Category: Updates

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Gig week is underway

This morning was the first of a few gigs ‘n’ stuff this week. Trip Wamsley arrived yesterday afternoon, and last night we headed into town to flyer outside Bill Frisell’s gig, which finished earlier than expected, so we went round to spitz to flyer outside another gig, which was more successful, and also bumped into the lovely Sebastian Merrick, promoter extraordinaire (booked me for my first ever solo gig at the Troubadour!), who in turn introduced me to two people I’ve been a fan of for a while and have wanted to say hello to – John Walters, jazz writer for the Guardian and Unknown Public amongst others, and Fiona Talkington, one of the presenters of the world’s finest music radio show, Late Junction. So that was a good night!

Then, this morning, Trip and I were giving a clinic/masterclass thingie at the Access To Music ‘British Academy Of New Music’ in East London, which went really well – a class of mixed musicians, we talked a lot about the thinking behind taking your instrument outside of its formal context, and Trip pulled apart the technical side of one of his tunes. Most entertaining it was too. Looks like I’ll be back at the college before long…

And then onto tonight’s gig. I’m really looking forward to this – playing with Theo is always a treat, watching Trip is always a treat. No idea how many people will be there, but it’s listed in Time Out, and there are flyers and posters up all over the place so there could be a few people come down!

Time to get ready to leave… see you there!

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good feline news

After a pretty down day on saturday, the fairly aged feline perked up a bit yesterday, especially when offered tuna for the first time in his life (or at least, since we’ve had him) – that’s clearly a favourite. He was a little more cuddly, slightly more vocal, and generally on the up.

That still didn’t prepare us for this morning’s return to the vets, who on examining his tummy by feel, said the lump had ‘gone’… yup, ‘gone’. Of course that doesn’t mean the cancer’s gone, or that we’re clear or any of that nonsense, but it does mean that the chemo is working its magic and we may have a little longer than the two weeks I was assuming was our time frame until I heard the word ‘gone’ this morning.

So, thanks to those of you who’ve been chatting to God about this. Whether or not it’s miraculous is at this point moot – the result is of more interest to me right now than the method (and, to be honest, the ramdomness of much that is labeled as miraculous just causes more theological and epistemological questions than it answers…

But I digress. Raise a glass to the small furry ginger one!

Soundtrack – Juliet Turner, ‘Live’.

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home from the vets

The Fairly Aged Feline is home now. The vet gave him a chemo injection which has reduced the size of teh tumor considerably already (cats are amazing creatures – far better at getting better than we are!), and a steroidal anti-inflammatary to reduce the swelling in his stomach, and bring down the fluid levels in his body cavity.

And now he’s here, lethargic, but seemingly happy. Picking and choosing when he wants cuddles and when he wants to be left alone. Complaining about the lack of v. tasty food. He and his fellow fairly aged feline are now reaquainted after much sniffing and some tentative mutual washing.

He’s currently sat behind me on the floor of the office, probably waiting to see what strange bass students I’ll be bringing in for him to sniff today. Straight back into his usual routine then.

Soundtrack – Eric Roche, ‘With These Hands’ (not bought it yet? put it on your christmas list!)

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from bad to worse

We were hoping for the best while preparing ourselves for the worst. And got the worst.

According to our lovely vet, the tumor is too big to operate, and anyway the fairly aged feline has got fluid on his lungs that mean they couldn’t put him under the anesthetic. So pretty much as bad as the situation could be.

He’s going on chemo to see if it will reduce the size of the tumor to the point where it’ll be operable, and also he’s being treated for the lung thing, so that if it does shrink they’ll be able to do the operation. But all in, the future doesn’t look that bright for the furry ginger one.

And we’re heartbroken. After the pain of losing The Aged Feline just over a year ago, we thought we’d have these two for years and years to come – they’ve settled in fantastically well, and become a vital part of the life of the house, having their own routines that we have to fit round, and their own novel ways of communicating. the tiny ginger one had a few delightful idiosyncrasies and was one of the clingiest cuddliest cats I’ve ever come across, never happier than being bundled up in someone’s arms for a big cuddle.

So we’re still hoping for that miracle, hoping that the chemo will work better than it ever has before, hoping that our genius vet can remove the tumour, and that our little guy will have years of happy life left. But it’s really not looking likely at all.

Soundtrack – Prefab Sprout, ‘Steve McQueen’.

