The process of writing.

Don’t let anyone fool you, writing songs isn’t easy. It’s the easiest thing in the world… except it isn’t. If you’re like me, and you tend to over-analyse and criticise your own work, it can be hard to persuade yourself you’ve created something of enduring quality.

This might help explain why, when I’m in the right mood, I do come up with the odd funky line, idea, motif, theme… but the arrangement is harder, and the ideas don’t come easily when you’re trying to find the middle 8, or a better bridge, or some useful rhythm device…

So today’s little session at Da Cube studios just goes to show that I can do some of my best work when I don’t have to write the song – alone!

This tune is a cracker. It’s come out really nicely. When it’s available somewhere… I’ll let you know. As a taster, it’s got a hard start which could be P diddy’s if we mix is right. The ending is totally different though. Wicked grooves.

How fitting.... the eagles???

Well, I've got Long Road out of Eden playing at the moment - it's a bit saccharine in places, this double album, but not bad fare for having been out of the limelight for a while.

However, the lyrics for Long Road out of Eden itself seem very VERY relevant right now.

---

Moon shining down through the palms
Shadows moving on the sand
Somebody whispering the twenty-third Psalm
Dusty rifle in his trembling hands
Somebody trying just to stay alive
He got promises to keep
Over the ocean in America
Far away and fast asleep

Silent stars blinking in the blackness of an endless sky
Cold silver satellites, ghostly caravans passing by
Galaxies unfolding; new worlds being born
Pilgrims and prodicals creeping towards the dawn
But it's a long road out of Eden

Music blasting from an SUV
On a bright and sunny day
Rolling down the interstate
In the good ol' USA
Having lunch at the petroleum club
Smokin' fine cigars and swappin' lies
Gimme 'nother slice o' that barbecued brisket!
Gimme 'nother piece o' that pecan pie!

Freeways flickering, cell phones chiming a tune
We're riding to Utopia; road map says we'll be arriving soon
Captains of the old order clinging to the reins
Assuring us these aches inside are only growing pains
But it's a long road to Eden

Back home I was so certain
The path was so very clear
But now I have to wonder; What are we doing here?
I'm not counting on tomorrow
And I can't tell wrong from right
But I'd give anything thing to be in your arms tonight

Weaving down the American highway
Through the litter and the wreckage and the cultural junk
Bloated with entitlement; loaded on propaganda
And now we're driving dazed and drunk
Been down the road to Damascus, the road to Mandalay
Met the ghost of Caesar on the Appian Way
He said, "It's hard to stop the binging, once you get a taste"
"But the road to empire is a bloody, stupid waste"

Behold the bitten apple-the power of the tools
But all the knowledge in the world is of no use to fools
And it's a long road to Eden

---

To re-iterate: Gordon Brown was responsible for the light touch which helped make sure we got into this mess. He is now trying to spend us out of it.

When are we going to get the chance to wake up?

The modern smartphone: a quick tip

GULP! Wish me luck. My trusty P990i (a little paint rubbed off on the corners, but otherwise doing very well indeed) has started acting up a bit, like an old windows machine does. It’s probably been a good year or so since I backed it up, etc so I’ve decided to do a sort of “sweep and clear”, by doing a complete backup (as an insurance policy), then a partial one where I only back up the contacts and calendar data but nothing else.

Then I’ll perform a master reset, followed by an internal drive format (making sure I back up anything in the internal drive folders, which isn’t much), and get stuck in reinstalling the apps I have on it. Effectively, I’m hoping to essentially “reinstall windows”, so to speak. I’m sure afterwards it’ll return to “as new” speed of operation, etc. Not that it’s slow, but it’s been rebooting a bit recently since I tried to get Doom working on it… I guess it may have become slightly compromised in the process. Who can tell? :)

I managed to find a 6-string set I didn’t know I had the other day, which means I now have 4 sets in Meths rotation, which is great. I think I’ll buy another 2 new sets to bring me up to a safe 6.

Politics meets music :)

I'm sitting here listening to my favourite Muse album, "Absolution", and a song remided me of our resident unelected useless bastard Gordon Brown (Kircaldy gimp that he is), a man of 10 years ignorance and big business forelock tugging:

---

I think I'm drowning
asphyxiated
I wanna break this spell
that you've created (well, he is blaming everybody else)

you're something beautiful
a contradiction
I wanna play the game
I want the friction (oh, you've got it now mate)

you will be the death of me
you will be the death of me (god, I hope so - politically at least)

bury it
I won't let you bury it
I won't let you smother it
I won't let you murder it (sorry mate, your light touch regulation already did)

our time is running out
our time is running out
you can't push it underground
you can't stop it screaming out (the unsayable truth - the banking system is still sick)

I wanted freedom
bound and restricted
I tried to give you up
but I'm addicted (cheap credit, anyone?)

now that you know I'm trapped sense of elation
you'd never dream of
breaking this fixation (except for when the world realised it was printing money through recycling and repackaging of debt obligations)

you will squeeze the life out of me

bury it
I won't let you bury it
I won't let you smother it
I won't let you murder it

our time is running out
our time is running out
you can't push it underground
you can't stop it screaming out
how did it come to this? (touche)
ooooohh

you will suck the life out of me

bury it
I won't let you bury it
I won't let you smother it
I won't let you murder it

our time is running out
our time is running out
you can't push it underground
you can't stop it screaming out
How did it come to this? (never a truer word, you stomped about with a smug look on your fat face spouting about abolishing boom and bust, and contributed a massive amount to the world's ultimate hangover through your inability to see through the greed, lies and sharp suits of canary wharf, you moron)
ooooohh (to be uttered with a good broad Fife accent, imitating Frank Spencer)

---

Gordon Brown, you are a useless tosser. Dave "davo" Cameron, you are a useless empty tosser. Lib Dems, you are useless tossers who still haven't grasped that this could be your moment.

It's time for total political anarchy, a new party to wipe the floor clean of these miserable self-interested, disconnected arsewits.

Then I might vote for the first time in 20 years.

Last Night's Gig... surprise new track

After a long night watching a procession of Reading Rock (TM) we finally had the chance to go on and do our thing.

At the moment the set is still short (we've got new tracks coming through but it does take time for them to mature and no mistake!) so when we'd done the 6 tracks in the current set we got asked to carry on - so we did a new one!

New keyboard player Tony did a nice job with some really chilled soulful keys.

The revelation of the night was that we did it all without our usual backing tracks - this meant things definitely got a little more smokin' and I suspect now we have a full sized reliable line-up (fingers crossed) we can probably look at playing everything without click (although I suspect I have one or two tunes up my sleeve which I'd like to put some samples behind - I may look into foot pedals for that).

And, big kudos to Dave, our new sound engineer (and a fellow Xantia driver to boot - top stuff) who spotted the elephantine bass tendency of the room and gave me a nudge to look out for it. A quick cut at 120Hz and a boost elsewhere and the bass sound was one hell of a lot more rounded, and no mistake. I'll be taking more time to look out for that in future.

The new track got extended by a few bars by Armen, and all of us had the same idea and came back in "slight return" style: Jacquoda grabbed the opportunity to give the audience the "goodnight" speech and plug the CD, which was very entrepreneurial of her.

All in all, an enjoyable evening. And my bass pod survived a bit of a tumble, which showed how solidly it's built. Excellent.

I'll be in the studio for an hour this evening working on an arrangement, I hope.

Of mismatched bills?

I tell you, people, it's damn hard being funky in today's reading. Sure, this town aspires to become the next motown, or san francisco, but the hooded tops and lager have worn down the 'macho man' vibe and this place just isn't doing its' bit to funkifize, man. Tower of power would have ended up on a triple header with nirvana, the pixies, skunk anansie (kid not, the band on at the moment just launched into 'weak as i am'!) and jack jones. Eek.™ what to do? You gig in reading, you play on the bill with rock. Bum. And to top off my thoughts, the band have just launched into heart shaped box. Who with the funk in their soul is going to still be here?!? ARGH!

After the soundcheck, before the gig...

The limbo, before anyone comes in, when you hope you'll play to a busy venue. It is sunday night, but I've tried out facebook advertising for the first time, and it seems to work a bit like adwords from google.

I elected pay-per-click and about 100 people have clicked through to the event page for the gig. I wonder how many will come along?

If you read this on the jacquoda facebook page and you're looking for some live music this evening, come on down the the jazz club on the caversham road (i.e. The IDR) in reading. It's just down the road from the station!

If you read this in the million other places I syndicate this to, then come on down and see us. You'll boogie. Promise.

Big bass in the cavern under the trains!!!

Gig this weekend in Reading…

Jacquoda have a gig this weekend in Reading at “the Arches”, also called the Jazz Club…

The facebook page for the gig is here!

Should be a giggle. I may take some more footage but it won’t be from the headstock of the bass, the camera didn’t like the vibrations. Must be too funky in here, say it again, too funky, funky in here…

Anyone know where I can get a good set of 5 string jazz pickups?

A new angle on things...

