The M25: I don't use it. Thank god.

Roadworks threaten M25 traffic jams for three years

I have a trafficmaster oracle system in my car, which talks to you, telling you the major issues ahead and on adjoining motorways. Sometimes it's a judgement call ( 5 mins, 10 mins, could be nothing... ) but since the M25 started to get widened (and the cones went out months ago now, they have only just started work on the road itself) as I approach J7 every evening (6-7pm) it barks in a female Stephen Hawking style that clockwise from J15 (the M4 interchange) the M25 has "stationary traffic for 17 miles. Severe delay. AVOID."

Wow. That, for three years? Who the hell would continue to live in this insanity? When they widened the stretch between the M40 and M3 I noted that what this did was create a pressure vessel between 2 pinch points. Hey presto, it has now got so awful trying to get north and south from the M4/M25 junction they're going to try to take 3 years to improve just the northbound side to the A1!!!

Time to get that horse I think.

Sorry about the rash of headlines.

There's just too much comedy about.

Governments 'must prevent suicides during recession'

I think one of those strong catch-nets under the No 10 staircase would be a start. Oh no, hang on, just leave that one off.

Governments must try HARDER not to COMPLETELY BALLS-UP EVERYTHING THEY TOUCH would be a slightly better rebuke, I suspect. Their lack of long-term planning and foresight, combined with a suicidal fawning worship of city suits, got us here.

My only hope is that those who decide to take their own lives do so in front of a cabinet member, preferably Mr tripartite regulation himself, Gordon Brown.

Sigh.

I believe I can fly!

... straight to B&Q to get some anaglypta to go over this lot - talk about giving everybody nightmares...

Get your Michael Jackson tribute wallpaper says the tearaway Sun. Solvit with Solvite? Eek.

Talk about non-geek. They mean COMPUTER DESKTOP wallpaper.

Today's best King of Pop (tm) headline

This in from the Times Online - Michael Jackson's family may await return of brain before burial.

So they have one between them? What are they, mormons?

Reshaping society - "commuting" is pointless

I just got a small online survey to complete regarding commuting. Here in the Glorious (i.e. shitty) Thames Valley, everybody uses cars, and hates each other. I got a bit philosophical (surprise surprise) at the last page of the survey - you know, the "any more points to add" bit where you can type some free text in - here's what I wrote.

It's not about how you get here (meaning work), it's where you live and how that relates to your mode of transport. The last 20 years have lauded mobility (e.g. politicians references to our wonderfully mobile workforce) and the ability to live somewhere other than where you work. Net result, clusters of glass and steel boxes where people work, away from their homes. Clusters of steel boxes out of town where they shop.
The only solution is to either make workplaces smaller and locate them in pleasing buildings near where people live, or to tell people to move close to where they work.
Undoing 20 years of social trending regarding car-centric behaviour patterns will take more than "why don't you use the train" type surveys.
It will require the demolishion of our current workplaces and shopping centres and a return to smaller ways of life.

I really do believe this stuff. I think anyone who wants to drop out of the rat race but keep some technological job, would do well to move to Devon or the West Country, where there seems to be a high-tech cottage industry if what I hear is right. Live near where you work: in a beautiful location: work in a nice building (you hope) near where you live.

And drop out of this tragic excuse for an existence in the Thames Valley.

Short breaks, long days, and giving in to the Jesus Phone

It's been a few days since I last posted - I'm making this one from my desk job in a 5-minute "eye break" as I've been flat out today with several different things as usual. I've realised my work-life balance may not be as good as it could be, but mainly because I'm pushing myself a bit too hard during the day. I'm not really doing enough musically in the evenings and I've had a lot of cold type stuff recently (I suspect allergies too, I'm a scottish coastal boy, not this inland english NO2 laden humid hell!) so I've been remiss on the practise side, which I have just started really ramping up again.

The "Jesus Phone"? It's a term often applied to the iPhone, an item recently upgraded to the "3Gs" model which finally sees the iPhone having capabilities which catch up to the 3-year-old P990i I'm still using. In version 3.1 of the iPhone operating system they finally get voice dialling, something I suspect Apple have put in pronto because the new Android handsets don't have it.

