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Paypal spoofs…

I get loads of these sent to me, so thought I’d post a link to the 10 ways to spot a spoof/fraud email page on paypal’s own site.

All good stuff, but it’s easier than that – never click on links in emails from any financial institution. Never. Just open your web browser of choice, type in their URL and log in as you normally would to check your account. If they’ve got something urgent to tell you, it’ll be mentioned on their page when you log in as well, not just in some email.

There must be loads of people getting caught out by this crap – banks don’t ask you to re-verify your details, so don’t do it.

Soundtrack – Del Amitri, ‘Twisted’.

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Edinburgh Fringe Programme now online!!

Got back from a weekend in Berwick On Tweed (more on that later) to find the Edinburgh Fringe programme had been posted out. And it’s also now online for your perusal!!

Obviously, the first place to go is to the entry for my show, where you’ll want to buy tickets for multiple nights for you and your friends.

Then, from blog-world, there’s Richard Herring’s show, from bass-world, there’s guy pratt’s show, from jazz-world, there’s Julie McKee’s show, from RFH Foyer gigs-world, there’s The Big Buzzard Boogie Band show, from last year’s showbiz pals-world, there’s Barry Cryer and Ronnie Golden’s show, from guitar-world, there’s Antonio Forcione’s show and from unmissable gig-world, there’s Spearhead.

So, spread the word, tell your friends and get them to come to the show, and I’ll have flyers for you to download everso soon!

Soundtrack – Prefab Sprout, ‘From Langley Park To Memphis’.

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Pavement art

Thanks to Not-At-All-Evil-Dann for sending me an email full of this guy’s art, Julian Beever is his name, and he does amazing perspective based artwork on the streets of Europe.

here are a couple of examples –

Check out some more of his work here – great stuff. I’m always inspired by artists thinking outside the box – being a solo bassist, you HAVE to think outside the box given that a) there’s no repetoir for the instrument, b) so much of what has been done solo on bass is horrible and c) most people think you’re mad, and will actively avoid the idea of solo bass, so you need to take them by surprise…

So when some crazy Belgian dude starts drawing cool perspective stuff on the streets of London, it inspires me to take my music elsewhere…

Soundtrack – Prefab Sprout, ‘Andromeda Heights’; Gillian Welch, ‘Time (The Revelator)’.

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Listening and Viewing…

Finally got hold of my copy of the As One Tsunami charity CD, which I’m on. It was posted a month ago, and for some weird reason the postal service decided that a box the size of a CD was too big for my letter box, which is clearly bollocks. So I finally collected it from the sorting office, and had a listen. There’s some great stuff on it, not least of all a Dean Brown track with Marcus Miller on fretless – very nice indeed. Also featured are some other amazing bassists – Laurence Cottle, Mo Foster, Jimmy Haslip etc. Top players.

Last night, TSP, Kathryn (current house-guest visiting from the states) and I watched Team America – it’s the South Park guys doing a satire on the War on Terrorism using Thunderbirds style puppets. I have to admit to being a big Trey Parker fan – I think the South Park stuff, when he’s doing satire, is brilliant. He does descend into mindless smut at times, but there’s usually a point to it. And when there isn’t, for me it still almost always stays on the right side of the ‘funny vs overly grubby’ scales.

And on that note, I also got a CD through yesterday from Toupe, a two basses + drums band from Southampton – I’d really enjoyed their last album, Alopecia, but when the first track I heard from the new album was called ‘f***ing’, my suspicions about the content of the new album were raised… As it is, bits of it are fab. Some fine satire on the music industry, and some other general frivolous nonsense. But, like their musical forebear, Frank Zappa, much of the album slips into crass comedy-porn. I’m sure there’s a point to it somewhere, it was just lost on me. If you’re into that kind of thing, definitely check them out. If you’re not, steer clear. I like the Toupe guys, and they are capable of making me laugh a lot with some of the stuff they do, but about a third of the album really misses the mark for me. Musically it’s somewhere in the Primus/SadHappy/Zappa territory – lots of funky ‘n’ furious slap lines, and some great distorted bass sounds, with that show-tune element that all three of the above mentioned bands have corrupted to similar effect in the past.

