Tag: Blog

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California catch-up

So what have I missed from NAMM?

Well, I posted about Thursday night – that was fun.

Friday – er, can’t remember much about during the day, other than doing some Looperlative demos, and playing on the Accugroove stand. Oh, and did a set at Modulus as well, though where Modulus is stationed, it’s all but impossible to play anything due to them being flanked by hair-metal amp companies and opposite the Taylor booth who have a stage set up with acoustic bands playing all the time. Accugroove and Looperlative are both down in Hall E where the noise level is much lower, so more people could stop and listen to what’s being played. And on both those stands I had AccuGroove speakers to play through, which made all the difference. I just don’t like using regular bass amps any more. The only bass cabinet company that comes close to AccuGroove is Glokenklang – they make some really lovely uncoloured speaker cabs. Great stuff.

Anyway, what else? Ah, Friday evening, Sabian had a big show, featuring some celeb drummers – Dave Weckl, Terry Bozzio and Joey Heredia. Terry being the interest, not just because he’s already more interesting than the others, but because he had the wonderful Doug Lunn on bass. Doug’s one of my closest american friends, and him playing also meant that his wife Vida was at the show on Friday, so we had lunch – that’s what NAMM’s pretty much all about for me, catching up with the lovely people here that I only get to see once a year.

The gig itself started and was unintentionally funny – I was there with three lovely bass people – Peter Murray, Jeff Schmidt and Janek Gwizdala – Weckl came on and it took us a while to work out what it sounded like, but we hit the name on the head with ‘game show themes’ – not my bag at all, I’m just not into clever twiddly fusion like that…

So we wandered outside, and hung out, chatted, laughed a lot – all good.

Back inside for the Bozzio band, which was a whole different proposition. Some seriously dark, difficult music, that owed more to Pierre Boulez or Edgar Varese than to the usual guitar trio reference points. Alex Machacacek who wrote most of the material is a remarkable guitarist, writing incredibly dense structured music, with multiple time and tempo changes each bar. Scary stuff. Doug acquitted himself admirably, playing this scary mathematical music with a serious amount of groove and flair.

Saturday at NAMM is mayhem – way too many people there, lots of celebs showing up (eg Gene Simmons shows up with film crew in tow – I saw him there up close last year and he looks like a pile of offal from a butchers floor that someone has mushed together and re-animated. Not a good advert for ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ living.) So I stayed down in Hall E for a lot of the time, and escaped over to Subway for lunch. Didn’t even think about playing on the Modulus booth, but did a fair amount of stuff down at Looperlative, including some fun duets with Tal Wilkenfeld – a fab Australian bassist living in NYC – I blogged about seeing her play last year.

Saturday night at NAMM means ‘Muriel Anderson’s All Star Guitar Night’ – one of the best gigs of the show. Sadly this year, I missed a lot of it due to heading up to Hollywood to see Bozzio’s trio again at the Baked Potato. But not before I’d gone in to meet Patti Larkin – Patti’s a huge favourite of mine, a stunning singer/songwriter who has worked a lot with Michael Manring over the years and I’ve been wanting to meet for years. A few connections were used, and I got a chance to say hello and briefly discuss the possibility of her coming over to play in the UK – that’d be great!

then off up to Hollywood for more Bozzio/Lunn/Machacek craziness. top stuff, but a very late drive back to Bob and Alison’s in Costa Mesa.

And then Sunday – the quiet day, I arrived late at the show, and left early, but not before filming the Looperlative demo and saying goodbye to some lovely friends for another year. And I headed off into Hollywood again to see another old friend, Tanya, who I’d not seen for three years, feeling dried out and exhausted (me, not Tanni) by four days of vicious air conditioning and walking miles.

Soundtrack – in the car here, I’ve been listening to lots of music by friends of mine, to keep me from feeling homesick – Juliet Turner, BJ Cole, Mark Lockheart, Thomas Leeb… it works.

