Tag: greenbelt

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Dudley Philips at the Vortex last night

Yesterday day time was spent finishing off the mastering of Julie McKee’s live album from the Edinburgh Festival. Julie’s a fabulous singer – we’ve been working on some duet ideas between doing the mastering, the latest of which is to do the entire soundtrack to ‘Bugsy Malone’…! the mastering went pretty well, considering the source material. Sadly, the guy who recorded it didn’t send the multitrack sessions, just his own mixdown, so we were limited in terms of what we could do, but some compression, stereo expansion, judicious reverb and the tidying up of the bits where the recording had clipped have made it just fine. We compared it to a few other live recordings, from Donny Hathaway’s live album to my first album, and it stands up well, despite the odd pop ‘n’ crackle. Anyway, isn’t that what live albums are all about? There’s squealing feedback in the middle of Bob Marley’s live version of ‘No Woman No Cry’ and that was released as single!

Anyway, that was the daytime. Yesterday evening involved a trip down to The New Vortex in Stoke Newington to see Dudley Philips launch his album Life Without Trousers. I’ve had a copy of the album for a few weeks, and am loving it, so was excited to go and see the gig. The place was pleasingly full, lots of musicians in – Julie McKee, Orphy Robinson, Filomena Campus, John Parricelli and others, as well as friends of Dudley’s there to celebrate the album coming out.

The gig was marvellous – Nic France, Mark Lockheart and Carl Orr were the band, along with Dudley on 4/6 string electric and upright bass. great tunes, great playing, all in all a fab night out. The Vortex is such a great venue, and a vital part of the london jazz scene. I’ll be back down there next Thursday to see the Works – Patrick Wood’s band who played such a spellbinding set at Greenbelt in the summer. Please come down if you can! While you’re at it, check out the rest of the programme for December on the Vortex website, they’ve got so much great stuff on!

I also picked up a new CD while I was there, which was playing before the gig – it’s a collection of hymns sung in welsh, by LLeuwen Steffan, Huw Warren and Mark Lockheart. A truly beautiful album, on the oh-so-cool Babel Label – Babel are putting out so many great albums of late, go and check out their website and have a browse around. Marvellous stuff!

Soundtrack – Steffan/Warren/Lockheart, ‘God Only Knows’.

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When blogging changes your world.

I read loads of blogs.

From the blogs I read, I discover other blogs.

Some of them are just silly and hilarious (like this one, sent to me via BDB’s blog).

Others show the world-changing potential of blogs. Not ‘world-changing’ in the sense of ending the conflict in the middle east, or convincing the world to stop ignoring the hurricane devastation in central america, but world-changing in the sense that you see the world differently after reading them. They remind of what the world is really like, both good and bad, and take you out of your own concerns into a world where things are very different.

One such blog is All About Ali – the story of a woman’s battle with stomach cancer. This one I picked up from Pip Wilson’s blog – Pip has a fantastically benign form of tourettes, which makes him reiterate how lovely the world is on an almost hourly basis. He posts lots of pictures of lovely people, and the occasional inspirational link. And if you ever need to be told that you’re lovely and valued and special and a ‘beautiful human person’, Pip’s blog is the place to go.

Anyway, All About Ali is a deeply deeply moving blog. I recognise Ali and her hubby from Greenbelt. I’m sure I’ve spoken to her hubby on more than one occasion. We’ve certainly got quite a few fairly close friends in common. The blog is a beautiful and heartbreaking read, but gives you much faith in people. Have a read, and say a prayer for her. If the power of positive thinking, prayer, great friends and regular glasses of champagne count for anything, she’ll beat it no problem.

And now I really ought to do some work, having spent the last hour and a half reading blogs!

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Rehearsal fun

So Rise Kagona and Doug Veitch are here, and we’ve had two rehearsals – last night was just the three of us, two guitars and bass, running through the songs for tomorrow night, and then today Jez joined us to put the keyboard parts in place. Playing this stuff is just so much fun – it’s a challenge to get the African feel right, and to try and ‘think African’, feeling the songs rather than analysing what’s going on, but I’m definitely feeling more inside these songs that I did with Duncan’s stuff at Greenbelt – I think it’s just having spent the last couple of months listening to African stuff more than anything else has got me into the right head-space.

There are a few of the lines that I’d got slightly wrong from the CDs, so we’ve been correcting the parts, and I’m pleased with how quickly I’ve got a hang of that stuff. It’s been a lot of work and it appears to have paid off. You’ll have to come tomorrow night to see if it worked!

Gig details again, in case you’ve missed them up until now –

Venue – Darbucka World Music Bar, 182 St John’s Street, Clerkenwell, London EC1 – nearest tube, Farringdon.
Date – Thursday Oct 13th
Time – doors 7.30, first band on 8pm.
Bill – Rise Kagona and band, Steve Lawson and Calamateur

Be there!

