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Tour starts tomorrow! Yay!

So the tour starts tomorrow, in Detroit, then onto Toledo on Thursday, and Grand Rapids Friday/Saturday. And we get to see Sarda, Kari and Ralston in GR, which is great.

Today’s going to be more rehearsing and making sure we’ve got everything together.

It’s going to be funnnn! Here’s the list of dates so far…

5.23.07 Low Down Sound, Detroit MI (clinic/masterclass)
5.24.07 Mickey Finn’s Pub, Toledo OH
5.25.07 Quinn and Tuite’s, Grand Rapids, MI
5.26.07 Four Friends, Grand Rapids MI
5.29.07 Rohs Street Cafe, Cincinnati OH
5.31.07 House Concert/Bass Clinic, Richmond VA
6.01.07 Gallery 64 West, Grafton, WV
6.02.07 Solo Bass House Concert w/ Trip Wamsley and Darren Michaels, Decatur GA
6.09.07 House Concert with Trip Wamsley Sulphur LA
6.14.07 Cafe Caffeine with Brady Muckleroy, Austin, TX
6.15.07 Mochas & Javas with Brady Muckleroy, San Marcos TX

drop me an email or a myspace message if you need more info on any of the shows – see you there!

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Throwing down the eco-monkey gauntlet…

Just heard about this company via Jonny Baker’s Blog – it’s Belu, and they make bottled water… or rather, they bottle water; you can’t make water…

But anyway, the USP is that their bottles are made from corn, are fully biodegradable and the company is carbon neutral. Apparently Tescos and Waitrose are both stocking it.

So, three challenges then, I guess – one is to buy it if you drink bottled water, two is to stock it if you sell bottled water and three is to switch to corn-made biodegradable compostable bottles if you make or sell stuff in plastic bottles. Someone else has done the hard bit, now all you need to do is play catch up.

C’mon, we’re already far too late on the whole climate thing, globally, so let’s not faff about, let’s switch plastic bottle production over to these lovely new eco-monkey bottles and get those carbon emissions down!

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Blog template fixed..

Yay! I’ve been able to fix the look of the blog to get rid of the old header and get the design in line with the rest of my site. That’s been bugging me for weeks.

Big thanks to Sarda for fixin’ the server despite no help whatsoever from the hosting company…

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Flight to the US… not good, not good at all

OK, I’ll be delving back into all the blog stuffs that I missed out on while the server was down, but for now, here’s what happened on Thursday with my flight to the US. My eventual destination was Ohio, but after looking at all the flight costs etc, flying to NYC and then getting an internal flight worked out cheapest AND gave me a chance to visit the lovely Shark and TH – flight times; leave london at 4pm, arrive NYC at 6.40, at the SharkTank by about 8.30, evening with them, fly to Ohio the next morning.

Plane takes off a little late, no worries says El Capitan, we’ll still be at Newark Airport on time. uneventful flight as far as the NY area (films watched – For Your Consideration which is more Christopher Guest magic, An Inconvenient Truth which should be sent on DVD to every house in the world, utterly vital viewing, And Casino Royale, which has far too much poker playing in it to be truly interesting, but wasn’t a bad way to waste two hours.)

Anyway, in the air over NYC, we get a message from the Captain that we’re going to have to land at JFK instead of newark. That’s not so bad, methinks, JFK is easier to get into the city anyway… but we enter a holding pattern. For hours. Eventually land at JFK, another message from Los Capitinos saying that they aren’t sure if we can get out here, then another saying we can’t and they’ll have to refuel and fly us to Newark.

Eventual arrival time in Newark – 11pm, time arriving at the SharkTank – gone 1am.

Emails have been sent to Virgin to see what they’re going to offer by way of compo. I’m thinking 25,000 airmiles would be sufficient, we’ll see what happens. 12 hours sat in the same seat, no extra meal, only one extra glass of juice or water for all that extra time. Not good service at all…

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Blog's back!!! HURRAH!!!!

Finally!! The blog is back!! It’s been down for almost two months, with the server that it’s hosted on being knackered, but it’s back now, and I’ve got lots to catch up on.

If you want to read the stuff that I’ve been blogging about over the last couple of months, you can head over to my MySpace blog and have a read.

