Tag: mp3s

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NYC gig

So last night was my first ever New York gig, at Mo Pitkins – a fabulous lil’ venue in Manhattan. When I got to the venue (with Sue, Nigel and Lobelia), Chris McIntosh (AKA Grandfather Rock, radio DJ and tireless advocate for great music) and Kathryn (LA buddy, now in Pennsylvania) were already at the venue. Soon followed by more delightful and exceedingly lovely people – Janek, Chris Tarry, Suse, Susan Enan, Jeff Taylor, Amy Kohn, Laura from the Fringe, and a handful of other marvellous people.

I was still slightly jetlagged (my set didn’t start til 11.15pm), so the chat between songs was loose and at times probably total bollocks (what’s new there, eh?) but all seemed to go down well The Absolute highlight of the gig for me was doing three tunes with Lobelia – we did Black Hole Sun (in the arrangement that I did with both Cleveland Watkiss and Julie McKee) and then two amazing songs of her’s. She sang like an angel, and wowed our tiny but v. attentive audience. Much more where that came from, fo’ sho’.

The solo bit of the gig went – Behind Every Word, MMFSOG (with extended talky intro and stop in the middle to explain loopage), Scott Peck, Amo Amatis Amare… I’m sure there were others – did I really only do 5 tunes plus the vocal stuff? I certainly finished with Deeper Still… wow, maybe I did – I was talking a lot, that’s for sure….

Anyway, the people there seemed to love it, and it was great to catch up with so many great friends and musicians and to christen a new duo project in such a creatively successful way. I’ll post an MP3 as soon as I can…

So now, onto wandering around Manhattan, meeting lovely people, late night’s talking, late mornings lying in and generally having a fantastic time, before heading out to California for the madness that is NAMM. See you there!

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Christmas tunes that won't make you want to puke…

Christmas albums are, for the most part, shit. It’s a fact, and it’s a testimony to the amount of romantic slushy good-will in the air that people releasing them aren’t marched through the streets, tarred, feathered and dumped in a municipal waste disposal skip.

Every now and again, a genius christmas record happens. Fairytale Of New York, for example – possibly the greatest christmas record of all time. Another contender for that title is ‘River’ by Joni Mitchell, also a front-runner in the ‘most miserable christmas song of all time’, it’s a really really beautiful song, and one of the few JM songs that don’t sound really daft when someone else has a go at them.

As indeed James Taylor has! Yay – click here to download his version of River – I might have to get the rest of his Christmas record – if anyone can do unashamed sentimentality without it being mawkish, it’s JT.

Failing that, I’ll do what I’ve done for about the last 10 christmases and let Bruce Cockburn’s ‘Christmas’ album be my only Christmas CD, along with an MP3 of ‘Fairytale…’ – if you can get it, the greatest ever performance of a Christmas song is the version of ‘Cry Of A Tiny Babe’ by Bruce Cockburn, recorded live on the Columbia Radio Hour, with Roseanne Cash and Lou Reed guesting. Lou completely ignores the tune, the meter, everything, and Bruce nearly pisses himself laughing, but holds it together to sing. It’s magique! Yes, Paul, it’s even better than that Wombles christmas record you posted on the forum. It’s that good ;o)

I used to own the GRP christmas album, but you can refer to my first sentence on this blog for my opinion on that one…

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My ringtone rendered as video…

OK, this one is objectively verifiably one of the greatest pop songs of all time. If you disagree, well, you’re just wrong and I pity you. It’s also my ringtone on my phone (the MP3 not some crappily rendered midi-file of it. So if you’re ever on a bus somewhere and hear this playing tinnily behind you, it’s me taking a call, OK?

Sit back, enjoy, then go and write some songs this good…

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Euroblog #6

Euroblog 6,

OK all you travel-monkeys, I think I’ve found the world’s shittiest hotel. certainly it’s the world’s shittiest 3 star hotel (where the hell did it earn these stars? working in McDonalds?????) Hotel San Marco, just opposite Milan Central Station. Wow. The room is tiny (like the box room in your house, or if you’ve got a big house, the walk-in wardrobe), the view is of… a fire escape. Oh yes. the lighting insufficienct, the decor nasty. It’s not that dissimilar to a visit to Linda’s in Ambleside (B+B for about £16 a night, mangey dog thrown in for free, veggie breakfast is the meat breakfast with the sausage and bacon taken off the plate…) Talking of which, breakfast here is pretty hilarious too, served by Mrs Overall. One poor overworked old lady who speaks nothing but fast Italian trying to deal with requests from picky English bassists with crap Italian for decaf coffee.

Anyway, Thursday, travelled back from Venice, after a fun day with Daniel and Enrico (my Venice hosts, and the hardest working PA-by-boat team I’ve ever come across), back to LucaLand (one day, that’ll be an experimental guitar theme park). Dinner at Cascina Capuzza (without doubt my favourite restaurant in the world – every time I’m there, the veggie option is some new concoction I’d never have even thought of, and it’s always incredible. And then back to mixing/editing the last track. The potential CD is sounding pretty exciting, but it is all being played over Luca’s Genelec 1032 monitors, and recordings of old blokes with bronchial problems wheezing and spluttering would sound great through those, so the rough mixes are transferred to CD and DVD, and I then convert the CD to MP3 and copy it across to my phone for extensive listening on the train.

