man steals laptop from CCTV camera shop – he’s caught on multiple cameras, and the resulting news stories makes their business soar.
Surely this is a joke?
The rancid end of the music industry
OK, this is really really screwed up. Garth Brooks has signed an exclusive distribution deal for all of his work… WITH WALMART!!
How scummy is that? I mean, it’s not like I’m going to miss being able to get his records, I’ve never bought one, or listened to one for that matter (though he did once record a Pierce Pettis song – I think I’ll stick with listening to Pierce’s amazing CDs, and avoid the be-hatted loser), but the idea of someone being so screwed up in their view of the world that they would want their CDs to only be stocked by a supermarket chain… and Walmart at that. It beggars belief quite what brand of decaying faecal matter his brain has been replaced with, but I’m sure Walmart stock it and sell it cheaper than anyone else.
The world of supermarkets is getting progressively more horrible – I went to the Tescos in Corstorphine last week, while staying with the lovely Gareth and Jane, and was amazed to find ‘self-checkout’ facilities – you just scan your own stuff and leave, with one person watching over 6 or 8 tills.
Now, I wouldn’t relish a job on a checkout, that’s for sure, but the net jobloss whenever a supermarket opens in a town that previously didn’t have one is well over 200. If you then take away what few shitty jobs there were in the supermarket, you destroy the local trade infrastructure and don’t even replace it with a poor imitation of itself. You replace it with a void. For some people, the option to work an overnight shift in their local supermarket is their only realistic chance of employment due to family commitments or whatever.
So Walmart are becoming exclusive stockists of shit country CDs and carry on destroying communities across the US. Meanwhile, they’ve bought Asda. Our local supermarket is an Asda, which we studiously avoid. Now we’re back from Edinburgh, it’s time to sign up to an organic box scheme and leave behind supermarket veggies for good.
But for now, Bollocks to Garth Brooks and his new distribution deal – I hope it fails miserably for all concerned.
Mo in her own words…
The Guardian today has a collection of quotes from Mo Mowlam – more evidence of what a marvellous woman she was. I’d not read the one with her threatening to headbutt Gerry Adams before, that’s another classic to go alongside the Ian Paisley one.
Soundtrack – Baba, ‘Rap Canterbury Tales’ (saw this at the festival, an amazing show, and it works equally well as an audio story on CD)
Goodbye Mo
I’m so upset by this – Mo was an amazing woman, one of the few New Labour politicians who never seemed to toe the party line at all. She will forever be remembered as the woman who told Ian Paisley to ‘fuck off’, something a lot of people have been wanting to say to him for a long time.
She spoke at stop the war rallies, she was openly critical of much of the Blairite agenda, and spoke up about the victimisation she faced in parliment – a situation I’m sure many more people have to deal with but never have the balls to go public on.
Her death is a huge loss to British public life, to the personality of British politics, and the surrounding press will be another reminder to Blair that he can’t shape public opinion. Just as Robin Cook will be remembered more for his ethical stance against the war than for his affair, so Mo will be remembered as a woman who didn’t take the shit that New Labour tried to throw at her.
The good ones always die first…
other links – Guardian Newsblog, the Indie, news.bbc
TAGS – Mo Mowlam
Gig last night…
Despite being exhausted, the promise of a chance to play a set with Orphy and a couple of friends from the States last night at the Red Rose was too tempting, so I headed off out again.
I took a much scaled down rig with me, as I knew I was only going to be playing for about 10 minutes, and really couldn’t be arsed to take the whole lot out again after setting it up and packing it down 12 days in a row at Edinburgh!
the Americans in question are Jeff Kaiser and Andrew Pask playing trumpet (jeff), sax and clarinet (andrew) through lots of delicious electronic processing (Andrew works for Cycling 74, so has written some glorious loop algorythms for Max/MSP).
They did about 25 minutes, and then Orphy and I joined them for a 10 minute improv thingie, which sounded lovely from where I was sat.
