A gig, a wedding and some very sad news

So what’s been happening?

Well, friday night was a very fun gig. Remember Ragatal? Possibly not, but it was a quartet that I played with for a time a few years ago.. It was started by Jason Carter and Nick Beggs, along with Steve Bingham on Violin and Sanju Sahai on tabla. Shortly after that, Nick became too busy to continue for a while, and I took over, recording the one album that the group did – Fragments Of Grace – on ARC (it’s not bad, though I’d advise against getting the re-released version, titled Elements, as there were a load of additional percussion overdubs by Hossam Ramsay that don’t add anything to it, IMHO…) Anyway, Friday night was Steve Bingham’s birthday, and he had a gig to celebrate, including some ragatal tunes! What a treat it was – it was great fun to get back playing with all those guys, especially Sanju who is quite possibly the most outstanding musician I’ve ever sat on the same stage as.

Saturday was another fun day, and a fine friends reunited success story. About two years ago, I got in contact with an old school friend, Dawn, met up for a drink, and then she arranged a bigger get together of old chums. Andrew came to that one. He’d always fancied Dawn, and apparently the intervening 17 years hadn’t dampened his adour at all. fast forward 18 months, and yesterday I went to their wedding! What fun! It was a fine day, they both looked great, and everyone seemed to have a great time. It was fun meeting up with some other old school chums too…

On an altogether much different emotional plane, I got an email today from the husband of Rana Ross, a fine bassist and someone I’d met at the NAMM Show in LA and emailed ona few occasions, to say that she’d been in an ICU after a series of heart attacks, and they were switching the life support off. I can’t even imagine what he must be going through – even at this stage he was giving thanks for the time he’d had with her, and described himself as the luckiest man in the world. She was only in her 30s, was working on a new album, and had a whole life ahead of her. what a terrible story. There are various threads on the bass discussion groups around the web, if you want to post condolences to John…

So what’s coming up? More recording with Theo, who came round last week to listen to rough mixes of the duo stuff so far, which are sounding spiffing! And hopefully some more playing with Sanju very soon…

soundtrack – right now, I’m listening to ‘and nothing but the bass’ – was teaching one of the tunes to a student earlier and it’s stayed on. Before that, and most of the day yesterday, I was listening to Athlete, ‘Vehicles and Animals’, which is great – best new british band I’ve heard in quite a while. The gig last week was great, and the album lives up to expectations. Also been listening to more stuff on kvmr.

Easy access to new music

If you’ve got a couple of weeks to spare, you can have a trawl through the archives of ‘Morning Becomes Eclectic’ – the daily live music show on KCRW radio.

There are some stellar acts in the archive, including David Torn, Charlie Hunter with Norah Jones (before her big success, but still sounding wonderful), Michael Franti, Coldplay, Travis, Howie Day, Gail Anne Dorsey – loads of GREAT stuff. Do yourself a favour, and have a listen…

Soundtrack – Michael Franti on KCRW

two weeks of theatre, gigs and puke…

Blimey – it’s ages since I last got to write anything! I’ve now got a broadband connection, so hopefully it won’t be quite so long before I blog again (not that it’s any quicker with BB, as it doesn’t take long to connect anyway, but I’m online more than I was so may be able to get 5 mins here and there to talk rubbish on here…)

So what’s been going on? Potted history of life since the 15th (last blog date) –

went to the theatre to see The Madness Of George Dubya again, which was marvellous again – it’s transfered to the West End (The Arts Theatre in Leicester Square), and is being rewritten daily to keep abreast of current events, so it’s more topical than ever. Vital viewing, especially as there seems to be a lot that’s going unsaid about what’s now going on in Iraq – more shootings were reported this morning, that american guy who’s been put ‘in charge’ doesn’t seem to have much of a clue, and the looting still goes on…

Then it was easter weekend, which was surprisingly un-churchified – an unusual easter for me in that sense, partly cos I was just busy and didn’t plan anything in time, and partly cos I was at a wedding on Easter Saturday. Made it to church Easter Sunday morning, but it’s a while since I last missed a good friday service – anyone would thing that easter was when a rabbit got nailed to a cross, but was a nice rabbit who rose again and gave everyone chocolate eggs… I know that the timing of easter is a hi-jacked ancient solstice or something, but it does seem odd for it to have kind of stuck with some sort of christian significance in the media, but mainly it’s all about eggs and bunnies… the world is a might strange place…

Easter Sunday I went to a very fine gig – Three Blind Mice – featuring Lyndon Conner, the keyboardist who played with Level 42 on the Greatest Hits tour last year. The mice are a three piece – two guitar/vox and Lyndon on keys/vox, and feature some of the finest harmonies I’ve ever heard. Great songs, great delivery in a lovely venue (some pub near Paddington)… Well worth investigating. And after all that guff in the paragraph above, I did eat rather a large number of chocolate eggs at said gig.

