The reason was that I got a fairly last minute call to put together a band for a big in Thailand. Which went brilliantly, and was all kinds of fun.

We recorded it (of course) and the first set that we did was all improv. The first of the tunes from the improv set is up now on Soundcloud. Here it is:

#Phunket Improv 2 by solobasssteve

Now I’m back to sorting out the details for our US trip in May/June. More bloggage soon!

January – Flapjack enters 2010 barely a month old, Lo and I still reeling from becoming parents, so January is a slow-ish month of ongoing adjustments to parentalism. But it does see two new ventures start – First, my work with the department of Social Computing at Imperial College began its first tentative steps, planning a new music discovery/sharing/listening app, that we’ve been working on all year, that’s proved to be all kinds of fun and a great chance to apply the knowledge I’ve gained about the changes in the world of music to a real-world project.

The other launch was the rebirth of ‘New Music Strategies’ – Andrew Dubber wanted to take the ideas that he’d developed on his blog, team up with some ninjas and see where it would go. We met up in Holland to talk over what it might end up being, and came up with all kinds of ideas. It’s quite a remarkable group of people, and NMS promises all kinds of great things going forwards…

February saw me back in full Amplified action, and our work grew from strength to strength through the year. Working with Toby Moores and Lucy Windmill to plan it and steer it has been one of the most rewarding teams I’ve ever been a part of. Two truly remarkable people. Add to that the incredible group of people we’re able to call on to ‘Amplify’ the events we get asked to cover, and you’ve got yourself a dream job. At least, you have if you’re me. It was a magical year for Amplified, and certainly a year in which novelty social media usage in many sectors gave way to a far more grown-up approach to harnessing the real time disseminating and democratising potential of social tech to change the way events are done. I’m glad to have been a part of that transition in the events we’ve been a part of.

Musically, February was when Mike Outram and I did our mammoth recording session in Leicester. Which STILL isn’t out. It was so much fun – to discover just how well our ideas gelled, while actually recording it (we’d never played together before the virtual-tape was actually rolling) was a delight. He’s a remarkable musician, and the album will be out v. soon, followed by as many gigs as we can get

I also recorded another album with Andrew Buckton, and played my first solo show of the year, at the Islwyn Guitar Club in South Wales. Good things.

Microgigs was launched in Feb too (wow, busy month!) – we hosted one with Miriam Jones in our tiny living room at our flat in Catford, and it was a resounding success. And it seems like lots more people were enthused about the whole house concert idea as a result… win!

March began with me headlining the Antwerp Festival Of Live Looping – a really enjoyable gig. The rest of the month was quiet, but ended with a masterclass tour for The Academy Of Music And Sound – a now annual (or in the case of 2010, twice-yearly!) masterclass tour that I do for them, and have come to really look forward to.

April’s big event was the Digital Economy Bill, which resulted in me watching hours and hours of live parliament online, and tweeting various MPs with thoughts, opinions, facts and figures relating to this most ham fisted piece of legislation. It passed, but not without enough of a fuss to lead to a judicial review, as well as the forming of an All Party Working Group which I was invited to address later in the year. The whole process galvanized a lot of thoughts and ideas I’d had about the shaping of the ongoing music industries, and the increasingly pernicious influence of the existing trade structures, copyright legislation and particularly the deeply damaging influence of regressive lobby groups like the BPI.

The end of April into May disappeared in a blur of Amplified work and bass teaching, but half way through May, Lobelia and I dipped our toes back into gig-world, eager to find out how Flapjack would take to house concerts. Initial results were NOT good (he screamed his way through our gig in Leeds!), but by the end of our UK Mini-tour, he was loving it, and all set for us to head out to the US at the end of the month.

June and most of July were spent traveling in the US, playing house concerts, visiting friends and family, and discovering just how much Flapjack loves the gigging life! As the tour went on, we released a live album of recordings culled from the tour itself, and in Louisiana, I recorded two albums with Trip Wamsley. It was a magical trip in so many ways, though ended up being a week or so too long, as Lo and I burned out before the trip home… Still, we got to spend lots of time with friends old and new (at this point I started listing them… way too many to list… fail.)

At the end of July, the marvellous Kristin Hersh was visiting London, and some fine twitter-serendipity transpired that ended up with me helping her and Billy organise a free gig in London, at Round Midnight – a night that was one of the musical highlights of the year. Amazing show, gorgeous people.

