Tag: music

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Is There Something I Should Know???

…and other such classic Duran hits were all in evidence at the gig at The Forum on Tuesday night. And what a fantastic gig it was!! Really really great to see a bunch of ‘pop stars’ who can a) write fantastic melodies, b) come up with really interesting arrangements and c) play as well as anyone. Seriously great stuff. Oh for the days when pop stars could play instruments!!! It set the dick-heads that currently litter the charts in stark relief, that’s for sure…

Anyway. What else?? Of course, the big news is that the album is here!! All the advanced orders have now been sent out, so you should be getting them early next week. the packaging, CD printing, sound quality and everything is just great – Theo came round yesterday to sort out the press-list and to sign all the extra discs, and we were like a couple of kids with new toys! I’ve been listening to the CD almost constantly since it got here on Wednesday, and it just sounds fantastic! Even though we played it, it’s still hard to conceive that it was all done live… a strange feeling indeed. Anyway, if you haven’t got it already, you can order it now! Paypal/Gemm and post are what we’ve got happening at the moment, but CDBaby will be sorted v. soon, as will evinsol, hmv and a few others…

anyway, here’s the paypal button –


One word of warning to anyone planning to do the same thing, all the backordering on GEMM decimates your rating – if you did buy the CD through GEMM, please go and give us a good feedback rating, or it looks like we’re a bunch of charlatans…!

Wednesday night was fun – Bob Lee, buddy from California was in town, so Bob and I, along with a couple of other guys from the churchbass discussion list met up for a curry. I’m always amazed at the myriad friendships that the internet facilitates – it makes a nice counter argument to www.internetisshit.org, which, while I think they’ve got a point, does take it too far… :o)

Tomorrow I’ve got my first gig in ages with Jez – you know, the piano guy on ‘Conversations’ – it’s a wedding reception, which is cool cos I don’t get to play standards very often, and playing with Jez would be a pleasure even if the gig was all TV Themes!

Soundtrack – Me and Theo (both discs), Billy Bragg, ‘Must I Paint You A Picture?’, The Cure, ‘Greatest Hits’, Scritti Politti, ‘Cupid And Psyche’, John Lester, ‘Big Dreams And The Bottom Line’ – if you’re in any way interested in solo bass and singer/songwriters, you NEED to hear John’s music – he’s seriously good – great tone, fantastic voice, fine lyrics, and all really well produced – GO AND BUY THIS CD.

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countdown to release day…

…so the CDs should arrive here on Wednesday – how exciting! I need to buy a nice big box of Jiffy Bags tomorrow and start addressing them, cos it’s going to take ages! Thanks to all you lovely people who’ve been ordering the CDs, it’s going to be quite a big job…

Was in Italy this weekend, which was great fun! I was playing at an event called Sound Expo ’03, organised by a HUUUUGE music shop in Verona called Musical Box. I was there playing on behalf of Ashdown, so as well as the two performance sets that I gave on the main stage, there were various amp demos in the Ashdown corner of the shop… Also had plenty of time to check out the rest of the gear that was on show, to see some music (most of it was the usual trade fair stuff – very fast, not many tunes, but there were some gems in there too…) and to just hang out with Luca. Fortunately I also got a chance to catch up with some other lovely friends – Giovanna, Albano and Renate, as well as Luca and Gio’s cats, Blue and Ompy (not sure about the spelling of Ompy, but as neither is he, I’m not too worried…)

The Ashdown distributors in Italy are Proel – known over here for making cables, connectors and stuff, but actually a freakin’ huge company!! Scarily huge in fact, but very very helpful, with great staff.

It was a flying visit – out Saturday morning, back Sunday night – and in that I managed to do rather a lot. Of the music I managed to see at the show, my favourite was Massimo Varini – a very talented Italian fusion guitarist – sort of Satch meets Phil Keaggy with a bit of Holdsworth thrown in. His trio were fantastic, and hopefully I’ll get to do some shows with them at some point. Another highlight was an italian singer doing Cornflake Girl who had apparently just learnt it phonetically as the words she was singing were incomprehensible… If I ever suggest singing in Italian, someone please punch me in the face.

