Yippee, I wrote my first bit of completely new solo music this evening, for about 9 months! I guess the practice I’ve been doing over the last few days has paid off… I got a rough version of it demo’d (just me getting to know the two sections really, not a proper arrangement or anything), and even that sounds lovely.
here’s hoping there are more tunes on the way!
(oh, BTW, the site should work properly in IE now…)
Soundtrack – Bill Frisell, ‘Before We Were Born’; Ron Miles, ‘Heaven’.
What a load of bollocks internet explorer is. It’s not compliant with some of the most basic of css standards and totally unintuitive at dealing with anything it doesn’t understand. Why does anyone still use it?? It’s rubbish, pure and simple.
If you’re on a PC, PLEEEEAAAASSSSEEEE Get Firefox – it’s compliant with all the relavent standards, looks great, works really well, had a whole load of features that IE doesn’t even have, and is generally better. Just get it. While you’re at it, you might want to try Thunderbird – the mozilla email client. I switched a while ago, and much prefer it to outlook express.
So now it’s back to trying to find some way to keep all the browsers happy…
Soundtrack – Sheila Chandra, ‘ “This Sentence Is True” (The Previous Statement Is False)’; Bruce Cockburn, ‘Joy Will Find A Way’; Bill Withers, ‘Best Of’.
It’s was one of those questions that had taken on an almost Monty Python-esque level of absurdity; ‘when’s Michael Manring‘s album coming out?’ – for the last 18 months or so, I’ve been asked this a few times a week, sometimes a few times a day! I started off telling people whatever spurious deadline Michael had told me that week – ‘well, we just need to blah blah blah and it’ll be ready in about three weeks’ etc. etc. It got more and more laughable as Michael missed more deadlines than end-times loonies predicting the end of the world.
So I gave up answering, other than to say ‘your guess is as good as mine, why not email him?’. Hopefully his inbox wasn’t flooded with requests that he was no better placed to answer that I was…
Anyway, his launch gig was last week, and my copy of the CD, ‘Soliloquy’, arrived this morning. My 10 o’clock lesson was cancelled due to illness, which has given me time for a first listen.
OK, these are first impressions, and I’m sure I’ll have more to say when I’ve heard it 20 times (some time tomorrow afternoon, I suspect!), but this really is the album that Michael’s been needing to make for a long time, the one that all of us have been waiting for.
It’s all solo, no overdubs, bass guitar pieces. He uses a whole range of basses, and an even wider range of techniques and sounds, but it’s all live all him (we like the sound of that – actually that reminds me of Michael mention at a gig once that he was going to release a live version of Selene, to which I answered, ‘we like live’, and he came back ‘you like live!’ – this was not long after And Nothing But The Bass had come out)
Anyway, all the live faves are here – Selene, Helios, Greetings Earthlings, Excuse Me, Mr Manring, Makes Perfect Sense To Me etc. and a load of other previously unheard magic.
I’m sure Michael will be unhappy with it in some way – he’s got that kind of analytical approach to these things where there’s an ideal in his head that he’s constantly chasing, refining and I imagine never quite gets to. It’s what makes his gigs so exhilerating. The rest of us will hear this as his best album to date, by quite some margin, and be inspired and scared by what’s possible on solo bass.
It also comes with a beautifully produced 20-odd page book in PDF format (if you work in an office with a colour laser printer, you’re really in luck!) with tonnes of great background info.
I’ve got some practice to do – it’s inspiring ideas for me already.
It will, I’m sure be available in my webshop soon (though, as with most things Manring-esque, there’s no knowing when!), but for now, you can order it from Michael direct – best to email him via his website, if the details still aren’t there (they weren’t a few days ago – how does this guy make a living?????)
Soundtrack – Michael Manring, ‘Soliloquy’.
It started with three hours of teaching, followed by two hours of missed teaching (occasionally students don’t turn up – it’s quite worrying when they don’t let me know, as they may have had an accident or anything – this time I only had a work phone number for the guy, so couldn’t call him…) Filled in the time with some more web tweaking – added a load of the photos from the marvellous photo sesh with the marvellous Steve Brown, and designed a little desktop image for anyone who wants it.
