O'Neills BLACKOUT!

Nah, we didn't drink so much we all forgot about the gig. We left that to the audience... I had a couple of pints of water (rock and/or roll yeah) and jumped about a lot in front of the stack (ah blissful bi-amped sound! So much headroom! Woohoo!) and sang until I got hoarse. Actually, I did all the above things until the power went out on stage and couldn't be persuaded to come back on!

Apologies to all of you who had a great time in the 2.75 sets we managed to play that night ;) on the plus side we did literally only have a couple more songs to play. It was going so well as well! You were all dancing like nutters, having a great time... then the lights dimmed a bit and it all went quiet!

All I can say is we had a chat while we were trying to get it all working again, and the band in O'Neills the night before had the same problem... the sparky got called out but said there wasn't anything wrong, and charged 150 quid for the callout! Talk about a rip off...

Anyway, a big shout to everybody who came along on friday night, total stars.

It's all good news...

Cool, lots of stuff happening... I redid the Janeiro myspace profile over on http://www.janeiromusic.com, I've saved the old one so we can rotate them about a bit. Janeiro have got what might become a residency at S-Bar in Battersea in ol' london town, which is cool, some london exposure and maybe some original material and who knows?

I've got employers lined up at different stages of giving me a new day job, and I'm pleased to say I'm hopefully not going to get hit by the time out I took in Soldeu. BTW, on the whole job hunting thing, I've only got one great tip, which is for gods' sake don't lie on your CV. Apart from the unprofessional creases (sorry) it will always get noticed. I remember at PMCDE a guy came for interview and he'd quoted some stuff he said he'd tested and worked on, but within 2 questions from the (knowledgeable) interviewer it was obvious he didn't know about the stuff he said he did.

Why do that to yourself? Over-reaching is one thing, but setting yourself up for stressful interviews where you have to try to fake knowledge of something? Don't bother - be totally honest.

That's probably dead easy for me to say, I've got 7 years behind me with a lot of different stuff that I've done at Panasonic so I can probably say I've touched on most stuff, and some of it I've done in a lot of depth.

But don't lie, please don't lie.

Holy cow, Speak and Spell!!!

We had one of these when we were kids... sweet emulator!

Amplifiers... a new search begins. Why?????

Well, I've finally got to the stage where I need to unpack and organise the studio. This means I have to think once again about how to keep the stack available to take to gigs, and looking at the stairs in the new place the 32+ kilo cabinets are starting to look a little excessive.

It's a 900 watt Warwick monster and I love it to bits but it's just too big... it only just fits into the Xantia! So it's time to consider some other options I reckon.

I saw some Gallien Krueger stuff out in Andorra which looked the part. Classic for them, it was small, portable, and had a massive power rating. Sweet. :)

I'll keep looking...

Getting stuff off camcorder...

It's not as hard as I thought, actually... the software that came with the Sony is a bit basic, but it does work. The avi files it captures are mental huge though, I'm using Nero Recode to bring them down to post to Myspace.

Now I can get into video editing (after I get another huge hard drive to fiddle with, mind)!

Looks like my interview technique isn't too bad.

woohoo! Got a call this morning from the agent fella, these tetra radio guys are apparently pleased with our meeting yesterday. 6 month contract with a good chance of a permanent position afterwards, so it's nice to have got things off the ground.

The actual job doesn't sound too bad (i didn't know the details before I went!) some testing to do in implementing a new feature.

And now, for a change, I can make a choice rather than being pushed into accepting the first position that comes along. That's liberating, you have no idea! Big thanks to Nic once again for supporting me like a trooper. Bless!

Cheers punters!

Summer? Maybe...

Blimey, I come back and the sun comes out... what a weekend! This is the only time of year I really have a lager or two, otherwise it's time for wine :)

But seriously, this is a very nice change. To think 4 weeks ago I was snowboarding where I lived!

A big shout to all the new friends at http://www.janeiromusic.com - thanks for the love people :)

Carpe Diem!

Now don't get into a hissy fit because I used some latin. It was in a Robin Williams movie anyway...

I was just thinking that a lot of the things that happened to me recently were pretty cool, especially when things were up to the wall, like moving house and needing to do it very quickly (like before going out Soldeu) - I was just looking out of the window at Bass Towers here and thinking how lucky I was, and then I suddenly realised the really obvious cliche. It sounds like one of those simplistic American Disney Cartoons about "How Capitalism Is Great"...

If you grab hold of a task and wring its' neck to do it right, good things happen more often than not.

Now, bad luck does occur, but I'll tell you right now that I can remember more good things happening to me when I grabbed hold of something I had to do and applied all of my resources to it than when I really didn't want to do something because it seemed like too much hassle, etc. Not just the extra effort: like something fell into place and the Gods themselved smiled down on the enterprise and decided that, well, yes, since I had put that extra effort in they'd lend a hand etc.

That's how it feels: like when I really tried and it worked out, that the hand of fate had almost helped out! You have to be careful with those rose-tinted specs: they can skew your perception. The truth is that you do, to a certain extent, make your own luck. Armed with that knowledge, and without any of that excremental american self-improvement garbage, go out there and really engage with what you're trying to do. Don't do the 21st century "oh, it's too hard" thing, really go for it. Properly.

You might be surprised how much you believe in fate afterwards :)

P990i problems... yes, I do have some

Ah, the thrills of a handset-still-in-development. It's been months since I had that... but this is mine, and it's a sonyericsson, not a pre-production Panasonic!

Basically, on the latest P990i software version, the phone app gets confused if you've got contacts which are in both the SIM and the handset phonebooks, and as a result personalised ringtones, number to name lookup etc don't work.

Simple solution - delete all the contacts on your SIM. It's not as if the phone uses them anyway...

I only stuck that on here so Google'd index it and some other poor sap will be able to find this solution pronto. Only one problem though... how do you access your SIM phonebook on the P990i...? I used an old Panasonic GD96!

Hmmm.

A little geeking can go a long way, musically speaking...

OK, Myspace is a cool way to get people into your stuff. The band are a covers outfit, but we do give one hell of a show, so while I'm looking for another job to occupy my waking hours behind a desk (poo) I decided to try making something using AutoIT v3 - an automatic Myspace Friend Adder!

There are plenty of things on the market which do the job, but you can pay upwards of $15 for them, so I thought "I wonder if AutoIT could control a web page?" - little did I know that the latest version has a whole user library pre-written to do just that.

I now have an app (windows only now) which can auto-request friends! There's a limit of 50 adds a day (which I'm working on, there are a couple of known workarounds which seem to work a bit) but for nowt and only about 5 hours of dev and test it works pretty well.

If you want to try it out for yourself (free at the moment, maybe a small paypal donation of £2.50 to spam.account@virgin.net) drop me an email at the same address...

Cheers m'deers

A

P.S. Still playing a lot of fretless 5 string Warwick. I've started recording some stuff too, in the "let's see where this leads" style, rather than coming up with something concrete like a melody and moving from there.

Forgot to add... more geeking - P990i!

Well, after a lot of research (and some anecdotal negativity on the forums which I had to dispel) I finally got a P990i. It's vodafone "branded", so I thought I'd have to go through the usual stuff to get it de-vodafoned but to my surprise the firmware out of the box (R7c ish) was good looking, and felt pretty stable: 2G/3G network selection (sticking to 2G thank you very much, better battery life), RSS feeds enabled, and no vodafone crappy icons. Excellent! Then I read about R9 software, put the update service on the laptop and fired it up: 30 mins later I've got a happy up-to-date P990i which seems to be plenty stable.

Overall I'm impressed - the flip is more solid, the QWERTY keyboard is fine, and the WiFi is blisteringly quick. Now all I have to find is SKYPE and a blogger app for it! :)

Yay!

Myspace Friend Adders.... useful musically?

Wow. I have to tell you, I've been geeking out for the last couple of days: I wrote my own Friend Adder for Myspace. It's still in the early stages, but it's got a windows front end, you give it a list of friend IDs to scrape for IDs to invite, and once it hits the 50-a-day limit it saves its position and tells you to restart tomorrow. So far it's made the 50 invites each day for the last 3 days!

Coming soon... scheduling and synchronisation with the Myspace server and I'll leave it running on the Server upstairs, permanently adding more friends to the JaneiroBreeze profile! Mwahahah!

Seriously though, I want everybody in Oxford to know about the band. Nobody could not want to see us in full flight, it's an experience :)

Cheerio chums!

Andy

P.S. the adder is available on request, and for a small shareware donation to my paypal account at spam.account@virgin.net

Holy cow my wife wants a games console.

Well, this is a turn up for the books and no mistake. I've fallen off the games console treadmill (you know, new hardware every 2 bloody years, plus buy another controller, oh and there's the 4-way multi tap for parties that you never use, oh and the games are now 50 quid each and....) but kept an eye on happenings, at least partly because I've always wondered about working in the industry (hell, if the teenagers can get together the cash I for one would like to join in fleecing the little square eyed ecstacy freaks).

But now Nic has tried a Wii (no smart jokes now punsters) at a show and likes it, specifically the bowling game. I guess it would be pretty cool with the projector and that funky controller, we can stand either side of the projector beam and swing to our hearts content...

But, I mean to say... I've been out-geeked.

Sigh!

A good start to finding gainful employment...

Blimey! I posted an online CV to Monster last night and I've already had 2 emails and a phone call this morning before 9am!

I can see the Word version of my CV is going to become hot property in the very near future. May have found something not-too-dull (I'm not really fond of desk jobs, remember) in Henley which actually talks about there being limited office space so working from home is de rigeur(!) - you only go in for design meetings or to meet customers! It's a development job though, not testing... I wonder if they'd take me on...

Must dash, have to produce that Word CV now. Actually, have to take lunch now. Seen "Flushed Away"? It won't be a french lunch. Heh!

Ebay... when it is at its worst...

Ebay can be pretty crappy, can't it? I'm in the worst situation at the moment - goods not as advertised, plus a vendor who won't respond to ANY messgaes. Where do you go from here? I presume you report the vendor... if he won't talk, you can't do anything about it.

