Tag: london

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Bruce Cockburn gig pt 1

As you may or may not already know, I’m a bit of a Bruce Cockburn obsessive. He’s been my favourite singer/songwriter/guitarist/lyricist for over a decade, and I’ve got just about everything he’s ever released.

He’s currently on tour in the UK, and tonight I headed up to The Stables in Milton Keynes to see him play – my favourite musician at my favourite venue – how good does it get?

And it was as good as I could possibly have imagined. Better even. Just Bruce and Julie Wolf on stage – him on guitar, her on keys/accordian and BVs. Mix of stuff from the new CD and classics, including a couple of marvellous reworkings of tracks like World Of Wonders, Mighty Trucks Of Midnight and Nighttrain. All in all a marvellous gig – and what’s even better is I get to do it all again tomorrow in London – oh yes, I’ve got a ticket for the Forum as well (thanks to The Cheat for getting them…)

The other rather fun thing that happened this evening was having a bloke in the row in front say ‘don’t I know you?’ narrowing it down to Greenbelt, before asking my name, to which he responded ‘oh, I’ve been listening to your CDs for the last few days, had you on this morning in fact!’ – so there you go, with my hair tied back, I can almost go incognito. Still, rather nice to meet people who’ve been listening to my stuff at a Cockburn gig – what fine taste he must have – nice to meet you, bloke-in-the-row-in-front!

Soundtrack – right now, it’s Terje Rypdal, ‘Skywards’. This afternoon, Michael Manring, ‘Thonk’, Mark Knopfler, ‘The Ragpicker’s Dream’.

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Another MP3

Added another MP3 to the site, from the new CD… well, I didn’t add it today, it had already been added, but only the Street Team had access… …you should sign up for the street team if you want to swap your help in plugging the music for some exclusives, and hopefully cheap tickets to gigs in the future…

It’s be a webalicious couple of days – today I added a page to the site for the new album, and yesterday, I designed the site for the London Guitar Festival. I played at the festival last year, opening for Antonio Forcione, which was great fun. This year, I’m just on web duty.

oh, maybe you’d like the see the cover of the new CD –

– there you go.

The picture on the cover there is of Union Square in San Francisco – an urban open space! The rest of the sleeve is very nearly finished – I just need to add a picture of me, and we’re done.

Been listening to Sigur Ros a lot lately, and it inspired a couple of new sounds – some really mad distortion/reverb type things. Very nice.

Soundtrack – Right now, I’m listening to WYCE – Sarda’s laydee-friend is presenting the show. other recent stuff – Talk Talk, ‘Spirit Of Eden’; Sigur Ros, ‘Agaetis Byrjum’; Mo Foster, ‘Time To Think’; and the final mix of ‘For The Love OF Open Spaces’, and boy, does it sound fine!

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Updating the site

Did a bit of a site update yesterday and today – firstly I added a Paypal feature for selling CDs (and sold a load within minutes of it going live!), and then added a new MP3 from the new album with Theo Travis, called ‘For The Love Of Open Spaces’. The album is sounding so good, I’m really excited about it. The track in question is called ‘Uncle Bernie’ and I’ve taken a four and a half minute excerpt from the middle, just to whet your appetite for the rest of the album… I’ll change it in a week for another clip… :o) Had lots of good feedback already, so feel free to go and have a listen.

Been an interesting day chez stevie – the small person managed to spill tea all over her imac keyboard, which out of protest stopped working for a number of hours. much time was spent researching replacement keyboards and shops open on sunday. By about half an hour ago though, almost all the keys are back working, presumably as they dry out… hopefully by tomorrow morning it’ll all be back to normal.

Still, it was great fun dismantling the keyboard and washing all the keys individually!

soundtrackSigur Ros (can’t remember how to spell the title), Pierce Pettis, ‘State Of Grace’, Francis Dunnery, ‘Man’ – Francis is playing in London tonight, The Cheat has gone, and I was going to go with him, but never got round to it…

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You Call That Hot???

….London’s heatwave, described below, suddenly didn’t seem quite so amazing when I stepped off the ‘plane at Verona Brescia airport, and into a furnace. Now THAT’S hot!

What a marvellous time I’ve had for the last few days – great music, great people, great food, great weather.

