Rebirth of a rebirth??? :)

Something this way comes...
An interesting week, this one! Breeze is getting well underway in Oxford, O'neills gigs a gogo until the end of the year - and the guys have got themselves a new 3K (yipe!) PA! Total stars they are. I've also got another interesting proposal on my desk (so to speak) which might come to something interesting... won't say more now, don't want to jinx it.

I've been digging into Chilipeppers stuff HARD on the Warwick 4 string - fingers tingling at the tips every night, I'm determined to be up and ready for the first Breeze gig in 1 weeks time. Jay is cool with getting together to work on a couple of new ones including "tell me baby" - the current Chilis single - which will go down a storm! The bass is classic slap flea, really simple and grooving. I think I should be able to hold down a vocal harmony on the chorus if I'm lucky. Hopefully the PA will improve my gravelly snore-ravaged tones... :)

I hadn't realised how out-of-shape my hands were until I really started to dig in. Not fatigued per se, they just wouldn't do what I asked when told to work hard! Quick enough.... just no power. So it's bass weight training time!

And it's fun too. Just realised I should take all the CDs for the books I've got and get them onto the iPod. Why didn't I do that sooner? Could then do that slap course with so much less hassle! The portable Sony CD player I've been using has a MASSIVELY loud "beep" when you press keys - why?

Wierd. Japanese, eh? Who can fathom it.

An experiment.....

Not tried to embed something in the blog - let's see if this works....



priceless - it gets better the longer you watch.

I've been out of the UK to Crete taking a well-deserved break (god knows how my bank balance looks) - but the Breeze gigs will be soon - the guys have a new PA! Big big big and shiny shiny shiny. Nice!

Right - did that embed work?

To kid or not to kid....

Not some dude-style reference to comedy pastimes. Should I have kids?

If you know me, you'll know committing that question to any form of readable stuff is quite a step forwards. I've been debating the issue again with myself on and off for the last few weeks, running around like the proverbial rat in a maze down the usual blind alleys labelled "self-loathing", "mortality", "loss of self", "economics" etc etc.

And I still have the feeling I don't have enough information to make the decision. I'm a terrible decision maker anyway, and barring infanticide (which is a little messy once the authorities know you've got one) there's no real way to reverse your decision once it's been made.

I've always been dead set against having kids, mainly due to the usual middle-class vices of having free time to think and hobbies. If you think about stuff enough you never do it: fear is the mind-killer.

But, predictably as the sun rising and setting, I've come to wonder what the hell I'm doing anything for: if all it's for is getting a couple of strands of molecules to make it into another protoplasmic carrier for 4 score and 10, it all seems pretty bloody pointless.

I wish there was someone I thought could tell me something about this which would help... there isn't, is there?

So I'll do the trad british thing and muddle through, I guess. I bet most kids are accidental...

If anyone's listening out there in information blizzardsville, let me know if you made the decision and did it, and why.

Peace.

Peace is spending some quality time with your family, after having to persuade yourself out of the hectic mind-set that life in the south east gives you.

Leicestershire is stunning in the sun.

A

Breezy n bright

I should start writing crosswords... the post title could correspond to the gigs at o'neills, or the weather, which is much more like the June we know and love. Pre-summer, as I used to call it: not as still as July/Aug/Sept (and, in the SE here, October) but one hell of a lot warmer than April.

I just got the new Chilis album. 28 tracks of gold dust, I love the simplicity of the tracks, the way the arrangements leave me to fill in spaces, the lack of huge instrumentation: it's so good to see a band with the confidence to trust their songs and not fall into overkill. The lushest RHCP album has to be "One Hot Minute", mainly down to the influence of Dave Navarro, who filled in the guitar for that album. It's a great album, but shows that the 4 piece we have now has a solidarity about them which produces some of the best music I've heard in a long time. There's contrast here - it's not all introspection - there's trademark funk, and you can hear more of John F's influence coming in. In particular, the harmony vocals are startlingly good on this album, doing a great job of filling out spaces where lesser bands would have dug into a synth pad or something.

Everything is mixed so wonderfully dry, it reminds me of beaches somehow.

Now, more metaphysically - I recalled recently a line from "The Princess Bride" (indulge me) - "Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something." - is our pace, our consumerism, all of it, destined only to crush us....?

Resilience.

How resilient are you? Do you have a depth you need to sink to before you rise up again? I saw a woman this morning on (gasp splutter) GMTV who was "an alcoholic". Well, she was actually bright, well spoken and had exactly the right opinion of why she drank, and it wasn't like she was in the gutter:

bluntly, she was alone, and scared. Said she's always been scared, and booze dulled fear of stuff so she could cope.

Doctor Hilary (sic) then piped up with medical addicition mumbo-jumbo, totally missing the point. How many alcoholics out there are drinking to dull fear, pain, anxiety, job worries, marraige worries, lack of self esteem?

Modern life+booze equals the UK boozer phenomenon.

But try hearing that on TV. Nobody ever puts the who puzzle together, least of all our MPs.

How many bars are there in the westminster asylum for the terminally egotistical anyway?

Hmmmm.

Another Breeze gig, wot a scortcha (apols to the sun)

That's the newspaper AND the actual item.

Good gig last thursday, but I'm well under par at the moment. Far too many unforced errors and stumbled pickings-I'm exhausted, not getting any sleep, but with any luck things will change after the 16th when I see the sleep docs at Churchills Hosp in Oxford. I'll get a neat machine to strap to my face and fall asleep having air pumped into my nose. Hopefully then I can get some sleep.

I never thought I'd have what is essentially a genetic defect: this OSA is partly due to the shape of my throat and mouth. Feels a bit odd to wander through life for 30 odd years with no real problems and then face up to being built wrong. Sort of like facing mortality, in a way.

Should I be grasping for wanting kids at this point?

I do know there are people who start families because they've run out of things to do. That sounds like the worst reason to have kids to me! Are most families the result of burnout, early onset middle age crises, burst condoms and tequila binges? That's a sad society if so...

I need to write some lyrics. It's all in there waiting to get out. Catharsis is good for you.

Another great Breeze gig! Who is Robbie Williams drummer anyway....?

Yep, another great night last night. Was "supposed to be" tonight but Jay got confused :) at one point after the first set someone approached Jamie for his number (a guy, I might add - arf arf!) saying he was Robbie W's drummer and he was "always looking for good support acts" - yeah right!

Good crowd last night, they always sing along really loudly to the crowd pleasers that Jay stokes 'em up with ;)

I'm thinking of getting some flightcases with half decent wheels on for the stack, to protect the bits in (smelly) transit (so to speak). Jamie says he'd really like to case up the Marshall head... I suspect Rich would like his amp cased too, I've got it at home to look at like I did Jay's the other week, the knobs are all well shagged and the preamp doesn't work too well - he generally plugs a guitar POD into the poweramp input on the back (which sounds good!)...

Trouble is, if I flightcase the Warwick cabs, they won't fit in the car any more. D'oh!

Hmm. Thinks.

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

Knackered!

Jeez, I'm tired... I haven't picked up a bass in 2 days(!) - the Tempa Tempa gig last week (thursday) was fun, if a little scrappy. The problems of getting rehearsals together are really starting to tell. I'm pretty sure Jamie T is busy during the evenings most nights - he's got to make a living out of his drums, after all - so he seems to be keen on daytimes, which of course is totally out for me.

Unless these diverging time pressures are resolved there's no way this can continue... Jake wants me to come in to record ASAP but I'm feeling shaky about Tempa material as we haven't rehearsed it, and the gigs we're doing in Witney nearly all consist of covers (some rehearsed on the spot during the soundcheck!)...

It's a little wierd... the Breeze gigs feel more organised at the moment. More profitable too. But not that funky, in the style that I like!

Oh - and I could have some real fun this Xmas if I took up something I've been offered musically.... ooooo yes. Once in a lifetime stuff! Not going to make me famous though.

Cheerio reader (yes I know that's singular)

From IZIs! Tempa gig blog returns...

Just banging this one out between sets at IZIs tonight. So far, so good but we really need some rehearsals. Bit scrappy but the feeling is nice and funky.

Soundman Andi Fatsounds is experimenting with middly bass tonight for more funk: I think he's got something. Pokey as hell! Bit nervewracking though, outside comfort zone alpha but fun.

In the next set, I'm singing Word Up no less arf arf! I use a sort of baritone Axl Rose voice and suddenly it sounds just like the cameo original!

Just got the 6 string with me tonight, forgot earplugs so I'm on toilet tissue specials which are pretty much working.

Witney's a wierd place: lots of bright young things and people watching them... like me!

Slap solo on the 6 felt pretty good. As ever though, wish I had something locked down!

L8rs!

