Tag: bass

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Congrats to Danny Baker – DJ Of the Year.

My only awareness of the Sony awards until a couple of years ago was that certain radio djs were introduced as ‘sony award winner….’. Then friends started winning them and I took more interest. It’s now grown to be the most important set of awards in UK radio, and I always look to see if anyone I know has one an award; not many of them have this year, though Sally Phillips got a bronze award for Clare In The Community.

My favourite bit of news though, is that Danny Baker got the DJ of the year Gold award. Much deserved, for sure – this house wakes up to Danny’s breakfast show on BBC Radio London every day, and he along with Amy and Mark mean that we wake up laughing. So congrats to Danny for a much deserved win. And if you’re in London, stop waking up to the Today Programme, or whoever is being dull on Radio 1, or Christian O’Donnel and his weirdness about horse cheese and super-powers, and tune into Danny instead – 94.9fm.

Soundtrack – Show Of Hands, ‘Dark Fields’.

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Two gigs this week (watched) and two days at LGS.

LGS being the London Guitar Show. I was there Friday to meet up with the nice peoples at Bass Guitar Magazine to chat about me writing a column for them, which I now need to sketch out a plan for, and then get writing. Caught up with a few other friends. Went back Saturday to see more friends, and was hoping to check out the Celinder basses which are amazing (Lowell brought one to my workshop in Cupertino , California back in January, and I wanted to see more), but the noise was so loud it was pointless.

However through the din I did get to listen to Laurence Cottle, jamming with guitarist Paul Stacey, and despite the noise and Paul having to play through a bass amp, they made a glorious noise. Fab musicians. Caught up with more friends. It wasn’t a bad show for bass stuff – the Bass Centre had a stand with all manner of bargains on it, EBS, GB Guitars, MarkBass, Celinder, the re-born Trace Elliot, Ashdown, Peavey and a few others were there with plenty of bass toys. It’d be unfair to compare it to NAMM as a) it’s open to the public, and all about selling stuff not launching new products and getting dealers and b) it’s in England.

The two gigs were Nitin Sawhney on Wednesday, and The Bays on Friday.

Nitin’s gig was a bit of a disappointment – the tunes he did with the Asian singers, Nina Bhardwaj and some guy whose name I can’t find online, were amazing. Great vocalists. The other stuff came over like a load of Urban Species mid 90s mellow hip-hop grooves with some OK tunes. Nothing special. Maybe it’s just that I had high expectations. It was enjoyable, just not the mind blowing experience I’d expected. Still, Orphy Robinson came with me, and an evening out with Orphy was enough to make it all worthwhile (and I didn’t pay for the ticket – ’twas a present from Dweez, who couldn’t go due to work commitments – thanks John!)

The other gig.. actually, there were two other gigs, as I went to see Roger Beaujolais play with his sextet in the Foyer of the Festival Hall before going to see The Bays in the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Roger’s band were very fine – London really does have some fantastic jazz players!

The idea behind The Bays is that they play completely improvised club-tastic dance grooves. The feel can change from night to night – sometimes its more house-y, sometimes more Drum ‘n’ Bass-ish. Friday night sounded like Gong remixed by Daft Punk. Top notch. The addition of a third keyboard player and a guy playing synth stuff on guitar was fine, but hardly necessary, as they make enough noise as a quartet. Still, the gig was fab, and I’d recommend the Bays to anyone who can cope with the volume (it was loud!).

Soundtrack – Eric Roche, ‘With These Hands’ (Eric’s had to cancel a few gigs again recently due to being ill, so if you’ve been playing to buy this fantastic record, now would probably be a good time! Head over to Eric’s site to have a listen – he’s one of the finest solo acoustic guitarists I’ve heard, one of the nicest people I know, and an indie artist that you really ought to support by buying his marvellous CDs!)

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When spoofs get out of hand.

Right, now I’ve recovered from laughing harder than I have in quite a while, I’ll share this one with y’all.

In order to prove a bet, a guy sets up a fake BBC news story, just to show the friend he’s having the argument with. At which point, some other new source picks up on it, posts it and it spreads across the net.

The explaination page is almost as funny as the article itself. If you do email the guy in question, please let me know whether you think 40 unarmed ‘midgets’ could take down a lion… (you’d have thought that the use of the word midget would have given away that it wasn’t a real BBC report, as the word is rarely used by any of the groups associated with restricted growth/little people.)

Soundtrack – Michael Manring, ‘Soliloquy’ (just keeps getting better and better.)

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What, no mention of the election result??

What is there to say? Labour back in – no surprise there. Greatly reduced majority – good news, or it would be if the Tories hadn’t taken so many of the seats. Interesting that the Tories took those seats due to a swing from Labour to Lib-Dem, rather than Lab to Tory… Lib-Dems did well but not as well as some predicted. Took a couple of very key seats (Hornsey being about the highest profile of them).

It’s nice to see that Michael Howard is stepping down. Hopefully whoever takes his place will be less overtly racist in their policy formation. While I dread the idea of a Conservative government again, a weak opposition is really bad for democracy. Good riddance to Howard and his race-baiting immigration policies.

