Year: 2003

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orders come flooding in…

…big thanks to everyone who’s bought the CD so far – lots of orders are in already, well on the way to covering cost before the CD comes out, which is always nice – it’s a slightly precarious thing this releasing your own CDs. Modern computer recording has made that side of it a lot easier, but without the funds to do blanket advertising etc. we rely on word of mouth more than anything, so please let your chums know about it…

Anyway – what’s been happening over the last few days? Well, Saturday was the Stop The War march in London – somewhere between 20 and 100 thousand folks out (usually split the difference is close – so say 50thousand), marching from Hyde Park to Trafalger Square. Much was made of it not being as big as February’s march, which is quite honestly shabby journalism – since when did marches protesting the complexity of requests to withdraw troups and playing poodle to Bush ever gather the same emotive response from the general populace as stopping the government going into a war that was at that point still avoidable?? Nonsense. It was a huge display of public unrest, with lots of the banners calling for an end to lies and spin, sick of Blair’s failure to engage with public opinion or even his own party. With the Labour conference going on at the moment, he’s getting a bit more of a battering, but still not enough. The party are refusing to allow a debate on Iraq at the conference – knowing obviously that Tony’s position is completely out of step with just about every labour supporter in the country. So much for living in a democracy.

Anyway, the march was good – it’s always nice to know that you’re not alone in finding the actions of the leaders of the west dispicable. Nice to stand alongside lots of very normal, but very pissed off people. The most moving group I saw was the ex-servicemen against the war group – decorated servicemen from the second world war saying enough’s enough…

So on Monday I went down to Eastbourne – firstly to fix Tess’ Echoplex, which wasn’t broken at all, and then to check the chromalin artwork for the new album, which was approved and sent off, with the delivery date set at the 13th october! how exciting – get those orders in now! :o)

Came back and headed over to have a play with BJ Cole and Orphy Robinson – our new trio of Pedal Steel, Bass and Steel Pans is really exciting – it’s cool because we haven’t taken written tunes in at this stage, just jamming to find the sound of the band, what works, what doesn’t, and lots of what we did on Monday worked. Hopefully we’ll be gigging soon

and talking of gigs, I’ve got a few dates coming up, it seems. Lots of unconfirmed but highly likely stuff. Just need to sort out logisitics to firm them up. And now I need to sort out a date or two with theo over the coming months…

Oh, and talking of Theo, there’s a new MP3 up from the extra disc – ‘It’s Not Gonna Happen’. The track’s called ‘As Long As My Arm’ and the MP3 is a 6 minute edit from a 15 minute track!

enjoy.

Soundtrack – Joni Mitchell, ‘Hejira’; Jughead, ‘Jughead’; Prefab Sprout, ‘Jordan The Comeback’; Steve Lawson and Theo Travis, ‘For The Love Of Open Spaces’.

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At last, you can buy the CD!

Finally, the new album is all sent off the the pressing plant, being lovingly turned from a bunch of computer files into delicious CDs.

And with that comes advance ordering – at the moment, via Paypal, Gemm.com and mailorder. see the main site for more on that, this isn’t so much about the commercial side as the bit you don’t usually see…

So the last couple of weeks have involved a lot of listening – burning the tracks from the album onto CDRs and playing them on as many CD players as possible. I’ve got some rather nice studio monitors in what passes for my studio, so I get a good ‘flat’ reference, but you still need to hear how an album works on the crappy player in the kitchen, or the CD player with the speakers up near the ceiling upstairs, or in the car… And it passed all the tests, which is nice, so that bit was finished.

Then the artwork – finding good photos of theo and I was one job – theo had some great live shots taken, which were ideal, and I did what I always do – took a load of lame photos with my digital camera, and then made them look proper in Photoshop :o) the one for the album came out very well indeed.

Then we were looking into barcodes, but registering to be a company that can put lots of barcodes on things was way too expensive, and by then, it took too long to get someone else to generate one, so we went without, and we’ll just get them stickered as and when we need to…

So artwork finished, text proof-read, quotes in from icc duplication, time to send it off. The artwork was all uploaded to the icc ftp site, the cd popped in an envelope with the mcps application for licence to press, the actual tunes themselves were registered with the mcps, and we’re away. I might be heading over to icc this afternoon to check the chromalin – the final version of the artwork printed out… we’ll see…

so now it’s all about letting people know the album is there, hopefully persuading them to order it before it comes out so we can cover as many of our costs as possible before it’s even released! The usual incentive is employed – a whole other disc of exclusive limited edition signed lovely music – this time it’s an album called ‘It’s Not Gonna Happen’ which is great…

So, please head over to the site and order the CD… :o)

…oops, I said this wasn’t going to be the commercial side… too late

Soundtrack – right now, Steuart Liebig, ‘Quartetto Stig’, Metheny/Haden, ‘Beyond The Missouri Sky’.

