Tag: music

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Another great Greenbelt Gig

Saturday at Greenbelt, and my plan was to avoid anything ‘work’ related for most of the day, and it mostly paid off. What I did do was to invite lots of special guests onto my show during the day in the hope that some of them would turn up!

So following a couple of seminars and a lot of sitting around chatting to lovely peoples, I headed up to my venue for the 7.30 start. just after 7.30, the band before started their last song – which then went on for 12 minutes. Always nice to be 15 minutes late getting on stage for a gig at a festival where audiences are on a tight schedule and probably have the gig bookended by other things they wanted to see…. if I’d been on sound, I’d have turned the power off.

Anyway, we got set up and I explained the premise of the gig – one piece of 50 minutes long (it was going to be 70, but the delay meant I cut it down), with a whole load of special guests, each one coming on stage one at a time, then playing, me looping them and then leaving while their contribution lives on for the next guest to interact with.

The four guests who ended up doing it were Jez Carr (obviously – Jez being a genius improvisor and perfect first contributor to anything like this in terms of letting the others who are less familiar with the form to hear roughly what’s going on.) So Jez played some piano, which got looped, then left, and after me layering a little more, guest number 2 was Andrea Hazell, (soprano from the Royal Opera House), who sang three of four beautiful layers of wordless vocals, harmonsing my ebow line.

Guest no.3 was Duncan Senyatso, who contributed some beautiful guitar, and a vocal line that meshed so marvellously with Andrea’s voice that it sounded composed, though far to intricate to have been composed by me!

Last guest was Patrick Wood, keyboardist and composer with The Works – I’ve collaborated with Patrick on a lot of improv things before, and once again he played some gorgeous fender rhodes sounds to the loops. To finish things off, Jez came up and played some bass – Jez is a great bassist and plays very differently to me, so it was lovely to have him take the low end somewhere else…

And in between and through it all I was mixing and adding and fading and chopping and multiplying and post-processing and keeping it all interesting for 50 minutes.

and the end result was without a doubt the best gig I’ve ever done at Greenbelt, and one of my favourite ever, I think. Some really really beautiful music – I’m gutted that I didn’t record it, but I’m sure we’ll get to do something similar again – time to contact the British Council in Botswana and see if we can get them to fly us over there!

So after the show, I was compering in Centaur – the huge indoor venue here at GB – where The Works were playing, followed by Aradhna – both played fantastic sets and went down a storm.

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not one but two Amy Kohn gigs in London

One of the best things about Edinburgh is meeting up with other performers. Sometimes it’s a fleeting yet encouraging chat outside a venue (I met Alan Carr outside the Assembly Rooms where he was performing, and had a lovely chat and swapped encouragement for the fest) and other times it’s people who become top chums and you stay in touch with.

Amy Kohn is a friend of JazzShark‘s, who was playing up at Edinburgh, and who stepped into the role of Echoplex footpedal on Fringe Sunday and jammed along on accordian, on Amo Amatis Amare. She was down in London this weekend playing a couple of gigs so we went along. First up she was at The 12 Bar – an acoustic venue in central London, playing at an accordion night (oh yes, it’s not just bassists who get together for a geek-out once in a while!). Obviously for this gig she was just playing accordion and singing, but was fab. She writes very quirky songs, with lots of really odd harmony in them, and it takes a while to get drawn into Amy-world, but when you catch up with her, it’s beguiling stuff.

Monday’s gig was at Ray’s Jazz in Foyles – just a half hour in-store. But they had a piano, so I went along to see what Amy was like with piano instead of accordion. Damn, she’s a fantastic piano player! Scary stuff indeed. The Accordion is a great live tool, in that it gives her freedom to move around, it’s pretty original for a left-field singer/songwriter and is just makes a nice change, but Amy’s piano playing is on a whole other level. There are nods towards Tori and Kate Bush, but that’s just a tiny part of what Amy does. She’s as much Charles Ives as she is Tori Amos, and her background in musical theatre definitely creeps in there too… I picked up copies of both her albums, and have listened to the brand new so-new-it’s-only-an-advance-copy one, which is marvellous. Really really original and lovely. Top stuff.

Today’s been a day of two halves – the first half was spent shopping in Enfield with my auntie Babs. Well, she’s actually my third cousin Babs, but has always been auntie Babs… (maternal grandmother’s cousin). Anyway, I think I’ve probably blogged about Babs before – she’s 80 (I think), but looks about 20 years younger, has a more active social life than most people half her age, a great sense of humour, and is much fun to go out for lunch with. Today she needed the batteries in her smoke alarms changing, so that was a fine excuse for us to go out for lunch before heroic me shimmying up a ladder to swap said batteries over.

And now I’m listening to and playing through the songs for Duncan’s greenbelt gig. Lucky me – what a charmed life. 🙂

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What is this, how you say, 'Kassett'??

