Author: Steve

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Weekend of musical friends

So, Friday was the last commuter jazz gig (or ‘computer jazz’, if you’re the chief exec. of the South Bank) before the big refurb kicks in at the end of Meltdown at the end of June. Peter King was playing, and was marvellous – very fine saxophonist, even if he does play alto (not a big fan of alto, generally – it’s just a tenor sax for kids) – and the aforementioned malapropism-prone chief exec. did a lovely speech about lady jazzshark who as previously mentioned has been booking bands at the RFH since prehistoric days, and will be much missed.

So, naturally, sharky person had a big party afterwards, at a friend’s GORGEOUS flat overlooking the Thames along by Blackfriars bridge. That’s one hell of a view to wake up to each morning, for sure. Much celebration took place, and by all accounts no small about of debauchery, though I left at 10.30, so thankfully missed all that.

Saturday was a fun day – started by meeting up with the wonderful Todd Reynolds – an outstanding violinist, and truly lovely wonderful person. Todd and I have exchanged emails and been reading eachother’s posts to Loopers Delight for years, but hadn’t met, so it was great to put a face to an email address and spend the day filling in the gaps. We went back down to the RFH Foyer for the last Saturday gig before the closure (and therefore JazzShark’s last saturday gig) – many fragile hung over people there from the party the night before (fools… ;o) ) – and a lovely short film about a couple in their 70s who meet at the free gigs in the foyer to dance together.

After that, gave Todd the shortened tourist trip round central London (interesting that my tourist trips never take in Buckingham Palace – maybe my anti-royalist sentiments are spilling over into my appreciation of what’s valuable to see in town. I always take people past Downing Street and along Whitehall (the seat of our sham-democracy) and Trafalgar Square (site of many a kick-ass protest) and down to the South Bank (home of the arts), but ignore any of the Royal nonsense, unless it’s for a quick walk round St James’ Park.

I digress… A fantastic day spent wandering round with Todd, all in. Top bloke, fun day.

Then home, to pick up TSP to head out to Lizzie’s leaving do, only TSP is behind on writing work (TSP is high powered celeb journo, interviewing the great and good about all things healthy), so I leave cinderella at home and head off to the ball on my own.

Lizzie is one of life’s lovely people – a fantastic photographer/photo journalist, and very funny lady. Party was full of lovely people, naturally, with no repeats of Friday night’s debauchery (totally different group of friends here…) So good send off for Lizzie, but crap that she’s moving (only to Bristol, so we’ll still see lots of her, but still…)

Sunday – head off to church, but it’s an ‘away match’ (meaning that a family from outside the church are having a christening – though it turns out they were from the church, I just didn’t know them – major black mark against my name for not having said hi to them!!) anyway – decide to go for fry-up at nice cafe on the Holloway Road was Gawain instead. Gawain is a marvellous producer/programmer/musician who has got heavily into community music education and is doing amazingly well. Very inspiring to talk to, with lots of plans for collaborative stuff.

Then home, domestic stuff, drop mixing desk off at St Luvvies to be used at Soul Space service before heading to Finsbury Park tube to meet up with BJ and Juliet to go to Joe Jackson/Todd Rungren gig at Hammersmith homebrew Apollo or whatever it’s called this week.

The reason BJ and I are at the gig is that the lovely Todd Reynolds who I met up with on Saturday is playing with his amazing string quartet Ethel as opening act and collaborator with Joe and Todd (BJ played with Todd in John Cale’s band in the 90s). Juliet had a ticket anyway, so Todd got her an aftershow pass and we all piled down to the gig together.

Ethel kicked out – wow. Incredible energy and performance, and great gig. They looked great, played great, the music was magic and the audience were captivated.

Then Joe Jackson came on – now I’m quite a fan of Joe’s singles collection (playing at the moment, in an attempt to rescue my memory of his music), but the gig was poor. Very poor. The sound was very compressed, and solo voice and piano versions of his uptempo stuff didn’t, to my ears, work at all. The new material was particularly bad. Some of his piano playing was lovely, but the overall feeling was one of big disappointment.