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What's your favourite colour, baby??

…Living Colour

Went to see Living Colour last night – woah!!! What a fantastic gig. Back on track, version 2.0 of the lineup – Reid, Calhoun, Glover and the mighty Doug Wimbish on bass.

I almost didn’t get in – Doug has said he’d put me on the guestlist months ago, but as I walked past the back of the venue on my way there, I saw him getting onto the tour bus, and he’d not done it! So we nipped inside and got passes for me and Jez – phew! Anyway, it was the loudest, sweatiest, funkiest, heaviest gig I’ve been do in ages. THe amazing thing about Living Colour is that they can change from thrash to hip-hop to dub to funk to straight rock to Avante Garde to Electronica to soul to d ‘n’ b to full on oldschool reggae in a heartbeat AND DO IT ALL LIKE THEY LIVED TO PLAY THAT STYLE – it’s amazing. Most bands that diverse end up in a sort of stylistic tourist trap, dabbling with all the influences but never nailing anything properly, and being totally unconvincing. Living Colour are the real deal, four extremely gifted virtuosos playing at the peak of their ability, and the crowd at The Garage lapped it up.

‘Twas very nice to catch up with Jez for lunch beforehand (went to a marvellous Turkish restaurant on Upper Street called Gem – highly recommended), and to get some time to chat to Doug after the show. Hopefully we’ll do some playing together at some point.

Was also talking to Will Calhoun about the Lovebubble project with David Torn, which Will described as some of his favourite music he’s recorded in the last 5 years, and said I should hassle Torn to get it released… so I will! :o)

soundtrack – not much to be honest, been working in quiet for a few hours today.

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Yet More Lessons Learned From The Aged Feline…

So The Aged Feline came home on Saturday, after two days in the vets, on a saline drip to try and flush out his rapidly failing kidneys. We were a little concerned about both his health and him coming home resenting us leaving him there for two days (though we did visit him both days he was in), but no such fears – health-wise he seems fine (he goes back in this thursday for a blood test), and as for how he is with us – if anything he’s even more cuddly than usual. In a world of grudge-bearing, point-scoring and all the political crap that’s going on, The Aged Feline models the kind of forgiveness that we all need to learn from. He has no idea that what we are doing is for his good, and yet he still bears us no ill will. Amazing. So much for our claims to intellectual supremecy…

Finished off the artwork for ‘For The Love Of Open Spaces’ today – just need to fill out the MCPS AFL form and we’re there – should have advanced ordering up in a day or so!

Soundtrack – John Lester, ‘Big Dreams And The Bottom Line’; Unamerican, ‘Unamerican’; Andre Lafosse, ‘Normalise’; Steve Lawson, ‘Lessons Learned From An Aged Feline Pt 1’.

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We've been had…

Just watched John Pilger’s latest documentary on ITV. The damning evidence that the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were just a sham driving by a desire for dominance in an oil rich region, rather than any genuine concern about ‘terrorism’ or WMDs, is very strong and very frightening.

Read about the program here

and more specifically, have a read about both Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice commenting in interviews in 2001 (before Sept, obviously) that Iraq posed no threat, had no WMDs and had no access to them.

The whole doc was full of stuff like that – stacking up against the Bush/Blair axis of bullshit. We’ve been had, people. We’ve been conned, and it’s still going on. Meanwhile an estimated 10,000 Iraqi civillians have been killed, along with loads of US troups, who are still being attacked for being in a country they shouldn’t have had to go to in the first place.

Soundtrack – Kelly Joe Phelps, ‘Slingshot Professionals’; Andre LaFosse, ‘Normalise’; Prefab Sprout, ‘Jordan: The Comeback’; Mike Watt, ‘Ballhog or Tugboat?’; Steve Lawson, ‘Not Dancing For Chicken’; Mark Knopfler, ‘The Ragpickers Dream’; Ron Carter/Jim Hall, ‘Alone Together’.

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Return of the King's (X)..

Went last night to see King’s X at the Mean Fiddler. They don’t play in London all that often, and their last gig here was one of my all time favourite gigs. And last night was no dissappointment. The sound was a bit ropey for the first few songs, but after that, ’twas amazing. Such an incredible band – it’s odd how a band can seem so un-cool on paper (odd time metal riffing with beatles-esque harmony vocals) and yet be perhaps the most timeless band I’ve ever heard. It’s testemony to this that their latest album, Black Like Sunday is all tracks that were written before 1986, and still sounds as fresh as any of the recent stuff!

