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I'm on a charity compilation CD…

Back when the Tsunami happened in December, everyone was running around wondering what they could do to help. We all gave money to the various appeals, so much so that the DEC said it didn’t need any more money after just a few months. It was an astounding response, to be sure. One of the efforts that I was contacted about almost immediately was a compilation CD being assembled by people at BassTechUK – a website/webforum based in Manchester. the guy who runs the site had the idea of putting together a CD of tracks from bassists all over the place, and selling it to raise money for the appeal.

So the charity was chosen – SOS Children – a charity that works with orphans all over the world – and lots of bassists were approached.

The resulting list is pretty impressive – Janek Gwizdala, Jimmy Haslip, the Poogie Bell Band, Steve Jenkins, Mo Foster, Peter Muller, Stevie Williams, Lorenzo Feliciati, David Dyson, Laurence Cottle, Dean Brown and me – we all donated tracks, which are now available on the ‘As One’ CD.

It’s a nice idea, and one I’m glad to be a part of – as a musician, it doesn’t really do much good to turn up in a disaster area and play tunes while there are people who need feeding (after the event, it can be good to have musicians turn up – if you ever get a chance to hear Micheal Franti tell his story of his trip to Iraq, it’s amazing). But we can do what we do – sell music to make money – and then donate that money to the appeal. Every penny of this is going to the charity (to the point where we’ve all agreed to donate our MCPS royalties on the manufacturing when they arrive).

So go on, click on the CD cover and head over to BassTechUK and buy a copy…

Soundtrack – mainly bits of new stuff that I’ve been recording, trying out some new tunes to premier at the upcoming gigs.

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Congrats to Danny Baker – DJ Of the Year.

My only awareness of the Sony awards until a couple of years ago was that certain radio djs were introduced as ‘sony award winner….’. Then friends started winning them and I took more interest. It’s now grown to be the most important set of awards in UK radio, and I always look to see if anyone I know has one an award; not many of them have this year, though Sally Phillips got a bronze award for Clare In The Community.

My favourite bit of news though, is that Danny Baker got the DJ of the year Gold award. Much deserved, for sure – this house wakes up to Danny’s breakfast show on BBC Radio London every day, and he along with Amy and Mark mean that we wake up laughing. So congrats to Danny for a much deserved win. And if you’re in London, stop waking up to the Today Programme, or whoever is being dull on Radio 1, or Christian O’Donnel and his weirdness about horse cheese and super-powers, and tune into Danny instead – 94.9fm.

Soundtrack – Show Of Hands, ‘Dark Fields’.

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Two gigs this week (watched) and two days at LGS.

LGS being the London Guitar Show. I was there Friday to meet up with the nice peoples at Bass Guitar Magazine to chat about me writing a column for them, which I now need to sketch out a plan for, and then get writing. Caught up with a few other friends. Went back Saturday to see more friends, and was hoping to check out the Celinder basses which are amazing (Lowell brought one to my workshop in Cupertino , California back in January, and I wanted to see more), but the noise was so loud it was pointless.

However through the din I did get to listen to Laurence Cottle, jamming with guitarist Paul Stacey, and despite the noise and Paul having to play through a bass amp, they made a glorious noise. Fab musicians. Caught up with more friends. It wasn’t a bad show for bass stuff – the Bass Centre had a stand with all manner of bargains on it, EBS, GB Guitars, MarkBass, Celinder, the re-born Trace Elliot, Ashdown, Peavey and a few others were there with plenty of bass toys. It’d be unfair to compare it to NAMM as a) it’s open to the public, and all about selling stuff not launching new products and getting dealers and b) it’s in England.

The two gigs were Nitin Sawhney on Wednesday, and The Bays on Friday.

Nitin’s gig was a bit of a disappointment – the tunes he did with the Asian singers, Nina Bhardwaj and some guy whose name I can’t find online, were amazing. Great vocalists. The other stuff came over like a load of Urban Species mid 90s mellow hip-hop grooves with some OK tunes. Nothing special. Maybe it’s just that I had high expectations. It was enjoyable, just not the mind blowing experience I’d expected. Still, Orphy Robinson came with me, and an evening out with Orphy was enough to make it all worthwhile (and I didn’t pay for the ticket – ’twas a present from Dweez, who couldn’t go due to work commitments – thanks John!)

The other gig.. actually, there were two other gigs, as I went to see Roger Beaujolais play with his sextet in the Foyer of the Festival Hall before going to see The Bays in the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Roger’s band were very fine – London really does have some fantastic jazz players!

The idea behind The Bays is that they play completely improvised club-tastic dance grooves. The feel can change from night to night – sometimes its more house-y, sometimes more Drum ‘n’ Bass-ish. Friday night sounded like Gong remixed by Daft Punk. Top notch. The addition of a third keyboard player and a guy playing synth stuff on guitar was fine, but hardly necessary, as they make enough noise as a quartet. Still, the gig was fab, and I’d recommend the Bays to anyone who can cope with the volume (it was loud!).

Soundtrack – Eric Roche, ‘With These Hands’ (Eric’s had to cancel a few gigs again recently due to being ill, so if you’ve been playing to buy this fantastic record, now would probably be a good time! Head over to Eric’s site to have a listen – he’s one of the finest solo acoustic guitarists I’ve heard, one of the nicest people I know, and an indie artist that you really ought to support by buying his marvellous CDs!)

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When spoofs get out of hand.

Right, now I’ve recovered from laughing harder than I have in quite a while, I’ll share this one with y’all.

