Year: 2006

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Petersfield gig

just back in from the gig in Petersfield with Theo – wow, what a great evening!

To start with, playing with Theo is about as easy as a gig can get – there’s no worrying that he’s ever going to play anything less than marvellous, he’s great fun, and we always have a great time on gigs. Add to that some fine Thai food (the venue doubles as a Thai restaurant), a nice big audience (full room), and some stellar improvs, and you’ve got yourself a damned fine night’s gigging.

We recorded it to minidisc, and the record quality is great except the points where it peaks. A few of the tracks will be editable to get rid of the peaks, a couple won’t be useable, but it does give us a reference point for the general sound quality coming off the desk, so if we drop the record level a bit, we’ll be fine.

Next stop, The Vortex tonight – don’t miss it!

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Wireless and screenless

thanks to the house insurance company demanding that we get window locks fitted, I had to completely dismantle my office yesterday (those of you that have seen my office are currently receiving oxygen at the thought…). The lack of a desktop computer to hook my laptop up to, and the marvellous experiences I’d had with wireless in the US (wi-fi is the finest invention since the Ebow), I decided it was time to get a wireless hub.

Four hours of tweaking and two calls to Onetel later, and I got it working. It’s worth noting that if you’re trying to configure a Zoom X6 5590 wireless modem and router that you can’t write to flash from Safari – I tried for ages and couldn’t get it to work. As soon as I switched to Firefox (which I didn’t even know I’d downloaded for mac!) it worked a treat and I was able to configure it. Well, configure everything except the password for the wireless network, so at the moment, anyone in my area can access my network, though not my computer, thankfully.

One of the methods I tried to get the router configured was to hook up my desktop computer and try that, but when I did it appeared the screen wasn’t working. I tried the screen with my laptop and that was fine, so it seems my video card has gone west. Need to get some advice today on fitting new video cards from either the Lovely G or The Captain…

But at least I now have WiFi in the house, the nicest upshot of which is that i’m sat here in total silence – no humming fans on my PC providing noise pollution. I can go and sit in front of the TV and do all my email things while watching family guy, and life is good.

Tonight I’m playing in Petersfield with Theo – first night of our tour, playing a whole load of new music, some favourites and some new versions of old tunes. I’m really looking forward to it, though I’m still feeling a little jetlagged. It’ll be my first theo gig with the Looperlative, which will be fun.

And tomorrow we’re at the Vortex in London – please come along!

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Home very sweet home

Home at last.

Glad to be home, but with two great weeks of having a fantastic time in California behind me. From the recording session with Jeff Kaiser the day after I arrived to my last morning with Anderson and Laura, the whole trip was a pleasure, and a success. Many good things to build on in the future.

The journey home was painless – the time sat round at the airport was spent online, and then the flight itself was spent largely asleep. Thankfully the plane was less than half full, so I had the middle four seats on a 747 all to myself to stretch out fully on – anyone who paid thousands for a fold out bed on that flight, the joke was on you! I got a good six hours of sleeps on the flight, so am feeling much more alive now that usual when I get back from the states…

The only thing looming is that I have to clear all the stuff out of my office before tomorrow morning, as we’ve got a guy coming to fit window-locks, and my desk is right across the window… not looking forward to that at all.

And then it’s gig week. and sleep week.

Oh, and before I forget, if any of you bloglings are in London and are planning a trip to the States in the next couple of months, lemme know, cos we can do some currency exchange at a rate that’ll benefit both of us…

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Postcard from SF Airport

I’m officially on my way home, sat in San Francisco airport, waiting for my flight.

The last few days have been fantastic – catching up with friends around the bay area, and then Saturday’s masterclass and gig.

Friday night was spent firstly having dinner with Rick Turner and with two lovely new friends from Third World Guitars in the Dominican Republic. I also got to try out Rick’s brand new 6 string Renaissance bass, which was just as fantastic as you’d imagine (John Lester is going to be wanting one of these, for sure…)

Then it was out to see another friend’s band play – a rock/metal covers band called Mr Meanor – great players, who’ve clearly put a heck of a lot of time, energy and skill into what they do – it’s great to see a bar band that plays with such conviction. The weird thing was how few of the songs I knew – the US and UK rock charts in the 70s and 80s were clearly very different!

Onto Saturday – It’s the third time I’ve taught a masterclass here, and the biggest so far – I set a limit of 20 people and we had 20 people, which was good – two long sessions of almost three hours each with an hour off for lunch and trying eachother’s basses etc. it was, as is my usual teaching approach, a lot more about the mental approach to playing than it was about ‘licks to play over a D minor chord’ – I probably only played for about 15 minutes total in the class, but spent most of the time answering questions, and dealing with a lot of the misconceptions that we’ve all grown up with about the music making process. the feedback thus far from the people who came along has been great, and hopefully the discussions will continue on the forum.