Anyway, that was followed by an hour chopping wood in the back garden – oh yes, it’s like victorian england here… The wood chopping in question was actually getting a pile of stuff that was cut from the bushes and trees at the end of last year and left in a pile on the lawn, into small enough bits to fit in the green waste recycling bin (there the victorian similarities end abruptly…) That was followed by some lawn mowing – which took a long time and a lot of energy, due to the grass being very long and the mower being a bit spluttery after sitting the garage all winter (you’d be a bit spluttery if you sat in our garage all winter, surrounded by boxes for music gear, much of which I don’t even own any more…)
So grass cut, wood chopped, now to tackle a job that’s been hassling us for a few days, a broken tap in the kitchen. It’s the hot tap, and it’s been getting harder and harder to switch off. I don’t want to have to call a plumber if it’s just a matter of dismantling it and replacing a washer. So I try to take it apart. I remove the obvious screw – no joy. can’t seem to get the tap part off the top. Can see a nut or two inside it, but my pliers don’t have long enough points to reach down to the nut. Oh bollocks. So out to the shops to try and find pliers. Only shop open is Asda. I hate Asda – owned by Walmart, scumbag bottom feeders that they are, but I go anyway. No pliers, so I buy eggs instead. Feeling grim stood in the queue, but get a phone call from Orphy Robinson which cheers me up no end – Orphy’s a vibraphonist, a marvellous musician who I’ve played with a few times, and always look forward to working with. He’s got all kinds of fun plans for this and that.
Get home, still can’t fix the tap, turn it off as best I can, put the lawn mower away, and collapse. I guess today was my first day’s training for next year’s Marathon. I’m not doing too well, am I?
Soundtrack – KT Tunstall, ‘Eye To The Telescope’ (been listening to this loads in the last couple of days); Stevie Wonder, ‘Innervisions’; The Cure’, ‘Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me’.
I’ve had quite a few invites to join the sms.ac network recently, from various people (obviously sent automatically, not individually to me) – I followed the link today, was told that it was all about sending free SMS messages (a good thing?), and signed up, only to notice that there’s a lot more to it than that. So I googled the company and came up with this from ripoffreport.com – please, have a read of it, make up your own mind. The reports look pretty damning. There’s a rebuttal from someone who works for the company, but a large amount of information claiming the whole thing is a scam.
Really does sound like the potential cons really do outweigh any coolness factor that sending a few free SMS messages might have. I cancelled my account with them after about 5 minutes. Here’s hoping I didn’t get scammed in that time…
Good lord, I’d forgotten just how closely music is linked to memory.
Having read a thread on a forum saying that it’s Robert Smith from The Cure’s birthday, I thought I’d put on a Cure CD, so out comes Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. A fabulous album.
And all of a sudden I’m transported back to Berwick On Tweed, walking down through Hiveacres (Ramsey Street-esque estate where we lived), with the opening track, The Kiss, blaring out of my ever-present cassette player with the one speaker that didn’t work. Me dressed in grandad coat, or denim jacket with the cover from The Cure In Orange painted on the back, All About Eve shirt, black jeans and suede pixie boots. On my way to some goth get together or other, smiling far more than I should have as a goth. Wearing big maroon framed Christopher Biggins glasses that totally ruined the look.
It’s all there, I can even smell the grass and sheep in the field at the bottom of the road that I had to walk past if I was taking the short-cut across the trading estate into town – the trading estate that I once wandered around for three hours stoned trying to find my way into town (the whole journey took 40 mins even walking slow) – down past Jus-Roll )I can now smell the pastry), and on into town. I can hear the wind, and the air conditioning units on the top of the factories on the trading estate, and then the quiet. You forget what ‘quiet’ sounds like living in London. Nowhere outside is quiet, there’s always traffic and noise. Berwick after 10pm was quiet, unless someone you’d never met stopped for a chat on their way home from the pub.
Track two – Catch – I’d be dancing to this down the street, or singing it to myself if I’d seen someone in the pub that I fancied. Now I can hear the sea – another regular walk was along the front at Spittal, between Berwick town centre and Giles or Martin’s house.
