Guy Pratt's Edinburgh Show

Last night was the preview of My Bass And Other Animals – Guy Pratt’s Edinburgh show. Guy’s a fantastic bassist, with a CV any bassist would be hugely jealous of – he’s played for Pink Floyd, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Coverdale/Page, Jimmy Nail. Oh, and Fat Les.

His show is a collection of mad stories from his life as a musician, with a little bit of bass playing – no solo tunes, just bits to demonstrate the gags.

It’s all very funny, some of it very familiar for anyone who’s toured or played festivals, or stayed in hotels with drunken rock stars. If Guy wasn’t such a skilled musician, a lot of his jokes at the expense of bassists would seem a bit bitter, but as he is a marvellous player, and fine composer too, they just draw you in to the gag.

It’s great that he’s going to be at Edinburgh, as it makes the ‘one bassist on stage doing a show’ thing seem slightly less freakish. His is more talking, and my show is more playing, but I’m sure I’ll get him up to guest once or twice during the run.

Definitely not a show to be missed if you’re anywhere near Edinburgh during August, and definitely not a show just for bassists – he’s been fastidious in removing any hint of muso-ness, to the point of not using one of my favourite Whitesnake stories of his. But it’s to his credit and the show’s benefit that he keeps it on a more general level.

Soundtrack – M83, ‘Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts’; Soulfly, ‘Soulfly’; Kris Delmhorst, ‘Songs For A Hurricane’.

June 27, 2005

and on a lighter note

Had a fun weekend, though not got as much work done as I should have.

Starting Friday lunch-time, it was yet another ‘last ever’ gig for the RFH Foyer as booked by JazzShark. It was a particularly fitting booking, as it was Rebecca Hollweg, a fabulous singer/songwriter, with a great lil’ quartet, featuring Andy Hamill on bass – one of my favourite bassists in the country. It was a lovely gig, with yet another ‘thanks, Sue!’ speech at the end, and a great rendition of ‘How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You’, with Winston Clifford changing the words to ‘How Sweet It Is To Be Booked By Sue’!

Friday night was a Soul Space meeting, planning the next service, which I won’t be at. They’re doing a Labyrinth service, which are always fun – see labyrinth.org.uk for more on what they are (and do the online version – it’s very chilled and lovely.)

Saturday started with teaching, and then in the afternoon it was Malcolm’s ordination at St Paul’s Cathedral. Malcolm (and his other half, Meryl) have been at St Luke’s for ages, and have had a pretty huge influence on the way the church looks, feels and thinks. Very lovely peoples. Malcolm has been at Vicar Hogwarts for a couple of years, and was ordained on Saturday. I got there 10 minutes before the service started and already all the seats were gone – seems there are lots of people in London who like the high-camp of some C of E pomp and ceremony on a Saturday afternoon. So I stood at the back, gave Malcolm a wave as he came in, and left after about half an hour, and headed over to The RFH, to go to the Patti Smith gig at Meltdown.

Was there very early, so was following the score in the Tennis. Murray was two sets to love up, looking good for another upset. Fell apart in the third, lost it 6-0. Was a break up in the fourth, all going v. well, but the length of the match got the better of him, and he still lost. It was a very odd experience just following the score – no news, no report, no audio. Just the score changing on my phone screen as I hit refresh… Very sad to see him lose.

Anyway, Juliet turned up, and we went in to see John Cale – who was on startling form. The opening tune was a spooky surreal monologue in the style of Velvet Underground’s ‘The Gift’, which some fantastic spacey noises.. and a very recogniseable bass sound… …which I soon recognised as being Flea from the Chili Peppers. I’m still not sure if I really dug what he was doing… it was a lot more pentatonic/obvious lick-based stuff than the rest of the band, but maybe in needed that to ground it… hmmm

Anyway, the rest of the set blended so many fantastic elements, from the spookiness of the opener, to some really straight ahead piano-playing singer-songwriter stuff through to full on Neil Young stylee guitar-rage in the last track. A sublime set. Always good to see the old guys rock out!

during the break, we realised we were sat next to Roy Harper, a genial chatty bloke, for sure, who amusingly kept throwing plastic cups at the losers in front of us who kept blocking our view by standing in stupid places.

