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Blimey, has it been that long???

Well, what’s happened since I last blogged? Well firstly, my hard-drive is fixed!! Yippee!! I got loads and loads of offers of help from blog-readers, one of which was an offer from Ted to fix the drive if I shipped it to him in Portland, Oregon. So I did, and he fixed it, and shipped it back, and all it’s cost me is a the cost of the new drive and shipping each way. Amazing. Huge gratitude to Ted for that!

For all of last week, I was on Lindisfarne (AKA Holy Island), off the coast of Northumberland, teaching at the Borders School For Life. The idea behind the school is based on the Scandinavian folk high school idea, where learning is pretty much for the sake of learning, rather than for the certificate that you get at the end of it.

The theme for this week was spirituality and ecology, the the many talks, classes and workshops took in themes of the Celtic history of the Island and Northumberland (Lindisfarne was pretty much the first home of the Celtic Christians in England), some stuff on the wildlife in the area, the notion of nature as sacrament, and some other ecological and economic stuff.

There was also a strong creativity thread, which included garden design, all sorts of arty things, and me doing a series on the parallels between music and language, and how to see music as an extended metaphor for communication – looking at music theory and improvisation and examples of language and conversation… It went very well, and much fun was had by all. The rest of the tutors included lots of experts in their field – professors of economics and sociology, design lecturers, authors and the director of the centre for human ecology! All round a marvellous week, and one I’m sure I’ll go back to next year whether I’m teaching or not…

Since getting home, the small person and I have been to a friend’s wedding, and installed a waterfall in the garden, that given the current heatwave has been doubling up as a foot spa. mmmmmmmmm.

So this week is going to be lots of teaching, getting back up to date with the duo album with Theo Travis (artwork nearly finished, just final touches needed on the track mixing), and then off to Italy for a gig on Thursday night!

Soundtrack – The Cure, ‘Disintigration’ & ‘Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me’; Cloud Chamber, ‘Dark Matter’; Phil Keaggy, ‘Acoustic Sketches’; Bruce Cockburn, ‘You’ve Never Seen Everything’; Paul Simon, ‘One Trick Pony’; Gary Peacock and Ralph Towner, ‘A Closer View’.

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Essential Reading…

following on from essential listening, how about essential reading – a by no means exhaustive 5 essential books for musos – feel free to email me with other suggestions…

  • Beyond The Bass Clef – Tony Levin (stories, tips, anecdotes. Genius)
  • The Inner Game Of Music – Barry Greene (probably THE most important. A life changing book)
  • Effortless Mastery – Kenny Werner (tonnes of great advice here, in amongst some new age waffle. Enough top quality wonderfulness to more than warrant the cover price)
  • Improvisation – Derek Bailey (his writing is way more exciting than his music, IMHO – a fascinating book)
  • The Jazz Theory Book – Mark Levine (much more nuts ‘n’ bolts that any of the others, but pretty darn comprehensive!)

There you go.

SoundtrackPrince, ‘Sign O’ The Times’; Joni Mitchell, ‘Travelogue’; King Crimson, ‘Discipline’; Stevie Wonder, ‘Songs In The Key OF Life’.

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essential listening

earlier on today, I was listening to ‘Straight From The Heart’ by Patrice Rushen – a truly remarkable funk record, which features, amongst other great tracks, Forget Me Nots. The whole record is a repository of amazing bass playing, and is truly essential listening for bassists. Which got me thinking about essential listening for bassist, so here are 5 essential bass albums (not neccesarily the top 5, but 5 nontheless) –

  • Straight From The Heart – Patrice Rushen (Freddie Washington on bass)
  • Hejira – Joni Mitchell (Jaco Pastorius and Max Bennett on bass)
  • What’s Going On – Marvin Gaye (James Jamerson on bass)
  • Michael Manring – Thonk (Michael on bass)
  • Secret World Live – Peter Gabriel (Tony Levin on bass)

….we’ll take it as read that all three of my albums should be in the list, but I’d hate to blow my own trumpet.. :o)

and while you’re here, check out some really good lyrics.

Soundtrack – KD Lang, ‘Ingenue’; Price, ‘Sing O The Times’; Patrice Rushen, ‘Straight From The Heart’; me, ‘Not Dancing For Chicken’ and ‘And Nothing But The Bass’.

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Can't… Get… Motivated…

Loads to do, can’t seem to get on with any of it. Good job I’ve got lots of teaching on, or I’d be sat around doing nowt. Really need to start working… lots to do… must stop reading bass discussion groups… practice… prac. tice. wash-up, tidy, work out some teaching stuff for next week. Anything, just get on with it!