The rest of the evening was fun too – a solo trombone set from Alan Tomlinson was a mindblowing mixture of virtuosic free improv and clowning. Very funny indeed.
Then Evan Parker and John Coxon did a lovely guitar/sax duet, which ran the gamut from outnoisemadness to a bluesy mellow jazz bit in the middle and back to freakoutland. Very fine stuff.
And finally a quintet of Tony Bevan (bass sax), Mark Saunders (drums), John Edwards (bass), Ashley Wales (electronics) and Orphy (percussion etc.) finished off the night with more craziness.
And what’s more there was a huge crowd in – by far the biggest I’ve ever seen at the Red Rose, which was great especially for Jeff and Andrew, coming all this way. It was lovely to catch up with Jeff – he came to one of my gigs a couple of years ago in Ventura County, California, and loved it and we’ve been in touch ever since, so it was great to finally get to see him play live.
The London Improv scene is fascinating – it’s got a pretty unique sound to it, and a fairly broad spread of contributors. There are elements to it that come across as over-zealous in their rejection of all things tonal, and other players who seem to embrace just about anything and everything. It’s not a scene I could inhabit all year round – I’d start to feel guilty about playing so much inside music, and that’s insane – but it’s one that I feel enriched and inspired by whenever I get a chance to see those guys play. The time and energy and focus that players like John Edwards and Tony Bevan have put into exploring the outer reaches of what’s possible with their instruments is awe inspiring.
And now I’m exhausted. Today I’m going to have to tidy up the mess from Edinburgh – my office looks like the stock room at a badly organised high-end bass shop, so I need to whip it into shape before teaching tonight.
Soundtrack – Avishai Cohen, ‘Lyla’ (a pressie to educate me from JazzShark – and a fabulous album it is too!)
maybe my homie has seen the error of his ways…
So, after me highlighting the ridiculousness of his set at Live8 each night in my Edinburgh show, it seems that news has filtered back to my homeboy Snoop and he’s trying to put things right by starting a junior football league – apparently his league is cheaper than the one that has been there for years and he’s stealing all the players from.
Snoop gives it up for the poor kids. He must’ve heard a bootleg of my show!
Word up, dawg.
Audience reviews from Edinburgh
A few more reports coming in from the Edinburgh show –
this one is on BassWorld.co.uk and includes some photos of the night with Guy Pratt, this one is from the Rev G’s blog – he came to four gigs, so was able to compare them a bit, and here are the reviews on edfringe.com. If you were there, please feel free to post reviews either at edfringe.com or preferably in the reviews section on my forum. It’d be lovely to hear what you thought of the show.
Today was spent shopping with Wes for a bass – I love taking people to The Gallery for the first time, as the magicalness of it strikes you the minute you walk through the door – great basses everywhere, amps piled to the ceiling and lovely helpful staff. We managed to pick up a real bargain – an OLP 5 string for £190.
And now I’m listening to the soon-to-be-released Bruce Cockburn album, ‘Speechless’ – it’s a collection of his instrumentals, and is as expected, perfect. Beautiful tunes beautifully played. What’s not to love?
Back on a PC after two weeks on a mac…
This is very odd indeed, being back on my trusty desktop PC after two weeks using the new iBook… I’m not sure I like it…
There are certain things that the mac does so well, particularly the RSS/XML integration with Safari.
It’s also a lot newer, so my email set up on there isn’t in quite such a dreadful state as it is on here.
Lots of work to do!
Back home in the 'hood.
We’re home!
We only just made it – loading up at the Rev G’s house yesterday, we had major major trouble getting everything in to the car, and ended up with TSP’s feet on the dashboard (good job she has feet that are detachable from her legs), and my rack back in the passenger footwell.
The weight of all the stuff had the car sitting pretty low on the back suspension, and I noticed that both of my front tires were pretty worn on the inside edge, suggesting that there’s a tracking issue that really needs sorting out. So, we drove all the way from Edinburgh to London at 60mph. Having a frontwheel blow out at 60 wouldn’t be funny at all, but would have been marginally less dangerous than at 70.
