Year: 2006

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The New Standard…

The New Standard – that’s the name of the show that Julie McKee and I are doing at Edinburgh this year – it’s a show over unlikely cover-versions, where we take songs from all over the musical map, and treat them as though they were ‘standards’ – ie, we just take the melody, words and chord progression and do what we want with them.

We’ve ended up with songs by Stevie Wonder and Slipknot, Curtis Mayfield and The Cure, Green Day, Kate Bush, Gorillaz… etc. etc. It’s a great set, and we’ve done top notch arrangements. If you head over to thenewstandard.co.uk you’ll find yourself on our myspace page, which has four tunes on it for you to have a listen to. They’re just demo live recordings, in my studio while we were rehearsing and working out arrangements. Hope you enjoy them!

While I’m here, here are the dates for this week’s gigs – hope to see some of you there –

Tuesday 20th June – CB2, Cambridge. Doors 7.30pm, tickets £6
Wednesday 21st June – Recycle Collective at Darbucka, with Special guests BJ Cole and Emily Burridge. Doors 7pm, Tickets £6.
Thursday 22nd – Escobar, Market Street, Wakefield, Yorkshire – 01924 332000
Friday 23rd – Oceans Eleven, 1-2 Church Walk Leeds, 07906 140 294
Saturday 24th – (2pm) Riffs Guitar School, Stockport, 0161 484 5208
Saturday 24th (8pm) Iguana, Manchester,0161 881 9338 tickets £3 adv. £5 on the door.
Thursday 29th – Traders, Petersfield, 01730 233 022 £5 adv/£6 door.

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Tim Bowness/Steven Wilson live in Norwich

Norwich is an awful long way to go to watch a gig. Norwich is an awful long way from anywhere. Which would be fine if it was a stinking hole, but it’s a lovely city, and someone should pick it up, drag it 50 miles west and join it up with Cambridge – Camwich would be a really really lovely city.

But I digress. It’s a long way, but I went anyway. on the main bill were Tim Bowness with his band, and Steven Wilson. Tim was the singer I gigged with last Friday. This time he had a whole band with him, featuring the truly marvellous Andrew Booker on drums (the last time I saw Andrew play drums with Tim, Brian Eno was at the gig, and wanted his phone number… did he ever get it? I don’t think so… a miss opportunity methinks).

The show was opened by Andy Butler – a looping guitarist, using multiple echoplexes. Sadly, because the gig started earlier than advertised, we (by ‘we’ I mean me, Dweez and Mrs Dweez, who all went for food, planning to be back in time for advertised start) missed all but the last few minutes of Andy’s set.

Steven Wilson set was really enjoyable – I didn’t know any of the songs (for some reason, despite liking all the stuff I’ve heard of theirs, I don’t own a single Porcupine Tree album… must rectify that), no, I lie, he covered ‘Thankyou’ by Alanis Morrisette, and that I knew. Anyway, most of it was just electric guitar and voice – something that I’m always amazed more people don’t do. Billy Bragg is the absolute master of that format, but i’ve heard others do it well (Iain Archer is another that plays brilliantly with just a elec. guitar and no band). I had a brief chat with Steven afterwards (we’ve got a fair few mutual friends, not least of all Theo who has played on Porcupine Tree things and opened for them at Shepherd’s Bush).

So all in a great night, and what’s more I got to meet up with Myspace chums Jeffrey and Samantha, here from New York. Much fun.

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Friday Random 10 on saturday…

a day late…

1. Pigs, Sheep and Wolves – Paul Simon
2. Part IV – Mark Isham (from Tibet)
3. Just For Now – Imogen Heap (sadly not a live version – this was the single greatest live looped performance I’ve EVER seen when I saw her do it in London and Brighton)
4. Rain – Iain Archer
5. Little More Time With You – James Taylor
6. Making Flippy Floppy – Talking Heads
7. Off The Wall – Michael Jackson
8. Creeper – Gary Peacock and Ralph Towner
9. Meanwhile – Art Lande/Jan Gabarek
10. I Will Find The Way – Pat Metheny

…now that’s a compilation I’d buy!!

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Surely anyone with a heart was rooting for T and T?

Actually ended up watching the last 15 minutes of the football yesterday. Was very disappointed when England scored – surely anyone with a heart was wanting it to be at least a draw? I have no idea at all how some spurious national pride can get in the way of wanting underdogs to do well. A load of the members of the Trinny team play well outside the premiership, for teams like Port Vale – I’d have loved to see them beat or draw with the bloated, overpaid, media-savvy pretty boys of England.

