Here’s the new Make Poverty History video – which was shown on UK TV last week, but you can watch it online here. Great stuff. Moving stuff. Go there, sign up, get involved.
Can't get started.
Just got back (well, ‘just’ meaning late Saturday night) from a lovely week in the south of france. Enjoyable holiday, and a chance to brush up on my v. rusty french. Really ought to go there more.
The problem with holidays is getting started again when you get back. It’s especially tricky this time as on Saturday afternoon, just before we got the plane back, I tripped over on Nice beach, grazed my shin and have strained the muscles in my arms and shoulders. So I’m aching lots, and tired from the journey, and out of sync with what I was doing before I went away.
Sunday was a Soul Space service at St Luke’s, which was lots of fun – more ambient noodling, which is always a creative pursuit. Ambient church services are a great place for trying stuff out like that as it gives that elusive musical element – context. Playing ambient music in my stupidly untidy office is pretty tough, so I need to tap into other things to inspire whatever I’m working on. In a space like the chancel at St Luke’s, with cool projections, low lighting, candles and a theme (this week was the road to Emmaus), there’s something to play for, something to soundtrack, something to be inspired by. I had planned to record it, but the lead that connects my mixing desk to the minidisc player was needed to plug a laptop into my set up in order to play a couple of tracks off CD.
So now I’m trying to get working. I’ve got normal stuff to do, like buying birthday cards (seems almost everyone I know was born in April), and some food shopping, as well as things to do with next week’s gigs and other stuff.
WAKE UP STEVE!!
Soundtrack – Steve Lucas, ‘Gamma Jazz’; Muriel Anderson, ‘Heart Strings’; Andrew Cronshaw, ‘Ochre’.
Third interview finished…
I’ve just finished my third interview of the last couple of weeks… that’s me being interviewed for magazines, rather than me doing the interviewing or applying for jobs.
The interesting thing has been that each one has been via a different medium – the first one was a phone interview for Bass Inside magazine, which was so much fun we had to do it on two days to get all the stuff in.
The second was a prospective interview for Unknown Public – a magical and unique magazine/compilation CD, that works to a theme each issue. That interview was conducted by a friend of mine, Julian, and was done face to face, after a lovely dinner, and was chock full of fascinating questions (and hopefully interesting answers!) – what could be better than sitting down with intellegent interesting people talking about music?? Thanks Jules!
Tonight’s was with Bassics magazine in the US, and was conducted via MSN Messenger! I’ve done this before, for a promotional article for a tour, but not for a mag, and it seemed to work really well. Again, a very interesting set of questions, different from the other two mags, and a lot of fun.
I do like this job!
Soundtrack – Muriel Anderson, ‘Heartstrings’; Tony Scherr, ‘Come Around’.
Did someone switch a light on?
One of the upshots of my photo shoot with Steve Brown two weeks ago was that I noticed just how dark my computer monitor was. So I rummaged around in the display settings and had a go at getting closer to what I was seeing on Steve’s computer monitor, and reset the colour (for some reason I’m having to redo it each time I switch my computer on, but I’m sure I’ll find the reset default command at some point).
So from that I noticed that some of the pictures on my site were way too light, and that the blue colour on there looked a lot nicer on my dark screen than on most other screens. So a little picture editing and a colour change later, the site has been tweaked. I rather like it!
Soundtrack – Various Artists, ‘Bossa Nova and Samba – The Gold Collection’; Redbird, ‘Redbird’; Gin Blossoms, ‘New Miserable Experience’.
One seriously overloaded server!
If you’ve ever clicked on the ‘Soundtrack’ link at the bottom of any of the blog entries, you’ll have been taken to my page over at Audioscrobbler – a site/plug-in thing that keeps track of everything you listen to on your computer and compiles charts – recent listening, weekly charts and top 50s for however long you’ve been on there.
They’ve been having some trouble, and now have over 10 million submissions cued on their server – that’s a serious amount of data! It remains to be seen if loads of playlists will be lost when they get this back together, but there’ll be some big changes in all my playlists when they get the thing up to date – I’ve listened to loads of stuff since my Top 50 artists was last updated…
some good (but surprising) and bad (but inevitable) news
Well, my wallet turned up this morning! Delivered via registered post. Apparently it was just stuck into a post box (the way whoever it was who took the money out of it – there’s the bad news – disposed of it) – the post office then returned it to the address on my driving licence inside.
So, I got it back, with driving licence in (that’s saved me £19), my cards (which have now been replaced), some receipts (which will save me some money as I can write off the stuff on them for tax), my blockbuster card (which I’d forgotten was in there), and a full Subway sub club card (so I’ll still get my free sandwich!)
So, I’m glad to get it back, and it’s kind of inevitable that the money would be missing.
If it was you that returned my wallet but didn’t take the money, thanks for your act of kindness.