We'll see what happens.

Mornin' all!

Ah, the joys of home. It's been a quiet week really... caught up with the guys at Panasonic on thursday lunchtime down t'Berkshire Arms (a friendly if clinical theme pub on the A4 near thatcham - try it, the guest ales are pretty good) and found out pretty much everything there is the same, bless 'em. I enjoyed the Gallows humour as much as ever but found myself curiously detached from it - and then realised it was because I don't work there any more!

When I left everything happened in a blur (and really, us moving in was part of that blur, that whole month was manic) so now I'm back it's not just about readjustment from entertaining merry snow-lovers in Soldeu, it's about adjusting to how my life altered before I left. I actually don't know where most things are in the Kitchen, as if we'd just moved in! One thing has changed for the worst (it's sunday morning as I write this and Nic has become re-addicted to TV a bit while I was away) - Hollyoaks is now officially abysmal! I've never seen a worse mixture of "I won a school competition" scripts, wooden acting (wooden??? I'm ga-vomiting here! (ta scrubs))... this is the most dismal pile of crap I've ever seen on TV. When it was self-effacing and funny it was light relief, but you can't marry a lack of acting gravitas with these miserable storylines - you end up with the UK equivalent of Spanish Soaps (minus the crash zoom addiction perhaps).

BTW, as an aside, Alison (bless you hen) informs me that it's done nothing but snow in the Soldeu area for the last 4 days and shows little sign of stopping! That big powder dump, and it happens DAYS AFTER WE LEAVE... typical!!! Still, I guess the silver lining is that I didn't shell out for a season pass - this laptop was about the same price - so it did save me some cash. I think in the 10 weeks I was out there I got out on to the slopes maybe 10 times, which it roughly how many times I'd be out there in a two week holiday :)

Anyway, after that little bit of wrap-up... "what I done this week"...

I've managed to get some cash changed back at Marks n Sparks - I can recommend them over the Post Office, MUCH better rates! I've done a lot of tidying up, unpacking and hoovering... got to be a good house husband.

I'm skirting around here :) I haven't done any CV work yet! Actually, I haven't really had time yet. I've got a ton of address changing to do, financials to sort out... etc etc. No excuses though, next week is the big CV write and post. I've been compiling a big list of recruitment agents from the emails I've received recently, and I'll be posting it all over the place.

Musically....?
No worries, I've been back to the practise schedule, exclusively on the 5 string Streamer Fretless! My intonation is improving (those 3 octave major/minor arps all the way to the top of the board help) and I'm back to jamming along with the iPod to help out feel, etc. My hands are the strongest they've ever been - the automatic pilot on them is wicked - and I feel like right now I have to get a really funky act to show off these chops!

Life is good: it's full of possibilities. God bless the last 10 weeks: it's shaken things up nicely.

The unbearable wierdness of not gigging...

Wow, it's odd being back at home. Plusses include:

• My other basses - I'm playing nothing but 5 string Warwick Corvette Fretless and carver acoustic 4 string at the moment
• Nic on tap without a 15 hour journey (she'll kill me if she reads that but it's meant in a nice way :)
• Mogs - the three terrors who scamper about trying to kill each other during the day, missed that while I was away
• Not having to climb the hill back up to the flat :)
• Living in a big house with 2 showers, 3 toilets, a music room, a pool table, a stocked fridge, a dishwasher.... the list goes on :)
• Having my car back (I know Alison will appreciate that one), although I need to tax it at the moment
• More chance of snow (that's not fair really is it.... nah, it's true though)

Minuses include:

• No gigging 5 days a week
• Snowboarding chances pretty limited (although this isn't the wrench I thought it would be, given the season in Andorra I've had... lol)
• Got to get another desk job (although I'm actually looking forward to being able to choose something this time)

I'm really missing the gigs. This time around, I got a taste of being up front, and I liked it: I was chatting to Nic the other day and realised that I may be ready to start another band - not since the Apostles of Funk in St Andrews have I really managed the activities of a band (I was writing out brass parts for that band) - I think I may be ready to really want to make something work again. The usual dichotomy though: to work, or to play? If it's a hobby, there's only so much you can do... there's always my Myspace site I guess, for the solo stuff... where did I leave Cubase...

Heh heh watch out for some warped live bass electronica people

Wow, what a couple of weeks...

Well, the last week was mental. No posts on here as Nic came out and I didn't need to get down to the brussels to talk to her! But I can relate some of the highpoints of the final week.

In a minute :) got to go unpack the board and ski bags right now, just making sure the place looks good! So good to be back home, wierd too - in 11 weeks Soldeu almost started to feel like home (ish!) - but the flat definitely didn't ever feel as good as being here. Back home to Nic, the mogs, and all the basses I left behind! I'll be playing nothing but 5 string fretless Warwick for the next few weeks, for sure :) May even play an O'Neills gig with it...

Back in a tic. Just wanted to make sure y'all knew where I was.

Friendships - are 99% of them real or not???

Now I've had a slightly strange upbringing. I moved about a fair amount, owing to the dictates of where I ended up going to school. While I can say I did have friends at school, I have no idea of where they are, and in most cases I've actually forgotten their names. Friendsreunited didn't spark my interest in getting in touch with them either!

At Uni, I pretty much got into being in one place long enough to make friends I knew I could call on to come out to the pub, got into a lot of bands, and generally had a great time. I was there long enough to see several years of student friends come and go, and I still had a great time every year.

But time has taken its inevitable toll on those friendships, until now we rarely see each other - even the guys from the last band I was in. Our lives step in to take people we felt strongly for from us, and communication seems to inevitably die with geographic isolation. Here, the internet cannot help: it's just not the same.

With all the moving around that Nic and I have done in the last 7 years, we've never really spread roots anywhere: all I can hope is that my friends have found their place and stopped frantically trying to move up, on, and out... and perhaps come to rest somewhere where they can actually be happy. Me? The only real friend I can say I truly have is Nic, because she's always with me (OK, except for the last few weeks). When you see someone every day, it's that human interaction, the face-to-face, the shaking hands, the contact... these are the things that bind people. Cyberspace is cold, compressed, blocky, with voice calls that break up like daleks and juddering video. Improving these quality of service issues might help, but there'd still be a lack of human touch.

Did we really do ourselves any favours at all when we stopped being agrarian and living in one place our whole lives? I feel lost and if it wasn't for Nic I'd definitely feel alone and isolated! Thank god for the one true friend.

Positivity of personal stocktaking!

People, you must make sure that at regular intervals you do the horribly cliched american thing of telling yourself how useful and good at stuff you are. Don't do the standing in front of a mirror and verbalising roten cliches like "I am a valuable person and I love myself" - that's frankly bullshit and only works if you think Disney is a model employer and George Bush is a great human being - but actually write down some of the good stuff you did recently, and maybe how it helped someone or got something done, and what the skill was. Don't turn it into a full CV, no need, but give it a whirl.

I mention this because I was looking at my old CV from 2005 which doesn't contain anything from my job at Panasonic during "the wilderness years" when they gave me crappy jobs (apart from the automation system stuff which was a blast). I had thought those years were lost time, but after sketching out all the things I did on the automation system alone I realised I had actually done one hell of a lot in that time.

And just writing this has reminded me of something else I did that I can stick on there - not just an empty "I did this", but "I did this and it proved this and saved this amount of money, etc" - just the sort of positive linkage of thought-deed-outcome that CVs need, rather than dry fact stuff.

It's been a positive experience and has actually built my gumption for the task ahead. BTW, read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for a great description of Gumption: spot on.

Go on, do youselves a favour and give yourselves a real lift.

Age hath its privs...

BTW, took a while to get online in the Brussels today - Regis has fitted a new router (A D-link, like mine) and the onboard DNS routing is totally screwed! In the end, he gave us the address of the STA DNS server and a static IP address (which I'm holding on to, def!) and I'm back on again. It showed me once again that embedded software is gravely in need of my services everywhere... I HATE bad software. I live to prove how awful it is. The satisfaction in watching developers and project managers running around like scalded cats after you tell them they can't ship a product because this problem will happen a lot and they'll look like prats is pretty cool :)

Last night's gig was OK - I decided not to take the usual plethora of gear and left the POD behind, just taking the 6-string and a cable to see what the "pure tone" of the bass was like through the Trace V4. I have to say, I was impressed - Jamie even asked for a solo, so I quickly tweaked the preamp dirty channel on the thing and got one hell of a racket out of it. Total anarchy, I just let rip and didn't give a shit what I played, and it seemed to go down well. I'm pretty sure I deafened at least the first three rows of the audience.

I'm 36 and I can see what I used to be like when I was in my 20s... I'm really happy with all the stuff that has happened to me, and where it has brought me. This trip has taught me many things about myself, including that I am through playing covers - I will never play cover music on stage again after this is over, I have had enough! I've spent half my life playing other people's music, and this has to be the end of it. I might pick up the odd technique from some track, but I won't play covers to audiences any more.

There, I've said it. You can keep me straight if you see me playing anywhere :)

Anyone know a good cure...

for sinus infections? Sorry to ask... but this one's been with me the whole time I've been here, and it's come back with a vengeance! Steam bath this morning definitely helped, but "that smell" is still up my nose and the headaches are bad in the mornings!

If anyone's got any good remedies which don't involve antibiotics (I've already got those) give me a shout with a comment on this post.

Cheers!

Urgh! Still got his crappy cold!

I wanted to get up the mountain again today, but this wierd sore throat / sneezing sometimes thing has left me feeling really flat... I got up at 3:30pm this afternoon! Must have had about 10 hours sleep...

On the music front the 6 string Tobias is sounding fantastic on stage. he guys rearranged things last night on stage so Steve could have a monitor of sorts. We've got a pretty good PA here, 3 x 1.5Kw amps and a three-way crossover to split out the low, mid and high into separate channels, then 4 4x10 ( 4 x 10 inch speakers) cabinets for the low and mid and 2 1x15 peaveys on stands for the top end. What they've done is taken one of the midrange 4x10 cabinets and put it at the back, moving the marshall wall of noise up to the front and putting the mixing desk / poweramps cabinet at the back too. The stage sound at the back is much better, Steve can hear more of his own drums and the guitars are forward of him so he's not going deaf with it.