So, I’ve got four days to get my head round Duncan Senyatso‘s tunes for Greenbelt, so time to have a listen to them… hang on, that’s not a CD. What is it? It this some new technology I’ve not seen before? A small plastic box, with a long ribbon inside wound round two spools.

Ooh, I remember – cassette tape! Blimey.

It took me about half an hour to find a cassette deck in the house (actually, there’s one in the kitchen but I didn’t want to bring that into the office). Eventually I found the cassette player at the bottom of a dusty box under a pile of records (records!!) behind the TV. It hasn’t been used for many years, but it seems to be doing OK thus far..

The sound quality is dreadful – how did we put up with this for so long? What a rubbish way to listen to anything. It makes low res MP3s sound positively high-tech. Maybe we should blame the inventor of the walkman – there’s no way cassette would have survived without it…

Thank the good Lord for CD, CDR, MP3 and Minidisc!

though sadly I don’t think even those lovely new technologies would make Duncan’s marvellous music any easier to play!

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One fab night out in London

With Jeff Kaiser still in town, tonight was the last chance to head out for a curry. When Jeff first came to a gig of mine in Ventura (a clinic at Instrumental Music), we went for curry afterwards, so it was time to return the favour.

I made a couple of phone calls this afternoon to find an indian restaurant in town that would cater for vegans, and one of the places I called was the Malabar Junction on Great Russell Street – just chosen at random.

So after we met up in Ray’s Jazz Store, we headed over there to check it out. Good guess, Stevie! It’s got to be one of the nicest indian restaurants I’ve ever been in – gorgeous interior, massively helpful staff, and fantastic food. What’s not to love?

Along for the evening also was trumpeter Ian Smith – one of the founders of the London Improvisors Orchestra – a very nice bloke indeed. Evenings spent talking bollocks with musicians have to rank on my favourite nights out. From curry house to Bar Italia and home again. All in all, a fine way to spend an evening.

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The rancid end of the music industry

OK, this is really really screwed up. Garth Brooks has signed an exclusive distribution deal for all of his work… WITH WALMART!!

How scummy is that? I mean, it’s not like I’m going to miss being able to get his records, I’ve never bought one, or listened to one for that matter (though he did once record a Pierce Pettis song – I think I’ll stick with listening to Pierce’s amazing CDs, and avoid the be-hatted loser), but the idea of someone being so screwed up in their view of the world that they would want their CDs to only be stocked by a supermarket chain… and Walmart at that. It beggars belief quite what brand of decaying faecal matter his brain has been replaced with, but I’m sure Walmart stock it and sell it cheaper than anyone else.

The world of supermarkets is getting progressively more horrible – I went to the Tescos in Corstorphine last week, while staying with the lovely Gareth and Jane, and was amazed to find ‘self-checkout’ facilities – you just scan your own stuff and leave, with one person watching over 6 or 8 tills.

Now, I wouldn’t relish a job on a checkout, that’s for sure, but the net jobloss whenever a supermarket opens in a town that previously didn’t have one is well over 200. If you then take away what few shitty jobs there were in the supermarket, you destroy the local trade infrastructure and don’t even replace it with a poor imitation of itself. You replace it with a void. For some people, the option to work an overnight shift in their local supermarket is their only realistic chance of employment due to family commitments or whatever.

So Walmart are becoming exclusive stockists of shit country CDs and carry on destroying communities across the US. Meanwhile, they’ve bought Asda. Our local supermarket is an Asda, which we studiously avoid. Now we’re back from Edinburgh, it’s time to sign up to an organic box scheme and leave behind supermarket veggies for good.

But for now, Bollocks to Garth Brooks and his new distribution deal – I hope it fails miserably for all concerned.

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Gig last night…

Despite being exhausted, the promise of a chance to play a set with Orphy and a couple of friends from the States last night at the Red Rose was too tempting, so I headed off out again.

I took a much scaled down rig with me, as I knew I was only going to be playing for about 10 minutes, and really couldn’t be arsed to take the whole lot out again after setting it up and packing it down 12 days in a row at Edinburgh!

the Americans in question are Jeff Kaiser and Andrew Pask playing trumpet (jeff), sax and clarinet (andrew) through lots of delicious electronic processing (Andrew works for Cycling 74, so has written some glorious loop algorythms for Max/MSP).

They did about 25 minutes, and then Orphy and I joined them for a 10 minute improv thingie, which sounded lovely from where I was sat.

The rest of the evening was fun too – a solo trombone set from Alan Tomlinson was a mindblowing mixture of virtuosic free improv and clowning. Very funny indeed.

Then Evan Parker and John Coxon did a lovely guitar/sax duet, which ran the gamut from outnoisemadness to a bluesy mellow jazz bit in the middle and back to freakoutland. Very fine stuff.