Doug Pinnick, the singer/bassist is 53 and looks about 30 on stage, and only about 40 up-close – definitely the best advert for prolongued canabis useage that I’ve ever seen!!!!! He’s got a remarkable stage presence, and a vocal with more soul than just about any rock vocalist ever… and can scream like Aretha Franklin.

I interviewed Doug years ago for Bassist magazine, and spent about 3 or 4 hours chatting over dinner – most of which was totally unusable for the interview but a great time nontheless. It was nice to get a chance to say hi last night, though they were flying out of Heathrow at some ungodly hour this morning, so no aftershow party…

Anyway, the gig confirmed why they are still one of my alltime favourite bands, even though I’ve listened to precious little metal for the best part of a decade. An utterly unique band, and one that have never even got close to the commercial success they so richly deserve.

Soundtrack Frogwings, ‘Croaking At Toads’; Hank Jones/Charlie Haden. ‘Steal Away’.

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Fresh Look At An Old Book

Like many people – believers or not – who grew up with Bible reading in school or church, I suffer from over-familiarity with The Bible. Lots of the really radical stuff in there gets a bit lost when you’ve read it a thousand times and heard innumerable sermons on it of varying degrees of imcomprehensibility.

So recently, I started reading through The Message, a contemporary translation/paraphrase by a Eugene Peterson – written cos as a Greek Scholar, he saw that the students in his seminary class weren’t getting the same vibe from the text in english that he was in Greek!

Anyway, I’ve just got up to The Sermon On The Mount – one of the most oft-quoted bits of moral teaching in the history of humanity, and part of the direct inspiration behind the life and work of Ghandi, MLK, Mandela and numerous other great people.

I must’ve read it hundreds of times, and always dug it as some great advice, but the way that Peterson renders Jesus’ words in The Message version brings it totally to life, makes it easily applicable, and certainly gets rid of this crass image of Jesus that pervades so much of church culture as some kind of austere, pontificating bore. This is vibrant lively stuff, well worth checking out, regardless of your religious persuasion.

Soundtrack – still listening to Denison Witmer

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Karmic Response

One of the many bass discussion groups I contribute to on the net is www.thedudepit.com – a site set up by Steve ‘dude’ Barr, who runs the Vintage Bass Trading Co. partly as a place for discussing gear, but also as just a hang out on line. As with most forums like this, it’s the ‘off topic’ section that attracts the most posts, and is where people actually get to know eachother (that and the chat room) – the off topic section at The Dude Pit is titled ‘Al’s Nudie Bar’ but fortunately actually rarely features any nudity; it’s more just an indication of where Dude’s head is at… :o)

Anyway, the amazing thing about the dudepit is the sense of community that has built up there – there are guys on there who are going way out of their way to help people out, supporting eachother through bereavement, gear theft, house fires, storm damage, and the in the latest case, through one of the guys being hospitalised seriously with no medical insurance. Now, as we know, in the horrible medical scenario that is the US, people without medical insurance get hit with hefty bills. In the case of Ray Duke – the pitter in question – who’s a pro musician making a living in bar bands, function bands etc. the bill came to $26,000!!!! WTF???? How on earth does that happen????? Anyway, there’s a thread about Ray’s situation in The Pit, where people able to pledge money to help the guy out. I’ve chatted to Ray a few times in the chat room there, and he’s a great guy (not that that should really have much bearing on whether he gets help or not but anyway…) – if you feel like pitching in, however much, I’m sure it’ll be hugely appreciated to help out with his bills. As a fellow pro bassist, and one who were I living in the US would probably also be without medical insurance, I have a great deal of sympathy with Ray, and just hope that somehow we can help him out, and in so doing, help the bass world out. Being a pro musician gets harder and harder the more crass the industry gets, and a knock like this can finish a guy off.

In other news, had a great fun gig last night with Tess Garraway – this time, Seb Rochford joined Joss, Tess and I for the show, which was another creative improv night. We hit some real highs in the set, and gelled with Seb straight away. ‘Twas another tiny crowd, and methinks Tess and the venue are going to have to get the promo sorted out fast if this kind of vibe is going to continue…

And then today, we took the aged feline off the vets for his regular check-up (given that he’s 18 it’s a VERY regular checkup) – we already knew that he has chronic renal insufficiency, but with his diet and some meds we’d had it under control. However, his blood test today showed that the urea levels in his blood are way high, so they kept him in and put him on a saline drip. This was rather harrowing, cos the poor little guy doesn’t like the vets at the best of times, so to be put in a cage there and for us to leave him was seriously freaking him out. We went back and visited him this afternoon, which was nice, but he’s not well at all, and the long term prognosis is not good. Please say a prayer for the little guy, should you feel so inclined.

here he is –

Soundtrack – right now, Denison Witmer, ‘Philadelphia Songs’, before that John Lester, ‘Big Dreams And The Bottom Line’; Kerry Getz, ‘Little Victory’; Nik Kershaw, ’15 Minutes’; The Choir, ‘Wided Eyed Wonder’.