Breeze - a breath of fresh air? :)

That breeze gig 2 weeks ago (wow, was it that long ago?) was such a blast I'm off to do another one tomorrow night! This time, I'll take the monolith with me so Jamie and Richie's PA doesn't have to work so hard to get the bass out there. I reckon 900 watts of Warwick Pro Tube IX should be enough to underpin O'Neills in Oxford, eh? :)

I haven't laid down those bass tracks for Tempa Tempa yet - and a load of potential gigs fell through because it's hard to get us all in one place at the same time. In my defence, I should say there was only one date out of about 6 I couldn't do! The bass tracks should get done next week I hope. Jake's been busy this week... studio stuff, he has a client or somesuch! I've scanned the materials he gave me for his studio website... pity I don't have any graphics though. I was hoping he would give me all the bits I needed electronically, so I could just put something together... I'll have to come up with something fairly basic I guess. I think that's all he wants though.

Meanwhile... tomorrow night it's fun fun fun with the full-on "jump around" O'Neills venue.

Seriously, if you're reading this, and you live anywhere near Oxford, get down to O'Neills tomorrow night. You won't have seen anything quite like this before. When Jamie does his solo on the bar thing, it's the funniest thing I've ever seen!

I get to be so chilled out as well: there's no pressure, the songs are all dead simple (although to my credit, I have learned "californication" properly now ;) - so I can have a beer or two and kick back.

It feels like this will be how my retirement feels: I always saw myself down the local pub playing blues once or twice a week, barely moving and yet still cranking out stevie ray vaghan style bass licks, with only an unfeasibly large glass of whisky next to me. Nice.

Ah, why isn't life more full of fun for everybody?

Cheerio punters, see you in O'Neills

Andy the Bassist

.... YAWN!

Ooer, I'm suffering from gig withdrawal again. Had a blast with Breeze last friday night - Rich and Jamie and Steve... O'whatsits in Oxford, 3 sets, playing until 12:30am... holy cow, I haven't had that much fun in ages! Took the fretless (only!) and did the whole cover-fuelled nonsense on that! Top shit! I actually took a slap solo (octaves, mainly) on a fretless... and got whoopin applause!

Happy happy happy.

This sunday it's stripped-back Tempa at Hoxton... ironically without Jamie and Richie (funny....).. .and then on friday it's another Breeze gig at the O'summats again in Oxford opposite the Odeon cinema.

Ever seen a guitar player playing while dancing on a bar? about 40 feet away from the stage, having made his way through the crowd while playing a solo? Jamie does that... seriously, there's people taking flash photos of him.

insane.

Good fun though!

Arf

A

Solo operations....

I think it's time to put some of my ideas on the blog - I've never been one to wear my heard on a vest under a shirt... so to speak. I'll stop that before I get accused of Frasier-esque verbosity. Oops, there I go again.

There are two ideas flying around my head to get more (local) gigs at the moment (Tempa Tempa doesn't gig enough for me, I need to be on at least one a week, and I could do with the extra cash!) - one is "highbrow" and one is "profitable"? ;)

Idea 1
This one's the "highbrow" one. I've harboured one of those muso conceits to do little intimate jazz gigs in classy restaurants for ages now. Not necessarily insane Jaco solo stuff, but something with some jazz standards where I've got a great backing track (I could get Terry to help me out here) and I play the 5 string fretless over the top - solos, basslines, depending on where in the track we are. Nothing deadly taxing, I could work up to be-bop :)

Advantages: solo gig: no rehearsals to try to arrange: can be very well prepared in advance: will increase my theoretical chops as well as my physical ones: spend more time with the 5 string fretless (which sounds amazing): classy gigs that don't go on until 2am: local to Windsor there could be demand for this kind of gig
Disadvantages: hard work (possibly): takes time to get set together: the audience will not be screaming for more (this does matter!): more gear needed (small PA of some kind)

That's not a huge list of disadvantages! Hmmmm. So, on to....

Idea 2
I don't need to go into intense detail for this one. I'll do solo nightclub gigs with a dance/funk crossover thing. Still using backing tracks, but with live bass (and maybe vocals, could use samples). Maybe George could do some vocals for me (she's got one hell of a voice).

Advantages: Insane audiences: great feedback: I already know the chops (funk funk funk funk): opportunity to be really creative using tools and samples I already have: don't necessarily need outside input for the backing tracks: a little further afield (london/reading) there could be a real demand for this stuff

Disadvantages: Late gigs: may need more gear (although this isn't a given): money may not be as good: might need more people (george at gigs?): local area (windsor) may not have a great demand for this kind of gig.

Hmmm. I do love audiences to go mental. Best part of the job!

As you can see, it's a couple of great options. I'll mull it over, shall I?

Ooo - and my eBay hobby has started up proper, I'm selling stuff like there's no tomorrow! I've just about got my packaging activities streamlined, and last night I started using "Turbo Lister" from eBay, which is a cracking tool. Much easier and quicker than using the website! Like they say on unnovations - "once you've got one, you'll wonder how you ever got by without it"

The slide towards luddite?..... the new Tempa Tempa site's "up"!

Well, I relented and did something to get [ TempaTempa website ] up and running. Telivo, who I got the JaneiroMusic.com domain off, were doing an offer on .co.uk domains for £5 / 2yrs. So I used their forwarding to take it to... a myspace site ;)

I apologise for not creating an all-singing, all-dancing website (or even doing up the Janeiro one with a new logo!) but to be honest, the day-to-day bits of the website which i was editing were pictures (which I can still do - I'll put the pics on the Janeiro webspace and use a scroller from [ Slide.com ] to display them on the MySpace site) and news (I'll use the [ myspace blog ]) - so I'll just use the MySpace site and think of something else to do with the JaneiroMusic.com domain and the webspace.

I might tinker with Flash to make a front end animation for the tempa tempa site before it redirects to the Myspace area... that'd be cool.

Music News - how to warm up quick and keep finger-fit
I found my hand exerciser thingy - no sniggering - and man, I'd forgotten how much it helps. If, like me, you struggle sometimes to squeeze in practise and want to cut down on warm-up time (I do have a full warm up exercise program which lasts anything up to 25 minutes!) one of these little dudes is a must. I also have a medium tension rubber band wrapped around it which I use to warm up the extensor muscles (?sp?I think that's right) by opening my fingers in a fan with the rubber band attached.

If you use the exerciser for about 15 minutes while you're doing other stuff (say, checking email or eBay or whatever) then when you finally get to picking up the bass, you're already mostly warmed up and can move on to nailing that Bach cello suite or Jaco solo (arf arf) piece you've been working on.

If only I could invent one for slap warm ups...

Never happy, eh? Roll on the 30th and another IZIs gig. Hopefully this time I can back away from the audience a bit: one thing's for sure, I'll be taking less gear with me!

Big shout to Jo Theones at Fox FM!

The joys of eBay n stuff

The linky thingy in the title is my eBay "shop" (well, it's a list of the items I've got on there). I've actually been getting my arse in gear and listing a lot of the stuff I've got stashed away for eBaying. Hopefully it should prove a lucrative sideline, and clear a lot of junk out of the house to boot.

I wonder if eBay is killing the lovely British Car Boot habit? Although it costs to list things on eBay, and it costs to use PayPal (something I'll put up with in return for the ability to have non-paypal customers be able to pay me with credit cards), it's a small price to pay not to have to fill a car with stuff and ol paste tables, etc. There's something about browsing through other people's junk which is very English though. Read "nosy". I guess there's no way of knowing what's happened to car boot sales...

Podcasts - inevitable
I've got into iTunes podcasts, finally. There's wicked electronica podcast from Gowan, a mate here at work (who has just been made redundant, the lucky sod) which I've subscribed to. I listened to most of the Ricky Gervais ones as well (who didn't, I hear), and I was into the pub landlord ones but they seem to have stopped for some reason...

iTunes: quality music?
I don't buy songs from iTunes though. I have this thing (probably from being a musician) about fidelity (or at least trying to get the best I can). When you buy compressed audio from these websites, you're not getting CD quality. As ever, perception is a fickle thing, so you just get used to not hearing some of the subtleties the producer and artists put into the music: while I've little doubt there's plenty of fiddling going on during mixdown with a view to how it will sound on an iPod, I just need to have that CD so I can make the decisions about sound quality: I don't want to download something for the same price as that track would cost on a CD and not get CD quality!

Plus, this method of buying tracks will have the inevitable effect of cheapening the best music. Not literally, but artists will be under constant pressure to come up with singles all the time - no room for any artistic "indulgence" (as a label would see it) - and you won't see CDs "crafted" in terms of their being a musical journey on their own: 7 to 10 tracks of music, chosen by the artist and arranged in an order that's pleasing to them.

Without being a luddite, this legacy hangover from LPs about putting many songs on a media so they are distributed all at once is surely a good thing: I don't like crap filler tracks, but there are plenty of songs which never made it to singles which I love (I'm a big fan of Queens of the Stone Age and some of their more "out there" stuff is brilliant, but not populist - and all the better for it).

I fear that iTunes, with the ability to audition tracks before you buy them, will not only kill CDs but it'll make life really difficult for people who want to make music from their hearts. Another bean-counting nail in the coffin of music that touches the heart, eh....?

