A Play What He Wrote

Last night I went to the theatre (er, beginning to sound like a 12 year old writing his summer project – “we went on holidays and it was really good and then we went to the beach and it was really good and my dad fell in the sea and we all laughed and then my mum laughed so much she dropped her ice-cream and we all laughed but she wasn’t laughing any more because she said she had ice-cream on her best clothes and if daddy thought that was so funny…’ etc. etc. or, er, something like that)

Anyway, as I said. Theatre, Last night. Brilliant. Genius. Speechless.

The play in question was called ‘The Madness Of George Dubya’, and is apparently an update on Dr Strangelove (or at least that’s what the review in the Guardian said – I’ve never seen Dr Strangelove, so can’t really comment on the veracity of that… but I digress) – anyway, if it is an update, it’s an incredibly topical one. It was, in fact, written in three days in January, and rehearsed in 6, before beginning a sold out run at Theatro Technis in London, then moved on to The Pleasance Theatre in Holloway, London.

The story revolves around a gung-ho US general on an airbase in the UK, deciding to order an all out nuclear strike on Iraq, and being the only one who knows the code to call the order back, you’ve now got your suspence. However, the play revolves around the idiotic mumblings of the US president, and the pathetic attempts to solve the problem by our own prime ministerial buffoon, Blair. Throw into the mix Yasmina The Cleaner – an Al Quaeda operative working as a cleaner on the air-base, a couple of US pilots flying the first plane ordered to drop it’s payload (all the while discovering their long buried desires for eachother), some useless British civil servants, more US army generals and a breath-taking speech by an Iraqi Ambassador and you’ve got yourselves one of the most powerful, funny, moving, disturbing, remarkable theatrical performances I think I’ve ever seen.

Justin Butcher, the writer, has been carving a reputation for himself for a few years now – last year his play, The Seven White Masks Of Scaramouche Jones toured with Pete Possilthwaite delivering the one man show to sold out audiences round the UK. But Dubya is a whole other kind of triumph – it would have been impressive if he’d written it in 3 months. 3 days suggests some sort of pact with the devil in exchange for genius, or conversely an angelic visitation, complete with finished script. Truly unbelieveable. And on top of that, one of the most vital, vibrant and controversial comments on the current impending (pleasegoddontletithappen) war.

‘If’ they get another run at it, you would have to be stark staring mad to miss it. Already they’ve had coverage on CNN, in various US newspapers including the Chicago tribune, on MSNBC, 4 stars in the Guardian, 5 in What’s On, been in the Independent’s top 5 theatre shows in London for weeks on end. Seriously, it’s magical, you have to see it.

phew, that was exhausting. Tonight’s the last night – if you’re in London, you can catch it at either 5 or 7.30. But I’m certain it will get another run. It HAS to.

In other news, last night I was on nightshelter duty again (meant to be next week, but I swapped) – as was evil harv. He wasn’t meant to be, but while we were in the theatre, some sort of serious police ‘incident’ took place outside, and Harv’s car was in the cordoned off zone, and he was unable to move it til this morning!!! So the poor guy ended up sleeping in a freezing church hall on a couch… :o)

Came home, slept, got woken up about five times by the phone. One of the calls was telling me about the funeral details of a friend of mine who died of lukemia last week. I’m not sure what to think about that one. I didn’t even know he was ill til the day he died. 11am – a text saying was on life support. 3pm phone call saying he’d died. WTF???? What? Where? When? How? Andy was officially my land-lord when I live in Lincoln, but the house for most of that time was more like a live-in community. He was a fantastic cook, so we’d throw dinner parties fairly often, there were up to 5 of us living there at any one time – me, farmer Joe, DJ Ben, Biker Wendy… it was like some poorly scripted sit-com, with some very bizarre events. One favourite was Farmer Joe trying to make his own garlic bread, and misunderstanding the difference between a ‘clove’ of garlic and the whole bulb. So he crushed three whole bulbs of garlic, and put them on two slices of bread under the grill. The dogs were yowling for days. Ah yes, the dogs – Max and Polly. Insane and ever-present. Andy doted on them. He married Sharon just before I left Lincoln, and they’ve now got at least two kids (could be three, who knows). I can’t even begin to imagine how she must be feeling. He was only in his late 30s. Still officially a ‘youth’ (18-40). And now he’s gone. I can’t get to his funeral on Thursday – it’s in Lincoln and I’m already mad mad busy that day. But I’ll be thinking about him. About live on Richmond Road, dinner parties, mad dogs, video nights, trips to the pub, Dave Elcock at his wedding reception.

