Tag: cds

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Gawd Bless Morgan Spurlock

I’d seen it before, but last night was the UK TV premier of SuperSize Me – Morgan Spurlock’s documentary that follows his challenge to live for a month on nothing but McDonalds.

He did it in response to the legal cases in america where obese kids were sueing fast-food companies for making them fat. Now, apart from the initial reaction of incredulity that people couldn’t know that a McDiet would mess up your health, the challenge to the psuedo health nonsense put out by the burger giants makes pretty compelling viewing. Spurlock is fantastic on camera, and his range of interviewees is superb and enlightening.

The failure of anyone from McDonalds PR to get back to him speaks volumes, as does this supremely bogus site that comes up tops if you do a google search on Morgan Spurlock a psuedo-debate site, claiming to debunk the film, run, of course, by McDonalds themselves.

Fried, GM, reheated, reconstituted meat products should not constitute any part of a healthy balanced diet. If they don’t make you ill, it’s just a fantastic testimony to the ability of our bodies to recover from invasion. Just don’t do it – that crap is addictive, unhealthy and won’t actually sort out your hunger.

If you must eat fast food, get a salad sandwich from Subway or something!

I’ve also just found that Morgan Spurlock has a blog – yippee! Top man, three cheers for Morgan Spurlock – bring on the closure of every McDonalds in the land.

Soundtrack – the rough mixes from yesterday’s recording session with Cleveland Watkiss – some fantastic stuff, some overly-long sprawling stuff ripe for editing. But over-all, a very promising first session!

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Some Listening Stats.

These are all taken from my Audioscrobbler top 50 artists playlist for the last 10 months or so.

  • number of artists that I know personally – 22/50
  • number I’ve played bass with – 9/50
  • number of bass-fronted acts – 5/50
  • number of singer/songwriters – 22/50
  • number of instrumental artists – 12/50
  • number I’ve seen live – 27/50

I wonder how that stacks up alongside your listening habits? If you’re a musician, do you listen to music by people you know, or people who play your instrument? do you buy many CDs at gigs, or do gigs inspire you to buy CDs?

Soundtrack – Joe Pass and NHOP, ‘Chops’.

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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’.

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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!)

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Sad news for the bass world

I heard today that Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen has died – NHOP is one of the greatest jazz double bassists in history. He was playing be-bop heads on upright bass before Jaco recorded Donna Lee on electric, could hold his own with just about any soloist on any instrument, but was equally at home make a beautiful contribution to ballads, with his two most famous band-leaders – Oscar Peterson and Joe Pass. His duet CD with Joe Pass, ‘Chops’, is a master-work, definitely one of the all-time great jazz-duet albums.

He inspired me to want to play jazz when I first got that album, and continues to inspire me today.

It’s a shame he was never as well known as he deserved.

Do yourself a favour and pick up ‘Chops’.

Soundtrack – Antonio Carlos Jobim, ‘Love, Strings And Jobim’ and ‘The Wonderful World Of Antonio Carlos Jobim’; Ron Eschete Trio, ‘Softwinds’ (features Todd Johnson on bass – a remarkable trio)

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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.

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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’.

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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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coming soon to a mag/poster/website near you…

Last week I had a new photoshoot done. I’ve been using the same handful of promo shots for years, and needed a load more. The photographer is – a hugely talented photographer. We did a whole load of studio, white background shots at a studio in central london then went down to Picadilly Circus for some outdoor shots. Much fun was had, and it’s true that all you need to do if you want people to think you’re a celeb in London is have a couple of people with cameras and flash guns follow you around in the middle of the city!

So yesterday I went round to Steve’s to see the edited doctored photos, which are, as expected, marvellous. Steve’s done an amazing job (given the subject matter – hah!), and they’ll be appearing in a couple of mags in the near future – I’ve done a handful of interviews lately, so hopefully they’ll be printing some pics!

Anyway, here’s a sneak preview of one of them –

Oh, and still no word on my wallet. (If any of you have been planning to buy CDs from the online shop here, now would really be a good time.)

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

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