Wed 23rd was a gig in Eastbourne with Tess Garroway and Joss Peach – more lovely improv, made even more fun by feeding both the piano and the voice into my loop setup to I could loop and tweak both of them as well… Small crowd, but cool venue.

The trip home wasn’t quite so much fun (this is where the puke in the heading comes into the story – turn away if you’re sqeamish) – I had a headache brewing through the entire gig, which got gradually worse and worse as we were packing up, bordering on migraine as I got in the car to drive home. It may have had something to do with not having eaten since about 2pm, and having had a beer when I arrived at the venue in the evening, but whatever, I wasn’t a well bunny.

Stopped once to wretch, didn’t puke. Stopped again, puked a bit. Was then doing 70mph along the M25 and vommed all over myself, the windscreen, the steering wheel, dashboard, seats, floor, everything. Tried catching it in a cardboard tissue box, but that just succeeded in funnelling said puke down both my sleeves (no, really, it is the most disgusting thing that has ever happened to me, which is why I just had to share it with you…)

One week previous to this, I’d been up to my armpit in blocked drain and thought that that was the grossest thing I’d ever done. This topped it, driving 35 miles covered in my own sick was really really nasty – the kind of thing that one usually associates with recovering smack-addicts…

The following day was a bit of a cleanup day, following my projectile experience of the day before.

Friday I was conducting an Echoplex clinic for the UK distributors, showing them a little of what’s possible (for lots more of what’s possible, see Andre’s site), which was great fun. I also picked up a couple more echoplexes, taking my tally to four – three are now in the rack, trying to work out how to wire the fourth one into the desk to give me a stereo main loop… hhhhhmmmnnnnnn

Friday evening was spent installing my broadband connection, which I’d got wrong somehow, and then Saturday required much rescuing as I’d downloaded too much stuff from Windows Update and had buggered up my machine, so with the help of evil harv, we got it going…

Last night, Jez and I went to see Carleen Anderson at the Jazz Cafe – we’re trying to get out to see more gigs, and were going to go out on Sunday, but there was bugger-all on in London. Boy, am I glad we waited til Monday – Carleen was brilliant, as were her band – Ben Castle on sax, Andy Hamill on bass, Mark Edwards on keys, Winston Clifford on drums and Jules someone on guitar – they are on again tonight and tomorrow, and if you can, you really ought to go… Carleen’s acoustic encore of ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ was worth the ticket price itself (and you can stream it from her website – high res with Broadband of course…)

In between all that stuff, I’ve been mixing the tracks that I recorded with Theo Travis, which are sounding great, and may well end up being my next album… It’s time for a duo album (last one was solo, before that duo, and first one was solo), and these are just fine ‘n’ dandy. Hopefully we’ll have something to listen to v. soon…

And obviously I’ve been indulging in the download delights of broadband – fave site at the moment is launch.yahoo.com, a music videos and streaming radio site which is very cool. Go there and watch some of the Bruce Cockburn, Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, Tori Amos and Johnny Cash vids – all great stuff. Also been listening to radio on line, including kcrw, kvmr and bbc london.

Soundtrack – other than the online stuff, been listening to lots of Ron Miles – both ‘Heaven’ and ‘Laughing Barrel’, and listening to Paul Simon, ‘Still Crazy After All These Years’, Bill Frisell, ‘Have A Little Faith’, Alex Skolnick Trio, ‘Goodbye To Romance’, Frank Gambale, ‘Resident Aliens’ and King’s X ‘Manic Moonlight’.

Can't Blog Won't Blog

…or at least, I couldn’t for most of today – bleedin’ software wasn’t working, so couldn’t access here to write anything… not that you were bothered, but still…

Sunday night’s gig at the Barbican was a lorra lorra fun – the band ended up being me, Orphy Robinson on percussion and steel pans, Mano Ventura on guitar (with a midi pickup) and filomena campus on vocals. The whole set was improv’d, and veered from some pretty ‘out’ weirdness through to more groove-based stuff. The biggest fun for me was that I was using a mixing desk for my stuff, so could a) run my own bass stuff in stereo (great for the delay effects etc.) and could also get a feed from the PA of all the percussion mics, which allowed me to loop Orphy’s percussion as well, which worked REALLY well. Some great layered percussion things ensued, and backwards steel pans sounds very fine indeed.