Patti’s gig was very fine too – she played through the whole ‘Horses’ album, start to finish, and then did ‘My Generation’ as cover at the end, not wholly convincingly, with a ‘rise up and take the streets’ rant in the middle… A fine sentiment, but a tricky one to deliver in the middle of a song without looking like a raving polemicist. Discourse works better than shouting, methinks. Or am I just getting old?

Anyway, I was very pleasantly surprised by her set – most of Rock’s sacred cows have no place, in my humble opinion, being on the throne they are on, but she was entertaining, engaging, intelligent and captivating.

Sunday – church in the morning (sermon was way too long and I can’t can’t handle full-on exegesis on a Sunday morning…), followed by coffee in Highgate with Steve and Lorna, after which the three of us meet up with Harry, Karen and Juliet for more cakes. Too much cake.

And finally, last night, called round to Orphy’s to drop off a copy of Jazz Review (he does the blindfold test this month), and ended up helping him register orphyrobinson.com and getting orphyrobinson.blogspot.com set up as well, so he’s now got a news page, and an atom feed – here.

Soundtrack – Ali Farka Toure and Ry Cooder, ‘Talking Timbuktu’.

June 17, 2005

Live8 – bringing rock stars together

So other than the G8-related politics, the biggest news of Live8 so far has to be that Pink Floyd are going to play, with Roger Waters back in for the first time since 83.

An infamous rock falling out, of Spinal Tap proportions, with all the dialogue via lawyers that usually accompanies these school-boy squabbles, made significant purely by the sums of money involved.

But they’re doing the gig, and it’ll be interesting to see the result (though fly-on-the-wall footage… or should that be fly-on-The Wall footage? from rehearsals would be more interesting.)

Anyway, today’s Guardian has a nice profile of David Gilmour – I have a few friends who know him, who testify to his all-round good-egg-ness. Seems like a nice bloke.

Soundtrack – lots of my duo stuff with Cleveland Watkiss and Andrew Booker.

June 6, 2005

Weekend of musical friends

So, Friday was the last commuter jazz gig (or ‘computer jazz’, if you’re the chief exec. of the South Bank) before the big refurb kicks in at the end of Meltdown at the end of June. Peter King was playing, and was marvellous – very fine saxophonist, even if he does play alto (not a big fan of alto, generally – it’s just a tenor sax for kids) – and the aforementioned malapropism-prone chief exec. did a lovely speech about lady jazzshark who as previously mentioned has been booking bands at the RFH since prehistoric days, and will be much missed.

So, naturally, sharky person had a big party afterwards, at a friend’s GORGEOUS flat overlooking the Thames along by Blackfriars bridge. That’s one hell of a view to wake up to each morning, for sure. Much celebration took place, and by all accounts no small about of debauchery, though I left at 10.30, so thankfully missed all that.

Saturday was a fun day – started by meeting up with the wonderful Todd Reynolds – an outstanding violinist, and truly lovely wonderful person. Todd and I have exchanged emails and been reading eachother’s posts to Loopers Delight for years, but hadn’t met, so it was great to put a face to an email address and spend the day filling in the gaps. We went back down to the RFH Foyer for the last Saturday gig before the closure (and therefore JazzShark’s last saturday gig) – many fragile hung over people there from the party the night before (fools… ;o) ) – and a lovely short film about a couple in their 70s who meet at the free gigs in the foyer to dance together.

After that, gave Todd the shortened tourist trip round central London (interesting that my tourist trips never take in Buckingham Palace – maybe my anti-royalist sentiments are spilling over into my appreciation of what’s valuable to see in town. I always take people past Downing Street and along Whitehall (the seat of our sham-democracy) and Trafalgar Square (site of many a kick-ass protest) and down to the South Bank (home of the arts), but ignore any of the Royal nonsense, unless it’s for a quick walk round St James’ Park.