Janeiro / Tempa Tempa
Well, I think I've probably relented on the "build a website" front. Only slightly though - I'll build a tempa tempa framework which houses stuff on other sites like MySpace. Neil doesn't think we've got enough of a following under the name Janeiro to be worried about moving to another Myspace site. I have some reservations, but he's the boss! I won't be buying another URL for the name out of my own pocket though. I'll have to work out what to do about that - I do have some ideas using Javascript cleverness from a while back.

I spent time... in MY studio! - Duhn duhn duuuuuuuhn -

Sorry about the dramatic music.

Yes, yesterday I got to spend a couple of hours tinkering with Cubase and a little bbit of composition with some hip-hop and laid-back rhodes. Coming along nicely. Finally got the Cheetah hooked back up to the system as well - glad to have finally got that done - and discovered it needed some values rewritten (including sensitivity, which was well out - no way to play quietly on a rhodes? Shum mishtake!). Easy done though, it's doing a great job again. Must replace the springs on those dead keys though.

I'm rewriting my solo to the Tempa Tempa (must get used to that name) track "funks me off" as the trading stuff that Dan and I used to do doesn't apply anymore. I'll need something that's a couple of 12-bat rotations long which builds properly. No small order for me, that one... I hate soloing!

The gig last thursday taught me how much I like being at the front all night... nervous? Me? Yep, it happened... thankfully there was a second solo spot in the second set where I opened up a little more but to be honest I just didn't feel comfortable in the first set, too close to the audience.

Oh yes... "too close to the audience"... jeez, in their faces - several of them were treading on my cables! Next time it's no stack for me (sob! why did I buy the damn thing?) I'll be taking the Warwick CCL combo, that way I can sit on it and stay away from the crowd a little.

We're starting to get some contacts through the nights we've played in the Pop bar in Soho as well, which is cool: a night called "ZenFM" at a rather spiffin' looking venue (also in central london, further north east, thank god!) - more news when there's something to tell!

Ho hum. Time to kill a bit more time at my desk. Currently I'm reading "Feel the Fear... and do it anyway" which, to be honest, isn't telling me anything I hadn't already confided to myself. Self-awareness of why you don't do things is one thing (and believe me, I spend plenty of time second-guessing myself there): the book doesn't really scratch the surface of overcoming those fears (not really, anyway) apart from using glib over-simplifications like "everybody else is scared too you know". I haven't ready anything revelatory yet - no "eureka" moments.

Then again, it's an American self-help cod-psych book... what did I expect?

Maybe I'll write my own book called "Ultimately, who gives a crap?" about how the end point of our self-obsessed society is total anarchy, led by enormously rich people. I'll subscribe to that, as long as I get big guns!

I feel like Giggin' tonight (flap flap)

Just a random google found link there... heh heh

Yes, tonight it's back to IZIs in Witney: the club with more glass, metal and dancing ceiling poles (I kid you not) than any other. I think the PA tonight is being done by our good friends from Nottingham as well (the nutters!) - how they manage to get all the way down here I really don't know!

I really should get myself a PA together, but where to store it?.... I'm still not sure I need all the amplifiers I have (I still have the Warwick CCL and an extension cab, a 2x10 trace elliot cab)... It's GAS all over again (for the uninitiated, that's Gear Acquisition Syndrome)... I've even been wondering (prepare yourselves) if I should be taking more than one bass to gigs! And do I really need effects! (GASP!)

Well, the pod could stay.

That wedding I was at was a blast - but getting back was even more fun, as Fleetwood and the whole west area there got blanketed with snow and blizzards: now, I know GB.com is pretty cack at dealing with winter weather (or leaves, or heavy rain, or pretty much anything that allows us to have an excuse) but apparently the M6 was down to 1 lane. So Nic and I shot over to the M1 (under TomTom's guidance) passing through places with power cuts and snow laying on the outside lane (still got nutters doing 80 there though).

-1.5 degrees C up there as well: bloody nippy. Then we get to the M1 and lo! as soon as we head south by the time we get to Watford Gap it's 5 degrees outside! It's like the southeast has some wierd Eden Project thing going on - we never get snow, it's not fair. I'd love to snowboard down a hill in England, it'd be well wierd!

I never did find out if Aviemore is ski-able at the moment...

Ooo! Nic and I are going to go down the Caledonian Canal this summer - not sure if it'll be 1 week or 2 - in a cruiser! We'll take the bikes and have a great time.

Cheerio

A

Weekenders on acoustics...

It'll be a nice busmans hol this weekend. Going to my good friend Peter Cridland's wedding, and Citrus Waltz (speak their names with hushed tones! WABTEMGASP! and other complete gibberish) are going to do a little acoustic set, with Greg playing an indian Dhokan I have in the studio!

This'll be a giggle, especially cherry headbomb, which ain't ever been played like that! I'll have to find some time this evening to play through one or two (or at least get them on the pod so I can play along!)

Whatever happens, I'm sure Pete's wedding will be a blast. The man knows how to party. Not that I've fed any stories to the best man, mind... giggle

Arf!

Frustrations!

Ah, this is the experience of a large funk band that I remember! Having trouble getting together for rehearsals!

Although, in our defence, we've done pretty well up until this point.

Last night's get together ended up canned due to lack of guitarists: Jamie is ill, bless, not to mention he's stuck in Peterborough(! don't ask) and Richies BMW (which did a fine job of getting us back from london) needs that knocking noise seeing to. Suspension bush collapse ahoy, not good to leave that or it damages the arm, resulting in more expense and no mistake!

So I went unrehearsed last night. Wah! I hope to have some fun this evening, spend an hour working on just Tempa Tempa tracks. Still feels a little wierd referring to the band under that name, s'not right...

Those EMP strings from warwick work a treat, btw: long life on my 6 string, they still sound good enough to gig. Plenty of punch.

Must drop some EMGs into the old hohner 5string, I hear you can turbocharge them to 18v with an EMG approved mod from their website(!)

Fun fun fun drool slobber

A quick post before bed...

Music stuff, really. Honestly. :)

Rehearsal tomorrow, at Terminal Studios - Neil recommends them, so they've got to be good... :) Late start at 7pm, until 11pm, so at least I'll get home around midnight (given that the studio is near london bridge!)

Spent today noodling about on the Warwick 4 string, making sure that the improvements I made on "Chromatic Fantasy" on the 6 string on saturday could be carried through to my 4 string funk machine: funny how much difference that string spacing makes, but I got it nailed. Nice! Plugged the warwick in on its own into the Pro Tube IX upstairs and was struck by the tone I got... there's something to that "direct is best" attitude. Maybe I should experiment with the effects loop a bit, rather than feeding the effected signal into the front of the thing...

This evening I've dug out the ol' hohner B-Bass, which is sounding very fat, passive (NEED TO CHANGE THE BATT) through the Pandora... nice sounds to jam to some Incognito with. Just got the new Incognito album (well, last years, anyway!) - "eleven" - it's a cracker, full of mellow funkiness. I'm enjoying it.

Unlike McDonalds, who I read are closing (yes, closing) 25 stores as Britain finally wakes up and smells the sickly-sweet buns and realises it wants to live, dammit :) It couldn't happen to a nicer multi-billion whatever franchise operation. I hope ronald rots with a bellyful of abused beef...

But enough of that! Next week holds an IZI gig (more pole dancing for Andy no doubt) and the promise of some interesting times... I hope. Even work is almost palatable...

Peace out y'all

A

Rounding up!

Well, the last 3 days have been cracking. Good pistes, good weather (apart from today, mind, bit too much snow and cloud!).

Had my lesson yesterday, the very helpful Jean says my balance is excellent: comments were about twisting too much! He had me carving turns and doing a natural halfpipe! Loon! Great fun, I spent plenty of time on my bum. Must mean he was right! After we went down Piste L (the bowl) I ended up taking the lift over the hill, and unwittingly ended up in the third valley across: eventually met up with Nic for lunch. D'oh!

Today big weather: cloud and snow at high alt, hard to see, very flat light, so hard to see the piste condition, etc. You'll be pleased to know I have survived intact! Tom, on the other hand, staved his thumb badly enough to dislocate it a few days back but he popped it back in (eeeuw!) and now it's a variety of cool colours.

My board has been fantastic since I had it serviced at keilly sport on tues night: the wax is good, it's been faster than even Tom's burton custom X! not bad for a salomon, eh? The guy in keilly sport was dead sarcastic about it tho- "are yoo 'appy weeth this board?" - "really??" - I don't care, it works for me, nice and flexible!

So we're up and out at 5am tomorrow - sheesh! - but it's a raclette at La Casserole for Nic and I tonight, just us, I've been so happy to actually get the hang of boarding we've not seen enough of each other, so it's lil meal for two time. Nice.

Cheerio peeps, back to music next week: panic studios rehearsals and gigs!

A the knackered!

Today thw we

Another fantastic day...

Another fantastic day...,
originally uploaded by Spammy Spamton.

In fact, I've worn out my board! It's in for a service, 23€ all in for edge and wax, which compares well to Snow and Rock in Chertsey which would charge me £35 for essentially the same job!