I've been messing around with a old-ish Sony MiniDV camcorder recently, following some fun I had with a small SD card one (low res, that one was). Ages ago, Nic's mum got me one of those camera tripods with the totally poseable, wrappable legs on, which you can stick around fence poles, chair legs, etc etc.

I thought it might be fun to attach it the the headstock of the 6-string during a rehearsal, and got footage from a couple of songs, including "witch bitch". The playing's a little shaky as I was getting used to the extra neck heaviness!





The poor camera got rather upset at one point with the deeeeep vibes coming from the bass on the Low B so I won't be mounting it there again - I'll get hold of another SD card based one at some point, maybe a high def one? They're pretty cheap now.

Enjoy the video. Good rehearsal - we had a fantastic little session working on new tracks, one of which is going to be quite different :)

A quick missive – keeping your hands strong when you haven’t got time to practise properly

It’s important! I use one of those hand exercisers which can do the fingers independently: very useful, when you come to practise the following day – you can feel fresh and warmed up much quicker.

Don’t use it for longer than a couple of days though, as your hands will stay strong but you might lose some dexterity in the process, esp with stretches. Try to perform some kind of tai chi for your hands if you can!

Camcorder update – I now have a 4-pin iLink to iLink cable which works perfectly with one of the laptops in the house with built-in Firewire – so be warned, the PCMCIA Adapted combo card I was trying to use was the weak link (I tried it in more than one laptop) – it couldn’t hack the pace of the firewire stream from the DV camcorder. Tch!

So I’m now happily ripping footage from times past – including a full set from Janeiro/Breeze playing a legendary last night set in Soldeu’s fantastic Aspen bar!

I’ve also got some great footage of Steve playing slide guitar. Oh yes. heh heh

A little Jacquoda experiment…

We’ve got material with IndieStore, and you can embed the preview player in lots of places. I’ve just put it on my website, and also on my MySpace page. Wonder if it’ll embed here?

That’ll be a “yes” :)

Sony MiniDV camcorders and firewire – and how Google can be counterproductive

*** One of my geek interruptions. Apologies. ***

I’ve got a Sony camcorder (not recent, but good enough) with USB 2.0 and firewire (iLink) streaming output. The USB 2.0 is useless for grabbing video, it can’t handle the stream amounts, but iLink should do it OK. I’ve got an Adaptec combi USB 2.0 and firewire PCMCIA card I’ve been using for hard drives for quite a while, so I got the cable (big 6 pin firewire to tiny 4-pin iLink) and had a crack.

Unfortunately, while the camera is recognised wonderfully by Windows and can be controlled and captured in Nero 6 (which I’m using) the video has small pink blocks every few seconds. Damn.

I looked into the firewire drivers windows installed and found microsoft had patched XP (labelled SP4, no less) for those drivers and unpdated them yesterday: still no dice.

After a LOT of googling – this was a hard one to track down, I finally used the search terms “mini dv streaming blocks” and found a forum entry with some solutions – I think it may be to do with the speed of the PCI bus, or possibly the cardbus, in the laptop.

This is the first time I think I’ve come across hardware limitations in the machine I want to use for a specific task: pain in the arse!

So I’ll go and look for better drivers for the lower subsystems now. Gulp – do I want to go down this road???

Backup time I think!

One man, one bass, one mind.

Nah, not a slogan - although it could be. This morning we had a really nice lazy lie-in (believe it or not, I’m sat here in a dressing gown playing bass) watching and laughing at Saturday Kitchen as usual (call that an omelette?). I trolled through to the studio, thinking I’d like to have a bit of a scroff around on a bass, and picked up the fretless, taking it back through to the bedroom and watching a little more TV (“meteor” starring Sean Connery – argh, that doom tritone noise for the approaching rock makes me cringe!) and I trilled way merrily for about 15 minutes before coming  back to the studio as I wanted to plug in and hear myself properly.

So the sound of the Warwick wood mellows me out, and I decide to change basses for my trusty fave, the 4-string Aria Integra which has been with me for 18 years now. I don’t play it as much as I used to (not least as it would need refretting if I did – talk about jumbo profile at the moment!) and I keep it strung with very very light 35s (blue label elites seem to suit this bass best).

Then I dug out a Jaco book I haven’t looked at for about a year, and actually got stuck into what might be termed “proper practise”, working on Chromatic Fantasy phrases which were rusty (i.e. all of em). This piece is a tour de force, it’s magnificent for getting your hands stretched out and flying.

There’s some great footage of Jaco playing a solo with the piece in at about 4:00.

As ever, there’s loads of guys who’ve posted attempts to play it – I’ve seen some great ones, but they all mask the hard transitions with a rubato approach to timing :)

I doubt I’ll ever post my attempts online! I’m definitely not up to speed on it. It’s more of an exercise piece for me.

On with it!

Anybody else got this head cold?

The sun would say “what a stinker” – I’ve had this since Sunday afternoon when it came on strong, and on Monday and Tuesday I sat wrapped in layer upon layer of clothes, sweating profusely with cold feet and hands watching the snow fall like a small child who has been told he can’t go out. Poo.

Right now I’m still suffering from the sort of congestion which leaves you sleepless and dizzy (despite several remedies!) so I’m off to the doc this afternoon for what will probably be my second dose of antibiotics this year for sinus infections. Grr.

This leads into a feeling I’ve had for a while about living down here in the south east of England, especially having spent the first 27-odd years of my life living on the east coast of Scotland, and most of that in an agricultural corner of Fife.

Up there, and I’m not being romantic here, the people are nicer to each other. We’re not talking about people cringing and fawning over each other, just small things like giving way in doorways: driving manners: smiling. In Edinburgh, Nic and I got directions to a wedding we were trying to find from a random man across the street who noticed us and gave us a shout – he’d seen everybody else headed for the reception venue. That touched me.

Down here, there’s a simple human truth: there is increasingly intense competition for resources. Roads: healthcare: supermarkets (yes, those shelves are empty for a reason): jobs. Colds and flu spread like wildfire in densely populated areas through the vectors created by schools and poorly air conditioned workplaces where people work the longest hours in Europe due to the paranoia of job security they’ve brainwashed themselves into.

All this results in a mental state which is becoming increasing strained, irritable and easily annoyed. I’d wager it also helps explain some of the insanity of the house market in recent years: how many people caved in to the “you’ve got to get on the housing ladder” jibe? I think this also results in the comparatively high crime rates down here.

Anyway, this makes the southeast (well, certainly the Thames Valley where I live and work) a miserable shithole to live in – you have to psychically “fend off” daily little displays of petulance, bad manners and short temper. And the truth is, I’m going that way myself. My shopping trolley etiquette is something to behold – I can’t put up with anyone who isn’t trying to shop at a million miles an hour, and while I don’t glare at people (yet) I do show my impatience. I’m on the cusp.

If you read this, and you’re considering moving down here because you think the jobs are here, you may be right – but you will notice that once the lustre of the cash fades, you’re left sitting in an overpriced brick shoebox, not knowing anyone who lives anywhere near you, paranoid about the chavs and the tinks you keep reading about in the local paper (the reading chronicle is great if you want to read about drugs, rape, murder and death on a daily basis!), and wondering why the hell you moved here in the first place.

Now.

I’m not quite that bad yet. But how long?

Just to emphasise all the above about Reading in particular, as I think it’s the biggest ugliest mirage to ever “big itself up” -

• http://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/articles/1/9121
• http://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/articles/1/9080/
• http://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/articles/1/9043/
• http://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/articles/1/8941/
• http://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/articles/1/9003/
• http://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/articles/1/9081/
• http://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/articles/1/8967/
• http://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/articles/1/8767/
• http://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/articles/1/8814/
• http://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/articles/1/9144

That little selection took me 3 minutes to glean. Yuk! I’ll go back to musical stuff after I get back into the studio – this post is the result of feeling like crap, promise!

Recent Jacquoda Gigs

We’ve had a couple of gigs recently – first one this year was at a cellar place in Bracknell. Hard to find (Bracknell is like a rat’s nest of dual carraigeways) but great once we got going.

I took the stack as I didn’t know the size of the venue – it’s a small price to pay for making sure you can be heard, but I think Matt the keyboard man may have gone deaf again – I dunno, it’s either him or Armen who gets it in the ear heh heh

Anyhoo, there are pictures and videos of a couple of gigs I can think of posting right now

Reading Deja Vu bar

• Pictures are up on the Jacquoda facebook site
• Includes at least one picture of me (eek)

That was a good gig – the venue’s a little strange as you play on a stage on the left as you walk in, playing directly to a few seats and a wall! Fortunately the CCL combo had way enough power for that night. We got matched up with another Reading Rock band though – this is getting to be too much, who comes to live music to see a mixture of funk, soul, jazz and get blasted by Reading Rock(tm)? It’ll definitely be better once we’ve got what might be called a “full set” – i.e. an hours’ worth of material.

