the soundtrack to the day you wish you'd had
taken by the marvellous Mr Lowell Packham…
As you can see from all the smiles, we had a great time on this gig… :o)
Soundtrack – King’s X, ‘Live All Over The Place’ (a present from Lowell, and a fantastic CD), Kristin Korb, ‘Where You’ll Find Me’ (I already knew she was amazing from her CD with the magical Todd Johnson, and this CD is just as good – hugely talented singer/bassist)
So I’m currently in Santa Cruz, having survived NAMM, and the drive north, and one gig with Michael Manring.
Got in last Tuesday, and was staying with the wonderful Doug, Vida and Dani for the first couple of days – it’s great to come out here and immediately feel at home. It just serves to reinforce my dislike of hotels.
Two days with the Lunns, then off down to NAMM. NAMM, for those new to the game, is a HUGE music equipment trade fair. The connection with the music industry means there are a fair few lovely people around. The commercial side of it means there are also a lot of losers on the make there. I tend to view NAMM as an archepelego (spelling, harv?) of lovely people in a sea of turd. you just run from one booth of nice people to the next, hoping not get hijacked by some moron trying to sell MIDI leiderhosen or the keyboard the doubles as a trouser press for musicians on the move…
All in all, it was a fab experience – I played at and compered the BassQuake event on Thursday night, which was much fun – Dan Elliot, the BassQuake founder, does an amazing job of putting together a great show every year.
On the show floor, I did one short set a day each for Modulus and AccuGroove, and spent lots of time just milling around catching up with people I rarely get to see. Some great friends where there – Anderson from Modulus, Mark and David from AccuGroove, Peter Murray, Michael Manring, Doug Lunn (again), Warren from Fodera, Wally and Lady Bo, Carl at Lakland, Eric Roche, Steve and Jill Azola, Rick and Jessica Turner, Dave Swift, Muriel Anderson, Sarita Stewart, John East, John Fearrante, Otiel Burbridge, Jeff Campatelli, Bill Walker, Bob Amstadt, Lowell, Dude. etc. etc. etc. loads and loads of great people, many of whom I only get to see once a year. Eating is a sacrament at NAMM – for me, I break bread with the Subway people every day – a foot long veggie delight, being my element of choice. Getting to eat with friends at NAMM is great, time away from the convention centre. Friday it was with Doug, Vida, Dani and Vinnie, Saturday with Peter Murray, Lunch was with Bob Amstadt on Saturday, and Tal Wilkenfeld on Sunday (fantastic young bassist from Australia working in NYC – you’re going to be hearing much more from her, I guarantee it).
So NAMM was lots of fun once again, and by not writing for a mag this year, I had a lot more time for just hanging out and enjoying the show.
During NAMM I was staying with Bob (QSC Bob from all the bass forums) and Alison – great people, who made me very welcome. The best thing about travelling is the people. The worst is missing the small person and the cats, but emailing whenever possible, and the occasional snatched phone call is having to do for now…
Sunday night after NAMM, Doug Lunn and I headed off the the Knitting Factory in LA to see Kaki King play – Kaki’s a killer guitarist, produced by the wonderful David Torn. She’s from that post-Hedges school, with a few twists of her own, and a great line in on-stage patter. A killer gig.
Tuesday was the long drive north, up here to Santa Cruz, staying with Rick and Jessica Turner. Rick and I could be stuck in a room together for months and not run out of things to talk about. They are both two of the most interesting and marvellous people I know, so coming here is my Northern California home, in the way that staying with the Lunns is in SoCal.
which brings us up to last night’s gig, back at the Espresso Garden in San Jose with Michael Manring. playing with Michael is, as you know from my raving after the UK gigs, the most enjoyable and fullfilling musical enviroment i’ve ever found myself in, and last night was great. Thanks to everyone who turned out.
And now I’m off out for lunch with Rick Walker, another great friend and fab percussionist.
more later…
Jan 15th was the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jnr’s birthday.
on the 15th, John Nichols from The Nation posted This article about MLK’s moral message, as a challenge to look to his teaching on non-violence in an age where world leaders increasingly rely on military might to prop up their economic empires.
Soundtrack – The Cure, ‘Greatest Hits’; Mo Foster, ‘Bel Assis’; Free, ‘The Free Story’; Air, ‘Moon Safari’.
No, that’s not just a clever heading, it’s an actual show. For those of you outside the UK, it’s a stage play that’s been on in London’s West End for about two years, getting rave reviews and packed houses. The basic premise is it’s a satire on the Springer Show, that ends up with Jerry getting shot and going to hell.
The BBC filmed it, and showed in on TV on Saturday night, and what’s noteworthy about that is the volume of complaint from Christians, accusing the show (that 99% of them knew nothing about, and were quoting made-up figures for) of blasphemy and obscenity. One of the marvellously outlandish claims was that the show features ‘8000 swear-words’ – yeah, only if you multiply up each time the chorus sings one by the number of people in the chorus (27)… what bollocks.
So, anyway, the program drew the largest number of complaints ever for a BBC show, and not only did it draw complaints but there were demonstrations outside the BBC buildings around the country, with people burning their TV licences, and waving placards.
…and then people wonder why I’m reticent to talk about matters of faith, when I’m likely to be lumped in with people who do things like that.
What a moronic thing to complain about, what a disgusting waste of campaigning time and effort. What a feeble target. What a huge embarrasment to thinking people of faith the world over.