Monday was The Small Person’s birthday, so we went out for the day, and watched a coupla vids in the evening – no music all day, which made a nice change. then today was back to teaching, although due to a diary balls-up, I managed to double book myself, and had to cancel one of them… durrrr…

This evening, I spent an hour or so editing down the recording of my duets with Antoine Fafard from our joint radio broadcast on LCR, a month or so ago. The duets sound great, and as soon as I get them converted to MP3, I’ll try to get at least one of them online, though they are very long… perhaps I’ll find somewhere else to post them other than on my own webspace, which is a bit too full already…

I also found time to record a new tune… watch this space for more on that.

Soundtrack – in the car, it’s been more of Paul Simon’s Greatest Hits, whilst in here Norah Jones album, ‘Come Away With Me’ is on about its fifth play today, after I was doing one of the tracks with a student today. Also listened to Peter Gabriel ‘Us’, which is brilliant, and Pierce Pettis – ‘Making Light Of It’ – Pierce is amazing, and your CD collection isn’t complete without at least one of his albums…

Stations Of The Cross

Last night’s ‘gig’ went really well… The event was called ‘UpLate’ and is a sort of alternative worship service at a lovely old church in Thame, Oxfordshire. Once a month they take a theme and set up a whole load of different artistic/musical/poetic ‘stations’ for people to wander round and look at/listen to/read/meditation on, etc. All very inspiring stuff – it’s a great building, and the quality of the art is top notch – it’s kind of like a themed multimedia art-gallery, with good coffee, and a glass or two of wine… ;o)

Anyway, last night, with it being their easter edition, Evil Harv, Jez and I were asked to come up with 14 improvs based on the stations of the cross to soundtrack the whole evening, we were set a time, and given 14 works of art to help inspire us – well, scans of them anyway… The list of station titles is –

(1) Jesus’ agony in the garden
(2) Jesus is betrayed by Judas and is arrested
(3) Jesus is condemned by the Sanhedrin
(4) Jesus is denied by Peter
(5) Jesus is condemned by Pontius Pilate
(6) Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns
(7) Jesus is made to carry the cross
(8) Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus with His cross
(9) Jesus meets with the women of Jerusalem
(10) Jesus is crucified
(11) Jesus promises paradise to the repentant thief
(12) Jesus speaks to John and Mary on the cross
(13) Jesus dies on the cross
(14) Jesus is buried in the tomb.

So for each of those we did an improv. As you can tell from the subject matter, it wasn’t going to be a happy-jazz sesh, and some of what we played got really dark and atonal – trying to express in music the image of Jesus being whipped and having a crown of thorns rammed onto his head is always going to be a pretty brutal sonic experience! But it’s amazing the way having a concrete theme like this can focus the music way beyond just noodling. Often Jez and I when we’re doing duo stuff will latch onto a particular mood and work with that, in a more abstract, but still just as compelling (for us) way. This time, it was obvious to all three of us what the theme was before we started, and the beginnings of some of the improvs were particularly interesting while we settled into how we were going to tackle that particular image – was the music going to be mournful, confrontational, pain-wracked, hopeful. etc… the tension worked really well at dealing with the many many mixed emotions that the easter story brings up…

The good news is we’ve got some of it on minidisc. The band news is that the batteries ran out after about half an hour, so we didn’t get enough… We played for about two hours (only overran by about 45 minutes! :o) – and it would’ve been great to have it all, as there were some really special moments, so hopefully we’ll be able to do it again next year in a different setting…

Soundtrack – last night and this morning, I’ve been listening to some new recordings by a fabulous bass playing singer/songwriter called John Lester. John’s a californian, who until recently was living in Paris, but is now in London, and will hopefully be gigging all over the place pretty soon. He’s great, check him out. And before that yesterday, was listening to Michael Jackson’s ‘Thiller’ – another tune that was being done in a lesson (PYT), and then staying on the turntable (ahhhh, vinyl) for a few hours… It really is a very good album indeed.