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Top comedy gig…

TSP and I are determined to make up for the fact that we missed all the great comedy stuff at the Edinburgh Festival that we really wanted to see.

So last night we went to The Banana Cabaret at The Bedford in Balham. We knew it was a nice venue from going to the new Kashmir Klub there fairly regularly.

The headliners last night were Milton Jones and Gina Yashere – obviously a v. popular choice judging by the ‘standing room only’ situation by the time we arrived. It was also extremely smokey and we were reconsidering our decision… until the first act came on, John Fothergill – a regular on the London comedy club scene (apparently – I’ve never been to a comedy club before, only comedy gigs in theatres), and a very funny man.

Then came some poor bloke who pretty much died on his arse – given that I’ve only gone to Comedy in theatres before now, the standard of live comedy I’ve seen has been very high – people like Eddie Izzard, Lee Evans, Ross Noble, Rhona Cameron, Barry Cryer etc… hang on, I have been to a comedy club before – Club Senseless in Crouch End, but their booking policy is so choosy there’s never going to be any rubbish there either (I’ve seen Rich Hall and Rob Deering there – both top pros).. so, that doesn’t really count. Where was I? Ah yes, poor bloke dying on stage – it’s not that he was dreadful, he just wasn’t very funny. Which just goes to confirm my response to anyone who ever says ‘you should do stand-up’ after one of my gigs. No I shouldn’t. If I’m not funny, but vaguely friendly and endearing on my gigs, I can still win. People will like me, enjoy the music, and smile a bit, and that’s a success. If you’re not very funny but just come across as a nice bloke at a comedy gig, YOU’RE RUBBISH! there’s no halfway measure. No-one can say ‘shut up and player yer guitar’. They just get impatient for the next act.

So I’ll stick with making people laugh between songs – that way I still have my proper skill to fall back on, something I’ve spent decades honing, rather than a half-arsed haphazard approach to comedy, which just sort of happened and is really helpful for getting reviews on the Edinburgh Fringe, but isn’t really what I do for a living…

Anyway, the headliners were, as expected, fantastic. Very very funny. I’ve seen Milton Jones live loads of times – at Greenbelt, and a few other comedy gigs around, but he never fails to make me fall about laughing. An exceedingly skillful comedian. Gina is someone that TSP and I have enjoyed on TV for years, and is equally if not more funny on stage. Great observational stuff, very endearing personality and some top absurd stories.

All in all a great night out, despite having spent £12 to stand up. Next Time we’ll get there earlier.

Soundtrack – Erin McKeown, ‘Grand’.

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Gay Marriage in the news again

The gay marriage debate has come up again in the US, this time with California’s rubbish governor vetoing a bill allowing same sex marriage.

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating – there’s nothing ‘moral’ or religious about the need to allowing the registering of same sex relationships. Whether you call it marriage or not is moot – it certainly doesn’t have any effect on ‘straight’ marriages to call a permanent stable faithful committed same-sex relationship a marriage, but if they want a new name, that’s cool. The issue is one of supporting people’s right to self-determination under the law in terms of their lives, the power of attorney, legacies and decisions relating to property, illness and death. Beyond all the emotional nonsense talked about protecting the sanctity of marriage, here we have a very simple choice to do with protecting the equal right of a gay person to decide who is their life partner, and who they want to be linked to, legally.

As Peter Tatchell pointed out when he spoke at Greenbelt a couple of years ago, it’s an issue that goes deeper than just gay relationships – there should be a way for people who have spent their lives together in non-sexual relationships to have that recognised under law.

And Arnie’s dropped the ball. He says that it being a constitutional issue means that legislating on it now just makes it less clear, but I reckon it would have given a great push to the equal rights side of the argument for California to have brought it into law.

Meanwhile, the worldwide Anglican communion is still threatening to split over the same issue – the Nigerian church are threatening again to cut themselves off from Anglicans in the UK “if it followed the lead of the U.S. Episcopal Church by accepting a gay bishop or otherwise condoning homosexuality.”

While this is clearly more of a theological issue than the legal decisions being made in the US courts, it’s still pretty tragic that an entire country is going to cut itself off from another one within the Anglican church over the issue of ‘condoning homosexuality’. Especially given that for for the most part within the African church, there’s been very little theological discussion simply because a very simplistic reading of the Bible supports their ‘ewww that’s disgusting’ view of gay sex. It’s driven by the yuck factor rather than any serious theological searching.

I know some very intelligent, committed, wise and scholarly people on both sides of this discussion in England. At the moment none are threatening to leave the church. There are a few slightly mad right wing groups in the UK threatening to quit, but perhaps not surprisingly, I don’t know them personally.

