Tag: iona

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Wrong things on-line.

You know when you see a link to something, and just know it’s going to be horrible, but can’t help but look. So it is with Siegfried And Roy’s website – oh yes, the bright orange, mullet-haired, tiger-taming millionaire oompa loompas have a website as cheesey as the act.

Bizarrely I can’t find any mention of the incident that ended their show – Roy being half eaten by a Tiger (‘It was trying to save me after I fainted’ says the implausable talking tangerine).

Anyway, their site contains a load of horseshit about their psuedo-conservation plans for the white tiger, which contains this marvellous give-away line –

“For more than 20 years, we have been entrusted with the care and preservation of the Royal White Tigers. There are now 200 of these precious creatures roaming the earth, 38 with us in Las Vegas.”

Right, so at least 38 of them are in their natural environment of casinos, strip clubs and wedding chapels. I hear that the first white tigers were in fact the off-spring of a normal tiger and an Elvis impersonator in a white jumpsuit… Why anyone who cared about animals would keep 38 endangered tigers in Vegas is beyond comprehension. And why anyone believes that shit is equally unfathomable.

Everything that’s wrong about everything is summed up in the words ‘Siegfried And Roy’.

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Couple of photos from the National Theatre gig

here’s a couple of piccies from the NT Foyer gig on Tuesday with Theo –

Yesterday was spent recording with Cleveland Watkiss again – more lovely layered improv stuff and a gorgeous version of ‘Black Hole Sun’ by Soundgarden. It’s shaping up to be a very creative and productive duo, so we’re going to be setting aside a week or so soon to really get stuck into it and see just how good it can be! It’s all rather exciting!

Soundtrack – John Patitucci, ‘Now’.

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Right now, I should be at a Jonatha gig…

So the plan for this evening was to do my gig at the National Theatre, come home, drop off my stuff and shoot down to the Borderline to catch Jonatha Brooke’s gig there.

The gig at the NT went very well – lots of friendly faces in the audience, some very fine improvs in the set, and nice versions of all the album tunes too. We finished at 7.20, then chatted to people in the audience for about another 20mins/half an hour (this is where I could have saved time, but would have been very rude to all the lovely people who came to the gig to run off), then go and get the car from the carpark, load up, drop Theo at home, head back up here and unload.

The small person had rung The Borderline to find out what time Jonatha is on stage, and they said she goes on at 9.15, will be off by 10.30 – I was expecting it to go on til 11. So I’m not ready to go out til 9, ergo, no gig for us this evening.

Bugger.

This is Jonatha’s first ever gig with a band in the UK, as far as I’m aware (I don’t think she brought a band with her when she played here in 95…) and certainly the only chance we’ll have to see her with band for a while (unless it’s a storming success and she comes back!)

I’ve got a whole load of texts on my phone from people who are there asking if I’m going…

Ah well, at least our gig went well…

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So, I'm number one in the charts!

Sadly not some kind of national sales chart, but an airplay chart for a show on WWSP in Steven’s Point, WI, hosted by BEAR – BEAR has been very supportive of my music for a long time, playing loads of it on his show over the years. Sadly you can’t stream it on line (at least, I’ve never found a stream), but it’s great to know he’s playing it!

Thanks, BEAR!

Soundtrack – Pat Metheny, ‘Bright Size Life’; Julie Lee, ‘Stillhouse Road’; Ethel, ‘Ethel’.

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Be like them, they're sexy

So PETA – People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals – are running a vote thing on their website at the moment to find The world’s sexiest vegetarian – yes, you can vote for some irrelavent celeb or other who wisely doesn’t eat dead animal things, proclaiming their sexiness…

What Total Bollocks. Why? Why trivialise the animal rights movement by stooping to Heat mag level nonsense. Who gives a shit about the sexiness of vegetarian celebs? I can’t even begin to list the ways in which this is SO WRONG!!

I’m sure if you asked PETA, they’d say that it’s just another way to highlight the number of people across the world who are veggies, and how it’s not a fringe weirdo thing, but even celebs are veggies. Fair enough, but FFS, world’s sexiest vegetarian??? – going veggie is good for your health, it’s a compassionate thing to do, it’s good for the planet and the people who live on that planet as well as the animals who aren’t getting killed to be eaten, but it has precisely jack-shit to do with whether someone is sexy or not. I could list a couple of hundred very sexy meat eating omnivore humans here, I’m sure there are sexy people who are murderers and psychos. So what? Ugly vegetarians are still vegetarians, they aren’t lesser veggies than the sexy ones.