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contender for the king of mint teas crown…

Had to buy a box of mint tea bags as soon as I got here – too many places where you can’t get things that are neither caffeinated or fizzy. So a trip Trader Joes was in order. Why don’t we have Trader Joes in the UK? It’s fantastic. Anyway, TJs mint tea is gorgeous – up there with Dr Stuarts. Oh yes, bloglings, it’s that good – try to refrain from drooling on the keyboard at the very thought of such at thing.

So I’m a happy minty stevie today.

Soundtrack – Jeff Taylor, ‘promo ep’ (all the songs from his myspace page plus one more – great stuff); Steve Lawson/Jeff Kasier (the improv stuff we recorded on sunday – marvellous noises – watch this space.)

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BB news

Our intrepid BB reporter, codenamelizzy, is on a day or two’s sabbatical from writing, and has requested someone to fill in. As I haven’t actually been watching, here’s my predictions for what has happened in the house over the last couple of days –

Day 17

‘the house has run out of food, and George has offered his leg as part of the rationing. This caused another argument with Traci, as she would rather die than eat meat, even meat from people she would rather were dead anyway’

Day 18

‘at maggot’s prompting, Dennis has been requesting a ‘Faria Special’. Unfortunately, his american accent was misunderstood, and BB supplied two horseshoes which Pete had to nail into Dennis’ feet as this week’s shopping task. They succeeded in the shopping task, though Dennis passed out from loss of blood and will never walk again. The housemates are divided on whether it was a worthwhile sacrifice or not. Never one to miss an opportunity, while lying bleeding on the floor, Dennis tried to tell each of the women in the house in turn that sex would cure his feet. None of them believed him, and managed to stay out of arm’s reach to avoid further molestation.

‘Because Chantelle has said she won’t kiss Preston as he has a girlfriend, they’ve skipped that part, and have applied for adoption. Big Brother is hoping to fast track the paperwork and deliver their new child to them in the house. The baby will not be eligible for eviction on its first week in the house, but after that, will be asked to nominate housemates like the rest of them.’

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Travelblog 2

Well, that was a long flight – about 6 hours in, a woman fell ill, and the plane was diverted to Winnipeg to take her to hospital. Apparently the paramedics on the ground said if they’d tried to make it to LA she may well have died, so we were glad they stopped. But it did make the plane three hours late.

Was planning on going to see Muriel Anderson in concert, and had been invited to sit in on a tune or two, but after the delay, I got to the gig about 20 mins before she started so just said hello, heard two songs and headed off to Ventura.

Staying in Ventura for the next couple of days with Jeff Kaiser – a fab free trumpeter, who I’m doing Monday’s gig with. We’re recording today, and he’s plying me with mint tea to help the jetlag recovery.

The weird thing is missing home already – TSP and the felines have house guests while I’m not here, which is dreadful timing – I get to miss hanging with friends as well as seeing my boys and the small person. I’m having a great time here, but it doesn’t stop me missing home.

Today’s plan is to record some stuff with Jeff, then buy a mobile phone (last year’s namm show phone bill was huge, so I’m going to buy a US phone to save me lots of money).

so, time to get moving!

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travelblog 1

so I’m in the departure lounge at heathrow, waiting for my gate number. Bagel for breakfast, sipping mint tea.

Yesterday was a manic day – first the lost passport, the the found passport (we all like passports have gone astray… etc.) then 6 hours teaching, 5 hours with a bag of poo on my head (actually it was bodyshop henna, but it’s somewhat akin to having a bag of poo on your head. Packing, dismantling music rack and reassembling travel rack, software update for Looperlative, 10 minutes playing with said new software, which rules, one curry, about half an hour of Big Brother (keep reading Lizzy for the real deal on it), and then finally 3 hours of sleep.

A crap night’s sleep before a flight is actually a godsend – I’ll sleep on the plane, and may avert most of my jetlag.