Bracknell Cellar Bar, South Hill Park

Yet another gig where we end up billing on a wierd list of acts including a fella on solo guitar who was spellbinding, and a totally flat out rock act with overtones of My Vitriol. Mismatched again! Grrrrr!

• Movie on MobileMe (with thanks to Armen!)
• Pictures on MobileMe (likewise!)

The sound on the video isn’t bad – I think we need time in a large-ish space with acoustics similar to a venue to record our live sound from the audience point of view and try to perfect the mixing a bit so we can get a clearer idea of what to listen for during soundchecks. Time for me to revisit the way Breeze mix – long cable, and get out the front to listen to the sound!

Wow, my nose is blocked. Amazing head cold, this. I’ll leave with a pic of me. Like the hat?

Righteous Justice?

* Warning! Property price based rant ahoy! *

Heh heh! I’ve just read that one half of the “location location location” property-gimp act who have done a fine job of stoking the public half of the 10-year obsession with equity (the banks did fine on their own under Gordon’s “light touch”) has a business which – get this – hunts for high-price property for rich buyers (ooo, he counts Kylie Minogue amongst his past clients).

This miserable bastard’s speculative “uber estate agency” is now possibly on the rocks – something which my schadenfreude gland has wished for for so long, especially after he and Katie Allsop were so bullish recently and defended themselves against widespread allegations that the recent “property porn” TV revolution had helped to get us into the mess we’re in. I have no sympathy for these peddlers of the mirage – in tandem with estate agents (who need no qualifications or previous experience to set up, and have sod all mandatory regulation – and who probably get a percentage of sale price), a banking sector which was effectively printing money by recycling debt into collateral (financial BSE, anyone?) and finally, the public – whose greed knew no bounds.

Watching it all unravel is great fun if you’ve been locked out of property (initially because we couldn’t afford to, then because we basically didn’t trust the market long term). Here’s to an overall 50% drop in house prices by end 2010!

* Rant ends – normal musical service will be resumed, promise *

Windows Writer?

Well, this is new. Decided to try out Windows Writer as a method of posting to the blog. The front end looks OK, and it’s apparently now linked to my live space on MSN somehow (although I think it’s only updates).

This still doesn’t look like it’ll post to every blog I have though – I’m talking facebook notes, Myspace blogs, blogger and MSN all at once. I don’t care how they look that much, just that the text finds its’ way onto all the sites. Maybe it’ll do it…

I think I found a way – I’ve got an RSS feed reader on the front of the Myspace profile, and the RSS feed from Blogger is already posted as new notes on Facebook. I’d like tighter integration on myspace, but what can you do?…

BTW, yes, we’re snowed in at Dairy Towers. As I type I’m sitting here in the studio wrapped up to the nines (I’ve got a cold) about to do some work on a track I think might be adaptable for Jacquoda as we need new tracks :) I’ve got a fat rap loop which I think might work as a funk thing to lay down as well.

And it’s started snowing again. We live opposite a cow field with a nice incline on it – I’ve just seen someone trying to snowboard down the hill on a wakeboard. Needless to say he failed horribly!

Were I not ill I’d dig out my old snowboard and have a go (not sure what the edges would do when they bit on grass), but I’m totally wiped out at the moment.

Back to bass! Here’s a pic of ours at the moment.

Andy is...

Totally bopping to Pat Martino doing Stevie Wonder’s “Too high” from “Blue Note plays Stevie Wonder” – a miraculous piece of Jazz guitar insanity with an infectious drum groove which always gets my toes tappin’
Oh, and I’m wondering if I should be doing Facebook and Myspace style “is….” Updates using Blogger.

Tilehurst Jam Night last night

The plough in Tilehurst has a wicked jam night on thursday nights. I've never ever (in 20 years of jam nights!) found a place with so many musos with so much talent and life about them. At last, a jam night which feels more like a gig - these guys have charm, wit, talent and they actually know most of the songs!

Come on along, you won't regret it. But do remember your earplugs - it's not a huge venue and the sound is BIG.

Big shouts to the musos in Tilehurst!

Scottish Jokes - Aye Right

Just got sent these by a friend who is also from North of the Border (you know, where people have pride in their nationality without being branded thugs....!). Make me chuckle enough to want to post them here!

Mail me at spam.account@o2.co.uk if you like 'em.

Jokes only understood in Scotland

A pregnant teenage girl phones her dad at midnight and says:
'Can you come and get me? I think ma water has broken'
'Okay,' says her dad. 'Where are you ringing from?
'Fae my knickers tae ma feet. '

A Glasgow woman goes to the dentist and settles down in the chair.
'Comfy?'asks the dentist.
'Govan,' she replies.

What did the male Siamese twins from Glasgow call their autobiography?
Oor Wullie.

A guy walks into an antiques shop and says: 'How much for the set of antlers?'
'Two hundred quid,' says the bloke behind the counter'
'That's affa dear,' says the guy.
'Aye yer right!' replies the bloke

Did you hear about the fella who liked eating bricks and cement?
He's awa' noo.

After announcing he's getting married, a boy tells his pal he'll be wearing the kilt.
'And what's the tartan?' asks his mate.
'Oh, she'll be wearing a white dress,'

Ten cows in a field. Which one is closest to Iraq ?
Coo eight.

Three wee jobbies sitting on the pavement.
Which one's a Musketeer?
The dark tan yin.

A Scotsman in London is having trouble phoning
his sister from a telephone box. So he
calls the operator who asks in a plummy voice:
'Is there money in the box?
'Naw, it's just me,' he replies.

While getting ready to go out, a wee wifie says to her husband:
'Do you think I'm getting a wee bit pigeon chested?'
And he says: 'Aye, but that's why I love you like a doo.'

What was the name of the first Scottish cowboy?
Hawkeye The Noo.

What do you call a pigeon that goes to Aviemore for its holidays?
A skean dhu.

How many Spanish guys does it take to change a lightbulb?
Just Juan.

'What's the difference between The Rolling Stones and an Aberdeen sheep farmer?
The Rolling Stones say: 'Hey you, get off of my cloud.'
And an Aberdeen sheep farmer says: 'Hey McLeod, get off of ma ewe.

'What do you call an illegitimate Scottish insect?
A wee fly b*****d.

Did you hear about the BBC Scotland series that features the queue for the toilets at Waverley Station?
It's called The Aw' Needin' Line.

Why was the Chinese restaurant so bad?
Because the chef was Lou Ping.

While being interviewed for a job as a bus driver, a guy is asked:
'What would you do if you had a rowdy passenger?' 'I'd put him off at
the next stop,' he says. 'Good. And what would you do if you couldn't
get the fare?' 'I'd take the first two weeks in August,' he replies.

Two negatives make a positive but only in Scotland do two positives make a negative - 'Aye right.'

A Glasgow man - steaming and skint - is walking down Argyle Street when he spots a guy tinkering with the engine of his car!
'What's up Jimmy?' he asks.
'Piston broke,' he replies.
'Aye, same as masel...

Snow this year?

From Home Pics

Well, it's winter season again. I'll probably dust off the Tea Tray Times to give me something to post to while I'm out trying to break more bones!

In the meantime, this pic is from last year's brief snowfall at the Dairy Homestead.

Nice gig. Nail the funk to the floor!

If you're thinking of a night out in Reading, I'd recommend overshooting the noisy overpriced fred-perry-n-violence of Brannigans at the Oracle Consumer Temple (henceforth referred to as the OCT disorder) and punt up the hill opposite until you come to RISC on the left hand side. Quirky, with old sofas and an addiction to world cuisine, by night this place rocks.

And last night Jacquoda ripped the bar a new funk-hole. We tore it up. Armen's solid on the click, so our backing tracks from the (now pro flightcased) 16 track recorder sounded excellent, including the synth lines I recorded over at tony's the other week.

We have arrived. Gigging feels fantastic, there wasn't any room to roam though, we were so packed in Matt our keyboard player ended up facing US at the front of the stage!

Come and see us on the 2nd of dec at the Jazz Club in Reading - formerly known as the arches - where we will make sure that blisters on the dancefloor are the scars that chicks dig.

Sweet.

Bass synthery

Had a wicked time last night which reminded me how I can be effectively ressurected by a good creative session.

I left work exhausted at about 6.45pm, having had a fairly good day messing about with things. Drove over to Uncle Tony's on autopilot, with an emerging headache telling me I needed to go home and rest. I had thought I would pop my head in, listen to a couple of mixes and limp home. As it happened, I did listen to a couple of mixes (rough, but improving!) and then set up the bass synth, as we were looking to get some backing tracks for live work with click together, specifically some synth work.

I had a ball! Wicked keyboard patch on 15, very jamiroquai, good enveloped squidgy thing. far from not being able to find the chord partials I wanted, I got some really nice little triads together. And the more I played, the more cool stuff I sound.

Btw, hate to talk politics, but this talk of the brown bounce - robert peston loves the phrase - cracks me up. I just can't help thinking it sounds like a sexual deviancy. Apologies. But if you smile every time you hear that tired useless soundbite from another uninspired journalist who can't express something without using the latest 2-word oversimplilfication (credit crunch? Piss off!) then my work here is done for the day.

