… but if I did this review would do the trick! – a very nicely written review from one of the guys on Loopers Delight. Always good to get well written reviews, even if they are constructively ‘balanced’. This ones is completely positive so scores even higher. 🙂
Soundtrack – John Coltrane, ‘Coltrane’ (I’ve got more John Coltrane CDs that almost any other artist – it’s between ‘Trane and Bruce Cockburn. I don’t listen to him nearly as often as I should… might be time for a Coltrane-binge.)
A thread on another website about Charles and Camilla got me thinking. Someone posted something to the effect that Chuck and Cam are the real deal, love that lasts etc. citing his being forced by royal convention to marry Diana as some kind of mitigation for him treating her like shit.
My thoughts on Diana are mixed, but largely she strikes me as someone with some pretty formidable in-laws in a grim situation who by and large made the best of it. While she was clearly ‘privileged’, she also did more for charity, and more to publicly raise awareness about certain issues that just about any other royal ever (homelessness and HIV being two of her main causes.)
Anyway, the thought about being ‘trapped by convention’ got me thinking about Edward VIII, who abdicated the throne to marry Wallace Simpson – here’s his abdication speech – what a class act. He carried himself with dignity, chose to follow love over some bogus duty to an archaic institution, and – apparently – lived for decades with his wife. That site says he died in 1972 – I had no idea he lived that long. I wonder how often the Queen rang to see how he was doing? Wallace lived til 1986.
So, Charles, instead of treating Diana like crap could have chosen the road less travelled – his great uncle had been there before, so it’s not like it was completely unprecedented, and chosen not to marry Diana, but instead married Camilla in the first place.
But no, he didn’t, he messed up Di’s life instead.
[EDIT]OK, I guess it was too good to be true that we had a royal with genuine conviction… aparently Edward and Wallace had Nazi sympathies and the whole deal was considerably more sordid that I thought 10 minutes ago – time to buy a book on the history of the monarchy![/EDIT]
So, I do wish he and Cam all the best, I honestly do (like they give a shit), but if they think we’re all going to forget the story of his first wife, he’s even more stupid that the rest of his hideously inbred family.
Soundtrack – Joni Mitchell, ‘Turbulent Indigo’.
As y’all know, I’m a big fan of the BBC – Britian’s finest export, top media entity in the world etc. etc. yup, I love it. So was a little disturbed when all the reports came out a while ago that said that there was a shake up about to happen in the BBC funding and programming stragegy…
Well, today the news has broken that the BBC will keep the licence fee for at least 10 years – one of the threats to the BBC was to start to redistribute the funding from the licence to the independent stations to assist them in Public Service Broadcasting. A dreadful idea, given that we’d then be paying for it, and putting up with adverts. Not good.
So the news is welcome. There’s a bit of a shuffle going on at the top level, and the board of govenors is to be scrapped, which I’m hoping is a good idea. There’s also a very welcome call for the Beeb to stop chasing ratings and focus on quality. Hurrah!!
If you want to get caught up on all this stuff, there’s no finer place to start than David Attenborough’s Book, Life On Air – he was there almost from the start, and was controller of programmes for BBC TV, and interviewed for the position of Director General. An amazing book, full of great stories.
So The Small Person took the Izzard test and scored 90!! Which leaves me no longer the top rated in my age group, but also not even the top rated in my house. Still, I’m rather proud of TSP for her remarkable knowledge of all this Izzard-esque.
I think it’s safe to say that the Fairly Aged Felines (who are doing really well, thanks for asking) won’t score quite so highly, as they haven’t watched Circle or Dress To Kill yet. Whenever we go to put one of those on, they complain and want to see Glorious or Definite Article again…
So last night I went to see Gary Husband’s Force Majeure band play at Ronnie Scott’s. Unbelieveable. Truly marvellous, energising, inspiring, life affirming music. Very dense and complex and spooky at times, but never less than awe-inspiring. The quality of the musicians is one rarely seen on one stage – Matthew Garrison was obviously a big draw, being one of my favourite bassists in the whole world, a great player and a lovely guy. He played really really well, and the rest of the band, made up of some of America’s finest fusion musicians were all on top form.
The audience was chock full of lovely bassists, including Mo Foster, Dave Swift, Nick Fyffe, Oroh Angiama, Michael Mondesir, Nathan King, Dave Marks – it’s rare that we all get to meet up, so much fun was had.
If you can get to any of the gigs, please please do – it’s not easy listening, it’ll demand your attention and energy, but it’s a band not to be missed, playing Gary’s beatiful compositions.
Go on, go and book tickets!
Thanks to Deb’s Blog, I found this Eddie Izzard knowledge test, and I scored –
——————-
Definite Article!
Your Izzard-ness is at 89!
