Year: 2006

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One more summer on the Royal Mile

So, after having said that I wasn’t going to do the Edinburgh Festival this year, it looks like I will be after all. Only this time, instead of doing it solo, it’ll be a duet with Julie McKee, one of my favourite singers around. Julie and I have been working on duo versions of pop tunes for a while now, everything from Earth Wind And Fire to John Martyn, The Police to Soundgarden, Kylie to Tom Waits, so we’re gonna do that stuff late night on the fringe, with a few loopy ambient things and a solo tune or two thrown in for good measure.

I’m really looking forward to it – we’re only doing 5 or 6 dates, so it’s fairly low pressure, and the upfront cost isn’t going to be as high as it was for me last year.

here’s the blurb for the festival fringe programme –

Julie McKee/Steve Lawson – The New Standard.
“A musical match made in heaven, divine jazz-influenced vocalist McKee and acclaimed solo bassist Lawson give a fresh spin to the pop canon, from Sondheim to Soundgarden. Unmissable.
www.thenewstandard.co.uk

(don’t bother going to the address at the moment, it currently just points back to my website, but will have all the info about the gig).

So expect a gig or two before then as we get out and try out our looping ‘n’ pop songs duo! It’s going to be lots of fun. If you’re in or around Edinburgh in the second week of August, come and see it – we’ll be at The Lot.

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Imogen Heap gig

This is one I’ve been looking forward to for quite a while. I first saw Imogen Heap play at the Kashmir Klub about 6 years ago, at a ModernWood Management showcase gig, along with Nik Kershaw (who also had Leo Abrahams on guitar, to be featured at the next Recycle Collective gig) and the Dum Dums. I then bought her debut album in the US for some tiny amount of money, and it very quickly became one of the favourite CDs in this house. It’s great.

Last night she was playing Shepherd’s Bush Empire – a pretty huge venue for someone who this time last year was just finishing up recording a self-produced CD. However, between then and now, the track Hide And Seek from that CD, ended up being featured at some critical moment on The OC (I’ve never watched The O.C. – I’ve been to Orange County, and if the TV show is accurate, I can’t imagine in being very interesting, and if it isn’t, I’d just get annoyed with it). It was a huge radio hit all over the place, Radio 1 played it a lot here, and Imogen was right there in the spotlight where she belongs. The album’s lovely, BTW.

So, anyway, the gig – Shepherd’s Bush Empire – a v. large and pretty prestigious gig, though not the friendliest for the musicians or the audience. I’ve ranted here before about venues owned by Carling, and SBE is one of them with the corresponding focus on beer, leading to people talking. At times it was impossible to hear what Imogen was saying between songs, and during the two supports there was a bit of chatter coming from the main floor.

Ah yes, the support – first support was Zoe Keating – someone I’ve had a fair bit of email contact with as she’s a looping cellist, and was, I think the third owner in the world of a Looperlative, after me and Rick Walker. Her solo set was lovely, featuring unprocessed looped Cello (and the best live amplified Cello sound I’ve ever heard – apparently it’s an AKG contact mic, will get the details for any geeks wanting to know). Very lovely stuff.

Second support I didn’t get to hear much of… We arrived just before 8 so we could see Zoe play, and thanks to the craziness of guest-list goings-on, I had a ticket, but TSP’s hadn’t arrived yet ( we were meant to be going with TAFKASB, but she had to go to some punk gig instead…) so I went in to see Zoe’s set (not fair on TSP at all, but as my ticket was on Zoe’s guestlist, it would have been pretty dreadful to miss her solo set), then came out again to find TSP and sort out tickets. Which was all during second support.

Sadly, while my first ticket was seated upstairs, second tickets were standing downstairs only. We’re too old for that, but we did anyway, found a place by the stairs where TSP could see the stage and settled in for an evening of chronic backache.

Imogen came on and did her first number just solo, looping her voice with a Repeater (she so needs a looperlative!) – it was one of the most musical, clever, groovy and entertaining loop performances I’ve ever seen. It’s interesting that often the best loop-based performers are those that don’t make a big deal out of it, but that’s by the by. The rest of the night was a gorgeous mix of solo loopy stuff, solo piano stuff and was the first time she’d showcased the full band, with Zoe being marvellous on cello, plus drums, tuned percussion and a second keyboard player (the second support bloke), augmented by a few things on laptop.

Imogen’s stage presence was somewhat akin to an amiable old-school TV chef, like a glammed up Fanny Craddock cooking up the perfect gig; ‘now we’re going to add some Cello – would that be lovely?’ – sadly the constant chatter of audience members lubed up on nasty overpriced lager from the venue owners meant that a lot of the between song asides were lost, but the whole vibe of just chatting to the audience instead of trying to whoop them into some frenzy was right up my street.