Last time I saw him was at Martin Clarke’s 40th birthday last year. he was smiling from ear to ear, telling me his news and looking remarkably pleased to see me. I wasn’t overly friendly with him (it’s always odd being back in groups of people from Lincoln – too much weirdness left there for me), but he was very eager to hear what I’d been up to and to tell me about his kids.

And now on a lighter note, tonight I’m going to see Muriel Anderson play at The Troubadour in Earl’s Court – lovely venue, I’m playing there myself at the end of March, and it’s where I recorded my first album! Muriel’s great, so I’m really looking forward to that one. If you’re going, I’ll see you there…

Soundtrack – been listening to a CD by Ollie Collins ‘Make Time Last’ – rather nice acid-jazz influenced layered bass and keys stuff, with some great sax playing. Before that, it was more of Michael Manring and I…

Peace-Party In The Park…

here are some photos from London’s stop the war march on Saturday, taken by me… they aren’t great, sorry. It was an amazing feeling joining with more than a million other people to voice our discontent at the bizarre way the US and UK governments are going about trying to engineer an attack on Iraq. This was democracy in action, and hopefully will have scared the shit out of Bush and Blair if they think they can go around flattening cities and killing untold thousands of innocent people without the people they are supposed to represent getting rid of them. Tony, your days are numbered.

Anyway, the march itself was a fantastic experience – I was walking with my mum, and met up with loads of people from St Luke’s as well as bumping into Vibraphonist Orphy Robinson along the way. Loads of other people I knew were there, but in a crowd of more than a million, what chance to you have of meeting up? Actually, I did meet up with Dave and James, who both probably knew where I was because they both, at different times, are the man who knows – a concept I shall explain at greater length later.

anywhere, here’s the piccies…









'>'wake up and smell the democracy!' –

– so said Tim Robbins when asked what message he had for Bush and Blair after the demos round the world on Saturday… I was on the march in London, spreading a little love and a whole lotta throat infection germs (getting worse, BTW…) – will post some of my photos later, but for now, here’s a great piece from the Observer, by Terry Jones, of Monty Python, about Bush’s patience running out…

more on the march, and other stuff soon

Soundtrack – right now, it’s David Torn, Mick Karn and Terry Bozzio – ‘Polytown’ – very good indeed!

Sleep perchance to… wake up again at 4 in the morning…

Jetlag!

never had it this bad before – three days in a row I’ve woken up at 4.30am, and usually I can sleep wherever and whenever I want… not good. In fact, have spent loads of time asleep since I got back – combination of jetlag, exhaustion from touring, and some sort of cold/throat infection thing I seem to have picked up somewhere along the way. Not dying, but not exactly on tip top form either…

So what have I been up to? not much, to be honest. Still trying to catch up on emails etc. Working on some more gigs for later in the year – newcastle in may, and a london one quite soon, I Think… more on that ASAP…

Saturday, if I’m well enough, I’ll be going on the stop the war demo in London – could be huge, should be huge. The more of the news I see, the more insane it all seems to get. Colin Powell trying to suggest the french are just getting their UN-kicks by stalling? er, no, I think you’ll find they’ve thought you were mad since day one for suggesting this war… Anyway, I’ll be there, infecting everyone with my viral stuff, but hopefully helping to let Blair know we think he’s a dickhead.

Today will be a tidying day – my mum’s arriving later on (coming down for the demo), and the house is a tip.

Soundtrack – yesterday, I just listened to ‘Lessons Learned…’ about six times in a row – definitely my favourite of my albums at the moment, and possibly destined for a CDR release before too long, maybe with another CD of ambient noodlings… we’ll see… Other than that, been listening to ‘The Willies’ by Bill Frisell (excellent as always), ‘Kakusei’ by DJ Krush (down tempo IDM – very cool indeed), and ‘this sentence is true (the previous sentence is false)’ by Sheila Chandra, which, as with all her stuff, is stunning. what else. Oh yes, the new album from Theo Travis, an album of solo alto flute looping called ‘Slow Life’, it’s lovely, naturally, as is all of theo’s music. And lastly, the new album from Michael Franti – ‘Sounds From The Front Porch’, which is just what the doctor ordered as the world heads towards more rich people bombing poor people.