From the masterclass, we headed over to the espresso garden – this was my fifth gig at the Espresso Garden, and possibly, sadly, my last, as the venue is being sold, but doesn’t have a buyer as yet. It’s a great venue that has hosted gigs by some of my favourite musicians – John Lester, Kris Delmhorst, Muriel Anderson, Martyn Joseph – a great listening room for acoustic music. It’s the fourth time that Michael and I had played there together, and the second time that we filled it, which felt good. We also had Jeff Schmidt along with us, who played a lovely opening set, and joined us for a cool improv at the end of the gig.

I think the most startling thing about the gig was Michael’s sound – due to the logistics of the gig, he had Mark Wright from Accugroove bring him a couple of speakers to use, which meant that all three of us were going through Accugroove stereo rigs – I’ve NEVER heard Michael’s bass sound that clear or focussed. It was incredible.

It was also a lot of fun for me to be using the Looperlative on a solo gig – it’s the first time I’ve done it, and it sounded great – I even tried a version of ‘Despite My Worst Intentions’, which I’ve never played with that box (and it has some pretty complex looping stuff going on with it) and it worked a treat, it made sense, and felt good.

All in, a marvellous day!

Yesterday was another magical day – the morning spent with Mark Wright, the afternoon with Michael Manring, the early evening teaching a great bassist called Arianne Cap, then dinner with Arianne, her husband Wolfgang, and with Jeff Schmidt and his wife Valerie, followed by late evening with Anderson Page from Modulus and his wife Laura – a day chock full of encounters with fantastic inspiring lovely friends. California is like that for me – I get to see so many great people, who energise me, inspire me musically, politically, spiritually… I really don’t think I could ever live out here (maybe that’ll change), but some of my favourite people in the whole world are here. Thanks to all of you for what you feed into my life.

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California catch-up

So what have I missed from NAMM?

Well, I posted about Thursday night – that was fun.

Friday – er, can’t remember much about during the day, other than doing some Looperlative demos, and playing on the Accugroove stand. Oh, and did a set at Modulus as well, though where Modulus is stationed, it’s all but impossible to play anything due to them being flanked by hair-metal amp companies and opposite the Taylor booth who have a stage set up with acoustic bands playing all the time. Accugroove and Looperlative are both down in Hall E where the noise level is much lower, so more people could stop and listen to what’s being played. And on both those stands I had AccuGroove speakers to play through, which made all the difference. I just don’t like using regular bass amps any more. The only bass cabinet company that comes close to AccuGroove is Glokenklang – they make some really lovely uncoloured speaker cabs. Great stuff.

Anyway, what else? Ah, Friday evening, Sabian had a big show, featuring some celeb drummers – Dave Weckl, Terry Bozzio and Joey Heredia. Terry being the interest, not just because he’s already more interesting than the others, but because he had the wonderful Doug Lunn on bass. Doug’s one of my closest american friends, and him playing also meant that his wife Vida was at the show on Friday, so we had lunch – that’s what NAMM’s pretty much all about for me, catching up with the lovely people here that I only get to see once a year.

The gig itself started and was unintentionally funny – I was there with three lovely bass people – Peter Murray, Jeff Schmidt and Janek Gwizdala – Weckl came on and it took us a while to work out what it sounded like, but we hit the name on the head with ‘game show themes’ – not my bag at all, I’m just not into clever twiddly fusion like that…

So we wandered outside, and hung out, chatted, laughed a lot – all good.

Back inside for the Bozzio band, which was a whole different proposition. Some seriously dark, difficult music, that owed more to Pierre Boulez or Edgar Varese than to the usual guitar trio reference points. Alex Machacacek who wrote most of the material is a remarkable guitarist, writing incredibly dense structured music, with multiple time and tempo changes each bar. Scary stuff. Doug acquitted himself admirably, playing this scary mathematical music with a serious amount of groove and flair.

Saturday at NAMM is mayhem – way too many people there, lots of celebs showing up (eg Gene Simmons shows up with film crew in tow – I saw him there up close last year and he looks like a pile of offal from a butchers floor that someone has mushed together and re-animated. Not a good advert for ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ living.) So I stayed down in Hall E for a lot of the time, and escaped over to Subway for lunch. Didn’t even think about playing on the Modulus booth, but did a fair amount of stuff down at Looperlative, including some fun duets with Tal Wilkenfeld – a fab Australian bassist living in NYC – I blogged about seeing her play last year.

Saturday night at NAMM means ‘Muriel Anderson’s All Star Guitar Night’ – one of the best gigs of the show. Sadly this year, I missed a lot of it due to heading up to Hollywood to see Bozzio’s trio again at the Baked Potato. But not before I’d gone in to meet Patti Larkin – Patti’s a huge favourite of mine, a stunning singer/songwriter who has worked a lot with Michael Manring over the years and I’ve been wanting to meet for years. A few connections were used, and I got a chance to say hello and briefly discuss the possibility of her coming over to play in the UK – that’d be great!

then off up to Hollywood for more Bozzio/Lunn/Machacek craziness. top stuff, but a very late drive back to Bob and Alison’s in Costa Mesa.

