the soundtrack to the day you wish you'd had
All the latest news about musical goings-on…
just had an email from Gustaf Fjelstrom with a link to these photos that he took at mine and Lo’s recent gig with Michael Manring in Felton. There are some cool pics here, which bring back memories of a really cool gig.
Here’s a slideshow of the pics – and watch for youtube videos appearing in the not-too-distant future too!
Was just browsing around the pages of my ‘top friends’ on Myspace, and on a whim started playing the tunes that are on the Recycle Collective page – just in case you’ve only just found this site, the Recycle Collective is a semi-regular improv night that I run in London with a revolving cast of characters that has produced some of the most incredible music I’ve ever had the fortune to be a part of…
Anyway, I’d forgotten just how lovely the tunes are that are up on the RC page – go here to have a listen – the first one, Dido’s Lament is with Andrea Hazell, and is particularly interesting as for big chunks of it when I tried to loop her voice, all I managed to loop was the reverb on her voice, which makes it all the more ghostly…
The second track is an improv duet with Cleveland Watkiss, the first thing we ever played together, and has a sort of Gregorian chant-ish harmony to it.
Track three is with Theo Travis, and is an improv track from a gig we did in Cambridge, that will eventually end up on a live album somewhere!
The last track features Cleveland again, and Julie McKee – all good stuff!
So head over there, enjoy, and look out for more RC gigs coming up soon!
I’ve just seen that Behind Every Word is now available on the Amazon.com download store – all DRM free pretty high-res downloads, apparently available to anywhere in the world. So at $8.99 US, it works out a pretty good deal!
click here to go there – I think my other solo records should be up there soon….
oh and while you’re there, you can check out Lobelia’s rather lovely piano/vocal album 040515 – that’s on amazon too.
We’re half-way through NAMM, and having lots of fun. Despite not being booked for the Bass Bash before the show, we got a phonecall at 5pm on Thursday asking if we could play at 8pm. A quick dash back to where we’re staying to collect a mic and a mixer, and we were there, maintaining my record of having played at EVERY NAMM bass bash since it started about 8 years ago, which is bizarre, but strangely satisfying, despite not really meaning anything other than I get in people’s way, and that Californians like to hear an english bloke speaking too fast for them to understand then laughing at himself…
The demos for Looperlative have gone great – Lo and I have just been playing a bunch of songs, and sometimes explaining what we’re doing, or just leaving Looperlative Bob to do that…
Today (saturday) is always the hardest day of NAMM – too many ‘guests’ there who have no business to do, but just want to ooh and ahh at members of Kiss and Quiet Riot hanging around signing stuff…
NAMM, as mentioned in previous years, is a mixture of 99% nonsense, but 1% amazingness. Many of my favouritest peoples in the world are here, some amazing music, some really inspiring creative types and of course a whole load of music industry contacts that are good to maintain.
I’ll write a fuller report soon, but now have to head back into the maelstrom, and get my loop on, y’all…
Wow, I’m exhausted! The last three days have been pretty intense work-wise.
Starting with a gig Friday night at The Red House in Walnut Creek – it’s a fantastic venue: The Red House is a ‘health club for musicians’, the attendees pay a monthly subscription, and then get to use the rehearsal facilities, go to gigs, buy stuff in the shop, record demos and get music lessons in a really great facility.
The gig went really well – the onstage sound was spectacular, which always makes for a better show, given that we can play with more nuance, and Lobelia sang beautifully. A fine time was had by all, many CDs were bought, and we all went home v. happy.
Saturday and Sunday were really heavy on the work schedule – two 7 hour bass classes and a house concert.
The classes were less well attended than previous years, mainly because I pulled the classes forward two weeks this year due to scheduling, and a lot of people still haven’t really surfaced from christmas – it’s a lesson for future years re: planning, BUT the great thing is that the smaller classes actually make for a much better learning environment for everyone. The group of bassists who come along to these classes are such a fascinating, diverse group of musicians, all willing to learn, full of great experiences, comments, questions, and capable of making some really beautiful music. It’s a real privilege to get to teach them one weekend a year, and to see the progress from year to year.
The house concert at Looperlative Bob’s house was another really special event – Bob’s living room turned into a REALLY great lil’ venue, and again the audience was full of really really great people! One of the most exciting things about house concerts is that the audience isn’t ‘genre defined’ – they aren’t full of bass-geeks or ambient music afficionados or jazzheads or whatever. They are generally friends of the people putting the show on, out to hear something new, and it’s a such fun to play our music to a completely uninitiated audience. Again, it went over really well, and lots of CDs were sold too… (it’ll be interesting to see if CD sales at indie gigs remain high even after CD sales online and in shops die out – people still want the social currency of coming up and buying a piece of the evening, interacting with the musicians, and showing their support by doing that… there are clearly other things that can be sold, but I do think CDs will remain as ‘souvenirs’ of a great night out long after they cease to be the primary way of transmitting music from band to fans-at-home. Right now, CD sales are still a vital part of the indie gigging economy, so a HUGE thanks to all those who bought discs at the shows…)
So that was our weekend – busybusy, rewarding, exhausting, mentally taxing (staying focussed on a room-ful of bassists for 7 hours a day two days in a row is pretty challenging, especially given that I don’t work from notes, so have to keep the narrative thread of the day’s material moving forward whilst accommodating all the side-tracks that happen based on the questions people ask and the things they play…), and above all it was a great chance to catch up with loads of old friends and meet lots of new lovely people. So much fun.
Today’s a day off, tomorrow we drive to Southern California, and on Thursday, NAMM starts… hurrah!