the downside of being out with the film-taste-challenged foursome last night was that I missed all but the last 10 minutes of Dara O’Briain on Jack Dee’s Live At The Apollo. Now I didn’t know it was a downside until I found myself nearly pissing myself after just 10 minutes of standup. Even in that 10 minutes he was one of the funniest people I’ve seen in a very long time. Now I understand why he pulls such huge crowds at Edinburgh each year. Must head off and try and find a DVD of him…
More fun with last.fm
the more time I spend on the last.fm site, the more I like it. I’ve started posting a series of thoughts on albums I love in the journal section over there. Not strictly reviews (so far I haven’t given a track by track breakdown or anything) – more some stuff about how I discovered it and what it has meant to me.
The first two are Hejira by Joni Mitchell, and Plumb by Jonatha Brooke – both remarkable albums that I came across in interesting circumstances that have stayed part of my aural landscape for a decade or so. I’m listening to Plumb at the moment, and it’s no less wonderful than the day I first bought it.
in other news, last night was a curry night with Sarda, Kari, Matt and Claire – Sarda and Kari being over from the US is always cause for curry, even if Sarda does seem to be in London more now than when he living in Reading… hmmm. Much fun was had by all (and much lovely spicey food), though my opinion of all of them was diminished by them being part of that damaged social grouping comprised of peopl who thought Lost In Translation was any good. Let me clarify, Lost In Translation was shit. Implausible, plotless nonsense. Yes, it was ‘beautifully shot’ but if you want beautiful camera work watch ‘The Blue Planet’ or ‘Secret Life Of Plants’ – thingie Coppola can’t get close to David Attenborough and his team for lovely camera-work, and you don’t have to put up with a load of unbelieveable nonsense about two people with nothing in common meeting in a hotel and suddenly feeling ‘a connection’. No, it’s bollocks, and anyone who tells you otherwise is just wrong.
Now, Matt and Claire, go and get Whale Rider and Team America, and watch some proper films.
Soundtrack – Jonatha Brooke, ‘Plumb’.
Alison Krauss at Hammy Odeon
Middle of last week, an email arrives telling me that as a thankyou for helping her out over the years, Julie Lee had put me and and a few other lovelies on the guestlist for Alison Krauss – Alison and Julie are good chums, so we got tickets and passes for a ‘meet and greet’ before the show. Yippee! It all sounds marvellous – even more so given that helping out Julie is such a pleasure that it hardly requires rewards…
Anyway, TSP and I jump in the new car and head off down to Hammersmith to meet The Cheat, The producer formerly Known as Showbiz Jude and Mark, and find when we get there that a powercut has taken out the Odeon (OK, I know it’s called the Apollo and is sponsored by some crappy beer company or other, but it’ll always be the Hammersmith Odeon to anyone who actually cares).
We head off to the pub, not knowing if gig will go ahead at all. Make occasional reckies (how do you spell ‘recky’?? it’s short for reconnaissance, I think, so can’t see how you’d abbrieviate that… but I digress), the traffic lights are still out, so we know the odeon is still without power.
Meet and Greet is cancelled, and we all started to head off when ‘poomph’ (poomph???) the lights came on! ‘hurrah’ said anyone too posh to cheer in a normal way.
Following some frenetic gig preparations, we were inside and sat down (in fab seats) and the band came on.
After my trip to Nashville last October, I’m a convert to the delights of bluegrass anyway, and it doesn’t get much better than this – the playing was amazing, the songs beautiful, and Alison has spectacular natural comic timing. It was yet another example of the simple rule about american bands – they get to play live so many more times that any UK band does before they go in and record that they end up being much better musicians. Even when their ideas aren’t as good as ours, the playing is usually of a higher quality (there are exceptions to the rule – me, for example – but in general… 
)
So the meet and greet didn’t happen, but the gig was well worth waiting for til someone put some 50p coins in the Hammersmith meter.
At the end of the gig, as we were coming out, I commented to Jude that I’d like to get Alison’s live album ‘I’ve got it you can borrow mine’ says jude. ‘I’ll buy it, I’ve already got her best of’ says me, which in the hubbub was mis-heard by Jude as ‘does she get her breasts out?’ – clearly, that’s one of my main criteria when choosing a bluegrass CD – whether or not there are boobs on the cover… very odd…!
Anyway, thanks Julie – a fantastic night out, even without Alison exposing herself on a CD sleeve.
soundtrack – Rise Kagona.
This is going to be fun!
I’m so looking forward to this John Peel Day gig with Rise Kagona and Calamateur. I’m chuffed cos we can put on a bill as electic as that and make it work, thanks to Peel’s astonishing programming policy on his show. I get to book two fabulous acts to come and play with me, and I get to play bass for Rise! How cool is that? v. cool indeed, that’s how cool.