This raises an interesting observation for me. I was in mobile phones for many years, and I used a long succession of SonyEricssons, from an old brick 768 (my first phone!) all the way through
to my current P990i. I liked the SEs because their feature set was larger than Nokias, and the user interface seemed slightly more intuitive to me (probably because it built on earlier SEs) and more comprehensive.

I've kept a weather eye on mobiles recently looking for smartphones which I thought I'd be interested in buying: the P990 firmware does crash quite regularly, and it's a little slow. Plus, the browser really doesn't handle sites very well.

Everything I saw left me feeling a bit "meh". A bit "so what?". A bit "Well, that doesn't do much beyond my P990", and the iPhone was a total turn off because 1) it's locked to O2 here in the UK, and you can't buy it anywhere else, and O2s network sucks, and 2) it was a "dumb" smartphone - no cut and paste, feeble camera, etc etc.

In addition, Nokia's utterly dismal smartphones (bad physical design, a version of Symbian which is falling apart at the seams and has an AWFUL UI) - their recent N97 is a case in point, it's already being criticised as a missed opportunity - just turned me right off. SE have pretty much stopped making UIQ smartphones (the P1i being the last), although some WXXX badged walkman phones are still running Symbian / UIQ.

Anyway, SE are about to release some new sparkly things, but the OS is... symbian, which is now entirely owned by Nokia (albeit under some form of "open" guise) - so I'm right off Symbian.

Android ain't looking bad, but no voice control for dialling! I've had that on phones now for 4 years! So no dice there.

Net result? I've been looking again at the iPhone, which I've had a certain amount of respect for, with Apple pulling their usual act of releasing something unique, well-formed and compelling into a market full of the above-mentioned miserable hacked, patched, ancient or not-quite-complete mobile OSs. Until very recently OSX on the iPhone fell into this category (no cut and paste? Dinosaur!!!) but with v3.1 they finally surpass my P990i. Bravo!

Now, I'm thinking I want an iPhone. But I'm on vodafone and I want to stay that way (they have a good network - it's all Ericsson - whereas O2 have got mixed-manufacturer infastructure and a rather poor comparative coverage. But I don't want to jailbreak an iPhone, I can't be bothered knowing internals anymore: I want something that "just works" (to borrow from Jobs).

Up pops Pete Stewardson at work and reminds me that in Italy phones HAVE to be sold UNLOCKED. I'm popping over there later this year - so I'll buy a PAYG from TIM and have a totally unlocked, feature enabled iPhone! Woohoo!

Addendum: I'll also not have the first hardware iteration - I hope - the iPhone 3Gs has been getting some rather dodgy press for overheating (although this could be gimps who left it in the sun while using it as a GPS device) and poor battery life. Here's hoping it's all good by the time I buy one!

Damn! It’s hot!

Metaphorically AND literally – last night’s gig was seriously hot. The gig last night at the South Street Arts Centre in Reading (nice venue, by the way – slightly out of the way but it’s a good space and they arrange tables at the front!) was a reminder of how hot things get on stage when they’ve got decent lighting going (and the lighting guy does good work – a mixture of blue and purple front and back gave some really nice contrasts on Armen’s kit, and the stage looked nicely “set” before the audience came in – I was impressed by that detail – check the pic!)

I arrived pretty much on time – 5:30pm, yet! – and Fatima Spar and the Freedom Fries were just finishing their soundcheck. Lovely guys, great double bass player who reminded me of Cooter from Dukes of Hazzard – lovely sound from his bass, despite having to use an old TNT 150 (I had one of those about 15 years ago!). They’ve got a great sound, it’s a real summery infectious experience.

Once the main act were happy with their sound, I did my usual routine of waiting for Armen to work out where his kit would go – he takes up the biggest amount of room onstage so it makes sense to see how the stage looks when he’s set up. To my delight, the Freedom Fries had no problems with moving pieces of kit away a little so we had good space to set up – far more space than any of the other places we’ve played in Reading – and I found a useful spot to place the Monster Stack, on top of the subwoofer for the PA.

My amp does hiss on the tube channel a bit (it’s the tubes, it’s what they do!), and the sound engineer noticed it – he dived in with a DI box (I didn’t mind!) but it was switching to channel 2 which really cured the problem I reckon. I also got a good reading from the engineer on balancing the synth sound for The Vibe with my live bass sound, which sounded great on the night.