I digress… A fantastic day spent wandering round with Todd, all in. Top bloke, fun day.

Then home, to pick up TSP to head out to Lizzie’s leaving do, only TSP is behind on writing work (TSP is high powered celeb journo, interviewing the great and good about all things healthy), so I leave cinderella at home and head off to the ball on my own.

Lizzie is one of life’s lovely people – a fantastic photographer/photo journalist, and very funny lady. Party was full of lovely people, naturally, with no repeats of Friday night’s debauchery (totally different group of friends here…) So good send off for Lizzie, but crap that she’s moving (only to Bristol, so we’ll still see lots of her, but still…)

Sunday – head off to church, but it’s an ‘away match’ (meaning that a family from outside the church are having a christening – though it turns out they were from the church, I just didn’t know them – major black mark against my name for not having said hi to them!!) anyway – decide to go for fry-up at nice cafe on the Holloway Road was Gawain instead. Gawain is a marvellous producer/programmer/musician who has got heavily into community music education and is doing amazingly well. Very inspiring to talk to, with lots of plans for collaborative stuff.

Then home, domestic stuff, drop mixing desk off at St Luvvies to be used at Soul Space service before heading to Finsbury Park tube to meet up with BJ and Juliet to go to Joe Jackson/Todd Rungren gig at Hammersmith homebrew Apollo or whatever it’s called this week.

The reason BJ and I are at the gig is that the lovely Todd Reynolds who I met up with on Saturday is playing with his amazing string quartet Ethel as opening act and collaborator with Joe and Todd (BJ played with Todd in John Cale’s band in the 90s). Juliet had a ticket anyway, so Todd got her an aftershow pass and we all piled down to the gig together.

Ethel kicked out – wow. Incredible energy and performance, and great gig. They looked great, played great, the music was magic and the audience were captivated.

Then Joe Jackson came on – now I’m quite a fan of Joe’s singles collection (playing at the moment, in an attempt to rescue my memory of his music), but the gig was poor. Very poor. The sound was very compressed, and solo voice and piano versions of his uptempo stuff didn’t, to my ears, work at all. The new material was particularly bad. Some of his piano playing was lovely, but the overall feeling was one of big disappointment.

So a lot was rest on Todd Rungren’s shoulders. And he didn’t rise to the occasion either. The songs all sounded thrown away, I couldn’t remember one snippet of melody at the end of any of them, his guitar sound was possibly the worst I’ve ever heard at a ‘big’ gig, and again I was left contemplating self harm as a more pleasant sensory experience than the assault my ears were currently being subjected to.

Then, all change once again. Ethel come back on, and we’re back to the gig being amazing – a Gilbert and Sullivan tune, a couple each from Joe and Todd and an encore of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ (after Todd’s solo set I wanted to rename it ‘While My Guitar is Gently put through a wood-chipper’) – I’ve never seen a couple of aging rock stars so outrageously upstaged by a string quartet in my life. If the gig had been 40 minutes of Ethel, followed by 80 minutes of all five of them on stage playing a mixture of hits and misses, it could have been a breathtaking gig. As it was, it was two hours of dire self-indulgent horse-shit topped and tailed by two exquisite but far too short sets.

Ethel were a revelation, and are destined for hugeness. Please go and buy their CD, I guarantee you won’t regret it.

After all-too-brief chat with Todd after the gig, with just enough time to introduce him to Juliet and blag a copy of the Ethel album, it was time to hop on the last tube home.

Soundtrack – Joe Jackson, ‘Stepping Out – The Best Of’.

June 2, 2005

Too many white acts at Live 8?

A lot of news sources today have been reporting the accusation that the Live 8 bill for the UK gig is almost exclusively white – with Mariah Carey being the only person with any non-white genes on the stage (Maria is mixed race).

The response from the organisers was to first say that “Bob Geldof approached a number of urban and black artists to participate.” – that’s fair enough.