August saw the last of my ‘normal’ bass teaching for the year, when living in a one-bed flat soon showed its limitations in terms of teaching-space vs baby-space. Baby won. But Lobelia was able to play her first solo gig since Flapjack’s birth, and she even played a superbly well received last minute set at Greenbelt.

September was dominated for me by a trip to Berlin for All2GetherNow – an indie music conference, organised by the brilliant Andrea Goetze from New Music Strategies. 3 days of amazing discussions about the changes and potential of the new music environment, with some remarkable thinkers, not least of all Nancy Baym, Mike Masnick, Zoe Keating, Micki Krimmel and the New Music Strategies team. The duo session with Zoe, talking about being completely solo, was a particular treat.

The rest of Sept disappeared in a blur of furious Amplified activity. Exhausting.

October began with UnConvention Salford, so more New Music Strategies goodness, as well as a chance to link music-world with Amplified-world, as Laura Kidd and I gave it the Amplified treatment, live blogging and documenting all the goings on there…

October had two other notable gigs – the first was speaking at a rape prevention conference in Glasgow about the treatment of women in the music industry – definitely a high point of my music and speaking careers so far. It was a real honour to be asked to do it.

The other was a return visit to Round Midnight with Michael Manring – we played what was probably the best improvised set we’ve ever done, and had another full house. A great venue with one of my favourite musicians on the planet, what’s not to love?

November’s big event was a surprise (to me) gig at the London Jazz Festival, at the invitation of Orphy Robinson – just a couple of weeks before the gig, he asked if I’d like to do it, and on the day I discovered I’d be playing twice, AND it was going to be broadcast on Radio 3. The first trio set with Tony Buck and Otto Fischer has already gone out, and got a really good response. The later set with Orphy, Steve Noble and Otto will go out at a later date…

We also moved house at the end of November – after a year in our tiny flat, it was time to move on, and for the time being to travel north…

December began with another remarkable Amplified Assignment, covering an ‘Artist’s research lab on the theme of memory’ with an organisation called Motiroti. I quickly ended up wearing two hats, contributing as an artist too, and having some really inspirational discussions relating memory to art, artistic practice and culture. A really special couple of days.

Following another week long tour for the Academy Of Music and Sound, and a 2nd marvellous gig at Chapter One Books in Hythe with the remarkable Emily Baker, December has brought us to the end of the year and the eve of a new one…

2010 was brought to you by

• Twitter,
• Facebook,
• Bandcamp,
• the end of Myspace,
• New Music Strategies,
• Amplified,
• Looping,
• Bassing,
• Blogging
• and above all, parenting an amazing lil’ dude alongside my amazing wife.

I’ve loved it.

What does 2011 hold? Well, the definite stuff is

• the release of the album with Mike Outram,
• a new solo album (or collection-of-tunes-that-used-to-be-thought-of-as-an-album),
• another trip to the US to visit family, and play some house concerts,
• more Amplified stuff,
• a public version of the music app with the Imperial College people
• and a return to bass teaching.

The less definite stuff all depends on how things pan out. How much time I get to spend playing music depends on how much time I can afford to spend playing music, but as things stand, music pays for itself, and the time it takes to do. It’s a sustainable part of our lives, with forward motion and a debt-free momentum. Thanks to everyone who has come to a show this year and/or voluntarily chosen to buy music or share it with people who might like it – you’re the reason all this works.

So, onward into the new year, a new start, a fresh set of possibilities and potentials. It’s quite possible that it’ll be your best year yet – don’t jinx it, OK?

As you’ll remember if you’re an even semi-regular visitor to this site, in November I took part in

Big, big thanks to the people who were reading it as we went along - you’ll see some of their tweets in the book from when they replied to the characters on there. Your encouragement and willingness to talk made-up nonsense to imaginary people was invaluable in shaping the direction of the book and providing the motivation to keep writing. Nuff respect.

The PDF as it was going along was behind a password-protected link, just so I could keep track of who had it. But now it’s available as a free download by clicking on the book cover below. Sadly, the links in the PDF aren’t clickable – I’m hoping that the eventual version of it will be fully interactive (the .rtfd version of it that I’ve got is fully clickable, I just can’t get a version that looks good AND is clickable. One or the other but not both… I’ll get there.)