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bad fairly aged feline news…

So we’d noticed that the ginger fairly aged feline had been looking a little listless of late, was eating less and losing some weight, so this morning we took him to the vet. He’d been coughing a bit too, so we thought it might be some kind of cat cold or flu or something…

The vet checked him out, went a bit ashen faced and said he could feel a huge tumor in his stomach. Now way of telling what kind of tumour it was, though the speed it had grown suggests something not good at all, and the prognosis wasn’t very positive at all.

There are a range of possibilities – at one end, it’s a spleen tumour, which can just be removed, and he should be fine. at the other end it’s a tumour on his bowel and that’s not good at all. Really very very not good.

So we wait. He’ll be opening him up later on to find out what the score is, and will call us, but we’ve basically had to say provisional goodbyes, cos there’s no knowing which way it could go. If you’re the praying type, a few words with the big man would be much appreciated.

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When blogging changes your world.

I read loads of blogs.

From the blogs I read, I discover other blogs.

Some of them are just silly and hilarious (like this one, sent to me via BDB’s blog).

Others show the world-changing potential of blogs. Not ‘world-changing’ in the sense of ending the conflict in the middle east, or convincing the world to stop ignoring the hurricane devastation in central america, but world-changing in the sense that you see the world differently after reading them. They remind of what the world is really like, both good and bad, and take you out of your own concerns into a world where things are very different.

One such blog is All About Ali – the story of a woman’s battle with stomach cancer. This one I picked up from Pip Wilson’s blog – Pip has a fantastically benign form of tourettes, which makes him reiterate how lovely the world is on an almost hourly basis. He posts lots of pictures of lovely people, and the occasional inspirational link. And if you ever need to be told that you’re lovely and valued and special and a ‘beautiful human person’, Pip’s blog is the place to go.

Anyway, All About Ali is a deeply deeply moving blog. I recognise Ali and her hubby from Greenbelt. I’m sure I’ve spoken to her hubby on more than one occasion. We’ve certainly got quite a few fairly close friends in common. The blog is a beautiful and heartbreaking read, but gives you much faith in people. Have a read, and say a prayer for her. If the power of positive thinking, prayer, great friends and regular glasses of champagne count for anything, she’ll beat it no problem.

And now I really ought to do some work, having spent the last hour and a half reading blogs!

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destroying all musical boundaries

A student turned up yesterday morning having been working on Jaco‘s arrangement of ‘Blackbird’ by The Beatles. He was making rather a nice job of it, but one of the things I often witter on about in lessons is the notion of active and passive learning – passive learning being just the copying by rote of a particular piece of music (or scale or interval study, or whatever) without taking it any further. Active learning would pull it apart into its various musical components, why does it work, what are the chords, how can I take that style of arrangement and apply it to other tunes, are there any new techniques that come up in this piece that I can absorb into my playing, and how else can I play this same tune?

In answering this last question, whenever anyone is doing this tune (it’s a standard for bassists to have a go at), I play them Bobby McFerrin‘s solo voice arrangement of the same tune, from his album ‘The Voice’. Which happens to be one of the greatest solo performer recordings of all time. The lovely thing about it is that conceptually it rips the roof off of what’s possible on any instrument – if one man can do all that with one unprocessed voice, how much more can I do with my bass than I am currently doing? What kind of leaps of logic, what kind of seemingly insane musical experiments have lead to Bobby being able to perform like that? It’s clearly not a style that one stumbles into, and I’ve no doubt that his arrangement of Blackbird took months and months to perfect, though he makes it sound so effortless on the CD.

If I were to draw up a list of most inspirational recordings for solo performers, this would be right up there at the top.

Oh go on then, here’s my top some, in no particular order –

Bobby McFerrin – The Voice
Don Ross – Passion Session
Michael Manring – Soliloquy
Kaki King – Legs To Makes Us Longer
Eric Roche – With These Hands
Pat Metheny – One Quiet Night
Keith Jarrett – Scala

a lot of these are solo acoustic guitar records, which I guess just reflects the fact that more people are experimenting with interesting music on solo guitar than on other instruments… or at least, I’ve been exposed to more solo guitar music than anything else…

Any others to add to the list? Stick ’em in the comments section at the bottom.