Soundtrack – Various Artists, ‘As One’; Prefab Sprout, ‘From Langley Park To Memphis’.

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So, I'm number one in the charts!

Sadly not some kind of national sales chart, but an airplay chart for a show on WWSP in Steven’s Point, WI, hosted by BEAR – BEAR has been very supportive of my music for a long time, playing loads of it on his show over the years. Sadly you can’t stream it on line (at least, I’ve never found a stream), but it’s great to know he’s playing it!

Thanks, BEAR!

Soundtrack – Pat Metheny, ‘Bright Size Life’; Julie Lee, ‘Stillhouse Road’; Ethel, ‘Ethel’.

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What? New Labour? Introducing a Sensible Policy? surely not!!

Thanks to this post on Sarda’s Blog, I’ve just been reading about Community Interest Companies – the gist of it seems to be that a company that is set up for the the good of their community, with the intention of making money to be used for social benefit, can now have that written into the nature of the company, register it as a CIC, and have those aims protected by law even if there are corporate takeovers, shares are bought and sold, changes in management etc.

This – if it works and is what it says it is – is a FANTASTIC step forward in our share-holder obsessed financial-gain-is-everything society. I’ve long held that the conflict of share-holder vs stake-holder is at the very heart of what’s wrong with modern economics, and this new initiative seems to be set up to protect those companies whose activities are for the benefit of it’s stakeholders, even if that is to the detriment (or decreased benefit) of the share holders.

It remains to be seen whether or not this means that ‘ordinary’ companies can write into their code of practice a desire to deal ethically and in an environmentally sound way – I doubt it, as it seems like the legislation is about the primary aims of the company rather than ‘secondary’ ideologies about the nature of running a business, but it’s still one in the eye for those who think that everything exists just to make them money.

I’ll be watching closely to see what happens.

all the legalese and fine print can be found on the dti’s pages about CICs.

Soundtrack – Wayne Shorter, ‘High Life’.

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This just in from the pen of The Small Person…

TSP’s first blog post –

“Have just read your long, detailed and exciting
account of your weekend. So I felt inspired to do mine
as well:

Saturday 4th June
Stayed in. Worked.

Sunday 5th June
Stayed in again. Worked.”

…methinks I’m neglecting my tiny loved-one. Must make sure we both get more time to do fun stuff…

Soundtrack – The Smiths, ‘The Queen Is Dead’; Ethel, ‘Ethel’.

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I knew I knew that Song!!!

…the second song of the encore last night was a song I was sure I knew – a song called ‘Pretending To Care’. I’ve been wracking my brains ever since trying to dredge up who I’ve got a version of it by, and then google came to the rescue and it’s Jennifer Warnes! Both her version, and Todd singing it with just Ethel backing him are amazing.

Soundtrack – Ethel, ‘Ethel’.

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Weekend of musical friends

So, Friday was the last commuter jazz gig (or ‘computer jazz’, if you’re the chief exec. of the South Bank) before the big refurb kicks in at the end of Meltdown at the end of June. Peter King was playing, and was marvellous – very fine saxophonist, even if he does play alto (not a big fan of alto, generally – it’s just a tenor sax for kids) – and the aforementioned malapropism-prone chief exec. did a lovely speech about lady jazzshark who as previously mentioned has been booking bands at the RFH since prehistoric days, and will be much missed.

So, naturally, sharky person had a big party afterwards, at a friend’s GORGEOUS flat overlooking the Thames along by Blackfriars bridge. That’s one hell of a view to wake up to each morning, for sure. Much celebration took place, and by all accounts no small about of debauchery, though I left at 10.30, so thankfully missed all that.

Saturday was a fun day – started by meeting up with the wonderful Todd Reynolds – an outstanding violinist, and truly lovely wonderful person. Todd and I have exchanged emails and been reading eachother’s posts to Loopers Delight for years, but hadn’t met, so it was great to put a face to an email address and spend the day filling in the gaps. We went back down to the RFH Foyer for the last Saturday gig before the closure (and therefore JazzShark’s last saturday gig) – many fragile hung over people there from the party the night before (fools… ;o) ) – and a lovely short film about a couple in their 70s who meet at the free gigs in the foyer to dance together.