But today... finally .anaged to galvanise into an early start, and explored vast tracts of Tigne's pistes after taking both funicular railways to get to possibly the highest point hereabouts. We then rode continuously (with a few lifts in between, of course) between 930ish and about 2pm(!)-I've enjoyed a little off piste action, and came down a black run with possibly the best rendition of the north sea swell in snow form ever: moguls? these were all bloody rupert maxwells!



Now totally wiped!



The pic is of 2 jet trails tom saw, the camera added the third for my inital to come alove in the sky. Signs and portents!



Cheerio, you'll be hearing from me later...

Keilly sport to the rescue!

The bindings are fixed!

After a couple of false starts, including one hell of a bum steer from precision ski in val, Keilly Sport (praise their name) drilled out the cover screw, removed the stump, found a bolt and fixed it all up. Sweet!

So Nic and I have had a brilliant day, up Glacier, down as many blue runs as we could handle: we're keeping up with each other really well, exchanging positions and resting up for water at lookout points.

Magical weather today, as well: clear skies, great snow, and the lift queues weren't too bad :)

Happy days!

if it's not me getting broken...

if it's not me getting broken...,
originally uploaded by Spammy Spamton.

It's the gear!



My flow bindings are shedding bits again: lost one of the left binding's highback retaining bolts. It would have been nice to have seen this BEFORE we got to the top of tommeuses lift.



Anyway, I patched it up with rope(!) taken from a helpful piste marshal.



Unfortunately my temporary repair is now proving to be impossible to undo: I think maybe it's time I stopped using Flow bindings. They're really comfortable, really convenient and on my feet, really unreliable.



Perhaps this afternoon someone can help me fix them. If not, it's time to buy yet another set of bindings.Arse! I had a great time this morning as well, really riding quite hard despite the rope fix thing. tch.



Cheerio!



P.S. pic is view from the Brussels Hotel across the nursery slopes.

view from the bar, solaise! - an explanation.

The pic in the last post is just before we charged up the solaise for Nic's private lesson with Arnaud (typically splendid looking hippy frenchman!). I had a wicked time between 12 and 2 going up and down blue and red runs at the top of solaise, down from the glacier, back to Val then back up solaise again...

Great fun, really hooking up with the board today: james bond style.

Today's embarrasing admission: I've split me trousers! Going to go get some outrageously expensive boarder pants later. Maybe corduroy. Maybe I'll pose yet!

L8r peeps

P.S. if you use Flickr to post to your blog, do remember to add the picture. D'oh!

view from the bar, solaise-pic!

view from the bar, solaise-pic!,
originally uploaded by Spammy Spamton.

Oops, forgot the bailey.



Cheerio!



Andy the Rad (not)

After 8 hours!!!

No kidding, it has taken 8 hours to get through a 3 hour transfer... god, torture with a europop soundtrack, save me!!!

French Airports...

Suck!

Jeez, is lyon some small backwater where you don't usually see a soul or something?

I swear, it was funny when the guy driving the steps to get off the plane parked 2 foot short and we sat there waiting to get off for another 10 minutes... it was even slightly interesting to be stood around for 30 mins waiting for a bored french policeman to glance laconically at my passport... but waiting 2 hours to get your bags? The handlers all looked like they thought libertes were made to be taken.

Lyon airport sucks. Royally. And we had to trek about half a mile to get to the bus, which doesn't have enough space for all the boards and skis people have brought!

Hopefully we won't be too uncomfortable on the way over to Val. There is a bloody kid learning to speak behind me who has been saying IK for the last 10 minutes, then changed to HELLO, now she's talking normally.

I predict tears before the end of the trip. Kids are not meant to take 3 hour coach trips, it's cruel to everyone concerned, especially the kid.

Grrrrr!

Things you find out too late and didn't want to know...

OK, I'll admit it, I'm in Gatwick again. About to fly to lyon, then on to val d'isere for... more snowboarding!

This time it's the regulars: tom, ingy and jim. After the recent round of redundancies at Panasonic, to which I was not invited, Ed is finding a new job, bless, so couldn't come along. 3 interviews this week, including Microsoft. Talk about frying pan/fire...

Just found out Tom the ever-competitive once had a "see who can drink the most without peeing" poker competition: loser of the hand drinks a pint of water!

Nutter.

So here we are at gate 32 in Gatwick, an inevitable 1 hour late boarding (the irony!) and they've successfully conned us into getting to the gate just after 7am. I got up at 4! The gits!

Must get the board serviced in val before I go out, Verbier was not kind-snow coverage on Savoleyes was crap! Luckily the snow report for Val is currently fantastic, a foot over the weekend. Nice!

Music news!
Janeiro is now called Tempa Tempa, not sure what to do with the website: I may get another domain, then use Janeiromusic.com as my own, redirecting people to Tempa Tempa's site.

Rehearsals when I get back, in Panic Studios again, in time for Izi gig next month. Did I mention Pop Bar is having us back? Yay!

Right, must get another drink.

Whaddaya know? It brushes!

Whaddaya know? It brushes!,
originally uploaded by Spammy Spamton.

Wierd. Last night's gig in soho was fun: I wore the bizarre BnR wig thing I got in london last yr for a giggle. As it turns out, it will brush up pretty good with some persuasion...



Too wierd. It's like gazing at Hal, or Stangus.



Makes you feel more human at a gig of 20somethings though. I was awake after everyone else went to sleep on the way home! I'm not so tired...



Good gig BTW.



Happy valentines, if you read this. My loved one, Nic, is a thing of beauty and a joy to behold. TM.



:)

Gigs gigs gigs! And ballet!

Well. So this is the new year gig mountain i was hoping for... wow!

2 things to report, then:
- Lots of gigs coming up. Thanks to a great gig at IZIs in Witney-which, btw, is a great little venue, even if the stage is a little small and designed for pole dancers, I spent the gig leaning against the pole!- we now have what looks like a pseudo-residency on thursday nights, starting first week in march. There's another club in Witney Jake got talking to after the gig who are showing an interest in us as well. Witney is revealing a side I didn't think it had!
-We had a great time thursday night in IZIs. Jake was on fine for onstage, lorraine and George sounded really together, good harmonies, and Jamie the NewBoy :) had a fun time too. Lots of smiles, and he's got one hell of a handshake.

Now, we've just found out we've got a gig in soho! Monday night, at what sounds like a sorta open mike night. It'll be top 2 gig in london again: ain't done that since I was gigging with haematic ages ago.

Been shopping for guitar straps too, in reading. Seems modern music shut down, hickies is still a dead loss for guitar stuff (although I did get a good slap tech book in there) so happy to report they have a new place called guitar world near the post office. Nice Warwick collection.

Stop that. Expensive.

Witney gig tonight!

Cool, tonight's gig at Izi's in Witney should be a real blast. New venue, and the promise of gigs in london to come - this is the ramping up towards killing them in london!

Speaking of "in london" - first rehearsal at Panic Studios was great: good gear they've got there, after the trouble I've had with the Warwick Pro-tube IX unsoldering itself under heavy load I'm wondering if I should take a cue from Panic's choice of Ashdown gear - thing is, do they make a head big enough? ;)

I like the warwick cabs, but maybe I should swap out the head for an ashdown. I figure, if it survives in a rehearsal room (and believe me, many of the knobs were missing but it was still doing a great job) then it'll survive gigging with me, surely?

The trial with Warwick EMP strings continues: they're not really blowing me away the way I thought they would though, I can't help getting the feeling the Blue Label Elites I used for years actually stay brighter out of the pack for longer. Time will tell, I guess. I must remember to take spare strings with me tonight and restring the 4 string, I've been slapping the hell out of it for the last couple of days as Jamie the new drummer is making me well paranoid. He's very good... it's raising my game the way I hoped it would.

You've got to have someone to keep up with. I'm not the most competitive person in the world (to be honest, I've done so much intellectual introspection about myself I'm essentially useless to society as I can't find any reasons to subscribe to any of the behaviour patterns that mean you "get ahead" these days), but it helps if you get really embarassed every so often about keeping up with someone.

Besides, this is supposed to be the aspect of my life I'm good at: gotta make it work, or frankly, what is my life actually for? :)

Shaftsbury Avenue nights...

OK, this is yet another non-musical post. But I've just come back from London (I did buy a bottle of lemon oil for the cleaning of oily skin deposits off bass necks, just used up the last of my stock) where Nic and I saw "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?" at the Apollo in Shaftsbury Avenue, following a light snack of burger king in leicester square. Bad, I know, but it was one meal between two and we really needed it - as it turns out, the performance lasts 3 hours(!) and you need to be able to follow what is at times fast paced dialog, and some twisting and twisted tales :)

Seriously, I'd recommend it to anyone - great cast, some real belly laughs.

Afterwards we had chinese down chinatown, really good crispy duck and a top chicken and salty fishbits fried rice. I'm stuffed!

I will now return to practising my arse off. Tomorrow I'll be posting a few megs of rehearsal bootlegs to the website for our new drummer to download, so he can get a good reminder of structures! Plus, it'll be some stuff for people to download.

They may well be bass-heavy though - I tend to record these for my own reference, so most of them have bass only in the left or right channel and a mic pointed into the rehearsal room for the other stuff. Does the job!

