Tag: opera

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Just booked in to do Edinburgh…

ooh, scary stuff – just booked in to do the Edinburgh Fringe Festival again this summer. Last year, due to a bunch of weird goings on, I ended up doing the festival on a straight 50/50 split with the venue, a deal pretty much unheard of in Ed Fringe terms, so got my intro to the festival in a fairly easy way. It took me a few days to get the hang on how the promo machine worked (basically there’s no substitute for just going out and flyering like a madman), so at least this year I’ll hit the ground running and be able to get lots of promo in before the festival starts.

But (big but), it is costing me lots of money upfront to be there this year – which is scary. I always operate on a worst case scenario, so have made sure that I’m spending as little up front as I can (no speculative capitalism for me, thanks very much!), and the chances of me making some money at the fest are reasonably high, but it still feels weird to have agreed to it.

I’m back in a CVenues venue again – last year I was in C too (St Columba’s By the Castle), this year I’ll be in C Central (the Carlton Hotel, by the North Bridge). It’s nice to be on familiar ground, that’s for sure.

Anyway, now I need to go and write my festival programme entry, which has to be submitted by close of play today.

Soundtrack – Avashai Cohen and The International Vamp Band, ‘Unity’.

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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?

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London Guitar Festival

Two days of London Guitar Festival involvement – yesterday, I went down to see John Scofield first do an interview, then a gig.

The interview was interesting, not least of all because it showed how little thought John has had to give to codifying what he does – admittedly, a lot of the questions were inane in the extreme (for example, ‘What kind of things would you play over, say, a Cm7?’ – as though he’s going to list a few notes that would make you play like him…), but even still, his explainations of what he does were much more from a visceral, intuitive place rather than a schooled detatched techie place.

The gig was breathtaking – the band were all pretty much perfect. Adam Dietch on drums was outstanding, Mark Kelly on bass a groove monster, Avi Bortnick on guitar and samples was like Nile Rodgers evil twin, and John – looking for all the world like Robert Duvall, as student nick pointed out – playing on top of his game. I’ve seen him twice before, and neither held a candle to this, in terms of freshness, invention, interplay. Genius at work.

Day two at the festival, and it was my turn to play. I did a 50 minute set on the foyer stage at the QEH, which was great fun. Always nice to see lots of familiar faces in the crowd, and always fun to get a chance to mess with things a little – this was my first solo gig since getting the second MPX-G2, and the new sound options were really really inspiring, so even the tunes that I’ve played before didn’t end up anywhere close to the record… Lots of fun!

After me was Jim Lampi, an incredible Chapman Stick player, and one I’d have probably gone to see anyway, even if I hadn’t been playing.

And in other news, today – oops, sorry, it’s yesterday now – was the anniversary of Dubya declaring ‘Mission Accomplished’ in Iraq. I really hope he’s feeling like a complete twat today, thinking back to the crass display that he put on under that banner on a warship. unless the ‘Mission’ in question was to destabalise, start a civil war, generate hatred and mistrust and generally fuck things up royally, I think we can safely say that far from being accomplished, things are as bad as they’ve ever been. Yes of course the Iraqi people wanted rid of Saddam, but I don’t think they wanted an abusive occupying force in his place.

And now, in a stoke of US military genius, the situation in Falluja has been handed over to one of Saddam’s former generals! Que? did I miss something?

Meanwhile, US (and possibly UK) soldiers are acting in a way more commonly associated with the third reich – torturing, mocking, debasing and abusing prisoners… ‘operation ultimate justice’ my arse – ‘operation ultimate balls-up’ more like.

Still, at least my gig went well…

Soundtrack – just been listening to some samples on Avi Bortnick’s site. Good stuff!

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3 gigs in three nights

that’s going to gigs, not playing them this time.