Soundtrack – now, Keith Jarrett Trio, ‘Inside Out’, before that Phil Keaggy, ‘Acoustic Sketches’; Patrice Rushen, ‘Straight From The Heart’; Ben Castle, ‘Four From The Madding Crowd’.

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Ross Noble Goes Global

I think I’ve posted about this before, but I’m listening to it again, so thought I’d post another link to Ross Noble Goes Global – one of britian’s finest comedians touring round the world doing gigs… very funny indeed…

Soundtrack Ross Noble right now, before that, Radio London.

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that's entertainment

So, it’s the end of Big Brother for another year. It was pretty poor quality TV, though a nice change to see someone who genuinely seems like a decent person win – Cameron comes across as a likeable enough chap. Davina McCall has turned into a big of a tabloid-esque gossip monger, but still. Serves me right for watching it.

For far more edifying entertainment, check out the BBC‘s radio on demand service – especially the archive of Radio 3 programmes – The Late Junction and Jazz on 3 are great shows, but I’m rarely in a position to listen to them when they are on, so I listen to the archive instead. If you do tune in, please drop them a line and request some of my music – they have played me in the past, and will be receiving a copy of my CD with Theo Travis when it comes out in a month or so’s time.

Soundtrack – right now, Late Junction. before that, me and theo, before that, me, before that Bill Frisell, ‘Ghost Town’; Trip Wamsley, ‘It’s Better This Way’.

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Trip the light fantastic

there’s a really cool interview with Trip Wamsley over at www.talkbass.com at the moment – Trip is a fantastic solo bassist, with a new CD out called ‘It’s Better This Way’, that I can’t recommend highly enough – head over to his site to get a copy, he’s very good indeed. The interview is marvellous, written by Max Valentino (another fine solo bassist), and mentions me a few times, which is nice, but not the only reason why it’s a cool interview – for someone who is clearly as mad as a sack-full of badgers, Trip makes a lot of sense in interviews.

Soundtrack – right now, Bill Frisell, ‘Ghost Town’ (another one of my most listened to albums in my whole life – at one point is spent a few weeks both in my CD player and my Minidisc player, so I was permanently listening to it), before that, Horace Silver, ‘Jazz Masters’; Mary Chapin Carpenter, ‘Time, Sex, Love’; Ghost 7, ‘New Directions In Static’; Joe Burcaw, ‘Dichotomy Theorem’ and Chris Bowater, ‘Still’ – I played on this one, the session was a couple of months back, and Dan Bowater who engineered and co-produced it has done a fantastic job – it’s a worship/devotional/gospel album, and I play loads of melodic fretless stuff on there, and a few bits of Ebowed ambient stuff that blends right in with the keyboards and string pads. Very nice stuff.

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a new top 5…

inspired by a conversation I’m currently having with evil harv on MSN, here’s my guess at my top 5 most listened to albums of all time, in no particular order

  • Steve McQueen – Prefab Sprout
  • Strength – The Alarm
  • Dusk – The The
  • We See A New Africa – Friends First
  • Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me – The Cure

Which says absolutely nothing about my taste, really… no jazz, no singer/songwriter stuff – it says more about the albums themselves as being ones to get obsessional about…

Soundtrack – was listening to Erin McKeown on Late Junction – she’s fantastic, gonna have to get her album…

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That's what friends are for…

…as I think Amy Grant sang…

I’ve had SOOO many emails, phone calls, MSN messages, message board posts etc. relating to my computer being screwed – thanks so much. Clearly lots more people read this than I thought, which is nice to know.

Not certain what I’m going to do yet. The cheapest actual quote I’ve had for data recovery is around

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Black Monday

Today was a very dark day – my D:/ drive on my computer crashed. That’s the one with all my music on it. ALL my music – four new album’s worth of stuff. and numerous other bits ‘n’ bobs. All in all, about eight months of work. And now the drive is dead. Well, currently it’s dead. It’s not powering up at all. My C:/ drive is fine – that’s the one that I’m using at the moment. The D drive was a massive 80Gig monstrousity that was used solely for music stuff. oh bugger.

I’m currently researching data recovery options, which turns out to be VERY expensive. I mean, I’ll have to go that route if I can’t find any other way of getting the info, and I could really do with having the music (especially the stuff for the duo album with Theo which is meant to be out in September/October…)

So, if you work in Data recovery, or know someone who does, or have any ideas on what to do. PLEASE email me with your suggestions – even if you’re in the states – a flight to the US is gonna be cheaper than the quotes I’ve had for data recovery in London! scary stuff. So thoughts and prayers please.

soundtrack – nowt.

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