‘Tis a shame the Greens didn’t get in in Brighton – they did get a load of votes, and it bodes well for the next election. I just hope that some miraculous thing transpires where we switch to Proportional Representation – that way, we would have green MPs, a vote for the Greens wouldn’t be wasted, and the Lib Dems would just about double their number of seats… though it would also give the BNP a voice in parliment… hmmm, maybe we need stronger laws about racial hate-speech. Glad to see the BNP didn’t get any MPs, and their highest number of votes in any constituency was less than 5000… still, the thought that there are 5000 people in Barking willing to vote for a fascist party is pretty frightening.

Will Blair go? i doubt it. Nice to see some MPs sticking their heads over the parapit and calling for his resignation. Would Brown be any better? Who knows. Sad to see Blunkett back in – off the scene for 5 months, and now all is forgotten apparently. I haven’t forgotten his draconian insanity in his time as Home Secretary, so dread to think what he’ll do in his new role as Work and Pensions secretary.

Basically, it looks like being business as usual for president Blair – a few vaguely contrite words about learning from the election, followed by more of the same. *sigh*.

Soundtrack – Sheila Chandra, ‘Moonsung’ (I can’t ever imagine getting bored with this album, it’s perfect); Steve Lawson/Jez Carr, ‘Conversations’ (not listened to this for a few months, very nice to pull it out again and have a listen – I’d forgotten how lovely some of Jez’ playing on it is).

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Well, I voted…

I stood in the voting booth for a long time. Probably three or four minutes, deciding between Green and Lib Dem.

Eventually went with Green. for a number of reasons. Firstly, and most obviously, their manifesto is the one I felt the strongest affinity with – they certainly seem like the genuine left-wing option these days.

Secondly, Chipping Barnet has been a Tory seat for years, and the main players are Tory/Labour, so voting Lib-Dem would be unlikely to have a big influence. It also means that even if we get a tory this time round (old MP is standing down at this election), it doesn’t mean a gain for the Tories, just same ole same ole.

Thirdly, I hate the idea of tactical voting. I’ve done it in the past, I can see the reasoning for it, but it’s really shitty having a system where people don’t feel they can vote with their conscience. All the polls suggest that the Greens would get way way way more votes if they were all counted as with proportional representation. As it is, few people vote green before they don’t feel like it counts, so they switch to the one of the Big Three that they think is least odious. That’s a really rubbish way to do democracy. Dreadful, in fact.

So, I voted according to conscience. I did it. The greens won’t get in, but in the analysis, the powers that be will see that they got my vote, that I didn’t cave in and vote tactically, that I cared enough about the green way of doing things that I spent my vote on them.

Feels good!

Soundtrack – Michael Manring, ‘Soliloquy’ (very hard to get this one out of the player once it’s in, and not because of some manufacturing fault with the disc!)

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Big with the 6Music crowd?

The Small Person sent me a link to this a few days ago – The 6Music big debate on favourite bassists – I’d seen it when it went up on the site (I listen to 6Music from time to time, would listen more if I remembered to tune in!), but not followed the ensuing posts, but there seem to be lots of mentions of me there, which is nice. I recognise a few of the names as street team peoples, doing their job, but there are others I don’t recognise.

Maybe they’re folks who heard my stuff when Stuart Maconie played it on The Freakzone, one of the finest radio shows anywhere in the world (and of course, available each week via ‘listen again’ so you don’t have to tune in on a Sunday afternoon).

Soundtrack – Michael Manring, ‘Soliloquy’.

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Election day…

So go vote! Whichever way you choose to vote, do it!

Bumped into a Labour dude handing out leaflets outside the tube station on Monday, and got into a bit of a chat. Told him I couldn’t possibly vote labour after an illegal war that caused the deaths of countless thousands of Iraqi civilians. If that war had been on Liverpool, he’d be in prison now. But they’re foreign so it doesn’t matter as much. My arse.

His reply was ‘I can’t argue with you there, but this election is about so much more than that, we can’t let the Tories back in’. True, the election does have a lot more going on than that. However, sanctioning what amounts to murder is a pretty big hurdle to surmount in the mental gymnastics required to convince me to put a tick next to a party candidate’s name on a ballot paper. The thought of the Tories getting in fills me with dread, it really does. All reports suggest that that won’t happen. Thankfully, Michael Howard’s campaign of inducing fear based on racist lies about immigration, talking almost exclusively about ‘illegal immigrants’ as a parasitical presence, not as people fleeing persecution, or just desparate for a better life. Rarely if ever mentioning the country’s huge need of a new workforce, with our own population greying, the birth rate dropping, and the public services needing a big injection of skilled workers…

Anyway, voting Tory clearly isn’t an option. Voting for the Labour party isn’t an option. My heart says vote Green – their manifesto is closest to my own convictions. My head says vote Lib-Dem – they are the ones most likely to make any kind if difference. We’ll see what happens when I get there. How I can still be this undecided minutes away from voting? What a weird scenario. Voting Labour used to be so easy – they were the party of workers, of unions, of taxing the rich to help the poor, of solid public services… And aside from a few MAJOR cock-ups (PPP being the most heinous of them), they’re record in the last couple of terms has been OK. Not great, but they do seem to be implimenting some policies that favour the poor. The airport expansion is a bit bogus, the mess that the rail and tube network are in is rubbish, schools still need more money, hospitals need to be brought back from the PPP firms that are ruining them, private contractors who make a balls up of building schools/hospitals/bridges/whatever else need to be held accountable for their mistakes, tardiness and missing deadlines. There are some really bad things, and some good things. But over all that, The war.