There will, in due course, be a paper version of it available on Lulu for you to buy, should you want to, as well as some band t-shirts…

So, if you want to read the PDF of the novel, feel free to click on the book cover below, or right-click (cntrl+click on a Mac) and save it to your desktop. It’s worth mentioning that it does have a lot of strong language in it. If that bothers you, probably best not to download, or get someone else to edit it for you first

I’m already thinking about what happens next for the characters, so the two Twitter accounts and one of the blogs will be ongoing – feel free to join in the fun – @Drum_Monkey_ and @TheDistanceMeg are the Twitter accounts, and http://verfremdungseffekt.posterous.com is their blog…

Well, I’m now well over twelve thousand words into my

As I said in my last post, I’m setting up twitter accounts for the characters as I go along, and two of them are now on there: @Drum_Monkey_ and @TheDistanceMeg. They’ve been chatting to each other and with other twitterers, and some of those tweets are ending up either in or influencing the story. Drum Monkey even got a string of really smart direct messages giving him some advice on a guerilla marketing campaign! It’s turning into all kinds of fun.

Meg’s twitter name stems from their improv band being called Verfremdungseffekt, AKA Brecht’s concept of ‘The Distancing Effect‘ – she thought she was being REALLY clever with that one

So please do have a chat with them, and if you want to read the book as it goes along, there’s a PDF version that gets updated every day or so out there… if you email me or send me a message on twitter, I’ll probably/possibly send you the link and the password

I’m having all kinds of fun writing this – it’s a really helpful creative exercise to

• tackle something without any expectation that I’ll be good at it
• have  a set ‘volume’ of writing to do but no other ‘aim’.
• have a way of weaving bits of real life into it, and through the characters tastes and interactions, give some other bands a bit of promo…
• have something to do while we wait for the baby to be born

Try it!

So this afternoon, on a whim, I thought ‘I wonder if I can write a novel about some musicians who in some imaginary world start a cultural revolution, accidentally’ – I realised that it would be fun to have a go at writing a long-form hypothetical case study on how the world of music might work out. After all, it’s how a lot of novels work – either romantic or dystopic visions of an imaginary future for people and planet.

And of course, with one of the pithy descriptions of the project on the NaNoWriMo site being “Let’s write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.” there’s no pressure for it to be any good. I can focus on it being fun, let my imagination run wild without the constraints of a blog, or the compulsion to finish it/publish it/whatever.

And of course, I can mess with the format. And with that in mind, I’ve registered a twitter account for the only one of my characters so far that would be on Twitter - he’s @drum_monkey_ and is there to be talked to. I’d LOVE it if you chatted to him as the novel went on. The other characters will get onto Twitter too, as soon as it’s conceivable within their characters that they’d be on it, and I may even write a chapter or two on twitter as they talk to each other.

For now, if you’re doing NaNoWriMo, please feel free to follow my progress, on Twitter, or on the NaNoWriMo site.

Thanks to my involvement in the Amplified project, I’ve been to a range of different events, talking about social media, capturing conversations around those events and writing it up afterwards.

Those of you’ve who’ve followed my career for a very long time will know that I was actually a journalist before I was a solo artist – I was writing for Bassist Magazine 2 years before I ever released an album under my own name. That was back in the late 90s. So the ‘reporting’ side of what’s going on with Amplified runs deep in my psyche. I’d hesitate to call what I’m doing ‘journalism’, just because I spend a lot of time these days hanging out with ‘proper’ journalists, fabulous journalists, and journalistic method is substantially different in approach to social-media methodology. Not to say that they can’t cross over, or that the skills from one don’t help in the other sphere, but there is a tangible difference. (Jemimah Knight – herself an excellent and inspiring journalist – wrote a fab blog post about this a while back…)

So, once I started playing solo, I had to develop a whole load of ancillary skills to enable me to do my ‘core’ business as well as I could – playing bass.

• I learned about design (the hard way – I owe the world an apology for the over-abundance of comic sans on the cover of my second solo album ),
• I learned about event organising,
• I learned about distribution,
• about collection agencies,
• about dealing with the press from the other side…

And in all this I was driven by the same forces that were beginning to shape my music:

• The desire to see just how much I could get away with on my own, and
• An impetus to create spaces where people working together get to have equal ownership of what they are working on, where everyone benefits, everyone learns, everyone wins.