Ttfn

Andy

(playing 5 string warwick)

AVOID iTunes 8!!!!

Yeah, I know, it's more geekery - but I just had my music collection nuked by iTunes 8. It corrupted a whole load of MP3s, some were just deleted. I'm guessing it had problems with the collection (it's pretty large) being on an external drive and being asked to update the album artwork. Either way, I'm overjoyed I backed up the lot last week.

I've uninstalled iTunes entirely and I'm downloading 7.6 as we speak. I will not be enjoying genius playlists as I'm not going through this crap again.

I'm speechless about Apple's installers as well - I didn't realise I'd enlisted Bonjour and MobileMe automatically, despite only having an iPod classic.

Why can't software companies TEST THINGS PROPERLY????

From the mists it rose...

Hello again!

Well, it's been an age. Thankfully, it's the usual excuse - summer was full of music and geekery. The new band is progressing well: we've got a demo recorded (!) before we do any gigs - it's wierd to do this shit in the right order - and the songs are pretty good.

I've been performing uber-geek stuff in the day job. Ever used realVNC on a laptop over Wifi to remote control a server in the house which was running a virtual windows PC under virtualbox which was using a VPN client to get onto your company network and then used RDP to control your machine at your desktop?

I have. And it worked really well.

Music wise, I've got Bass Synth!!! The Roland system is installed on the 6-string, and it's truly brilliant. The tracking at the very bottom of the low B is a little slow, but if you're ready for it, you can compensate.

The band are rehearsing in a cool rehearsal space on a farm in the middle of nowhere outside Wokingham. It's pretty cool, the gear is pretty good (I'm using the stack though, good to crank it).

More later if you're listening and you're good.

Floppy Music

Just caught this through google video. It's musical geekery.



Insane! I love it!

Customer service or bad luck?...

Something just occurred to me. Since march, I've bought three things by credit card, either over the phone or on the internet, which I've had to get refunds for. These were:

• A headlamp for the car (scrapyard job - they sent me a bumper instead and I had to invoke a chargeback to get my money refunded)
• Mario Kart Wii from Amazon (waited an entire month for it to be shipped, they did their usual crap with the website, stringing me along while they kept my money)
• Some gear to turn one of the basses into a synth bass (this one really hacked me off. I did a bit of research, realised the bundles usually only come with the guitar pickup, not the bass one, so I went out of my way to confirm at every stage of the ordering they knew what I needed. They shipped the *&^# guitar one anyway).

It just struck me that I've never had such a lousy run of luck before. I'm going to stop shopping at Amazon because their JIT oriented user interface lies through its' teeth about the status of your order so they can get the cash out of you and give you the impression you can't get a refund when you can (what sort of strange state for an order puts it "pre shipping" for god's sake?). The scrapyard was a joke, but then again every time I rang them (5 times) apart from once I got someone who sounded like their skull was shaped like a frisbee. The time I got an intelligent guy he just didn't bother ringing back.

But somehow synth gear bums me out the most. I tried my best. I did all the hard work. All they had to do was check their stock, and send me the right thing. I found out since they don't even have the bass pickup, so it's refund time again.

I'm starting to think shopping in shops is actually a better idea. Online retailers are starting to take the piss and the pinch starts to bite (to mix my metaphors).

Quick geek post.

Sorry, this just made me laugh out loud. It's been about... oh... 30 years since I looked up rude words in dictionaries. The internet just gives you so much more scope.

So I typed "wiener" (a favourite crap american slang term of mine) into Wikipedia (as I knew it would return a lot of high-intellectual-value matches which I could snigger at) and the first link I clicked on was this one. Frankly the concept of an Extended Wiener Index makes me giggle uncontrollably but then I haven't had enough sleep!

Incidentally (on this blog???) I've got a new musical project! It's looking well funky, I've been writing loops with the guitarist at his (well equipped) studio on the edge of Reading, and he's got some bandwidth (no pun intended) to organise stuff. Good PA too.

Watch this space for links when we've got songs together - it's looking like an all-original setlist too, which is great. Drummer's no slouch, he's got good chops and he's very keen to work on the stuff, having been tied down to a covers band for too long - he wants to explore (and so do I!)

pip pip!

ReBirth of a ReBirth...

Well, the bad news is it's been a long time since I gigged. This doesn't mean I've been idle though - I think the last time I spent this much time working on technique I was still living in a shared flat in St Andrews: net result is I've got very strong hands, and Chromatic Fantasy is coming along very nicely (I've started learning page 3!) - I'm not having to warmup before playing Bach suites.

This stuff is really esoteric though, it's not something I would ever gig. And that's where music lives - playing live to real people - so the lack of gigging is chafing pretty badly.

Hopefully this will change soon! The open night I used to go to in Windsor died on its' arse following some rather shady machinations (not least that the venue location sucked, unless you enjoy getting lost is a building site underneath the railway in windsor), but Tony, who was running the nights, is a great guitarist, and he's keen to start something with the sort of funky vibe I enjoy playing. He's got a great vocalist already, and percussion is lined up - we need a good drummer, and I reckon keyboards will be vital too (Terry was a huge part of the Janeiro/Tempa Tempa sound).

It's nice to be there on the ground floor - at the start - and I want to make this something special. I've got gear which hasn't been gigged itching to sit behind me on stage, and at the moment there's a lot of lines jumping out from under these well exercised hands every time I start playing. It's time I got out there.

TTFN

A spot of politics. Sort of.

Anyone who knows me knows I hate politicians. Well, modern politicians anyway - you know the sort, the ones who make it to the front bench, the eton/oxbridge/etc educated career politicians who dabbled in law before they "heeded the calling" and decided they'd prance about in a gothic craphole getting pissed on our taxes...

But the recent budget has me slightly hot under the collar, and not because I'm some telegraph reading twat who's concerned about the residuals on his mondeo ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/15/ncars115.xml - "Families to suffer" ) - but because ( I should mention I'm under the heathrow flight path) of the brutal hypocrisy of the government with regard to air travel.

Nearly everybody who lives in this area thinks the third runway is a pisspoor idea - in Slough it's apparently 100% (dunno how they managed that one) - and it appears that the department for transport is also in deep deep collusion with BAA to try to push this through ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6726613.stm"Heathrow runway collusion denied" but then they're not going to admit anything, are they?) and besides, some of the original figures used to justify the expansion are massaged ( http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/transport/article3423583.ece "BAA rigged figures to hideairport delays" ) - and Ruth Kelly actually supports the expansion of Heathrow with a third runway(!) - there are voices of dissent in higher places, thank god ( http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/transport/article2982701.ece "Report attacks heathrow expansion" ).

This doesn't stop the CBI from spreading the usual pinstripe hysterical blackmail - "Richard Lambert, director-general of the CBI, recently said major financial institutions would desert the City if Heathrow was not expanded." - and the quotes from some self-interested conglomeration of parties whose livelihood is intertwined with air travel have suggested that 500,000 tourism jobs would be lost without airport expansion(!)... what a load of sensationalism.

So. Cars = bad, planes = good. Because we all know planes run on carbon dioxide and spew out oxygen! Oh yes...

I see in some of these stories that other bodies than groups of citizens are objecting to BAAs relentless lobbying. NATS and the CAA have concerns, and if your air traffic controllers reckon there isn't enough room in the sky, I'd listen. Before a 747 falls on your precious houses of parliament after crashing into another 747.

Seriously, we have to rebase how we think about "progress". It's not economic growth. Economic growth brings us, amongst the good stuff, some really bad stuff (I'm using this mode of speech deliberately). Gordon Brown went to China and wilfully ignored how they treat people as he wants their cash injected into our economy...

We have to slow down. We've only been running this hot as a species for a hundred and fifty years, maybe. If we don't slow down we're going to come to an abrupt halt.

The arts as a business

I confess I'm a little cynical about this, but it might be to do with the total lack of support I had from any official sources to admit that talent and hard work in a "creative" field would get me anywhere - no, when I met with careers advisers, they were all obsessed with "good jobs". God help you if you fancied doing something creative.

so http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7258096.stm is an interesting development. Perhaps Gordon is gradually coming to the realisation that 1) we ain't competitive in making anything tanglible, 2) the square mile and legal crap working out of london is responsible for far too much of our GDP, and 3) we do actually have a reputation in the world as a country which makes some decent music.

God knows why though - perhaps the endless self-flagellation of shit jobs, crappy pay from gigs, and exhaustion trying to persuade fat gits in suits you're worth a punt makes the music better through hardship :)

I'll leave it there...

When techie-diagnosis bites back

Recently I took a really long car ride with my wife, about 12 hours in total. We were heading for a winter hol and had covered about 70 miles on our way to the chunnel when we heard what sounded like static coming from the windscreen area.

I quickly flipped into techie-diagnosis mode and started examining the aircon, fan, proposed that it might be the roof box noise coming through automatic cold air vents on the front etc.