But sadly it wasn’t to be. And then Sweden won, which meant Trinidad can’t even go through just by beating Equador – they need to win by a few goals in order to go through on goal difference… so now I actually do want England to win their next game, and Trinidad to beat Ecuador, and then we’ll have them in the last 16, which would be fabulous.

Get me with my wikkid football-score-working-out skillz! Statto!

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When TV gets it right

Last night was the first in a new series called The Convent, in which four women from wildly differing backgrounds check in to a convent for 40 days. Yes, it’s reality TV, and yes, it’s what all reality TV should be like – offering people the relatively un-manipulated chance to experience something new and potentially life changing.

It’s a follow-up series to one called ‘The Monastery’ that was on about a year ago. Fascinating, life-affirming brain-food. And what’s more, you can watch it all online (thanks to Jonny B for the link).

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CDs are here! CDs are here!

Yay! Just as I was teaching this morning, a TNT delivery lorry pulls up outside and a man with a palette and a hand truck thing arrives at the door, bearing CDs by the shit-load. Loads of copies of ‘Behind Every Word’.

the first load of orders have been posted already (you’ll have received an email if yours has been sent – if it hasn’t it’ll go first thing tomorrow), and because the ‘release date’ is the 20th, it means that if you order the CD now, not only will it go out in the next day’s post, but you’ll still get the free download album. How great is that? Go on, you know you want to… :o)

It’s been a busy couple of days – I’ve been booked to play at Greenbelt at the end of August, and have a gig or two in Italy the second weekend in July. Now the CD’s here, I need to get sending that out to press peoples, along with the press release for the Edinburgh festival gigs… I’m going to be sick of jiffy bags before too long…

Anyway, off you go and order the new CD, fair blogling.

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stevelawson.net vs aol.com

no, I’m not setting up a rival international ISP with crap interface and ‘keywords’. the ‘vs’ in the heading refers to my not being able to email anyone with an aol.com or aim.com email address. This is almost certainly because both my stevelawson.net and steve-lawson.co.uk domains have been spoofed by some spamming wankers using them to send out god-knows-what, and after a certain number of spam emails received by aol users, they’ve just blacklisted the domain names. I think…

So I’ve emailed their customer services (or rather, got someone else to email their customer services, as they have an aol address so wouldn’t have got it!!!) and asked them to unblock my main email addresses (steve@ each of the domain names).

But for now, if you’re an AOL/AIM user, if you have an alternative email address, please include it when emailing me. If you’ve emailed me recently and were expecting a reply that hasn’t arrived, it may well be that I sent it and it was eaten by the AOL blacklist…

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John Lester/Paul Tiernan gig

Headed up to Cambridge last night, to CB2, where I’ll be playing in just over a week with Ned Evett, to see John Lester and Paul Tiernan.

John’s new album, ‘So Many Reasons’ is fantastic, so I was really looking forward to seeing him live again. It’s been quite a while since I was last at one of his gigs, and he didn’t disappoint. He and Paul switched back and forth playing each other’s songs, playing some solo tunes, and a handful of covers, including the only acoustic version of ‘Play That Funky Music White Boy’ that I’ve ever heard.

Paul Tiernan was a revelation – not having heard him before, he’s got a gorgeous voice, like a more intelligible John Martyn. All in all a very enjoyable gig.

John’s album isn’t officially released yet, but I’m sure if you email him via his website, he’ll sort something out for you…

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The Tebbit Test

One of the bizarrist bits of political posturing of the last couple of decades was Norman Tebbit’s assertion that you could judge the level of an ‘immigrant’s’ allegiance to England by asking them who they’d support when their country of origin played England at cricket… did second Generation Bangladeshi, West Indian or Pakistani root for their country of birth or the country of their family heritage?

The problem with this is that it assumes that sporting allegiance is somehow a given expression of national pride.

The problem is, that under the Tebbit test my national identity can be filed under ‘couldn’t give a shit’ or when feeling generous ‘the independent republic of underdog’. I have no sense of association with sports men and women from England at all. The english football team is not ‘we’ it’s not ‘us’, it’s 11 blokes that I don’t know, probably wouldn’t like very much if I met them, who just happen to have been born on the same bit of land as me. So what?

So, in this world cup, I’ll be rooting for Iran, Togo, Trinidad, and any other underdogs.

And as a musician, I’m hoping that England go out in the group stage, just to free up the venues for music again instead of sports on big teles. :o)

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