Two steps from greatness…

Have you ever checked out cdbaby.com ? It’s a very cool indie music sales site, based in Oregon, with a great website, cool search functions and a lot of support for artists… Anyway, they have a system where CDs are linked from different pages, and one of them is the ‘Other CDs you will love’ section – Ron Miles is a very fine trumpeter extraordinaire, and dueter with the mighty Bill Frisell on his new CD… which is for sale at CDbaby… and who’s album should be in the ‘Other CDs you’ll love’ section, but me and Jez – Conversations! So there you go, just two steps from Frisell… don’t believe me, see for yourself…

Soooo, what else has been going on here? Currently working on the artwork for a CD by a Danish girl band called Desta – Jez is producing it, and last night I went over to see him and take some piccies of the band, and today I’m putting it together. It’s looking rather good, though I say so myself. It’s amazing what you can do with a fairly crappy digi camera and a bit of experience in photoshop…

Other than that? Been sorting out some upcoming gigs (see the gigs page), and also getting some dates arranged for Rick Walker when he comes over to Europe – Rick is a fine percussionist from Santa Cruz, with whom I’ve toured a couple of times, and whose friendship and musicianship I’ve enjoyed ever since my first solo gig in the US, which he organised back in Jan 2000… I’ll post more details about his Euro-dates here at some point…

Soundtrack – did lots of driving yesterday and listened to more of the Disposable Heros album, which still sounds amazingly fresh and inspiring 11 years after it was released. Then I had Paul Simon’s greatest hits on – I do love greatest hits albums, they are sort of a summary of where people have got to, it’s like recapping for those who missed the first half of a conversation, and Paul Simon’s GH is one of the most consistently outstanding bodies of work in the pop world. He’s amazing, and still making brilliant music, as You’re The One bore witness to. At home I’ve been listening to Ned Evett – ‘Circus Liquor’, Bill Frisell Live, Matt Garrison, and various projects featuring me!

Back to the Troubadour

Last night was the gig at the Troubadour, with Modeste Hughes. Which was great fun! As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the Troubadour has changed a fair bit since I recorded my first album there three ‘n’ a bit years ago, all for the better – the venue is really cool, the food’s good, the stage is nice. Was suffering a bit from an earth hum on my amp – couldn’t work out if it was the amp, the lighting, the system or what… a little bit annoying, but not gig-destroying… Was really nice to see lots of familiar faces there (though it’s a mixed blessing to play to an audience where lots of them have already got all your albums, as they don’t buy stuff! LOL) Still, the gig went well, and seemed to be rather well received.

Modeste Hugues was also very good – quartet of him on guitar and voice, with bass, percussion and his son on shaker. Great party music, smiling music, and some fabulous musicianship. Well worth checking out if you get the chance.

Lots of very nice feedback from the venue – the soundman and the venue manager both said they want me to go and play there again, so hopefully there’ll be some more me@thetroubadour stuff before too long… hopefully some interesting duets, and one of those increasingly rare me/jez gigs… finger’s crossed…

On a different note, church was very interesting on Sunday morning – the prayers bit of the service was arranged around a map of iraq on the floor in the middle of the church, and people were offered the opportunity to pray for peace, and light a candle, which could then be put on the map – a lovely symbolic gesture, handled without any political discussion, in deference to the messiness of the current situation and what we should do now it seems like the ‘coalition’ is, as Bono once sang, ‘Stuck in a moment, and you can’t get out of it’… Anyway, the symbolism of lighting candles is always such a simple yet effective focus for thoughts and prayers, and placing it directly onto a map of iraq, considering the lives of the iraqi civilians and soldiers, the UK/US military personel, the brave/foolhardy journalists, and those affected elsewhere, was a thought-provoking and moving moment.

Soundtrack – been repeatedly listening to Matt Garrison’s self titled solo debut album, which is marvellous. Also been listening to Best of EW&F, Naked City (the first album), The Pixies – Doolittle, and in the car an early Jonas Hellborg album (that someone taped for me when I was at college), and ‘Hipocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury’ by the Disposable Heros Of Hiphoprisy – there’s a track on the CD called ‘Winter Of The Long Hot Summer’, all about the first Gulf War, and it’s really really frightening how much of it could apply to what’s happening now… Also took a couple of CDs along to the gig last night to top ‘n’ tail my set – David Sylvian’s ‘Secrets Of The Beehive’ before I went on, and ‘Angel Song’ by Kenny Wheeler, Lee Konitz, Bill Frisell and Dave Holland to finish – ideal!

In the fight against international terrorism…

Photoshop has become the ultimate weapon of mass distraction… ;o)

check out some of these very creative anti-Bush spoofs and subvertisments.

