Tag: art

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Andrea Dworkin has died

Apparently she died on Friday, but it only reached the press yesterday.

Dworkin was one of the most controversial writers of the 20th century, but also one of the most influential. Rabidly loved, hated and misquoted in almost equal measure, her opposition to pornography as a violation of all women’s rights made her the target of much vitriol from liberals in the US, but her books were read in their thousands, and and she even managed to temporarily get the US law changed (it was overturned at appeal.)

The net is filling up with comments – how sad that it takes the woman’s death for us (including me) to reappraise her contribution. Makes me want to go and read some of her books, having only read articles by and about her before now.

here are a few links to obits and comments –

Guardian Obit.
Hugo’s blog post
Jyoti’s blog
some crappy myths clarified.

There don’t seem to be that many revolutionary thinkers around these days – maybe I’ve stopped looking for them, but it just feels like the substance has dropped out the arse-end of cultural critique. Please, if you can suggest any books I should read, post them in the forum.

Soundtrack – Cathy Burton, ‘Burn Out’; Jaco Pastorius, ‘Jaco Pastorius’; Eric Roche, ‘With These Hands’; John Lester, ‘Big Dreams And The Bottom Line; John Scofield, ‘Up All Night’.

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Two gigs coming up this week, and I really ought to be practicing…

Yup, gigs this week in Brighton (Tuesday, Joogleberry Theatre) and Cambridge (Thursday, CB2). Both are with John Lester and Theo Travis – triple bill gigs with me solo, me and theo duo, and john solo, with theo and I guesting on a tune or two…

So I really ought to have a play through some tunes, remind myself how all the duo stuff with theo goes. But I’ve been tidying, cooking, and faffing most of the day, and not doing any playing.

this morning was fun – turned up for church slightly late, but coincided with Paul (my godson’s dad) arriving, and we both decided to bunk off and go for a chat and a fry-up instead. A wise decision. Chats with Paul are always fun events, a most edifying alternative to the regular sunday morning God-bothering.

Soundtrack – Michael Manring, ‘Thonk’; Sarah Slean, ‘Day One’; Sarah McLachlan, ‘Surfacing’; John Martyn, ‘Solid Air’.

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Make Poverty History campaign goes global.

So finally, the Make Poverty History campaign is spreading out across the planet – in the US, it’s the One campaign, with its own white wrist bands and choice celebs. Click here to check out the One video – it’s good (though it did make me balk seeing Pat Robertson on it… guess it just goes to show how far this campaign is stretching across political divides!)

And that’s not all – there are now nationally focussed campaigns in Germany, France, Canada – Click here to see a list of all the partner campaigns

No excuses not to get involved, people…

Soundtrack – Kings X, ‘Live’; Talk Talk, ‘Spirit Of Eden’; Stevie Wonder; ‘Songs In the Key Of Life’; Renaud Garcia Fons, ‘Entremundo’; Tom Waits, ‘Asylum Years’; Bobby McFerrin, ‘The Voice’.

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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’.

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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 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 – 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 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 – , ‘Heartstrings’; Tony Scherr, ‘Come Around’.

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Did someone switch a light on?

One of the upshots of my photo shoot with 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’.

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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 – 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…

Soundtrack – BBC Radio 3 – Jazz on 3 (listen again).

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iPod generation?

I keep hearing all over the place about now being the iPod generation – where our music listening is governed by homemade playlists, shuffle functions and genre-specific online radio… Does anyone else still listen to whole albums?

While I do occasionally listen to odd tracks (or even buy odd tracks on iTunes – the latest one was Carly Simon’s ‘Coming Around Again’ – just had an urge to listen to it, for some reason!) I’m still a big fan of the art of constructing an album, programming the tracks in the right order, developing a musical or lyrical theme and packaging it in a way that makes sense. Music just doesn’t seem to have the same significance in a disembodied ‘shuffle mode’ MP3 context.

On the flip side of this, I’ve always been a big fan of Greatest Hits albums, more because I’m looking forward to the day when I’ve got 10 or so albums under my belt and can cherry-pick the best tracks to go on a best-of. That feeling of looking back over your career and seeing how many great tracks you’ve made must be a very satisfying one.

so, my top 5 fave Greatest Hits albums –

  • The Cure (Greatest Hits)
  • Paul Simon (Negotiations and Love Songs)
  • Michael McDonald (Sweet Freedom – the best of)
  • Tom Waits (Asylum Years)
  • Prefab Sprout (Life Of Surprises)

The other great packages of a lifetime’s material are live albums and re-recordings – my faves of those would be

  • James Taylor (Live – mid 90s)
  • Joni Mitchell (Travelogue)
  • Kings X (Live)
  • Bruce Cockbun (Live – late 80s)
  • Dave Matthews/Tim Reynolds (Live at Luther College)

So here’s to the magic of the album, long may it continue as an artform…

Soundtrack – Stevie Wonder, ‘Hotter Than July’; Tom Waits, ‘Nighthawks At The Diner’.

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Photos of Toronto

After last year’s trip to the US, I started blogging all about it and posting pictures, but must have bored even myself as I quit half way through, which meant I never posted any pics of Toronto, which was one of the coolest cities on our trip. Lots of cool things happened in Toronto, mainly meeting up with , going to a Sisters Euclid gig and eating a very fine curry!

Anyway, here’s a few pics –

There you go! Toronto in a nutshell :o)

Soundtrack – Tom Waits, ‘Nighthawks At The Diner’; Stevie Wonder, ‘Songs In The Key Of Life’; Public Enemy’, ‘It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back’; Prince, ‘Purple Rain’.

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