It perplexed us (and at one stage we caught some taxi talk too) for the next half hour, with nic saying it was coming from her left, and me saying it was on my right, and it sounded like the sort of "flat noise" you get which is often hard to place.

Nic then suggested it sounded like static on a radio, at which point I remembered I had a walkie-talkie in my pocket. It had switched itself on against the centre console!

A sobering revelation. The WT was in my pocket as it's the orphan of the one I lost: I'm hoping to find another pair to go with it, and had been looking earlier in the day.

Sometimes though, occam's razor really ought to be applied early. Consider my forehead slapped. :)

Studios and an old lesson re-learned

Funny how some old addages can help you out, eventually. In my case the last few days have been a righteous return to "RTFM, idiot"... if you're not sure what that means, I'm sure the web will provide.

I've got a fairly old (but plenty powerful) athlon machine with cubase SL on it, and a cool software-driven mixing desk with MIDI out. I've been trying on and off (most off, I got frustrated) to get the desk to control Cubase as a control surface. I'd tried using my Innate Sense Of Technology but this was tricky... the desk has various modes of control, including direct control of ADAT machines, etc - so you have to choose your mode of operation carefully. Hence reading the manual. Once I worked out that the desk could transmit everything as MIDI messages, and read the cubase manual about configuring the generic remote control, I soon had the whole lot talking nicely.

I do suspect I need a newer version of cubase though: the desk is fully motorised and it would be useful to have the desk controlled by cubase, restoring fader levels, etc...

On the live music front, it's still quiet at the moment... there's a lot of interesting stuff coming up on StarNow, but I don't know if I want to pay the buggers so I can respond to the want ads :) I suspect the first thing I should be concentrating on is making my website a better advertisement for my talents... so the studio it is then.

If you're out there, Jamie... give us a shout mate :)

StarNow leads in London

I've got some interesting looking leads to follow up which the RSS feed from StarNow is sending me - I'm currently looking for a new original act to join, or help form.

You could say that this is in fact another rebirth!

Incidentally, I've really rediscovered that Aria of mine. A cracking passive bass!

Oh - and the studio PCs gone tits up, but in a moment of serendipity, my dad returned his old PC as he has a new one - same mobo! So I have a donor... and, bless, more memory for the PC.

I've also found a Victor Wooten book I forgot I had - and I'm working on the transcription of Sinister Minister in there. Wacked out! Got to be careful I don't become too virtuoso though: it's the easiest thing in the world to slide into playing fantastic solo bass, but that's not what I'm about. I need an act with some creative and happy people to bring out the best in my playing. Music is pure playfulness, pure quality!

Hello! Blimey... closure?

Interesting.

I used to work for a fairly major Japanese electronics company, in their handset division. I was there for 7 years all told, far too long to hold a post really but I suspect I just got too comfortable. The last 3 years there were pretty bad apart from a great automation tool we worked on, which worked rather well.

They had 2 rounds of redundancies while I was on the employee forum: both times, I participated in the process, working on the definition of what would decide who stayed and who got paid off. Both times I was left in the company: and the second time, it hurt rather badly and I'm ashamed to say I behaved like an asshole for about 6 weeks. Ultimately I recovered a bit but eventually it just became too much to wait around for the final axe to fall, so I left almost exactly a year ago and spent the three months in Andorra playing bass with Janeiro in the Aspen bar in Soldeu (wotcher peeps).

I heard today that the final axe fell: I stayed in contact with the guys I used to work with ( a great team - we had a Xmas meal this year, and more than 20 of us turned up - remember, this is an EX-system test team) and now I'm trying to help throw jobs their way.

And it feels pretty good. Not gloaty good, I'm not grinning because the place is shutting down, I feel good for the guys who are still there as this will a) give them a healthy payout and b) give them a chance to work somewhere where they will feel really valued for the talents they have (Darren, Sean, et al - you are wasted on those dumb ineffectual bizarre Japanese idiots at head office: you care about quality, they care more about losing face and honour!)

It really feels like some form of closure: like something let go of properly. It's good.

A Fine New Year!

Mad couple of weeks. Hope you had a great christmas and new year.

Nic, bless, got me a mega iPod (giving me a total of 200GB of iPod space when you take my 4th gen clickwheel into account!) so I've been spring cleaning my music collection and converting some DVDs using some wicked freeware I found out there. Bourne ultimatum actually looks pretty good.

In the last 3 days I've stashed loads of stuff in our lofts for long-term storage, built a tabletop out of 12mm chipboard and 33mm profile wood batons which fits on top of the pool table and gives us a dining table which will comfortably seat 12 (possibly 14!) but which breaks down in about 20 minutes to give the pool table back for after-dinner gaming. The jukebox started misbehaving shortly before Xmas, but once I got around to fixing it I did several component replacements and connection cleanings on the wallbox and now it's perfect, and did a great job last night during our meal (nice 5hr stewed beef bourginon) where it provided excellent background music.

Good friends, good food, and Ravin Rabbids 2 on the Wii with 4 controllers. Ever seen 4 people trying to run away from a big rolling rock a la Indy? Hysterical!

I may even have some video of it :)

And in addition, my studio now has good square footage to walk around in. I'm feeling good about 2008 - I think it could be a very creative year. Certainly I'll be finding something local to do...

----- Today's Practise Diary -----Something original in the STUDIO

Jukebox stuff

Last weekend we finally got up to Castleford near leeds and collected our 70CD series 3 Sound Leisure jukebox. This weekend I've finally got it wired up with fresh tangent speakers from Richer Sounds, it sounds cool!.

Tetrion for blogs

I decided to day to take a minute to fill this in a little. Without giving too much away to the identity thieves, of course.

Good things that have happened recently:

• eBay - won a CD jukebox, "regency" series 3 from sound leisure, popped up to Castleford (!!200 miles!!) to collect it and it's great!
• Found somewhere I could source an EL84 (just the ONE) but their ordering system turned out to be pants so - surprise surprise, modern e-shopping nightmare - it's sat in a bloody Citylink warehouse in Hayes waiting for pickup. Why couldn't I have it delivered to work you MORONS?
• Chrimbo tree is up and looking very pretty
• Updated the Wii and posted my Friday the 13th Mii onto the new Mii competition channel (they've got some well freaky stuff on there)
• Restrung the old white Aria, took it to a jam night in Windsor and the bass blew them away - that old beast has the most fantastic sound for a passive bass. A real peach, and the strings are so light I found it tricky to play! That's always a good sign.
• Get together with the old crew from Panasonic - which was very very well attended, how many people can say they had a Christmas works dinner with their ex-colleagues and more people came than where they work at the moment??? Lots of good natured loud boisterous chatting over excellent Indian food at Spice in Thatcham (I'd recommend it, they put up with us, they'll put up with you, trust me) - well done Andy Beith for organising it.
  

That's a short list for 17 days. I really need something local and musical, the Windsor jam night is fun but I'm not sure how many contacts I'll make that way. I think I'll have to bite the bullet and find something in west London, maybe Ealing. A bit of a hotbed of jazz-funk there.

Wish me luck. Incidentally, I'm back on the 5-string fretless again. Erp!

CAPTCHA with a conscience???

I'm a geek really. A gear geek and a bit of a computer geek as well.

So the story on Techworld about a Quicktime exploit allowing nasty people to do things to your computer if you're running firefox was of passing interest. Much more interesting was the CATCHA image at the bottom for weeding out spam comments from bots! Not only does it have something political to say, which is an interesting and new viral idea spreading idea, but I love the logo - "Stop spam. Read books." It almost sounds like a bored mantra of someone who writes captcha code for a living :)

Music - the stack needs a new EL84 for the valve channel (arse!) but the solid state is good so tonight I'm going to give the new Warwick NEO cabs a baptism of fire in O'Neills - come and see Janeiro at their best, we'll rip the roof off again!

Just do be careful at the front of the stage. Jay usually ends up with at least one woman who crashes into his lap (not that he isn't used to it)...

Bit the bullet, did the deed: now 20 kilos lighter!

It's not quite as it seems... I've traded in all the cabs I owned (1 4x10 Warwick cab, 1 1x15 Warwick cab, and a 2x10 Trace Elliot cab) and bought two Warwick NEO PRO cabinets to replace the 4x10 and 1x15 cabs - and they weigh masses less! As an example, the old 4x10 weighed 41Kg(!!!) and the new one weighs 28Kg... and handles 200W more power (nice.)

I can safely say they sound fantastic. And I did all this in Brighton at GAK - the title links to them - and they were friendly, enthusiastic and didn't bat an eyelid helping me get the three cabs into the shop from the car 2 streets up, and getting the new cabs back to the car. Top fellas.

I just woke up in the morning, looked up some prices (I've been lusting after these cabs for a while!) and decided to bite the bullet and finally do the job.

Incidentally - on the geek front - just got a proper conference call on Skype working (fixed the video banding problem with newest S3 drivers for my laptop) and it's wicked! Got the whole family on with a reliable skype link!