Soundtrack – Massimo’s album, Billy Bragg’s best of, and the recordings from my last trip to Italy (thanks to my new RAM strip I just fitted to the computer, I can stream it all off the DVD quite happily…)

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This is why musicians have managers…

Arghhhh!!!

So I’m all booked up to head off to Italy on Saturday for these gigs, and then think ‘oh dear, my passport hasn’t come back…’ – it ran out on the 23rd September, and I sent it off just after that, but this really is cutting it fine… I should have sent it off the day I got back from my last overseas trip, really – the sort of advice that a good manager would have given me (actually, to be fair, it’s the sort of stellar advice that the small person gives me, but I end up procrastinating, and in this kind of situation)

So I’ve just rung the passport office, and they are going to pull the application out of the queue and send it to the emergency team, which sounds very scary! Anyway, hopefully I’ll get a call back from them – their office is in Peterborough, so I could probably go and collect it if I had to, though I’ve got a very full teaching schedule over the next couple of days…

So the moral is – get things done when they come in – I’ve still not done my self assessment tax return either, which means I’ll have to do all the calculations myself (not that hard, but it is making extra work where it doesn’t need to be…)

gotta get organised, gotta get organised…

Soundtrack – mainly the extra disc that’s coming with the new album (if you order it before next week…), ‘It’s Not Gonna Happen’, which is sounding very good indeed. I’ve just finished the on-body artwork for it, which is nice. Other than that, been listening to John Abercrombie, ‘November’ (I think that’s what it’s called – it’s borrowed and I can’t find it now!) and Andrew Buckton, ‘Now But Not Yet’.

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try again

OK, so this is my second attempt at writing this, having written a very long post earlier before my computer crashed nearing the end. Bugger…

anyway, here’s the bullet point version (I’m sure much to evil harv’s delight) –

on Saturday I went to a memorial service for a friend whose life was tragically cut short by cancer a couple of weeks ago. She was 29, had a baby and a husband – everything to live for, but the cancer had other ideas. The service was moving and beautiful, but nothing could hide the deep, painful merciless injustice of someone being cut down that early in life. I’ve no idea what her poor hubby is going through – he’s someone I’ve looked up to hugely for years, and I just hope that I can somehow be there for him now. The pain must be inconceivable.

Friday I got a new computer… well, some bits with which to construct a new computer having picked at the bones of my old one for whatever morsels could be rescued. the new chimera is pretty good, and The Captain was invaluable in building it for me – I’d have no idea how to put the damn thing together – software, I’m fine, hardware, forget it.

So the last few days have involved lots of installing of software, lots of trying to find email archives and diary archives etc. All great fun… but at least is all runs a bit quicker, and I’ve not got an extra external drive so I can back everything up. Some friends of mine were burgled this last week, and aside from the electronic stuff the had taken, they also lost a load of photos and film that was in the camera and camcorder, as well as a load of work that was on the PC – that’s terrible! I’m going to try and keep backups of everything so it can’t be stolen or lost or have my harddrive crash again… It’s such a pain as the actual stuff is hardly worth anything, but the work on it is very hard to replace…

anyway, today was a teaching day, and posting out of CD orders (yup, still getting orders for the older albums too! :o) this week I need to get the extra disc pressed up and sorted, so that it’s already to be sent out to all of you who’ve advanced ordered it by next week…

On the gig front, Italy this coming weekend is confirmed, but Stoke Newington on Nov 9th has been cancelled… comings and goings, hellos and goodbyes, bookings and cancellations. Thunder and Rainbows from the same sky. Friends dying, babies being born. All part of the cycle of life, but that doesn’t make the tragedy of death any easier to bear, the joy of birth any less marvellous. On that note, congrats to Johnny and Rosie, Geoff and Sarah and maybe to Steve and Linda by now, who knows… St Luke’s is awash with babies, with more on the way!

Soundtrack – Keith Jarrett trio, ‘Tokyo 96’; Marc Johnson’s Bass Desires, ‘Second Sight’; Joni Mitchell, ‘Hejira’; Charlie Haden & Hank Jones, ‘Steal Away’; recordings of me with BJ Cole and Orphy Robison, and with Luca Formentini, Moreno and Gianni in Italy.