And one last site to check out – www.axisofjustice.org – great site, run by Tom Morello I think, from Audioslave – is the audioslave album any good? been meaning to check it out… very good site anyway. go there and get informed!

oh and by the way, I posted a link to Todd Johnson, the bassist’s, site the other day as www.toddjohnson.com which turns out to be a hocket player or something… anyway, Todd’s real web address is www.toddjohnsonmusic.com – go pay him a visit, and ask him sports related questions… :o)

Talking to the Taxman about… well, tax, probably

Dadaaaaaaaaa – it’s only Jan 2nd, and I’m already well stuck into my resolutions. Well, one of them anyway… the tax one, mainly out of desparation, I guess, but still, I’m well into it (would be further if it wasn’t for Excel deciding to crash my computer earlier. seems ok now though…)

clevermecleverme

was distracted from my graft for about 20 minutes just now by the chat room at thedudepit.com but managed to claw it back, and am now back into work… well, not right now, I’m writing this, but you get the idea.

On an altogether more outward looking note, the world must be a damned scary place for kids these days – I’ve been listening to Radio London today, and we’ve got the story of the nutter in Camden who hacked up a couple of women and dumped the body parts in dustbins, the mad gunman in Hackney who’s holding someone hostage (been going on for more than a week), and a couple of girls shot dead in Birmingham at a party last night! What’s going on? shootings?? Blimey, it’s all gone a bit wrong, somewhere along the way…

The track called ‘Regretting The Rainbow’ on ‘Not Dancing For Chicken’ was so called when I was thinking about the story of Noah, in the bible, and how at the end of the story God gives man (and woman) kind a sign that he won’t flood the world again, and that’s the rainbow… And I wonder if God thinks ‘Oh bollocks, wish I hadn’t done that, I’d get rid of ’em all again, and start a new, once more, third time lucky…’ but there doesn’t seem to be a divine plan B. This is it, we make the best of it, do what we can. In the worlds of Raskolnikov from ‘Crime and Punishment’, we ‘contribute out stone to the building up of universal happiness’. But then, he was a murdering nutter as well, so what would he know.

Anyway, the news is full of murders, and it must be a bit frightening for little people, growing up with all that kicking off. Statistically, we’re told it’s no worse now than it was years ago, just that media has got quicker and more salacious in reporting it. Doesn’t make it any easier for the 9 year old kid who thinks they are next…

what was the point of all that? nothing – that’s the joy of a blog, no editor saying ‘but Steve, that’s totally inconclusive, please rewrite your last paragraph’… :o)

Soundtrack – just the radio.

More news on the aged feline…

Well, no more fits or seizures thus far from the little fella, and we’re taking him to the vets tomorrow morning… finger’s crossed he’ll be fine.

I’m my official capacity as his administrative assistant, I’ve been tending to his material needs – following him around with bowls of food, administering snuggles when required… He seems to be rather happy with the situation, though I need to talk to him about a pay rise…

Last night I went to the Kashmir Klub – the best acoustic music venue in London. Tony Moore who runs it has done more for live music in London in the last few years than just about anyone, and the quality is usually pretty high… Last night, the attraction for us (me, James from Deli, Si and Heli Jones) was Cathy Burton, who went down a storm at Greenbelt this year. She was pretty good. I do wish that more acoustic singer/songwriters would give some thought to the arrangements of their guitar playing – why do so many people seem to be happy with just strumming obvious chord shapes all the time??? It’s like band-in-a-box in terms of the inventiveness factor. It doesn’t take much to make the guitar part sound like it’s meant to be there, rather than just being there for something to do with your hands. Listen to Martyn Joseph or Bruce Cockburn, or Jonatha Brooke and you hear some masterful guitar work that can only add to the impact of the song. So often, fine songs are delivered in a rather limp way due to the unimaginative arranging…

anyway, rant over…

Today has been a teaching/admin (on behalf of me and aged felin) and blobbing day – neuralgia attack last night is only just wearing off (nasty pain down the left side of my head and face) after taking lots of vit B12…

Also, I registered a couple of new domain names for this site – www.stevelawson.net and www.steve-lawson.com – just in case people either a) don’t know what .co.uk means, or b) type the wrong thing into their machine (I can’t get stevelawson.com, as that belongs to a man with a big hammer who sells houses…)

Teaching again at 7 tonight.

Soundtrack – listening to ‘Not Dancing…’ a lot over the last couple of days, and enjoying it immensly I’m pleased to say. Also had Living Colour’s ‘Biscuits EP’ on in the car last night – must be 7 years at least since I last heard that. Very fine it was too.

