Tag: Gigs

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Caught in a flyerless limbo

you know, this leaving the flyers til the last minute thing was a really bad idea. And yes, TSP did point out to me about a month ago that I really ought to have all that stuff finished by now so that it was all ready in good time. Did I listen? Well, yes, but I procrastinated, and there was obviously something really important to blog about, and flyers got moved down the list, and then it was time for lunch, and then I did some bass practice, and that was the end of third day. And Steve looked at it and said ‘oops, didn’t get much done there, then’.

The problem now is that the BIG job before Friday is getting all the flyers and posters out all over Edinburgh, and it’s more than we can comfortably do just on wednesday evening/thursday. Today and yesterday I could’ve been toddling all over the city sticking up posters and letting the lovely people of the Burgh know about the show, so they could come flooding through the doors in their ones and I could go home a newly minted hundredaire!

So today, I’m actually going to stay in Berwick, I think. I was planning on going to Newcastle, but thought that was just too much unneccesary driving, and I was going to go to Edinburgh, but there’s not much to do there yet, so I’ll stay here, work on some tunes for the gig, head into town and buy a shirt or two for onstage (Berwick? stage clothes? this’ll be a challenge) and generally take it slightly easier, preparing for the maelstrom to come.

Had a good play last night with the laptop looping set up. Managed to get it working so that the processing was only happening post-loop, and not to my main bass sound, which was cool, but then that stopped and I couldn’t work out why. And I couldn’t use any pitchshifting as it was way too processor hungry. Methinks this is going to take some major tweaking of latency settings etc. to get it to be stable enough for gigs.

Soundtrack – right now I’m listening to ‘I Don’t Want To Know’ by John Martyn over and over, as I’m hoping to do a version of it on the gig, and am trying to soak up a lot of his melodic stuff. It’s a really simple chord progression, almost too simple, but I’m sure I can make it do what I want to do.

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fine gig in Berwick

Today was my gig at the Borders Green Festival, in Berwick on Tweed. Playing in Berwick is always odd (well, I say always – I’ve only played here twice since I left 14 years ago!!), obviously, as it’s coming back to where I grew up, and today was particularly odd as the soundman was the same guy that did sound for one of my earliest ever gigs, At one of the first ever local band nights at The Maltings In Berwick!

That was with my first gigging band, EARS. Today was a solo gig at a very cool little festival. The idea behind the fest was that it was a showcase for all things sustainable, renewable, local, therapeutic and generally marvellous, so there was a resources marquee with lots of info about local action groups anti-war stuff, environmental pressure groups etc. there were teepees with various things going on in them – a massage tent, a talks tent and a making cool stuff out of old crap tent. There were stalls from a lot of the local fair trade and organic traders, and lots of fun things for kids to do, as well as obivously the music stage.

The music was very varied indeed, ranging from some very fine local folk musicians to a rather good local rock band, to, er, me. A real spread from solo Bach piano to Balkan folk tunes.

In my set I leaned heavily on the floaty soundscape end of things – No More Us And Them, Kindness Of Strangers, Grace And Gratitude, Highway One – nice big long improv-enhanced versions of everything. The big problem I faced was that the sun was so bright, I couldn’t see the illuminated panels on the front of any of the processors, particularly the Lexicon, so was half guessing which sound to use next. There weren’t any train-wrecks, but it was close at times! Certainly a nice warm up for Edinburgh.

Anyway, as an event, the Borders Green Festival was a resounding success – loads more people there than they expected, no disasters at all, some great music, and a fantastic message. Roll on next year!

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Italy post no. 11 (last one!)

(written 25/7/05 17.07)

So, on the plane on the way home. It turns out there was wifi available in the airport once you’d gone through to the departure lounge, but I met up with a guy from Naples who was at the gig yesterday, so spent the time chatting to him instead of online. So none of this stuff will be uploaded til I get home.

The good news is that I’ve had no hassle at all getting my bass onto the planes on this trip – it remains to be seen if my rack makes it home safely; it’s currently in the hold, at the mercy of the gorillas that throw your stuff around in a way euphamistically refered to as ‘baggage handling’ – I think baggage mutilation or baggage stomping would be more accurate.

Anyway, it’s the home stretch, and I’m hugely looking forward to heading out for curry tonight with TSP and Jez. Can’t wait to be home.

It’s been a very successful trip – a lot of opportunities have presented themselves for further touring in Italy, and I’ll hopefully be back there in November. Which gives me about three months to learn how to explain the story behind Shizzle in Italian.