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At last, you can buy the CD!

Finally, the new album is all sent off the the pressing plant, being lovingly turned from a bunch of computer files into delicious CDs.

And with that comes advance ordering – at the moment, via Paypal, Gemm.com and mailorder. see the main site for more on that, this isn’t so much about the commercial side as the bit you don’t usually see…

So the last couple of weeks have involved a lot of listening – burning the tracks from the album onto CDRs and playing them on as many CD players as possible. I’ve got some rather nice studio monitors in what passes for my studio, so I get a good ‘flat’ reference, but you still need to hear how an album works on the crappy player in the kitchen, or the CD player with the speakers up near the ceiling upstairs, or in the car… And it passed all the tests, which is nice, so that bit was finished.

Then the artwork – finding good photos of theo and I was one job – theo had some great live shots taken, which were ideal, and I did what I always do – took a load of lame photos with my digital camera, and then made them look proper in Photoshop :o) the one for the album came out very well indeed.

Then we were looking into barcodes, but registering to be a company that can put lots of barcodes on things was way too expensive, and by then, it took too long to get someone else to generate one, so we went without, and we’ll just get them stickered as and when we need to…

So artwork finished, text proof-read, quotes in from icc duplication, time to send it off. The artwork was all uploaded to the icc ftp site, the cd popped in an envelope with the mcps application for licence to press, the actual tunes themselves were registered with the mcps, and we’re away. I might be heading over to icc this afternoon to check the chromalin – the final version of the artwork printed out… we’ll see…

so now it’s all about letting people know the album is there, hopefully persuading them to order it before it comes out so we can cover as many of our costs as possible before it’s even released! The usual incentive is employed – a whole other disc of exclusive limited edition signed lovely music – this time it’s an album called ‘It’s Not Gonna Happen’ which is great…

So, please head over to the site and order the CD… :o)

…oops, I said this wasn’t going to be the commercial side… too late

Soundtrack – right now, Steuart Liebig, ‘Quartetto Stig’, Metheny/Haden, ‘Beyond The Missouri Sky’.

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What's your favourite colour, baby??

…Living Colour

Went to see Living Colour last night – woah!!! What a fantastic gig. Back on track, version 2.0 of the lineup – Reid, Calhoun, Glover and the mighty Doug Wimbish on bass.

I almost didn’t get in – Doug has said he’d put me on the guestlist months ago, but as I walked past the back of the venue on my way there, I saw him getting onto the tour bus, and he’d not done it! So we nipped inside and got passes for me and Jez – phew! Anyway, it was the loudest, sweatiest, funkiest, heaviest gig I’ve been do in ages. THe amazing thing about Living Colour is that they can change from thrash to hip-hop to dub to funk to straight rock to Avante Garde to Electronica to soul to d ‘n’ b to full on oldschool reggae in a heartbeat AND DO IT ALL LIKE THEY LIVED TO PLAY THAT STYLE – it’s amazing. Most bands that diverse end up in a sort of stylistic tourist trap, dabbling with all the influences but never nailing anything properly, and being totally unconvincing. Living Colour are the real deal, four extremely gifted virtuosos playing at the peak of their ability, and the crowd at The Garage lapped it up.

‘Twas very nice to catch up with Jez for lunch beforehand (went to a marvellous Turkish restaurant on Upper Street called Gem – highly recommended), and to get some time to chat to Doug after the show. Hopefully we’ll do some playing together at some point.

Was also talking to Will Calhoun about the Lovebubble project with David Torn, which Will described as some of his favourite music he’s recorded in the last 5 years, and said I should hassle Torn to get it released… so I will! :o)

soundtrack – not much to be honest, been working in quiet for a few hours today.

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Yet More Lessons Learned From The Aged Feline…

So The Aged Feline came home on Saturday, after two days in the vets, on a saline drip to try and flush out his rapidly failing kidneys. We were a little concerned about both his health and him coming home resenting us leaving him there for two days (though we did visit him both days he was in), but no such fears – health-wise he seems fine (he goes back in this thursday for a blood test), and as for how he is with us – if anything he’s even more cuddly than usual. In a world of grudge-bearing, point-scoring and all the political crap that’s going on, The Aged Feline models the kind of forgiveness that we all need to learn from. He has no idea that what we are doing is for his good, and yet he still bears us no ill will. Amazing. So much for our claims to intellectual supremecy…

Finished off the artwork for ‘For The Love Of Open Spaces’ today – just need to fill out the MCPS AFL form and we’re there – should have advanced ordering up in a day or so!