So the ‘allies’ rained down a 1000 missiles onto Baghdad last night – so much for attempting to minimise civilian casualties…

to keep track of just how many civillian iraqis have been killed, check out
www.iraqbodycount.net

Soundtrack right now, Prince’s ‘Diamonds And Pearls’, before that Brian Houston’s ‘Good News Junky’ (very fine album, and he’s even better live, if you get the chance…), and before that ‘Quartet’ by Pat Metheny – possibly his finest album, and Steve Rodby’s bass playing and tone are exceptional – Steve really is one of the most gifted bassists I’ve ever come across. An outstanding musician, rarely given the credit he’s due…

Bloglessness…

Blog posts seem to be getting rarer – sorry about that. This time the reason is that I’ve been away for the last couple of days, recording at dB Studios in Lincoln. The session was for the next album by Chris Bowater – he’s a gospel singer/worship leader, who I used to gig with a lot when I lived up in Lincoln, and I’ve played on his last three CDs (this one being the fourth). It was a really interesting session to play on in that it ran the whole gamut of bass playing from ‘duck eggs’ (one note in each bar) through to E-Bow and looped atmospheric stuff (on one track I did a ‘normal’ bass line, fretless melody line, and then three layers of twinkly, sparkly ebow loveliness!) – it was a lot of fun to be playing at both ends of the spectrum, very arranged and very open. On the fretless melody tracks, it was largely a case of playing a meandering melody through the whole track which will then be cut up and used at the basis for some other themes (doubled by the string quartet or whatever). Chris’ music is interesting in that even though his main ‘gig’ scenario is leading congregational singing in churches, his albums are far far more ‘music-led’ than most of the stuff written for that setting – the church music scene in general is pretty stagnant and normally at least 5 years behind anything else that’s happening in music, but Chris being a very highly qualified and experienced pianist and writer tends to put a lot more emphasis on the creativity of what he does, which is quite inspiring when it comes to coming up with bass parts…

Much fun was had as the producer/engineer was Dan Bowater (Chris’s son, and the owner of the studio), who I’ve known for 10 years and have toured with on a number of occasions, and the drummer was Gabriel Alonso, who produced and played on Chris’s last two albums, so it was a pretty comfortable setting…

Then today, I was back recording with Patrick Wood again – Patrick is the keyboardist on the MP3 track based on Highway 1 that’s over on the MP3 page – he’s a marvellous musician, and it’s always a treat to play with him. We recorded two very long improvs (improvs, I’m finding, are rarely short… :o) – and I’m hoping to get mixes of them soon to put up on the site, as they were both some of the best stuff that Patrick and I have played together… Me thinks there may be a limited edition album release coming up before too long… ;o)

So what else has been happening? Ah yes, we’re at war. Well, I say we, but it’s not in my name, as the saying goes. Despite opposition from the UK population, the UN, and his own back-benchers (culminating in the biggest labour back bench revolt in recent parlimentary history), President Blair has seen fit to send British troops into battle in Iraq, without UN sanction or backing, and without any kind of clear plan for a post-Saddam Iraq, or any kind of scenario regarding the future of the Kurds in Northern Iraq, who are shitting themselves given that the Turks who have a history of killing lots of them but are currently in a four year cease-fire are at present in diplomatic talks with the US regarding the use of Turkish air-space and land for accessing Iraq, and who may use the opportunity to cross into Northern Iraq (allegedly, they already have 20,000 armed soldiers stationed there) and resume hostilities. Have I heard mention of this from Blair or Bush? nope…

So, if this does end as quickly as it’s likely to (250,000 ‘allied’ troops? methinks this won’t go on and on, though I guess they thought that about Vietnam…), who’s next? Iran? Yemen? Saudi? Sudan? North Korea? They have been talking about trying to broker peace in Palestine – surely that’s a higher priority right now, given the numbers of Palestinians that have been slaughtered, and the number of suicide bombing retaliations that there have been (is suicide bombing retaliation or just an act of insane desparation??)…

…and what on earth is Britain doing in Iraq anyway? didn’t we bollocks it all up last time we installed a puppet king there? and what about sorting something out in Zimbabwe (a former collony that we are clearly more responsible for, and should be able to apply a lot more diplomatic pressure to), which also has a crazed dictator who is sanctioning extra-judicial killings and other atrocities…

I’ll keep praying for peace, whatever happens.