Lessons learned from a useless DJ pt 1

I have to thank Jon Gaunt… I made a fine discovery today, thanks to him.

For those of you that don’t live in London, or do but don’t listen to BBC Radio
London, he’s the ill-informed, reactionary, argumentative waste of oxygen
that comprises a big turd-stain on an otherwise fabulous schedule at Radio
London, between 9 and 12am… His is a phone in show, in which anyone
who disagrees with said loser gets shouted down or cut off or insulted and
sundry equally ill-informed losers (why on earth should I give a monkey’s
what Joe-schmoe-cabby thinks about Asylum seekers?? Has he done the
research? has he worked in a camp, or a homeless shelter? does he have
any idea what it’s like to be dislocated??? of course not!!! So why on earth
are his views being broadcast across London, at the licence payer’s
expense?????????????) phone in to agree with Mr Gaunt’s ludicrous polemic…

Anyway, thanks the small person leaving the radio on to entertain the
aged feline today when she went to work (a futile exercise, given the
profound deafness of the afore-mentioned feline, but a cute attempt
anyway…), I was subjected to about 5 minutes of Gaunt’s bile-filled
ranting, and turned over to radio 4. Woman’s Hour. What great radio!!
Quality broadcasting, expert opinions, funny presenters… good lord! any
way of getting that Gaunt loser to have a listen?

Jumped in the car to drive to Oxford to see Jez, and leave the radio on –
very funny radio play, followed by fascinating docu-thingie on inner city
schools. So thanks to Gaunty’s attempts to be ‘the british Rush Limbaugh’
(yes, my US friends, he’s that useless…) I have now discovered the delights
of Radio 4… :o)

Anyway, the visit to Jez’ was highly enjoyable and resulted in another
fascinating improv track, which will probably be available from the Pillow
Mountain Records
website for download soon, as an early Christmas Pressie
for anyone that wants it… No looping on the track this time, just my bass
and his piano and some lovely noises. Same premise as the ‘Conversations’
stuff. No discussion of key/vibe/anything. Just plug in and play… a rather
invigorating way to spend the day. Jez is a very intuitive musician, and
plays some fantastic stuff on here…

Came home, listening to more Radio 4 stuff on the way. Was hassled
mercilessly by the cat when I got in, who clearly doesn’t like being left
on his own during the day anymore, even though I’d fed him and given
him maximum snuggles before I went out… There’s no pleasing some
small furry people…

Soundtrack – well, during the few moments when I’ve not
been indulging my new love affair with Radio 4, I’ve listened to Cupid
and Psyche again, Peter Gabriel’s Up, the new Keith Jarrett double live CD,
and this new track from me and Jez, which is play at the moment…

Right, off to cook dinner now…

Miscellany (have I spelt that right, evil harv?)

Missed church this morning – woke up feeling rather rough, like I’ve got a
cold coming on or something… bugger…

eventually woke up sometime after 12 (!)

Last night the small person and I watched ‘The King Of Comedy’ – one of
those films I’ve had recommended to me on many an occasion, but never
got round to watching… WHAT A GREAT FILM!! Deniro is fantastic, and the
rather unexpected ending (well, I didn’t expect it anyway) really leaves
you thinking over the whole film, completely reassessing what you thought
of Rupert Pupnik throughout the rest of the film. Superbly written, beautifully
acted, great story! Shame it took me 20 years to get round to seeing it…
maybe sometime in the next 17 years I’ll get round to watching the Matrix
or it’ll be 2022 before I see Donnie Darko… who knows…

Been practicing a lot over the last couple of days – having my full rig set up
at home is always inspiring, as I only have to switch it on to start getting
strange noises… Need to work out what I’m going to play in Norwich next
Friday

My mum arrives back here this afternoo, which’ll be nice…

Just had emails from Dan Elliot (my manager/booking guy in the US), and
Michael Manring trying to firm up some more dates for January – if you’re
in LA, feel free to call the Baked Potato or the
Rocco and suggest that they book us!

soundtrack last night, listened to Trip Wamsley’s CD a lot,
this morning woke up to Radio London, and now am listening to Three Blind
Mice – a trio that features Lydon Conner (from L42 and 64 Spoons – think
he’s got a thing about band names with numbers in them???) It’s just a CDR
as it’s not released yet, but it is fantastic. Really really good songwriting in
the Crowded House/Squeeze/Rembrandts/Jellyfish kind of direction… Hope
they get to release some of this stuff soon…