And finally a quintet of Tony Bevan (bass sax), Mark Saunders (drums), John Edwards (bass), Ashley Wales (electronics) and Orphy (percussion etc.) finished off the night with more craziness.

And what’s more there was a huge crowd in – by far the biggest I’ve ever seen at the Red Rose, which was great especially for Jeff and Andrew, coming all this way. It was lovely to catch up with Jeff – he came to one of my gigs a couple of years ago in Ventura County, California, and loved it and we’ve been in touch ever since, so it was great to finally get to see him play live.

The London Improv scene is fascinating – it’s got a pretty unique sound to it, and a fairly broad spread of contributors. There are elements to it that come across as over-zealous in their rejection of all things tonal, and other players who seem to embrace just about anything and everything. It’s not a scene I could inhabit all year round – I’d start to feel guilty about playing so much inside music, and that’s insane – but it’s one that I feel enriched and inspired by whenever I get a chance to see those guys play. The time and energy and focus that players like John Edwards and Tony Bevan have put into exploring the outer reaches of what’s possible with their instruments is awe inspiring.

And now I’m exhausted. Today I’m going to have to tidy up the mess from Edinburgh – my office looks like the stock room at a badly organised high-end bass shop, so I need to whip it into shape before teaching tonight.

Soundtrack – Avishai Cohen, ‘Lyla’ (a pressie to educate me from JazzShark – and a fabulous album it is too!)

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Back home in the 'hood.

We’re home!

We only just made it – loading up at the Rev G’s house yesterday, we had major major trouble getting everything in to the car, and ended up with TSP’s feet on the dashboard (good job she has feet that are detachable from her legs), and my rack back in the passenger footwell.

The weight of all the stuff had the car sitting pretty low on the back suspension, and I noticed that both of my front tires were pretty worn on the inside edge, suggesting that there’s a tracking issue that really needs sorting out. So, we drove all the way from Edinburgh to London at 60mph. Having a frontwheel blow out at 60 wouldn’t be funny at all, but would have been marginally less dangerous than at 70.

Still, we got here, in one piece (well, once I’d re-attached TSPs feet).

Looking back on the fest, it was a major success, lots of fun, exhausting in a good way, and a chance to meet up with lots of lovely people. I didn’t have a single off-night on the gig, all the audiences seemed to dig the show, even my one ‘bad’ review wasn’t really all that bad and said I was ‘top class’. And on top of that, I sold out an 80 seat venue on the last night, which is no mean feat at the Fringe.

So, we need to start planning for next year now.

Stuff to do now I’m home? Need to get the remaining t-shirts listed in the e-shop here, and send out the orders that are waiting to go. I really need to pay my parking ticket from Edinburgh (which I felt strangely less worried about when looking out at a packed house on Tuesday night.)

I have a gig tonight at the Red Rose in Finsbury Park – not sure quite what I’m going to take with me yet for that one – whether I take the whole set up or just a scaled down mini-rig.

And this afternoon I’m going shopping with Martin and Wes for a new bass for Wes, which is always fun.

Oh, and somewhere in there, I’ve got to sort out the carnage that is my office, so that I can teach in here tomorrow!

Soundtrack – Joni Mitchell, ‘Hejira’ (this is the first music I’ve listened to in two weeks that isn’t Duncan Senyatso – and for the next week, his will be just about everything I’m listening to, as soon as I get a tape deck rigged up so I can listen to it.)

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Fringe Sunday…

Fringe Sunday began looking like it was going to be a total disaster – it was tipping it down with rain til gone 12, and given that they usually have almost a quarter of a million people out during the day to see all the Fringe festival-related stuff going on at (a secret location known only as) The Meadows, rain puts a bit of a downer on the day.

Fortunately it had stopped by 1pm, and by 2 it was drying up nicely.

I was booked to play in the Cabaret tent (how the hell did I morph from serious musician to cabaret performer??? Edinburgh seems to do this to you…), but had had a major brain freeze the night before and forgotten to bring my Echoplex pedal with me out of the box backstage, so was left with two Echoplexes and a bass, and no way to start the loops. A brain-wave just before I went on lead to me asking the wonderful Amy Kohn to come and be my footpedal. Not that I was going to tread on her or anything – we just planned it so that I’d count her in and out of hitting the record button on the Echoplex while I played ‘Amo Amatis Amare’. And as she was there on stage, it would seem mad not to get her to play some lovely accordion over the top. Which she did, beautifully.

So that went well. I had a couple of minutes left at the end of the set, so opted (rather unwisely, really) to playing ‘What A Wonderful World’ – I played it OK, but it is a struggle on the fretless, and doing it without decent monitoring, and more importantly with NO REVERB (!!!!), it didn’t sound great from where I was. Still, it was well received.