So a lot was rest on Todd Rungren’s shoulders. And he didn’t rise to the occasion either. The songs all sounded thrown away, I couldn’t remember one snippet of melody at the end of any of them, his guitar sound was possibly the worst I’ve ever heard at a ‘big’ gig, and again I was left contemplating self harm as a more pleasant sensory experience than the assault my ears were currently being subjected to.

Then, all change once again. Ethel come back on, and we’re back to the gig being amazing – a Gilbert and Sullivan tune, a couple each from Joe and Todd and an encore of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ (after Todd’s solo set I wanted to rename it ‘While My Guitar is Gently put through a wood-chipper’) – I’ve never seen a couple of aging rock stars so outrageously upstaged by a string quartet in my life. If the gig had been 40 minutes of Ethel, followed by 80 minutes of all five of them on stage playing a mixture of hits and misses, it could have been a breathtaking gig. As it was, it was two hours of dire self-indulgent horse-shit topped and tailed by two exquisite but far too short sets.

Ethel were a revelation, and are destined for hugeness. Please go and buy their CD, I guarantee you won’t regret it.

After all-too-brief chat with Todd after the gig, with just enough time to introduce him to Juliet and blag a copy of the Ethel album, it was time to hop on the last tube home.

Soundtrack – Joe Jackson, ‘Stepping Out – The Best Of’.

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Be like them, they're sexy

So PETA – People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals – are running a vote thing on their website at the moment to find The world’s sexiest vegetarian – yes, you can vote for some irrelavent celeb or other who wisely doesn’t eat dead animal things, proclaiming their sexiness…

What Total Bollocks. Why? Why trivialise the animal rights movement by stooping to Heat mag level nonsense. Who gives a shit about the sexiness of vegetarian celebs? I can’t even begin to list the ways in which this is SO WRONG!!

I’m sure if you asked PETA, they’d say that it’s just another way to highlight the number of people across the world who are veggies, and how it’s not a fringe weirdo thing, but even celebs are veggies. Fair enough, but FFS, world’s sexiest vegetarian??? – going veggie is good for your health, it’s a compassionate thing to do, it’s good for the planet and the people who live on that planet as well as the animals who aren’t getting killed to be eaten, but it has precisely jack-shit to do with whether someone is sexy or not. I could list a couple of hundred very sexy meat eating omnivore humans here, I’m sure there are sexy people who are murderers and psychos. So what? Ugly vegetarians are still vegetarians, they aren’t lesser veggies than the sexy ones.

I’m very pro animal rights, I support animal rescue shelters and Animal Aid and suggest that everyone go Veggie, but not because Bryan Adams, Avril Lavigne and Weird Al Yankovic are!!!!! Sweet Jesus, this stuff annoys me!

(thanks to The Cheat for the link)

Soundtrack – The Smiths, ‘The Queen Is Dead’; Kenny Young And The Eggplants, ‘The Search For EggPlantis’.

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From Today's Guardian

From Today’s Guardian, Muriel Gray on Live 8

it’s a great article, and contains at least one laugh out loud quote –

“Live 8 is conceived by old people. In fact Geldof now displays such an archaeological brand of old, the kind that gets dug up from thousand-year-old peat bogs, that he is scaring children.”

But a very balanced and sober piece on the importance of the protest.

I’m a tad more optimistic than Muriel, but really like the way she’s thinking.

Soundtrack – The Cure, ‘Disintegration’ (blimey, this is a good album!)

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The Cure split.. again…

So two members have left The Cure – Perry and Roger are gone, with the other three carrying on, and augmenting the live band with other people.

The Cure story is one populated by Robert hiring and firing people fairly regularly – I think this might have been the longest running stable line up in their career. No clarifying word yet as to whether they jumped or were pushed.