Soundtrack – Michael Manring, ‘Soliloquy’; Mike Watt, ‘The Secondman’s Middle Stand’; Miles Davis, ‘Cooking… and Relaxing with the Miles Davis Quinet’; Victor Wooten, ‘Yin Yang’.

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A plea to all musicians with websites…

STOP AUTOMATICALLY HAVING MUSIC LOAD WHEN PEOPLE VISIT YOUR SITE!!!!!!

It’s a total pain in the arse if you’re trying to do anything else at the same time, takes ages to load, can mess up people’s media players if they’ve got them running at the same time… JUST STOP IT!

Have a button where people can CHOOSE to listen to you. If you embed music into your site to launch immediately, I will just close the window and not bother reading any further, OK? I’ve usually got something that I’ve chosen to listen to playing on iTunes and I don’t need your low res samples messing that up! Just gimme the option to download it, then convince me with text and style and panache why I should want to.

on the front page of my site, I have a link to a streaming MP3 selection from all my solo albums – which people can choose to click on or not. Or they can go to the MP3s page or the CD shop and listen to samples there. In their own time. When they aren’t trying to listen to anything else.

thanks.

Soundtrack – Calamateur, ‘Tiny Pushes Vol II’ – a free download album, far to good to be free, get it from the website.

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The Man In The Van With A Bass In His Hand

Went to see Mike Watt at the ICA this evening. He’s a bit of a punk legend, particularly in the States, where his first band, The Minutemen, inspired a whole generation of American punk bands in the 80s. In the mid-90s he made his first solo album, on which a who’s who of the American alternative scene paid their respects to Watt – members of Nirvana, The Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam, The Pixies, Black Flag, The Rollins Band, Sonic Youth, Porno For Pyros etc. etc. all appeared on the record with him.

I met Watt a couple of years ago at The Bass Bash in Anaheim during NAMM, where he played a set with Kira, as ‘Dos’ – just two basses and voices – a resolutely low-fi punk set at an evening of fusion twiddling. Great subversive stuff. We also chatted alot that evening, and he revealed himself to be a deep, intellegent musician commited to maintaining his integrity as an artist, and staying true to his original punk ethic – DIY, and don’t take shit from anyone – even when signed to a major label.

Tonight he played all the tracks from his latest album – The SecondMan’s Middle Stand – from start to finish. It is, he says, a ‘sickness opera’ – a song-cycle based on his near-fatal illness, in three sections; hell, purgatory and heaven.

The music is very difficult to describe – very intricately written but playing with a punk abandon, the arrangements stop on a dime, switch time signatures, have unison phrases for all three musicians (the line-up is a trio of organ, bass and drums – not your typical punk lineup!) and then switch to full on dissonant avant garde scariness, and back to more conventional song forms. The dynamic range is huge, from a whisper to ear-splitting rock-out, and at the heart of it all is Watt’s aggressive, adventurous bass playing. All in all, marvellous stuff, impossible to accurately pigeonhole, deeply personal, and definitely music that rewards repeat listening.

He’s on tour in the UK for another week – go and see him if you can, but leave any preconceptions at the door. Do take earplugs though – it gets very loud! I’m so out of practice with ‘rock’ gigs – the volume scared the life out of me til I got my plugs in.

Watt’s tour diary makes for great reading too, though be warned, he speaks his own language, so the Pedrospeak Primer might help!

Soundtrack – Mike Watt, ‘The Secondman’s Middle Stand’; Mike Watt, ‘Contemplating The Engine Room’.

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Top notch comedy night

Went to a very fine comedy gig last night – organised by James Cary – an exceedingly funny man himself – the gig featured absurdist standup from Milton Jones, comedy performance poetry from Jude Simpson and Paul Kerensa – I don’t think I’ve seen a more consistently funny comedy gig in a long time – no lame warm-up act here. Paul’s style is old school observational stuff and word play, and he does it brilliantly. Jude is all set to be the new Victoria Wood – comedy poetry that’s both hilarious and brilliantly constructed, it’s a joy to hear language (ab)used in such a creative way.

And Milton – one of the funniest people I’ve ever seen. It’s about the fourth time I’ve seen him do his show, and even the repeat gags get funnier every time. I heartily recommend going to see any of them if they are doing standup near you.

It was also one of those gigs where you know half the audience – Jam and Melissa, Evil Harv, Mini Harv, Andy Flan, Darren Greenbelt, the blokes out of Infinite Number Of Monkeys… much fun, and a fine night out.

Soundtrack – Green Day, ‘American Idiot’ (left here by a student, and marvellous it is too – must buy this); more of me and Cleveland.

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