If it was you that returned my wallet and did take the money, thanks for sending it back, but no thanks for stealing the money I needed to pay a tax bill, you bastard.
If it was you that took it, took the money, and dumped it, you’re scum and I hope the next time you try that you get arrested. A pox be on your ASBO’d head.
Racist's hall of shame
Just got an interesting email through from Unite Against Fascism, listing the BNP’s ‘Dirty Dozen’ – pretty much shows up what they’re about for the coming elections:
- Tony Lecomber: top BNP official. Three years jail for nailbomb
plot and three years for stabbing a Jewish teacher.
12 convictions in all. - Kevin Scott: north east BNP organiser. Convictions for
assault and threatening behaviour. - Paul Harris: Barnsley BNP council candidate. Convicted of
using threatening behaviour towards a pensioner. - Jason Douglas: leading Greater London BNP candidate.
Convicted football hooligan. - Warren Bennett: BNP chief steward.
Convicted football hooligan. - Stephen Belshaw: Amber Valley BNP
candidate. Convicted of attacking a
Jewish solicitor. - Colin Smith: south east London BNP
organiser. 17 convictions including burglary,
car theft, possession of drugs and
assaulting a police officer. - Darren Dobson: Oldham BNP council candidate.Convicted
of racially aggravated assault. - Frank Forte: Waltham Forest BNP member. Convicted of
actual bodily harm. - Paul Thompson: former Durham and Darlington BNP
organiser.Convicted of criminal damage and for violence. - Neil Keilty: BNP member. Convictions for possessing an
offensive weapon and threatening behaviour. - Gary Mitchell: former Sunderland BNP secretary.Convicted
of racist attacks and possession of offensive weaponry.
So, that’s just about all that needs to be said. Mark Thomas last year posted a list of some of the remarkable acheivements of the BNP local councillors up north – most had never even attended any council meetings.
I can’t imagine that any of the erudite creative delicious people who read this Blog would be voting BNP, but the thing to remember is that they benefit greatly from low voter turn out, so make sure that you and everyone you know goes out to vote in the forthcoming elections!
Soundtrack – Dave Matthews/Tim Reynolds, ‘Live At Luther College’; Tom Waits, ‘Blue Valentines’; Terry Callier, ‘Speak Your Peace’; Cocteau Twins, ‘VictoriaLand’.
Jonatha gig #4
Last night was Jonatha gig number four this month – back at the 12 Bar, this time a headline set of just over an hour. She’s almost too good – a really great set-list, including, I’m glad to say, a song I’d never heard (there’s not much Jonatha-related material I haven’t heard) – a song called ‘I’ll Try’ from some Disney movie… Beautiful, tried to find it on iTunes today, but it’s not there (lots of her other stuff is though – go and get it!)
Her last gig in the UK for now is at The Bedford in Balham on Monday – JUST GO!! If you haven’t seen her on this tour, you need to, she’s a genius.
In other news, still no news on my wallet, so I’m guessing it’s gone permanently. Bollocks.
Random link of the day – www.wordcount.org – the 86,000 most commonly used words in the English language in order. A fantastic site.
Soundtrack – Paul Simon, ‘You’re The One’; Incognito, ‘Positivity’; Jonatha Brooke, ‘Live’; Stevie Wonder; ‘Hotter Than July’.
coming soon to a mag/poster/website near you…
Last week I had a new photoshoot done. I’ve been using the same handful of promo shots for years, and needed a load more. The photographer is Steve Brown – a hugely talented photographer. We did a whole load of studio, white background shots at a studio in central london then went down to Picadilly Circus for some outdoor shots. Much fun was had, and it’s true that all you need to do if you want people to think you’re a celeb in London is have a couple of people with cameras and flash guns follow you around in the middle of the city!
So yesterday I went round to Steve’s to see the edited doctored photos, which are, as expected, marvellous. Steve’s done an amazing job (given the subject matter – hah!), and they’ll be appearing in a couple of mags in the near future – I’ve done a handful of interviews lately, so hopefully they’ll be printing some pics!
Anyway, here’s a sneak preview of one of them –
Oh, and still no word on my wallet. (If any of you have been planning to buy CDs from the online shop here, now would really be a good time.)
Soundtrack – Tom Waits, ‘Nighthawks At The Diner’; Stevie Wonder, ‘Hotter Than July’.
Lost Wallet
Shit. A rubbish end to a rather nice day in Central London was losing my wallet, somewhere between County Hall and The British Museum. Been to everywhere we stopped, no joy. Rung the police stations in the area, no joy, cancelled my cards. Need to order a new driver’s licence, get the people who had written me cheques that were in there waiting to be paid in to reissue them. Need to work out how to pay my tax bill when the cash that was in it was set aside for that. Shit.