The solo gig was at the Rivolta Art Restaurant (or something like that – not sure what the official name was) – a marvellous place in Rivotella, on the banks of Garda Lake. The gig was outside the front of the restaurant, so I had people who’d come just to listen, people who’d come to eat at the restaurant and people who were just walking by (which kind of reflects the healthy attitude to the arts that seems to be pretty widespread in that part of Italy, but that may just be the very groovy people I was spending my time with) – anyway, the gig went really well, despite a bizarre introduction from a slightly crap clowning troupe who decided to do a 10 minute show about 20 feet from where I was playing! Time to take a break… sold a pile of CDs, and paved the way for quite a few more shows in that part of Italy.

The next three days involved lots of recording – duo with fab guitar user/abuser, Luca Formentini, quartet with Luca and a rhythm section of Gianni Sabbioni and Frank Moreno, and trio with Luca and Moreno. The duo and Quartet were very good, Trio was good, but I think due to the kind of sound we’d go with the quartet, we slipped all too easily into trying the same thing, and in the quartet lineup I’d not been playing much in the way off basslines, leaving that to Gianni, so the trio was a little empty sounding when attempting the same thing…

Anyway, it was all good, got tonnes of stuff recorded.

Sunday night was spent at a marvellous Italian family birthday celebration, and due to my total lack of Italian linguistic skills (Ciao, Gracia, and a bunch of musical terms is about as far as it go at the moment, but I’ll be learning more soon… ;o) I ended up talking in French to a marvellous Italian artist called Albano Morandi. All in all, a great way to spend a Sunday night in Italy.

So I’m home now, glad to be back with the small person and aged feline. Time to get ready for Greenbelt next weekend, and to get back into finishing the work off on the album with Theo…

Soundtrack – now it’s Janis Joplin, ‘I Got Dem Ole Kosmic Blues Again Mama’, before that Sigur Ros, ‘Agaetis Byrium’; David Bowie, ‘Heathen’; in Italy, Bruce Cockburn, ‘You’ve Never Seen Everything’; Mark Knopfler, ‘The Ragpickers Dream’; Fripp/Sylvian, ‘Damage’; The Cure, ‘Disintigration’; The The, ‘The Naked Self’; David Sylvian, ‘Gone To Earth’; Bill Withers, ‘Best Of’.

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Ross Noble Goes Global

I think I’ve posted about this before, but I’m listening to it again, so thought I’d post another link to Ross Noble Goes Global – one of britian’s finest comedians touring round the world doing gigs… very funny indeed…

Soundtrack Ross Noble right now, before that, Radio London.

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Black Monday

Today was a very dark day – my D:/ drive on my computer crashed. That’s the one with all my music on it. ALL my music – four new album’s worth of stuff. and numerous other bits ‘n’ bobs. All in all, about eight months of work. And now the drive is dead. Well, currently it’s dead. It’s not powering up at all. My C:/ drive is fine – that’s the one that I’m using at the moment. The D drive was a massive 80Gig monstrousity that was used solely for music stuff. oh bugger.

I’m currently researching data recovery options, which turns out to be VERY expensive. I mean, I’ll have to go that route if I can’t find any other way of getting the info, and I could really do with having the music (especially the stuff for the duo album with Theo which is meant to be out in September/October…)

So, if you work in Data recovery, or know someone who does, or have any ideas on what to do. PLEASE email me with your suggestions – even if you’re in the states – a flight to the US is gonna be cheaper than the quotes I’ve had for data recovery in London! scary stuff. So thoughts and prayers please.

soundtrack – nowt.

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The strange ways people find my music!

as you know, my CDs are on the cdbaby.com site, and one of the things you can get from cdbaby as an artist is a list of where people came from to find your site – and this is one of the links that someone used to find me –

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=hear+baby+chicken+sounds+&FORM=SMCRT

so, buy my CDs and hear baby chicken sounds – simple as that!

…anyway, this reminds me that I need to send another box of CDs to CDBaby as they’ve just about sold out of Not Dancing CDs… there’s been a mini-rush of sales to Japan, which is rather cool… must get a japanese language page up on this site somewhere… hmmm, time to email Chi, methinks…

Soundtrack – right now, Mary Chapin Carpenter, ‘Time Sex Love’ – one of the most consistently fantastic singer/songwriters around, rarely does anything edgy or groundbreaking, but just focusses on write fantastic songs and using great musicians. Is also blessed with a gorgeous voice… Before that was listening to Ma, ‘Links’ – Ma is a French electronica/dancey stuff artist, who came over the London to buy an Echoplex from me last week (still got a couple left is anyone’s interested – drop me an email…) – she’s just sent me her CDs which are really really good. Great sounds, great voice… ….and before that, Morphine, ‘B-Sides And Otherwise’, which is genius.