They went on to say “We look upon Live 8 as one global concert. A number of urban acts in the UK are hugely talented but they are not well known in Paris or Rome.”…

right, let’s have a look at some of the artists playing in the other venues –

Eiffel Tower, Paris includes Yannick Noah, Calo Gero, Kyo, Axelle Red, Johnny Halliday, Renaud – I’ve heard of Johnny Halliday, but there’s no way he can be described as international. He’s huge in France and unknown elsewhere. And he’s shit.

Circus Maximus, Rome includes Irene Grandi, Jovanotti, Nek, Laura Pausini, Vasco Rossi, Zucchero – clearly all big stars in Italy, but international???

So, drop the patronising crap about ‘UK Urban artists’ and represent. There are loads of people that could do it. If they want to reach out to everyone, why not book AR Rahman or Ashe Bhosle, and make the Indian community feel like they are a part of this (and expose the hopeless Sting and Elton John fans to something worth listening to). There are loads of people they could get in there.

I’m really into the idea of the gig, I love the fact that it’s about raising awareness not money, and that it’s going to get millions and millions of people thinking about issues of trade law reform and debt relief instead of just aid, but they’ve got to realise that there are more than enough white rock dinosaurs on the bill, and it needs to be a day for recogising not only Africa’s needs, but Africa’s strength and culture – so get some great African artists on the London show, and ditch one of the 80s losers.

Soundtrack – Jason Feddy, ‘Is This Thing On?’.

May 31, 2005

Thoughts on Live 8

It was announced today that there’ll be a huge gig in Hyde Park on July 2nd called Live 8, to highlight the cause of the Make Poverty History campain, and put pressure on the G8 leaders meeting the week after in Gleneagles to make changes to our screwed up economic system that currently favours the rich over the poor, widening the gap between them.

The gig won’t be a fund raiser in the way that Live Aid was, it’s all about awareness and garnering public support for the changes. On the same day, there’ll be gigs in Paris, Rome, Berlin and the US. It’s all happening on the same day as the Protests in Edinburgh in the run-up to the G8 summit.

Which begs the question, why isn’t it happening in Edinburgh? People are already suggesting that up to a quarter of a million people are going to descend on Edinburgh for the weekend. Why host an event in London that could a) dent the attendance in Edinburgh and b) split the media attention? I’m all for gigs big and small that raise awareness of such issues, but the timing could have been better. Even having it on the Sunday would have been better, giving die-hards the change to hot-foot it from Scotland back to London.

Meanwhile, I was asked to play a gig in Edinburgh months ago, which has yet to be confirmed (looks unlikely to happen), and have now been asked to play one in London on July 2nd (sadly not in Hyde Park – I’m sure some solo bass noodling would provide the perfect antedote to overblown rock dinosaurs giving it earnest for hours on end).

As it is, I’ll probably still go to Edinburgh, minus bass gear. I’ve already planned to go to the protests, and on a much more selfish note, can stay on a day or two and see if I can sort out some promo for my Edinburgh show! Having said that, the London show does look fun – it’s organised by Filomena Campus, an improv singer I’ve done things with before, and the last gig we did together featured some fab players – Orphy, Dudley Philips, Roland Sutherland etc.

Hopefully the split in the focus of events on July 2nd won’t confuse people as to the aims, and somehow some kind of miracle will happen in the G8. Given the kinds of people the US have been putting forward for jobs in the UN and World Bank of late, I don’t hold out much hope for them to show any compassion to the poor – clearly making the mega rich even richer is a much higher priority than ending the trade inequity that leaves entire continents languishing in crippling poverty despite them being rich in natural resources.

I’ll stop now, I’m slipping into despair again…

Read the Guardian’s report on the announcement

May 18, 2005

Blogless and desperate!

Ah, blog’s back online – was blogless for a long time, thanks to a crash on Sarda’s new server, but it’s all back now. Phew!

