No need for me to upload my lame videos, there are already plenty of StreetBox clips on YouTube
post-greenbelt curry
A fun evening last night – a Greenbelt chum was having birthday drinks in town, so ’twas a chance to catch up with her and other greenbelt chums in town. Fortunately, two of them were people who’d been so busy over the weekend I hadn’t had a chance to see them at the festival – Emma and Chris, both delightful and lovely. I’d arranged beforehand to go for dinner with The Cheat at the end, and Emma, Chris and Emma’s friend Sarah-who-thinks-she’s-met-me-before were going as well, so a delicious Thai feast and much hilarity followed. Yay.
plans are a-foot for a post-greenbelt curry in the next couple of weeks – email me if you’re a greenbelter who’s interested.
However, that wasn’t the most exciting thing of the evening – that prize goes to StreetBox – a beatbox/voice duo who were busking at the top of Carnaby street, and the beatbox dude was out of this world. They did a kick ass version of Billy Jean, which I’m going to try and get uploaded to YouTube cos I videoed it on my hires phone (riiight), but I’m hoping their website will be updated soon with info/MP3s/CD buying options. They had a CD for sale there, which I saw Howard out of top pop singing sensations Take That buy. I stood next to Howard watching them, us both smiling incredulously at what the beatbox monkey was capable of – drums, basslines, scratch effects and bleeps all merged into one incredible sound. Well worth keeping an eye on…
National Theatre gig…
In my post-Greenbelt blogging frenzy, I forgot to blog about the NT gig with the lovely Theo. It’s amazing that we keep getting booked there, given that most of the music there is either solo classical guitar, or standards. We seem to get away with playing original spacey ambient loveliness in a straight setting. Still, the audience seem to like it, we like it, so what’s not to love?
Anyway, the gig went really well – it’s always too quiet in there, thanks to the powers that be complaining about the volume, but that aside, it was such a joy to be back playing with Theo – he’s an exceedingly nice bloke, and a fantastic musician and improvisor. It’s a really natural musical hookup. Most of the gig was freshly improvised stuff, with a couple of ‘Open Spaces tunes thrown in’ (Flutter, Bernie and Lovely), a solo tune from me (Behind Every Word) and our duo arrangement of ‘All I Know’ from Theo’s excellent Heart Of The Sun album. All in a most enjoyable gig, with a mix of friends and strangers in the audience, many of whom were most complimentary about the music afterwards. We even sold a pile of CDs, which is fairly rare for a foyer gig…
No doubt we’ll be back there soon.
Photos from the New Standard gig at GB
Tax avoidance?
I’m a little late on this one, news-wise, but someone mentioned to me over the weekend that U2 have moved a load of their business affairs to Holland To avoid paying tax back home.
I’ve always found this kind of tax exile behaviour pretty reprehensible. You choose where you live, and render unto caesar what is caesar’s. Taxation isn’t the great evil – it is, until someone comes up with something better, the least-worst way to redistribute the wealth a little, based on the assumption that no-one makes money on their own, we’re all beholden to eachother to some extent, and if you’ve got a shitload of money, there’s zero evidence that having an even bigger shitload of money will make you happier. In fact, the misery of bitterness over how ‘unfair’ it is to be taxed is likely to make you more miserable if you’ve got loads of money.
So, when a band famed for their campaigning stance on the insidiousness of certain aspects of global finance, to do something that so clearly directs wealth away from their country of birth, of residence, of nurture seems not only fiscally suspect, but displays a scant lack of gratitude…
I just asked BDB about this via MSN, and his comment was ‘it depends what you’re planning on doing with the money’, which seems to be the american ‘compassionate conservative’ argument against higher taxation – let people earn more, and choose where to donate it.
the problem is, free markets are never free, and we’ve already got a world where charity fund-raisers are paid daft amounts of money to access all that financial goodwill that is out there. When individuals take it on themselves to do the redistribution themselves, certain hot-button charities do incredibly well, and others fall apart, regardless of how vital their work is.
The role of governments in this is to redistribute based on need, not on how effectively an advertising campaign tugs at the heartstrings. Yes, central government can be deeply inefficient, beaurocratic, non-sensical etc. etc. but it is still the least-worst option.
Within this web of life, the rich do bear some of the responsibility for the poor – neither riches nor poverty exist in a vacuum, and sharing the love benefits everyone.
So shipping your business dealings off-shore strikes me as complicity in the worst two tier-ism of globalisation. The rich end up paying a much smaller percentage of their wealth in tax than the poor, so those trying to feed their kids on one crappy McWage are struggling, while U2 and the Stones get to keep a few more million a year… yeah, that sounds like compassionate conservativism to me. What a crock.
Anyway, has anyone seen a response from the U2 camp on this? I’m certainly open to the notion that there’s a reasonable excuse for this, but I’m buggered if I can tell what it’s going to be…
iMac/iBook tip…
Should’ve blogged this ages ago, but was using it a lot at Greenbelt and introduced quite a few people to it, so here it is –
if you need to either a) extend your battery life or b) see the screen in a really sunny place, you can invert the colour of the screen (like a negative of a photo) by holding down the control, alt and apple keys and pressing number 8. If the screen is predominantly white space, it saves lots on the battery, and you can then turn down the brightness of the screen (with the two buttons in the top left of the keyboard) and save lots of battery life.
