Year: 2005

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Aha, I think it's fixed…

Well, after much marvellous help from , It looks like the new paypal thingie in the shop is now working! The PHP troubles are dealt with, my paypal account is upgraded to a ‘business account’ and I can now take any old Credit/Debit card orders via paypal without the need for people to sign up to paypal in order to use it! This is marvellous news, believe me! If anyone feels like trying it out please, be my guest. It’s even set up to copy your address details across into the paypal pages, so that you’ve got less typing to do, at least, that’s the idea… Hopefully all of this will mean lots more lovely CD sales for me!

Soundtrack – Finley Quaye, ‘Maverick A Strike’; , ‘Shapeshifter’; , ‘Big Dreams And The Bottom Line’.

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maybe it's time to learn php…

So, I’ve spent most of the afternoon and evening battling with the software on my webshop, trying to impliment a new payment processing thingie via . Paypal have finally made it possible to pay for things through their site without having to sign up for a paypal account, which means that my shop can now handle payments from loads more people – all those people who previously didn’t want to get a paypal account in order to pay!

So, , the lovely open source programming community that came up with the shop interface I use, have implemented a new payment module that allows this new ebay functionality to dovetail nicely with the shop, and with a secure transfer of info, using security certificates, and all that jazz… the problem is, the information on how to actually get all that jazz to work is written in geek-speak, and while I’m reasonably computer-savvy, I’m largely self-taught, so don’t know all the terminology.

Which means I’ll just have to wait to The Captain or Sarda have a spare 20 minutes to help me sort it out. ‘Til then I’ll just keep wasting the hours trying to find new tweaks that will fool php into working.

So maybe it’s time I got a book on php (the language that all these pages and scripts are written in) and found out how to do all this stuff…

Soundtrack – , ‘Speed Your Love’; Free, ‘The Free Story’; Bill Frisell, ‘Live at Pizza Express’.

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Big achievement

OK, so I’m blogging this a week late, but last weekend, I managed to get my email inbox down from over 1200 to 7! The main upshot of this was that I was able to ditch Outlook Express and switch over to , which also allows me to have all my news/blog feeds in the same programme as my email. which is nice. One more step away from Microsoft stuff.

On the subject of groovy free software, I mentioned a few days ago about , the free photo management thingie from Google. Well, I’ve been toying with it, and it’s even better than I first realised. It’ll generate webpages with your photos in, movie files of your photos as a slideshow, and all the edits are non-destructive, so you can do as much editing as you like, and then save a copy later… It’s great. Seriously, I’d have happily paid £100 for a piece of software this logical and useful. I’ve hardly opened photoshop since I started using this.

Soundtrack – and Elvis Costello, ‘Deep Dead Blue’; , ’10 Cent Wings’ and ‘Back In The Circus’; , ‘Entremundo’; , ‘Legs To Make Us Longer’.


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A timely reminder.

Was rehearsing with this morning for the couple of gigs we’ve got coming up over the next two weeks, and was reminded once again how much fun playing with Theo is! It really is the simplest most immediately effective musical hook-up I’ve ever had, and I’ve had quite a few others that were pretty painless. When we were trying to remember how ‘Flutter’ goes (the opening tune from For The Love Of Open Spaces), we actually played the first minute of the tune twice in a row – that’s the most work we’ve ever had to do on anything!

Anyway, we were sounding just fine, and it gave me renewed impetus to get more gigs with Theo. He’s a fantastic musician and a top bloke. If you haven’t got his new CD, Go here to get it.

And now I’m listening to – those of you in the US will probably have heard her (she was on Letterman recently), those of you in the UK might have heard of her if you keep up with David Torn-related news (he produced the record), but she’s pretty much unknown on this side of the pond at the moment. She’s a solo acoustic guitarist, in the Hedges/Forcione/Roche/Ross school of playing, and is magic. Writes great tunes and is a great performer. I’m hoping to bring her over for some gigs together this coming summer. ‘Til then, check out her site and buy the CD on-line from the states!

Soundtrack – Kaki King, ‘Legs To Make Us Longer; Steve Lawson and Theo Travis, ‘For The Love Of Open Spaces’; , ‘Matthew Garrison’.

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After a 10 year wait…

…I finally got to see live this evening. The venue was in Balham, hosted by the legendary Tony Moore.

Jonatha played five songs – Back In The Circus, Red Dress, It Matters Now, Linger and Because I Told You So – all of them incredible, all of them worth the 10 year wait. Fortunately it won’t be another 10 years, as she’s got lots of London gigs coming up, and those of you that are within about 2000 miles of London owe it to yourselves to catch one of her gigs. She really is that good. We talking Joni Mitchell/Bruce Cockburn/Paul Simon good. Up there with the greatest. No shit. This is your chance to see her play in a tiny venue, and say you were there first… well, ignoring the first seven albums… :o)

So, go to her website, listen to the albums (I think you can stream all her albums there…) check the gig list, but tickets and I’ll see you there (except tomorrow, cos it’s sold out and I was too late trying to get a ticket).