Monday night was Carleen Anderson at the jazz cafe. I’ve see her there before now, and it’s always an amazing gig. Her band is wonderful – Ben Castle on Sax, Andy Hamill on bass, Winston Clifford on Drums, Mark Edwards on keys, Mark someone on guitar (didn’t catch his surname, but he was very very good), and a backing vocalist I think was called Natasha. Anyway, a great gig – Carleen’s voice is amazing, her songwriting is really strong, the grooves were exceedingly funky, and a fine time was had by all.

Tuesday night involved going to hear Duke Special at Sound Acoustic in Leicester Square, which is a lot better than the Sound venue upstairs in the same building, which is horrible. Duke Special, AKA Pete Wilson, is brilliant – dread-locked piano-playing singer-songwriter with a stellar voice, beguiling stage presence, and some fantastic songs. His EP ‘Lucky Me’ is brilliant, and he was one of my top three favourite acts from Greenbelt last year. He’s on again at The Barfly in Camden tonight, but I’m teaching til 9, so don’t think i’ll be able to make it. I’ll have a mooch around online and see if I can find a stage-time…

Then last night (wednesday), I spent a very pleasant evening listening to the JazzBerries in the Crypt at St-Martins-In-The-Fields, in Trafalgar Square. It was a rather lovely set of vocal standards, well played and sung. Good stuff.

I love wandering round London on balmy evenings – the centre of london is such a gorgeous historic place, brimming with culture and marvellousness. Theatres, restaurants, street musicians, historic buildings and monuments, groovy cafes and swanky celeb bars. Add to that the majesty of the museums, and you’ve got one amazing city. OK, so we’ve got one of the worst recycling records in Europe, the public transport infrastructure has gone to shit, the hospitals are being sold off to people who don’t want to do operations that aren’t ‘cost effective’, the government are happy to ignore democracy in action, gun crime is rampant… etc. etc. but it does have its upside too… :o) I tend to walk around with a big grin on my face at this time of year.

Over the last couple of days I’ve been listening through all the tracks that I recorded for ‘Not Dancing For Chicken’ that didn’t get used, and some of it’s really good! I obviously did a really strong stylistic selection job on what went on and what got left off, and there’s tonnes of stuff here I really like. So it might be time for a downloadable extra and live tracks album… I’ll get round to that ASAP!

– right now, more of the out-takes. Before that, Carl Young, ‘A Few Sides Of Myself’; Ben Castle, ‘Blah Street’ (which is out next Monday, and is fantastic); St Germain, ‘Tourist’; David Sylvian and Holgar Czukay, ‘Flux and Mutability’.

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the dark side of being away…

Remember a few weeks back I blogged about being Godfather to Angus? Angus, who had had a heart defect at birth, was rushed into hospital and operated on in his first few days of being alive, and then his mum and dad, Paul and Rachel, had a sort of dedication/service of thanksgiving thingie for him and his sister Jasmine? Well, while I was away, I got a text message on my phone saying that Paul was in ICU, on life support, and could I pray for him… at this point, as per all good film scripts my phone runs out, dead battery, and being as how it will only charge off a USB port on a computer (no wall-socket charger with me – won’t make that mistake again), I was unable to charge it. The next day I try phoning round friends, but all the numbers I need to call people are in my dead phone. So I have to wait til I get home.

This is the dark side – email, cell-phones, fax etc. all makes for an amazing web of communication, but we grow to expect it and when if fails, we don’t have contingency plans…

As it is, Paul is out of ICU, doing really well, all things considered. It turns out he was hit by a bus on his way home… not really what anyone needs. Please pray for him, and Rachel, and their tiny people.

Soundtrack – Luca Formentini, ‘Subterranea’, Cuong Vu, ‘Come Play With Me’.

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A trip back in time…

Saturday night, The Cheat and I went to see Level 42 in Guildford, which was obviously a very different trip down memory lane than it was for the people who’d just come to hear some great pop tunes from their childhood… It was great to catch up with the guys in the band and crew, and to say hi to a few people in the audience who remembered me from the support slot last year (and to be refered to as ‘Chicken Man’… which was slightly unnerving and flattering at the same time… perhaps I need a feathered coat instead of the furry one… :o)

Anyway, it all brought back lots of fine memories, and the band played really well – slightly different set list from last year, with some really nice unexpected additions to the set list. Didn’t get home til the early hours of sunday morning.