A wide-angle view of the stage shows how much kit there was up there! Apologies for the focus, when I upgrade my phone (finally – the ones on offer are all shite at the moment)

I was really pleased with the setup (you can see my W as a blue smudge on the far right!) – you can see Tom’s stuff on the left and Jacquoda got centre stage which is ideal – as it meant I could dismantle my stuff and get it offstage ASAP.

The gig went pretty well – I had spent all day doing mouse work at work, and my right hand was oddly stiff – took ages to loosen up – and that’s my excuse for the cack bass work on Turn me On. And I’m sticking with it :).

One thing though: as we’ve played a lot of small venues so far, we’re really not used to be spaced out across a stage: we needed better monitoring, but this isn’t easy in a short timespace (we only found out we were supporting 10 days ago!) – we’ve agreed that we need to rehearse in some bigger rooms, and some in-ear monitors for Jacquoda would definitely really help I suspect, she’ll be able to hear the whole band and we can tailor levels of different instruments so she gets the best mix.

Me? I don’t need no stinking monitors! I’ve got 900 watts of Warwick Neo POWER! And a very loud drummer.

Before the last track (turn me on), Jacquoda seized the initiative and did the band introduction bit, which was great – we launched into one of our patented jams, which funked up quite nicely, and when jacquoda ran through the names we got great rounds of applause and some cheers from the audience. Very gratifying. I was actually pretty pleased with the audience reaction, we reworked the set with a lot of the quieter numbers early on to “bring them up to Funkerton” – they had, after all, come to see Fatima Spar and her Freedom Fries, who aren’t quite as LOUD as we are when we get going…

All in all, a good evening with plenty of learning curves all round :)

Ill wind?

Well, I’ve felt pretty crud today but at least something good came out of it – I revamped loads of stuff on my own website and got a facebook ad out for our gig on friday, supporting Fatima Spar and the Freedom Fries (wacked out stuff, find them on MySpace and listen to the maddest Vienna people I’ve heard in a while) – the ad’s turned out like this -

this time around I paid per 1000 presentations, so we’ll see how it pans out.

The Jacquoda Site got some attention as well – now it sports the right logo and some blurb I concocted telling the start of one deflated music fan’s ride back to the high ground of the funky mind :)

Shout to Tom

Big shout to Tom Johnson (that’s his facebook account there) the skin-slappin funktor who hits things to give us some seriously infectious grooving capabilities. He’s the man for your conga needs. And car parts.

Rehearsals, colds and headaches…

You know, sometimes you just stretch it too far. You know? Like when you work hard all week to try to fix stuff, don’t get the time at home with mental energy to do the stuff you really want to NAIL in the evenings, and then find yourself wiped out at the weekends… such it was this weekend!

We had a great time on Sunday, it was something of a writing session – at least two great new grooves, with some structure emerging already, and quite nicely too. I love it when a band gets the sort of interpersonal feel where one person can suggest some kind of lick, groove or motif, get someone to play it, then sort of “fashion” the idea as it’s played by everybody, as they start throwing ideas into it. It’s like listening to plasticine being aurally moulded, as it were.

Armen had a nice simple idea, a pretty laid-back groove, a rare gem which has great potential for a whole chilled-out track with some scratchy samples from old black and white movies in it. Very smoky, end of the night, almost ambient. He just sort of “dah dah dah dah daaaaah dah – no, like chocolatey bass, andy – yeah, that’s it” and before we knew where we were we had a smooth feel rolling along.

In order to ensure our set has shade and light as well, we got a fastish thing going which I called the Duck (for some reason) – much Q-Tron in evidence, in my fave squishy driven mode. The bass in “another story” on “return of the space cowboy” in the fast parts – I love that sound – and the 6-string running through that GR-20 just gets so much boost to volume it can really drive pedals nice and hard.

Funny thing was, I was feeling more and more tired as things went on – dog-tired, like I was going to have to lie down before driving home or something. I loaded the car up, got back, and then promptly fell asleep for about 12 hours(!!!) – I did move from sofa to bed after Nic suggested it might be a good idea – but I woke up this morning with a headache like you wouldn’t believe. 400mg of ibuprofen isn’t touching it, and I’ve been like a zombie all day, with a dribbling nose and sinuses like rocks! urgh! I haven’t ruled out tree pollen yet. Could be the old allergies I used to get really bad in the summer coming back? Seems like they vanished a few years back.