There are so many huge injustices in the world that christians should be complaining about, from unjust wars to unfair trade laws, third world debt to child prostitution, institutional racism in the police force to potentially rigged elections in so-called democratic countries. And these schmoes pick on a TV show. A marginal TV show, on the BBC’s ‘arts’ channel. A show that none of them had seen. A show about which they felt it neccesary to make up stats to back up their claims of it’s shock-value. Good God.
Why on earth can’t these same self-righteous moralising masses get of their lazy arses and complain about shit that really matters? God, I get so angry at stuff like this. I missed the show – why? cos I was volunteering in a homeless shelter. Does that make me Mr Worthy? Not at all, I do one night every other week for three months of the year, while the people who really deserve us to be supporting their protests are out changing people’s lives with little regard for their own safety and comfort.
I’m not suggesting everyone should like Jerry Springer The Opera, I’m not even saying it’s a bad thing to complain about. But at least watch it first!! And calling for the broadcast to be cancelled is madness. What kind of weird country are we living in?
Once again, the outcry against a marginal bit of art has turned it into a huge hit. The viewing figures for JSTO will almost certainly be over double what they would have been. The BBC news have had a field-day reporting on the complaints, flagging up the broadcast every hour or so on their news reports, making a huge deal out of it. The same thing happened with ‘The Last Temptation Of Christ’, which wasn’t even looking like getting a full cinema release until some overly zealous complainants got their teeth into a campaign and made it a box office smash.
Maybe I need to release an album with really disgusting titles to all my tunes and get organisations like Christian Voice to do my publicity for me? (for some reason this bunch of particularly zealous muppets ended up getting tonnes of airtime over the campaign… even amongst the people who protested, they were particularly odeous. Poor old God – with friends like these, who needs enemies?)
Please, please, please – channel your campaigning energy and righteous anger into things that are going to change the lives of those who have no power to change things for themselves. Support the Make Povery History Campaign, lobby parliment for trade justice, write to your MP about the rights of asylum seekers and the homeless in your borough, push for better recycling, start a soup run, volunteer with a charity overseas, send money to the relief effort in Asia, scream on the street corners about the tragedy of the Tamil communities that have been cut off from the aid that’s going to Sri Lanka. Anything, anything but whinging about TV shows.
So who’s up for joining my new Messianic Taoist group? 
you’ll hopefully have noticed that on this site (and on my homepage and the forum on my site) there’s now a ‘make poverty history’ white band link in the top right hand corner – you can add one to your blog too, by adding the little bit of code you can get from the make poverty history website. Thanks to Sarda for alerting me to this one.
Soundtrack – Stephen Dawson, ‘Demos For Dolly’ – Stephen’s in a rather wonderful band called Dolly Varden, and these are his original demos for a lot of their songs. Great stuff.
OK, fave live gigs of 2004 (no particular order etc.)
The Pixies – Brixton Academy
Billy Bragg – The Barbican
John Scofield – QEH
Show Of Hands – The Stables (and The Bloomsbury, The Borderline, Greenbelt…)
Julie Lee – The Station Inn (and Tower Records, Greenbelt, The Basement…)
and…
Juliet Turner – The Borderline
Spearhead – Jazz Cafe
Gary Husband – Turner Sims
Carleen Anderson – Jazz Cafe
Psychodots – Cincinatti
Sam Philips – The Belcourt, Nashville
Soundtrack – Beck, ‘Sea Change’; The Low Country, ‘The Dark Road’, David Torn, ‘Best Laid Plans’.
Make Poverty History is a new initiative bringing together all the major charities and pressure groups working for fair-trade, debt cancellation and aid for the world’s poorest nations. The aim is to make extreme poverty extinct by the end of 2005 – a monumental task, and therefor one that we all need to get behind.
Their website is now live, and their page describing international trade laws is about the most succinct appraisal of why those laws are so horribly inequitous.
So what can we do? Well, there are lots of action points on the website, but the first one to raise the awareness of the campaign to the level where the pressure will do some good is to wear the white band – get lots of them, give them to your family and friends, explaining what it’s about. Wear them everywhere, and make a fuss.
The G8 summit this year is in Scotland, at Gleneagles – a real chance to pressure the UK goverment to do something about Trade reform and debt cancellation.
Soundtrack – David Sylvian, ‘Secrets Of The Beehive’.
Well, here’s the year-end stats for the website (not including this blog – which is hosted on a different server, thanks to Sarda)
so that’s over 40,000 individual visitors, making a total of more than 80,000 visits to the site, viewing over 400,000 pages, and racking up over 1.3 MILLION hits! I’d say that’s pretty good show! For a musician doing what I’m doing, the web is the hub of it all, so having a busy site is pretty much vital to keeping things moving. I’ve had more CD sales via the website this year than ever before as well, and the forum has been a great place to hang out and chat about all manner of weirdness. A big thankyou to all those of you who contribute over there (it’s about time for a live chat again, but since I updated the phpBB software, I haven’t had a chance to reinstall the chat program…)
Soundtrack – Sarah McLachlan, ‘Afterglow’ (if you haven’t seen it yet, you HAVE to check out the video to World On Fire from this album – best video of 2004, by miles!)
The Fairly Aged Felines wish you a happy, warm, snuggle-filled year of mouse-dreams and giant laps.
…so I’m meant to be sorting out my tax stuff for last year (really need to get it finished this weekend), but before that, I found everyhit.com mentioned on another site – great place for music trivia enthusiasts. Find out what the number one single and album were in the UK on the day you were born by Clicking here.
Soundtrack – Julie Lee, ‘Stillhouse Road’ – starting 2005 with my favourite album of 2004!