Your Izzard-ness is off the charts! You must be a bit of a bastard, cuz you’re getting shagging a-plenty! Your knowledge of the Action Transvestite is unrivaled, and you KNOW you wanna be a beekeeper! You wanna KEEP BEES! But you’re COVERED IN BEES! Quite sexy, actually. Well-done. You beat out Sexie Eddie, Kilted Eddie, and the lowly Plain-clothes Eddie. If I asked you, “Do you have a flag?” you’d say “Yes, five of ’em!” You’re like Achilles without the Achilles Heel… Immortal!
Test statistics:
* Compared to users who took the test and are and in your age group:
o 100% had lower Izzard-ness scores.
——————-
So my Eddie-obsession is now official, and I’m supremo ‘in my age group’. Deb scored 91, but she’ll be in the ’25-29′ bracket whereas I’m in the ’30, going on 70′ bracket.
Soundtrack – JBK, ‘Ism’; Talking Heads, ‘Fear Of Music’; The Cure, ‘Greatest Hits’.
Last month’s Bass Player Magazine had a great interview with Matthew Garrison in it – click here to read it – it’s even got .gifs of the musical examples. Good stuff!
Then, when you’ve read it, go and see him play with Gary Husband’s ‘Force Majeure’ who are on this week at Ronnie Scott’s.
Soundtrack – Zakir Hussain, ‘Making Music’; Talking Heads, ‘Stop Making Sense’.
Most of the time, I’m glad I don’t watch much TV. However, missing Channel 4s The New Ten Commandments was a bit annoying. I found out about it on Paul’s marvellous blog, and now really wish I’d seen it.
Shifts in what is perceived as ‘moral’ are fascinating, particularly in relation to Britain now having made the shift into being a ‘post-christian’ pluralist culture.
There are a couple of noteable quotes on the website, some really good, some nonsense.
Into the latter category comes this gem from Janet Street Porter –
‘The commandments can’t be very relevant,’ she says. ‘Otherwise people would repeat them every morning as a kind of mantra to live their lives by.’
Riiight – so everything that’s relevant becomes a mantra? OK…
Here’s the full list –
An interesting list, fairly predictable, and also clearly not a list that most people live by – Live within your means is obviously being ignored big time given the debt levels in the UK, parental respect is pretty low on the priority list, so is taking responsibility for our actions…
The one I’ve bolded up there (my emphasis, not C4’s) is the interesting one, given the ramifications of carrying it out – Treat others as you would like to be treated is such a huge thing to take on. To the point where Jesus reduced the whole of ‘The Law and The Prophets’ to two commandments – love God, love eachother – that’s what the second half of that means. We all want to be treated fairly, to be shown mercy, to be appreciated, protected, have time to enjoy ourselves, to feel safe… How much of our time is spent either trying to bring that about, or avoiding practices that cause the opposite? It’s interesting that most of them are very parochial – lots of things to do with the small stuff of life – family, personal responsibility etc. Very little to do with the big stuff of life – government, global issues, God/spirituality…
Anyway, the Make Poverty History campaign is a chance to do just that – to give to other people the kind of fair deal that we expect for ourselves. None of us would wish the situation that much of the continent of Africa finds itself in now on our worst enemies, so why do we support a system which is making the poverty worse…?
Laziness, inertia, ignorance – I’m guilty of all three when it comes to the problems of people ‘over there’. But we need to make some changes. All of us.
Soundtrack – Zakir Hussain, ‘Making Music’; Carl Herring, ‘Azure’.
England hasn’t produced that many solo bassists, or bassists who front their own instrumental bands under their own name. One of the few – one one of the finest in the world – is Mo Foster. Better known as a session player (Jeff Beck/Phil Collins/etc.), Mo has released a string of really really beautiful solo records, with his fretless bass as the primary melodic voice. He’s great. His last album, Time To Think is one of my all-time favourite bass-feature records.
Anyway, the reason for discussing Mo is that I found a cutting from an old copy of the sadly now defunct Making Music magazine. The cutting is a column that Mo wrote for them about session playing. Here’s an excerpt –
“There’s a certain mythology currently surrounding session work:
1 – It still exists as a career option
I’m afraid it doesn’t. The thrusting, vibrant scene of some years ago has, regrettably, gone. There’s still a fair amount of work around, but it’s almost entirely for artists and producers who happen to be friends – ie it’s very much ‘who you know’. Breaking in is harder than ever.
2 – You must be able to read music
It helps to read and is, on occasion, vital, but for many gigs you don’t necessarily need that particular skil. You must, though, be able to create a bassline from a chord chart and , in some cases, no chart at all – ie your musical ‘ear’ is everything.
3 – You mustn’t contribute ideas to a song but just play the written part
This is nonsense: it’s quite possible both the producer and the artist haven’t a clue what bass does or how it does it and are desperate for your expert input. Een a written line should be scrutinised in case you can improv on it.”
Wise words indeed. Certainly true in my case – all the session work I’ve had has been through friends and chance encounters, not some marvellous mythological network of agencies and management.
Soundtrack – Boards Of Canada, ‘Music Has The Right To Children’.
current number of emails in inbox – 52
..it’s creeping up again, must do some folder-husbandry…