I’m personally in favour of ordaining people who are called to the priesthood whatever their sexual orientation – the prurience of inquiring into the specifics of what people do with their chosen life partners seems absurd to me – it’s not as if straight married clergy get given a list of sexual sins laid out in Leviticus to tick off which ones they’ve done. I wonder how many vicars have ever been asked about bestiality, incest or whether they’ve ever had sex during their wife’s period in their time at vicar-hogwarts? So even if gay sex is viewed as a sin, there’s still a crap double-standard at work that says straight people can self-regulate and act according to conscience, but gay clergy have to be subject to moral policing. That’s clearly rubbish.

However, I also recognise that as a club with it’s own set of rules, the Anglican church does need to establish what those rules are, and allow people who don’t agree to them to either leave in good grace, or agree to abide by them for the good of the whole. I just hope that the church manages to find a way to accommodate the different ways of seeing things, and that everyone concerned learns something through it – that those on the more liberal wing see that the conservatives are (nutters notwithstanding) just doing what they see as right in the sight of God, and that the more conservative members realise that their more liberal brethren (nutters notwithstanding) aren’t on a quest to undermine the moral fabric of the church and society, but are genuinely seeking to apply their understanding of Biblical principles in the modern world.

FWIW, I’ve met some fantastic gay ministers, and some really shit straight ones – in neither case did their sexual orientation seem to play any part in their shitness as clergy-peoples.

Soundtrack, Duke Ellington, ‘The Classic Tracks of The 1940s’ (I’ve just written a last.fm journal entry about this stuff here.)

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You wait for a gig, then two come along at once…

Orphy phones. The gig on the 24th in Chelsea needs to be moved. Fine, when to. Oct 13th. Shit. What? I was going to book you for a gig on that day too.

We chat about whether or not we can do both gigs. Doesn’t look likely – it would involved far too late a start at Darbucka. And, if Orphy can’t move the other gig, it means I need to find another percussionist for Rise’s set at the |John Peel Day gig. Fortunately, London is awash with marvellous musicians, and I should be able to find someone suitably marvellous. Or, hopefully, the Chelsea gig will be moved again.

I’m really looking forward to the gig on the 13th, whoever the percussionist may be – Calamateur is fabulous – I’ve known Andrew (AKA Calamateur) for many many years, and we gigged together last summer. He’s a great songwriter, John Peel was a fan, and his album, ‘The Old Fox of ’45’ was recently voted one of the top 15 greatest Scottish albums of all time!

Rise, as founder, guitarist and latterly lead singer with the Bhundu Boys, is an African music legend – the Bhundu Boys were the first African band I was ever properly aware of, thanks to airplay on John Peel and Andy Kershaw‘s radio shows in the mid-80s.

Rise’s band for that gig will be him and his rhythm guitarist from scotland, Champion Doug Veitch (they recently did a session together for Andy Kershaw’s Radio 3 show), me on bass, the TBA percussionist, and Jez on keys – there was a marvellous moment at Greenbelt when Duncan Senyatso first heard Jez play piano. His eyes went wide and he said ‘wow’ lots of times, and asked me who he was. When I told him that Jez had grown up in East Africa he said ‘ahh, this is how we play piano’ – his delight was at having recognised the ‘African-ness’ of Jez’s playing, even in his jazz stuff. Guess you can take the boy out of East Africa, but you can’t squeeze East Africa out of his piano playing…

I’m not sure which set I’m going to do that night – whether to see if Andrea Hazell is free, and do the Greenbelt ‘Global Footprint’ improv thingie again, with Rise playing Duncan’s role, or to do my Edinburgh set (not having played that exact set in London, or done the audience participation bit), or to do a bit of both – shorter collaborative improv piece, and some solo tunes… hmmm, we’ll see. WWJPP? What Would John Peel Play?

Soundtrack – Rise Kagona (all the tracks that we might be playing on the gig).

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Back so soon?

So I’m back in Edinburgh, and it hardly feels like I’ve been away! Back with the lovely Rev G and Jane. Bizarrely, having stayed here for over two weeks in august, tonight was the first time I’ve actually had a meal here with G and J!! the madness of the festival meant that TSP and I were eating out each evening, and though we took the lovely G and J out to Henderson’s, we didn’t get to have a meal in with them at all. How nuts is that?

Anyway, I’m back to buy the Rev G’s car off him – after me slightly facetiously blogging about my car needs, I get an MSN message from everyone’s favourite sweary clergyman saying that they are getting rid of their cars and getting a new one, and did I want the old one? Much haggling ensued, with TSP and I wanting to pay more than G and J wanted to receive for the car (ah, trying to out-nice eachother is such a fun problem to have), but we settled on a figure, and I’m here to pick it up.

i’m also getting to meet up with Duncan and Rise from the Greenbelt gig while i’m here, to catch up and hopefully talk about some gig opportunities – all being well, I’ll have Rise playing in London for John Peel Day on October the 13th (you heard it here first, peoples!) I’ll confirm that on Thursday!