Still buzzing from Thursday night’s gig – I enjoyed every single aspect of it, and good reports are still coming in.

more from LA in a few hours…

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Not again…

Right, first thing – last night’s gig was a blinder – much fun, great audience response (OK, except the couple that walked out after the first set and emailed me to express their displeasure… fortunately, they appear to have been in a minority of two) – playing with Cleveland and BJ is such a treat – fantastic players, great improvisers, they both listen really well, and the path of each improv seemed to unfold without anyone trying to pull in a direction the music itself wasn’t going in. Most enjoyable.

No time for a longer breakdown now because – the ‘not again’ of the blog title – I’ve lost my passport.

How do I did this??? More to the point, why do I do this??? Every sodding time! Anyone with any ideas where it might be, let me know… I think I’m going to have to cancel my first lot of teaching today, in order to keep looking… :o(

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Galloway – Dereliction of Duty?

The ever thought-provoking Sid Smith has blogged today about George Galloway on Big Brother, quoting the following excerpt from the Respect Party website –

“I will talk about racism, bigotry, poverty, the plight of Tower Hamlets, the poorest place in England sandwiched between the twin towers of wealth and privilege in Canary Wharf and the spires of the City. I will talk about war and peace, about Bush and Blair, about the need for a world based on respect. Some of it will get through.”

As Sid points out, there’s no way on earth that Channel Four are going to allow the Big Brother broadcasts to be a platform for political rhetoric. From what I’ve seen, there’s been none so far. There have been A LOT of conversations edited for content – those conversations could be libelous, commercially sensitive or overly political. I think George is going to be sorely disappointed when he gets out and sees the footage.

I’m with Sid on this one – I said from the start that I thought Galloway’s decision left him in dereliction of duty as an MP – he’s been democratically elected to represent the people of Tower Hamlets, people who are voiceless. He’s missing the parliamentary debate on The Crossrail project, he already has the third worst attendance record as an MP (last year he was second worst, behind Blair – I’m guessing someone somewhere is off on long-term sick). He’s just not doing his job.

My feelings towards Galloway are mixed – his anti-war stance is great, his opposition to the Blair/Bush lunacy and lies is laudable, and his performance in the US senate last year was one of the outstanding political acts of my lifetime. But the Respect party is a bizarre mis-match – a union of the far-left Socialist Workers Party and the rather more authoritarian Muslim Association of Great Britain. I wouldn’t vote for either party in isolation, and I’m certainly not about to support them in their bizarre union, though I guess one has to applaud the pragmatism of those involved – there can’t really be much of an ideological cross-over between the two groups!

But all that aside, I really don’t think Galloway should be in the BB house – and it’ll be interesting to see if he gets called up in front of a select committee and fined or punished in anyway… But it’d also be nice to see the papers being a bit more balanced in their political reporting, so MPs like Galloway don’t end up doing reality TV to try and get a point across! what a bizarre world we live in. I’m sure part of it is just that Galloway is a bit of an ego-maniac, but if there’s any truth in his appearance being part of an attempt to reach the apolitical masses, then the media is failing to educate and inform.

However, it is fun to see Galloway being exposed to the seedier side of life via the conversations of Jodie Marsh and Dennis Rodman, who are both utterly foul. Dennis Rodman comes across as one of the most sexually predatory people I’ve ever seen in my life, and Jodie seems in capable of any degree of self-restraint, she’ll seemingly say anything to out-filth whoever else is talking, even to the point of sounding wholly unconvincing in the process.

It really is a rum bunch of no-marks in the house. A lot has to do with the way it gets broadcast, and in general we see very little of Maggot, Rula, George and Faria in the shows, unless they get caught in the crossfire of another conversation about sex/orgies/boobs/surgery/yada yada yada. Is that really what people are interesting in hearing about these days? I am, as Liz said in the comments the other day, hopelessly out of touch…

Don’t forget that if you want the latest news, forget the BB website, and follow codenamelizzy’s updates – far more entertaining!