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Musical Friends…

…are keeping me happy…

so sang Bruce Cockburn in 1970, and indeed it’s true in my life too.

The latest installment in musical friendship began on Friday when I went to see Lifehouse play at Shepherd’s Bush Empire. What a fantastic band!! I’ve got both their albums, but the live experience is even better, and the new guitarist is amazing. I met Sergio, Rick and Jason a couple of years ago in LA, and have seen Sergio a few times since (he came to one of my gigs in LA), so had to go see them play when they were here. Great to hear them, great to get to hang out here in London rather than in LA this time!

part 2 of musical friends was Julian’s wedding on Saturday – Julian’s a former student of mine from Drumtech, who’s now doing big business on the session scene, and deservedly so, he’s a truly brilliant drummer (he was when I was teaching him too, so I’m not taking any of the credit for that!) – anyway, his wedding was naturally full of musos, lots of whom I hadn’t seen for ages, so it was great not only to see my friend get married, but to catch up with so many old aquaintances. Add to that the full on gospel choir hymns/worship section of the service, and some fantastic food at the reception, and you’ve got a magical day.

part 3 – meeting up for a beer on Sunday afternoon with Steve McEwan and Nick Paton. I’d not met Nick before, but he was in Friends First’ – one of the bands I’ve listened to most in my whole life (their album ‘We See A New Africa’ soundtracked about three years of my life in my mid teens). It was great to meet him, and be able to give some advice on indie promotion to someone whose music has meant so much in my life.

part 4 – Denison Witmer is a singer/songwriter from Philly who played at Greenbelt this year, and was fantastic. We chatted a bit at the festival and swapped CDs, and he was playing in Brixton on Sunday night, so The Cheat and I went down to hear another stunning gig from the man. Also gave me a chance to buy his other CDs, and go for a curry with Denison and The Cheat.

Then today, met one of my occasional students, Nick, for a coffee, and had a marvellous afternoon chatting about life, music, politics and everything in between.

So, music friends have indeed been making me happy, which got me thinking, and I came up with the notion of the Pillow Mountain Records extended family – a list of artists who are good friends, and whose music I endorse wholeheartedly, and will encourage as many people as possible to check out. So anyway, so you don’t have to go rummaging through the PMR site for the list, here are the links for you to peruse. All these peoples are amazing artists, and lovely people worthy of your patronage.

www.altruistmusic.com – Andre LaFosse
(turntablist guitar)
www.petermurray.ca – Peter Murray
(singer/songwriter)
www.denisonwitmer.com – Denison Witmer
(singer/songwriter)
www.kerry-getz.com – Kerry Getz
(singer/songwriter)
www.manthing.com – Michael Manring
(solo bassist)
www.johnlestermusic.com – John Lester
(solo bass singer/songwriter!)
www.nedevett.com – Ned Evett
(fretless guitarist)
www.tripwamsley.com – Trip Wamsley
(solo bassist)
www.unguitar.com – Luca Formentini
(unguitarist)
www.calamateur.co.uk – Calamateur aka Andrew Howie
(singer/songwriter/foundsoundist)
www.julielee.org – Julie Lee
(singer/songwriter)

there you go – check ’em out!

soundtrack – right now, Julie Lee (see above), ‘Made From Scratch’; before that, Denison Witmer (ditto), ‘Safe Away’ & ‘Philadelphia Songs’; The Choir, ‘Wide Eyed Wonder’; Bruce Cockburn, ‘World Of Wonders’; Nik Kershaw, ’15 Minutes’; John Lester, ‘Big Dreams And The Bottom Line’; Joni Mitchell, ‘Travelogue’.

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We just lost one of the greats…

So Johnny Cash just passed away last night – what a sad loss. Very very few artists will ever have the significance and integrity that Johnny had. Had some tough times, addicted to amphetamines in the 70s, the death of his wife, but made some hugely important records – the prison albums were landmarks in the relationship between music and the ‘real world’ – bringing the woody guthrie grit to mainstream country music.

And he continued to make great music – the video for his cover of the Nine Inch Nails track, ‘Hurt’ is one of the most powerful music vids I’ve ever seen – if you’re on broadband, check out the video at yahoo.

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