Unfortunately, with the rewiring came a small problem, but it made me giggle :) during the soundcheck we did of this new setup, Steve came to the conclusion it was much much better, which is cool. Then at the end of the first set he declared it was worse than ever! I thought maybe the crossover needed adjusting, so I had a small fiddle but while I was working out if I was making a difference I noticed that the cabinet Steve had beside him was getting no signal at all! The XLR cable from the crossover was knackered! :)

So perhaps perception is 9/10ths of the law? heh heh

The gig was OK but I'm feeling a bit lacking in evergy at the moment, and I've sort of been demoted to the back beside Steve. Seeing the silver lining in this (it's pretty much the same "hired hand" feeling I often get at o'neills in Oxford) I've started singing less and playing better bass, which I find very satisfying.

I've also decided to try to write something for Pussycats up the hill - they apparently play some pretty hard RnB and House late on in the evening, so maybe with the massive stock of drum loops and noises I've got on here I can come up with a pussycat theme tune for them :) It's the object of my myspace music profile which I'm trying to ramp up as the Janeiro thing ramps down. That's on http://www.myspace.com/basexperience and I'll post the results of my noodlin'. I'm hoping for something with huge slap bass on it but a massive beat as well.

Sitting here in the Aspen I've currently got one of the crappy Sky channels raging in my ear and my god, the UK really is a hotbed of paranoid advertising isn't it? It's all about missing out, going downhill, what happens when the worst happens, Dell say they build PCs "just for you" - what a pile of unadulterated shite. As for Carol Vorderman... don't get me started!

Christ, do I really want to go back to the country that watches this shit? ARGH!

I should end this, the cold is warping my words. Or maybe it's helping my honesty gland.

And now, the end is near...

And so I face the final couple of weeks.... :)
Overall the experiment has been fun, but now I find myself starting to think about what will happen when I get back (apart from being totally blissed out to be back with Nic and the mogs). My last CV is on this laptop so I can work on it while I'm out here, and there are a couple of agents who want it asap (I've been naughty and haven't brushed it up to send to them yet).

Trouble is, I'm not sure which sector I want to work in. I do enjoy software testing, and the background in mobile telecomms is useful (not that many people have done the kind of work I have done)... as ever, it's probably more useful to take stuff out of the picture than to try to come up with a whole new picture from scratch.

So I suspect ( I think I mentioned this before!) I won't be working with mobile handets again (although I have decided I won't say I'll never go back to Panasonic, this is probably a fallback position!) - software testing is becoming more and more of a squeezed afterthought in that arena!!

It would be fun to test software that was to do with something i was really interested in - like music, say. Wonder if Steinberg have any labs near me? I should do some research.

I should go and set the studio up again in my room: maybe I can get some big beats to congeal into something interesting...

Quick personal feeling note - it's wierd, but with Richie here essentially it's Breeze+1 (and guess who's the +1?) so I'm feeling a little lonely at the moment. Luckily I'm used to doing stuff on my own, so I can keep myself amused... but even so, it's a little bit of a comedown to the norm where I'm at the front of the stage. I'm compensating by singing less and enjoying some technical playing on the bass (I've even started playing the 6 string in the Aspen, not donw that before!).

Looking forward to getting back to the 5 string Warwick Fretless!

Cya

Andy goes Myspace too...

I remembered I had a myspace profile this afternoon. Not feeling too well tho, woke up at 7am with the dreaded sore throat and headache. Don't think it's a big one though.

Oh yeah, my myspace profile. I'll integrate it into www.funkybass.nailed.org/andrew.watt1 when I get back, but it's on http://www.myspace.com/basexperience and I've just got a half decent looking skin on it.

Now to write all that interesting music :) I'll get this laptop hooked up when I get back maybe... got a lot of samples and beats I can try. Maybe I can get Noel from Sugarhouse Lane to give me some squeals, pinched harmonics and whammy dives a la prodigy to make atmospherics.

Anyone else like that stuff?

Geeky but Cheeky :)

Just another quick posting. The Aspen where we have our residency is across the road from the Brussels where I do all this internettin'.

Just found out their aerial is way powerful enough to reach across the road and into the Aspen, so I'm sitting in the bar typing this :)

Cheeky, but boy do I love wifi :) And Skype - listen, if you can get skype, do it. Not only is it free to call other people on skype (you're paying for your internet access of course, unless you're blagging it off an unsecured aerial!) but the calls to landlines are really cheap. How else could I call Nic at work during the week from Andorra for 1.7 cents a minute???

Great technology enables: it doesn't befuddle. So far, Skype have kept the front end clean (they have added tabbed panes with stuff on I don't use in the relentless western quest for making things more profitable though) so it works like it says on the tin. Apple style logic - I admire that - high tech should not have to be terrifying!

Mind you, with my background I probably can't take an objective view of what someone else would find technologically terrifying! All this typing should mean I can still get a secretarial job when I get back lol!

Losing your temper (a bit) on stage is never good...

Don't worry, I didn't do anything I regret apart from throw a few harsh words. Last night's gig was fun, Richie has arrived and we're playing as a 4 piece - the sound is huge! - and Steve, bless him, has managed to move his drums so far right there's plenty of space for me to stand with a mic (so still able to sing - did Dani California last night no probs) and play, but I can't jump about quite so much :)

During the first set some Irish lads (much boozed up) - I say lads, they were red-faced middle aged men really - got a bit carried away. In hindsight, they weren't lairy or violently inclined, they just didn't know where the lines in the sand were, so to speak. Smiley fellas, but causing a bit too much disruption, which really peaked when one of them managed to somehow throw a shoe at the stage. Luckily it was low, and only knocked over Rich's pint, but Jamie immediately asked over the mic who threw it, we brought the music right down, and at that point I spotted the git who had one shoe off. Jamie told him to leave, and I spat some rather ill-advised invective, punk style, at him and then the whole group, telling them in no uncertain terms they should all get out. Nothing kicked off in terms of bad blood, I think we rather scared them as the bar staff then started asking them to leave. There's no security staff in the Aspen per se, but Neil (a fine scottish mountain of a man, gym-trained and over 6 foot!) was basically telling them to get out in gentleish terms. James the bar managed joined in too. We finished one other song, then went for our break.

During the break I stayed on stage to protect the gear (a good idea, 2 of them decided to invade the stage separately while it looked empty) but the guys were basically telling James we wouldn't play until they left. A couple of the younger Irish fellas made some lame excuses to me about it being a bit harsh (which didn't get any sympathy from me) but we went on for our second set while they were still there.

Then the most remarkable thing happened: I suspect they thought the pub was being entertained by them in the first set (which was, of course, patent testicles) and they realised in the second set that most of the other people in the pub thought they were a bunch of arseholes. I saw what had been a small (what, 6?) group of rather rambunctious gits turn into a smaller looking group of people who had the wind totally sucked out of their sails by our 2nd song. They dribbled out of the front door as we played looking pretty sheepish :)

After that, the set was fantastic. We had a great time playing tracks we only usually play as a 4 piece, including some Pink Floyd which sounded enormous. Scissor sisters too!

Overall, no danger of anything ever happening, but it was an interesting study of how even over-zealous annoying idiots can be totally defused by realising they really aren't funny at all. By the end I found myself having a bit of pity for 'em, which is without a doubt the worst emotion you can feel for anyone :)

Cheers all!

Andy

Ski Calbo servicing guys are top!

Nice P-tex work on the Custom X, and only 4 euros. I can recommend them, and they're all around andorra apparently. Wicked.

Dropped Nic's skis off as well!

Fri night gig tonight... I hope the school hols crowd can be as kind to us as they were to Elvis on Wednesday night!

Cheerio!

What a day! And it's my day off as well...

Wow, I've been everywhere on the mountain today. Well, not every single run, you understand.... but I've taken to that Burton Custom X, really I have! A great board, and now with bindings I can finally ride it... and I got out to Pas de la Casa! The snow out there is great, the pistes were still really fresh just after lunch, even the steep ones. Some great wide open pistes too with lots of room, so even though there were plenty of people on there today no mishaps due to packed pistes.

It's funny to be on the other side of trying out the board now, this morning as I walked up with the dusty (I kid you not!) board with shiny new bindings on I thought "what if it's so different I can't ride it???". My worries were dispelled after about 10 minutes as I headed down towards my first lift.

A big shout to Tom Watt - also a custom X rider - I can see why you love that board mate, it's fast, responsive and when the middle cuts into the piste on a turn it really responds.

In fact, I had so much fun I managed to put a deep gouge into the board which is getting p-texed to fix it in time for tomorrow morning. I will take Nic's skis down to get them serviced then...

I've been thinking more about what sort of job to go for when I get back to the UK - I suspect it will be in mobile comms, but I really don't know wether to try handsets again or not... I've beaten enough doubts about the economic pressures handset makers are under into my head to think that none of the handset manufacturers are even remotely interested in Quality. Can this be true? Logic says they can't just churn out awful handsets forever, nobody would buy them in the end. But my observant half notices that modern nokias and motorolas are basically plastic cack with software so awful that people actually hate their phones (the classic line is "I bought it because of the adverts but I really hate it").

And this came home yesterday when I spoke to a guy who owns a P990i - a phone I am intersted in getting to replace my (perfectly working!) P910i. He said it's cack - unreliable, prone to crashes, he's on his 3rd operating system upgrade...

Is nothing safe? Even symbian seems to be creaking at the seams (wether series 60 "how many keypresses to send an SMS?????" or UIQ with the apprently unreliable P990i)... no hope for those of us who want to keep one phone for 2 years or more?

We get the handsets we deserve. While the UK average consumer clamours for another version of the razr with some half-arsed metallic reflective finish, we will get handsets with crappy user interfaces and a software shelf life of 8 months.

So there!

Then again, I do know how handsets work and you can only change the system from the inside... d'oh I'm arguing with myself again.

Decisions decisions.