Speaking of which, this rehersal place we're going to be using looks pretty good: prices top out at £10 odd an hour on sundays, but during the weekdays the day rate is £6.75 an hour(!) - when I used to rehearse at Stage2000 in dundee the rate there was anywhere between 8 and 12 pounds an hour!

And having just checked their site it's still exactly the same!

I dunno, I just expected rehearsal rooms to be more expensive in london: after all, you're ripping off people with dreams here, they'll pay... and the gear at Panic Music is nice too: ashdown rigs in most of the rooms, and trace gear in the others!

So I won't have to take my rehearsal rig with me, which is a real bonus. We won't have to set up PA systems either, which is cool too. Hopefully Jake will have more time on his hands (depending on what job he ends up with in london I guess) as he won't be trying so hard to pay rent on a studio space at industrial unit rates. I'll miss the space at Witney, but I can see good reasons for moving to london (most of which must be obvious to anyone who knows the biz)...

Wish us luck. I think it's going to be an interesting few months... actually, I saw something on a poncey record review slot on GMTV the other day that made me think. They'd just finished singing the praises of Arctic Monkeys (whose rise I followed a bit in the music press) and then they mentioned the Go Team - who I read about a couple of years ago. Their gigs were supposed to be insanely energetic affairs, real fun stuff - they obviously kept plugging this whole time and now they're making waves. If they can hack it for two years, I can!

Now to get the 6 string hooked up to the pandora.

C ya l8r

First Janeiro rehearsal with different drummer...

Well, that was interesting!

I suspect because we haven't met up in a few weeks we were in the mood to do work (despite the best efforts of Richie's car going flat 'cos he left his lights on at work - oops!) - and plenty of it. Some arrangements have changed subtly, and here's a lesson to anyone reading this who rehearses regularly - always take some form of recording device with you, those little discman things from Sony are great, get a little stereo condenser mike if you can and record the whole rehearsal on one disc using ultra-long-play-mode (I can get 6 hours on one disc). Then review later to make sure any changes are there in your head for the next one.

I was in a distinctly negative mood when I left the house this morning, so I didn't grab the discman - wish I had!

The new drummer's name is Jamie, and he's pretty good: you'd expect that seeing as it's how he makes his living in London. His swing is good. his kit is small (he does a lot of jazz gigs), his snare is deep and his timing is excellent. Great sense of humour as well!

We all got on pretty well - those vocal coaching sessions Jake has been putting the vocalists through (which thankfully I don't have to do any more) seem to be working - a couple of times my eyebrows shot up with the accuracy of the backing vox.

George has a job in Covent Garden to go to when she, Jake and Jake's other 'arf move to London - they're pretty far north but thankfully Jake is not expecting us to hare around the north circular (a bit of an oxymoron I'll grant you) - there's a rehearsal space called Panic Studios which isn't far off the A40 so hopefully this means I'll be able to get there OK - although perversely getting there from Newbury will be a pain in the arse, getting back in the evening will be a LOT shorter.

So things are maybe looking up for Janeiro after moments when I had a couple of real worries. Mind you, I'm a worrier. I just don't tell people I'm worried.

See you in A&R after my first coronary!

First rehearsal of the new year next weds!

But, in an ironic twist (either my life is a string of ironic coincidences or I don't understand irony properly, which might make me american. Gulp.) it will probably be the last at the Witney Studio. Jake has handed notice back in on the industrial unit, it's proving to be too expensive.

So... Jake's moving to London! "conway rd, southgate,london n14" to be precise.. this should make life more interesting :) Especially as he's actually north of the north circular... argh, that road's a total nightmare - evening rehearsals ain't going to be easy (or possibly even possible)...

I guess the advantages are we'll start gigging in london, which will mean it feels like we're moving forwards with Janeiro again - the tail end of last year felt a little static - but on the minus side the rehearsals might (another irony!) be harder to get to - plus, there'll be fees to pay. We'll have to see how it pans out, esp after I find out what this new drummer's like: if he's half as good as he should be, I think I'll need to raise my game a bit to keep up with him :)

We'll see next wednesday I guess.

TTFN

A

One last Snowboard post.

Then I won't post any more about snowboarding, promise.

Overall impressions of verbier!
Had to make sure I got these in. Nice resort village, very pretty and with PLENTY to keep you occupied for a week or two - good clubs, cool bars, PRICEY drinks(!).

However, the piste arrangements aren't what I'd call totally inspiring: felt like you spend a lot of time on buses (to get to Savoleyres) and too much time on lifts (to get to just about anywhere interesting) - and the piste down into town is hellish for intermediate snowboarders (although all credit to it for getting me to become a speed demon on narrow twisting traverse tracks, something I was crap at in Canada!), with long twisting blue runs coming down into town which deviate WAY out of town.

Here's a piste map of Verier's 4 valley area.

In addition, a lot of the runs in the area covered by your pass are inaccessible unless you can get down from Greppon Blanc - trust me, those buttons will kill a snowboarder! - there's a great deal of nice runs in Thyon but they're hard to get to , even on the organised 4 valley challenge.

I spent a lot of time on the blue run which runs down to the end of the Chaux Express - a great little run with a fast last section up to the lifts, great slopes further up and lots of off-piste availability. Nice n crusty while I was there :)

Savoleyres has great slopes on the dark side(!), but got really icy towards the end of the day down at the bottom side of La Tzoumaz - then again, we were on 10 day old snow, and they've just had a dump (typical!) - but the upper slopes were great fun, again with great off-piste fun.

Speaking of pistes, the piste marking and signposts are AWFUL in Verbier: piste markers regularly end up in the wrong places holding up various bits of netting, totally confusing you as you zip by onto an unpisted track while trying to stay on a blue run(!) and we found red markers on a blue piste for no apparent reason as well!

Signposts are rudimentary, and sparse. Canada was spectacular in comparison, with numbered pistes and piste markers at VERY regular intervals - then again, they regularly have total white-out so you need to see where you are motorway-style. And they're catering for americans, who have to be spoon fed!

All in all, a great week - but I can't wait to get to Val D'isere with some skills under my belt and have a whale of a time on their resort slopes where things seem a bit more "joined up". Less time on lifts, more on the pistes.

OK, that's the last of it!

Back once again to the desk-rage master...

D for damage, power to the people..... well, nearly.

I came into the office yesterday morning (the M4 was less than kind, another 1-hour commute with stop-start for 5 frickin' miles) and on walking in, realised the enormity of the decision Panasonic have made to keep me. I wanted to leave. Now.

So I went into a sort of psycho-loop, exploded at my department head like some form of mental patient and went home to calm down. I really needed to be made redundant, it would be a useful meeting of circumstances that might get Nic and I into our own house - but no, the cosmic joke that is my unfulfilled existence at Panasonic continues, probably (oh, the irony) because I've been on so many dead-ended projects in the last few years, making me look flexible. Arse.

Although, if I'm honest, I'm still VERY ANGRY.

Grr.

And so the journey home.

OK, it's bus time. It's been great, and as I predicted I didn't break anything-in fact, I hardly fell over and made a lot of great recoveries, especially yesterday on Savoleyes mountain. Nic and I came down the big sweeping blie run as a final treat having gone up to Mont Fort for the view (no way we were coming down the sheer face of muguls!) - looks great at 3330m.

So we took a cable down to the floor of the valley below and made our way down the prettiest piste I've seen here, down to siviez: sweeping turns, scenery to die for.

My only problem yesterday was when Nic and I decided to come off Savoleyes though: we were below the 200 lift off the mountain and had to pick out way down a red run to - gulp! - a button/t-bar back up to the top. I wanted to conquer my fear of buttons after the greppon blanc incident so I opted for one of them, only to be foiled by a narrowing track full of ski ruts. Nic got to the top 1st time and I made my way rapidly down to the bottom to take a t-bar which I now prefer. All the way no problem! Nic, bless, rang my phone on the way up and, as it is wont to do when Nic rings me with this phone in my pocket, it auto-answered, so I was at least able to tell her I was OK and on the way up. Muffled she was, but I was glas to hear her from my pocket!

Pity I left my gloves on the gondola-d'oh! J-P is chasing those up for me.
Mike the chalet man got a nice present from all of us which should replace the watch he lost this week. His card was a giggle thanks to June's handwriting which turned 'keep up the good work' to something entirely different!

Well, it's back to music for this blog.

The 4 valleys challenge...

God, I'll say. yesterday could be made into a Disney DVD.

Basically, the challenge is to get from verbier to Thyon and have some fun on the lifts and slopes out there; fun is definitely part of what happened!

Everything was going really well, I was tinkering with my bindings when we got to the top of lifts and the results were starting to impress me a lot: more control, more stability, more fun.

We had a brunch of chips at a really nice mountain cafe, then set off for a pair of terrifyingly long button lifts called greppon blanc: I've done button lifts before so I was fairly confident. Got the button, moved off, cool. I was even ok with a humpback bridge in the middle (who put that there?!?) but the problen started with the final ascent; the button started to slip quietly from between my legs. argh. I tried to hold on but eventually I was being hauled, still upright, up a sheer face, by my arms, and I had to let go, ending up in between the buttons. After a climb of maybe 50 metres at 2700 altitude (i'm a desk worker, for gawds sake) which took about 30 minutes with pauses for frantic breaths, I made it to the top.

