Finally, Michael Manring's CD has arrived…

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’.

April 22, 2005

My, what a busy day!

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’.

April 21, 2005

Sound and Vision

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!)

April 21, 2005

Another website tweak.

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’.

April 19, 2005

Today's activity.

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.

April 18, 2005

Just booked in to do Edinburgh…

ooh, scary stuff – just booked in to do the Edinburgh Fringe Festival again this summer. Last year, due to a bunch of weird goings on, I ended up doing the festival on a straight 50/50 split with the venue, a deal pretty much unheard of in Ed Fringe terms, so got my intro to the festival in a fairly easy way. It took me a few days to get the hang on how the promo machine worked (basically there’s no substitute for just going out and flyering like a madman), so at least this year I’ll hit the ground running and be able to get lots of promo in before the festival starts.

But (big but), it is costing me lots of money upfront to be there this year – which is scary. I always operate on a worst case scenario, so have made sure that I’m spending as little up front as I can (no speculative capitalism for me, thanks very much!), and the chances of me making some money at the fest are reasonably high, but it still feels weird to have agreed to it.

I’m back in a CVenues venue again – last year I was in C too (St Columba’s By the Castle), this year I’ll be in C Central (the Carlton Hotel, by the North Bridge). It’s nice to be on familiar ground, that’s for sure.

Anyway, now I need to go and write my festival programme entry, which has to be submitted by close of play today.

Soundtrack – Avashai Cohen and The International Vamp Band, ‘Unity’.

April 18, 2005

Hooked on the Marathon

I still remember the first London Marathon. At least, I remember the fuss around it – I don’t remember much about the actual race, I just remember getting up early to watch it on TV when I was about 8 years old, living in Wimbledon. Can’t remember what I thought at the time, probably was thinking of running it one day.

Still haven’t ever run it. Since that day, I’ve kind of lost interest in it. Each year, I listen to a bit of the radio broadcast in the car on the way to church, but ’til yesterday had never been to see any of it.

So when after church yesterday morning, a few people were heading down to cheer on Natasha who was running, it seemed like a fun thing to do.

The atmosphere was amazing – we were watching (we being me and Lizzie) from by Embankment tube, so the runners had already done twenty-odd miles by then and were in varying degrees of a state of total disarray. By this point, I’m sure the people who were running in costume were planning to kill whoever the bastard was who suggested dressing as Hong Kong Phoey, or a pirate, or a rhino, or a caveman, or a pasty or whatever other weirdness people were dressed as. some of the runners were in some quite major discomfort.. well, discomfort that appeared to have crossed into the ‘excruciating pain’ category. But most were soldiering on determinedly, walking a bit, running when they got a cheer or saw their mates.

We almost missed Natasha coming by, due to a guy a few runners in front of her having the worst case of joggers nipple we’d ever seen – two large blood-stains on the front of his shirt… makes me wince just thinking of it. Lizzie’s bit of conversation there went something like ‘look at that bloke’s nipples! (half second pause) Natasha!! WOOOO HOOOOO!!!!’ ETC. much whooping and cheering ensued, from us and from harry, karen and juliet who were on the other side of the road.

The end of the race for Natasha was fab – lots of friends there congratulating her, a picnic in St James’ park, and a medal that none of the rest of us had. Makes it all worth while. And she raised a lot of money for MIND.

It definitely made me think about possibly doing it next year. I would have to start trying to get in some sort of shape now, given that I’m a bit of a sedentary slob most of the time (hey, I don’t even stand up for gigs!)

So I’ll give it some thought, and try not to think about Paula Radcliffe’s ‘unplanned pit-stop’. That’s dedication to your sport!

Soundtrack – Scottish Guitar Quartet, ‘Landmarks’ (beautiful album – more about this later when I’ve heard it a few more times); Andrew Cronshaw, ‘Ochre’ (my most listened to album of the last few weeks – full review on the way)

April 16, 2005

Beware Of The Dog

No, we haven’t just got a Dog (the fairly aged felines are particularly glad about that) – it’s the title of the new album from The Works, who used to be known as Woodworks, and are the brainchild of keyboard/guitar genius, Patrick Wood. Pat and I have played together a fair bit – it was fun getting him into my method of ‘spontaneous composition’ and we ended up with some fab stuff recorded, that still needs to be mixed and edited properly.