Friday starts with programming the new Looperlative – after the problems with my prototype, Bob sent me a production model from the States, so I need to copy all the settings into it for the foot controllers and groups etc. doesn’t take long. Lunch back at Cascina Capuzza, a vain attempt to dry the clothes I washed the night before by ironing them, and it’s back to the train station to Milan.

Now, I was supposed to be finishing up an interview for InSound magazine in Milan, but thanks to a family crisis, the journo can’t make it, which means I’m free to meet up for a drink with one of the Italian bassists I didn’t get to see in Verona, Antonella Mazza. She’s a fantastic double bassist, session player, jazzer – and we meet for a drink and a bite to eat in a bar next to the Blue Note (jazz-by-proxy). A most enjoyable chat ensues, and her hubby gives me a lift back to hotel-di-shite.

So now, I’m staring down the wrong end of 12.5 hours on a train to Amsterdam. 4 changes, with all my bags, but an evening with John Lester at the end of it to spur me on. All this getting to hang out with lovely groovy music people all over the continent is pretty fantastic, it must be said.

[update] – on the train now, having just written the press release for the Recycle Collective first anniversary (I’ll post the details ASAP, but it’s on Nov 15th, so put it in your diary now!), half an hour gone, 12 hours to go… anyone know any good jokes?

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"I like pretty much anything…"

so goes the beginning to So many people’s list of favourite music on MySpace. They then proceed to list only music that has a) singers, b) that sing in english and c) bands with drum kits, or programmed drums that sound like drum kits.

THAT’S NOT ‘PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING’!! By any stretch of the imagination, that’s a very very narrow range of what’s on offer in the world of music. This faux cosmopolitan approach to music is fostered by radio and TV shows that claim to have a hugely wide booking policy that reminds me of that line in The Blues Brothers ‘we have both types of music – Country AND Western’.

I feel like bombarding these people with MP3s of Gamalan orchestras and Harry Partch, Tuvan throat singing and Gustav Mahler, Bollywood soundtracks and Andean pan pipes, Noel Coward and Fats Waller, Henry Purcell and Meshuggah… ‘pretty much anything’ really, until they say ‘I have, in the greater scheme of things, incredibly conservative music taste, it runs the gamut of ‘white-boy stadium guitar nonense’ from Coldplay to Stereophonics, but I have got a Boards Of Canada album, cos someone told me they were cool, and it was cheap in Borders.’

For the record, I don’t like ‘pretty much anything’ – I actively dislike most of the music I’ve heard in my life. It’s not out of some musicological misanthropy, it’s just that even across the range of styles and genres I like, I tend to only like the best of it. The reason being that most music isn’t very good. That’s what’s magical about music – if it was as easy as breathing, we wouldn’t value it at all. We wouldn’t have favourites, in the same way that most of us don’t have favourite ‘walkers’ – (“ooh, just look at the way he puts one foot in front of the other”) – we can almost all do it, it’s a hugely useful skill, but it’s not generally considered a uniquely artistic one in the way that making great music is.

That said, our reasons for liking music go beyond the sound of the music itself, often. There are emotional resonances based on things we’ve heard before, there are cultural, social and personal connections with the performers and writers, there are lyrics that grab us and draw us into styles we wouldn’t previously have bothered with, there’s music played by people we know (The Cheat is always laughing at me for spending most of my time listening to music by friends of mine), there’s music that we encounter in good situations (opening for a favourite band, soundtracking a favourite film, or just on in the background when great things happen).

But that still doesn’t come close to ‘pretty much anything’ – so if you have that on your myspace page, please go and change it, and put something more honest! ;o)

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GRRRRR, Apple meddling with great apps…

I HATE it when corporations do shit like this – a while ago, a friend turned me on to a great application called ‘Cover Flow’ – it basically catalogued all the albums in your iTunes folder and automatically downloaded the cover art for them so you can flick through it like a stack of records. A really great app. The interface was good, and the fact that it ignored single tracks, and just stuck with albums was great. It kept the whole thing neat.

Naturally, Apple saw it and wanted a piece of the action, and have built it into the new version of iTunes. But they’ve messed it up! It catalogues everything, uses the cover images embedded in the MP3s, is much harder to update, doesn’t jiggle around in the groovy way that cover flow did, and isn’t full screen, cos it’s built into itunes. In short, it’s a crap version of the freeware one that was put out before.

Thank God I’ve still got the original app, and I’m holding onto it. I might see if there’s way of uploading it somewhere for anyone if any of you want it… it’s for mac only though…

[UPDATE] GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR – the old Coverflow doesn’t integrate with the new iTunes!!!! How shit is that? So I’m going to have to ‘make the best of it’ with the new shit cover flow. not fair at all.