Poll Dancing…

The Evo E-Zine – which I posted about a couple of days ago when they added
a coulple of reviews of my gigs, also has a poll of who their readers would
most like to see interviewed/featured/reviewed – bizarrely enough, as of last
night, I was in third place! If you feel like heading over there and voting for
me, that would be lots of fun! :o) At the moment, I’m just behind Jon Anderson,
and just ahead of King Crimson and Peter Gabriel! Very bizarre…

Currently listening to Mel and Sue on Radio London – the only justification
of celebrity Big Brother is that it’s given them more comedy ammo… Sue
was by far the most interesting person in the house, and is even better
deconstructing it from the outside…

Soundtrack – been listening to King’s X – ‘Manic Moonlight’, Prince
– ‘Sign Of The Times’ and a Nick Harper compilation from Catherine-from-
the-street-team. Also been playing a lot in the last couple of days, so
whenever I get a groovy loop going, I leave it running for half an hour to
get the idea into my head… My new Gibson Echoplex is amazing
– been experimenting with a lot of the extended functions in the software
revision, like some of the quantize functions, different replace/substitute/insert
modes and the double/half speed thing… lots of fun to be had by all! Should
manifest itself in an MP3 or two before christmas…

Some interesting recent listening

Back when I was in school (late 80s), we had a small group of friends who would all head down to fat george’s record shop on Bridge Street in Berwick on a Saturday morning to order records… any old records… the more obscure the better.

In those pre-internet times, the source of all knowledge about what was available was the Music Maker Publications big red book of records, which listed just about everything that was on general release.

I bought some great stuff through that, and some total bollocks. Great stuff, like Steve Berry – ‘Trio’, John Zorn – ‘Spillane’, the best of Weather Report etc. etc… and some rubbish like ‘Electric Storm in Hell’ by White Noise…

One record that we all really wanted to get but could never find was ‘Ladies Don’t Have Willies’ by a band called 64 Spoons. It seemed like the most preposterous title for a single – add to that the daft band name, and we had to know what it sounded like. But sadly, week after week, George couldn’t find it, it was out of print… whatever, it never turned up.

Fast forward 15 years, and in the last two tours I’ve done, with the Schizoid Band and Level 42, I’ve been touring with two ex-members of said Spoons! Jakko Jakszyk (guitar/vox with Schizoids) and Lyndon Conner (keys/vox with L42) were both in 64 Spoons!

Enter not-at-all-evil Dann, delving deep into his extensive CD collection to provide an early 90s compilation of Spoonerisms from the late 70s/early 80s… and bizarrely enough, it’s pretty good. Very good in places. Very silly and self conscious in other places, but sort of Squeeze meets Cat-Food era Crimson, meets Joe Jackson with a touch of Blockheads-funk… The kind of thing, that were it more widely known, would now be forcing people onto the dance floor at schooldisco.com events.

Still haven’t heard Ladies Don’t Have Willies though…

After that, the next CD I listened to couldn’t be more different Juldeh Camara is a West African singer/composer and player of the one string fiddle! I first heard his stuff on Charlie Gillett’s show on BBC London, but then met up with Duncan Noble – a bassist who has assembled a touring project with Juldeh, playing in the UK early next year.

It’s amazing how Juldeh manages to keep your attention… even mesmerise you with just fiddle and voice. And judging by the range of material on the CDR that Duncan gave me, he’s more than happy to recontextualise his playing and writing into whatever setting is around, from acoustic blues to funk/soul stuff… I really hope that their tour doesn’t clash with my dates in California next year, as I’d love to see this live…

Finally got stuck into the last chapter of Derek Bailey’s ‘Improvisation – its nature and practice in music’ book last night. It’s an amazing book, but I do have a habit of dropping books somewhere in or around the last chapter… seems to be a theme running through my life (do half the washing up, write half a song, tidy half my office, etc. etc…)

Anyway, the last chapter is all about the Musicians Improvisors Collective (MIC – I think that’s what it stands for…), and is very interesting indeed. The whole book is very highly recommended for anyone interested in improv and its relationship to music making as a whole…

Busy day today – meeting Jam-comedy-writer this afternoon, and going to see Moby play tonight… well, going to meet up with Greta Brinkman, who happens to be playing with Moby. Evil Harv’s coming as well, so that’ll be my dose of eville for the week sorted then…

before that, need to tidy up here, as my mum arrives for a short stay later on. Always nice to see my mum, cos she’s great!

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