Soundtrack – during the few moments that I’ve not been listening to news reports on the radio, I’ve been listening to myself (just downloaded Fruity Loops Studio, and have been recording some stuff with it – a bargain at $49 for the update…), also listening to The Cure’s Greatest Hits (very very fine), and now am listening to Lifehouse – ‘Stanley Climbfall’, the opening track on which (Spin) is breathtakingly good.

Weapon Of Mouse Destruction

Just been up to see my mum for a few days – very nice it was too. My mum’s cat is called Gizmo. Well, technically, he’s my brother’s cat, but he’s moved out, and the cat stayed… anyway, Gizzy is the cutest friendliest cuddliest little beasty on the planet… so long as you’re human. If you happen to be any kind of warm blooded furry or feathered thing, and smaller than a tiger, she views you as potential dinner. Mice, rats, voles, moles, rabbits, hares, pheasants, and all manner of garden birds. She’s lethal. A one-feline environmental disaster area. How can one so seemingly cute be such a cold-blooded killer?? Guess the various smiling faces telling us about how they plan to rid the world of evil, whilst perpetrating muchos evil of their own have been taking lessons… Indeed, she’s a veritable Weapon Of Mouse Destruction…

(BTW, Tonight there’s a round-the-world candle-lit vigil for Peace, called for by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Check and see if a church near you is involved and head along there…)

Anyway, whilst in Berwick, managed to catch up with Heath – first known as ‘the boy next door’ when we first moved to Berwick (1986), soon became the drummer in the first band I was in (called various things, I think Mother’s Legs was the longest lasting name, though we never did a gig.) Heath then went to the same college as me, and now works in a theatre just north of London. He’s a very nice bloke, and it was a lovely surprise that he was ‘home’ at the same time as me…

Got a couple of days in the studio this week, with Chris Bowater (gospel singer/worship leader guy from Lincoln that I used to do loads of gigs with) – very much looking forward to that. Playing with Chris was always a fun challenge – he’s got an amazing sense of harmony, and is a great piano player. Other than that, it’s lots of teaching, and getting to grips with Fruity Loops – been programming drum beats, and learning how to automate effects changes and mutes etc… all good stuff…

Hang on, forgot to mention rather fabulous and eventful gig last Tuesday night – I was playing at Delicattesen in Reading (see link on left hand side), with Julie Lee (who I played at Greenbelt with last year), and with Pierce Pettis (who I’d not played with before, but who is marvellous) – I was only doing a couple of songs with each of them… That all went well, but half way through Pierce’s set, some poor bloke collapsed, fell off his chair and had a fit! Didn’t look like Epilepsy, and he came out of it pretty quick. We sat him up, and tried to talk to him, but he was still pretty out of it, and couldn’t stand up to leave the room. So we called an ambulance which arrived in LESS THAN A MINUTE!!! – you can say what you want about the national health service, but that’s what I call speedy response!! They took him in for observation, but the medics said he was in no immediate danger. Anyway, if by some quirk of fate you’re reading this, Mr-Looks-Like-Kenny-Rogers-And-Falls-Over-At-Gigs, I hope you’re feeling much better…

Aside from that it was a stunning night’s music – same line up as the 12 Bar Club gig the week before – Julie and Pierce, with Brian Houston on before them. All three are seriously world-class headline act stock, and if you get any chance at all to see them, jump at it!

One of the best things about the evening was Pierce’s between song banter, which is excellent – very very funny indeed.

so here’s my top 5 banterers (in no particular order)

  • Pierce Pettis
  • Michael Manring
  • Ben Castle
  • Martyn Joseph
  • Mo Foster

In fact, Mo’s stories are so good, he’s written a book – 17 Watts – full of his marvellous rock ‘n’ roll anecdotes, which is required reading for anyone with an interest in the birth of rock ‘n’ roll in the UK, and the growth of the music industry here through the 60s and 70s…

Soundtrack – currently, listening to more of the stuff by me and theo (hopefully the street-teamers will have some of this to listen to soon…), and whilst away, the soundtrack was Michael Franti – ‘Songs From The Front Porch’, Scritti Politti – ‘Cupid and Psyche’, Francis Dunnery ‘Man’, Lifehouse ‘Stanley Climbfall’, ‘Pierce Pettis ‘Everything Matters’ and ‘Making Light Of It’, and Juliet Turner – ‘Burn The Black Suit’ – all very fine stuff. The drive home from Berwick was mostly soundtracked by Radio 4 (always fun to learn new stuff just by sticking the radio on – doesn’t happen too often with the TV), and then a documentary about Elvis Costello, ensuring that sometime this evening ‘Armed Forces’ will go on…

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