What I did realise was that being lumbered with armfulls of bass-techie equipment at Fringe Sunday is an f-ing liability, and I’d actually have had much better exposure if I’d not bothered playing and had just spent the day flyering near the music venues. As it was, it went OK, but me and one EDP with no reverb or processing is hardly a fair representation of the show. Thankfully the duet with Amy made it worth doing. She was fab.

So after that I took the Echoplex travel-rack home, picked up TSP and headed back into town. The best thing about weekends in Edinburgh isn’t, as most people will tell you, the larger crowds. Oh no, it’s the FREE PARKING!! We were able to park on the North Bridge, less than 50 yards from the front of my venue. Very nice.

Then it was back to the usual flyering mode, which I’ve been perfecting over the week. Flyering your own show definitely gives you an edge of the disinterested students trying to make some money to pay off their beer deficit for the year, and it does get people to stop and chat if you introduce the fact that it’s you on the flyer in an amusing way. By yesterday my patter for flyering had become (roughly) ‘One Man Music Show, four star review in Three Weeks (pause while they take the flyer) He’s a legend! He’s a genius! He’s MEEEEE!’ – cue much hilarity and a conversation with person being flyered about what the hell the show is… seems to be working well, as I had another audience of around 40 last night (didn’t get the official figure, but that’s the report from the venue manager).

The show itself went well – there were a lot of late-comers, walking in after the first song, so I hope the caught the explaination, or they’ll be going home telling their friends to give the Karaoke bass-monkey a miss, he just mimes to a mini-disc! Still, sold a bunch of CDs and tshirts, so all is good.

The Rev G (where did I get the abreviation Rvd from? I just made that up, and it’s not like I don’t know enough vicars so I have an excuse) was back in the house last night and performed very well in the role as ‘vicar with tourettes’ in the MMFSOG story – it’s odd, I just decided on the first night to explain the tune (not something I’ve ever bothered with at gigs before) and it’s become a bit of a favourite in the show). And the lovely Amy also came to show and was involved in the audience participation number, making a very odd sound which worked surprisingly well! That’s another spur of the moment addition to the set that has worked remarkably well. Might have to expand it to two tunes next year if I can come up with another angle that works…

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Oops, a not so great review…

Ah well, just found this review from The Scotsman – it’s fairly gentle, though she (I’m assuming Jan is a she, though could be a Scandinavian bloke, I guess) only gave me two stars. Nice that she described my technical abilities as ‘top class’, and my chat as ‘engaging’, I guess, even if the music didn’t make much of an impression on her… Well, at least I’ve broken my Edinburgh press duck. Would have been nicer to get a good one first time out, but we can’t control these things, and reviewers bring with them a whole pile of notions and preconceptions about how things should be (I know, I used to be a reviewer!) Maybe I should just write ‘TOP CLASS!!’ on a piece of paper and stick it across my posters… this seems to be the way with Edinburgh promo – a review might say ‘despite an excellent premise, this play was dire, one of the worst shows I’ve ever seen’. And the poster then says ‘Excellent!’ – the Scotsman.

So no, my self-esteem is worth more than that.

Maybe the Three Weeks one will eventually come out…

For now, I’d wholeheartedly recommend ignoring the press, and reading the audience reviews instead.

Oh, and this one by the Rvd G (which, given that I’m sleeping in his attic, might be biased in terms of feeling particularly warm towards me, though I did make his kitchen look like the aftermath from a Greek wedding the other morning at 2am, so this would have been the perfect opportunity to get my back for covering his floor with broken glass… So on second thoughts, view Gareth’s words as understated and mute by comparison with him having to be carried from the venue in an ambulance, such was the degree to which I blew him away with my wikkid skillz!)

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Eric Roche update

As those of you who’ve seen my Edinburgh show or any other recent dates will know, I’ve written a tune for Eric Roche – a very dear friend who’s a breath-takingly gifted guitar player and is currently in a monumental battle with cancer.

He’s recently posted a diary entry on his website – please go and read it. Eric’s a remarkable person, amazing musician and a HUGE inspiration to me in many many ways – if you haven’t got his CDs, all three are highly recommended. His latest, ‘With These Hands’, is one of the finest solo acoustic guitar CDs you’ll ever hear.

It breaks my heart to see someone whose spirit is so strong struggling with a disease like this. Please do send your messages and prayers of love and support to Eric via the guestbook on his website, and spread the word. I’ve no idea if he’s insured or not, but as a pro musician with a family like that, the fear of illness is multiplied a thousand times – the best way to support is buy is CDs, and then play them to your friends. That way you get to hear some music that will enrich your soul and be with you for your whole life, and he gets to pay the bills in the way we musicians do it best.

God bless you, Eric.

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