Soundtrack – John Lester, ‘Big Dreams And The Bottom Line’; Unamerican, ‘Unamerican’; Andre Lafosse, ‘Normalise’; Steve Lawson, ‘Lessons Learned From An Aged Feline Pt 1’.

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We've been had…

Just watched John Pilger’s latest documentary on ITV. The damning evidence that the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were just a sham driving by a desire for dominance in an oil rich region, rather than any genuine concern about ‘terrorism’ or WMDs, is very strong and very frightening.

Read about the program here

and more specifically, have a read about both Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice commenting in interviews in 2001 (before Sept, obviously) that Iraq posed no threat, had no WMDs and had no access to them.

The whole doc was full of stuff like that – stacking up against the Bush/Blair axis of bullshit. We’ve been had, people. We’ve been conned, and it’s still going on. Meanwhile an estimated 10,000 Iraqi civillians have been killed, along with loads of US troups, who are still being attacked for being in a country they shouldn’t have had to go to in the first place.

Soundtrack – Kelly Joe Phelps, ‘Slingshot Professionals’; Andre LaFosse, ‘Normalise’; Prefab Sprout, ‘Jordan: The Comeback’; Mike Watt, ‘Ballhog or Tugboat?’; Steve Lawson, ‘Not Dancing For Chicken’; Mark Knopfler, ‘The Ragpickers Dream’; Ron Carter/Jim Hall, ‘Alone Together’.

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Karmic Response

One of the many bass discussion groups I contribute to on the net is www.thedudepit.com – a site set up by Steve ‘dude’ Barr, who runs the Vintage Bass Trading Co. partly as a place for discussing gear, but also as just a hang out on line. As with most forums like this, it’s the ‘off topic’ section that attracts the most posts, and is where people actually get to know eachother (that and the chat room) – the off topic section at The Dude Pit is titled ‘Al’s Nudie Bar’ but fortunately actually rarely features any nudity; it’s more just an indication of where Dude’s head is at… :o)

Anyway, the amazing thing about the dudepit is the sense of community that has built up there – there are guys on there who are going way out of their way to help people out, supporting eachother through bereavement, gear theft, house fires, storm damage, and the in the latest case, through one of the guys being hospitalised seriously with no medical insurance. Now, as we know, in the horrible medical scenario that is the US, people without medical insurance get hit with hefty bills. In the case of Ray Duke – the pitter in question – who’s a pro musician making a living in bar bands, function bands etc. the bill came to $26,000!!!! WTF???? How on earth does that happen????? Anyway, there’s a thread about Ray’s situation in The Pit, where people able to pledge money to help the guy out. I’ve chatted to Ray a few times in the chat room there, and he’s a great guy (not that that should really have much bearing on whether he gets help or not but anyway…) – if you feel like pitching in, however much, I’m sure it’ll be hugely appreciated to help out with his bills. As a fellow pro bassist, and one who were I living in the US would probably also be without medical insurance, I have a great deal of sympathy with Ray, and just hope that somehow we can help him out, and in so doing, help the bass world out. Being a pro musician gets harder and harder the more crass the industry gets, and a knock like this can finish a guy off.

In other news, had a great fun gig last night with Tess Garraway – this time, Seb Rochford joined Joss, Tess and I for the show, which was another creative improv night. We hit some real highs in the set, and gelled with Seb straight away. ‘Twas another tiny crowd, and methinks Tess and the venue are going to have to get the promo sorted out fast if this kind of vibe is going to continue…

And then today, we took the aged feline off the vets for his regular check-up (given that he’s 18 it’s a VERY regular checkup) – we already knew that he has chronic renal insufficiency, but with his diet and some meds we’d had it under control. However, his blood test today showed that the urea levels in his blood are way high, so they kept him in and put him on a saline drip. This was rather harrowing, cos the poor little guy doesn’t like the vets at the best of times, so to be put in a cage there and for us to leave him was seriously freaking him out. We went back and visited him this afternoon, which was nice, but he’s not well at all, and the long term prognosis is not good. Please say a prayer for the little guy, should you feel so inclined.

here he is –

Soundtrack – right now, Denison Witmer, ‘Philadelphia Songs’, before that John Lester, ‘Big Dreams And The Bottom Line’; Kerry Getz, ‘Little Victory’; Nik Kershaw, ’15 Minutes’; The Choir, ‘Wided Eyed Wonder’.