I was shown this in LA in January by Janek, and used it a lot when trying to jack wifi from outside cafes in Hollywood. :o)
David Byrne's blog
I told quite a few people about this over the weekend, so thought I ought to post a link to it – David Byrne’s blog – some great stuff here, thoughts, reviews, comments. Well written and interesting.
Let’s face it, he’s the man who brought us ‘Stop Making Sense’ – I’d read his shopping lists.
Behind Every Word available on CDBaby
Behind Every Word is now available at CDBaby.com – click here to head to the page – there you can hear 2 minutes of every tune, and read about it. And if you’ve already got the Cd, you can post a user review at the bottom of the page (just as you can in my webshop too!)
So you can now get Behind Every Word on my site, CDBaby, at gigs and from Ray’s Jazz Store on Charing Cross Road in London. What are you waiting for??
more greenbelt thoughts
some top 3s (I don’t think I did anything 5 times at Greenbelt except brush my teeth…)
Top 3 music highlights
- Spearhead
- Nizlopi
- Lleuwen Steffan, Huw Warren and Owen Evans
Top 3 non-music things from the program
- Jude Simpson’s poetry/comedy gig
- The Northern Ireland discussion
- Paul Powell’s Liquid Lunch, with Jude Simpson, Gareth Higgins and Cole Moreton.
Top 3 eateries
- the new Burrito van (definitely a favourite)
- Nuts
- the Burrito place again (didn’t go anywhere else really)
Top 3 things I wished I’d seen
- Clive Stafford-Smith
- Alistair McIntosh’s seminars
- Bill Drummond’s interview
(fortunately loads of the seminars and talks can be bought here)
Top 3 people I vaguely knew before but got to chat to lots more
- Gareth Higgins
- Paul Chambers
- Joe Fisher
(very nice to make your further acquaintance, gents)
All four of the me-playing moments went really well, so can’t pick favourites there, and everyone I got to play with over the weekend – Julie McKee, Steve Stockman, Simon Jones, Mark..? (fab poet whose surname I didn’t catch, sadly), Huw Warren, Andrea Hazell, Harry Napier, Juliet Turner… were all fab. The poetry and bass stuff (Stocki, Simon Jones (‘is unwell’) and Mark) was a whole lot of abstract fun, and the Recycle gig continued the tradition of Recycle gigs resulting in some of the loveliest music I can imagine. All good, nothing bad.
Greenbelt really is my favourite weekend of the year, and selling lots of CDs and T-shirts is kind of a lovely icing on the cake.
It speaks volumes that I took no photos at all over the weekend – was far too busy having fun to faff with a camera. But there are squillions of great photos on the Greenbelt website.
If you weren’t there, put the last weekend in August in your diary for next year now. It’s magic.
The finest weekend of the year is over
For another year.
Another magic Greenbelt has come to a close, and we’re home. We drove back late last night, which was pretty hair-raising given how tired we were, but I’ve got a gig today at the National Theatre Foyer with Theo so couldn’t really have stayed over and partied til 4am like so many others…
The last day of GB was a fab one – starting with an organic vegan breakfast, and progressing via a panel discussion on Norther Ireland featuring Assembly members from the DUP and Sinn Fein along with two peace activists, one of whom had had his wife murdered by the IRA. The session was incredible, and what was said was so remarkable, that I doubt they’ll release the tape of the session… A big step forward. Maximum kudos to the most wonderful Gareth Higgins| for chairing the session so well.
After that, I was back into compere mode, to introduce Lleuwen Steffan, Huw Warren and Owen Evans – definitely one of my musical highlights of the festival (that’s their gig, not my introduction, which was good, but hardly a highlight). Amazing music, great performance, very well received.
After that it was full-on Recycle gig logistics – collecting keyboards for Huw to play, getting my gear up to the venue, missing lots of things I really wanted to see… Anyway, got all the gear up to the venue, and set up. Lovely audience comes in along with my co-conspirators.
The gig started with a me-solo set – (Grace and Gratitude, Behind Every Word, MMFSOG, Scott Peck, FRHU, Deep Deep Down and Deeper Still, for those keeping notes), then Julie joined me for some New Standard-ing – Video Killed The Radio Star, I Don’t Wanna Know and Running Up That Hill. Then we went into One Step from the album, and about three quarters of the way through, I gave Huw a nod and he joined in on the baby grand piano that was in the corner of the room, which worked an absolute treat.
After that, he came up to the stage on Keys and laptop, and he Julie and I did a couple of improv things, with them doing a duo version of ‘The Water Is Wide’ in the middle that was exquisite.
All change after that, and Andrea Hazell joined in on voice for our version of Dido’s Lament, which was gorgeous as always.
The wonderful Juliet Turner then got her first taste of Recycling with Harry Napier and I. Most lovely.
And finally, Huw and I played a gentle duet to send the lovely crowd off into the night. All in all, a fab Recycle night. Don’t miss Sept 20th at Darbucka!
Then it was all systems go to get all the stuff packed up before Spearhead started on mainstage. We missed the very beginning of the set, but it must be said that standing in a field at Greenbelt with TSP listening to Spearhead is as close to utter bliss as I can imagine. Really really great way to end a stunning weekend of great music, me-gigs, new friends, old friends, brain food, organic food, camping, chatting, hugging and kissing, laughing, sharing etc. etc. etc. All good nothing bad. Everything was wonderful in this best of all possible worlds.
See you there next year?