All in all, musically and performance-wise one of the finest gigs I’ve seen in a long time, some of the most sophisticated looping and a whole slew of stunning songs (including one of the duets she did with Urban Species years ago, just her, the rapper from the band and piano – lovely stuff!). I just can’t wait to see her play the Barbican or Festival Hall, or the Albert Hall – somewhere with seats and an audience encourages to STFU during the whole gig.

The After-show party was a bit of a long wait – I really wanted to meet Zoe, so we stuck around for about 45 minutes til she showed up. Well worth the wait, as it’s always lovely to meet online-chums face to face. Also got to say hi to Imogen, who I’ve met on a few occasions before, but she couldn’t remember where. :o)

If she plays near you, DON’T MISS IT.

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CD recommendations from yesterday…

For any students from Salford reading this, here’s a list of all the CDs I mentioned at various times and for various reasons throughout the masterclass yesterday –

Voodoo – D’Angelo (made me rethink my whole understanding of rhythm)
It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back – Public Enemy (ditto, also amazing for the cavalier way they treat ideas of dissonance and tonality)
Spirit Of Eden – Talk Talk (the one mastered by the bloke who mastered my last record, a glorious album)
Michael Manring – Soliloquy (not only the finest solo bass album ever made, one of my most amazing solo statements by any instrumentalist ever)
John Lester – Big Dreams And The Bottom Line (the solo bass/singer-songwriter who was on at Bass Day that I’ve toured with, who’s fantastic)
KT Tunstall – Eye To The Telescope (I shouldn’t really need to list this, but she’s the anti-Blunt – great in exactly the same ways that James Blunt is shit.)
And of course all my my stuff, available via my webshop where you can also get the Michael Manring and John Lester CDs.

Can’t think of any others that I mentioned for now, but if you want a more exensive listening list, just request it, along with the areas you’re interested in, in the comments section. :o)

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What goes around…

Back in ’91 when I left school, I applied for three universities – Middlesex and Leicester to do performing arts and Salford to do Popular Music and Recording. Middlesex and Leicester didn’t even invite me for interview, but Salford did, and I went down to Manchester to check it out. I drove down with my schoolfriend Martin, as Ocean Colour Scene were playing in Manchester that night, so we went down, spent the day mooching around record shops and comic shops in Manchester, I did the audition, we went to see OCS, slept in the car and went back to Berwick.

The audition went terribly – not because I played worse that usual, just because I was rubbish, and didn’t really deserve to even get an audition. Still, the guys conducting it managed to stifle a laugh. The upside was that OCS were outstanding. Those of you who didn’t hear their first two singles will find that impossible to believe, given that they peaked there and by the time their first album came out they were already past their best. But they were fantastic.

What’s this got to do with today? Well, today I was back at Salford, giving a masterclass for their students! haha! fantastic! It was a hell of a lot of driving (410 miles round trip), but a lot of fun to do – the students asked a lot of good questions, and seemed to enjoy it (if you were there, feel free to post a comment here!) – It’s great getting paid to talk about music for a couple of hours, and hopefully give the students some food for thought on what it takes to become a professional musician. Those kind of sessions can go either way, and get deep into the mechanics of playing, or be all about the stuff of living as a musician. This was more the latter, with a few questions about Ebows and looping thrown in. All in all, a fine way to spend the day!

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Martha Graham quote

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening
that is translated through you into action,
and because there is only one of you in all time,
this expression is unique.
If you block it,
it will never exist through any other medium
and be lost.
The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is;
nor how valuable it is;
nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly,
to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep open and aware directly
to the urges that motivate you.

Keep the channel open.
No artist is pleased.
There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.
There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction;
a blessed unrest that keeps us marching
and makes us more alive than the others.”

this is by Martha Graham – not someone I knew anything about, but clearly a wise lady. Apparently she’s the founder of contemporary dance, and rather important. must do some research.

anyway, it’s a fantastic quote.

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Kid's typing course

just found this via a friend’s blog – A free touch typing course on the BBC website – it’s designed for kids, so the graphics and stuff are as you’d expect for kids, but if you are really to tight to fork out for mavis beacon’s typing course, then it’s a great place to start, or to refresh your skills if you’ve got lazy. Just typing this and thinking about which fingers I’m using, there are a few touch typing rules that I’m breaking, so I think I’ll go back and do the course too…

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Third musician for the April Recycle Collective!

Well, it’s been an enouraging couple of weeks. I’ve been asking lots of lovely musicians to take part in the Recycle Collective, with a very very positive response. Those who’ve said they want to take part in the future include Seb Rochford, Byron Wallen, Andy Hamill, Rebecca Hollweg and Oroh Angiama. Lots of fantastic musicians, all lovely people too!