And then Sunday – the quiet day, I arrived late at the show, and left early, but not before filming the Looperlative demo and saying goodbye to some lovely friends for another year. And I headed off into Hollywood again to see another old friend, Tanya, who I’d not seen for three years, feeling dried out and exhausted (me, not Tanni) by four days of vicious air conditioning and walking miles.

Soundtrack – in the car here, I’ve been listening to lots of music by friends of mine, to keep me from feeling homesick – Juliet Turner, BJ Cole, Mark Lockheart, Thomas Leeb… it works.

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Monday in California

Well, NAMM’s over for another year. Much fun, but I couldn’t have handled another day of it. After 8 years of it the novelty has worn off, but it allows me to appreciate the bits of it that I love a lot more – mainly the great people I get to see when I’m here.

I’ve got lots of stories, and much to write, but haven’t got time now – hopefully tomorrow I’ll get to post more.

ta ta!

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Day one of NAMM proper

So the mayhem started today. Having a US mobile phone has proved to be an absolute God-send, keeping me in touch with all the disparate groups of people I need to meet up with.

A mellow morning, wandering around, seeing friends, explaining the Looperlative to a few people, Lunch with Laurie and Janek, then back to do some playing, first on the Looperlative stand, then Accugroove. Headed up to Modulus to play too, but there was a guy playing Stick in the booth next door, so it wasn’t going to happen.

Then BassBash – v. nearly late getting their thanks to traffic, but we found a way through. Got there, set up and played some duet stuff with Trip, which went down great. Then had to run off to do my second gig of the evening with Jason Feddy – no rehearsal, really shitty charts, but a whole lot of fun. Jason’s songs are great, and he’s one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet (a Leeds lad living in Laguna Beach… oh yes.)

Jason’s set was v. late, and it meant that I was held up at the hotel til way later than expected, which lead to my first let down of NAMM – NAMM is all about let downs, people arranging to meet up and missing eachother etc. This one was that I was supposed to go and pick up Jeff Schmidt again from the BassBash, but couldn’t cos I was playing! Here’s hoping Jeff got back (it was walkable, but it’s a way!) – sorry Jeff!

And the evening ended watching Dave Pomeroy playing bass for Doyle Dykes. Great stuff.

The one stupid thing I forgot to do today was drink enough water, and I’m feeling a little dehydrated now. Must do better tomorrow.

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National Britishness day? Er, no thanks…

Alerted to the story by an email from my mum, I’ve just had a read in The Guardian about Gordon Brown’s plans for a ‘Britishness Day’, to be tagged onto remembrance Sunday.

He goes on to site american national pride as the inspiration.

Has he spent any time in the US? The jingoistic flag-waving over here is perhaps the single most baffling element in American culture – spending that amount of energy and effort in telling other people that are already like you, how great it is to be like you are. It’s an embarrassment to a lot of outward looking world travelling cosmopolitan americans, and just reinforces the refusal of Middle America to look at itself with any degree of self-analysis or self-criticism.

The bits of Britain that I’m proud of are those that stem from our history of dissent, our willingness to protest at the behaviour of our elected officials and our LACK of that very jingoism that Brown seems to be wanting to foster.

Bollocks to the flag – flags are generally a shit idea. The BNP are welcome to it. We don’t need to ‘reclaim’ the Union Flag, if people want to use it for sports, fine go ahead, I’m not going to accuse you of being nazis, I just won’t understand it.

It’s really odd to have read this story less than 24 hours after spending a good half hour trying to get my head about the reasons for American National pride, and seeing it as some kind of sinister government plot to coerce people into acquiescence, to disengage brains, to limit dissent. All things that we need LESS of in Britain not more.

So, Mr Brown, you can shove that idea up your arse, thanks.

Oh, and Faria’s been evicted, so Tenille tells me.

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contender for the king of mint teas crown…

Had to buy a box of mint tea bags as soon as I got here – too many places where you can’t get things that are neither caffeinated or fizzy. So a trip Trader Joes was in order. Why don’t we have Trader Joes in the UK? It’s fantastic. Anyway, TJs mint tea is gorgeous – up there with Dr Stuarts. Oh yes, bloglings, it’s that good – try to refrain from drooling on the keyboard at the very thought of such at thing.

So I’m a happy minty stevie today.

Soundtrack – Jeff Taylor, ‘promo ep’ (all the songs from his myspace page plus one more – great stuff); Steve Lawson/Jeff Kasier (the improv stuff we recorded on sunday – marvellous noises – watch this space.)

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