TTFN!

Laughing my arse off!

I heard about the lost child-support database CDs when the story first broke and was open-mouthed for about 10 seconds until I started laughing... I realised pretty quickly what this meant for a government obsessed with holding as much information as possible about us, and their precious (apparently terrorism-beating) ID card idea.

Now, I don't have kids, and thank god: my bank account details, national insurance, etc should be safe - so I can laugh like a drain at this story (http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL2354801820071123?sp=true) and hope beyond hope that the UK public make their anger known in some other way than voting for the opportunistic tory scumbags who sit opposite in our ancient corrupted democracy!

It's time for the UK public to demaind that our ruling classes GET A LIFE - I mean it, they need real-world knowledge, not this horribly insular bunch of lawyers (who the hell decided to let the country be run by them, for god's sake????) who studied politics at Oxbridge or whatever. Maybe some of them should get a real job before running the country?

Public confidence in the government of the UK has apparently dropped from over 60% to 28% since september - the question I'd like to ask is, "do you believe our system of government is high time for a change?". Our ruling class needs a wakeup call, but I fear we're all too busy paying tax and trying to survive... which is a whole other story!

Still, I'm still laughing at this sorry tale! It's even funnier that the whole database was on there because government IT strategies mandated they'd have to pay a third party IT contractor to work up the new version of the database minus the sensitive data, and thus they didn't bother!!!!! Pointy haired bosses in Whitehall?? Whod'a thunk it?

*** Scary financial rant alert ***

Spotted this today - I think it's in the US but one of the "companies" they refer to is based in London: it seems companies are buying and selling discharged bankruptcy debt!!!!!

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_46/b4058001.htm

this is off the wall. If this insanity can produce a “robust market” in discharged bankruptcy accounts, what bloody hope is there? Apart from the poor saps who find themselves unable to progress because organisations are demanding funds that have been legally excused, surely that “market” in this dead debt can only be worse than the current madness in the entire global financial market about badly labelled investment vehicles that looked like gold but had crap sub-prime mortgages sitting underneath!

A bigger picture proving the need for screwing down these insane bent suits I cannot think of!

The horribly irony is, it doesn't matter if you're a follower of the "neither a borrower or a lender be" and you lead a comfortable but non-40" LCD TV existence: ultimately this soaraway $$-pupil greed will see all of us royally shafted as the world economy goes down in debt flames and the same suits retreat to safe distance in Monaco, Switzerland etc and wait for the dust to settle before sharpening their steak knives and salivating again in 10 years time...

When will we learn? Kill the suits.

P.S. buy your strings from Strings Direct - they rule.

Quick post in a hectic week...

Hullo punters! What an insane week. Two days of madness on monday and tuesday, a mad drive back home on tuesday night getting back at about 2am, then a full day's work behind that desk I keep on about...

Then I got the chance to be a bassist in shining armour for the jam night at Havan in Windsor - this has proven to be a great place to meet new musicians, and the standard of playing is high, I ended up well outside my comfort zone the other week playing fretless 5 string fusion jazz of sorts, definnitely a stretch for me - anyway, I was considering a quiet night in on wednesday night, but the call came at about 9pm - "We've got 2 drummers and no bassist - can you come down?"

"I'll be there in 20 minutes" I said. I'm close enough to Windsor to mean it's a short hop (especially compared to driving to O'Neills in Oxford as I often do for Janeiro/Breeze gigs)... I had a cool night, met another drummer (a man I'm sure I've exchanged emails with, Colin Bibby) who has a nice line in grooves and reggae and got home relatively early for a music night.

Last night I thought... I'll have a quiet night and recover. Fat chance! I'm on my way home after another full day at work and Jamie rings me - O'Neills need us, the stuff they thought was on wasn't and Jamie has been offered a gig. Not one to turn down the chance to boost adrenaline levels both inside and outside myself, I stopped off for pie and chips on the way home, grabbed the 5 string fretless again (hell, I'm way way way outside my box now) and shot up the M40. What a night - Steve was totally left field, I don't think I've heard him ever play Sweet Home Alabama that way, it really groooooved. Jamie was ready for a gig as well, and it was just the 3 of us, Andorra style: good to be at the front and out from behind the speaker stack!

Plus, the PA behaved - last gig we did (a wedding in Oxford) it developed feedback problems when nothing was plugged in(?!) but Jamie tracked it down to the crossover, which appeared to be feeding back by itself!

Great crowd in there last night, lots of good natured revelry. Oh yes.

GEEK NEWS...
I got put onto this by a friend in the office - A tiny solid-state drive laptop from ASUS - it looks rather spiffy and it's fairly cheap. Looks like you can load it with anything you want - linux, windoze etc. With an external SD slot you can slap 8GB in there, and the internal drive being another SD card the wear-levelling of the SD standard will def come in handy, although with the number of cycles modern cards can handle I'm sure it'll do well. It even has a built in webcam and skype installed in the linux distro that the beast comes with. I'd probably load ubuntu myself... Looks like a useful and neat little piece of kit.

Tonight I'm off again, watching some shakespeare... wish me luck, hopefully I'll stay awake! I feel for the poor cats, they've barely seen us!

An update! Local music is alive in Windsor...

Wotcher.

It's been a good week: I've fixed the linkback to Musicians-in-my-city from my website (they seem to demand that their little graphic is in every frame) and got a few emails as a result. One was from Jayson Norris's band, who are looking for a bassist, it seems. I'll be getting in touch with them: he's from New Zealand and I like their sound. It's like a more energetic Jack Johnson, and the songs are better written, I reckon...

I also got to 2 gigs last weekend with Janeiro in Oxford, one classic O'Neills mad night, and then a Saturday night wedding in a place called Dragon School on the way into Oxford centre. Wierd gig but the audience was very into it!

And finally, on wednesday night I took the plunge and took the 5 string fretless to a jam night in Windsor at the Havana pub in the station. Happens every wednesday (I'm sure I mentioned it before) and the gear is brought along by Tony from Phat Tone studios in Reading. Nice fella.

Great night, I ended up doing wierd 6/8 jamming in some odd new-jazz thing at one stage. Was insane for the first 5 bars as I found my feet, then when I realised what the feel was, I started to pull it around like a piece of blutak. I made some of the best 6/8 grooves I think I've ever done!

Other stuff... Richard and Judy are splitting the band! I love the article -
"It is understood Judy Finnigan, 59, plans to move away from television to write books, while her husband Richard Madeley, 51, will pursue a solo career. "

So Judy's going to get Pickfords in, and Richard's going to play a piano in a big white room and sing about peace and love and good happiness stuff. Hmmmm.

I just found a myspace page for local music hereabouts which includes some tuesday night jam nights in Maidenhead! Excellent!
----- Today's Practise Diary -----I must learn 2 more bars of chromatic fantasy :)

Musicians with Integrity!

Excellent: just seen a band bow out of the Channel 4 "Mobileact Unsigned" competition on the grounds that it was demeaning: even Alex James couldn't persuade them to poledance for the 4 "lorded" judges (I will admit that Jo Whiley has definitely not done herself any favours being associated with this attempt to create a slightly grungy X-factor - although she tends to be the only dissenting voice sometimes).

I've been in battle fo the band competitions, but never at this level: to be honest, the "stakes" for this comp are much higher - or are they? At least with the last one I was in (with Janeiro) we knew that the eventual prize was to play at FoxFMs party in the park in front of several thousand people: that was definitely an experience. The poor buggers who make it through the Channel 4 skit will be bankrolled by a fat arsehole who I bet won't stump up for a second album.

So kudos to Nemo for turning up and making a stand. The only positive Channel 4 can be assigned in this situation is that they did in fact broadcast the situation. But then chose a lame piss-take about how the van was parked in. The presenter implied they'd parked in such a way they couldn't get out: what if the other cars parked him in, you floppy haired arsewit?

We have to stop reality TV shows. Lazy, cheap, voyeuristic crap. And when they start playing on the dreams of people (X factor is bad enough, but they're mostly starry-eyed McJob cannon fodder - which is cruel) - especially real musicians who play real gigs for real music fans (i.e. people who support local music scenes) - they have crossed a line which makes even my cynical brain-centres hurt.


----- Today's Practise Diary -----

The hunters in your home...

We have 3 young female cats who get antsy when they only get let out in the late afternoon. As a result, they stay out until dusk falls and thus get into "wild cat hunting mode". This seems to have been added to with a "take some work home" mentality where they literally bring live unharmed rodents into the house to chase everywhere.

This poor little bugger is one such rodent.

grr!

Your up-to-date source from Google Trends...

Here's the up-to-date info from Google Trends for those of us waiting for the "house price correction"... bear in mind this is not a totally accurate picture and it does make certain assumptions:

• Google's search engine is by far the most popular and nobody goes looking for houses or information on when prices will drop without making a google search first
• The information from Google trends is useful as an indicator of social trend (note - we're only talking about online UK here, nothing about anyone who doesn't use google as a first-point-of-access) and the overall "feeling" of people
• That what people feel ultimately dictates what they do, no matter how hard the vested interests (estate agents, conveyancy agents, banks/building societies, mindless property TV shows etc) try to keep pumping out the positive messages to try to keep the bubble inflated.

