Year: 2005

Posted on

Right now, I should be at a Jonatha gig…

So the plan for this evening was to do my gig at the National Theatre, come home, drop off my stuff and shoot down to the Borderline to catch Jonatha Brooke’s gig there.

The gig at the NT went very well – lots of friendly faces in the audience, some very fine improvs in the set, and nice versions of all the album tunes too. We finished at 7.20, then chatted to people in the audience for about another 20mins/half an hour (this is where I could have saved time, but would have been very rude to all the lovely people who came to the gig to run off), then go and get the car from the carpark, load up, drop Theo at home, head back up here and unload.

The small person had rung The Borderline to find out what time Jonatha is on stage, and they said she goes on at 9.15, will be off by 10.30 – I was expecting it to go on til 11. So I’m not ready to go out til 9, ergo, no gig for us this evening.

Bugger.

This is Jonatha’s first ever gig with a band in the UK, as far as I’m aware (I don’t think she brought a band with her when she played here in 95…) and certainly the only chance we’ll have to see her with band for a while (unless it’s a storming success and she comes back!)

I’ve got a whole load of texts on my phone from people who are there asking if I’m going…

Ah well, at least our gig went well…

Posted on

Online articles from The New Statesman

I’m a big big fan of The New Statesman – it’s the only magazine I subscribe to, and read it avidly every week.

They don’t tend to put much of the content on their website, prefering to tease people and get them to buy the mag, or pay for online access.

Anyway, I was just reading some stuff on Mark Thomas’ website, and he’s a got a fairly big archive of a lot of the things he’s written for them on there – click here to read some – he’s a very good columnist, and his site is a great resource for political action links.

Soundtrack – Charlie Haden, ‘Nocturne’.

Posted on

More wasted pixels

thoughts on the Michael Jackson trial (as if there aren’t enough ill-informed opinions out there about it).

Celeb trials are always fraught with danger of things going wrong, being unclear or getting sidetracked by issues of fame and celebrity rather than than law and criminality. The bigger the star, the more potential there is for it to go wrong.

We’ll never know what really happened with MJ. His behaviour was certainly bizarre, troubling and served as a red flag to any right thinking parent regarding their kids. But clearly it wasn’t ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ – the burden of proof is a very difficult thing to establish when you’re dealing with any celeb as there’s always the likelihood that the motives, feelings and behaviour of the victim is going to be affected by the fame of the accused. The main kid in this trial was clearly a troubled lad, from a pretty screwed up family, behaving in a bizarre way and totally taken in by celebrity.

The problem is that screwed up, lying, fame-obsessed, money grabbing sons of screwed up, lying, fame obsessed, money grabbing parents can still be molested. When it comes down to his word against MJ, the jury are going to try and establish who seems the most truthful. MJ’s a performer, has been all his life. The kid was just a screw up dealing with cancer, who had parents who wanted to milk it.

Will we ever know? Clearly not, unless he was guilty and does it again…

Posted on

Paypal spoofs…

I get loads of these sent to me, so thought I’d post a link to the 10 ways to spot a spoof/fraud email page on paypal’s own site.

All good stuff, but it’s easier than that – never click on links in emails from any financial institution. Never. Just open your web browser of choice, type in their URL and log in as you normally would to check your account. If they’ve got something urgent to tell you, it’ll be mentioned on their page when you log in as well, not just in some email.

There must be loads of people getting caught out by this crap – banks don’t ask you to re-verify your details, so don’t do it.

Soundtrack – Del Amitri, ‘Twisted’.

Posted on

Edinburgh Fringe Programme now online!!

Got back from a weekend in Berwick On Tweed (more on that later) to find the Edinburgh Fringe programme had been posted out. And it’s also now online for your perusal!!

Obviously, the first place to go is to the entry for my show, where you’ll want to buy tickets for multiple nights for you and your friends.

Then, from blog-world, there’s Richard Herring’s show, from bass-world, there’s guy pratt’s show, from jazz-world, there’s Julie McKee’s show, from RFH Foyer gigs-world, there’s The Big Buzzard Boogie Band show, from last year’s showbiz pals-world, there’s Barry Cryer and Ronnie Golden’s show, from guitar-world, there’s Antonio Forcione’s show and from unmissable gig-world, there’s Spearhead.

So, spread the word, tell your friends and get them to come to the show, and I’ll have flyers for you to download everso soon!

Soundtrack – Prefab Sprout, ‘From Langley Park To Memphis’.