Only to discover my right binding had shed a couple of clips which held a peg in place, and the clip which holds the back of my binding was flapping about. Eek! After some serious bodging using bits of red bull can, I came down the mountain carefully trying not to stress the binding, and managed to move one of the clips off the left one in veysonnaz by borrowing a pair of pliers.


The rest of the day was fun, but I still didnlt want to stress the binding as it was on half-clip strength.

At the end of the day we all congregated at this cool bar at the bottom of Mayens-de-lours which is basically a wood and perspex igloo! Very cosy.



I got a good tip on a specialist snowboard shop which might be able to help, and to their credit No Bounds had exactly what I needed: clips installed, board good as new, 1f please. I gave him 2 and told him to keep the change (with good humour!) which raised a smile.

So, a full day of fun and frolics. Biggest wipeout of the day was being wrong-footed on a traverse track by deep rutted ski tracks and ending up on my arse sideways at speed. Ouch! No permanent damage to anything.

Lift 200? yes please!

Lift 200? yes please!,
originally uploaded by Spammy Spamton.

Superb day. After an early low-slope funtime including some hysterical off-piste action cutting corners while trying to get to savoleyes, I came down la rouge and hiked up the hill (doh!) to the base of the lift to the top of savoleyes mountain. Massive! the pic is out of the window of the lift.

Great slopes, some top carved up soft stuff: I came back to meet up with Nic and go out for food. after some comical misunderstandings trying to meet up the rest of the guys, Nic and I ended up paying about 30 quid for what was essentially a single course(!)-very swanky joint, 5 star hotel and haute cuisine ahoy.

Poor Nic. Yesterday she had some kind of local cheese, ham, potato and onion thing: made her VERY ill. I was up with her until 1 am while she basically flushed out this vile stuff from her system by alternating water and toilet. She was very determined though, real 'bridge over the river quai' stuff, and after she finally fell asleep she was much better today. We've go a suspicion se might be lactose intolerant of smelly gruyere. All the right signs, especially the bent-over-the-loo one.

Now it's showers and snoozing before dinner!

A morning's punishment!

... and an evening's stunning red sunset over the mountains (click the title link!). This place is just stunning: last night turned into an apres-ski tour de force, which is ironic given we hadn't been on the pistes yet! I've got some video of all of us in the pub having a riotous time, after all-the-wine you can drink over dinner. Outstanding!

As I type I've been flumping around the chalet this afternoon following 2.5 hours of solid boarding this morning. After a little initial wobbling I was off-piste an hour later, and it was an intended off-pisting!

Seriously tired now, but not mentally; just a physical leaden quality in the bones. Good training for tomorrow: I plan to try to get a full day in.

The pic is taken from the balcony of the chaperon rouge, our chalet here in Verbier.

Heaven!

On the buses...

Apart from Geneva's attempts to conceal our ski and board gear (took a while for it to appear) and watching Jason whassisname fro Lock, Stock etc and the bloke who was Jekyll in League of Extraordinary Gentlemints (who were sat in front of us) it's been uneventful and easy so far.

The piste map of verbier's 4 valleys looks outstanding: so much skiable area! like Val d'isere where I broke a rib, they run free shuttle buses about so you can get back down to your original starting point.

I'll email the first pic soon: unlike canada I'm not keen on taking pics of boring stuff!

Last night's rehearsal...

That was a little strange. I really should start asking Jake if they're going to be actual rehearsals, because although it might be a quick 10 minutes down the road for him to get there, I have to collect my gear together in the morning, get it into the car, drive to the office (about 35 miles) bring the bass into the office, then go up to Witney from here in Thatcham (about 50 miles), then set everything up and discover that I'm the only one who has, so we all chew the fat for a while about the name, and the new setlist... the atmosphere IS wierd because Dan is missing, and then I break all the gear down again and drive home (another 50 miles ish).

I wonder if this is what having a close loved one pass awway feels like? I suspect that once I have a chance to scope out this new drummer (although I do still have misgivings about rehearsals getting even less frequent as he's a session guy from London) I'll know how to feel but right now I'm a constant mix of numb, confused and slightly perplexed.

I must talk to Jake about the setlist as well. If I remain totally silent then I've no leg to stand on if I don't like particular tracks, and I'm feeling a bit invisible at the moment anyway - that wont improve if I don't talk more!!! I really want more uptempo funky tracks to play, where I can really dig in with a drummer.

We'll see what happens... it's all about the Ressurection, after all!

[ How big can a webcam go? Try clicking here! ]

The link is for the BIGGEST webcam I think I've ever seen at a ski resort. How on earth that one works, I don't know: it updates fairly regularly though. I wonder if it's sweeping, then creating the image, or if it's a fish-eye with correction?

Either way, the view is simply stunning. I can't wait to get out there!

The board is sitting in the bag waiting to be let out... the new bindings, with only a few hours use in them... my faithful and ultra-comfy boots, which are on their 3rd trip... it's so cool to have my own gear, well worth the rib I cracked in Val D'isere that time that paid for it all (insurance y'ken).

Music News
Well, Janeiro lineup changes aside, I've joined [ The BassWorld Forum ] which has some excellent players on there. It's been a long time since I've indulged in gear discussions, but I find myself enjoying it a little, especially as now (as distinct to then, of course, when all I had was an unreliable Peavey TNT) I have some good gear to discuss!

Rehearsal tonight... hope the atmosphere isn't too strange. I'm determined not to fall out with anybody over what's going on, I still hold tight to the belief that provided I can be straight with everybody about everything, and I don't contribute to ill-feeling directly, I can navigate a way to make sure I don't lose anyone's friendship, because we're all nice people :)

Ooo - and I get to dig into my EMP strings on the 6 string (I'm travelling light this evening, no warwicks on me!)...

Wish me luck.

Counting down the days.... board board board board

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hoboy.

It's that time of year again! See, it's a bit deep and crisp and even somewhere and I really need to go slide down it on a tea-tray.

Not content with last year's magnificent efforts to end my bass playing career prematurely (see [ here ]) I'm off to Verbier (with correct size bindings and a good feeling) for a week of snowboarding on the 7th: wish me luck :)

The snow reports look good, and I've got a couple of good webcams in there as well -



and



I reckon this year will be cool.

Music news
Sigh. It's with great sadness I report of personnel changes within the band... but you'll have to see the Janeiro Webpage for more details when they're available.

Sucks a bit, this does.

In more positive notes, I finally bit the bullet and restrung the Tobias with slightly heavier strings (the 20s custom gauge I put on there were just too soft for my gig-hardened hands, I was pulling the strings everywhere!) - medium Warwick EMPs, a first for this bass (I usually use Stadium Elites). I took the oppotunity to modify the setup as well, bringing the action on the top 4 strings right down, and...

It sounds superb!

Oh well, gotta go. See you here with postings from Verbier! I did make a separate blog last year, but I've decided to keep it here this time around. Normal service will resume :)

Politics, fear and loathing in vas deferens

Honestly, it's 2 days after new year (happy 2006 btw) and all I've heard on TV and radio this morning is that I'm supposed to be depressed!

I feel slightly evil for having a spring in my step, I can tell you.

I've got a theory though (as usual)- I reckon the life of a GMTV or 2-10Fm host is so empty 359 days of the year they want to drag us down-so sod em, let's smile in their stupid, dumbed-down faces! ha!

Geeky new yr, used streamsicle 2 mp3 the whole house: then got the radio stream out to Manchester, then sweden! I'm a dj! arf arf!

The 4 hour poker marathon until 430am on new yrs day was fun though. Texas hold-em!

The 6 string is now strung with Warwick emps which rule. Worth the cash. Also set up the poor thing, now it's really flying compared to the warwicks.

Hope u had a good one people!

Snowboarding again!

Well, it's that time of year again. Thanks to Snow and Rock doind another nice service job on the ol' board, it's off to verbier 7th January for some boarding with:

1) No broken bones
2) The right size bindings!

I'm hoping this time around will see me totally burn upbthe piste-and what a piste, Inghams use verbier as their photoshoot place for their brochures. Not since Val D'isere (where I broke a rib, oops) will I have had the opportunity to come down such spectacular slopes. Huge wide open spaces, and the knowledge that finally I'll have the board secured to my feet perfectly. Those last few days in Canada with new SIZE L not XL bindings were a revelation: ankles not burning, front edge work a dream, turning a piece of cake, even though I was nursing a broken wrist!

I'm resolute: I'm going to have a spectacular time. I'm even going to take the ashbory bass and the new korg pandora so I can perhaps have a jam somewhere!

I'l keep blogging to this blog rather than starting a special one like I did last time, I think the URL for that one was http://andy-boards-in-canada.blogspot.com - the diary of a broken man, arf arf ;)

Xmas stuff:
Best pressie this year?
I got a dalek and some really nice oakley snowboarding goggles from Nic. Top stuff. Also iPoddery gadgets a gogo. I do love Nic.