In order to prove a bet, a guy sets up a fake BBC news story, just to show the friend he’s having the argument with. At which point, some other new source picks up on it, posts it and it spreads across the net.

The explaination page is almost as funny as the article itself. If you do email the guy in question, please let me know whether you think 40 unarmed ‘midgets’ could take down a lion… (you’d have thought that the use of the word midget would have given away that it wasn’t a real BBC report, as the word is rarely used by any of the groups associated with restricted growth/little people.)

Soundtrack – Michael Manring, ‘Soliloquy’ (just keeps getting better and better.)

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What, no mention of the election result??

What is there to say? Labour back in – no surprise there. Greatly reduced majority – good news, or it would be if the Tories hadn’t taken so many of the seats. Interesting that the Tories took those seats due to a swing from Labour to Lib-Dem, rather than Lab to Tory… Lib-Dems did well but not as well as some predicted. Took a couple of very key seats (Hornsey being about the highest profile of them).

It’s nice to see that Michael Howard is stepping down. Hopefully whoever takes his place will be less overtly racist in their policy formation. While I dread the idea of a Conservative government again, a weak opposition is really bad for democracy. Good riddance to Howard and his race-baiting immigration policies.

‘Tis a shame the Greens didn’t get in in Brighton – they did get a load of votes, and it bodes well for the next election. I just hope that some miraculous thing transpires where we switch to Proportional Representation – that way, we would have green MPs, a vote for the Greens wouldn’t be wasted, and the Lib Dems would just about double their number of seats… though it would also give the BNP a voice in parliment… hmmm, maybe we need stronger laws about racial hate-speech. Glad to see the BNP didn’t get any MPs, and their highest number of votes in any constituency was less than 5000… still, the thought that there are 5000 people in Barking willing to vote for a fascist party is pretty frightening.

Will Blair go? i doubt it. Nice to see some MPs sticking their heads over the parapit and calling for his resignation. Would Brown be any better? Who knows. Sad to see Blunkett back in – off the scene for 5 months, and now all is forgotten apparently. I haven’t forgotten his draconian insanity in his time as Home Secretary, so dread to think what he’ll do in his new role as Work and Pensions secretary.

Basically, it looks like being business as usual for president Blair – a few vaguely contrite words about learning from the election, followed by more of the same. *sigh*.

Soundtrack – Sheila Chandra, ‘Moonsung’ (I can’t ever imagine getting bored with this album, it’s perfect); Steve Lawson/Jez Carr, ‘Conversations’ (not listened to this for a few months, very nice to pull it out again and have a listen – I’d forgotten how lovely some of Jez’ playing on it is).

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Well, I voted…

I stood in the voting booth for a long time. Probably three or four minutes, deciding between Green and Lib Dem.

Eventually went with Green. for a number of reasons. Firstly, and most obviously, their manifesto is the one I felt the strongest affinity with – they certainly seem like the genuine left-wing option these days.

Secondly, Chipping Barnet has been a Tory seat for years, and the main players are Tory/Labour, so voting Lib-Dem would be unlikely to have a big influence. It also means that even if we get a tory this time round (old MP is standing down at this election), it doesn’t mean a gain for the Tories, just same ole same ole.

Thirdly, I hate the idea of tactical voting. I’ve done it in the past, I can see the reasoning for it, but it’s really shitty having a system where people don’t feel they can vote with their conscience. All the polls suggest that the Greens would get way way way more votes if they were all counted as with proportional representation. As it is, few people vote green before they don’t feel like it counts, so they switch to the one of the Big Three that they think is least odious. That’s a really rubbish way to do democracy. Dreadful, in fact.

So, I voted according to conscience. I did it. The greens won’t get in, but in the analysis, the powers that be will see that they got my vote, that I didn’t cave in and vote tactically, that I cared enough about the green way of doing things that I spent my vote on them.

Feels good!

Soundtrack – Michael Manring, ‘Soliloquy’ (very hard to get this one out of the player once it’s in, and not because of some manufacturing fault with the disc!)

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It's all in the artwork…

As y’all know, I’m a sucker for good CD packaging. if a CD looks like crap, I’m very unlikely to buy it even if the music is great (despite him being one of my favourite guitarists, I own very few Jim Hall albums cos they all look so dreadful!)

So it’s doubly marvellous that ‘Beware Of The Dog’ by the Works, which I’ve been raving about here recently, has such great artwork:

Granted, it’s still in a jewell case, but the photography and layout are just superb. You really do need to get it. Head over to their website and get a copy (I should be sorting out stocking it here soon).

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A little email husbandry…

Email count had crept back up to 175, so just did a bit of a purge, and it’s now back down to 67. Aiming for single figures by the end of today, so if you’ve been waiting for an email from me, you should get it today…

if you don’t, feel free to email me again and hassle me about whatever it was. I’ve got a few people outstanding (a few outstanding people as well) that I really should have emailed ages ago… sorry if that’s you!

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Big with the 6Music crowd?

The Small Person sent me a link to this a few days ago – The 6Music big debate on favourite bassists – I’d seen it when it went up on the site (I listen to 6Music from time to time, would listen more if I remembered to tune in!), but not followed the ensuing posts, but there seem to be lots of mentions of me there, which is nice. I recognise a few of the names as street team peoples, doing their job, but there are others I don’t recognise.

Maybe they’re folks who heard my stuff when Stuart Maconie played it on The Freakzone, one of the finest radio shows anywhere in the world (and of course, available each week via ‘listen again’ so you don’t have to tune in on a Sunday afternoon).

Soundtrack – Michael Manring, ‘Soliloquy’.

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