Posted on

Pavement art

Thanks to Not-At-All-Evil-Dann for sending me an email full of this guy’s art, Julian Beever is his name, and he does amazing perspective based artwork on the streets of Europe.

here are a couple of examples –

Check out some more of his work here – great stuff. I’m always inspired by artists thinking outside the box – being a solo bassist, you HAVE to think outside the box given that a) there’s no repetoir for the instrument, b) so much of what has been done solo on bass is horrible and c) most people think you’re mad, and will actively avoid the idea of solo bass, so you need to take them by surprise…

So when some crazy Belgian dude starts drawing cool perspective stuff on the streets of London, it inspires me to take my music elsewhere…

Soundtrack – Prefab Sprout, ‘Andromeda Heights’; Gillian Welch, ‘Time (The Revelator)’.

Posted on

Listening and Viewing…

Finally got hold of my copy of the As One Tsunami charity CD, which I’m on. It was posted a month ago, and for some weird reason the postal service decided that a box the size of a CD was too big for my letter box, which is clearly bollocks. So I finally collected it from the sorting office, and had a listen. There’s some great stuff on it, not least of all a Dean Brown track with Marcus Miller on fretless – very nice indeed. Also featured are some other amazing bassists – Laurence Cottle, Mo Foster, Jimmy Haslip etc. Top players.

Last night, TSP, Kathryn (current house-guest visiting from the states) and I watched Team America – it’s the South Park guys doing a satire on the War on Terrorism using Thunderbirds style puppets. I have to admit to being a big Trey Parker fan – I think the South Park stuff, when he’s doing satire, is brilliant. He does descend into mindless smut at times, but there’s usually a point to it. And when there isn’t, for me it still almost always stays on the right side of the ‘funny vs overly grubby’ scales.

And on that note, I also got a CD through yesterday from Toupe, a two basses + drums band from Southampton – I’d really enjoyed their last album, Alopecia, but when the first track I heard from the new album was called ‘f***ing’, my suspicions about the content of the new album were raised… As it is, bits of it are fab. Some fine satire on the music industry, and some other general frivolous nonsense. But, like their musical forebear, Frank Zappa, much of the album slips into crass comedy-porn. I’m sure there’s a point to it somewhere, it was just lost on me. If you’re into that kind of thing, definitely check them out. If you’re not, steer clear. I like the Toupe guys, and they are capable of making me laugh a lot with some of the stuff they do, but about a third of the album really misses the mark for me. Musically it’s somewhere in the Primus/SadHappy/Zappa territory – lots of funky ‘n’ furious slap lines, and some great distorted bass sounds, with that show-tune element that all three of the above mentioned bands have corrupted to similar effect in the past.

Soundtrack – Various Artists, ‘As One’; Prefab Sprout, ‘From Langley Park To Memphis’.

Posted on

So, I'm number one in the charts!

Sadly not some kind of national sales chart, but an airplay chart for a show on WWSP in Steven’s Point, WI, hosted by BEAR – BEAR has been very supportive of my music for a long time, playing loads of it on his show over the years. Sadly you can’t stream it on line (at least, I’ve never found a stream), but it’s great to know he’s playing it!

Thanks, BEAR!

Soundtrack – Pat Metheny, ‘Bright Size Life’; Julie Lee, ‘Stillhouse Road’; Ethel, ‘Ethel’.

Posted on

What? New Labour? Introducing a Sensible Policy? surely not!!

Thanks to this post on Sarda’s Blog, I’ve just been reading about Community Interest Companies – the gist of it seems to be that a company that is set up for the the good of their community, with the intention of making money to be used for social benefit, can now have that written into the nature of the company, register it as a CIC, and have those aims protected by law even if there are corporate takeovers, shares are bought and sold, changes in management etc.

This – if it works and is what it says it is – is a FANTASTIC step forward in our share-holder obsessed financial-gain-is-everything society. I’ve long held that the conflict of share-holder vs stake-holder is at the very heart of what’s wrong with modern economics, and this new initiative seems to be set up to protect those companies whose activities are for the benefit of it’s stakeholders, even if that is to the detriment (or decreased benefit) of the share holders.

It remains to be seen whether or not this means that ‘ordinary’ companies can write into their code of practice a desire to deal ethically and in an environmentally sound way – I doubt it, as it seems like the legislation is about the primary aims of the company rather than ‘secondary’ ideologies about the nature of running a business, but it’s still one in the eye for those who think that everything exists just to make them money.

I’ll be watching closely to see what happens.

all the legalese and fine print can be found on the dti’s pages about CICs.

Soundtrack – Wayne Shorter, ‘High Life’.

© 2008 Steve Lawson and developed by Pretentia. | login

Top