Tag: website

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The Allotment

My mum came up to help flyering yesterday, and while here, we went to a play. As a general rule, I don’t go to plays at the fest. I don’t really go to plays anywhere. Theatre just isn’t an art form that enters my radar.

But I’d been accosted by a flyering lady on the Royal Mile, who told me about this show, and it sounded fascinating, and I’m REALLY glad we went.

It’s called The Allotment, and is set, predictably, on an allotment, where a well meaning but fairly clueless mature student is conducting an experiment in the therapeutic value of horticulture for her MA, and recruits four asylum seekers to work on it. Their clash of worlds values, her ineptness and cliched outlook make for a fantastic story, brilliantly written, superbly acted and far too good for what you expect at the Fringe.

The theatre company website says that it’s touring in the East Midlands in Sept/Oct, so if you can get to see it either here at the Fringe or on tour, go, it’s fab. I hope they bring it to London at some point, I’d love to see it again.

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John Lester/Paul Tiernan gig

Headed up to Cambridge last night, to CB2, where I’ll be playing in just over a week with Ned Evett, to see John Lester and Paul Tiernan.

John’s new album, ‘So Many Reasons’ is fantastic, so I was really looking forward to seeing him live again. It’s been quite a while since I was last at one of his gigs, and he didn’t disappoint. He and Paul switched back and forth playing each other’s songs, playing some solo tunes, and a handful of covers, including the only acoustic version of ‘Play That Funky Music White Boy’ that I’ve ever heard.

Paul Tiernan was a revelation – not having heard him before, he’s got a gorgeous voice, like a more intelligible John Martyn. All in all a very enjoyable gig.

John’s album isn’t officially released yet, but I’m sure if you email him via his website, he’ll sort something out for you…

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cats and websites

Sorry for big absence from blog-world – two big things have been going on. Firstly, and most tragically, the ginger fairly aged feline has been very unwell. You know about the cancer, which at the moment isn’t showing up the way it was, but he’s now got very serious kidney failure, (creatin level of over 800, which is off the chart), and there’s pretty much nothing they can do. We’ve been trying to get his blood levels settled, but he’s not enjoying the renal food and isn’t really improving anyway, so we’re now pretty much resigned to giving him whatever he wants to eat so he can enjoy his last week or two on earth. It’s a horrible horrible moment to reach – it feels like condemning someone to death, even though there’s no way he’s going to suddenly get better. The will is there to keep fighting for him, but he’s got nothing left to fight with. It’s a dark time in Stevie-Towers.

The second hugely time consuming thing of late is moving my website over to a new server. Copying the stuff over was no problem at all – the Captain took care of that in his usual uber-geek cleverness way – but once there, it became clear that OSCommerce wasn’t going to run on a server running the latest versions of PHP and MySQL (like I know what I’m talking about). So, ’twas time to find a new shopping cart – this time I’ve gone with Zen Cart – it looks quite similar to OSC, but I’m assured by geeks who know that it’s more secure, and much tidier code-wise. I’m almost there, almost completely up to date with the shop – it’ll hopefully go live over the weekend, with advanced order on ‘Behind Every Word’ available, which will include the free download album ‘Lessons Learned From The Fairly Aged Felines (Lessons Learned Pt III)’ – I just need to finish mixing that, zip it up into a zip file with some artwork, and maybe a couple of tracks from ‘Behind Every Word’, and it’ll all be on sale then. I’ll then over the next week or so get Lessons Learned Pt I, Conversations, Open Spaces and It’s Not Gonna Happen up for sale, and hopefully replenish the Street Team Stash with all manner of goodies. Busy time for a bassist cum web designer. :o)

Also, just in, I’ve been booked for an open-air gig in Portsmouth (at least, I’m assuming it’s open air, as it’s for a boat race of some kind, and they generally don’t happen in doors) – I’ll posted the deets as soon as I can.

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all right, own up…

who has put my email address on a public website somewhere??? I’m getting so much spam over these last few days, it’s mad. I’ve had very little for the last 6 months or so. Seemed like a lot of it had gone. But now it’s back, and I’m getting loads of spam comments on this blog… they get filtered, and I can delete them, but they are a pain in the arse…

grrrrr

*grumble grumble*

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McWebChat with the McDevil

I’m currently watching a web chat on the channel 4 website with Steve Easterbrook, the managing director of McDonalds in the UK. It’s in response to channel 4 having just shown Supersize Me again. I watched bits of it again, and it’s a fantastic bit of film making.