And, what’s just as cool is that I’m able to do the ticket sales online. Oh yes – OSCommerce, the online shop cleverness that I use on my site will happily deal with choices for concession priced tickets etc. It’s very cool. We like.
So, now you can head over to the shop and buy tickets for the gig. Go on, you’ll love it! It’s going to be such a great night.
Have a read of the blurb I’ve put on there. Here’s a choice quote from Andy Kershaw about The Bhundu Boys (from this article in the Independent) –
“I first heard them when they put out an EP in the autumn of 1985,” Andy Kershaw recalls. “Peel and I were in the office at Radio 1. We sat staring at each other, thinking this recording was absolutely wonderful. It was the dazzling quality of the music, the harmonies, the sparkling guitar playing. The Bhundu Boys were simply one of the greatest pop groups I have ever heard.”
The following spring, Kershaw adds, he and Peel went to see the group in Chelsea.
“I realised after a few minutes that I had this enormous grin on my face. I was surrounded by kids of college age. They were all grinning too. I turned to look at John, and – Peel being Peel – he was weeping. The tears were just running down his face. It really was a revelatory moment…The band played like they were having the time of their lives. They played like that because they were.”
How can you miss the chance to see the founder of that band, with me on bass???? It’s going to rule.
soundtrack – Alison Krauss, ‘Now That I’ve Found You: A Collection’.
a Last.fm experiment
So, while I’m waiting for the washing machine (newly fixed) to finish its cycle so I can hang the washing, I thought I’d try skipping through 20 tracks on the ‘similar artists’ radio station for me on Last.fm – here’s the list:
1. Mike Watt – Heartbeat (Ball Hog or Tugboat?)
2. Ginger Baker Trio – Rambler (Going Back Home)
3. Roy Budd – No Co-Operation (Buddism)
4. Haden/Metheny – Two For The Road (Beyond The Missouri Sky
5. Randy Crawford – Secret Combination (The Very Best)
6. Elza Soares – Deixa a Negra Gingar
7. Sheila Chandra – Nana/The Dreaming (Weaving My Ancestors Voices)
8. Marcus Miller – The Blues (Tales)
9. Bob Mould – Megamanic (the Last Dog And Pony Show)
10. Show Of Hands – Yankee Clipper (Live)
11. Truby Trio – New Music (Elevator Music)
12 (someone chinese, in chinese writing)??
13. Denison Witmer – These Days (Recovered)
14. Level 42 – Talking In Your Sleep (Forever Now)
15. Terry Callier – 4 Miles (Lifetime)
16. Zakir Hussain – Tabal Solo In Teentaal (Festival Of Indian Music: Roma)
17. Incognito – Listen To the Music (Nortern Jazz – Southern Soul)
18. Goodbye Mr Mackenzie – Goodwill City (Love Child EP)
19. Lies Damned Lies – Only You (Lonely Together)
20. Senser – Return To Zombie Island (Schematic)
Is that close? it’s definitely swayed by who has uploaded music and who hasn’t (every time a Level 42 track comes up, it’s always from ‘Forever Now’, so that’s obviously the only album of their up there) – hopefully this will be an incentive to indie peoples to get their music uploaded there for the radio listeners to get familiar with (Andrew H, Trip, Buck, Manthing, Big Buzzard and any of you other indie peoples reading this – get your music uploaded! Email me if you need a hand…)
Right, washing machine has finished…
More cool listening options from last.fm
I’ve just noticed that on last.fm you have two main radio playlist options for each artist – you can listen to a radio show of tracks by similar artists, and a show of tracks by artists that fans of that particular artist are fans of! How cool is that?
So, using me as an example (and what finer example could there possibly be?) you could go to my artist page at last.fm, and the click on ‘start radio’, and choose one of the options – similar artist radio or artist fan radio (these last two links will only work if you’re signed up to last.fm and have downloaded the radio player – you so need to do that.)
If you want to see who the artists are that I’m ‘similar’ to, based on what people who listen to me are listening to, click here.
When compared to other music networking sites, like myspace which I recently signed up to, last.fm is so much more sophisticated, ad-free (makes a huge difference) better designed, and more intellegently configurable for both the artists and the listeners. There’s no way that some loser band can do a hard-sell on you, but if there are people who like what you do then you’ll automatically reach the people who listen to the other stuff that they like. It’s organic music networking at its very best. Go on, sign up.
soundtrack – James Taylor, ‘Hourglass’; Gary Peacock and Ralph Towner, ‘A Closer View’; Eric Roche, ‘With These Hands’.