I’m very pro animal rights, I support animal rescue shelters and Animal Aid and suggest that everyone go Veggie, but not because Bryan Adams, Avril Lavigne and Weird Al Yankovic are!!!!! Sweet Jesus, this stuff annoys me!

(thanks to The Cheat for the link)

Soundtrack – The Smiths, ‘The Queen Is Dead’; Kenny Young And The Eggplants, ‘The Search For EggPlantis’.

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terms to ease the conscience…

Just been reading a blog entry by the lovely gareth, in which he refers to ‘winning’ an ebay auction. Ebay themselves use the term on the page after the auction – ‘you’ve won!’ it proudly displays.

So, would someone tell me in what sense being willing to pay more than anyone else for a certain item is winning? Surely it’s just shopping? Does anyone do a victory lap round Sainsbury’s after laying out £100 on a week’s groceries? ‘yay, I won some fantastic organic food!!!’

Ebay is chance-inflected-shopping in the same way that the stock market is Ladbrooks for people in suits. ‘Investing’ in the stock market is just like having a flutter on the horses, only you have to buy the FT to follow the form instead of the Racing Post. Either way you’re throwing money at anything based on its ability to make you more money, not out of any kind of support for the enterprise involved, or any sort of sporting allegiance to the jockey or horse…

I was listening to a radio phone in on stock trading on BBC London yesterday, and at no point did anyone raise any kind of moral or ethical questions about the idea of investing in financial success without any concern for what the company actually does. When Chris Martin declared that ‘share holders are the great evil’ last week in the debate about how The new Coldplay album’s delay had dented the EMI share price, it was the first time I’d heard any kind of critique of the system on the news for years. Anyone questioning the rationale of the free market ideologues (FMIs) is painted as a mad commie (rather a commie than a FMI any day), and their critique dismissed as anti-progress or out of step with the times. Does anyone really think that a situation where any PLC is required by law to maximise the investment of it’s shareholders is a good thing?? This means that if a company wants to switch to using all recycled stationary in their offices, which would cost a bit more, they’d have to ballot their share-holders to be able to make the switch, and could be blocked, rather than being able to make ethical decisions in the work place. If they offer out to tender the production of a particular product and a ‘legal’ factory in the far east offers to make the stuff for less with worse workers rights and no unionisation, they are legally bound to go with the lower offer, again unless they ballot the shareholders.

So what can we do? I know various people who have with varying degrees of effectiveness bought stock in order to have a voice at AGMs. Turned up, highlighted particular human rights or environmental abuses and been able to change company policy (Tony Campolo, professor of Sociology at a Uni in Philadelphia, has written about this, but I’m not sure which book it was in…) That’s one way.

Or we can just support co-operatives, small businesses, family run shops, cottage industries, solo bassists… how did that last one creep in there????

If you haven’t done so yet, PLEASE read No Logo by Naomi Klein – a fantastic look at how all this stuff relates to branding in big companies. Beautifully written and very compelling.

How did I end up here, after starting a post to take the piss out of Gareth and his ‘winning’ on Ebay??

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Too many white acts at Live 8?

A lot of news sources today have been reporting the accusation that the Live 8 bill for the UK gig is almost exclusively white – with Mariah Carey being the only person with any non-white genes on the stage (Maria is mixed race).

The response from the organisers was to first say that “Bob Geldof approached a number of urban and black artists to participate.” – that’s fair enough.

They went on to say “We look upon Live 8 as one global concert. A number of urban acts in the UK are hugely talented but they are not well known in Paris or Rome.”…

right, let’s have a look at some of the artists playing in the other venues –

Eiffel Tower, Paris includes Yannick Noah, Calo Gero, Kyo, Axelle Red, Johnny Halliday, Renaud – I’ve heard of Johnny Halliday, but there’s no way he can be described as international. He’s huge in France and unknown elsewhere. And he’s shit.

Circus Maximus, Rome includes Irene Grandi, Jovanotti, Nek, Laura Pausini, Vasco Rossi, Zucchero – clearly all big stars in Italy, but international???

So, drop the patronising crap about ‘UK Urban artists’ and represent. There are loads of people that could do it. If they want to reach out to everyone, why not book AR Rahman or Ashe Bhosle, and make the Indian community feel like they are a part of this (and expose the hopeless Sting and Elton John fans to something worth listening to). There are loads of people they could get in there.

I’m really into the idea of the gig, I love the fact that it’s about raising awareness not money, and that it’s going to get millions and millions of people thinking about issues of trade law reform and debt relief instead of just aid, but they’ve got to realise that there are more than enough white rock dinosaurs on the bill, and it needs to be a day for recogising not only Africa’s needs, but Africa’s strength and culture – so get some great African artists on the London show, and ditch one of the 80s losers.

