A virtual gig – Geeknbury in your living room!

This weekend, the social media marvel that is Christian Payne hosted a lil’ festival out in wilds of Surrey called Geeknbury – I REALLY wanted to go, but it was just dreadful timing for me, work-wise, so I had to make do with checking out the happenings from the fest via the festival channel on Phreadz, at geeknbury.phreadz.com

Phreadz is a multi-media threaded conversational platform, so you can have chats like on twitter or a message board, but videos can be replied to with MP3s or pictures, and text can be added to anything posted. The threading works like a ‘family tree’, with all the sub-conversations viewable, and everything can be tagged and searched, as well as viewed within topical channels.

It’s still in ‘closed-beetroot’ mode at the moment, while all the coding is done by the mastermind behind it, Kosso, but a load of us are on there as beta-testers, and I love it.

Fortunately, the Geeknbury channel is open to the public, and as Lobelia and I couldn’t get to the fest, we decided to extend the festival via Phreadz, posting a load of songs as posts in the geeknbury channel, so people anywhere in the world could tune in and watch.

We had LOADS of fun doing it, and the embedded widgets below have each track, plus the conversation that happened embedded in them, so you can enjoy it too!

This was just a test, a trial run, for something much slicker, with proper streaming as well as the archived tracks, and a chatroom etc. We need to talk to Kosso about what’s possible, but we’ll let you know what happens next… Til then, enjoy, and don’t forget that you can see us ‘really live’ at Darbucka on Tuesday night (that’s probably today for most of you reading this!!)

Track 1 – I’m Lost

Track 2 – Happy

Track 3 – Grace And Gratitude

Track 4 – I’m In

Track 5 – Tea In The Sahara

Track 6 – Love Is A Battlefield

Video of Friday night's gig…

Here’s some fun video from Friday night’s gig at The Perseverence in London – the whole thing was streamed live, and archived, so that you can watch 45 minutes of it now! It starts of with Lobelia playing solo, then I join in, and finish up with a solo tune…

Enjoy!

Oh, and don’t miss Tuesday night’s gig at Darbucka! 🙂

Paradigm is no measure of quality – what to do when you're 'different'…

This post is inspired by two things – firstly, a conversation I had recently with the very lovely Laura Kidd. We’d known each other quite a few weeks before she finally bothered to listen to any of the music I did, assuming that because it was solo bass it would be a load of techno-wank bass cleverness and therefor not something she’d be interested in. She eventually listened to it, probably as much out of politeness as anything, and said with a large degree of surprise the next time I saw her how much she liked it.

She was quite embarrassed, but actually her response is pretty much mine whenever I get an email or get given a CD and told ‘you’ll really like this, it’s solo bass’.

The problem is that solo bass is neither a style of music, not does it carry any indication of quality. And, for the most part, I’m not hugely into what happens on solo bass. There are some very notable exceptions to this, and some of my favourite musicians in the world are indeed solo bassists, but as a ‘draw’, solo bass doesn’t really work for me without some evidence that there’s more to it than the tools of the trade.

Same goes for ‘loop music’, ‘ambient music’, or any other vague classification I might fit into. It’s one of the reasons I find it so tricky to accurately sum up what I do in a single sentence…

The 2nd thing that inspired this as a topic was thinking about mine and Lobelia‘s upcoming gig at Darbucka. Going out to live shows in a city as big as London can be such a chore, and venues are, by and large, becoming less and less pleasant places to hang out. I don’t want to stand around in a dark smelly hall surrounded by drunk people shouting waiting for a band to come on only to find that I can’t hear them play anyway… I’m immediately wary of any gig in a venue I haven’t heard of, and I’m guessing that most of the people who would enjoy my gigs feel similarly.

So how do you get it across to people that a night out at Darbucka is ‘not like other gigs’? That the venue is cool enough to be worth a night out on its own, that the food is great, the ambience is really mellow, the sound is always cracking, it’s a fun night, people listen, the audience are generally lovely, and there’ll be the return of the lovely bloke playing Ukulele and singing, as well as all the usual Steve ‘n’ Lobelia loveliness.

That, dear readers, is where you lot come in. Cos nothing at all beats word of mouth in spreading that kind of info. I can rant til I’m blue in the face about how fab my own gigs are, but hey, they’re my gigs, I’m bound to say that. Why should anyone believe me when I have a vested interest in them being there?

…I hope that for most of you reading this, that last bit is rhetorical, that it’s clear I do try to be honest about what I’m doing, and definitely go out of my way to put on the best gig I can (despite Darbucka having it’s own PA, and me not owning a car, I still take my own PA down there cos the sound is better, for example 🙂 )

So, if you’ve been to see us before, take the next couple of mins to tell someone about it – post a comment on last.fm or Myspace, or hey, just post a comment on here! Tweet about it, blog about it, or call up some friends if you’re in London and bring ’em along. If you’re bringing loads, email me for a group discount 🙂

Hope to see you at Darbucka on Tuesday 29th July – it’ll be a really lovely mellow, fun night out, I promise!

Tuesday night gig in London: don't miss it!

OK, this is VERY last minute news of a gig tomorrow night at Darbucka!

It’ll feature Lobelia and I playing our duo stuff (see Youtube for more on that!), my new trio with Patrick Wood and Roy Dodds (see Reverb Nation to listen to a track from our forthcoming album!), and will also feature Yolanda Charles and Miles Bould (oh yes, unbridled funkiness from two of the most amazing musicians I know) and Lloyd Davis (one man and a ukulele – he’s fab!)

It’s a celebration, which you’ll know all about if you’ve been following Twitter over the weekend, and we’d love for you to be there – So much so that it’s only £3 for you to get in if you say you read about it on the blog when you ge there… Normal tickets are £6.

So bring your friends and come on down. The gig is at Darbucka, on St John’s Street in Clerkenwell, doors are at 7, music starts around 8 and it’s wise to plan to eat there as the food is amazing, either in the restaurant upstairs, or downstairs in the venue. It’s all marvellous.

For more info, if you’re on Facebook, you can check out the facebook event page.

See you there!

Exclusive track on Reverb Nation + gig news…

I’ve FINALLY got round to adding the latest bunch of gigs to Reverb Nation. The first of which is this sunday, at the Brickhouse, on Brick Lane in London (deets below in the gig cal widget).

The gig’s with my new trio with Patrick Wood and Roy Dodds – two of the most amazing musicians I’ve ever had the privilege to play with. I’ve just added a fan-exclusive track to the Reverb Nation page, which you can play from from the widget below if you’re already on the mailing list, or you can just sign up! Enjoy…


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