In music, the former was clearly the objective when looping and layering my bass into mini-symphonic works. The latter found its ultimate expression in the Recycle Collective – a monthly music night I put on for over a year that brought together improvising musicians for some of the greatest gigs I’ve ever been a part of. No one was told what to play, how to play or even when to play. We just got together with the aim of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

Fast forward a couple of years, and all of those principles, skills and lessons are now being applied to myriad social media projects. The ongoing experiment of finding the people who enjoy my music via social media channels is going great guns, making friends and finding ‘fans’ via Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, YouTube etc. etc. and on each of them, I’m able to promote the work of musicians whose music I love, as well my own. Everybody wins.

Working alongside Toby, Lucy, Joanne, Mike, Christian and Benjamin on the Amplified events is a lot like being in a really great band – lots of improv, some fascinating gigs, way too many tech-toys, and everything getting done by the person best equipped to do it at the time. Hence me getting asked to fix a bus with a power-cut while at the Civil Service Live conference last week – the power on a coach is pretty much the same as on a boat; find the fuse box, flip the switches of the circuit that’s tripped. Job done.

Taking what I’ve learned in the last decade and applying it to any area of life where social media has enabled people to cut out the middle men and talk direct to their customers /end-users /partners /collaborators /etc. is a wonderful privilege. The same curiosity that makes me wonder if it’s possible to make engaging, deep, music with just a bass and some toys makes me wonder if it’s possible to make politics more truly democratic by using social media tools to talk directly to politicians. And if it’s possible to help charitable organisations tell their stories more effectively, and cheaply, by talking direct rather than through the press and through printed newsletters.

It’s one big long prototype of an idea. A proof of concept experiment that’s all about building up evidence by JFDI. And it’s all connected. So I hope the rest of my weird life proves at least partially as interesting as the music

(the photo at the top is by Benjamin Ellis )

When The Cheat and I first visited Grand Rapids in 2004, for Sarda and Kari’s wedding, they introduced us to their Neighbour, Ralston Bowles. As well as having an unusually brilliant name, he was introduced to us as being a singer/songwriter who works for a radio station. A description that could just as easily fit Bob Dylan these days, and one that for Ralston was as much of an understatement of what he meant to the music scene in Grand Rapids as it would be for Bobby D.

Ralston offered to show us round the venues in the town. Sounded like fun. A weird thing happened – every venue we went up to, the people on the door ushered us in like VIPs. Past queues, through hordes of fans for whichever band was playing. Folk venues, rock clubs, underground punk venues, no difference for Ralston. He was greeted with affection and recognition wherever we went. It was becoming transparently clear that he was a man who through years of advocacy for the music of Grand Rapids had built up an astonishing level of respect that transcended genre or age barriers. He truly was the Johnny Cash of Grand Rapids.

We ended our tour of venues at some nuts party, full of very stoned and drunk people. The Cheat and I sat in with Ralston on a few of his songs – simple, deep, gospel songs. Songs of hope and justice. Story songs. All of them with about 3 chords and no bridge. Great stuff to jam on.

Ralston Story II:

When Lobelia and I went to Grand Rapids, in the summer of 07, Ralston hooked us up with a gig at Four Friends coffee shop. Lots of cool people had played there, sounded like a fun venue, we were well up for it. When we went to the venue on the evening of the gig, we found that not only were they not prepared for us to play, they were shut! They’d actually closed early. So this was about 7pm.

“I wonder if anyone’s playing at The Pony?” says Ralston. We’ve no idea what he’s talking about, but run with it. We head off to ‘The Pony”, which turns out to be nearby venue The One Trick Pony, and as we walk in the owner greets Ralston with a jokey ‘hey, Ralston, are you playing tonight?‘ ‘we are if you want us to‘ says Ralston, and within about 20 mins we’re set up, Lo and I do a set, Ralston plays a set, and a marvellous gig is had (off the back of which we end up with a gig in St Louis too!)

He’s since played with me in London, slept in our cupboard, hung out and been a bit of a legend.

Ralston needs our help:

Which is why, when I read this story about him having just had cancer surgery, and people putting on benefit gigs for him in Grand Rapids, I decided to blog about him, and suggest that you lot

• check him out, and
  
• buy some of his music.