Today I'll mostly be recovering from yesterday

Apologies to Fast Show fans :) I think the sheer amount of work I did yesterday wiped me out! Feeling very odd today, sort of disconnected... it's not entirely unpleasant, but it's that old "cotton wool in the head" feeling. I suspect if I get back to the flat and set up the studio for a bit of noodlin I'll feel better.

I should work on "shyboy" some more. Although I don't really like Billy Sheehan's solo stuff (to be honest, the last album of his I bought, "compression", was just wierd - you can't actually hear the bass on it, I suspect Billy may have dissappeared up that grind tone of his entirely) the stuff he has done in the past with Talas and DLR / Steve Vai is spectacular - the dual bass / guitar work on eat em and smile and ( to a lesser extent ) skyscraper is still a technical marvel and probably some of the more complex 2-hand tap ( in a guitar style, not hamm-ish ) you can try to learn.

Couple this with Windows Media player 11, which now has a speed control function with pitch correction, and you get something you can train phrases with! Very useful when you're stuck out between france and Spain :)

Big shout to Ed Buckland who just sent me a possible linkedin recommendation. To say I blushed is an understatement. More people should have mates like Ed, he's a top bloke.

Last night's gig was pretty quiet, and the Aspen was like a sauna... hey, that gives me an idea, maybe I should go blast the crap out of my head at the spa...

Final decision on the burton bindings.... it's a no. I will save the board for next year's excursion, wherever that turns out to be, and ride the burton with good friends on a 6 day pass (who knows, 2 weeks again?) and do nothing but board and enjoy their company (hi Tom, Ingy, Jim, luvly wife Nic and maybe Ed!) - none of this working business that keeps you up until 2am!

No gig in the Alba tonight, so a quiet night which is much appreciated. Time indeed to get Cubase out and have some fun with it! Wish I had bigger speakers to mess with... I'll stick with the sennheiser cans I've had for the last 17 years :)

Cheers all. BTW, are there any panasonic guys still reading this? Has the company finally been closed? It's gone real quiet....

A great day boarding!

Well, I didn't get up the mountain yesterday like I wanted to, but the snow stuck around for me to get up there today - and there's been enough to open up the valley at the back of soldeu to the north, so I got onto some pistes I haven't been on before! I even found one or two little areas of fresh powder and wiped out lovely in the deep stuff, sending up powdery smoke signals and laughing lots! Shortly after one of those I found a natural half pipe to wind my way back to the piste again, looking like a greenish yeti :)

And now it's winding up to tuesday night gig time, and I'm chatting with my gorgeous wife Nic thanks to skype, for nowt! lovely!

Mind you, I now know EDF energy are asking £400 for gas from 30th Nov which sounds insane... oh well, silver linings!

Cheers peeps!

Ps - anybody from panasonic still alive out there?

A cautionary tale....

Ah, yes I've been quiet of late haven't I?

There is a good reason... I got caught out for not having done my homework, and trusting people too much! I'd rather trust people too much than not at all...

Before I left for Andorra I knew I needed a police report, sealed in London at the FCO with an Apostile seal confirming the document to be authentic. I got this information from Jamie but what I didn't do was dig any deeper myself, so I assumed all was well. As it turns out, this wasn't the case... we gigged hard for the first 5 weeks we were here together, it was great fun. Nobody made mention of my certificate so I assumed this document needed to be produced on request, as it were, and consituted a document of character and identity. Andorra isn't a "full" EU member but it subscribes to some things (for instance, it uses the Euro) but not others. I didn't realise the EU right to roam and work was one of those things!

Before anybody panics (I'm thinking of family members here!) I should say right now that everything is fine, it's all OK - I'm just telling the story and there are no really dramatic bits!

Anyway, we were playing the Alba apres-ski gig on the 10th and it all went a bit wierd - the owner asked for jamie to come around the back and chat a bit, so Steve and I carried on regardless with a funky drum and bass thing which went down quite well. Eventually we heard we'd have to stop and made our way to the lobby where some plainclothes police were waiting to take us to Andorra La Vella for not having green cards! I was calm enough, realising my mistake in taking things as read straight away. The police guys were genial, friendly and let us pack up our stuff before we left. We spent a couple of hours in a comfortable office answering the occasional question through the owner (who spoke good catalan and could translate) and then signed a document each saying we had to stop playing and get our affairs in order within 8 days. Then we came home to a village of paranoia with all musicians having stgopped playing and all chalkboards wiped clean! As it turns out, very few musicians actually have green cards, and in fact you can only get one by being sponsored by a business (in this case, the bar). This appears to have been the status quo for many years, with no musician ever under any threat of being busted - as I pointed out to people, this is actually a good reason for the immigration guys to finally decide to do something about it!

There are other hypotheses (god knows, there's been plenty of speculation about it all!) which have to do with the owner of the Alba which I won't go into, but suffice to say it's made Soldeu a strange place, with no live music at all really for the last week save the solo acts in the hotels.

Now, back to my personal story. Since I had my certificate here, it was off to Andorra la Vella the next day with Virtu (co owner of the Aspen) who filled in all the relevant forms (and there were plenty of them) to apply for the card. My stunning wife Nic came over at the end of the week and helped out by bussing me in and out of La Vella for the small tasks necessary (which include a blood test and medical interview) and I now have a smart little green card which I can produce.

But to get back to the title of this posting, you've got to find out everything you can for yourself people. Take some stuff on trust, but watch out - if you think you need to know more, you're probably right - so go find it out! I should have twigged when nobody asked for my police certificate at any point in the first 5 weeks - why would you spend money on a certificate, then go to london to get it sealed, if nobody needed it?

A valuable lesson I won't forget in a hurry. Mind you, I had the certificate... the other guys didn't bring theirs to the UK and Nic acted as courier (a very very good coincidence!!!) when she came out this week. I can recommend the Wellness Spa by the way - we spent quite a few happy hours getting wrinkly in pools, saunas and jacuzzis!

As Virtu put it in a text when I told her I had the card - you can breathe again now :)

Chin chin

Nic gets here tomorrow! And...

Really looking forward to seeing Nic. Music comes from your heart (well, original music does, when you play covers your enthusiasm and drive comes from your heart!) and Nic is all of my heart (slush alert, and I ain't talking the snow out here)....

oh, and she bought a pool table. Full size, slate top, what a nutcase - but a really cool thing to have! :)

Certainly beats some of the other mad stuff she's bought in the past. Which includes...

- two pianos for £10
- several stone of fresh fish when we didn't have freezer space for it (bless!)

Actually that's all of it :) I think this is her best buy though. Apparently it looks wicked, and came from www.pooltablesonline.co.uk who came and set it up ready to go. She's now looking at sparkly spot and stripe balls for extra cheesy look :)

Cheerio all! BTW, it's snowing here in Andorra! Yay! We'll have snow to ski and board on while she's out!

Of radio packs etc....

I finaly repaired the NADY radio pack Jamie uses for it to last 2 gigs! Seems like it has now decided to keep working - he got all the way around the bar and came back onstage from the very back last night and the signal JUST kept itself up OK. Those hot sweaty dancing gyrating heaving bodies can block the radio really well... :)

It's getting around to string boiling time... the Warwick has 35s on it again (elites, no less!) so after the 45s on the Hohner they're going to feel like putty in the Alba tonight!

Must dash. Got to repair (or have a look at) Sugarhouse Lane's bass this evening. Top two strings sound to be out of phase.... no volume!

Bleargh! (as they used to say in Kerrang)

The pub crawl night extension theory

Jamie's got a nose for knowing when a night is going to be good - he predicted we'd be able to do another set last night when James wasn't so sure. By the time we finished the place looked like another crawl had come in!

Good night last night, but the trace V4 combo definitely needs looking after - the biasing is definitely wrong and I'm wondering if a couple of the tubes are on the way out, it seems to start loud then get quieter!

All I need is a voltmeter.

Oh - and I repaired the radio pack AGAIN, this time hopefully permanently, and Jamie said if it messed up he was going to smash it to pieces (I begged him not to!) but my repair seems to have done the trick, it did well all the way through his bar-jumping histrionics (it looks pretty cool when he gets the JD poured into his mouth while playing and leaning backwards onto the bar from behind it!)... so the pack has the right to live, for now... :)

Wonder where I can get that voltmeter from...

Great night last night!

Suundays are usually quite quiet, we do a half-gig (meaning only one 45 minute set) but last night was the exception! Great gig, receptive audience of newbies who got into the spirit of things (and there are a few instructors in training who keep shouting "shots!" after every song - sometimes it's like being a zoo animal, I tell you! Fun though) - Big shouts to Bern and Amanda down from Oxford, especially Bern who got the shots to the stage most of the time - the bar staff were too busy!

And Virtu - you little devil - we can tell when the shots are lemonade! The bubbles are a dead giveaway.

We have hazy cloud today, I'm hoping the forecasts for snow flurries will come to something. Must find a good weather site with good sattelite shots I can look at. Sometimes you get the feeling you might be able to predict the weather better than the professionals... but you're probably just kidding yourself.

Counting down the days to Nic coming over on the 9th! I'll have to straighten out the room a bit, it's full of drying laundry! In the typical batchelor style, I have taken on a clean if crumpled look (a signature style I admit is not all my own) as we don't have an ironing board. Steve (to my surprise) religiously irons everything including jeans - this is the man who looks to be allergic to washing up! C'mon big guy, get yours hands wet - worried they won't be so soft? ;-P It's good to have a little friction occasionally heh heh but let's not get to the police side of things eh? Sting and Copeland were not good chums by all accounts... which makes it wierder that the police are actually doing some gigs this year!

I think I'd like to see that. London and Paris, I think they're doing. I wonder if they've shaken hands and made up? Reading on good ol t'internet a bit I see that it's 30 years since they formed this year, a good excuse to release a compilation and do a bit of a reunion tour to back it up. Wonder if they'll be any good? I'd like to see them, didn't get the chance while they were still togther, I was just about getting into iron maiden at that point :)

Cheersh all!

Hullo all!

Just a quick one. Got the apres ski gig this evening followed by another Aspen Angst Session (last night was hectic, good sound though, pleased with it) - I need to wax the warwick again, it's hard hard work up there.