Right, onto blog-things –

Went to a gig last night – M83 (be warned, the website plays loud unwanted music at you) were the headline attraction, who I’d heard of via The Cheat’s scrobbler list, and actually heard thanks to the lovely Lizzy at their record label, who sent me CDs to hear. Their sound is kind of big ambient meets punked-up rock beats. Quite an overwhelming sound, on the new album especially, relentless huge synths and wall of noise guitars, but in an anthemic soundscape kind of way. Most enjoyable, if a little oppressive. The live experience was pretty much what you’d expect – the same thing only louder and noisier. They played lots of stuff from both albums (I prefer the first one – ‘Dead Cities, Read Seas and Lost Ghosts’).

The support act was Pure Reason Revolution – whose bassist Chloe is an occasional student of mine, and who I have a few mutual friends with, so it was great to get to see them play at last. Their sound is VERY mid-70s psychedelic prog-rock – think Hawkwind, early Floyd, Blue Oyster Cult, with a touch of Rhiannon-era Fleetwood Mac. They even look like the product of a fight between The Bay City Rollers and Flock Of Seagulls – rarely have more mullets been seen on stage since the mid-80s. Still, their set was great, and if they’d been around when I was 16, they’d have been my favourite band in the world ever. I’ll hopefully catch a headline set of theirs soon.

So inevitably, after a gig like that last night, I’ve been recording big proggy soundscapes today – I’ve done two, following a similar theme on each, we’ll see whether either ends up being releaseable… Might have to do a download-only soundscapes album soon.

Soundtrack – M83, ‘Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts’; Kings X, ‘Live All Over The Place.

May 3, 2005

The Man In The Van With A Bass In His Hand

Went to see Mike Watt at the ICA this evening. He’s a bit of a punk legend, particularly in the States, where his first band, The Minutemen, inspired a whole generation of American punk bands in the 80s. In the mid-90s he made his first solo album, on which a who’s who of the American alternative scene paid their respects to Watt – members of Nirvana, The Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam, The Pixies, Black Flag, The Rollins Band, Sonic Youth, Porno For Pyros etc. etc. all appeared on the record with him.

I met Watt a couple of years ago at The Bass Bash in Anaheim during NAMM, where he played a set with Kira, as ‘Dos’ – just two basses and voices – a resolutely low-fi punk set at an evening of fusion twiddling. Great subversive stuff. We also chatted alot that evening, and he revealed himself to be a deep, intellegent musician commited to maintaining his integrity as an artist, and staying true to his original punk ethic – DIY, and don’t take shit from anyone – even when signed to a major label.

Tonight he played all the tracks from his latest album – The SecondMan’s Middle Stand – from start to finish. It is, he says, a ‘sickness opera’ – a song-cycle based on his near-fatal illness, in three sections; hell, purgatory and heaven.

The music is very difficult to describe – very intricately written but playing with a punk abandon, the arrangements stop on a dime, switch time signatures, have unison phrases for all three musicians (the line-up is a trio of organ, bass and drums – not your typical punk lineup!) and then switch to full on dissonant avant garde scariness, and back to more conventional song forms. The dynamic range is huge, from a whisper to ear-splitting rock-out, and at the heart of it all is Watt’s aggressive, adventurous bass playing. All in all, marvellous stuff, impossible to accurately pigeonhole, deeply personal, and definitely music that rewards repeat listening.

He’s on tour in the UK for another week – go and see him if you can, but leave any preconceptions at the door. Do take earplugs though – it gets very loud! I’m so out of practice with ‘rock’ gigs – the volume scared the life out of me til I got my plugs in.

Watt’s tour diary makes for great reading too, though be warned, he speaks his own language, so the Pedrospeak Primer might help!

Soundtrack – Mike Watt, ‘The Secondman’s Middle Stand’; Mike Watt, ‘Contemplating The Engine Room’.

April 15, 2005

A quick round up of some election related goings on…

Firstly there’s whoshouldyouvotefor.com – a series of online questions (rather obvious ones relating to specific pledges in the different party manifestos) that tells you who you should be voting for. obviously, I came out fairly staunchly lib dem on this one…

_______________________________________________________

Who should I vote for?