A top comedy night out.
Having missed their show in Edinburgh, TSP and I were most pleased to discover that Barry Cryer and Ronnie Golden were playing at our local arts centre, The Arts Depot in Finchley. It’s a new place that we’ve tried to get to a few times before, but each time the show has been sold out.
This time we were on the guest-list, so no selling out woes for us.
However, when we got there, and went upstairs to get to our seats, there was what looked like a civic reception in full swing – various people dressed like local dignitaries (no idea who the local dignitaries are, so not sure if they were just imposters), many peoples with ‘arts depot’ badges on, and a handful of local celebs (Robert Powell, the lovely Linda Bellingham etc.) Our first thought was that we were in completely the wrong place and something very odd had happened. Then the woman giving the speech (speech!?!?) mentioned tonght’s gig that everyone was about to go into, and we realised it was just a do that happened to coincide with the gig.
The gig was, as expected, marvellous – very funny indeed (I think TSP was laughing louder than anyone else there, but largely because we knew what the songs were going to be from their intros, as many of them were also in the ‘Men In Beige’ show we saw at Edinburgh last year). The larger venue didn’t really work in Barry and Ronnie’s favour – the intimacy of an Edinburgh-style venue was perfect for their style of musical comedy, and the bigger stage meant that those of us in the balcony didn’t get such a great line of sight for some of the facial expressions, but it was still a marvellous night’s comedy.
The party afterwards was lots of fun, given that we now knew what was going on, and would actually know two people at this bit of the party (they’d obviously been getting ready to go on stage when we got there at the start). Surreal moment of the day goes to Jeremy Beadle, who wandered up while I was chatting with Ronnie, and started to compliment him on his marvellous country singing (Ronnie is indeed a fantastic singer in just about any style he turns his hand – or larynx – to) – Beadle was as pissed as anyone I’ve seen for quite a while, and told us of his extensive country music collection. I’m sure if I’d had the forsight to video it on my phone it would’ve earned me £250 on ‘You’ve Been Framed’.
Also met the director of the arts centre who is, by the look of their programme, doing a marvellous job. Must follow up the contact – the main hall there is a beautiful performance space, and one I’d love to play in.
Today was a housework day, interrupted by coffee with the v. talented Photographer Steve, who has one of his shoots in the current issue of RockSound magazine, and is clearly going to be the most in-demand photographer in the country within the year. His latest shots are astounding. It’s always nice to sit and chat with other freelancers about the world of work and the state of the world. Also very nice to talk to one who’s doing so well, and deservedly so. Not only that, but his equally talented wife Lorna gave me her old minidisc player to record gigs with, as mine is broken. Talented lovely peoples. gives you faith in the world.
soundtrack – still the Rise Kagona tracks for the gig in October.
TAGS =Barry Cryer, Ronnie Golden, Arts Depot; Steve Brown, comedy.
New things at last.fm
First there was audioscrobbler. then they added last.fm, a sister internet radio station that chose tracks based on your audioscrobbler profile.
Hang on Steve, what the hell is audioscrobbler in the first place? Oh sorry. You see how at the bottom of most blog posts, I have a list of what I’ve been listening to, and the word ‘soundtrack’ next to it is in bold. Well that’s because it’s a link. if you click that link you get taken to a page that gives you details of every bit of music I’ve played in itunes over the last year or so. It has charts of who I’ve listened to the most, and for each artist it has charts of how many people are listening to them, what tracks are being played the most, etc.
Anyway, that was the scrob. And they also had last.fm, which had much the same information available on it as the scrob, but in a slightly crappier format.
So the whizkidz behind it decided to combine the two sites, and give the new site a bit of an overhaul. and it’s now last.fm. go and have a look. Do a search on an artist or two. then check out my page – the one that’s always linked from the bottom of the blogs. You’ll see what I’ve been listening to. How clever is that?
Anyway, they’ve also made it much easier for record companies to upload their music for the radio stations. So I’ve just been uploading the Pillow Mountain catalogue. check out the pages there for Grace And Gratitude and for For The Love Of Open Spaces. From there you can preview the CDs, or add them to your last.fm radio station (personalised radio, for free, with no adverts. Oh yes).
All in, last.fm is a music geek’s paradise – head over there, sign up and geek out!
Soundtrack – last.fm solobasssteve radio (you need the Last.fm player and a last.fm account for this link to work)
Bye-bye, little blue car
Having bought Gareth and Jane’s car from them last week, it was incumbent on me to dispense with my old – and now rather knackered – Ford Fiesta.