That reminds me, I must find some tab for "Country Music, a night in hell" so I can get the tap bits right - I can do the slap, but not the tap (well, not all of it, I can get the end - it's the really fast arpeggios I can't hear out).

Fingers holding up well, the nail bed on the middle finger of my right hand is recovering from the annoyance it received following the fixing of the van by gaffa (which reminds me of another thing, must check the coolant level in the van before we set off this evening to make sure it hasn't been losing as much as I think it might heh heh time for a couple of good clips I think!)

The weather here is still far too warm - there's some predictions I've seen of snow in a week, but rain before then(!) as it's so warm - this is just bonkers. I've seen snow reports for Val D'isere and they do have snow, but not a huge amount and not all runs are open: however, Banff appears to be having a great year, and by the looks of their snow history (going back to 2001) they really do get consistently good conditions every year. I'd like to go back and get some fun boarding in without a freshly broken wrist to keep me slow :)

Toodle pip!

2 nights off, 50 euros down... oh well :)

Last night's apres ski gig was cancelled due to lack of power(!) - the Alba had a power cut and when I last heard they had a small army of people trying to get the place reconnected. Pity, we look forward to those gigs, they're really intimate, easy to set up and I've got used to playing without an amplifier... it's nice to play a laid-back set after the insanity of tuesday and the coming storm of friday nights!

Pity about the cancellation too because I was chatting to some nice lads who work for Cisco in the UK (you can take the boy out of the tech company.... but....) - we had a nice long chat here in the Brussels about all manner of stuff technical, I was telling them this was my little break before trying to get a job on the other side of the mobile fence, as it were, in networks (which have to be stable, therefore software testing is taken more seriously - I hope ). When I told them we were gigging in the Alba Stone Bar in the evening, they worked out their evening schedule to make sure they came to see us and then see the football afterwards, which is a pleasant change from the Aspen where we often set up our gear with Sky Sports showing premiership matches over our heads!!! We end up watching the last half hour of the game before we go on, but it hasn't sparked some interest in the beautiful game in my head, it still leaves me a bit cold... I'm too much of a middle class white kid I guess.

Kid?.... one of the nice things on this trip has been meeting guys half my age and actually having good conversations with them, where we actually talk, not those nightmare scenarios where you realise you've lost touch with the dizzying pace of teenage culture (i.e. you end up talking like their dads and looking like a middle aged faker!)... there's some really good people out here, friendly, enthusiastic. Big shout to the guy I was talking to last night, he was great fun and a blade skier as well - kudos there - with a green streak in his fringe which was apparently 5 or 6 washes old! I must admit I'm not a loreal advert watcher but I got the point.

Right, I've got to do some tinkering with the Janeiro site (www.janeiromusic.com) and then I can get togged up and go up the mountain. I want to see how the top of Solana looks in the streaming sun! Guess I won't need so many layers as I had last time heh heh!

Cheerio punters - SHOTS!

Damn! Missed the bus!

... but I did get into SkypeOut yesterday. I've been using an Andorra Mobiland SIM to ring back to the UK, which isn't cheap - but it is cheaper than being stiffed by VodaBone for 75p + 99p per minute(!) - SATTELITE PHONES ARE CHEAPER THAN THAT!

Skypeout charge me 1.7 CENTS a minute - i.e. just over a penny. Good job I brought this laptop out, I knew it would be useful but I didn't realise just how useful. I expected to do some skyping with Nic at home but I didn't think I'd prefer to call the UK using my laptop, period! 10 euros of credit are going to last me all month!

Even if you call a mobile from skype it's still only 20.7 cents a minute. Not too shabby. My folks were certainly impressed!

Oh yeah, missed the bus. The Aspen Staff Lunch (as arranged by the inimitable James) is today - and I slept in, despite getting an earlyish night! The pub crawl night last night was busy for sure, we got a little sidetracked when Steve's highhat pedal (this is one he's using to replace the one he has already ditched!) came apart just before we started the Arctic Monkeys... but the final set turned out OK! I suspect we're all waiting for another insane audience like last week's. Maybe tonight will come up trumps!

I thought about going up the mountain today but decided on reflection I'd rather come down to my favourite watering hole and get a lemonade or two in me. The sun is beaming down on us again, the snow we had in town has melted but the stuff on the mountain still looks pretty good on the runs down to the gondola. I'll go out on thursday and try to get a full day in - wednesday's apres gig finishes early so I can try to get my head down to get up for the first lift if possible.

I think the season pass is probably an expenditure I'm not going to need - if I got up the mountain 3 times a week I think I'd probably collapse on stage!! Actually, I'd probably get fit enough that I'd do better on stage so maybe it's time to be honest and say that I'd rather be boarding up there with Nic!!! I do get into it on my own eventually (just me and the iPod) but it's the getting up and getting up there that's tricky.

Live webcam for Soldeu!

I am really king dweeb. I always used to put the webcams for the resorts I was heading for on my desktop at work.... old habits die hard!



The Soldeu Webcam!

Anyone in Panaland.... this is what I have to board on :)

A couple of days off...

Sorry about the weekend off from posting (I know there are many millions of you out there keen to read a blog which contains no political analysis, up-to-date opinions of crappy news events, endless negativity about the the human condition, etc etc etc!) it's been sort of hectic, but lots of fun.

I've secured a great deal to keep getting the internet from the brussels, I can really recommend this place - they're really friendly, the food is great and the internet is high-speed. That's my dweeb recommendation anyway :) I like the light while typing as well. The Aspen is a totally different kettle with wicked pool tables, table football (good ones too) and big screen sky and snowboarding DVDs - and the attic serves the best texmex I've had in a while (apart from my own chillis, of course, which have a reputation all their own).

Well, friday night's gig was pretty insane - take a look at the janeiro blog for a potted history of some of the highpoints, including the Irish, who made the weekend along with the other nutters on the top floor of the Aspen! We played Bob Marley! (well, a bit of it anyway - Nic, it was no woman no cry, but we did it at the right speed - no muppets on stage here heh heh :)

Also heard from James at the Aspen he's organised a staff lunch on tuesday in Spain! A nice little mountain restaurant, apparently - sounds like fun, a lazy afternoon before the big gig of the night! I like James a lot: he's got a lot of personality, his diplomacy skills are impressive and he's not obsessed with the bottom line, from what I can tell - he's more interested in the bar's atmosphere, which ultimately is the underlying cause for great profit - if you can keep the atmos going week to week (the "fresh meat", as Steve puts it, rolls in on coaches on Sunday! It's an affectionate term though!) then you're going to do well. And James is really happy with the way the bar is running this year - good staff who all get on. It really does feel a bit like a movie set some nights - "coyote ugly" meets "from dusk till dawn" (although we don't suck blood as a rule - Jamie and I have bled a little onstage but not julian cope style mind)

In other personal news, I think some of the chubby may be shed from my waist before the end of the season - belts are being tightened to prevent any Jim Morrison style antics onstage! I would hope that all this effort and hard work would pay off!

Can't wait to get back on the piste - think I may try to get up there tomorrow afternoon for another bit of fun - but I'm still in 2 minds about buying the burton bindings: more snow and I'll be set. The Salomon (with the cool Flows) will have to do for now. It's getting me around just fine - I'm no star on a board, I just enjoy some fairly quick free riding (although I have tried to kick off from one or two tiny bumps at lower speeds to see what it's like - nothing clever mind, I know what broken wrists feel like!!)

Right, more emailing to do... hey you Panasonic types, did you get my mail???? Where are you all? OK, I know you're at work, and I definitely sent the emails there... Tell me I'm not that depressing, am I? Yipe!

Cheers one and all!

Big night last night. Oh yes.

Lots happened last night so I'll itemise for brevity ( got another gig in an hour! ):
1. The audience were mad - learned "shots!" in only 2 takes!
2. 2 great guys matched us for shots at the bar and brought them when the staff were too busy (which was all night, the place was rammed)
3. Steve broke 3 drumsticks, which were given to audience members, one of whom was daft enough to play a cymbal behind my back - I heard steve bellow "I WILL KILL YOU" very loud behind me a trust me, he stopped :)
4. Irish people on the top floor jumped and shouted so hard I thought the balcony would come down!
5. Radio pack annoyed Jay again - but he accidentally pulled it out of the guitar we reckon!
6. I played the Warwick and it sounded SPEC-tacular compared to the hohner - I hadn't realised - plus lower gauge strings = VERY fast playing. Funky, too. Felt very familiar and highly malleable!
7. I went home for about 2.30am ish after clearing stuff up and taking some shots of the bar for the myspace site (www.janeiromusic.com)
8. Everybody else rolled in about 4:30am I think and I woke at 5 with Steve praying to the pocelain god (poor lamb!) - these great gigs tend to leave the kids (as I comedically call them) "up for it" as I believe they say (where's me zimmer) - I think Jamie's missed the lesson he was due to give this PM!
9. Jamie did the alternative version of Angels (robbie W) for the first time while Katie was listening and her face was a picture :)

Right, apart from that, I've been busy posting things to Myspace, including a couple of new videos - so get on over there (the link's on the right somewhere!) and have a look!

Must get back up the hill and get ready for apres ski! The van is now stationed at the bottom of the hill in a car park in case of more snow, it doesn't cope well with the hill... my gaffa tape fix of the coolant pipe to the expansion tank seems to be holding, more or less - certainly, the tank didn't empty! Hopefully there's good antifreeze to protect against the lo lo temps we've got now (mainly thanks to the snow I think).

Gotta scoot and pay my brussels bill (mmmmm tagliatelle bol today, more than I could eat for 8 euros!) - I just camp in here during the day really!

Cheers chums (oh, and... "shots!")

Adjustments... good day yesterday!

It's been a long time since I lived in a house with other people, and boy can I tell :) Admittedly this is a band I'm living with here, and maybe I'm being over cautious (what, me????) but I can't get merry every night and still put in a gig the next day... besides, I want to get up on the mountain! Now that the new snow is here, I really want to get those bindings... that burton board looks like a piece of installation art! That's just wrong, as Steve would say....!