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What's my name again?

I think he’s still the only other Steve Lawson I’ve met, and is now the editor of Total Guitar magazine (a magazine I’ve written for in the past…), but here’s photographic evidence that we met at NAMM last year!

so there you have it – two Steve Lawsons. If I was on a Dave Gorman-esque quest for more of them, this would be #2 and would take pride of place on the list… The big question, however, is why I’m doing a Garth Algar smile???

Soundtrack – , ‘Day One’; Francis Dunnery, ‘Man’; , ‘Back In The Circus’ – going to see Jonatha play tonight at The Bedford!! How excited am I???

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A like-minded teacher

There are a lot of really really bad bass teachers around. I know ‘cos I end up having to undo their efforts when students come to me with some really twisted ways of thinking about music, and some odd ideas about the student teacher relationship. So it’s great when I find a teacher who is speaking the same language as me.

is arguably the best bass tuition book writer working today. His books are always full of great material, and contain precious little filler material. I recommend them highly. He’s also an amazing player (come on Ed, do a solo album NOW!!), but I’d ever read the page about private teaching on his site before. Go and read it – he says all the right things, and I’m certain he lives up to them. It’s just a shame he lives in Tempe Arizona, or I’d definitely take a lesson or two with him.

Maybe I should start a list of teachers I would recommend. It’d be a pretty short list at the moment, given that I don’t really know that many other teachers, and even fewer whose work I would vouch for.

is another bass teacher I admire greatly, and the only person I’ve had a bass lesson from since I left college. He’s also one of my favourite bassists, and has recently released an amazing CD along with called ‘Get Happy’ – you can get it from Todd’s website – it’s one of my favourite CDs of the last year, and shows just how adept a chordal instrument 6 string bass is – Todd’s bass arguably sounds better than a guitar would along with Kristin’s voice as it stays out of her range, leaving more room for her. Add to that Kristin’s marvellous swinging upright bass playing and Kendall Kaye’s drumming and you’ve got one fantastic record. Again, it’s a shame that Todd’s tucked away in the mountains above Los Angeles, or I’d be getting regular lessons with him too!

soundtrack – McGill/Manring/Stevens, ‘Controlled By Radar’; , ‘Back In The Circus’ and ‘Plumb’ (don’t forget she’s playing a load of gigs in London, starting next Tuesday!!!!); , ‘Grand’; , ‘Entremundo’ and ‘Oriental Bass’ (Renaud is my new bass hero – the most frightening chops and musicality that I’ve ever heard from an upright bassist. Get these CDs!!)

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Every Picture Tells A Story

Nice man The Cheat told me about a fine bit of free software yesterday, called – it’s a free photo archiving/editing/sorting program, that finds all the photos on your harddrive, and catalogues them for you. I discovered that I’ve got loads of duplicate sets of promo shots and stuff from my websites, from various incarnations of it being left littered around my hard-drive.

This is the best free application I’ve seen since (if you’re still using Internet Explorer for web-stuff, you REALLY need to get Firefox – more stable, safer, and easier to use, please, for the sake of all of us, switch!).

head over to the Picasa Website for more info and to download it. It’s developed by the people behind Google…

Soundtrack – Joni Mitchell, ‘Hejira’ (fast catching Julie Lee at the top of my Audioscrobbler most played list!); , ‘Drastic Measures’.

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Things to Do In London When You're… In London

A couple of events that deserve a heads up, not involving me (more of those coming in the next day or so…)

Firstly, Jenny Eclair is doing a one-woman show at The Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, called The Andy Warhol Syndrome. It’s a play in which Jenny plays a former reality TV star, and it’s fab. I’ve seen it twice. It’s great, funny, moving etc. Go see it.

Click here for the details. There a couple of cheap ticket offers that look good value…

The second one is that one of my favourite singer/songwriters is finally coming to London! has a whole run of gigs coming up in London in tiny venues. If there’s any justice in the world, she’ll be playing the Brixton Academy in 6 months, so go and see her now while you can – the dates are on the tour dates page on her website – she’s playing the Bedford in Balham, The Betsy Trotwood in Farringdon and the 12 bar in the west end. I’ll be going to as many of the gigs as I possibly can. She’s a genius, up there with Joni Mitchell, , etc. in my list of faves. Truly marvellous. Take friends with you – you’ll thank me, and they’ll thank you.

Both of these shows are not to be missed. Great stuff. Go on, go and book tickets now, I dare you.

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