Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Diversifying a little... indulge me.

Ok, I've been gigging with Breeze a lot, which is fun. I'd like to be gigging more with tempa tempa, but it's not happening. That ship seems to have sailed.

Add to this a flaccid day job and you have one thoughtful Andy once again asking "what the hell am I doing all this for?".

I know, it's too easy to give in to despondency, but seriously, I don't have any faith in anything being worthwhile right now: I'm totally down on people, who seem to me fundamentally selfish creatures (nearly getting wiped out on the M4 the other week didn't help), and our whole system of society, from huge bonus payouts to fat idle gits who fail to run businesses properly right down to Jane "einstein" Goody, the thinking man's thought-arsenic. Sold lies about consumerism, pensions, products, owning your own home, starting a family, being in a band with a crack at it, etc etc etc is all starting to finally tell on me. I've had it.

But there's no other way, it seems. I watch it all happening around me with a sort of dreamy, drugged-up anger which doesn't feel hot any more, just despondent.

Perhaps it's time to start thinking about something different. Oh yes, back to my day job, which got shipped to china. I used to test phones, you know: now, I write macros for a living. Very intellectual, very deep, very quality oriented.

Ho very much hum.

Normal service will be resumed shortly... I hope.

Friday, May 19, 2006

Breeze and Sweat

Wow, just remembered I should put something in about last weeks breeze gig at O'Neills in Oxford: best yet. I felt much more in control (although I think in future I'll take a 4 string!) and we had the pub totally rammed with wildly dancing singing punters. Jamie's showman qualities are outstanding: he really knows how to wind up an audience, and dispenses with hecklers without alienating anyone.. apart from the heckler heh heh

More playing-on-the-bar antics, and this time I got the bassline for the killers track much truer, actually listened to it the other week and realised they have a very inventive bassist: I'll be checking out the other tracks on the album with a more critical ear!

Practise is all about theory and slap at the moment. It's coming on quite well. Also tentatively volunteered to help something musical at the local youth club if I have time!

Cheers chums

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Reeeeee-cording'

Wish me luck, today I'll try to get something that isn't too awful onto some tracks of Jake's at the WitneySoundCentre.

Got some cider, had a chicken wrap, sitting in the stunning early May sun. This is the life. Worth the 1 hr drive!

Mill streams a gurglin' and I'd let myself into the studio if:

1) I had keys
2) I wanted to get out of this lovely sun.

A quiet moment in an otherwise tortured existence.

Question of the day: do you find the widespread use of the made up infantile word "radicalised" (and the many crap forms therefrom) as annoying as I do?

I swear modern journalists are getting so lazy it's a real turn off.

I'm 35 you know.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

the calm before the breeze

the calm before the breeze
the calm before the breeze,
originally uploaded by Spammy Spamton.
Arf arf! Breeze, bricklayers arms, marston lots of fun. Restrung the 6 string, sounds zingy on Warwick EMP 25s!



Wish me luck... I'll be reading the songs as we go along!

New songs! Tempa fun...

Jake's going to get me to lay down some bass tomorrow, and sent me a couple of new tracks to listen to yesterday: on one of them, Jamie T was singing(!)-he's got a great voice, sounds like Kincaid from Brand new heavies!

Great track too, total BNH funk style. I'm working on lines for that.

The other one (bounce, current working title) sounds trickier to lock down: possibly Jake may want to keep that one all electronic? We'll see wht I can conjour, eh?

Man, Reading has a lot of ugly naked bellied people in it.

Arf!

Friday, May 05, 2006

That new years resolution of 2005...

This blog started when I decided to get involved in something which was going somewhere musically and which pushed my bass playing, really energising me to new heights and confirming to myself that I've got something creative to give to a project. Janeiro really made me feel that way. It even made me feel a sense of belonging to a band which you want to feel, less of a spare part or a session player and part of something vibrant, alive, building, growing... luminous. That feeling saw me through a lot of the worthless vibe in my heart which was planted and nurtured by Panasonic's feeble appreciation of my efforts.

But.

As ever, this is only a personal view. It's how I feel. Since we lost Javier and Dan, we've gained 2 very capable, affable, talented musicians, but they're both in london. this wouldn't be a problem if they 9-5'd it like yours truly (that feeling I was talkng about got me driving a LONG way in the evenings!) byt they're both pro musicians, so they're pretty much always busy. As a result, there hasn't been a rehearsal in a couple of months, and the gigs in Izi's, while fun, have seen more covers drifting into our set.

This isn't how I saw my resolution panning out. Few gigs, no rehearsals, and once again my dweeb knowledge sees me being web liason, which might as well be a full time job! It really needs a lot of work which I don't have time to do the way I'd like...

I find myself cursing work more and more these days, it's really getting in the way.

Tempa tempa needs to get loads more gigs and more togetherness pronto! I'm also worried that Jake and George now have their own Myspace artist profiles, george has a great song on there!

Hmmm. Stuff to contemplate. I should really get some of my material on Myspace.

Cheers punters

Andy the increasingly worried.