Clearly, McTurdBoy is going to be a shitbag – you don’t take a job like that in the first place without being McScum – and the webchat is being filtered so it’s all the questions that look really edgy but allow him to recite the McShit party line.

I’ve submitted three questions so far – one of about the Judge’s conclusions in the McLibel trial, one about the McDonald’s statement that none of their meals are guaranteed free from meat contamination and one about whether or not the film has an impact on the ‘diminished consumer confidence’ that McShit listed as one of the reasons for them closing 25 of their hellholes last month… – perhaps not surprisingly, McSatan hasn’t bothered to trouble me with a McAnswer.

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One more summer on the Royal Mile

So, after having said that I wasn’t going to do the Edinburgh Festival this year, it looks like I will be after all. Only this time, instead of doing it solo, it’ll be a duet with Julie McKee, one of my favourite singers around. Julie and I have been working on duo versions of pop tunes for a while now, everything from Earth Wind And Fire to John Martyn, The Police to Soundgarden, Kylie to Tom Waits, so we’re gonna do that stuff late night on the fringe, with a few loopy ambient things and a solo tune or two thrown in for good measure.

I’m really looking forward to it – we’re only doing 5 or 6 dates, so it’s fairly low pressure, and the upfront cost isn’t going to be as high as it was for me last year.

here’s the blurb for the festival fringe programme –

Julie McKee/Steve Lawson – The New Standard.
“A musical match made in heaven, divine jazz-influenced vocalist McKee and acclaimed solo bassist Lawson give a fresh spin to the pop canon, from Sondheim to Soundgarden. Unmissable.
www.thenewstandard.co.uk

(don’t bother going to the address at the moment, it currently just points back to my website, but will have all the info about the gig).

So expect a gig or two before then as we get out and try out our looping ‘n’ pop songs duo! It’s going to be lots of fun. If you’re in or around Edinburgh in the second week of August, come and see it – we’ll be at The Lot.

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Kid's typing course

just found this via a friend’s blog – A free touch typing course on the BBC website – it’s designed for kids, so the graphics and stuff are as you’d expect for kids, but if you are really to tight to fork out for mavis beacon’s typing course, then it’s a great place to start, or to refresh your skills if you’ve got lazy. Just typing this and thinking about which fingers I’m using, there are a few touch typing rules that I’m breaking, so I think I’ll go back and do the course too…

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A week without my laptop

So much for ‘Apple Care’ – it’s been a week since I dropped off my laptop to be repaired. For the last two days I’ve been phoning, getting put on hold, been told three times that I’ll be called back, and have yet to receive any calls at all, or talk to anyone who knows anything about my laptop. Until 5 minutes ago, the support website at apple.com said ‘information not available’ about the status of my repair. As I write, I’m still on hold (38 minutes and counting), but the website has updated to ‘repair in progress’. That’s fine except that it says that the laptop was dropped off at the shop TODAY!!!! That’s clearly total shit, as it was dropped off a week ago today. So it’s been sat there, with no-one knowing where it was, or caring, for a week before some fucking jobsworth realised that it might actually be wise to locate the laptop they’ve had FOR A WEEK and fix the damn thing.

Meanwhile, I’ve been using TSP’s laptop, which is exceedingly kind of her, but it hasn’t got my bookmarks or diary on it, hasn’t got Skype or Adium or any of the other stuff I use daily. Meanwhile Apple don’t give a shit. Bastards.

If you’re getting a computer repaired by Apple, my advice is phone them EVERY DAY. Call them as soon as you get home after dropping it off, check the website hourly and hassle the shit out of them until they fix it and get it back to you. Otherwise, it’ll just end up on a pile of non-urgent jobs, and get done when the pile gets so high they can’t find their way out of the office without fixing a few.

Balls to Apple Care. 42 minutes on hold – great service.

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The randomness of the National Insurance system…

The story so far – back in Nov/Dec last year, I get a letter out of the blue from the National Insurance people asking for £900 or they’re going to cut my balls off. Or something like that. I was given 28 days to pay and the letter threatened court action.

I rang them up, said ‘er, what the hell is this?’ to which the girl on the other end of the phone says ‘oh, don’t worry about that, it’s not compulsory to pay it before then, and no there won’t be any court action. Just pay some off when you can.’ me says, ‘so why the hell are you trying to scare me with this letter???’ she says, ‘it’s just a formality’.