From this evening though, it’ll be full speed back into Edinburgh, as well as the gigs in Guildford and Berwick, and planning some more dates for September, writing an extended improv framework for a performance at Greenbelt and planning a couple of tours for early 2006 with Theo in the UK and Michael Manring in the US.

…And now I’ve just been fleeced to the tune of £4.60 for a particularly hideous cup of hot chocolate (I’m dying for a mint tea – I’ve had none for days!!) and a cheese and pickle sandwich… don’t you just love budget airlines?

Oh, things are looking up, I’ve just noticed that one of the flight attendants has taken that crap-mowhawk-boy-band hair thing one stage further and is teetering dangerously on the boy-band/flock of seagulls cusp. Somehow bad 80s hair makes the journey more palatable.

Soundtrack – Maurizio Rolli, ‘Archivi Sonori’; Jonatha Brooke, ’10 Cent Wings’; James Taylor, ‘Hourglass’.

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Italy post no. 6

(written 24/7/05 10.45)

I’ve just arrived at the venue for todays, gig and it’s unbelieveable – it’s in the grounds of a huge chateau, known locally as ‘little versailles’ – beautiful gardens, an 18th century stately home, and a massive great covered venue in the gardens – huge stage, lighting rig. Ripe for some solo bass loveliness.

The range of acts playing is pretty broad for a bass-centric event – from me at the start, through to a big band playing some of Jaco’s big band stuff at the end, with Michael Manring as featured guest. It’s going to be a fun day.

As well as that, there’s a bit of a gear expo going on – lots of freaky looking high end basses, gadgets and amps galore. The problem with having a set-up that I’m as happy with as I am is that gear loses its appeal, unless it does the same thing only smaller.

Michael and I have been talking a lot in the last couple of days about how to reduce our processing setup down to a laptop and a handful of pedal controllers. The idea of taking two basses and one bag to gigs, especially once I get my powered Accugroove speakers, is sublime. I’m definitely going to start investigating what’s possible, and checking out possible pitfalls like latency. It’d open up all kinds of other options for loopage and processing too – being able to use the Ohm Boys filter live would be a dream, as well as being able to have the tail on a reverb or delay carry on fading whilst switching to a whole other channel to carry on playing, with different reverb and delay settings. Geek heaven!

Today is definitely going to involve a lot of sitting around not doing much, but I can’t think of a nicer place to be sitting around doing nothing in.

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Italy post no. 1

(written on the plane, 21/7/05 18.02)

What a day!

Given the travel fuck-ups in London of late, I decided to leave plenty of time to get to Gatwick for the flight to Italy… Little did I know I’d need every second of the FIVE HOURS that it took to get from Southgate to the airport!

The Picadilly Line is already suspended up where I am, so I had to get the ‘rail replacement bus service’ from Arnos Grove to Seven Sisters (oh yes, I’m going into all the really dull details, just for you lovely bloglings… and cos I’m on a flight with not much else to do!) but when I got to Seven Sisters tube, a little man in an orange jacket (perhaps fresh from Guantanamo) said that the whole Victoria Line was suspended…

At this point, the serendipity of my having just got a new phone (Sony K750i) kicked in, as it has an FM Radio built in. I’d been listening to the mighty Robert Elms on BBC Radio London, and he’d done a quick announcement that something had happened just before I got to the tube, but as I crossed the road to try and get on a bus towards Victoria, the situation started to unfold in a fledgling way. The report came through that three ‘incidents’ had taken place, at Oval, Warren Street and Shepherd’s Bush tube stations, and soon after a fourth incident came through on a bus in Shepherd’s Bush. Radio London switched to rolling news, and kept updating with all the facts and no speculation, and did a remarkable job, which greatly helped with the next installment of my journey, definitely the strangest thing that’s ever happened to me on a bus…

…the radio broadcast is interrupted by my phone ringing, and it’s Muriel Anderson on the other end of the line – it’s always a delight to hear from Muriel and my immediate assumption was that she was coming to England to look for gigs. ‘I’m in Indianapolis, doing a live radio spot, and was wondering if you wanted to talk on air about the bomb situation’…!! I checked to see whether they meant the one from two weeks ago, or todays – not knowing whether news would have filtered as far as Indianapolis – and they confirmed it was today. Fortunately having been listening to the radio I was able to fill them in on all the latest official details, and quash a few rumours about huge explosions and the like… My first ever live international radio interview whilst on public transport, that’s for sure!