Here’s a link to his stuff on last.fm so you can hear him.

And here’s a link to his CD-buying page on his website. And another link to the page on CDBaby where you can buy his Cds and MP3s.

Here’s what I suggest: you can obviously buy one of his CDs. Or you can buy either Carwreck Conversations or Rally At the Texas Hotel on iTunes. and if you feel like donating some more dough to help someone out who has given so much to his local music scene, has little or no insurance for the surgery he had (when is the US going to wake up to the economic apartheid of its medical system???) then you can send him money via paypal (the address is ralston [at] his domain name)

Last week I was sat opposite a guy on the train who had been sold the wrong ticket. He was going to be thrown off the train cos he didn’t have a fiver for the ticket, and they wouldn’t accept his Solo Card. I paid for his ticket, he stayed on the train, the guard was suddenly all apologetic for his aggressive tone, and the bloke had his faith in nature restored. I didn’t even notice the missing £5. I mean, 5 quid’s basically nowt. And when you can actually buy someone’s music rather than just ‘donating’ it, it’s win-win. Go on, I dare you.

Which got me thinking, so I put in the URL to this site, and here’s the wordle it produced:

…could there be a finer group of words for a musician/geek/blogger/me-type-person to be associated with?

WIN!

Have you made a wordle for your site? If you do, and you add it to their gallery, feel free to post the link below…

Anyway, over the course of NAMM weekend, quite a few bass builders looked at it, most with a look of horror on their faces. All said it wouldn’t repair adequately, and at best would need to have the spruce top sliced off and replaced. Not good. That’s a few grand’s worth of work.

Fast forward to yesterday, and I finally get to visit the lovely geniuses at Modulus Guitars, who made the bass (and every other solid bodied electric bass I’ve played in the last 16 years). I showed the bass to their chief bass builder, designer and all-round bass building ninja-dude, Joe Perman, and he basically wrote off the body. Because the crack goes ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE BODY by the jack socket, and is right across the grain through the top, any repair is going to be a botch job at best. He said he could make it better, but not great.

So we start discussing other options, after deciding it needs a new body. At this point, the willingness of Joe and Modulus A & R guy and dude-who-sorts-things-out Anderson Page to bend over backwards to help was astounding. Ideas were thrown around, including putting the neck and electronics from my bass on a completely solid body until they had time to build a new one, and even shipping me the body to have Martin Peterson assemble it in London…

But then a Joe has a light-bulb moment, remembering that there was in fact a semi-hollow Q6 body that had a tiny blemish (I couldn’t even see it!) that meant it couldn’t be sold (their quality control is exceptional). I looked at it, and loved the idea…

‘can I take it home on Thursday then?’ – er no, it’ll take a coupla weeks to get it finished and sprayed and for the lacquer to dry… which reminded me of a conversation I’d had last week with Steve Azola, maker of the incredible Azola upright basses, who was wondering what my bass would be like with a rubbed finish, rather than the heavy lacquer finish. “if we did that kind of finish, would that work?”

Joe’s eyes lit up – it was a plan that allowed them to use a body that couldn’t be sold, to experiment with a new finish for their basses AND I get a perfect working bass to go home with. The old body on mine becomes a write-off, but the new bass will be a whole other bass adventure for me. The wood combination is different (walnut top on an alder body) so will add a different flavour to my music. Always a nice game to play

As you can see in the photo at the top, part of me is loathe to let go of the bass that has been MY sound for a decade. It’s what happens at the end of my arms, a new limb… But that’s not going to happen, it’s not going to be fixed, BA saw to that by completely trashing the old one.

Good job bass manufacturers don’t function like airlines.

We’ll be heading back to Modulus tomorrow morning to see how they are getting on with it… More photos and blog posts then!

Of course, I’ve also run into loads of pictures of Geddy Lee looking scarily like me as always (see above), but below is a round up of the rest of my pictures so far from NAMM – bass gear-wise, my favourite things so far have been the Mark Audio powered speakers (not really bass gear, more portable PA equipment – looks PERFECT for what Lobelia and I do!) and the new Ernie Ball bass with the push button pick-up controls… the great sound of it really took me by surprise.

Have met lots of of twitter friends too, which is rather lovely, and not a small number of people whose opening gambit has been ‘dude, I LOVE your blog’ – so this post is for you lot!