With that in mind, here goes...

2007 only "house price crash" trend - this continues to rise, with a very noticeable "blip" in the recent Northern Rock wake. This one has to be the biggest indicator of what's on people's minds. Self fulfilling prophecy? Well, if the herd mentality holds true, eventually, yes...

2007 only "buy to let" trend - falling? Can it be that either there are enough debt-laden greedy private gits out there now, or is the lure from the TV show is waning as people realise the line of cheap credit is drying up?... I saw a guy in a crap striped suit admit that out of £7.5m of property portfolio he owed about £5m - so he'd be up £2.5m if he sold up now. At which point, the other studio guest said "assuming you could sell it"... and surprise surprise, the "polite strained argument" so prevalent in England today broke out, as our reality-aware bubble-burster was treated to a stonewalling from Mr Pinstripe who couldn't believe things would possibly change...

"Northern Rock" 2007 trend - this one shows the strartling jump in interest in this crappily-planned company at the time of the crisis - but also shows people are still keeping an eye on it...

I've seen some good new stories recently on "shoring up" mortgage markets with banks putting aside crisis funds... holy cow, they'll never be made to pay for their stupidity, will they? :)

BTW, another Windsor jam night wednesday night! Think I might take the 5 string fretless and the combo... not sure where to park for that though!

----- Today's Practise Diary -----

Jam nights... bit o'fun!

Wotcher all.

I got to that Jam night in Windsor - it's the Havana club in Windsor: a stone's throw from the station (actually, it's underneath it, in a very cool arch-basement-long-thin style).

Great night: the guys there have a PA which pretty much does the trick, but the Carlsboro bass head and a wedge monitor definitely don't cut it. I'd consider taking the combo if I wasn't about to sell it! It's always a bit of a lottery taking good gear to a jam night - you can end up with it totally fried (it's happened to me before) by people who don't understand how amps work.

Thing is though, my sound really sucked! The moment I started tweaking the warwick I knew I'd have to use more midrange honk because the Carlsboro simply didn't have the welly. While that might work in some places, I don't like bass with less BASS.

I used to have a carlsboro Cobra 90 bass combo: first proper amp I had. Got a lot of mileage out of it too, but I don't hanker after one of them again!

So on balance, I think I'll bring the combo next week. Hopefully I can park close enough by. I'll take the pod as well.

The guys there are cool - the dude playing percussion's a pretty good drummer: Nick, the guitar player, was very kind about my playing on the night. It's been a long time since I jammed with musicians I don't know... bit rusty, but otherwise OK!

----- Today's Practise Diary -----Some sight reading: a few more bars of Chromatic Fantasy!

windsor-home of great musicians?/

Well, I'm hoping it is. It seems to be a fact that musicians have to keep looking for bands to join, more than anything I suppose it's probably a function of not finding yourself in a stable act which is the main source of income for all involved. Therefore, you all don't have day jobs, and you're probably young enough not to have too much to lose. I've got the creeping realisation that I'm going to die a bit before I reach forty as my goals and ideals don't match the life I've fallen into.

This won't be anything apart from a resignation that dreams are dreams, and a hardening of the person to what life really is. Starting to realise that the best part really was good, and it was 10 years ago.

This has to change. I'm probably going to have to do something radical. nic feels it too, she's had enough of the emptiness, the vapid manic crap we put up with.

I'm not sure what to do. I could just keep sleepwalking, I suppose.

Maybe tonight will spark me up.

friendship entropy

...or, How I learned to let go of the past. Or at least started to.

Maybe it's just the feeling of passing of seasons, maybe it was the huge lucid dream I had last night about being in St Andrews again (which I didn't want to end), but I've been thinking about friendship entropy and loneliness.

Right now there are probably a fair number of people I remember from St Andrews days, scattered everywhere from the US to Shetland to Switzerland to London. All have their own lives (the ones in london seem more successful in keeping together), and a lot use stuff like Facebook.

But it's not the same. The best part of my life was with these people, and telling each other every other month by email that "we must get together sometime" is pretty lame after the first few years.

With that in mind, I guess I'm saying "you can never go home again", which is sad, because that means the place I felt happiest, safe, useful... Is in the past.

I see now that I have to give in to friendship entropy. It's time to stop trying to stay in touch with people who simply have their own lives to lead. i guess i should go get one now, even if it is a tiny, small, rather grey one.

i'm not stopping this blog though: this falls under the heading of self-publishing. I'm just going to stop trying to keep the past alive. I wonder if I've done this before?

I promise I didn't watch the race.

Well, it sounds like I missed an "eventful" race. The FIA messed up telling people what tyres to use (or so it seems - perhaps ferrari thought there was advantage to be gained in "getting the email late"?) - how hard is it to tell them all at once? Another classic cock-up...

The rain fell in Japan for the F1 weekend, and surprise surprise it was like the M4 on a wet commuting afternoon - chaos. And - double surprise - the pole position man won! Well duh, I may not have seen the start but I bet he was one of the few who didn't get pranged in the first corner or so...

Really. I think it's time for F1 to stick its tail between its legs and slink away for 2007.

The great F1 swindle... self-delusion by drivers? Never...

OK, ok, it's not music related. But it is a big "I told you so", and we've all got to feel smug sometimes.

http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?PO_ID=40795&PO=40795

So Felipe Massa thinks Ferrari deserve their F1 constructors title, does he? Come on mate, you should have kept your mouth shut. At least then if Ferrari had kept saying "no comment" we could limp to the end of the season and let the 2007 championship whimper to a close and lick its' wounds in time for 2008.

But no, the idiot had to open his big, fat, stupid mouth. And now everybody will be thinking that Ferrari are paranoid that nobody thinks they deserve the title. So now, in everybody's eyes, they won't!

Well done, there's a hole in your foot guys.

I don't like to extend political intrigue in sports (it diverts from everything that's good about sport) but in this case I had to say something. F1 sucks, it really really does. It's like Heathrow, it can't grow any more without pissing people off (the technology has become too big a factor) but if it doesn't grow people will think it has failed.

Let's hope F1 can find a new direction, or it'll implode in more messy ways next year. Meantime, don't watch grand prix... it's pretty boring.

small gigs, small rigs...

Tomorrow night we're at the Bricklayer's in Marston, Steve's local, tiny pub for the big noise that is Janeiro: they love it tho. I have to remember to bring mic cables so I can get sone singing in!

I'll take just the combo and 2x10 I reckon. The crating up of the two big speakers is pretty much complete, now I have to weigh them and work out how much it'll cost to ship them! On the plus side it's original boxes, so they're up to the task. Was a pain getting the boxes down from the loft.

Our pond is drying up: don't know why, but the ducks are looking worried. Think we'll have to work this one out for ourselves. Could get messy.

Btw, if you've got a wii, there are actually websites out there where you can register you wii number so connecting yourself to local gamers!

In an effort to look more well-rounded...

OK, I admit it, it's been a while since my last gig(!) - I do think about other stuff though, hate you to think I'm a one-trick pony.

So stuff I've noticed - F1

http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?PO_ID=40767&PO=40767 - so Juan Pablo Montoya, the world's greatest has-been in F1 (let's face it, he's a better driver than I'll ever be, but that's not the point of being a sports fan, is it?) slags off the way F1 works. Well mate, now you're really playing with the big boys at NASCAR, driving around and around in circles on unchallenging tracks and able to bang your steed off anyone who gets in your way (never did work with F1 cars did it you lead footed hot headed tit?) after quitting halfway through the 2006 season you're obviously hugely qualified to comment on the state of F1...

Honestly, what a cack-headed dimwit.

The Dilbert Blog -

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/09/900-pound-man.html (latest story)

I don't believe it, the man who writes Dilbert has time to write an acidic blog... and he's got plenty to say on a lot of stuff. Gets a lot of good comment traffic too. Well worth the odd peruse.

And if my post last night from the Globe during the intermission (complete, I might add, with elizabethan musicians on the stage!) wasn't enough to persuade you to go see a show there - I'll reiterate - the complete lack of technological stuff in there (aside from the standard white lights so everybody can see) means you just have the play, the words, the fun, the actors voices: I've never found a Shakespeare comedy quite so funny! Who thought ol' Will did fart gags? And bloody long ones too, Family Guy have a real lineage behind them (no pun intended).

Tonight I'll be packing up huge speaker cabinets in prep for selling the buggers on eBay. You heard it first here folks, I'm cutting at least 20Kgs off the 900W warwick stack by buying new cabs. Woohoo!

surprise theatre!

Alas alack-no!

I'm watching shakespear at the globe!

This place is fantastic-and the guys playing are really funny. One of the leads is on crutches (accident, not character!) and he's been using them to great effect.