I got myself a half decent acoustic, a polycarbonate backed Crafter, stunning stuff!

Right, more food!

The christmas break! Interesting new year...

Well, a few things are a-changin' for the new year I guess...

First, the Panasonic gig went well - the guys from the PA company and the rest of the band pretty much got there before I did, despite coming down from Oxford to the newbury racecourse, and me coming across from windsor... good PA too, good sound - loud, and seemed to fit the bill.

It's wierd seeing people you see during the day really have some fun - lose their usual external appearance and go for it!

And I'm happy to say the amp survived and sounded great, both at that gig and at the gig we did at the Jericho tavern the other week. I've consulted a few people and there's a consensus emerging that the problem was most likely a dodgy solder joint: my repair should hopefully see the amp be more reliable in future. I'll wait and see before trying to find another one.

It's a christmas break now, with January having a weeks' worth of snowboarding during which I shall NOT be breaking anything.

Y'see, on my return (well, a couple of days later) we're off to do some recording with Andy Chatterley of Skylark in London. Should be fun!!!

Oh, and if I'm lucky (cross fingers) I might get made redundant from the day job, with commensurate redundancy package which will really help Nic and I to stop renting houses, finally. I really need to build a studioroom with all the trimmings, and you just can't do it in a place that isn't yours... a good basement would be ideal ;)

Gotta go.

A

Mr Fixit

I've got this habit, see.

I tend to try to be ready for the worst when it happens. Nothing so grey suit as life insurance, etc - I'm far too busy trying to make sure the active years of my life are spent enjoying it rather than worrying about the output of the Great Financial Experiment that is Pensions and the financial markets (see, they've got you over a barrel: create something so hideously over-complex you HAVE to hire accountants and managers to "look after" you money.... paranoia? No, it's just the way things turn out with humans.....!)...

No, I tend to carry tools and spares. I heard this is something bassists do instictively - we've always got the soldering iron, the gaffa, the spare cable, etc.

Maybe there's something about being that sort of person that means you play bass - not instinctively a risk taker, OK at the back, enjoy your moment in the sun every so often but can go back to the obscurity of keeping everything running smoothly....?

Recently though, I've started fixing just about anything Janeiro related ;)

Van won't start? I'll have a go (not completed that one yet, the van needs the preheating circuit overhauling as well, no doubt about it)...

Need cables in 10 mins flat at a gig? I'll just solder some up....

3 Microphones busted? Hang on a tic.

Precious in-ear monitors need foam casing in a flightcase? No problem.

And last night, I found out that Jake's MOTU (a firewire recording interface module his Mac is plugged into) has been crashing a lot. After some brief perusal of the menu structure ("hang on, that menu there - see that - it's not meant to do that flashing with random "*&£^%$ characters thingy") I found the Master Reset menu and lo! It's reliable again!

Once again, embedded software which hasn't been tested enough. Sigh! I wish I could get into that if I have to stay behind a desk! At least the freebies would be cool ;)

To cut a long story short, I must remind the guys occasionally that I can't fix everything, or a) they'll get pissed off when I don't fix something (I have my limits, I'm just a hacker and cleaner in the end) and b) I'll start feeling like I have to volunteer all the time!

Sometimes it's a right pain in the arse being a dweeb. I always like to know how things work, it's like some form of compulsive disorder, and when they don't work? Well, that's worse, because then I want to know how it _should_ work, so I can fix it, and... well, you get the picture.

Anyone else reading this drivel get the same sorts of impulses?

Whee! Something else to fix! My brain!

Week? What week?

I'll try to remember what happened.... Tuesday's big meeting included the decision to change name AGAIN.... so we're soon going to not be Janeiro any more, which (in this very private forum!) I'm coming to terms with. I like the name, but it's not my shout alone wether we keep it or not. So that's that!

The van broke down again, so we couldn't get the stuff back to the studio for a full rehearsal: Terry wisely ducked back home as he'd been at the studio all day working on stuff with Jake (there is some great stuff in the pipeline). I stuck around as I wanted to test the newly repaired stack for longer than a few minutes, and besides I'd lugged that damn thing around! So we did an acoustic vocal workshop, which was actually quite cool and fun.

Wednesday was actually a day off. Just as well, I wasn't well!

Thursday was a gig night, I had to be careful what with the cold and all. Jericho tavern, no less, in Oxford: Amy, sound wunderkind and general top person was pretty blown away by us (literally - the venue is, I fear, more used to solo David Gray style acts!), and it was a good gig. Bit crowded with 8 people on that tiny stage!

Friday was the Panasonic Xmas Party, and also the day Panasonic decided they couldn't stop Reuters from releasing this story so they'd have to tell us that it's the second year there will be redundancies. Who knows, this time it might be me! Joy.

The party was good though. Late one, and it's wierd having guys you work with in an office see you in your "real" guise: Lots of good feedback though.

Gotta scoot, it's monday night and that's recording night! Parasite tonight.

Tomorrow night... Ben Folds for the second time this year! That'll be a hoot.

Last night was fun though. Although still shattered from the Friday night fun, we went to Dan the Drummer's place and had a Turkish Food Frenzy in honour of his 22nd. Nearly the whole band turned up and Jasmin and kids! Top stuff. I've never seen anyone dance like that to Underworld...

Cheerio peeps

A

Of Warwicks and Meltiness... and Franz

Well. A few things to tell you about...

The Warwick Saga
Well, I worked out what happened to the Pro Tube IX last night. After revealing the innards, I discovered that the earth cables from the poweramp stage back to the main enormous toroidal transformer (these are solid-core cables, mind: REALLY thick, and designed to take a LOT of juice) had, in fact, unsoldered themselves from the board.

No kidding. They'd melted their connections off. And were drifting around in the case! Thankfully no harm has come to any components, and the board is OK.

However, the construction of the amp in this critical area is frankly sub-standard: there should be binding posts with BIG surface area for the current to flow through: soldering to a pad on the board with not-enough-solder will not do!

I've managed to fix it myself (no chance I'm sending the poor bastard to be kicked around the floor by TNT again!) and it seems fine now, but I don't think I'll be holding onto it for that long. Although it is now an absolutely fine piece of equipment, sounds great, fantastic routing, bi-amp and effects capabilities, I can't rely on it to run close to flat out without unsoldering those connections again - I reckon the gigs we did recently where I had to use the stack to provide all the bass for the Bridge gigs were the ones that did the harm. Even if it was (god forbid) a manufacturing error (not enough solder put in) I still don't think I can trust it entirely, even after my repair, which is undoubtedly better than it was when I got hold of it from new.

So, at least I have a working stack for the next gig, which is cool. But I also have to research gig-ready amp heads with the capabilities I need. Which is frankly a pain in the arse. I am not a natural shopper :)

What was the other stuff again... oh yeah, Franz Ferdinand. That last posting was put up before they came on (actually, it was uploaded before the second support act came on - and to think, we thought we were late, they opened the doors at 6:30pm (who does that, fer heaven's sake?) but no band at all went on until 7:30!

Anyhow, when we got there I ended up being interviewed by a swiss TV company who were there: they wanted some pithy and enlightened comments about why I thought Franz were a great act. While blinded by their cameras and slightly in awe of the situation, I blarted out some stuff about their being "new-old" and having punkish energy. Nic interjected (thank god) by pointing out they'd got art college background, which was a nice touch. Thanks hun!

Well, this got me thinking about the kind of band Franz F is: we saw them at a small student venue in Leicester, and to be honest they totally blew me away. I actually became a Franz fan that day, their raw, focussed energy suited their music perfectly and they got a huge feedback from the packed small venue.

That got me thinking - Alexandra Palace is titanic in comparison, and the ticket prices were much higher. Different audience, bigger venue: would their music stand the change? I expressed this to Nic before they came on and said that I couldn't ever see them playing Wembley Arena: wrong type of music, too angular, too "indie", too.... something I'm reaching for here and can't find.... too "arty"?

As it turns out, I was right. Their music didn't fit very well that night. Plus, to be honest, a lot of the energy seemed to have vanished! Their new album is a great album: the songs are all strong, in fact it feels like there's less filler than the first album. But onstage on wednesday night, Alex the vocalist looked and sounded exhausted, and they all seemed so much more static: that could be because they've been hard at it for 2 years, or maybe because it's harder to look like you're giving it everything on a larger stage (ever seen Mick Jagger trying to cover a football pitch sized stage? It's like watching a couple of twigs trying to start their own fire) - either way, they just didn't set me on fire like at the leics gig.

But that's just my opinion. Nic agreed with me though, so we actually left before their encore (gasp!) - along with, I might add, an awful lot of other people!

Honest people, in places they almost sounded so tired that they might not have rehearsed enough. That can't be right!

I've posted a review on WhatsOnStage about it.

Oh well. It was worth it to try out the TomTom5 navigator, which chose a great route from Nic's work at Amersham. A404/M25/M1? Cool!