What a marvellous euphamism, formality.

Anyway, fast forward to about a week ago and I get another letter saying ‘pay up or we’re sending the heavies round’, with a letter in it explaining about the process of having money taken off you through the county court!! WTF??? This people are mad.

So, methinks, I’ll go and pay some of it off online… er, website? nope. Sorry, no payments online.

This morning I phone the number.

‘hello, I’d like to pay a couple of hundred quid of what I owe’.
‘how about £312.45?’
‘er, no, just £200, thanks’.
‘we can’t do that. Can you pay £312.45 monthly?’
‘of course not.’
‘how much can you pay monthly?’
‘well, like I said, I’m happy to pay £200 now, and then maybe £100 a month til the debt’s gone’.
‘how about £152.31?’
‘well, that’s a fabulously random figure, but I guess that would be OK’
‘right, the first one will be a month from today, I’ll send out about 76 letters before then, confirming everything in writing 9 times, wasting a tree and a half, and ignoring the fact that you’re offering to pay £200 now.’
‘er, OK’.
*click*

So I didn’t get to pay £200. Instead, I have to pay some random amount in about a month’s time, after my postman dies under the weight of spurious letters from the Inland Revenue.

Given that it’s basically the same thing as tax, why the hell can’t I get online and pay it??? Why isn’t there a bank-transfer number or something? Then I’d just pay it off when I’ve got the spare cash…

In case you’re thinking ‘well, you ran up the debt, you should pay it all now’, they hadn’t EVER contacted me about paying this, I’ve ever seen it mentioned on a tax bill, never had a phonecall or a letter about it, until the one asking for £900. So it’s not my fault at all, you hard-nosed bastards.

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New Music/Recycle Collective tomorrow…

Went into town this morning (town=central London), ostensibly to pick up a copy of Sibelius G7 software. It’s a score-writing package, that I need to be able to a) do my column for Bass Guitar Magazine properly and b) get a load of PDF scores of my stuff up on the web-shop ASAP. I get emails every week from people requesting the sheet music or ‘TAB’ for my tunes. Rest assured, there’ll be precious little TAB going on. Reading music isn’t hard, and is a much more useful skill that interpreting numbers of frets on imaginary fingerboards so that you can learn lots of really simple songs badly.

Anyway, long story short, no-one had G7 in stock. Shit! A wasted trip into town. Well, not entirely – I did get to call into Ray’s Jazz, and picked up a couple of very cheap CDs. One was Daby Toure’s album (something I’ve wanted since seeing him at Greenbelt last year), and the other is ‘Nordic Quartet’ by John Surman, Karin Krog, Terje Rypdal and Vigleik Storaas. It’s a fascinating album, featuring lots of classic Rypdal guitar loveliness, and inspired me to record another idea towards the new album. I don’t think it’ll make it on there, as it was just recorded to stereo, not on separate tracks, but it is a great idea that I’ll definitely revisit. Terje’s stuff always inspires me, please check out some of his CDs. {EDIT – I’ve just compared the recording of this new tune with ‘Not Dancing For Chicken’, and it’s SOOO much better – amazing how clean the sound of the Looperlative is!}

And recording that piece has got me all excited about tomorrow night’s Recycle Collective gig – I’m playing in a duo with Patrick Wood – Patrick and I have recorded together lots over the years, lots of lovely improv stuffs, some of which is in the street-team stash (or was – I’ve no idea what’s currently in the stash!). We’ve also played live together at Greenbelt, both in a duo, and he was a part of my Global Footprint huge improv thingie last year.

So we’re playing, followed by Orphy Robinson and Roger Goula – both of whom are fabulous players I’ve collaborated with in the past.

I really am like a kid in a toy shop with the Recycle Collective – I get to book all my favourite people to come and make lovely noises with me, in a gorgeous venue, to lovely audiences, which you’re more than welcome to come and be a part of. See the RC website for more details.

So that’s tomorrow. I’ve been doing LOADS of teaching of late – schedule is filling up, for sure, I’m almost maxxed out on evening teaching (if you’re wanting any lessons, best book a fair way in advance…) but I’m looking forward to my next lot of gigs – book shows in April with Muriel Anderson in the UK, and some solo stuff in April, as well as some clinics/masterclasses around… watch this space!

Soundtrack – right now, it’s my new tune, before that it was the Franks – Sinatra and Dunnery (not together!)

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