Sunday was fun – one of the tunes from ‘Open Spaces’ was used as a musical interlude in part of the St Luke’s service, and then last night I spent a few fun hours catching up with David Torn – a very busy chap, and astonishing musician who’s playing around England this week with Tim Berne, so I’m going to three of the gigs – London, OXford and Birmingham.

And today, the new dyson arrived… :o) Ahh, domestic bliss. Took me a while to figure out how to get it working properly (what? programming effects units and operating four loopers at once I can handle, using a vacuum cleaner is a whole other world…) but once I did, we were away!

And now I’m waiting for a BT engineer to arrive, and while I’m doing that I’m listening to The Late Junction on BBC Radio 3, who last week played Flutter from ‘For The Love Of Open Spaces’ – fantastic! The Late Junction is a very very cool and very eclectic show, which I listen to a lot anyway, so getting airplay there is marvellous. you can hear an archive of the show – it’s the wednesday show in the ‘listen on demand’ archive, and you can see the playlist here – if you do listen to it, please email them and tell them how much you enjoyed hearing us on the radio!

so now I’m going to get on with mixing some of hte tracks from the Italian sessions of a few months ago…

Soundtrack – right now, The Late Junction. before that more of Rob Jackson, and John McLaughlin, ‘Que Alegria’.

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Hi, honey, I'm home…

after being away for about two weeks.

First week was in Denmark, visiting the International People’s College. IPC is a ‘folk high school’ – a scandinavian educational model that looks at learning as something that’s worth doing for its own sake rather than just for the piece of paper you’ll get at the end of it. The various folk high schools around Denmark, Sweden, Norway etc. have different emphases (emphasise?? no idea…) – some are all about sport, or film making or whatever, and this one is an international school (the clue’s in the name), drawing currently from 32 different countries as diverse as nepal, england, argentina, tibet, bangladesh, malta, poland, USA, romania, uganda, kenya, australia and brazil.

the focus of the college is on conflict resolution, cross cultural studies, development issues and for most of the students it’s seen as a great place to learn english. The staff are an amazingly diverse bunch – from cambodia, mauritania, denmark, australia etc. etc. and the food’s great.

The reason for the visit is that my mum’s involved in trying to set up a folk high school in Berwick On Tweed (middle of nowhere and turn left), and I taught on their summer school this year. So we both went on a fact finding trip, to see if all this folk high school stuff was hippie idealism or a the answer to the UK’s current education crisis (education, education, education said Blair. bollocks bollocks bollocks says the entire population of england, 6 years on.) It was amazing – a fully functional school, the classes dealt with some pretty intense stuff, lofty concepts and deep philosophical stuff, all within the framework of 32 cultures under one roof, all unwittingly capable of deeply offending one another! :o)

With a week at the college and a couple of days to look round Copenhagen, we had a marvellous week (also had a nice chance to drop in and see Anders-Streetteam at one of the most amazing drum shops I’ve ever seen!) Copenhagen’s a great city – here’s hoping I can sort out some gigs there soon…

Got home from there for one day, did a day’s teaching, and headed off to Amsterdam on holiday. Warning – if you’re living in London, heading off to Copenhagen and Amsterdam in the space of a week is not a great idea if you still want to feel really good about where you live… Don’t get me wrong, I do like living here, and some things about being in England are magic, but politically we’re losing it, and the whole crime/vandalism/transport/weirdness thing has become the british axis of evil. Amsterdam is beautiful – it’s great to see a city of that size operate with so little car traffic. Thousands and thousands of bikes, but precious little car useage. lots of canals, gorgeous canals, and some very groovy shops. The liberal drug laws seem like a cool thing (when was the last time you saw someone get stoned and start a fight??), and there were much less of an agressive feel there than on a night out in central london, but the ‘liberal’ attitude to porn and prostitution is, according to the UN and other sources, just a front for some seriously nasty illegal stuff. So much for unionising the prostitution industry – doesn’t really help the girls who are being trafficked from asia and eastern europe. London has a huge problem with this too, but at least we don’t pretend that being a prostitute is a great gig and that it’s all kosher here… scary stuff.