The Riviera comes to Slough

Holy cow, it’s actually hot enough to sunbathe!

So I’ll be the one setting up outside to record some new ideas :)

In the meantime, and it’s at least musically related – check this youtube vid out. It’s the best parody of Kiss I’ve ever seen.

I almost fell off my chair, it’s that funny!

The Night after the Night After

Good gig, that. Bracknell has a very well hidden basement venue in an arts centre we played in last night, alongside the first gig by some rather talented guys called The Stellar Thieves – great energy live and – thankfully – their music sounds great in a night where we’re playing as well. We found someone to gig with! So nice to have a friend…

Tuesday night gig!

We’ve got another gig at the Cellar place in Bracknell – weird venue, and last time we had a very odd band playing after (the guy before was wicked, solo acoustic) – thrash punk. Good drummer though.

If you come along, bring earplugs just in case!!! I’ll be bringing the stack so the bass will def be up there :)

Big shout to Paul Harckham, hope your Gorillapod arrives shortly mate – one tip, use one of the newer SD card or hard drive camcorders, I was using a MiniDV cam and the tape mechanism got well upset by the vibrations at points :)

Hope to see you in Bracknell on Tuesday night.

When Digiboxes tell the truth

You have to laugh. Nic and I often have a giggle at what the program guides throw up on the Sky box – and we’ve got a Bush terrestrial digital box which gives some great comedy:

Poor old Britney. Even the digibox is out to smear her personality.

Heroes’ Bar, Maidenhead – stylish and full of FUNK

Last night, great gig. We definitely still need more material but last night was the first live outing of the new track we worked on based on the heavy vibe from a synth line I pulled on the 6-string: the track flowed pretty well last night, but it needs some sax and vox in the bridge before the chorus I reckon. Otherwise it sounds great!

I did get a bum steer from a clamper last night though – you can park round the back of this particular venue, and we did get a message from the bar owners saying that if we had a sign in the window saying we were playing in Heroes we’d be OK, but I saw the clampers freeing a poor git when I arrived, so I asked one of them what the deal was: “you can’t park here mate” got I. So I used the multi storey opposite and got all my gear down 2 sets of stairs (lifts out of order, of course) – 6-string, gear bag, pod and CCL combo – and trundled it (thankfully I didn’t bring the Monster Stack with me, god, I’d have killed meself) through maidenhead to the venue.

Good stage area – backlit with odd LED panels, cycling through colours – and some decent overhead lights. Definitely not your average pub gig. Mind you, it’s more of a trendy bar in the bit of Maidenhead with block paving and the cinema. It’s a little like Dundee – except Dundee has gentrified more of itself in the city centre.

Good gig though.

Seriously. He’s gotta go.

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/please-go/

I’d encourage anyone who reads this to visit this site and stick your name on there. As I’ve mentioned once or twice (thoroughly abusing this information vector which is supposed to be about music) I think Gordon Brown is a naive gimp who, while chancellor, was stupid enough to think that the Banks would reign in their own excesses.

This petition is gathering pace pretty quickly, but you’ve got until October 22nd (I think) to sign it – while I’ve had my laptop on another 80 have signed up, and in the last 4 hours it’s gathered another 400 signatures.

Ideally I’d like to see it reach millions – we should be using this pathetic politicians’ attempt to use electronic media to shout “YOU STUPID GOBSHITE” in his ear!

Summer Nights… Tony feels shite!

But uh-oh the summer allergies (a wella wella wella OOH)

Bummer – we were going to be playing the Arches in Reading tonight, but Tony’s had a massive allergy attack (I’m not surprised, I saw the oilseed rape on the outskirts of town and it’s in full yellow smelly bloom) so it’s all off! Bummer.

I guess I’ll have to use the time to work on chops. Ah well, all in the name of live work eh?

Oxford Gold and Random Rhythms

Wicked. I've been jamming to random rhythms from a steinberg loops CD and having a blast with some patches on the GR20: now a well-deserved rest. Made a latte for the first time in ages after the kitchen yielded gadgets we forgot we had (the gadgets that time forgot) and now it's Oxford Gold time.

