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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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MOBO drops Jazz. Jazz not happy

The one downside to being at the Recycle Collective last night was that I missed the protests outside the MOBO awards at them having dropped Jazz as a category.

I mentioned this on the blog when the issue was first raised by Abram Wilson – it’s such a nonsense to have an awards show for ‘music of black origin’ and not have jazz, unless all you’re celebrating is Spirituals and Field Hollers. Hip-hop, soul, R ‘n’ B, reggae all trace a big part of their sound back to Jazz, and, Paul Robeson aside, jazz musicians were the first worldwide black music stars.

So last night, outside the Royal Albert Hall where the awards were taking place, about 100 people gathered to protest, 20 or so musicians played, including Soweto Kinch, a former MOBO winner, led by Abram Wilson. I saw some photos at the RC last night, as John L Walters came straight to the RC from the protest – looked like a lot of fun!

So, balls to the MOBOs and their hideous bling-fest. Support jazz in the UK, peoples!

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More Recycle Magic

Favourite Day is over again til October.

Got there just after 6, so plenty of time for set-up, though TSP was coming from work which meant that the door wasn’t covered for a while (not sure what I’d do without TSP on these gigs – she’s a lifesaver).

I’ve rarely seen so many gadgets and gizmos on one stage, and even then Leo only brought half his stomp-boxes with him! I’ve only seen Jason play acoustically before, so even though I knew he did an electro-acoustic processed thing, I had no idea what that would be, so he turned up with saxes and percussion and a great TC harmonizer an airFX, JamMan and another boss multi-FX. Lots of great noises.

As is customary, I kicked things off solo (No More Us And Them, Amo Amatis Amare, Scott Peck), then Leo joined me for the duo bit. He’s just been working on a project with a ranting mad new york bloke, so had these fabulous and ever-so-slightly scary vocal samples that he brought into the piece. Great stuff.

I had a feeling when I booked Leo and Jason together that the combination would work really well, and I wasn’t wrong – the combination of my setting up progressions, Leo alternating between playing the progression and punctuating it with crazy detuned guitar noises and Jason veering from gorgeous Garbarek-esque soprano sweetness to multiphonics+harmoniser squeals made for some really fascinating music, that often drifted from really ‘out’ to very ‘in’ indeed across the course of a couple of minutes.

The Recycle Collective works so well on so many levels – from giving people who don’t often get the change to play solo to explore that, through to bringing together disparate combinations of players who otherwise might not have met, as well as just playing gorgeous music in a gorgeous venue.

Crowd was fairly small, but I had lots of apologies waiting when I got in from people intending to be there who were ill or called away by mini-tragedies.

Next one is with BJ and Theo, on October 12th – put it in your diary now!

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