When I’m working towards a new album (as I am at the moment) I tend to ‘use’ music in a more knowing way than at any other time – I put things on to consciously take me out of my comfort zone, to re-orient my ears towards another space, to offer up possibilities for my own playing. I’m very much at the mercy of the things I listen to. in the last lot of recording I did, I recorded tracks that were heavily influenced by Morphine (the band, not the drug), M83 and Eric Roche. Bobby’s music takes me into another space altogether.

Soundtrack – Bobby McFerrin, ‘The Voice’.

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Emotional music day…

I’m having an emotional music day… well, two days, actually.

It started last night, with a song called ‘Freedom’ by a band that I think are called ‘The Wrest’ – I’ve just got this one MP3 that I was sent, cos it features the marvellous Julie Lee on vocals. It sounds just like something that would’ve cropped up on a mid-80s Fleetwood Mac album, like a lost last track from Tango In The Night. And it really moves me. It’s eminently hummable, though I’ve not really listened to the words in any great detail. Part of it is just Julie’s voice – she’s in that category with singers like Michael McDonald and Joanne Hogg where it doesn’t matter what they sing, it works for me.

After that I was listening to Kris Delmhorst’s ‘Songs For A Hurricane’ album, which is just perfect. It just gets better with every listen. Some amazing lyrics, beautiful metaphors, and another really great moving voice.

Today I ratcheted up the emotional content, and in the car on the way to Birmingham was listening to ‘Diesel and Dust’ by Midnight Oil. Now, the Oils are from that brand of serious 80s rockers who had a message and no sex appeal – a combination that would see them disappear without trace were they to emerge now, but as a reaction to the rancidness of yuppy life in the 80s, such bands appeared all over the place (remember U2 before the Anton Corbijn make-over?)

‘Beds Are Burning’ by Midnight Oil is one of the most spine-tinglingest top 10 hits ever – can you imagine a song about paying reparations to Australia’s aboriginal people making it into the charts now? Pete Garratt sang like a cross between Mick Jagger and Henry’s Cat, but packed his odd croaky/whiny voice with so much intent and meaning that it moves me to tears. The rest of the album packs a punch too – ‘Sell My Soul’, ‘Bull-roarer’ – stunning stuff.

And after that, James Taylor Live – it’s hardly news-worthy ‘man moved by James Taylor’ – I guess the only surprise was that I wasn’t wearing a nice wooly jumper at the time. Particularly noticed the lyrics to ‘Slap Leather’ from his ‘New Moon Shine’ album, which are a stab at the materialism of US government policy in the early 90s – not what you’d expect from the writer of some of the greatest relationship songs of all time…

And now, back at home, I’m listening to ‘Now, But Not Yet’ by Andrew Buckton – the launch gig for this album was, I think, the only time I’ve actually cried during a song on stage – Buck’s songs are all about people he knows going through all manner of crises, and some of them were in the crowd for the gig. Hearing him sing these beautiful, poignant, painful songs to the people they were written for was too much for me. It’s time like that that I’m glad I’ve got enough hair to hide behind – I must’ve looked like cousin-it from the Addams Family for the duration of that song.

So it’s moving songs day – join in, what are the songs that really move you? (warning, if you list anything by Whitney or Celine, I’ll be banning your IP from ever viewing this blog again. 😉 )

Soundtrack – Andrew Buckton, ‘Now But Not Yet’.

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Tomorrow is going to be a MAD day…

Right, so during the day I’m heading up to the Music Live show in Birmingham. I then come home to do two hours teaching between 7 and 9, and then I’ve got a gig! Oh yes, I just got phoned up by the marvellous Ronnie Golden, asking me to play at Club Senseless – now, I’ve been to Club Senseless a couple of times, and seen some very very funny people there – namely Rich Hall and Rob Deering. While i can be pretty witty between songs, I’m not really in either of their leagues… So I’ll do my thang, and hopefully endear myself to the Club Senseless faithful.

The house band is Ronnie And The Rex, fronted by Ronnie Golden. I first met Ronnie at The Kashmir Klub many years ago, and gave him a copy of ‘And Nothing But The Bass’. Then at last year’s Edinburgh Festival, we were on a radio show together, and since then i’ve been to a couple of ‘senseless nights, and have been to see his double act with Barry Cryer a few times too. A very very talented man.

I think after that day, my no. 1 skill of the night will just be staying awake!

Soundtrack – Kris Delmhorst, ‘Songs For A Hurricane’.

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