Just seen a wicked shot by my mate Skip Bruce on Flickr - he's using a funky little Casio camera and this is the sharpest shot I think I've seen from it -



wicked shot, eh? I need to pass my bike licence when I get back so I can tour places like that. B&B hopping in the northern summer sounds like a nice couple of weeks. Wonder if Nic and I could get up there on the train with the bike?

Friday night gig tonight, and I'm feeling more up for it that last week, after recovering from that cold. I'm still on some antibios to clear the sinus infection I picked up in the UK before I left (that'll be the legacy from Panasonic - a lingering sinus infection! Curse that crappy aircon!) but it's going, gradually. It's funny, but years of poorly animated bugs in adverts on TV means I really do visualise the contents of my sinus cavities as having small grimacing amoeba with pickaxes chipping at my membranes... culture is not the word I would use, despite its double meaning :)

Right, must find that Trace Elliot manual - the V4 combo needs rebiasing and surprise surprise the manual was lost long ago...

This weeks rock n roll cliche: repairing a coolant tube in the van using gaffa tape (your truly) so we could make it to the apres ski gig on saturday!

How I laughed as I tried to get Gaffa to stick to sub-zero temperature rubber hose :)

Cheersh!

5 days and I am knackered

5 days in a row my friends and we have torn up every night... now it is a time for Zen like reflection, for sitting cross legged on a piste contemplating the higher things. Like curries.

And then it's back to the posing on friday!

I meant to go up the mountain today (looking good up there, new snoooooo) but managed to answer 3 texts, turn on the laptop for TV then fall asleep again until 2pm. D'oh!

So. Tomorrow I will be up earleeeeee and get down to the gondola for the full day pass. Maybe passing Slims for a breakfast on the way (I'm told they do good stuff)

L8rs

From the snowy pyrenees!!!

Yes, it's actually snowing. It's been snowing for 2 days pretty much straight, and you can bet I'll be up on the mountain tomorrow! After 3 weeks of nothing but sunshine (I was starting to worry a bit there) the weather finally broke, in common with the rest of europe, it would seem... that high pressure had to go with a bang though, didn't it? I heard the news about the storms that hit the UK and germany, and out here in Andorra we were away from the path of the storm, really, but I get the feeling the pretty snowscene evolving before my eyes is as a direct result of that storm...

Another pic for the day!....



live and direct: by the look on my face, I'd say I got 220v somewhere where the sun don't shine :)

I'll be trying to get up the mountain tomorrow morning, I hear the conditions are nice but in the afternoon visibility can be tricky. Just me, the pod and my trusty salomon board: I haven't bought the burton bindings for the custom X just yet, although I now know where I can get hold of them! I'll need to catch the bus now though... the van needs some work doing to it, there's a coolant leak from a minot pipe to the expansion tank and the brakes definitely need an overhaul (possibly a new master cylinder)...

Cheerio chums! More later...

IT IS SNOWING!!!!!!

Holy cow, it's snowing. Big fat flakes of it. The pavement outside has gone white in about 10 minutes. Scary! It's been bright sunshine (I'm talking t shirt weather) since I got here - the whole of europe has deferred winter, it seems, even moscow's red square didn't get any snow this january!

I think the big ol storm which wrecked big bits of aforementioned Europe (Germany in particular got hammered) finally blew that high pressure off the map and now the cold front is reaching down from russia over france and into spain (touching the pyrenees!).

It's good news though, the lower pistes here had gone very very brown, and I gather the reservoir for the snow cannons was used up too.

Phew! Perhaps the season will last a little longer.

Big shout to Nic, back in the UK and back at work. Sorry about the work bit hun! Your pictures are still above our heads while we sweat our way through the shot song :)

Newsline from Andorra 1

Hey there.

Well, a lot has happened so far. Plenty of gigs, some of them quiet (the après ski gigs at the Alba hotel in El Tarter are very laid back – we actually do a couple of slow blues numbers and they go down really well amongst the usual high-octane insanity) and a lot of them VERY loud. We’ve done 3 full gigs back-to-back in the last 3 days, and tonight’s is a scheduled full gig (as I write this it’s Tuesday), so that’ll pay the rent for this month. Very reassuring!

My gear is holding up well. The 2x10 trace cab I sent down with Jamie provides some much-needed mid and top to the Trace V4 combo, which is a monster. The bass POD is doing great, and I’ve been tinkering with sounds this evening trying to get the levels right on the patches I use for soloing. I had set them up before and didn’t realise they were absolutely massively louder! I’ve been trying to use the SoundDiver software that came with the POD too – I can get MIDI out to it from the Tascam 122L I got – but the software doesn’t seem to be able to find the pod. I’ll have to check the web for updates when I hook this laptop up to the Aspen’s ADSL to send this stuff. Ironically, I’ll probably use the cable I hook up the foot controller for the POD with to plug into the Aspen office Ethernet – it’s a standard cat 5 cable! I like that, it’s good design – no need to reinvent, and cheap cable replacement when required.

The Aspen is a great place to play. The stage now has the backdrop (which Nic made ages ago – we projected the logo onto a sheet and Nic did the rest!), the speakers out front as a runway for Jamie (and myself!!!) to pull all the rock and roll poses necessary to entertain the crowd, and thanks to Nero 6 and Nic (thanks honey!) we now have a slideshow DVD of pictures, logos and URLs projected onto a massive screen above us as well! It all looks really pro, and when I finally get hold of those stage lights it’s going to be the most professional looking stage in Soldeu – actually, there’s probably only places in Andorra La Vella which would look better. As regards the audience side of the stage, that’s great too. Large area out front of the stage between us and the bar, stairs to the upper level where they have 3 full size pool tables and balcony seats with tables to watch the band from…. It’s a great venue. You get people cheering and singing along on 2 floors in front of you – and if the DVD player is playing our DVD slideshow and all the screens are showing it, you could rename the place the Janeiro Bar….!

So… I can hear you all asking how a Janeiro show runs. It’s pretty much on-the-spur as to which songs we play (I’m now doing vocals on Basket Case and Dani California by the way!) but there are some set pieces during some of the songs.

“Mustang Sally” features Steve the drummer belting out the vocals and Jamie and I sharing the mike out front and “ooo-ooo-ooo” ing all over the place, beatles style. The audience gets a great chance to sing during that one. Last night Jamie and I were goading the audience with the promise of a free shot for the best voice in the audience (which basically means the one who looks like he’s about to pop something when he sings) and had great fun pointing and nodding during the audience participation bits.

“Johnny B Goode” has a spectacular mid section during Jamie’s big solo where he plays his guitar slide-style with any object James the bar manager can rustle up – so far, I’ve seen jamie play with a spade, a fire extinguisher, a beer barrel, and beer sign, several bottles of bud, one of his other guitars (that WAS impressive), someone’s pint, a packet of fags, a mop head(???)… I’ve taken to doing a little Bud-slide myself during that bit, sounds weird but great fun.

We also have a little country n western benny hill action (I kid you not) with the theme from Benny Hill's little bawdy chase sequences as what essentially amounts to a bar order. We call it "shots!" and it gets a round of Sambucas from the bar, which we then toast the audience with. By the end of a night most of the audience are joining in and shouting "shots!". We seem to be able to get an audience to really get into the spirit (sic) of the show and join in!

Home life in the flat here at the top of the hill is pretty much settling down – we’re usually all awake by 12ish (I tend to get back here fairly soon after the end of the gig) although the guys have been getting in pretty late after post-gig partying and as a result I think Steve holds the current record with 5pm(!) – I can see I’ll have a spot of gig-lag when I get back to the UK, I’ll have to retrain myself a bit! We’ve got TVs, DVDs, PS2s etc in the house, and Steve bought a little digibox for about 30 euros which gets a fair few local channels and BBC world. It’s got the advantage over the Freecom DVB stick I got in that it detects and can use alterative audio channels within a TV channel – Nic, you’ll be happy the hear that K3/300 can show you Dallas, Land of the Giants, Beverley Hills 90210 and Star Trek with the original English soundtrack! The other channels are all French, Spanish and Catalan.

Speaking of TV channels, there is an Andorra TV channel (good music TV during the day) – and they’re going to be at the Aspen tonight filming us! I’ve got my LED VU level T-shirt my folks got me for Xmas (posted out to here no problem!) and tonight I’ll be flashing the audience plenty. Stop sniggering, Pearson….

Only worry at the moment is the lack of snow – the cannons were out of commission last couple of days as it got too warm, but it went very chilly today and the cloud has moved in – so here’s hoping for fresh snow and plenty of it!

More later – long long postings can be tiring on the eye…. And the page!


L8rs



P.S. Chris Last, I'll post some pics ASAP - battery out on laptop!

Phil Lynott Lives!

Phil Lynott Lives!,
originally uploaded by Spammy Spamton.

Nic took this pic - I love it! The red LED on the hohner looks fantastic. I'm standing on the speaker cabinets. First night I did that I overestimated what I could do and very nearly overbalanced onto the stage in a nasty manner... could have been a right "canada trip" that!

A posting from the Pyrenees!!!

Holy cow, we made it! 14 hours (with 1 hour for misc stops including several cans of red-bull style drink for Andy) and aboot 500 miles of rain for the second half, but we made in in a oner.

I can recommend using the channel tunnel to get across BTW, 35 minutes and you end up popping up near the calais ferry terminals. Very useful for a quick trip to Eastenders (which was sadly shut when we sped by!).

Soldeu is really pretty, the ski area is pretty big across the GranValaria area BUT... at the moment we're in a snow crisis and no mistake! The alps got a big dump the other day but it didn't get down here..... still, Nic and I went up the slops today and had a lot of fun on the pistes which the guys are doing a great job of keeping in a remarkably good condition. Good on them.

The gigs?... they're great fun. We've got a really good looking stage at the Aspen where our main gig is (as Janeiro, no less!) - the backdrop is in service and looks the part. I'll post a picture of the stage as soon as Nic (our caterer, transport specialist to Pas de la Casa and photographer!) takes one.