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Musical Friends…

…are keeping me happy…

so sang Bruce Cockburn in 1970, and indeed it’s true in my life too.

The latest installment in musical friendship began on Friday when I went to see Lifehouse play at Shepherd’s Bush Empire. What a fantastic band!! I’ve got both their albums, but the live experience is even better, and the new guitarist is amazing. I met Sergio, Rick and Jason a couple of years ago in LA, and have seen Sergio a few times since (he came to one of my gigs in LA), so had to go see them play when they were here. Great to hear them, great to get to hang out here in London rather than in LA this time!

part 2 of musical friends was Julian’s wedding on Saturday – Julian’s a former student of mine from Drumtech, who’s now doing big business on the session scene, and deservedly so, he’s a truly brilliant drummer (he was when I was teaching him too, so I’m not taking any of the credit for that!) – anyway, his wedding was naturally full of musos, lots of whom I hadn’t seen for ages, so it was great not only to see my friend get married, but to catch up with so many old aquaintances. Add to that the full on gospel choir hymns/worship section of the service, and some fantastic food at the reception, and you’ve got a magical day.

part 3 – meeting up for a beer on Sunday afternoon with Steve McEwan and Nick Paton. I’d not met Nick before, but he was in Friends First’ – one of the bands I’ve listened to most in my whole life (their album ‘We See A New Africa’ soundtracked about three years of my life in my mid teens). It was great to meet him, and be able to give some advice on indie promotion to someone whose music has meant so much in my life.

part 4 – Denison Witmer is a singer/songwriter from Philly who played at Greenbelt this year, and was fantastic. We chatted a bit at the festival and swapped CDs, and he was playing in Brixton on Sunday night, so The Cheat and I went down to hear another stunning gig from the man. Also gave me a chance to buy his other CDs, and go for a curry with Denison and The Cheat.

Then today, met one of my occasional students, Nick, for a coffee, and had a marvellous afternoon chatting about life, music, politics and everything in between.

So, music friends have indeed been making me happy, which got me thinking, and I came up with the notion of the Pillow Mountain Records extended family – a list of artists who are good friends, and whose music I endorse wholeheartedly, and will encourage as many people as possible to check out. So anyway, so you don’t have to go rummaging through the PMR site for the list, here are the links for you to peruse. All these peoples are amazing artists, and lovely people worthy of your patronage.

www.altruistmusic.com – Andre LaFosse
(turntablist guitar)
www.petermurray.ca – Peter Murray
(singer/songwriter)
www.denisonwitmer.com – Denison Witmer
(singer/songwriter)
www.kerry-getz.com – Kerry Getz
(singer/songwriter)
www.manthing.com – Michael Manring
(solo bassist)
www.johnlestermusic.com – John Lester
(solo bass singer/songwriter!)
www.nedevett.com – Ned Evett
(fretless guitarist)
www.tripwamsley.com – Trip Wamsley
(solo bassist)
www.unguitar.com – Luca Formentini
(unguitarist)
www.calamateur.co.uk – Calamateur aka Andrew Howie
(singer/songwriter/foundsoundist)
www.julielee.org – Julie Lee
(singer/songwriter)

there you go – check ’em out!

soundtrack – right now, Julie Lee (see above), ‘Made From Scratch’; before that, Denison Witmer (ditto), ‘Safe Away’ & ‘Philadelphia Songs’; The Choir, ‘Wide Eyed Wonder’; Bruce Cockburn, ‘World Of Wonders’; Nik Kershaw, ’15 Minutes’; John Lester, ‘Big Dreams And The Bottom Line’; Joni Mitchell, ‘Travelogue’.

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