Looks nice. :)

String Cleaning Advice

Up until a short while ago, I’d save a few quid (well, 30 odd per set!) by cleaning Bass strings in a saucepan, boiling them with some washing up liquid, rinsing and drying. While it worked quite well, the strings predictably objected to being boiled in water, and eventually the core would give up on the thinner strings.

Well, recently I came across a new way to clean bass strings online – I suspect it was via the BassChat bass forum site somewhere – using methylated spirits, available from B&Q and other outlets.

In a nutshell, just take the strings and immerse them in meths, at room temp! I leave them for as long as possible (they get a lot of oil and skin in them over time, especially the way I play) in a large plastic pot which I vapour-sealed, and it works really well. The strings come out bright, but not too bright (sort of “ready played in”) and they’ll last 3 gigs or so before they need doing again.

By far the biggest advantage is that the metal isn’t corroded by this: the only thing I think might limit the life of the strings would be the wear of the frets (so I guess the fretless will do well!) and a gradual weakening of the core through age and stress.

I’d recommend it to anyone. With the price of a set of Warwick black labels at nearly 40 quid for the 6 string, it saves me a fortune – and I now have loads of spare sets as the lifespan of the strings has been increased.

Incidentally, we’ve got a few gigs coming up:

• Sunday 19th April – “the Arches” (or the jazz club underneath the railway line near the fire station on the IDR) in Reading
• Friday 1st May - “Heroes” club in Maidenhead
• Weds 13th May – Fiddlers Elbow in Camden, London
• Tuesday 19th May – Cellar Bar in Bracknell

Good job we’re writing more material, eh? :)

The process of writing.

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

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

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

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

How fitting.... the eagles???

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

The modern smartphone: a quick tip

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

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

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

Politics meets music :)

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

you will squeeze the life out of me

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

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

you will suck the life out of me

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

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

---

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

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

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

Last Night's Gig... surprise new track

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of mismatched bills?

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

After the soundcheck, before the gig...

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

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

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

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

Big bass in the cavern under the trains!!!

Gig this weekend in Reading…

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

The facebook page for the gig is here!

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

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

A new angle on things...

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A little Jacquoda experiment…

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

That’ll be a “yes” :)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Backup time I think!

One man, one bass, one mind.

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

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

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

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

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

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

On with it!

Anybody else got this head cold?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now.

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

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

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

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

Recent Jacquoda Gigs

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

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

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

Reading Deja Vu bar

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

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

Bracknell Cellar Bar, South Hill Park

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

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

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

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

Righteous Justice?

* Warning! Property price based rant ahoy! *

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

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

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

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

Windows Writer?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andy is...

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

Tilehurst Jam Night last night

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

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

Big shouts to the musos in Tilehurst!

Scottish Jokes - Aye Right

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

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

Jokes only understood in Scotland

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Snow this year?

From Home Pics

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

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

Nice gig. Nail the funk to the floor!

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

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

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

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

Sweet.

Bass synthery

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

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

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

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

Ttfn

Andy

(playing 5 string warwick)

AVOID iTunes 8!!!!

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

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

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

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

From the mists it rose...

Hello again!

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

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

I have. And it worked really well.

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

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

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

Floppy Music

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



Insane! I love it!

Customer service or bad luck?...

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

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

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

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

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

Quick geek post.

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

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

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

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

pip pip!

ReBirth of a ReBirth...

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

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

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

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

TTFN

A spot of politics. Sort of.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The arts as a business

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

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

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

I'll leave it there...

When techie-diagnosis bites back

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

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

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

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

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

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

Studios and an old lesson re-learned

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

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

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

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

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

StarNow leads in London

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

You could say that this is in fact another rebirth!

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

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

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

Hello! Blimey... closure?

Interesting.

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

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

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

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

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

A Fine New Year!

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

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

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

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

I may even have some video of it :)

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

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

Jukebox stuff

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

Tetrion for blogs

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

Good things that have happened recently:

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

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

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

CAPTCHA with a conscience???

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TTFN!

Laughing my arse off!

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

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

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

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

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

*** Scary financial rant alert ***

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

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

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

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

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

When will we learn? Kill the suits.

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

Quick post in a hectic week...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wotcher.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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