The bus proved to be a pretty unreliable way of getting across London – it stopped for over an hour on High Holborn, and then turfed us all out – but with the tube network being pretty much closed, I didn’t have any choice but to sit it out, and watch the three hour margin I’d left myself gradually ebb away. The second bus moved much quicker once we got past Oxford Street, and eventually we got to Victoria, and I made it straight onto the Gatwick Express.

At this point, I want to praise British Airways. my initial idea for this trip was to take my rack on the plane as handluggage, and put my bass in the hold in a foam-flight-case. But I weighed my rack-case this morning and it was 50lbs! Not the kind of thing you can get away with as hand luggage. So the plan switched to taking the bass in a soft case again, and checking the rack, hoping it’ll get through OK (it is packed with all my clothes too, so should be padded OK).

I’m used to having to sweet-talk my bass onto a planes by all means neccesary – starting with chat about favourite shades of nail varnish, moving up to compliments on people’s hairstyles, and culminating in blind panic if it looks like I’m going to have to put a soft case in the hold… At the BA check in desk, not a question was asked. The lovely lady who took the rack from me was fine with me taking the laptop and the bass onto the plane, and was very helpful with labeling up the rack as fragile and getting it hand carried down to the plane. None of the other BA staff questioned me taking the bass on board, and it’s now nestling in the overhead compartment above my head!

So as you can now tell, I made it onto the plane, from whence I write (to be uploaded when I find some delicious Italian WiFi at the other end). I’m sat here, listening to Gillian Welch, sipping tomato juice (why do I only ever drink tomato juice on planes? I really like it!) having just eaten a lovely veggie meal, along with everyone else: BA are smart enough to just serve veggie food to everyone, so there’s no questions about who gets what food! smart as plums.

Anyway, the situation with the ‘incidents’ as I left it in London was that there had been four explosions, all much much smaller than the ones two weeks ago, and that no-one had been killed, and there were very few casualties at all – the only confirmed one being the owner of on of the rucksacks that exploded.

Whoever it was who did it did a rather good job of ballsing up London’s transport for another day, and have probably scared quite a few commuters. I’m just glad that the bombs either malfuctioned or were only detonators with no payload. Enough already with the bombing, please!

…and in that serendipitous way that chance can provide a day’s soundtrack, the track that’s just come on iTunes is John Martyn’s ‘I don’t want to know about evil’ – I don’t want to know about evil, I only want to know about love… I’ll find the lyrics and post them when I find the delicious italian wifi.

Soundtrack – John Martyn, ‘Solid Air’.

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Update on the fairly aged felines

Yesterday, the original aged feline would have been 20. We had high hopes of him reaching that most prestigious of cat-landmarks at this time last year. His ongoing chronic renal condition got rapidly worse through August, and he died in September, a couple of months after his 19th Birthday. Which is not to be sneezed at. It makes him a bit of a Yoda amongst felines.

But we now have charge of the fairly aged felines, who are getting along just fine. The new challenge we face is trying to prevent the long-haired-ginger-one from resembling a moving shrubbery by combing him about five times a day to remove the myriad leaves, twigs and sticky seed-pods that he picks up whilst squirrelling through the ragged forest that is the extensive grounds here at Stevie Towers.

Both the boys have increased in bravery and friendliness, greeting new people in the house with curiosity and a request for cuddles rather than hiding under the sofa, which was their prefered reaction for the first few months.

They love their food, love cuddles, but are complaining a little about the heat of the summer. Well you try wearing a fur coat in this weather (I have tried it, it doesn’t work. Even for gigs.)

So raise a glass to the memory of The Aged Feline, and all the lessons he taught me.

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Gardening and Bass Practice – don't work in that order.

So, I had a list of things I needed to get done tonight. The usual Sunday jobs of putting the bins out, checking the smoke alarms, bit of washing up etc. But also had to do a lil’ bit of gardening.

Anyone who has seen the garden at Stevie Towers will know it’s like a jungle (sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from going under, uh huh huh), and the suckers growing out of our blackberry bushes and out of the wild roses had got well out of hand encroaching onto the lawn (or savannah as it’s more properly named). They were also cutting off access to the compost bin, so action needed to be taken against these needle sharp thorny triffids. So I attacked them, with secatures (how on earth do you spell that?) and a gardening glove, but still managed to shred my fingers in the process, making the last of tonight’s tasks – some bass practice – a little tricky.