Funniest moment at the mo is Jamie being called "steve" in 50,000 copies of the village magazine (the season's one!) - J is taking it rather well :) We helped out Elvis with his stage setup the other week... I repaired his mike cable. How surreal... he does a great Brucie impression as well.

Right, gotta scoot. I'll post again soon!

A

Chunnel Funnel

Well, you still have to wait it seems :) Glad we decided to do it this way, it's really windy out there and I get the feeling we'd both be a little green on the ferry.

Speaking of ferries, satnav reckons the chunnel is one. "unspecified ferry", it thinks. Hmm.

Nice sunny day, the gulls are wheeling around and the car is full. Couldn't bring the mixing desk, sadly, it wouldn't fit!

Also, I think it would have been to big to be useful in soldeu, apprently the aspen stage is smallish and the existing mackie desk is rack mounted with the poweramps in a cool wheelie coffee table thingy!

Anyone know if the horse carved into the hill beside us while waiting for boarding is the EDF energy logo?

BTW, hope they sell strings out there, I've got some but not a massive amount! Also need a small Midi controller, maybe a couple of octaves.

Happy new year! I'll be asleep.....

Twas the night before driving for 13 hours,
and all through the house,
lots of things got unpacked in a hurry,
including an infra-red mouse.
The audio equipment was stashed with due care,
in hopes that on arrival it would all still be there.
The laptop was nested all snug in its case,
With visions of new Janeiro tracks (with cracking bass).

Tomorrow we set off. Around 10am we'll pull out of folkestone on the chunnel train in the car, and tomtom will guide us (with the excellent european map pack - I'd recommend it to anyone) all the was to Andorra. We're planning to stop off in Toulouse, which should be interesting.

I've rationed myself to a 4, 5 and 6 string bass, which should be more than enough. My rationale is that while I'm out there it's music and boarding, boarding and music, so I might as well go for it!

Only thing bothering me at the moment is a lack of small MIDI controller keyboard. I think I'll have to get one while I'm out there. Still, I'll have the ultimate small studio system then! Must update my webpage with the new gear... have to do that when i get back :)

Got lots of spare drive capacity - 2x120Gb drives plus a small 20Gb one as well. Even brought a little DVB stick along! Wonder if they've got digital TV in Andorra...

Wish me luck - this is definitely feeling the fear and doing it anyway, so to speak.

Finally - and this goes out to anyone who is willing to read my diary, such as it is, with its' occasional philosophical meanderings - have a great new new year. Here's to your 2007 - I hope it's as interesting as mine is going to be!

And if you still work for Panasonic... then good luck to you too :) Big shout out to Darren K, Chris B (the man in the far east), Sean C, Abid K, Shinee R, Mike L, James T... have fun this year guys, and be careful with that system.... :)

Oh god yeah - and here's to James Brown. I've spent more happy hours playing his stuff than most other - with the Apostles in St Andrews, we used to do a version of Sex machine that lasted literally 15 minutes and caused people to almost drop dancing.... wild.

Stagecraft... gulp!

There's something I'll have to do more of out there in Andorra which I admit scares me a little - I'll have to front the band a bit! While Jamie is without a doubt the star, he does need a break sometimes so I need to sing a few tracks so he can back off a bit. I was tinkering with the bassline to "the boys are back in town" earlier on today on the 6 string (ah, strumming those barre chords will def help thicken things out!) and thinking about how complex and "semi spoken" the words are...

cripes!

I'll have to practise that one until I'm sick of it! Actually, I've only sung a whole sung as the "front", as it were, a couple of times - really, it's a question of practise, I think. I'd guess I'll just have to tone down the complexity of the basslines to try to give myself more head space to remember lyrics, etc. I think I can just about handle some green day though. We'll have to work on some new green day tracks. Basket case does get 'em going though. Just ask David Hasselhoff. The hoff knows, he does.

Last day at work! Now I can look forward...

Wierd day. Wierd, wierd day.

I had all those "Well, this is the last time I'll" moments getting into the building, then I spent the day sorting out things to bring home (including the pinky and the brain characters Nic bought me years ago) and making sure my exit didn't leave anyone in the lurch...

And at 11:30 a small crowd of brave souls who were still in the building on the last friday before christmas gathered to see me off. When I left Racal years ago it was totally different, I just left really. Getting the card was nice, and the sequin covered fluffy red cowboy hat (which Chris B assures me is essential in Brighton clubs, along with white gloves) was a nice touch. Apparently Darren quizzing me about using iTunes to buy music was to make sure I did ( they were going to get me an iTunes card) but I then went off on one of my little rants about how I hate iTunes music shop because they don't sample at a high enough rate. Truth is, I'm a staunch CD buyer because that's the best digital quality you can buy - you can dictate the sample quality when YOU rip it, and if you buy your CDs on play, you'll pay about the same rate as iTunes charge per track. DON'T LET THEM RIP YOU OFF THIS WAY! 128k is not quick enough.

I think I may have just illustrated my rant. And possibly restated it again. Sorry about that, I tend to go off on one... :)

Anyway, I was genuinely touched by the sendoff. Actually, lots of people have been really nice about what I'm doing - very few people have called me mad (at least not to my face!) and one or two have actually implied I'm something of a hero! I'm flattered, but it's definitely time I had some form of career break from the desk jobs to tax myself in another sphere before I come back. If you read this, Mike Livingstone, I will make sure I get in touch once I get back to earth. Thanks for the comment mate, means a lot. :)

And now I can really look forward to the season - although at the moment Andorra is lacking in snow like a lot of european resorts. It's looking bad in the alps unless you're over 2000m... I think Andorra may be in a good position in the pyrenees though, the warm moist air from the atlantic should dump on the pistes!

Been trying to squeeze practise into all the madness recently - I'll be blistering by the time I get on stage. In a good way.

Got to unpack some of the studio to get at some software before I leave and no mistake....

Getting VEEEERY close now...

If you click on the title of this post, you can look down into the comments about Soldeu for a mention of Breeze (who are gigging as Janeiro in this winter season with yours truly!)... I've got a lot to live up to, obviously!

So much to catch up on.... OK, I'll try to get it into some kind of order.

1. Moved house
Nic and I moved again! Found a place (at the last moment, it's got to be said) a couple of miles up the road, really beautiful, and space for the Virago in a nice dry shed. We have a pond, ducks and a moorhen (which you can hear at 1am). We also have a dairy herd which wanders along the hill opposite in the mornings while you're trying to make breakfast!

Currently the house is a total shambles, but it's getting there. Kitchen is arranged (better than the one we had before!) but my studio is still well and truly in boxes. Good news - the mixing desk is working again, I can recommend sending your dead Soundcraft 328XD power supply off for repair with some guys I found near stevenage. Total cost was around £113 for the repair, as opposed to £450 for a new supply from soundcraft... no contest! If anyone wants the address give me a shout on the blog. I need to unpack some of the studio so I can get at software before I leave!

The cats are going stir crazy, surprise, but they seem to like the new place. It's a lot warmer. Despite feeling more rural that the last place, it's actually got gas central heating(!) - never mind the cost, the place is WARM!

So all in all a good move. We did it with one luton transit again, and that definitely is the last time. After the 6 vanloads, (2 of which were solo on my own! We did get lots of help from my Bro and Nic's mum for which I am eternally grateful) and the cleaning of the old place, I took a week to recover. Hard hard work. Volga boatmen city.

2. Ready for Andorra
Well, nearly. I've got a laptop (finally) to keep the blog up to date (I notice I've got a comment or two - thanks for those, whoever you are...!) and hopefully do some recording out there with Cubase. I'll be using internet cafes though I think, thankfully I'm sure there is one in Soldeu and the access cards aren't too expensive.

Our gear (Nic's skis and my boards) has already gone down in the van - Jamie is already down there! Actually, the Van is a worry - currently the brakes aren't working, but thankfully they got there OK before they gave out. I've got the workshop manuals for LDV vans which look like they're pretty good, but how do I diagnose from this distance?????? eek.

3. Job situation....
I've had a lot of good positive noises from ex-panasonic employees - many thanks to all of them - and I'll be working on my CV (probably towards the tail end of while I'm out in Andorra, now I've got a laptop) in order to come steaming back to the UK and find a software sector to terrorise. Typically, I've got something really juicy to dig into at work as well. Wish I'd had that 3 months ago, but what can you do? It takes a long time to persuade the Japanese of things.

4. That's it.

Oh yeah... I fixed my car up. Window winder, windscreen, tail light... little things.

Another breeze gig last friday... another one this thursday!!!

Cool, I could use the cash! Need to get a laptop so I can keep this stuff up... mainly as if my counter is right, there's a few of you who drop by every so often. Including that anonymous comment from "Parker" to my last post! I'm guessing that's you, Elwyn :)

If not - drop me another comment, anonymous - anyone who mentions VB and the Witney Wisp (are we referring to 'arry 'arris 'ere?) should shurely be Elwyn???

Oh - and I'm stoked that the snow out there is good. 100 inches at Baker? Woah, I would sooooo like to be there :) The boarding I did at Banff was some of the best - American and canadian ski resorts rule, I suspect - Europe needs more himalayas (or at least our own pocket san andreas for more hilly bits).

So yes... another Breeze gig this thursday! And I've got to get some serious stuff packed - we're taking the studio out there!!! So not only do I get to spend that time playing music and boarding (when I have chance - remember, this is hard work we're talking about here) - we're going to get some writing done as well! Jamie is driving down fairly soonish so I'll be taking him a load of stuff this thursday night as well as the trace 2x10 cab to extend the V-Amp V4 combo (which, BTW, sounds totally awesome - I'd kill for one of those!).

Sweet!

Things at work have been cool - I've actually done more work recently that ever before, lots of little apps to do cool stuff remote controlling other apps using AutoIT v3 (yeah, I'm a dweeb on the side). Hopefully when I get back I can get myself another post fairly quickly, but with any luck in a new place close to home.

Oh yes... and we're moving house this weekend!!!! Not doing things by halves, eh... Nice new place though, very warm. And not oil powered. BTW, if you have the misfortune to be in an oil-powered house, try boilerjuice.com - they are very very cool and very very useful.