Amazing. Maybe I need to dig out more music I listened to back then… Throwing Muses, Napalm Death, Anthrax, Metallica, The Pixes… actually, I’ve probably listened to the Pixies too often for that to work… maybe the Peel sessions would do the trick. Ah much memory jogging to be had!
Soundtrack – The Cure, ‘Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me’; Antonio Carlos Jobim, ‘Love Strings And Jobim’; Matthew Garrison, ‘Live’; Scottish Guitar Quartet, ‘Landmarks’; KT Tunstall, ‘Eye To The Telescope’ (this arrived this morning – fabulous album!)
As you can see, I’ve tweaked the site again – added a little header image. It’s actually taken from the back of the Edinburgh Festival flyer that I was working on yesterday – I liked it so much I thought I’d add it to the site.
I also briefly added another picture of me to the whitespace down the right hand side of the screen, but it was a bit much.
The tough bit was formatting the design on the forum page to work with it – took me ages, but I did it. I didn’t even need to get Sarda or The Captain to help me this time! (this makes a change, I’m usually pretty reliant on the two of them for web advice… both are PHP gurus.)
So there you go.
Soundtrack – Keith Jarrett/Gary Peacock/Jack Dejohnette, ‘Always Let Me Go’; Charlie Haden, ‘American Dreams’; Fiona Apple, ‘Extraordinary Machine’.
I heard today that Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen has died – NHOP is one of the greatest jazz double bassists in history. He was playing be-bop heads on upright bass before Jaco recorded Donna Lee on electric, could hold his own with just about any soloist on any instrument, but was equally at home make a beautiful contribution to ballads, with his two most famous band-leaders – Oscar Peterson and Joe Pass. His duet CD with Joe Pass, ‘Chops’, is a master-work, definitely one of the all-time great jazz-duet albums.
He inspired me to want to play jazz when I first got that album, and continues to inspire me today.
It’s a shame he was never as well known as he deserved.
Do yourself a favour and pick up ‘Chops’.
Soundtrack – Antonio Carlos Jobim, ‘Love, Strings And Jobim’ and ‘The Wonderful World Of Antonio Carlos Jobim’; Ron Eschete Trio, ‘Softwinds’ (features Todd Johnson on bass – a remarkable trio)
So Joseph Ratzinger has been chosen as the new Pope – he was the favourite with the bookies anyway, so it’s not really a surprise, but is slightly disappointing for anyone hoping that the new pope might move forward dialogue within the Catholic Church on Contraception as it relates to the AIDS crisis in Africa, or the ordination of Women or the host of other theological areas of contention that all Christian denominations seem to be wrestling with at the moment.
It was certainly never on the cards that the Conclave were going to elect some out and out liberal as Pope, and it’s just as well – I think such a move would have been divisive in the extreme, but Ratzinger’s record is even more conservative than his predecesor. I just hope he proves me wrong and becomes a progressive voice within the church and the wider world.
The biggest disappointment however is that he missed the chance to follow up Pope John Paul by calling himself Pope George Ringo. Benedict is such a predictable Pope-esque name.
Soundtrack – Don Ross, ‘Passion Session’ (one of the most amazing solo acoustic guitar records ever made)
Well, after getting my Edinburgh application in yesterday, I’ve been working on my flyer design. It’s weird that so much rests on this – if you’ve got cool looking posters and flyers, people are going to want to see the show. If you haven’t, they aren’t, simple as that. It’s the same as with CDs – I just don’t buy CDs with bad artwork. I get sent them, and sometime enjoy the music on them (been listening to a lot of M83 lately, and really don’t like their packaging at all, but the music’s pretty good – if I’d had to go to a shop and pick the CDs up, they’d have stayed on the shelf).
So, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got so far. Now I’m just working on pithy ways of describing what I do that will appeal to yer average EdFest punter… hmmm, maybe I should just change my name to Antonio Forcione and make it all a whole lot easier!
One thing that’s particularly fun about doing the flyer and posters is that I now have these fantastic photos that Steve Brown took of me. Really fine high quality pics, it’ll make a difference I’m sure. Steve’s just had a couple of high-fallutin’ magazine commissions, so if you’re wanting music photos done in London, get in quick, or he’ll be far to busy to work with the little people like you and I!
that’s one of them, and I’ve scattered a few others around the site.