For the gigs in Italy next weekend I really need to get practicing, given that I’m only taking my fretless with me, and so will have to play all the chordy tunes like Kindness Of Strangers and Despite My Worst Intentions on the fretless as well (and maybe even Shizzle). That’s going to take some practice, and it’s also going to require that my hands are in proper working order, not lacerated by evil garden monsters.

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And after the gigs, The reviews!

This was quick – the joy of the internet – here’s a lovely review of the Vortex gig from Tuesday night with Theo Travis and Orphy Robinson. Very nicely written.

And if you can read Italian, there’s a lovely review of Grace And Gratitude, in the ‘No Warning’ E-zine. Luigi Ametta who writes it has been very supportive of all the music of mine that he’s heard, and this looks to be another lovely review (though so far I’ve only read the Google translation, which is pretty garbled…)

If you’ve been to one of the recent gigs, please post a review in the forum, and if you’ve bought one of the CDs, you can post those reviews in the online shop.

Thanks!

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Bono and Bob on the G8…

here it is.

What on earth are they thinking???

” ‘We’ve pulled this off,’ said U2 frontman Bono.

He and Geldof praised the Group of Eight summit for pledging to double aid to Africa to $50 billion, saying the move will save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who would have died of poverty, malaria or
AIDS.

‘The world spoke and the politicians listened,’ Bono said.”

and

“Geldof, creator of the Live 8 concerts, said: ‘The summit in Gleneagles is a qualified triumph.’ Appearing alongside Bono at a news conference held at the close of the summit, he said: ‘A great justice has been done.’ “

Oh shit, why do these people conspire to make me look like a miserable whinging git? Everyone has come out and said the G8 produced very little of note. The 50 billion is fine – it’s 50 billion, not to be sneezed at – but it’s way too little and it won’t be protected by trade reform and debt cancellation.

Before the summit Bono and Bob were both calling for the three points of the MPH campaign – trade reform, debt relief and aid. Only the aid element has been touched with any effectiveness.

Maybe I’ll just go back to writing about my solo gigs, it’s less depressing than all this stuff.

The MPH campaign goes on, more pressure is needed. What isn’t needed is Bono and Bob telling the G8 what superstars they are. ‘A great justice has been done.’ – no it hasn’t!!!

I really really hope I’m misjudging this, that they know something I don’t about making things happen. I’ve no problem with pragmatic compromise to get a result, and if they honestly can get the bastards to move faster and further by chumming up to them, then great, I’ll sit here and whinge to my few hundred readers while they change the world, but right now, it’s looking like they’ve got too close and can’t tell it like it is.

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Last Night's gig.

So last night was the gig with Theo Travis and Orphy Robinson at The new Vortex in Dalston.

The old Vortex, in Stoke Newington was a vital element in London’s Jazz-life. Along with the 606 and The Bull’s Head, it was one of the few places where you could regularly get to see the best of London’s jazzers playing in a small club for not much money.

So when it close about 18 months ago, it was a bit of a loss. There was talk for a while of it opening up in Hackney’s ill-fated Ocean venue, but then that went belly-up, and it looked like the Vortex was no more.

So it’s great to have it back, just off the A10 in Dalston. Very easy to get to, nice room, all back how it should be.

The fun thing about this gig was that it was the first time that Orphy and Theo had met, let alone played together. I’ve played with both before, obviously, so I was the link.

I set up with a mic on Orphy’s vibes so I could loop him, though had to be judicious so as not to loop Theo too (Theo’s loop-ideas are so incredibly well formed, that bits of his flute and sax cropping up in my loops is not really desireable).

Anyway, the gig went superbly well – we played a bunch of tunes from Open Spaces, and a load of improvs, with Orphy playing vibes and piano (I’m still not sure how well piano works with the thickness of sound that Theo and I get – I remember spoiling a duo gig with Jez at Greenbelt one year by putting far to many layers down and not really finding that gorgeous sparseness that is there on Conversations)

The audience was tiny, as per lots of midweek gigs at the Vortex, but David, the owner, loved it and wants us back for a weekend gig.

The only downer was that I was feeling steadily iller and iller as the evening went on (and not in the Beastie Boys send of the word ‘ill’ either)… I’m still not sure if I’ve beaten this cold or the worst is yet to come. We’ll see.

Anyway, it’s great to see The Vortex back happening again – check out the programme here.

Soundtrack – Tim Berne live at the QEH

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