The discussion at thecure.com is fascinating, not least of all for Robert’s involvement. Amazing that he would post on his own message board like that, especially in response to some of the crap that gets posted. Good on him, I say.

And on that note, I shall have to listen to some Cure stuff, methinks…

the new three-man lineup –

Soundtrack – Eric Roche, ‘The Perc U Lator’; but soon to be The Cure.

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terms to ease the conscience…

Just been reading a blog entry by the lovely gareth, in which he refers to ‘winning’ an ebay auction. Ebay themselves use the term on the page after the auction – ‘you’ve won!’ it proudly displays.

So, would someone tell me in what sense being willing to pay more than anyone else for a certain item is winning? Surely it’s just shopping? Does anyone do a victory lap round Sainsbury’s after laying out £100 on a week’s groceries? ‘yay, I won some fantastic organic food!!!’

Ebay is chance-inflected-shopping in the same way that the stock market is Ladbrooks for people in suits. ‘Investing’ in the stock market is just like having a flutter on the horses, only you have to buy the FT to follow the form instead of the Racing Post. Either way you’re throwing money at anything based on its ability to make you more money, not out of any kind of support for the enterprise involved, or any sort of sporting allegiance to the jockey or horse…

I was listening to a radio phone in on stock trading on BBC London yesterday, and at no point did anyone raise any kind of moral or ethical questions about the idea of investing in financial success without any concern for what the company actually does. When Chris Martin declared that ‘share holders are the great evil’ last week in the debate about how The new Coldplay album’s delay had dented the EMI share price, it was the first time I’d heard any kind of critique of the system on the news for years. Anyone questioning the rationale of the free market ideologues (FMIs) is painted as a mad commie (rather a commie than a FMI any day), and their critique dismissed as anti-progress or out of step with the times. Does anyone really think that a situation where any PLC is required by law to maximise the investment of it’s shareholders is a good thing?? This means that if a company wants to switch to using all recycled stationary in their offices, which would cost a bit more, they’d have to ballot their share-holders to be able to make the switch, and could be blocked, rather than being able to make ethical decisions in the work place. If they offer out to tender the production of a particular product and a ‘legal’ factory in the far east offers to make the stuff for less with worse workers rights and no unionisation, they are legally bound to go with the lower offer, again unless they ballot the shareholders.

So what can we do? I know various people who have with varying degrees of effectiveness bought stock in order to have a voice at AGMs. Turned up, highlighted particular human rights or environmental abuses and been able to change company policy (Tony Campolo, professor of Sociology at a Uni in Philadelphia, has written about this, but I’m not sure which book it was in…) That’s one way.

Or we can just support co-operatives, small businesses, family run shops, cottage industries, solo bassists… how did that last one creep in there????

If you haven’t done so yet, PLEASE read No Logo by Naomi Klein – a fantastic look at how all this stuff relates to branding in big companies. Beautifully written and very compelling.

How did I end up here, after starting a post to take the piss out of Gareth and his ‘winning’ on Ebay??

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Another fine Theo gig… and our last at the RFH for a while.

Yesterday’s gig went very well – playing with Theo is about the most relaxed and simple musical setting I’ve ever been in, knowing that whatever I do, he’s going to play something very cool to go with it. We did a couple of big improv things in the first set that came out very well indeed, and played all the usual stuff off the album very well too – we really need to do a live album to document how far the tunes have come, and also get the other stuff we do out there. We do a duet version of ‘Amo Amatis Amare’, from Not Dancing For Chicken, and a duet version of ‘All I Know’, which is from Theo’s ‘Heart Of The Sun’ album (a marvellous album).

What made the gig more special is that it was our last gig in the RFH Foyer for a couple of years, due to the refurbishment, and the last one booked by SueAKATheShark – she’s been booking music for the RFH Foyer for almost a century, since well before she was born, and is now moving to NYC. The Shark has booked some amazing music there over the years, and is a huge supporter, fan and friend to live music in London… Let’s hope she’s trained up some apprentices to carry on the jazz-evangelism on The South Bank.