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Land of Confusion

I’m clearly determined to make sure no-one actually knows when my gig this week is! First I send out an email to a load of mates without the day or date on it, then yesterday I put on the blog that it’s on Wednesday when it’s ACTUALLY ON THURSDAY – Thursday 12th January, 2006, doors open 7pm. Don’t miss it!

it’s at Darbucka World Music Bar in Clerkenwell.

Soundtrack – Penradin, ‘Lunasadh’ (folk/world/jazz crossover project featuring marvellous double bassist Jonny Gee, and a tremendous violinist called Jake Walker, who’ll be making an appearance at a future Recycle Collective gig, for sure. Great stuff)

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homeless shelters and tax returns

Catching up – three very very busy teaching days Thurs/Fri/Saturday – much fun. Busy days like those are a great confirmation of how much I enjoy teaching, I love getting to the end of a day, feeling that I’ve worked hard, and the students have all taken away lots of good quality stuff to work on, hopefully been inspired and are beavering away at their practice!

Saturday after teaching was a visit to see my dad – really ought to see him more as he only lives half an hour away. A most enjoyable few hours.

Had to leave fairly early as I was doing an overnight shift in the St Luke’s homeless shelter – long-time blog readers will remember said shelter from previous years – this is i think my fifth or sixth year of helping out. It’s hardly a huge commitment – I tend to do every other saturday night from january to march, excluding saturdays when I’m not actually in the country…

this was the first night of the new year for the shelter, and was utterly without incident. But it did give me a chance to finish one of my christmas present books – ‘Serious’ by John McEnroe. A good read, for sure, clearly aimed at tennis fans (a fair few play by play dissections of big games, big sets big matches). He didn’t turn out to be quite the sage I’d assumed he was from his commentary skills – he’s one of the best sports commentators I’ve ever encountered (and, to be fair, that’s not many, given my general antipathy to all sport except tennis), but his wisdom in commentating on the psyche of the players doesn’t really seem to have come from having lived a sage life. Maybe he’s just learned from having got it all wrong in his own life. Definitely a worthwhile read though.

So not much sleep last night, which meant two things – a) I missed church by not waking up til 1pm after getting to bed at 6.45, and b) I missed most of the Soil Association organic market thingie happening down by the Barbican. It was organised by the lovely Ruthie, and featured some lovely live music from the lovely Andy Buzzard and Jonny Gee. Great to see them play, if only for one number. Also gave me a chance to meet lots of cuddly musos and invite them along to Thursday’s Recycle Collective gig, which I’m getting more and more excited about the closer it gets – the potential musical marvellousness in a trio of me, Cleveland and BJ is pretty huge, methinks. We’ve played together before, when I did a gig at Darbucka last year that both of them guested on, and it was magical. Don’t miss it!

So, after getting back from the organic thingie, I’ve just finished, submitted and paid my tax return/bill for 2004-2005. Fortunately, I only had about £50 to pay over and above what I’d already paid on account for last year… well, fortunately for now, unfortunate if you think that it means I earned less than the previous year (main reason for that is that in 2004 I was still receiving HUGE PRS cheques for the Level 42 tour…) Good news is, online CD sales were higher in 04-05 than ever before, which is great news.

One of my resolutions for next year is not to leave it til Jan 2006 to submit my tax return. I’d LOVE to actually get it done in April for the first time ever, and then have all year to pay a figure that I actually know. In order to do that, I’ll have to get my financial records for this year up to date in the next week, so I can stay on top of it from here on in… here’s hoping.

As an aside, I submitted my tax return online – what a breeze! It does all the calculating for you, tells you the boxes you’ve missed, makes sure your sums all add up, and gives you a print out at the end. Couldn’t be easier.

And now I’ve done the taxation bit, I feel inspired to write some letters to my MP to do something about the representation bit. I’m a fan of tax, in principle, I’m happy to pay my way, and to pay more to help those who haven’t got enough. But I do wish we had more say over how it was spent, and a less wasteful exchequer – Government spending is a disaster, which while not doing away with the need for taxation, certainly makes most people’s loathing of it a lot easier to understand.

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