clever heading, it’s an actual show. For those of you outside the UK, it’s a stage play that’s been on in London’s West End for about two years, getting rave reviews and packed houses. The basic premise is it’s a satire on the Springer Show, that ends up with Jerry getting shot and going to hell.

The BBC filmed it, and showed in on TV on Saturday night, and what’s noteworthy about that is the volume of complaint from Christians, accusing the show (that 99% of them knew nothing about, and were quoting made-up figures for) of blasphemy and obscenity. One of the marvellously outlandish claims was that the show features ‘8000 swear-words’ – yeah, only if you multiply up each time the chorus sings one by the number of people in the chorus (27)… what bollocks.

So, anyway, the program drew the largest number of complaints ever for a BBC show, and not only did it draw complaints but there were demonstrations outside the BBC buildings around the country, with people burning their TV licences, and waving placards.

…and then people wonder why I’m reticent to talk about matters of faith, when I’m likely to be lumped in with people who do things like that.

What a moronic thing to complain about, what a disgusting waste of campaigning time and effort. What a feeble target. What a huge embarrasment to thinking people of faith the world over.

There are so many huge injustices in the world that christians should be complaining about, from unjust wars to unfair trade laws, third world debt to child prostitution, institutional racism in the police force to potentially rigged elections in so-called democratic countries. And these schmoes pick on a TV show. A marginal TV show, on the BBC’s ‘arts’ channel. A show that none of them had seen. A show about which they felt it neccesary to make up stats to back up their claims of it’s shock-value. Good God.

Why on earth can’t these same self-righteous moralising masses get of their lazy arses and complain about shit that really matters? God, I get so angry at stuff like this. I missed the show – why? cos I was volunteering in a homeless shelter. Does that make me Mr Worthy? Not at all, I do one night every other week for three months of the year, while the people who really deserve us to be supporting their protests are out changing people’s lives with little regard for their own safety and comfort.

I’m not suggesting everyone should like Jerry Springer The Opera, I’m not even saying it’s a bad thing to complain about. But at least watch it first!! And calling for the broadcast to be cancelled is madness. What kind of weird country are we living in?

Once again, the outcry against a marginal bit of art has turned it into a huge hit. The viewing figures for JSTO will almost certainly be over double what they would have been. The BBC news have had a field-day reporting on the complaints, flagging up the broadcast every hour or so on their news reports, making a huge deal out of it. The same thing happened with ‘The Last Temptation Of Christ’, which wasn’t even looking like getting a full cinema release until some overly zealous complainants got their teeth into a campaign and made it a box office smash.

Maybe I need to release an album with really disgusting titles to all my tunes and get organisations like Christian Voice to do my publicity for me? (for some reason this bunch of particularly zealous muppets ended up getting tonnes of airtime over the campaign… even amongst the people who protested, they were particularly odeous. Poor old God – with friends like these, who needs enemies?)

Please, please, please – channel your campaigning energy and righteous anger into things that are going to change the lives of those who have no power to change things for themselves. Support the Make Povery History Campaign, lobby parliment for trade justice, write to your MP about the rights of asylum seekers and the homeless in your borough, push for better recycling, start a soup run, volunteer with a charity overseas, send money to the relief effort in Asia, scream on the street corners about the tragedy of the Tamil communities that have been cut off from the aid that’s going to Sri Lanka. Anything, anything but whinging about TV shows.

So who’s up for joining my new Messianic Taoist group?

Posted on

A Christmas pressie for my bass!

Well, it’s been two years since I last changed them, so I thought as a christmas pressie I’d give my 6 string fretless a new set of strings… Woah! It feels like a completely different instrument (that might also be down to me ill-advisedly tinkering with the truss rod at the same time…) – it suddenly sounds all bright and twangy! They’ll break in in a week or two, I’m sure, but it’s a huge difference from two year old flats to brand new ones… Now, do I do the 6 string fretted at the same time? Those have only been on for just over a year… :o)

Also discovered in changing the strings that thanks to not really playing much bass over the festive period thus far, my intonation has gone to shit… time to put in some practice, methinks!

In other news, The Small Person and I were due to meet up with Andrew AKA Calamateur today, but got so snarled up in traffic on the way, that we had to abort the visit and head home – the worst traffic I’ve been in in London for many a year… :o(

On a more upbeat note, I’ve just had an email from Michael Manring inviting me to do a couple of gigs with him at the end of January in CA, which will be a lot of fun!

BTW, a couple of people have emailed/AIM’d in defense of Lost In Translation, but nothing even vaguely convincing has been said of yet…

Soundtrack – Jonatha Brooke, ‘Plumb’ (one of the greatest albums ever made – she’s coming to do some gigs in the UK soon, finally!!)

Posted on

The two best suggestions for the betterment of society in 2004

So, the two best suggestions I’ve heard all year both came from the radio –

the first was on Danny Baker’s Breakfast Show on BBC London earlier on in the year, in the run up to the Mayoral elections here in London. Danny was getting people to phone in with their suggestions for a platform on which to campaign. The finest suggestion came from a guy who rang in to say that if he was elected mayor, he’s make it so that whenever one of the new bendy buses in London went round a corner, it would play accordian music… :o)

The second came from a phone in show on BBC 5 Live, on the theme of what could do done to make Snooker more interesting. Someone rang in suggesting that they trained hamsters to play in goal across each of the pockets on the table!

Definitely two suggestions that would make the world a better place if they were adopted in 2005…

Soundtrack – Stevie Wonder, ‘Songs In The Key Of Life’; Strongbad, ‘Strongbad Sings and other type hits’; Finley Quaye, ‘Maverick A Strike’, and the songs for the wedding I played at yesterday…

Posted on

More big changes at the BBC

regular readers of this ‘ere blog will know that I’m a huge fan of the BBC – I think any Brit that has travelled abroad comes to appreciate the unique resource we have in the BBC, and as the media in general seems to get more and more commercialised, the Beeb is a bastion of publicly funded journalistic marvellousness in the middle of it all. Their track record on commissioning great drama and comedy is fantastic, and their kids programs are the best there is.