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post-greenbelt curry

A fun evening last night – a Greenbelt chum was having birthday drinks in town, so ’twas a chance to catch up with her and other greenbelt chums in town. Fortunately, two of them were people who’d been so busy over the weekend I hadn’t had a chance to see them at the festival – Emma and Chris, both delightful and lovely. I’d arranged beforehand to go for dinner with The Cheat at the end, and Emma, Chris and Emma’s friend Sarah-who-thinks-she’s-met-me-before were going as well, so a delicious Thai feast and much hilarity followed. Yay.

plans are a-foot for a post-greenbelt curry in the next couple of weeks – email me if you’re a greenbelter who’s interested.

However, that wasn’t the most exciting thing of the evening – that prize goes to StreetBox – a beatbox/voice duo who were busking at the top of Carnaby street, and the beatbox dude was out of this world. They did a kick ass version of Billy Jean, which I’m going to try and get uploaded to YouTube cos I videoed it on my hires phone (riiight), but I’m hoping their website will be updated soon with info/MP3s/CD buying options. They had a CD for sale there, which I saw Howard out of top pop singing sensations Take That buy. I stood next to Howard watching them, us both smiling incredulously at what the beatbox monkey was capable of – drums, basslines, scratch effects and bleeps all merged into one incredible sound. Well worth keeping an eye on…

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Fringe underway.. :o)

We’ve arrived in Edinburgh… well, right now I’m in Berwick on Tweed, but I’ve been up in Edinburgh for the last three days, putting up posters, arranging extra gigs, and saw my first show last night – Stephen Daltry in Ludwig’s Van – a one man light comedy show about classical music. Like Gerard Hoffnung, which is no bad thing in my book, always loved Hoffnung’s stuff. Anyway, much fun, worth going to see, particularly if you know a little about classical music.

Other than that, Julie and I have tramped all over Edinburgh putting up posters in windows, shop doorways, loos, restaurant walls – anywhere with a space and the permission to put them up! Today, flyering starts with a vengeance – out of the Royal Mile convincing people that ours is the show they just can’t afford to miss (which shouldn’t be too hard, as, let’s face it, it’s true).

Gig in Glasgow on Thursday was a tough one – at such short notice, it was a sparsely populated affair. The bar itself wasn’t, just the bit where we were playing, but the people who watched seemed to really enjoy it, and a few said they were coming to Edinburgh to see it again, which was nice.

So tomorrow, Sunday, we’ve got a tech rehearsal in the afternoon, the Fringe opening party early evening, and then gig #1 at 11pm. It’s two for one on tickets tomorrow night, so if you’re in Edinburgh, come down, bring a friend, and enjoy!

click here to buy tickets!
and here to hear the MP3s and read about the show!

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Another preview for all Last.fm users…

I’ve just uploaded Lessons Learned From The Fairly Aged Felines to Last.fm, so you’re a subscriber, you can head over and listen to three full tracks, and 30 seconds of all the others, just to get a flavour of what marvellousness is available if you order to new album ahead of time. :o)

If you’re not up to speed with last.fm if an online streaming radio site that’s free to sign up to and use. The way it works is you download a plug in for your media player of choice (iTunes, winamp, WMP or whatever) and it then keeps a log of all the music you listen to, and generates custom radio stations based on the taste of other people who listen to the same stuff as you! It’s fantastic, and the stats are kinda interesting too. Well worth joining and geeking out on.

So, if you’re already there have a listen, and if you’re not sign up THEN have a listen. :o)

and after that, you can hope over to my online shop, order ‘Behind Every Word’, and download the whole of ‘Lessons Learned From The Fairly Aged Felines’ straight away. And get MP3s of two tracks from Behind Every Word to preview before the album gets sent to you at the end of June. How exciting!

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New Album – order today! :o)

FINALLY, as my earlier message said, I’ve upgraded my server (email me if you’re looking for webspace, it’s the best deal I’ve come across, and the tech support is fantastic) so have now got my new album, ‘Behind Every Word’ available for advance ordering! YAY! How exciting!

To order it click here – the click on the album cover, register, and then use paypal to pay, with either a paypal account, or just a credit or debit card (you don’t need to register with them to do that).

AND, if you do order it before the release date of June 20th, you’ll get ‘Lessons Learned From The Fairly Aged Felines (Lessons Learned Pt III)’ absolute free as a download album. That’s another hour of great music for free. Every time I record an album, I record way more than will fit on one album. So I choose the ones that fit together as whole, and then release a second CD, often with a different overall feel, as a bonus disc with the album. Lessons Learned Pts I and II are both fab (I get quite a few emails from people saying that LL Pt II is their favourite of my albums), so this isn’t just outtakes and nonsense.

AND, the zip file that the album comes in also includes MP3s of two tracks from ‘Behind Every Word’ so you can listen to them straight away.

So get to it – go buy it, it’s great!

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