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Can't think of an interesting title

So what’s new? Gig at the Klinker on Thursday was a lot of fun, though it was also a bit of a (self-inflicted) hassle, in that I forgot two leads that I needed and had to come back for them, which meant Rick and I had no soundcheck as such, and that I missed a fair bit of his solo set 🙁 Still, the gig went well – I was just using one Echoplex and the Kaoss Pad, and the combination of that with Rick’s arsenal of percussive and ambient sounds was really cool – some very fine moments.

Friday morning, I had to take Andrew to the airport at 6.30, so couldn’t stay late at the Klinker on Thursday, sadly. Hopefully will get to spend more time with Rick and Chris this week, if they make it back to London…

The rest of the weekend has been lovely and relaxing – went to church this morning, and to ikea this afternoon to get a new CD storage thingie, which is v. nice, and also home to my new Bonsai! after the last one died, I wanted a new one, and finally got round to getting one midweek, as mentioned in last blog entry.

Just google-ised my name – not done it for a while, so was checking for new entries and links etc. Found one v. interesting link on wikipedia – not sure who posted it there, but apparently I’m one of the eleven influential bassists… hmmm, v. flattering, not sure it’s true, but I’ll leave it there. I did just add an entry on my own name (or rather, The Captain entered a daft entry, which I replaced with something a little more sensible…)

Soundtrack – right now, Blackstreet, ‘Another Level’; in the last few days – Bruce Cockburn, ‘You’ve Never Seen Everything’; Spearhead, ‘Everyone Deserves Music’; Athlete, ‘Vehicles And Animals; Cocteau Twins, ‘Victorialand’; John Coltrane, ‘Lush Life’; The Sundays, ‘Reading, Writing and Arithmetic’ and in the car (ehem) Cinderella, ‘Long Cold Winter’ (80s metal, sung in the style of miss piggie, for some bizarre reason).

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duets…

What a fine week! – Monday, as mentioned was a day recording with Theo. Thursday was a day recording with BJ Cole, and Friday was a day transfering music from Patrick Wood’s ADAT to my computer, and then recording a bit too. These three duo projects are rather fun and invigorating and are producing all manner of fascinating music. The duets with BJ are from a looping perspective going to be the most technically demanding, as we tend to be heading towards tracks with lots of sections, which is great, cos it’ll force me to learn some new EDP tricks – probably time to pay Andre’s site another visit. Talking of looping – there have been some rather heated discussions on the looper’s delight mailing list the theme of what on earth ‘live looping’ means – does it refer to a technical approach to music making? does it imply anything specific in terms of style/genre/aesthetic? is it enough of a hook to build a festival round? While the discussion has been fascinating, the main bizarre thing about it has been just how upset some people have got with it all – it’s way too easy to let email lists encroach on your ‘real’ life, and also to get disagreements mixed up with personal attacks…

Anyway, duets – lots of cool stuff already played/recorded, and lots more to come. I’ll be editing some of what’s already gone, and will hopefully have some stuff up on the site soon… Talking of duets, If you’re in Southern California, Todd Johnson – solo bassist extraordinaire – is hosting a fantastic series of duet gigs in a coffee shop in the Santa Clarita Valley – see Todd’s Site for more info…

what else? Yesterday – teaching and gardening – gardening should have just involved cutting the lawn, but The Small Person had left a large pile of sticks on the lawn, which last time I’d cut the grass I just cut round. So this time the sticks were still there, and the grass had grown through it, making moving the sticks a bit of a big job. Anyway, I did move them, and cut the rest of the lawn, but was knackered afterwards. How dull was that? you don’t care to you? and quite rightly so, there are far more pressing bits of info you could be reading.

And today? church this morning, followed by a day of musical tinkering – bass practice, listening to duet stuff, drum programming etc. The off to see The London Improvisors Orchestra – lots of very skilled musicians making a very inspiring racket. The ones I’d heard of included BJ Cole (who’d suggested I go along), Evan Parker, John Edwards and Steve Beresford.

Soundtrack – lots of interesting stuff over the last few days. Michael Jackson, ‘Off The Wall’, Holly Penfield, ‘Fragile Human Monsters’, an Esquivel compilation (do a search for him on line – he’s great), Medeski Martin and Wood, ‘The Dropper’, and right now I’m listening to Jeff Kaiser/Brad Dutz, ‘The Order Of Her Bones’ – an experimental duet CD for trumpet and percussion, Jeff’s own pfMENTUM records, which is also the label that released Ted Killian’s fantastic ‘Flux Aeterna’ album.

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