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Hey, moron, what took you so long??

I guess it had to happen eventually, Right wing ‘christian’ extremists blame the Hurricane on New Orleans’ party people – apparently New Orleans is the worst place in the world right now for sin, as they allow Gay Pride parades and Mardi Gras celebrations. As a result, according to the dickheads at ‘repent america’, God has punished them with the Hurricane.

Interesting that there’s no mention of global warming in their report, nor have they chastised God for punishing the poor and ignoring the manifold sins of the rich and powerful. No, because as we all know, on the Sin-hit-parade, being Gay is far worse than robbing the poor to fund your classic car collection. So long as it’s ‘legal’, it’s fine for the wealthy to keep twisting international trade laws to destroy the lives of the poor. All the world’s problems can be blamed on gay people. Thanks for making it so simple.

This reminds me of a very wise quote from a friend of mine about George Bush – ‘the problem with Bush isn’t that he’s a conservative evangelical Christian, it’s that he isn’t conservative evangelical enough’ – the culture of conservative evangelicalism in the US have utterly dispensed with their supposed respect for The Bible as the authority in deciding what’s right and wrong. The entire Biblical narrative follows the story of God holding leaders to account for their mistreatment of the poor. All the way through, ‘disobedience’ is as much about justice, about failing the poor and the marginalised as it is about personal piety.

And what about Grace? At what point will these so-called christians get down of their soap-box and acknowledge that the Christian story is one of God’s grace towards the entire created order. We fail, we get it wrong, and we look to God and she says ‘don’t do it again’.

I have two conflicting responses that immediately spring to mind – the first is to disown myself from anything labeled as ‘christian’, in the hope that I’m never going to be tagged as anything to do with these psycotic fuckwits pretending to speak on behalf of God. The other is to put more energy into reclaiming the concept of ‘christianity’ from the madmen… I guess this post falls into the latter category, but tomorrow I’ll be back to calling myself a messianic taoist and disowning the fascists… :o)

Soundtrack – The Rough Guide To Franco (After playing with Duncan and Rise at Greenbelt, I’m going to be hitting the African CDs pretty hard, trying to get myself comfortable with all these marvellous rhythms!)

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Ah, 'proper' jazz.

Just in from a fine gig (getting sprayed with hot water in the car notwithstanding)

When I saw Jason Yarde at Greenbelt, he mentioned that he was playing at the Progress Bar in Tufnell Park tonight, so I thought I’d head down.

For some reason I thought Jason did some heavy electronics with his sax (dunno what lead to that assumption, but still). In fact, tonight’s was an almost entirely unamplified gig – only a little bit of reinforcement from a GK amp for the bassist. Drums and sax were both unmiked.

I’ve always has an affinity for trios, especially chordal-instrument-less trios, so Jason’s sax/bass/drums line-up had me hooked from the start. Stylistically, it was pretty free – tending to hover around a particular root, but not modally. Jason’s armoury of techniques on Alto and Soprano sax is pretty incredible, exploring lots of skronks and squawks and percussive noises as well as more note-based improv stuff.

Just before I left, Denis Baptiste joined for a tune, and played just about the free-est stuff I’ve ever heard from him too – full-on New Thing At Newport squealing for part of it. Fab stuff indeed!

Then had to leave, as I had a bin bag full of damp washing in the back of a broken car and really needed to get home.

But if you get a chance to hear Jason play, jump at it, he’s amazing.

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Me in a magazine.

Here you go, there’s an interview with me in the new issue of Bassics magazine – and on the CD there’s a track (shizzle) and a bit of video with me explaining looping and performing a tune (can’t remember what the tune is, maybe Grace and Gratitude). Filming the video was lots of fun – The Cheat acted as video monkey, and did a fine job. I recorded the audio to Minidisc and then chopped up the different video angles to fit the soundtrack. The only problem is that we did it at St Luke’s hoping to be able to use one of the groovy burgandy curtains as a backdrop, but they were installing a new PA in the main bit of the church, so we were through in the back hall, with a yellow brick background that makes it look like I’m in prison… niiice.

Soundtrack – Mo Foster, ‘live’ (an advanced copy of an upcoming album by Mo – as with everything Mo does, it’s lovely, and of course I’ll report here when it’s released); Cathy Burton, ‘Speed Your Love’ (Cath was singing BVs at Greenbelt for Ricky Ross, and her album is lovely); Julie Lee, ‘Stillhouse Road’ (a fantastic record that I never get tired of hearing).

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