Gigs that are not janeiro

never fear, silent watching millions. I'm not moonlighting. I'm at Ally Pally in london (holy cow, free parking!) to see, yes see, Franz Ferdinand. Late getting here, but thankfully only missed the first act. Phew. Thank you tomtom, I'd never have thought of using the M1.

In other news, the warwick pro tube ix head i use has gone phut. regular readers will know TNT totally shafted it shipping it back from a warranty job, but I got it working OK then. It's finally unresponsive to my efforts. Arse.

Another warranty jobm NO TNT this time.

Sigh. still, the ever-ready ccl combo stood in. cool.

Tinker Tinker!

Good rehearsal last night, bit long - I was knackered by the end - but long for a good reason, we had a rethink of a couple of areas of some tunes. Cream of the Crop sounds MUCH stronger now, and the intro is going to have some people really smiling :)

Tonight's gig will be a test of how well I can remember things we worked out and learned while I was tired: I should really always take the minidisc recorder and a couple of mics along. I'll be doing that in future, it's a great tip to record all of your rehearsal sessions if you can, then archive off the good stuff. With that MD recorder there's a really long play function which puts about 6 hours on one disc. The quality is low, but it doesn't matter: it's still about as good as a reasonable mono MP3, which means the structures and melodies are preserved.

Currently on the Pod: Kylie(!) - "Spinning Around" - great bass playing on this track from a bass player I can't find the name of: really tight playing, with great note length choices and a neat line in bubbling octave/5th reaches at the end of a bar. I'll have to try to steal that one in the right place!

Bloop

A

Totally GREAT night at Bridge!

Wow, that was SOME gig.

As ever, soundcheck was basically finally achieved with minutes to spare (this brinksmanship stuff is scary!) - Dan and I can now play about 8 bars and the guys on the desk are happy, they're really settling into a fine groove getting our sound week to week, top stuff.

And the sound?

It was REALLY good. Our best yet, Neil says! Sorry - Our MANAGER Neil. Another step to professionalism! Woohoo!

We even got a [ really positive comment from a couple of loony dancers ] on the Janeiro messageboard. Cool! I've been printing and distibuting flyers with the Janeiro website URL on all over the place. Hopefully it'll pull in more traffic. I'd like to pull the mailing list onto the site itself soon, so we can have info to hand on our legions of fans :)

I wonder how long it will be before I have to hand the website over to professionals? That event will be joyful, tinged with perhaps a small amount of regret. It is fun having some control of it!

Anyway, great gig. Lots of good comments on the Bass sound - fat, dense, not overwhelming everything else, all the good stuff I like to hear - and the monitor mix onstage was so good that I was sort of in a "pocket" - all I could hear was Dan's drums, SOME of Terry's keyboards from the drum fill and Terry's monitor. The guitars and vocals were on the other side of the stage - wierd! I was wearing emergency earplugs though, they're a bit more vicious when it comes to rolling off the top end.

Things are looking interesting on the gig front too: we've got a gig at the Jerico Tavern in Oxford: the place where Radiohead, Supergrass and Ride were discovered and signed(!), although it has to be said that was all 10 years ago. Can you believe the place was theme-pubbed???? Turned into one of those soulless "It's a scream" crapholes! Someone's taken pity on it and resurrected a fine music venue. Excellent.

Right, I'm off.

An announcement... shortly!

It's going to be a good one, fear not. After Monday Janeiro should be fully managed by the Great Neil Ferris, a man of energy, enthusiasm and distrust for PCs (a Mac man, and the better for it no doubt!). Neil's got plenty of history in the industry, and he's been scooting around talking to friends (he's got some GREAT friends!) about us and generally (I believe the phrase is) "biggin' us up".

Excuse my dip into hoodiespeak, I am over 30 but I'll try to keep up with anything for the sake of the band. Heh!

Should be a great gig next tuesday: we've got the same sound guys, and it's good to be building up a rapport with some new guys (although we really need to get set up faster, soundchecking should be a little less time-constrained!), the sound last tuesday was great. Nic's going to come see us and take some video, which I will hopefully be able to get onto the website if I can locate the cable to stream it off the camera lol

..:: Totally different tack... ::..
My extended family covers most of the world, and I've often thought that one of the reasons we tend to get on well is we don't live in each others pockets: we've got a yahoo group which we all post to occasionally when there's news to post about, like marraiges, etc (hatches, matches and despatches, so to speak) - it's a cool family to be in.

Speaking of cool, the entire house is like one big wooden-beamed icicle. I'm freezing!!! You have to have some form of heating on all the time in whatever room you're in! I guess I need to bite the bullet and try to insulate and fill the gaps in the windows. This place seriously does leak heat like a sieve. God knows how much of the cash is going out of the windows and roof!!! I should try to take a look at the roof avec frost and see where it's melting to get an idea of how much lagging I need to do... including the end of the house with the enormous Wasp nest in it (argh) which I'll have to go cave-diving past the enormous chimnet to get to (double argh) after some daft builder put the water tanks in the gap (D'oh).

I've got to go practise now. The Korg Pandora Bass thingy I've purchased is top stuff: the aux now has my iPod plugged into it and I've been getting down to some serious playalong like I used to a few years back: all I need is a coupld of cables, the pandora and the iPod and I'm in bass heaven, plus I can do it anywhere. Even in a tour bus (crossed fingers for later)...

Speaking of tours, Students are fickle beasts, ain't they? The Janeiro tour got chopped down a fair amount when a whole load of venues didn't confirm: I suppose I should have checked before I stuck them on the website, but I was in something of a frenzy at the time. Oops!

Oh, and don't use flickr to post to Blooger anymore, it's simply not working. Extra linebreaks, the picture causes the sidebar to plummet underneath the text on the page.... anyone'd thing blogger were knobbling it so people use their mobile blog facilities instead... shurely not? Slightly paranoid, but it's got to be said I'd have expected the flickr photopost to blogger to be working right by now. It's just not working, and hasn't for months..... what is going on?

Enough of this drivel, I have to exercise my fingers in other ways.

Stop sniggering.

Andy

Bridge gig comes good!

We did it! we won them over! we reeled em in with slower tracks that groove, so less shock to their systems when we started, then cranked it up, and the dancefloor stayed full!

Everybody is totally relieved. This is a tough crowd in here, we're up against a disco upstairs which plays abba regularly and the dj down here plays straight RnB through garage to ragamuffin!

And we've got a gig in a good london club, oxford ball of some nature. Must've been the drunk polo shirt lads who danced like demons, bless em!

Sigh! Happy! And Jamie wishes everybody a happy evening and wednesday. And hello to his admirer on the janeiro messageboards:)

Andy W plus StreakyRed

CHECK OUT THIS PIC!!!!

Adjust your perception-that's Andy with a wig!

Hysterical!

The guys think it's wierd, it's like a badly-gelled mushroom of shiny hair with red highlights. Actually, under a hat it's not that bad, first Nic, then George couldn't stop laughing heh heh

I'll be trying it out 2night...

Rhythm Section Session... cool

FMO solo entry,
originally uploaded by Spammy Spamton.

Great evening: Dan and I had a cool time working through some stuff and locking it down. This pic is the whiteboard in the studio, with my scribbles of the drum rhythm entry into Funks Me Off's solo sections...

We locked some stuff down, like the stuff we do in the verse sections of "Are you gonna keep me waiting"...

Hours went by, with only 2 people in the studio... and I barely noticed! Lots of concentration.

Waiting Scribbles,
originally uploaded by Spammy Spamton.

The Ryhthm Method....

Stop sniggering, this is serious.

Well, not really.

Tonight I intend to inject some serious fun into Bass with a session of Dan and I going apesh*t in a funky style: a workout where I hope to stretch my chops and work on some technique in a way that playing songs doesn't.

I think it's a good idea: you can actually regress if you don't push all the time, and gigging regularly can have the opposite of the desired effect, i.e. becoming a better all-round musician! My hands are the strongest they've ever been, but I need some mind-biggening :)

Dan is always up for these sessions as well: I think I've yet to meet a drummer who is so energetic and fired-up about the bass/drum dynamic. He thinks we'll end up in the pages of magazines about the close-knit way we play.

I think he might be right :)

We've got a good mind-link happening, and sessions like tonight's enhance that.

Here's to it.

Exhausted but happy :)

Well, that was one hell of a gig. The new PA guys had some great gear, but I suspect it was pretty much the first time they'd used it, and their flyers gave the impression they don't usually mix live bands... so Bridge in Oxford was, of course, going to be a great way of them practising ;)

Young crowd tonight too, I think we need some contemporary covers to pull them onto the floor before we play them originals: they get chased away by our stuff. The sound we keep getting in the bridge doesn't help either!

Plus, I was knackered. I need more sleep again...

Bleah. Hot choc and bed. Night all!

A

total blast!

that was a corker! a tues night residency gig that went really well! even my solo has high and low points, but tonight I actually enjoyed it, really dug in!

All round good stuff; only jakes rapid segue into cream of the crop left me playing a 4 string bass on a 6 string track! yipe!

pulled it off though.

yay!