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another Behind Every Word Review…

Another review just in of Behind Every Word – this one from Sid Smith on his blog – Sid is the author of ‘In The Court Of King Crimson’, a brilliant book about the entire history of the Crims – a very fine writer and long time supporter of all things Stevelicious.

thanks Sid

click here to read the review – the choice pull-quote from it is “sensuous melodies intertwine and fall away with the intimacy of Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden and the cinematic production values of Brian Eno”. Which is nice.

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Clinton at the Labour Party Conference

So Bill Clinton’s been bigging up Blair and Brown at the Labour party conference, describing Blair’s government as a ‘stunning success’, and Brown as having a ‘brilliant vision for the future’.

I, on the other hand, prefer George Galloway’s description of the two from a few months back – ‘Blair and Brown are two cheeks of the same arse’.

I can’t even be bothered to watch the coverage of the conference. It’s all either nonsense about the leadership challenges or it’s labour monkeys telling us not to concern our pretty little selves over the leadership squabbles and to focus on issues.

Well, we are focused on issues – issues like those expressed by the 50,000 people who demonstrated in Manchester earlier in the week, calling for Blair to resign now, and for an end to the balls up in Iraq. Ah, I’m guessing our faux-labour-new-tory chums would rather not talk about those issues… let’s not forget what happened to Walter Wolfgang last year… So instead we can continue to talk like the succession of Blair to Brown is a foregone conclusion.

Two cheeks, bloglings – where’s the left wing option when we need it? Billy Bragg for prime minister?

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A solo theremin gig???

Yup, that was the first half of the gig I saw last night – Pamelia Kurstin’s gig at The Vortex was one I happened upon while looking at their website for something else entirely last week. When I saw that her two collaborators on the gig were Seb Rochford and A< HREF=http://www.liamnoble.co.uk/>Liam Noble, it was a sure thing – had to see that.

The first half of the gig was a solo looped Theremin set – Pamelia was using two DL4s and an EH Bass Microsynth – and the first 20 minutes of it was captivating. After that it was still good, it’s just tricky to sustain that level of interest without varying the arrangement ideas (would love to hear what she’d do with a Looperlative instead of the DL4s).

The second half was wonderful – lots of mad squeaky gate improv stuff with Seb on drums and Liam on piano. Both guys are such great and original improvisors, and worked really well with the theremin craziness coming from Pamelia, who veered from violin territory to clarinet tones to the sound of a pizzicato double bass. Fascinating stuff. All in all a top gig, and I’ll have to get her for the Recycle Collective next time she’s in London!

What was also most fun about the night was the number of other players that showed up – Julian Seigel, Estelle Kokot, Mandy Drummond, Phil Robson, Dylan Bates, Jason Broadbent – a most enjoyable jazz-hang! And what’s more, the Vortex are wanting to book the trio from August’s RC gig – me, seb and Andy Hamill – for a gig in Jan/Feb! Yay! And I got booked for a gig with Estelle in a couple of weeks time – more on that soon…

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Chuck Rainey's clinic…

What a fun night out that was! The Bass Centre hosted another great clinic last night (as I mentioned on the blog on Saturday) – Chuck Rainey played and sang, but more than that told stories from years in the business. Some great lil’ stories about working with Quincy Jones and Aretha Franklin, Lalo Schiffrin and Ricky Lee Jones… An entertaining storyteller and a great bassist, it made for a great night out (though I’m still not that convinced by the PJB amps he’s playing through – I’m just SO spoiled by the AccuGroove cabinets that genuinely, very few things ever even get close…)

Anyway, ’twas a great night out – at the end after the clinic, Chuck, Barry Moorhouse (bass centre owner), Phil Jones (who makes the amps) and I sat round, hearing all the stories that couldn’t make it into the clinic itself. Most entertaining!

It’s also great to hear a 67 year old bassist who’s still trying new things – he only switched from 4 string to 6 string bass when he was 60… so there’s hope for all of us!

I’ve also got a better idea now of what the hell he’s playing on ‘Woody And Dutch…’ from Ricky Lee Jones’ ‘Pirates’ album.

These nights at the Bass Centre are such a gift for bassists, and the next one is going to be BRILLIANT – Seth Horan is coming to do a night, hosted by Warwick. Seth’s a singer/songwriter/solo bassist from the US – an amazing songwriter, great bassist and marvellous performer, you SO don’t want to miss that (and it’s one that you can take your girlfriend/boyfriend to without fear of them getting bored shitless by endless bass noodling – he actually writes songs… no, really, actual songs – who’d have thought it?) I think that one is on December 8th – I’ll confirm that as soon as I’ve got the details. Til then, go and have a listen to some of Seth’s songs on his MySpace page, then get the CDs – both Conduit and NotWithStanding are worth £10 of anyone’s money.

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OK, who thought Jackass was some kind of infomercial?

the crassness of the world of amusement parks just hit an all time low with this story – if you eat a LIVE cockroach, you get to jump the queues for all the rides…

er…

ummm…

WTF????????!?!?!?

What on earth is going on? It’s the kind of thing Steve-O off Jackass or those buffoons on Dirty Sanchez would do, thinking it was cool. But in both of their defenses, they got a TV series out of it!!! That’s a career, all be it a weird one that involves covering yourself in human waste and nailing your scrotum to a plank on occasion… The idea that eating live insects is somehow a good thing to do to get onto amusement rides quicker is utterly beyond me. Quite apart from the being vegetarian part of me, crunching up live-but-immanently-dead animals just seems very wrong indeed. (actually i doubt it is quite apart from me being vegetarian – my repulsion at it is definitely heightened by my general distain for eating meat…)

As we used to say in the 80s, pre-Blair; ‘it could only happen in America’.

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now THIS is why I got a freeview box…

Before we upgraded our TV options from the regular 5 terrestrial channels to the greater variety of FreeView, I would regularly read about people watching Joni Mitchell live gigs on there, or Dylan documentaries, or jazz gigs or whatever, and that drove my resolve to get a freeview box in the place.

And now, after God-know-how-long, I’ve finally been enjoying the fruits of BBC4’s output – for some reason I’ve always missed their music output until this evening, but today have watched Liane Carroll live from Brecon Jazz, Oscar Peterson live (with the majestic Neils Hennigs Orsted Pederson on bass), a Johnny Cash documentary, and now Roseanne Cash in concert. What a marvellous evening’s entertainment!

Today’s been a fun day, recording Ruthie Culver’s voice for her album – the rest of it was recorded a while back in a studio, but thanks to a major technological breakdown in the studio, the vocals weren’t useable. So we’re redoing them in StevieStudio. Much fun! We’ll be spending a few days on this over the next couple of weeks…

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