Wish me luck, I have a PC, 2 monitors and several bits of 19" rackmount gear to pack for the back of a van :)

Oh yes, and my 5 string. And my board. And Nic's skis.

Cheerio punters

Andy The Man With Something To Live For

My Andorra Trip Will Be...

for 10 weeks, starting January!

Bless 'em, Panasonic simply couldn't cope without me, they said, so I had to give my notice today. I still don't really understand why they can't give a sabb until I get back, and still have all these talents I apparently possess, but there you are.

Gentle reader, how could I, a 36 year old male bassist, turn down the chance to stretch my capabilities in a totally different and very demanding sphere, because my employer hasn't granted a sabb before and doesn't know what to do?

I think this marks a great phase for me: I will find a software company who rate software quality as I do and blow them away with the force of my testing. It will be a meeting of minds and hearts.

I have broken free!

The time is drawing on...

I've decided to existentially link my titles through Google to the rest of the interweb. Maybe it'll throw up the occasional irony. Enormous parallel search machines can do that, it's a sort of electronic serendipity.

The andorra sabbatical draws near, and so does preparation. We're moving house again, so it's time to start packing things up. I always get wistful when packing up the studio (although at the moment I need to keep some things available for 1) gigging and 2) trying to recording backing tracks with). Did the drumkit last night (yamaha electronic job, very portable). Hopefully that'll give me some room to stash boxes in the corner in!

Basically, we need to move to bring rent down anyway, but while I'm away Nic will have to cover things at this end (I will help out as much as possible!) so it's time to downsize a bit if possible. It also has the added bonus that we can try to move much closer to where Nic works. This will also mean that I escape from Thatcham, I suspect: we will see.

How to feel undervalued?
Did a presentation yesterday for the test system I've contributed one hell of a lot to. However, I felt compelled to jump in and start explaining things in more depth when the magic word "we" started being used too much and I felt a little undervalued: we've had a few people come through the team I work in, and believe me a lot of them just weren't up to the task. I've fixed problems in every piece of software in the system, and implemented most of the scripts. So what's this "we" business about? While I acknowledge I haven't done all the work (far from it), 2 of the systems wouldn't exist and nearly every cool aspect of the original one was implemented by me.

I have an insatiable appetite for being told I am responsible for success, but it never, ever happens enough. Bit self-evident that one. I think I'm basically socially maladjusted that way, which is probably why I'm crap in offices (I never want to lead teams, always want to beaver away at impressive solutions to problems people don't know how to tackle, etc) but great on stage with a Bass (love me, please, tell me I'm not utterly inadequate and basically shite at everything)

I think the bottom may be falling out of my belief system.

Colds. Gotta cave into 'em.

This one's nice, like having exploding sweets (pop rocks? can't remember) on your throat.

Central heating on - colds caught.

Sheesh modern living eh?

About to start packing up house again, every 12 months or less recently. Not fun.

Been trying to find the brass sound in "addicted to love", the cheesy palmer classic. Can't find it! Need to hook up the old midi module and see what it's got.

Satch on the ipod, "war" from crystal planet. A favourite of mine. Nice bass start too.

Stu rules! I met him once doing a jazz gig in a department store in SF. Him, not me!

Board board board - time to think about it again

Yes, it's time to think about the annual try-not-to-break-anything fest.

This year has a different twist though, which brings it more into the spirit of this haphazard blog.

I think I'll be in Andorra for 10 weeks playing in "Breeze", the covers band! Play at night, board in the day... and I've got a new Burton Custom X to try out!

Can't wait. This is the chance of a lifetime.

In between, just have to find somewhere new to live... the rent on our place is sooooo high it's mental, so it's time to save some cash, esp as the pay out in andorra is a lot less than I'm on at the moment! It is pretty good though, and board and lodging is more or less thrown in.

I'll go through a few strings playing 6 nights a week though and no mistake... eek

Nostalgia? Thing of the past.
Groan.
Sorry about that. I did get misty eyed earlier on though, found a really nice aerial view of where I "grew up". I say that in quotes as it was the place we lived the longest, although even then it wasn't that long. Local.live.com (which is actually a great site despite being microsoft's) has it [..:: HERE ::..] . It's the walled garden with the large house attached in the middle of the map, on the way out of town towards St Andrews.

I loved it there.

birthday stuff, the lads n haggis

What a wierd and cool weekend it was.

Friday night was an O'neills in oxford, first one with rich back from hols. Blinder, enjoyed it lots.

Saturday was in the crown and thistle in abingdon, and that was a wierd night.

The warwick ccl packed up - yet again, showing shite build quality, why do warwick insist on using pcb ribbon cables with no snaplock on the connectors? the pro ix head i bought kept shaking off the power amp connectors, then the combo's done the same, but it's royally shafted the poweramp, which is now permanently muted. Great.

Anyway, I used the trace V4 valve combo the lads have and plugged in the 2x10 trace cab. Sounded really good. That combo is spectacular, needs overhauling tho.

Wierd motorhead fan got me doubled up with mirth asking for ace of spades and making bad smell faces at me during the gig when we played other stuff hee hee!

And between sets Jamie and Steve nipped back to the van and got... a haggis! With 4 candles. Bless! they got me a jester hat as well, which is cool.

Then, after one of the most fun gigs I've had (big solo) Jamie got the whole pub to sing happy birthday to ME! Quite touched. I can see andorra is going to be a blast! Breeze even have positive review as part of a review of Soldeu on a ski site.

Phew, the P910 is smokin now!

Great gig at the Embassy in london last night Dan mate. Electric City rule! Celebs were in attendance... 2 pints, anyone? heh

TOTALLY knackered. Really. :)

That 3 night in a row thing last week left me dazed and confused on Sunday morning, I'll tell ya. All 3 nights were pretty full on, with the third one seeing Jamie pretty much having to sit down at the end. The O'neills gig on Friday night wasn't without incident either - on his second foray into the crowd (I now have to fix the wireless Nady sender for him again!) he got into it a bit in a crowded moshpit zone at the front and had a clash of heads with a female member of the audience. Both were not really hurt, but Jamie was pretty dazed and rested his head against the stack on his side of the stage for a minute or so while he recovered while Steve and I continued!

Drink being what it is, Jamie got some lip later on suggesting he had headbutted the girl (which he definitely didn't!) - Jamie took that kinda personally, which I don't blame him for at all. But students will be students, after a few beers - these were americans too, really up for having a good time. I suspect they must have thought Breeze were more like the Pistols by the end, how wrong can you be? The Breeze work ethic is terrifying to behold... :)

I'm itching to get into my studio and tinker... need a myspace site with some homegrown audio on it!!!

Cheersh

A

Gig gig gig (literally)

3 gigs in a row: one last night in Izi's in Witney (mental night, people falling backwards onto the stage from the "mosh pit"), one tonight in O'Neills and then another one Saturday night at a birthday do somewhere...

and it's a 3-piece... with me singing a bit (gulp!)

Richie is on hols (hopefully having fun!) so it's just me, Jamie and Steve. As it shall hopefully be in Andorra come january... I think it's going to work out pretty well. I'm not used to singing and playing, takes a bit for me to back off and play simply so I can concentrate on singing a bit: a very different style of performing for me. I'm not singing all of particular songs yet, but there's definitely one or two I can do. Just have to guage what my voice is capable of and remember my diaphragm. Stop tittering at the back.

A

Circular Arguments

Not another "should I have a kid" thing? Nah. Had enough of that question. I was listening to the radio this morning and not only did R4 (I'll admit I do listen in the mornings on the way to work, although I'm pretty sure it's bad for my BP) have some twittery stuff about a blogger in Paris, but the local radio berkshite channel has their "blog" in the mornings where locals witter on about the weather and lack of resources.

Which made me wonder if my nonsensical scattergun crap was worth writing (let alone reading!) - just another whiney middle class white boy (if 35 qualifies) railing against stuff he can't do anything about...

Maybe I should just stick to stuff about music.

Getting older...
Hmmm. I've been watching my hands with interest during the last few weeks since I got back from holiday. 2 weeks out, and I thought I'd have a tough time of it when I got back: this is partly true. The breeze gigs have been hard work, but what's odder is the stiffness in my right hand (I'm paranoid about that one - that's the wrist I broke in Canada) which seems to start up if I don't practise really really hard in the evenings for at least 45 minutes. If I do that, I'm strong as an ox: all that billy sheehan/stu hamm/pastorius/flea stuff comes flying out as easily as ever.

I really should be making my own music by now. Some silence in the evenings would help I suspect! No excuses now either, I've dumped every sample and loop CD I have onto the studio PC so I can scan and drag as quickly as I like to try to mash something interesting together. Even found sounds for Halion I haven't installed! Tut tut.

BT and virgin net
Dweeb stuff. Haven't had any ADSL now for getting on for 7 weeks: virgin's policy is to listen politely to you complain to their 25p a minute tech support line, ask BT to do a basic line check even though you've TOLD them repeatedly that ADSL has been disabled on your line (can't hear anything on there with the ADSL filter out - should hear a lot of high pitched noise) and only after the third BT response that "nothing is wrong" do they raise an engineer call. Or rather they don't.

Then the BT line went out completely (no voice either) so now I'm totally stuffed. Called BT on the mobile, got calls diverted, helpful fella name of Andy made all the right noises and told me he'd get an engineer out on monday (this was last saturday). Great, thinks I, what a helpful chap. Text message alerts tell me it's actually going to be a week on monday (OK, I'll let that one go, thinks I), then I get another text on sunday morning saying an engineer will call that day, and nothing happens: no engineer. Called them back last night, and apparently there isn't even a voice fault registered on my line!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This bore out what their online fault tracker service said (http://www.bt.com/faults) which pissed me off even further.

Virgin net AND BT, you're both a bunch of useless organisations. (note: keeping it printable)

Now I've found out some underground cables have been identified as substandard, so they're being replaced.

Hopefully this'll mean we'll get 2MB ADSL for the first time....?

I'm not holding my breath.