Still, it’s a great city, sex-tourism aside, and I hope to go back and do some gigs there too soon!

And now I’m back home – time to get to work promoting the CD, which hopefully you’ve all bought by now! :o) Theo did a huge mailout to radio and media while I was away, so reviews and airplay should start happening soon… til then, play the CD to your friends, steal their money and buy them it for christmas. Lots of people are saying it’s their favourite of the CDs I’ve put out, which is nice.

On the bad news front, I heard today that Mike Yaconelli was killed in a car accident a couple of days ago – if you’ve ever been to Greenbelt, Yak won’t need any intro. If not, he was an author, social activist, realist, speaker, comedian and all round remarkable human being who did far more in his 61 years than many people could acheive in 10 times that. His passing is a loss to the world. here’s the report from his hometown. Please spare and thought and a prayer for his family.

Soundtrack – while I was away I picked up a few CDs – Charlie Haden, ‘American Dream’; Jing Chi, ‘Live’; Living Daylights, ‘Electric Rosary’ and Metalwood’s latest, which is upstairs and I can’t remember the title, but they’re all very good indeed! Today I’ve been listening to Jonatha Brooke, ’10 cent wings’, which is oustandingly brilliant, like just about every note jonatha has ever uttered.

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lots of interesting musical things…

…but first, I must tell you that there are 453 deleted emails in my outlook express right now – I’ve just gone through my inbox, which had near 600 emails in it, and replied to or filed all but 24 of them!! yippee, what a liberating feeling. NOTE TO SELF – must try to stay on top of email from now on…

anyway, music stuff – lots of exciting things. Saturday night was a sad event, the last night of the Kashmir Klub. so I went along with evil harv, sarda and cap’n-birdseye-pirate-ben. we were promised lots of special guests, but no-one was expecting Rick Astley to play. Yup, 80s pop legend, who quit music years ago, was there playing guitar for a friend of his, and was talked into doing a song. So he did ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’, just him and an acoustic guitar, and it was GREAT! His voice sounded marvellous, and the song, stripped of the cheesey late 80s SAW production stood up remarkably well, sounding every bit the multi-million seller it was… For an 80s obsessed pop-fiend like myself, it was a real treat. Also in attendance for the evening – Lewis Taylor, Keith Emerson, Kiki Dee, and a few other celebs…

Then Monday night I went round to see BJ Cole – awesome pedal steel player. Pedal Steel is such an evocative sound anyway, but in the hands of someone with BJ’s skill, it soars. We had a bit of a jam, and listened to lots of tunes, and are getting together again next week – how exciting!

And last night was the best of the lot – went to see alex cook singing ‘The Pirates Of Penzance’. Alex is a drummer I toured with for a few years in the mid 80s, and a very good friend, so the thought of him dressed as a pirate singing light opera was too tempting to turn down. Sad thing was, he was actually really really good. Far too good to be funny. I was hoping for classic am-dram silliness – people falling off the stage, kids crying, out of tune oboes. But alas the singers were great, the band very good, the staging excellent. Far too good for an amateur production. Next time, rehearse less!

So tonight, I’m off to see Maria McKee at Shepherd’s Bush Empire with Evil Harv and Radar. Should be lots of fun.

Soundtrack – Prefab Sprout, ‘From Langley Park To Memphis’; Pat Metheny, ‘Imaginary Day’; Marc Johnson, ‘Sound Of Summer Running’; Rain Tree Crow; The Dum Dums, ‘It Goes Without Saying’; Theo Travis, ‘Heart Of The Sun’; Stevie Ray Vaughn, ‘Texas Flood’ and some forthcoming tracks from BJ Cole’s next album, which are fabulous!

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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…

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