Anyway, this is his quartet, with Mark Lockheart on sax, Neville Malcom on bass and Nic France on drums – all major players on the London jazz scene – and it is, almost without doubt, the best album I’ve heard come out of that scene for ages. Actually, it’s on a par with Theo’s last couple of albums – which are equally amazing.

The compositions are quite Zawinul/Shorter-ish in places, but with a really strong singer/songwriter sensibility to them, which obviously connects well with me. It’s beautifully recorded, perfectly crafted, and has all four players playing right at the top of their game.

If anyone ever suggests that BritJazz is somehow inferior to US jazz, this is the album to play them to prove them wrong. If Patrick was from New York, this’d be selling tens of thousands of copies.

It’s fab, and you really need to get it. I’m going to talk to Pat about stocking it in my online shop.

Talking of which, I’ll have John Lester’s CD up there before too long.

Soundtrack – The Works, ‘Beware Of The Dog’.

April 15, 2005

Ooh, I hope this comes to the west end!

It’s no secret that one of my favourite comedy films is ‘The Wedding Singer’. Well, it’s now being turned into a stage play in the US, slated for a run on Broadway in April 2006.

I SOOOOOOOOOO hope this comes to London – there are some classic script moments for any 80s nostalgia freak, and it’s got to be worth the ticket price just for the mullets.

‘you want to be fonzie, don’t you?’
‘yes I do’

marvellous stuff.

Soundtrack – Cathy Burton, ‘Burn Out’; Bruce Hornsby, ‘Harbour Lights’; M83, ‘Before The Dawn Heals Us’.

April 15, 2005

A quick round up of some election related goings on…

Firstly there’s whoshouldyouvotefor.com – a series of online questions (rather obvious ones relating to specific pledges in the different party manifestos) that tells you who you should be voting for. obviously, I came out fairly staunchly lib dem on this one…

_______________________________________________________

Who should I vote for?

Your expected outcome:

Liberal Democrat

Your actual outcome:

Labour -30
Conservative -75
	Liberal Democrat 108
UK Independence Party -24
	Green 58

You should vote: Liberal Democrat

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

________________________________________________________

Interestingly, the leader article in today’s New Statesman is all about how the Lib Dems are no longer a wasted vote, and if they do well they could hold the balance of power in a hung parliment, which is great news! So, go and vote for them on May 5th! 🙂

Er, what else? Ah yes, there’s some scumbag Tory lying turd MP who doctored a picture of him supporting the case of a local asylum seeker to look like he was campaigning against immigration – now Michael Howard is refusing to sack him. Rotten to the core.

And on that note, check out the torybusting going on on this blog – some really doctored posters, and some photoshop. The tories’ campaign this time is horribly targeted. I think this one says it all –

They can’t get in… can they??

What else? Ah yes, The UN human rights commission have concluded that kids in Iraq were better of under Saddam. Yes, that’s right, that murdering, torturing amoral scumbag did less to ruin the lives of the children of iraq than the illegal invasion and occupation have. Despite the fact that then they were living under UN Sanctions, so very little of anything was getting into the country. Now, I guess it’s getting in, but they are having to pay ‘western prices’ for stuff that previously was being subsidised. Ah, don’t you just love free market economics, especially when kids die as a result. Just watch those shareprices skyrocket. Get out that one, Blair.

And on that note, tonight is the Make Poverty History/Trade Justice Movement all night candle-lit vigil in Whitehall, calling on the government to apply pressure to the World Bank and IMF to modify trade laws in favour of the world’s poorest nations, to cancel debts and increase aid. The opening ceremony thingie in Westminster Abbey is going to be marvellous. then there are fun things going on all over the Whitehall area all night. Be there. see the Trade Justice Movement website for the details.

Soundtrack – The Works, ‘Beware Of The Dog’ (I’ll write more about this later, it’s fantastic!); Antonio Carlos Jobim, ‘The Wonderful World Of Antonio Carlos Jobim’; Phil Keaggy, a a live gig from a church in California – skip to about 37 minutes through, unless you really want to watch 37 minutes of Californian mega-church stuff going on. The gig is fab, and features some of the most nifty looping I’ve seen in a long while, using a JamMan and one maybe two DL4s.