LOADS to catch up on here, but suffice to say, I’m in Ohio at the moment, about to do a load of American dates – see the gigs page for more on that!

It’s great to be back…

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Tour update… finally!

Right, we’re now in Amsterdam, staying with the marvellous and wonderful John Lester for a couple of days, between the Germany gigs and the Denmark masterclass…

Where did we leave it last time? On the train to Madrid… OK, Madrid – what a great city! I’ve not been to Spain since I was 17, and last time was to a little holiday resort on the South Coast where we went to english-run pubs and sat on the beach, so not really much of Spain was seen. So this was my first proper trip. Madrid’s gorgeous – we were in a hotel right in the middle (thanks to the wonders of Priceline.co.uk), so had ample opportunity to explore.

The first gig however, did not go well – it was booked at the very last minute (actually, it was booked, cancelled, and finally rebooked on another day at the last minute) and the venue hadn’t really told anyone about us being there… so no-one showed. Yup, no-one. A gig for the people who worked there. Who enjoyed it. But that really doesn’t pay the bills. Anyway, it was a good warm-up, and thankfully, the second gig was pretty full, very much appreciated, we played well, sold a load of CDs, and all was well. We’ll be back in Spain, again with the wonderful Charlie Moreno (whose set was excellent), in October… Got a bit of a shock when I had to send out all my CD orders from Spain – international postage rates from Spain are nuts! Note to self – never try and run a mail order business from Spain…

After that it was back to Geneva to see the lovely Paul and Rachel again for a couple of days, then onto Magdeburg, where L had organised a gig through some friends of hers – the marvellous blokes of Studio 201, who were fantastic hosts, great fun, and exemplify the concept of ‘work hard, party hard’ like nobody I’ve ever met before. Deadly serious about having fun, as Michael Franti might say. Anyway, the gig was at UrBar, a very cool music bar/venue in the gorgeous city of Magdeburg, and much fun was had, CDs sold, and plans for a return made. Favourite thing about Magdeburg was Green Citadel, designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser – definitely in my top 5 wishlist of places to live one day!

From Magdeburg it was to Kleve and a return trip for me to the truly marvellous XOX Theatre – I played there last October, and it was such a treat to go back and take L. with me. I did the first set solo (including a massively extended improv on the end of Amo Amatis Amare – will be doing that one again!) and then L joined me for the second set, which went amazingly well – once again lots of CDs sold, and amazingly for me (cos I hate the damn things) we did two encores, the second one being a very impromptu version of Stand By Me (!!)

So some fab gigs, lots of lovely people, a whole mix of languages (French being the most comfortable, my German was coming back after 4 days there, Italian I’m still working on, Spanish was pretty much a right-off, given that the Spanish L. learnt at school was Mexican Spanish which is very different from Madrid Spanish, and now dutch where I know how to say please, thankyou and byeee!)

And tomorrow we head to Denmark for a couple of days… We’re racking up the miles, and definitely getting the most from our interrail tickets, watching a lot of films on the laptop on the train (I’d forgotten just what a great film The Hudsucker Proxy is!!)

So, films watched so far – The aforementioned Hudsucker Proxy, Withnail and I, Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire, Peep Show series 1, Wedding Singer, Dodgeball, The Life Aquatic and Jump London.

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Are we allowed a little schadenfreude once in a while?

Every once a while, the downtrodden get their own back.

this footage of some fuckwit matador getting gored in the plums by a bull made me smile. Does that make me a sicko, or do is there just a little justice in seeing the twisted sickos that seek sport in taunting animals and spearing them to death get a taste of their own medicine…

Of course ‘Spain bans bull-fighting’ would have been a much better headline, but it’s about as likely as ‘Nugent goes veggie and joins PETA’, sadly…

get well soon, senor plumless… ;o)

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Musical diet

i’ve mentioned before how I treat my music listening as a diet – it’s why, after years of trying to be the nice guy, I finally scrapped piles and piles of CDRs that people have sent me over the years wanting me to listen to them – I just don’t have the time for all of them, in between trying to feed my ears with brain food that’ll help take my music to where it needs to be. (I do still listen to a lot of what I’m sent, just not generally the unsolicited CDRs with no info on them…)