Tonight is an even more auspicious occasion, in that it’s Sue’s last ever commuter jazz gig – every Friday since the end of the Napoleonic wars, Sue has booked a band to play after work in the RFH Foyer – again, more amazing music to a hugely appreciative crowd. So there’s a party afterwards tonight.

Soundtrack – Eric Roche, ‘The Perc U Lator’; Nirvana, ‘Nevermind’.

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Too many white acts at Live 8?

A lot of news sources today have been reporting the accusation that the Live 8 bill for the UK gig is almost exclusively white – with Mariah Carey being the only person with any non-white genes on the stage (Maria is mixed race).

The response from the organisers was to first say that “Bob Geldof approached a number of urban and black artists to participate.” – that’s fair enough.

They went on to say “We look upon Live 8 as one global concert. A number of urban acts in the UK are hugely talented but they are not well known in Paris or Rome.”…

right, let’s have a look at some of the artists playing in the other venues –

Eiffel Tower, Paris includes Yannick Noah, Calo Gero, Kyo, Axelle Red, Johnny Halliday, Renaud – I’ve heard of Johnny Halliday, but there’s no way he can be described as international. He’s huge in France and unknown elsewhere. And he’s shit.

Circus Maximus, Rome includes Irene Grandi, Jovanotti, Nek, Laura Pausini, Vasco Rossi, Zucchero – clearly all big stars in Italy, but international???

So, drop the patronising crap about ‘UK Urban artists’ and represent. There are loads of people that could do it. If they want to reach out to everyone, why not book AR Rahman or Ashe Bhosle, and make the Indian community feel like they are a part of this (and expose the hopeless Sting and Elton John fans to something worth listening to). There are loads of people they could get in there.

I’m really into the idea of the gig, I love the fact that it’s about raising awareness not money, and that it’s going to get millions and millions of people thinking about issues of trade law reform and debt relief instead of just aid, but they’ve got to realise that there are more than enough white rock dinosaurs on the bill, and it needs to be a day for recogising not only Africa’s needs, but Africa’s strength and culture – so get some great African artists on the London show, and ditch one of the 80s losers.

Soundtrack – Jason Feddy, ‘Is This Thing On?’.

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Yet another reminder to back up regularly…

One of the forums I visit most regularly online is The Dude Pit – a bass-related forum, hosted by Steve ‘Dude’ Barr. It’s a fun place, with some amazingly knowledgeable bass peoples, some really good friends, and a fair few scary mad people as well. But good scary mad people, I’m sure.

Anyway, the forum is hosted by ezboard – a pay-to-use service that hosts thousands and thousands of boards. They appear to have been hacked on Monday and have lost loads of data, and lots of the money that people had paid in to keep their boards running. All stuff that really ought to be easy enough to restore from their backups, if they had any, which it appears, they don’t.

So, I’m reminded once again to back up everything regularly. All the content on my main website is generated by my PC, so the original copies are all still here. But I do need to remember to make backups of the blog and the forum once in a while…

Soundtrack – Bill Frisell, ‘The Willies’.

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geek alert – found a fun bit of code!

Was browsing sites of people who use Audioscrobbler, and found this fun bit of code on someone’s website –

http://lumi.valkoinen.org/music/as_np.php?nick=solobasssteve

…well, obviously it didn’t say ‘solobasssteve’ on their site, it had their user-name, but what it does is display the last track you listened to, like this –

cool, eh? Will have to add it to the right hand side of the screen here…

Soundtrack – Andrew Booker, ‘Ahead’ (Andrew’s a marvellous drummer, in a band called Pulse Engine, who are fab, and his solo album’s pretty fine too – he came round last night and we recorded a load of bass and drum looped duets – look out for an MP3 or two here soon!); Mo Foster, ‘Time To Think’ (this album is a ‘must have’ for any fretless bassist – a true master at work)

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