Your expected outcome:

Liberal Democrat

Your actual outcome:

Labour -30
Conservative -75
	Liberal Democrat 108
UK Independence Party -24
	Green 58

You should vote: Liberal Democrat

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

________________________________________________________

Interestingly, the leader article in today’s New Statesman is all about how the Lib Dems are no longer a wasted vote, and if they do well they could hold the balance of power in a hung parliment, which is great news! So, go and vote for them on May 5th! 🙂

Er, what else? Ah yes, there’s some scumbag Tory lying turd MP who doctored a picture of him supporting the case of a local asylum seeker to look like he was campaigning against immigration – now Michael Howard is refusing to sack him. Rotten to the core.

And on that note, check out the torybusting going on on this blog – some really doctored posters, and some photoshop. The tories’ campaign this time is horribly targeted. I think this one says it all –

They can’t get in… can they??

What else? Ah yes, The UN human rights commission have concluded that kids in Iraq were better of under Saddam. Yes, that’s right, that murdering, torturing amoral scumbag did less to ruin the lives of the children of iraq than the illegal invasion and occupation have. Despite the fact that then they were living under UN Sanctions, so very little of anything was getting into the country. Now, I guess it’s getting in, but they are having to pay ‘western prices’ for stuff that previously was being subsidised. Ah, don’t you just love free market economics, especially when kids die as a result. Just watch those shareprices skyrocket. Get out that one, Blair.

And on that note, tonight is the Make Poverty History/Trade Justice Movement all night candle-lit vigil in Whitehall, calling on the government to apply pressure to the World Bank and IMF to modify trade laws in favour of the world’s poorest nations, to cancel debts and increase aid. The opening ceremony thingie in Westminster Abbey is going to be marvellous. then there are fun things going on all over the Whitehall area all night. Be there. see the Trade Justice Movement website for the details.

Soundtrack – The Works, ‘Beware Of The Dog’ (I’ll write more about this later, it’s fantastic!); Antonio Carlos Jobim, ‘The Wonderful World Of Antonio Carlos Jobim’; Phil Keaggy, a a live gig from a church in California – skip to about 37 minutes through, unless you really want to watch 37 minutes of Californian mega-church stuff going on. The gig is fab, and features some of the most nifty looping I’ve seen in a long while, using a JamMan and one maybe two DL4s.

March 15, 2005

Manic Compression

I’ve just been listening to ‘Absolution’ by Muse – the songs are great, the playing’s great, the sounds are great… but the mastering is SOOOO harsh!! The whole album is flatlining at close to 0dB all the way through – so little light and shade, distorted vocals, squished drums… MAKE IT STOP!!

Why do bands do this? At least one track on the new album by The Killers is like this too – Glorious Indie Rock ‘n’ Roll is so over compressed I get major ear-fatigue after about two minutes. It’s a shame, cos it’s a great song.

This kind of mastering job used to be reserved for single edits of songs – it makes tracks sound great on small cheap radios (think ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ or ‘Bartender And The Thief’ by Stereophonics). But to mix a whole album like that is just painful – stop doing it!!

Mastering is such a sensitive part of the recording process – it’s what happens after the tracks are recorded and mixed – you send a Cd of the mixes to a dedicated mastering person who then compresses and EQs the tracks to make sure that the level is consistent between the tracks, and that there are no rogue peaks in the audio that means the rest of the track has to be really quiet to accomodate them. In more extreme circumstances, the whole track can be really obviously compressed to bring the average level right up. That’s what’s happened here, and it really hurts your ears listening to it on good speakers.

the mastering on Grace And Gratitude was done by Denis Blackham – a hugely experienced and skilled mastering engineer who got the job on my stuff because he’d mastered Theo Travis’ albums, and also ‘Spirit Of Eden’ by Talk Talk – one of my favourite albums, and one of my favourite sounding albums.

He did a great job of taking my pre-mastered mixes and doing the compression and EQ magic required to bring the overall level up a bit without losing the dynamics on the tracks. There’s some serious audio-voodoo involved in mastering, and Denis has clearly got the mojo. I’d recommend him highly if you’re wanting to get a record mastered.

Soundtrack – Muse, ‘Absolution’; Tommy Simms, ‘Peace And Love’.