It was not without some sadness that TSP and I took it down to a local scrap-yard to head off into a new life as bits for other cars. I wonder if it was carrying a donor card? I’m slightly disappointed to have had to scrap it so soon, given that it’s only done 110,000 miles, which compared to the 196,000 of my last Fiesta is still middle-aged. the bodywork was pretty rusty, and the water-system had developed a fate-sealing leak – it was said leak that lead to the car’s demise as, though fixable, it would’ve cost more than the car was worth to sort out. Not a good investment on a car where just about anything else could’ve gone wrong at any moment.
So after a week of middle classness, we’re back to being a one car family. The insurance has been moved over (with a fairly major hike in the monthly payments! Time to investigate alternatives to the Co-Op for car insurance, methinks…)
Farwell, little blue car – we’ve been through a lot together; speeding fines, driving in bus-lane fines, congestion-charge-flouting fines… hang on, you’ve been nothing but trouble! Good riddance, you rust-bound-dollop of scrap. The £15 I got for you at the scrappies is more than you’re worth!
the American political landscape post-Katrina
There’s been a heck of a lot of coverage of the battle for the ideological mind of america in its collective response to Katrina. The left have been very quick to target the incomprehensibly slow response of the Bush government, while the right have looked to lay the blame with local politicians and the looters (or at least the black looters, who were overwhelmingly portrayed at thieves, compared to the footage of white survivors foraging for food.. I’m guessing the divide between those trying to survive and those ‘looting’ was not strictly racial…)
However one area that seems to have come up for discussion more than most has been the effect that America’s welfare system has had on things. One article that I had forwarded to me from a few different sources said that what the aftermath of Kartrina demonstrated was that the welfare state had bred an entire sub-society of spongers and freeloaders with no sense of their place within society, who didn’t see hard work as the answer, but instead looked to the government for handouts etc. etc. It was a particularly poorly written piece, heavy on the appeals to America’s pioneer heart and generalisations about the nature of people on welfare, and very light on the reasoning behind the welfare state or any sense of responsibility for the nation’s poor.
On the other side, this article on the BBC website expresses the hope that Katrina will expose the rotting heart of the American social darwinian project, and that Americans will be able to relight the social concience that got them through the depression.
The responses at the bottom of the page are fascinating from the overwhelmingly supportive, to the scathingly critical, to those who just seem aggrieved that any damn Euro-Commie would dare to comment on the majesty that is the USA.
I’ve never been able to understand the American reaction to the notion of ‘welfare’ – surely the word itself is overwhelmingly positive – an institution to look after the WELFARE of the people. A recogntion of our collective responsibility to the people who share our laws and economy. It seems there are many in the US political elite who refuse to recognise the role of the upwardly mobile in stepping on the heads of the poor. The fallacy of ‘worldwide economic growth’ is writ large across the US political scene, with lots of talk of trickle down economics and a rising tide floating all the boats, and all that horseshit. It clearly doesn’t work. The net has too many holes, the trickle down structure isn’t porous, too many people have no boat to start with, so are drowned.
Katrina has placed the faces of the poorest of the poor on the TV screens of america for the first time. The dark underbelly of the American dream, those for whom it’s been a nightmare, are now on the nightly news. A lot of people seem to be alarmed that so many people were without transport to get out, or without the technology to even know fully what was going on. I’d love to know how many of the ‘looters’ had mental illnesses which they couldn’t afford to get any help for.
It truth, I think arguments about the welfare state in relation to Katrina are a bit of a red herring. The lack of funding for the reinforcing of the levees is a far greater question hanging over it. The lack of any coherent disaster plan, the utter confusiong that permeated the post hurricane planning and led to no-one doing anything except bussing people to the Superdome to die. (actually, that’s where the welfare system comes in – with a decent welfare state comes government-paid doctors, locally practicing, who would have had more chance of knowing what was happening with their patients… The image of people in wheelchairs left outside the superdome, many in desperate need of medication, abandoned to die, is one of the most harrowing TV images I’ve seen since the first pictures of Darfur came through. That alone should be grounds for a total governmental shakeup.)
But why the richest nation on earth should balk at the idea of taxation to help the poor is utterly beyond me. A nation that hold claim to a ‘christian’ heritage, but where the christians overwhelming vote for a party of lower taxation and less assistance for the poor (who’s the Good News meant to be for exactly?) It all leaves me rather bewildered. As I’ve said before here, many of my favourite people in the world are Americans, I love visiting the country, and there are things about the american way of life that we in Britain could really do with a dose of, but the political landscape still leaves me utterly bewildered, incredulous that such a country could put up with the festering sore of abject poverty within its own borders.