So anyway, the listening material so far on these ‘ere train journeys has been as follows –
Annette Bjergfeld – The Kissing Post (an exquisite poppy singer/songwriter record. That she’s co-written with Boo Hewerdine gives you some idea of where she’s coming from. Definitely great ear-food from a melody and joyousness perspective.
Paul Simon – Surprise (never fails to amaze me. Every time I listen to it I take more away from the lyrics, and hear more of the little touches that Eno has added to it. A really really great album.)
Mark Hollis – Mark Hollis (every time I listen to either this album or to the last two Talk Talk albums, I realise again just how much I owe Mark Hollis in terms defining for me what so much of what I do is about – his phrasing, his use of space, the really incredibly wide dynamic range, the emotion… it’s all stuff that I aspire to and try to feed into my music. Truly remarkable timeless deep IMPORTANT music. It’s great listening to an album that feels significant in the grand scheme of things. Not in any trendy way, not because the style mags see it as the soundtrack to coolness, but because it’s the sound of an artist delving so deep into his well of experience and emotion to produce something of worth. It feels like a privilege to listen to it.)
Suzanna Vega – Suzanne Vega (how old was she when she did this? mid 20s? It was her first album, and it’s incredible. That strength of vision, purpose, that depth of self-assuredness in the songwriting and singularity of voice is mind blowing. And it contains ‘Marlene On The Wall’ which is one of the greatest pop songs of all time.)

And that’s just finished – what now? I think a little John Martyn Live At Leeds might be in order – come on, John ‘n’ Danny, gimme something to aspire to…

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Strangeness on a train…

It’s a universal process – you get onto your chosen mode of public transport (plane, train, and I guess coach…), and until take-off or departure, you sit in your designated seat, waiting and hoping against hope that a better seat is available and that you get there before someone else does. It requires a certain amount of focus and determination to secure the four-in-a-row empty seats on a 747, and in all my years of flying I’ve only managed it once – on the way back from San Francisco, jan 2006.

But that’s not the point of this ‘ere blog post – the point of this, my dear bloglings, is to tell of a bizarre happening. On, in fact, that is still unfolding around me as L and I sit here on the TGV from Lyon to Paris (Lyon because we managed to miss our direct train from Geneva to Paris, and had to re-route – it’s times like this that you thank God for month-long rail passes, fo shiz…)

No, the strangeness unfolding around us began with us following the universal process listed above. We boarded the DOUBLE DECKER TGV (DOUBLE DECKER???? How bad-ass is that! I’m like a 10 year old kid, all excited to be travelling on such fantastic futuristic transport. It couldn’t be better unless the Jetsons were serving drinks!) and took our allocated seats (on the top deck, no less – YAY!!) and the carriage seemed pretty empty. all good. The train pulled away, and no-one else showed up, so L and I moved to the table seats in front of us, to get a lil’ more leg roomage. All good for about 4 or 5 minutes, when four oriental women arrived (I’m trying to work out if they are Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or from somewhere else – I’m not having much luck working it out, and it’s not that important, but I do like the be able to furnish you with these details). So these four show up, and start looking curiously at the numbers on both the tables (that’s 8 seats for four people), and point out that these are their seats. No problem, we move back to our seats. And, it seems, just in time, as their arrival then proved to be akin to the appearance of a couple of scout-orcs over the hill in a LOTR battle scene, and over the next 5 minutes EVERY seat in the carriage was filled with oriental peoples from the same party! All of them, hundreds of them, appearing from nowhere. Where the hell were they when the train pulled away from the station? Who gets on a train and doesn’t go and find their seats?? Where does one hide that many tourists on a train? So many questions, with very few plausible answers… Definitely the strangest thing I’ve experienced on a train.

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Stuff

OK, first up, I’m in Geneva, so I have an excuse. However, for those of you in the UK, why the hell weren’t you voting for Tim Vine last night on Comic Relief does Fame Academy?????? How could he be evicted??? It’s a tragedy, fo’ sho’… Equally bizarre was Sundance Head being evicted on American Idol, but that’s another story.

secondly, how old does it make you feel that The Joshua Tree came out 20 years ago this week??

and thirdly, thanks to the lovely Rev. Gareth, I give you the weirdest thing on the entire internet.

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