So I’m always a little uneasy when I hear talk of big changes at the BBC, such as those announced yesterday in a talk by the Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson.

Thousands of jobs are to go, and loads of BBC stuff is going to move to Manchester… I’ll watch this one unfold with a cautious eye.

This spawned a discussion on BBC London about whether a licence fee funded BBC was still valid, and true to form, much of the genetic detritus that makes up the listenership to John Gaunt’s show in the morning seemed to think that they got better value and programming with their Satellite and Cable channels. Sometimes I despair for the future of the country. Most of that despair comes from listening to John Gaunt’s show. Maybe he just attracts obnoxious morons?

Anyway, if there are any referenda on the future of the BBC, do us all a favour and vote for it keeping it’s funding base just the way it is, please. The licence fee would be great value if it just covered radio, or just covered the BBC website, let alone the TV as well… Gawd bless the BBC.

Soundtrack – Zakir Hussain, ‘Making Music’; Pierce Pettis, ‘Great Big World’; Gillian Welch, ‘Time (The Revelator)’; Jonatha Brooke, ‘Plumb’; Indigo Girls, ‘4.5 – the best of’.

Posted on

General update…

OK, I’ll fill you in on general goings on over the last week or so.

Last weekend was spent in Holland and Germany. The event I went over for was the European Bass Day, run by Marco Schoots, who publishes the Dutch bass mag, and runs a record label – an amazing guy. I was booked to play solo (actually, I was booked to play last year, but there was a pretty major breakdown in communication with the people who had offered to fund the trip, and I ended up not going… but that’s a whole other story…) Anyway, I was booked to play solo, and also with one of my favourite singers/bassists, John Lester – John, as you’ll know is the guy that opened for Michael Manring and I back in March on our tour here in England, and neither Michael nor I can work out why he isn’t a megastar yet – amazing voice, great songs, friendly engaging stage presence and a fabulous bassist… I’ll never understand this industry…

So, I went over to Amsterdam a day early to see John, to rehearse a few of his tunes and hang out in Amsterdam (oh, life is hard for your friendly neighbourhood solo bassist!). That was Saturday, and Sunday we drove to Viersen, just over the German border, where the Bass Day was being held.

My feelings about bass-days in general are mixed – I really like the idea of getting together with a load of bassists, and I love the chance to catch up with all my bass-chums that are at these events. But I really can’t cope with listening to hours and hours of machine gun slapping; after about half an hour it all starts to sound like someone drilling for oil. I guess it’s just me, ‘cos lots of people seemed to really be into it, but it really gets tired pretty quick. Guitar-fests and drum-fests are the same.

On a gigging level, it tends to work in my favour, as I’m often there as the alternative to the slap-monsters, and certainly both my set and John Lester’s went down really well – good crowds, well received, and quite a few CDs sold.

And it was great to see so many friends there – Stefan Redtenbacher, Jan Olof Strandberg, Jono Heale, Stevie Williams, amd even one very nice guy who’d travelled from Germany to see the gig with Michael Manring in London a couple of weeks ago!

So a fine time was had, and we stayed up in a bar back in Venlo til the early hours of the morning.

Monday was back to England, and Tuesday we collected the cats. So the rest of the week has been pretty cat-centric for The Small Person and I, discovering that these truly are remarkable, friendly and utterly adorable little animals. How anyone could have given them up is beyond either of us. It’s been a week of many snuggles with our new feline family. We always felt so lucky to have had five years with The Aged Feline, and there’s no way that any new cats could replace him, but it’s great to be able to give a home to more abandoned cats, and to then find that they have personalities bigger than most drummers is such a great bonus!

Teaching has gone mad of late – I’ve been doing loads and getting loads more emails from people wanting to learn, travelling from all over the southern half of england, and wales! I really really enjoy teaching, so it’s great to be in demand, but I don’t want to get into a position where I have to start turning people away… maybe I should make street-team membership a prerequisite of having lessons, and whittle them down a bit that way! :o)

Which brings us up to Friday night, when I went to a comedy gig – I’m a big fan of Rich Hall, but this was the first time I’d seen him live, doing his ‘Otis Lee Crenshaw’ failed country singer routine. Very very funny indeed, don’t miss him if he’s gigging near you. He was on at Club Senseless, which is hosted by Ronnie Golden – a comedy songwriter, who plays at the club with his band Ronnie and The Rex – he’s great, very funny, very clever. My only problem with the club is the amount of smoke. The Kings Head in Crouch End has a very low ceiling and really shitty air conditioning, so I end up leaving half way through anything I go to there, choking to death. BRING ON THE SMOKING BAN, says I.

And Yesterday, after a 7 hour teaching day, I went over to Oxford to see Jez and Susan Enan. I hadn’t seen Susan in ages, probably not since I played on her EP, but she’s been very busy working on a new album, getting a management deal and is about to move to the states and become a star. She fab, and it was very very nice to catch up with her and hear a few of the rough mixes from the new CD.

But I got back so late that I slept in and missed church today… doh!

anyway, here’s another piccie of the Fairly Aged Felines –

Soundtrack – Keith Jarrett Trio, ‘Tokyo 96’; Julie Lee, ‘Stillhouse Road’; Eric Roche, ‘The Perc U lator’; John Martyn, ‘Solid Air’; Lifehouse, ‘Stanley Climbfall’.

© 2008 Steve Lawson and developed by Pretentia. | login

Top