Soundtrack – Jason Feddy, ‘Is This Thing On?’.

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The end of civilization as we know it?

So I’m sat here, having a conversation with myself about why Kris Delmhorst isn’t a superstar – I’m listening to her album, ‘Songs For A Hurricane’, loving it, and trying to imagine why she isn’t the biggest thing in the singer/songwriter world. So, this is going on in my head, and I flick over to the BBC entertainment newsfeed in Thunderbird, and see that the new UK #1 single is the Crazy Frog ringtone. What the hell is going on with the world? A ringtone at the top of the singles chart??? The singles chart has been largely irrelavent for many a year, but this is pretty much the nadir of its descent into a Dante-esque new level of hell.

For starters, who the hell is buying it? OK, I know, it’s lil’ kids, downloading it, not thinking about the cost etc. etc. It’s still a nightmare. The charts have always been subject to the occasional hijack by things that have nothing to do with its normal constiuency – like every time Cliff has a hit, or when Robson and Jerome suddenly became one of the biggest selling acts of the decade with a couple of shitty karaoke versions of great songs just cos old ladies in their millions dashed out to buy their lame band-in-a-box-plus-drunk-pub-singer drivel.

But, ringtones?????????.

I now know why Kris isn’t a huge star, and I’m far less bothered by it than I was 10 minutes ago. I’ve not paid any attention to the singles chart for a decade, and I guess no-one else is really.

Chart-wise, the audioscrobbler charts are a much more interesting indication of what people are actually listening to, given that they log actual plays of actual songs on real people’s computers. So it’s a geek-chart, but a real chart nonetheless.

But the lesson is surely to give up listening to charts and mainstream radio for music suggestions, and go on recommendations and networks, and random links and of course, solo bassists.

Soundtrack – Kris Delmhorst, ‘Songs For A Hurricane’.

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Two days with Sarda and Kari

Not having seen Sarda and Kari since the day after their wedding last October, in Grand Rapids, it was a real treat to get to see them two days running this weekend. Friday night we met up at the commuter jazz at the RFH, and from there walked to Brick Lane to meet The Cheat and The Producer Formerly Known As Showbiz Jude for a curry. Much fun was had, especially with The Cheat surruptitiously turning off the TVs in the restaurant with his new toy – a remote control that will turn off just about any brand of TV in the world!

Saturday was S and K’s official big party, at Sarda’s parents’ place in Tunbridge Wells. Again, much fun, especially discovering that James is in fact the son Ned Flanders, or at least was til his dad went grey and shaved off his moustache! A startling likeness.

The most obvious thing from the visit is just how uninterrupted my friendship with Sarda has been by him moving overseas – we chat just as often now as we did before on MSN or AIM, so it’s not like some big emotional reunion, just a chance to talk face to face instead of typing or the occasional video conference.

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"Unbelievable. Incredible. Brilliant. The whole country is very proud of you."

In a message to the Liverpool Football Team, after they won the European Champions League thing last night, Tony Blair said: “Unbelievable. Incredible. Brilliant. The whole country is very proud of you.”

Sorry, Tony, I’m not. I couldn’t give a shit. I don’t care.

I’m told it was very tense – very tense if you care about a field full of millionaires kicking a ball around to make money for the club shareholders… …or, according to Jude if you care ‘about a kid who grew up in merseyside and went on to be captain of the club he supported as a boy… and wins the european cup’ – clearly I don’t. That’s very nice for him, but it registers pretty low on the giveashitometer.

I think I was just all footballed out as a kid – my dad worked for Wimbledon at the time when they were starting their rise from non-league to First Division (in those pre-premiership days) in 8 seasons (the previous quickest was something like 32 years). I went to home games, away games, youth team games, training sessions, supporters club parties etc. etc. etc. It was quite fun when I was little. I even ended up pictured in a book about football, in my mascot outfit at the age of five –

but by my mid teens I was sick of it, bored with blokes kicking a ball around, and increasingly distrustful of any unisex activity – too much testosterone involved! And I discovered music, where there are no winners and losers, just people playing what they want to play. Ahhh, that’s more like it.

Now that pro football is all about shareholders and millionaires, date-rape scandals, failed drugs tests and club takeovers by shady billionaires, it has even less appeal. Even if I enjoyed the game, I think I’d rather go out and support my local pub team.

But I’d still rather go to a gig.

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