Still, we got here, in one piece (well, once I’d re-attached TSPs feet).
Looking back on the fest, it was a major success, lots of fun, exhausting in a good way, and a chance to meet up with lots of lovely people. I didn’t have a single off-night on the gig, all the audiences seemed to dig the show, even my one ‘bad’ review wasn’t really all that bad and said I was ‘top class’. And on top of that, I sold out an 80 seat venue on the last night, which is no mean feat at the Fringe.
So, we need to start planning for next year now.
Stuff to do now I’m home? Need to get the remaining t-shirts listed in the e-shop here, and send out the orders that are waiting to go. I really need to pay my parking ticket from Edinburgh (which I felt strangely less worried about when looking out at a packed house on Tuesday night.)
I have a gig tonight at the Red Rose in Finsbury Park – not sure quite what I’m going to take with me yet for that one – whether I take the whole set up or just a scaled down mini-rig.
And this afternoon I’m going shopping with Martin and Wes for a new bass for Wes, which is always fun.
Oh, and somewhere in there, I’ve got to sort out the carnage that is my office, so that I can teach in here tomorrow!
Soundtrack – Joni Mitchell, ‘Hejira’ (this is the first music I’ve listened to in two weeks that isn’t Duncan Senyatso – and for the next week, his will be just about everything I’m listening to, as soon as I get a tape deck rigged up so I can listen to it.)
I think that's called 'going out on a high'
Words I wasn’t expecting to hear at the Fringe ‘hello can I get a ticket for ‘Bass: The Final Frontier?’ ‘no sorry, sir, he’s just sold out’.
Oh yes, a sell out. A rather confusing sellout, given that I’d got lots of comps and given them to friends, not expecting the room to be full at all, so just before I went on stage there were people who had bought tickets who didn’t have a seat… all v. mixed up. My fault. But hey, what a problem to have!
The show went superbly, and loads of lovely people were in tonight – the poetry legend that is Jude Simpson sat in on the show and did a cracking version of Femur (to the tune of Fever), Ronnie Golden was there (his show with Barry Cryer, Little Richard III has just started at the fest, go and see it!), Duncan, Simon and Rise – who I spent a fantastic 5 hours rehearsing with today for Duncan’s gig at Greenbelt – were there, Jack Cryer, the guys from Rap Canterbury Tales and of course the potty-mouthed Rev G. ‘Twas the perfect way to end a run at the fest, great crowd, I was on form, played well, bantered well, and sold lots of CDs and T-shirts. If you were there, thanks so much.
The CVenues crew in C Central were great to work with – lovely peoples who put up with a lot of crap.
And now it’s finished, and I’m off back to London, to spend the next week and a half teaching and learning the songs for Duncan’s gig at Greenbelt – the rehearsal was amazing, and the best bass lesson I’ve had in years, getting to grips with the African rhythmic stuff that Duncan and Rise were throwing at us. Being on stage with two guitarists that good will be a dream come true. They are both outstanding (Rise Kagona was the guitarist in the Bhundu Boys, one of the first African bands I was properly aware of, thanks to Peelie and Andy Kershaw).
So tomorrow we’re off home, via Berwick to see the family again. It’s been so much fun staying with Gareth and Jane – they are the perfect Edinburgh hosts, and it’s just a shame we’ve seen so little of Jane, as she goes to work before we get up, and is in bed before we arrive back in the middle of the night.
So if you’re still in Edinburgh please go and see the shows I recommended tonight at the show – Subverse, Paul Kerensa, Julie MeKee, Big Buzzard Boogie Band, Rap Canterbury Tales, Little Richard III.
And I’ll see you here again next year!
TAGS – Edinburgh Festival, Edinburgh Fringe, Solo Bass, Steve Lawson.