Northern Rock, etc... and that McCann thing...

Right, non-contentious as ever.

So northern rock shares have rallied, hmmm? Well well well... do you think people might have bought some when they thought it had bottomed out? Oh wow, that could never happen... this doesn't mean a thing! And the government saying they'll guarantee every penny? Well, it seems to have worked in Leeds and Manchester... but surprise surprise, you get further south (north london) and they were queueing at 1am again this morning.

"I don't trust my life savings on the govt's promise" seems to be something the nearly-deads queueing outside the branch are saying. And we still don't know what the postal and electronic transfers are going to do yet... watch his space.

In other points, I'm seriously glad to see the Portugese police pointing out that engaging celebrities and high-ranking british officials is a pain in the arse:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/18/nmaddy318.xml

I suppose they might be feeling a little like their every move is being scrutinised - but just to play devil's advocate... if you'd engaged in a high-stakes high-media savvy attempt to cover up something that happened to a member of your family accidentally ( it has happened comparatively recently you know - the news conferences by the tearful boyfriend, etc and it turns out they're guilty... ) would you keep raising the stakes? I mean to say, getting Gordo to set out your case???? Holy crap, I hope Mr Brown has more sense than to get involved...

Oh - and I heard on radio 4 earlier on the classic politician-has-ears-shut response to constant calls from almost every phoned-in caller for ELECTORAL SYSTEM REFORM.

We keep shouting, they ( i.e. the two main parties ) keep shifting in their seats and nervously bleating about "minority parties having too much power"...

Look, either give us a "none of the above" or do something about that crappy one-past-the-post bullshit.

D'oh!

Wait a moment... that sounds like Rock and/or Panic...



Good fun generator, that one - http://www.signgenerator.org/church/

Northern rock... who'da thunk it?

I'm at home with a cold today, (ahhh stoppit I don't need sympathy I need more beechams) and I've seen a few more reports about what's going on with Northern Rock. Now you'll know I follow the UK mortgage market with a cynical eye so you'll find no surprise in a degree of schadenfreude on my part... but the extent to which the media-fuelled paranoia is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy is just staggering me. Once some speed gets into a story like this now, it's amazing how people will run with it.

So people are still queueing outside branches (although if you believe GMTV there aren't any north of Kingston), trying to extract their savings. Hmmm. As long as you keep reporting this, I think it'll keep happening, chaps.

There's a number of things I've heard this morning which are new, though.

• The head of northern rock accidentally(?) revealing that they can indeed pay everybody who wants their cash - thanks to the loan from the bank of england! No distortion here, he literally said that on GMTV this morning. So, how much real liquid asset do you have, Northern Rock? Hmmmm.
• Northern rock's shares have gone into freefall again this morning (I watched "fun with dick and jane" over the weekend... that poor CEO is reminding me more and more of Jim Carrey) - the pillocks reporting this story and queueing are all going to bring about the takeover of northern rock if they're not careful: then the mortgage holders will end up owing the cash to someone else... someone not so nice? It does throw Fiona from GMTV into stark contrast - the dozy bint was trying to emulate Paxman interviewing the CEO of northern rock this morning while repeatedly mentioning she had her mortgage with them(!!!) - well done dear, there's no amount of foot-shooting you can't achieve with a microphone and your incessantly annoying nasal whine if you put your mind to it.
• Paragon (who are a huge UK mortgage company specialising in buy-to-let - no deposit accounts AT ALL) are being eyeballed as the next to die - they're staunchly saying they've got credit funding secured into mid-2008 but to that, I'd say - who from, and will they still be able to supply the cash? Where are your facility providers getting the credit from? Cash? Or the global (frozen) credit market? Buy to let - your time is nigh. Here's hoping all you property tycoons jump out of the second stories of your ludicrously extended houses and impale yourselves on B&Q conservatory glass panels!!! (me, bitter? Nah)

The ol' google trend for England (the most paranoid in this search in the world, I might add) for "house price crash, mortgage rate" is starting to pick up big time! Clicky clicky for all the good reasons to wait out the storm!

I'll be in my room, sniffing, sneezing and chuckling.

why facebook might survive...

I've heard and read a lot recently about facebook, and how it differs from other social networking sites: the third party app plugins (I'm fond of scrabulous), the status updates, and I've realised they're right, but nobody I've heard so far has summed it up: facebook is more like having some shared experience with old friends, whereas myspace is always more of a "look at me! I'm here!" sort of thing (which you could do with any copy of dreamweaver and a space on the web somewhere, myspace just made it a bit easier for spods).

Although no replacement for getting out and seeing people (which I really need to do more of) it's something more collabarative than old email lists, etc. Maybe it's got something that'll keep it alive: enough quality to keep people updating their status. I'll keep leaning over the e-fence and spying on my mates status for now...

That Flickr experiment...

Didn't work, actually. I ended up trying to send the email three times, but the flickr pic email address seems to be a bit shafted: no worry though, if you include pictures with a post to the blogger email post address it includes the pics in the post, as you can see from the previous post.

And it ends up as a link in the Facebook RSS feed note trawl, which'll do. I'm lay-zee.

Still going to make an app which can post to Facebook, Blogger and Myspace though - once I get some content MP3 wise onto my myspace page I'll be making sure my blog on there gets posted at the same time. Email me if you're interested in the app, or have any suggestions for other sites it should post to: my aim is a tick-box list of sites the prog will post to via web page control, which I'm thinking will happen similtaneously in the background (i.e. it'll post to all of them at the same time, with progress bars for all of them too as it goes).

Cats can be a pain in the arse - our three are predictably great at catching things, but their habit of bringing live stuff in for practise means the poor small furry beasts often die hiding in corners, where they then start to stink after a few days. Not nice. We've aired the house all day and here's still a lingering trace of decompsing mouse.... grr!

We've been harvesting nature's local wonders again. Within 30 feet of the back door are enough brambles and an apple tree with masses of fruit on for the 5 gallons of bramble wine we've got brewing upstairs, two frozen apple and bramble crumbles and now many many pots of apple and bramble jam.

And flying off in another direction... touchscreen Ipods! No need!

Fwd: mega blog picture tastic

Ok, this is a picture of green park in reading where i work. The lakes are actually really nicely done, did get rather full during the floods, but the ducks, fish, swans, geese, and million other living things you can stroll about looking at from bridges after lunch were not bothered.

Why is this a test? Well, flickr gets this from email from my phone, which took the pic, it then posts a new blog on blogger, and facebook then gets the rss feed and it's all dead clever. But as simple as sending one email.

Btw, good time on the 6 string last night, totally funked up on some beats on the pandora. Nice.

Oh dear, well, it had to happen... I'm on Facebook.

And this post is echoed to it as well. That's possibly a good example of why I'm thinking I'll probably keep an account there - I've been thinking recently that E-Mingling is nothing compared to real mingling (which is definitely true) but then again, how much mingling do I get to do these days? Best days of your life, student days. You socialise in a random way which is stimulating, life-affirming and definitely exciting. Adult life just kills all that really!

So in the absence of real mingling, we'll declare that E-mingling will do for now.

BTW, anyone need a bass player to play some danceable stuff?


----- Today's Practise Diary -----This evening Andy will mostly be clearing a space and setting up his studio!

Friday night gig...!?!

Well well well. No sooner am I predicting my own spiritual demise when an O'Neills gig comes along and saves me :) Great night, I was knackered before I started but soon got into it, and the familiar berserker instinct kicked in. Must remember to always bring my own mic cables though. However, the exertions of the night definitely proved to me I could use some more gigs - just lifting the cabs was an effort where normally I wouldn't have a problem.

This should change soon when I get the neodymium (sp? who cares!) cabs for the warwick stack. I'm selling the combo (fully up to speed after the tiny fix to the relay- ran close to flat out all night at O'Neills no worries!), the trace elliot 2x10 cab, the warwick 1x15 and 4x10 and purchasing the 4x10 and 1x15 lightweight cabs Warwick currently have. Smaller, lighter, they should go into car a lot easier and be generally better! Plus, I'll take the stack places more as it won't nearly kill me (and Jamie, and Steve, and Richie.... :) to get them into and out of the venue.

Oxford on friday night seemed a little more out of control than usual - although there's usually a fair number of visible police about (and one night recently a car full of plainclothes?) last friday seemed a little less like people having fun and more of an undercurrent. Maybe my most hated topic, the media, is actually getting to me at last... still, the vespa with alarm shrieking into the 1am night sky with graffiti painted all over it seemed like a valid soundtrack to the closing of the night.

I've signed over the Myspace site to Jamie now, so if you leave messages etc he'll get the emails! I'll still sign on and do stuff (friend adding, etc) but Jamie is doing the admin.

Cheersh punters

A much revitalised Andy.

P.S. did anybody reading this get back to me with stories about why you had kids? Tell me some of you haven't done it by accident... what is it with the UK and not liking children? It's like some new form of the victorian premise of "seen, but not heard" only now we don't even want to see them... I blame the newspapers.