After that, gave Todd the shortened tourist trip round central London (interesting that my tourist trips never take in Buckingham Palace – maybe my anti-royalist sentiments are spilling over into my appreciation of what’s valuable to see in town. I always take people past Downing Street and along Whitehall (the seat of our sham-democracy) and Trafalgar Square (site of many a kick-ass protest) and down to the South Bank (home of the arts), but ignore any of the Royal nonsense, unless it’s for a quick walk round St James’ Park.

I digress… A fantastic day spent wandering round with Todd, all in. Top bloke, fun day.

Then home, to pick up TSP to head out to Lizzie’s leaving do, only TSP is behind on writing work (TSP is high powered celeb journo, interviewing the great and good about all things healthy), so I leave cinderella at home and head off to the ball on my own.

Lizzie is one of life’s lovely people – a fantastic photographer/photo journalist, and very funny lady. Party was full of lovely people, naturally, with no repeats of Friday night’s debauchery (totally different group of friends here…) So good send off for Lizzie, but crap that she’s moving (only to Bristol, so we’ll still see lots of her, but still…)

Sunday – head off to church, but it’s an ‘away match’ (meaning that a family from outside the church are having a christening – though it turns out they were from the church, I just didn’t know them – major black mark against my name for not having said hi to them!!) anyway – decide to go for fry-up at nice cafe on the Holloway Road was Gawain instead. Gawain is a marvellous producer/programmer/musician who has got heavily into community music education and is doing amazingly well. Very inspiring to talk to, with lots of plans for collaborative stuff.

Then home, domestic stuff, drop mixing desk off at St Luvvies to be used at Soul Space service before heading to Finsbury Park tube to meet up with BJ and Juliet to go to Joe Jackson/Todd Rungren gig at Hammersmith homebrew Apollo or whatever it’s called this week.

The reason BJ and I are at the gig is that the lovely Todd Reynolds who I met up with on Saturday is playing with his amazing string quartet Ethel as opening act and collaborator with Joe and Todd (BJ played with Todd in John Cale’s band in the 90s). Juliet had a ticket anyway, so Todd got her an aftershow pass and we all piled down to the gig together.

Ethel kicked out – wow. Incredible energy and performance, and great gig. They looked great, played great, the music was magic and the audience were captivated.

Then Joe Jackson came on – now I’m quite a fan of Joe’s singles collection (playing at the moment, in an attempt to rescue my memory of his music), but the gig was poor. Very poor. The sound was very compressed, and solo voice and piano versions of his uptempo stuff didn’t, to my ears, work at all. The new material was particularly bad. Some of his piano playing was lovely, but the overall feeling was one of big disappointment.

So a lot was rest on Todd Rungren’s shoulders. And he didn’t rise to the occasion either. The songs all sounded thrown away, I couldn’t remember one snippet of melody at the end of any of them, his guitar sound was possibly the worst I’ve ever heard at a ‘big’ gig, and again I was left contemplating self harm as a more pleasant sensory experience than the assault my ears were currently being subjected to.

Then, all change once again. Ethel come back on, and we’re back to the gig being amazing – a Gilbert and Sullivan tune, a couple each from Joe and Todd and an encore of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ (after Todd’s solo set I wanted to rename it ‘While My Guitar is Gently put through a wood-chipper’) – I’ve never seen a couple of aging rock stars so outrageously upstaged by a string quartet in my life. If the gig had been 40 minutes of Ethel, followed by 80 minutes of all five of them on stage playing a mixture of hits and misses, it could have been a breathtaking gig. As it was, it was two hours of dire self-indulgent horse-shit topped and tailed by two exquisite but far too short sets.

Ethel were a revelation, and are destined for hugeness. Please go and buy their CD, I guarantee you won’t regret it.

After all-too-brief chat with Todd after the gig, with just enough time to introduce him to Juliet and blag a copy of the Ethel album, it was time to hop on the last tube home.

Soundtrack – Joe Jackson, ‘Stepping Out – The Best Of’.

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