And what’s more, the third musician that’s playing with Cleveland Watkiss and I on April 29th is Leo Abrahams, an amazing guitarist and looper that I first saw live playing with Imogen Heap and Nik Kershaw at the Kashmir Klub about 5 years ago, and who played after me at Greenbelt last year. He’s hugely in demand, working recently with Brian Eno, Ed Harcourt, Stairstailor, David Holmes and others, and having worked in the past with Paul Simon and Nick Cave amongst others. I’m so excited about both hearing Leo’s solo set, and what he Cleveland and I will come up with as a trio!

Head over to Leo’s myspace page to hear some of his lovely solo music.

All this means that the Recycle Collective continues to be unmissable.

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Yay!

Right, back on my own laptop, nothing disappeared from the harddrive, all seems to be working. I’m still in the Apple Store using their wireless, so won’t know if the firewire is back working til I get home… watch this space.

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Margrave Of The Marshes

I finished the John Peel autobiography, ‘Margrave Of The Marshes’ last night. I say ‘auto..’, he actually wrote just under half of the book, his wife Sheila finishing the rest of it. The changeover between the two, the sudden nature of his part stopping and her picking up the story, is one of the saddest moments in any book I’ve ever read. It’s odd to think of a 65 year old man as having so much unfulfilled potential, especially one who was already arguably the most important figure in the development of pop music in the UK. I’d argue that anyway.

His life story is candid, heartwarming, beautifully written as you expect from the presenter of Home Truths, full of his love for music, his family, tales of his frankly insane youth and young adulthood. I’m not sure I’d have liked him if I’d met him in the late 60s, though even then, the excerpts from his diary that Sheila quotes reveal a man I have an enourmous amount of empathy and respect for, despite his opportunist deceptions involving the Beatles and deflowering numerous american highschoolers…

His marriage to Sheila is an inspiration, his love for his family equally so. His impact on me as a musician and music fan has been written about here before, but it bears repeating – growing up in Berwick on Tweed, pre-internet, music information was pretty hard to come by. There was the mag trinity of NME/Sounds/Melody Maker which, whilst nowhere near the cheap nasty nonsense they are now, were still pretty trend-driven, even if those trends were a little more underground that they are today. No, the only real source of information about music-without-boundaries was Peel, and I devoured his show voraciously, recording it onto Tandy cassettes, making compilations of Pixies sessions before they were released, and collections of tunes by The Wedding Present, Bongwater, Napalm Death, The Stupids, Rob Jackson (not THAT Rob Jackson, sadly), Billy Bragg, The Bhundu Boys, Extreme Noise Terror and hours of obscure Soukous and strange German techno squawks.

The overall effect was that of removing all possible labelling from the process of making music. This allowed me to be simultaneously a fan of BoltThrower, Weather Report, The Cure, Wet Wet Wet, George Benson, John Zorn, The Alarm, Yes, The Housemartins and just about anything else that came along. I was often being accused of having ‘no taste’ – not bad taste, just no discernment about what to listen to at all. Truth was I did, I went through obsessive phases (just as Peel did), and kept the best of it as I moved on. In 1986 I voted the Mission and The Smiths the worst bands in the Smash Hits readers poll. By the 1990, I had every album the Smiths had ever released, along with having cultivated a near-obsession with The Cure and The Pixies that lasts to today. Only this week I’ve been introducing various students of mine to the majestic delights of Kim Deal’s bass playing via ‘Debaser’ and ‘Hey’.

The more poignant, funny, engaging and revealing the book became, the greater the pain at John’s loss. The greater the sense of anguish for the family at having lost him – as much as I miss his broadcasting, and regret never having met him, it quite obviously is nothing compared to the excuciating pain of losing a parent/husband/brother/friend.

The tributes when he died were effusive, though not a surprise. I was one of millions of teens from the laste 60s onwards who saw the world of music though Peel-tinted specs, who dispensed with the style fascism of most teen music-factions and took on the mantle of music-lover. I think it’s safe to say that without that exposure, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today. My relationship with music would have been very very different indeed, and that desire to explore as a listener would never have spilled over into that desire to explore as a player that lead to me playing solo.

So go, read the book, remember John, tell your kids about him, make them read the book, and buy them a copy of the new Billy Bragg boxed set, the Hardcore Holocaust’ Peel sessions compilation, The Shed Sessions by The Bhundu Boys and any other weird nonsense you find in the hope that they’ll grow up to view labels like ’emo’ and ‘goth’ and ‘pop fan’ to be as erroneous as they really are.

John, you are missed.

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Laptop update

Phone call just now from me to them (they still haven’t called me once). The repair is apparently ‘finished’ but my laptop is in testing… so I might not get it back today. Huh? It’s 10.30am, how long does it take to test to see if it’s working? One of you geeks might be able to fill me in on this, but running some kind of diagnostic test on a laptop to make sure the Logic board is working can’t take 24 hours can it?

Miserable git on the phone – I asked roughly how long after the test was finished would I be called, given that I’ve been promised three phone-calls so far and had none of them. No help at all. A request for a note to be put on it that the repair is already overdue and it’s urgent. No can do.

Useless losers.

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