gigged bagged aristocrat

so i did my online gig, 27 minutes of me playing to my girlfriend & sometimes my cat in this room, and two other people out there online, a third who popped in and out, bad connection i guess and almost a fourth who got it all set up about 4 hours before the gig then never came back... small acorns and all that...

it included the 27th weekly improvisation which is rendering right now and will hopefully end up in this post...

me & dinah just saw the aristocrats on more4... very funny film about a joke... featuring an awful lot of mainly american comedians...

and one of the presents i got this christmas was from my beautiful dinah and it is a bag... but a bag modified so that i can hang it from my handle bars as i cycle...

i cycled with it today and it rocks...

rummy slightly different sized families

howl's moving castle

ghibli

rummy

of some kind

...

i had to virtually borrow money today to bid on a soundcard on ebay...

me & felinity's immediate family played rummy tonight which was really nice...

slightly wider family only an hour before with trave's M (who he's marrying in september... oh yes... no small news that... hang on, why am i in brackets?)

MARRYING NEXT SEPTEMBER...!!!

he somewhat half-heartedly asked me to be best man when i was lying sick and bored in bed on christmas eve... i accepted somewhat reservedly and i'm hoping it's still on...

i'm looking forward to the speech...

so this slightly wider family watched howl's moving castle earlier while my ebay bid failed to win me the soundcard i desire, releasing me from the debt...

a more even version of this slightly wider family will be present @ tomorrow evening's meal which will be just before trave & M leave and will include both felinity's G & my sweet boobelah dinah...

howl's moving castle was a present from felinity to me and it's made by the same people who made spirited away (which i gave her last christmas), the cat returns (which me & felinity had seen together ages ago and which she didn't really like and i liked a bit) & princess mononoke (which i saw on filmfour in a couple of sittings & loved)...

it was very good, although a little too long..

larger family again an hour or three before this, with uncle R & auntie J and three of the cousins, very sociable visit they had...

and an even wider family about two hours before this with uncle C, dad's brother, who left this afternoon and had been here since christmas eve morning and who bought the snow patrol album this year... a fact me & felinity liked...

so, briefly, the rummy, some version of it, where each round you have a different wild card, starting with aces and ending with kings...

and just how nice it was only to have our immediate family (for once) no matter how pleasant each version of the wider famnily we experienced today, it's a rare thing, just having the five of us...

felinity won... having gained the lead from the 4th round and keeping it...

she won 6 of the rounds,

i won 5 of the rounds...

i started off losing spectacularly, became 2nd in a surprise attack, ended up 4th with victory in my grasp but not...

it was fun

having a lovely christmas now, despite my earlier sickness...

can't wait to see dinah tomorrow

x

sorry for myself

a little anyway...

yesterday i starting throwing up in the afternoon and i slept very badly last night...

so today i'm a little out of sorts, still not all better... and as a precautionary measure i'm missing christmas day dinner...

which is undoubtedly for the best but it is a bit rubbish...

my boobelah just phoned which pleases me though... and it turns out one of her nephews had a stomach bug which has felled both her mum and her sister in a similar way to my sickness... so that's probably where it came from...

ok, online gig business:

this page on deoxy gives you the gen... and... hang on...

basically you download the ventrilo client software and install it, then click on this link and i'll be there next saturday @ 9pm (GMT)

x

almost leaving the house

well, briefly this is...

just about 5 minutes before i head out of the door and head to the placid countryside...

i've said my goodbyes to my beautiful girl and she's gone to work, we'll be seeing each other again on wednesday - or - the day after boxing day...

and i have to say i'm getting a fair bit confused what with everyone using words like christmas day instead of monday... the schedules are confusing enough for me as it is...

and another thing...

toilets in shops..?

why do they not always have coat hooks...

why must i be working out a hygienic way to hold onto my coat while doing what i do in there...?

ray's jazz in foyles bookshop this was, this afternoon, otherwise a perfectly relaxed shopping experience, finishing off the christmas shop, a coldish cycle ride into town and then that calm atmosphere only a few 100 metre's away from oxford street and the madness that was presumably going on there...

i'm watching a soundcard on ebay...

i have almost exactly no money so in some ways it's daft even to watch it but miracles do happen, one of my employers surely is about to pay me something...?

and me & dinah have booked a hotel in brighton for new years eve...

la, la, la...

a chance to see grace & josiah on new years day i hope...

ok, enough rambling... the road awaits... and a christmas tree at the other end that needs decorating...

x

longcat rhodes, voice & space echo improvisation week 26

happy solstice x

longest night

darkness has fallen and this will be the longest night this winter...

i've had a very productive day... managing to recycle the drinks cartons, get in the loo roll and the laundry powder and swap the freeview box for one that works...

we have a house meeting in a couple of hours which shouldn't be too arduous but could easily become so...

and tonight i am intending to record the longcat weekly improvisation week 26 at exactly the moment of the solstice... which is either 0.22 or 0.26 depending on who you ask, so that's ok, start playing @ 0.20 and make sure it's at least 7 minutes long...

x

freeview denied cold

you know, cycling home last night was very similar to cycling home tonight, both times i'd spent quite a long time outside in the cold before getting on the bike and both times both my fingers and my toes were very, very cold by the time i got in...

actually hard to feel them kind of cold... both nights i immediately sat in front of my heater and thawed out for 5 minutes or so...

last night i was with felinity, riding the storm amongst other things... we had meant to go to the pictures but we missed it and it was a very nice night anyway, just sitting in a cafe drinking tea for quite awhile, and of course the storm...

tonight i was out with some folks from londonbridgework and much fun was had, we ended up sat outside, huddled around one of those gas heaters, outside of the george on borough high street... producerG & M amongst the people... producerG came with me to richer sounds to help me buy the freeview box i bought tonight... a product i got home and which promptly didn't work at all...

deeply rubbish, i'll be ringing richer sounds up tomorrow and questioning this situation...

and i've been checking out soundcards... i want a 4in 4out and producerG was ringing round for me to get ideas... i'm a little put out by technology tonight what with the freeview box not functioning... but i think i'm going to end up spending 80 odd quid on an M-audio soundcard that will give me what i want...

it would be a handy thing to have tomorrow (or the next day) when i'll be doing this weeks improvisation, week 26, exactly 6 months since the 1st one...

the winter solstice falls at around 0.25, (just after midnight) tomorrow night, so actually the 22nd of december and i'd like to do the improvisation then, although it being the middle of the night i'll probably do it earlier... or later...

and that man in the north of england is cool with the online gig a week on saturday so that's looking likely...

x

trickster

popped down to kennington to retrieve my keyboard this morning, which meant getting out of bed about 4 hours before i got out of bed yesterday... yesterday bearing the hangover from monday night, (even with said hangover i still managed to ride the storm in leicester square with felinity last night)...

but not only the hangover, the gradual process of not working and therefore sleeping later each day was doing it's work and so this morning was about resetting the body clock and was tricky...

so around 7 (early by a couple of hours) i woke up to find that my room was booby trapped... i could even hear/see the booby trapper, i knew him, he was a friend, the booby trap was a playful thing...

which was all very well but both of the tape delays currently in my possession, neither of which is actually mine, were balanced precariously up high so that as soon as i moved they would fall on me...

and that surely wouldn't do them any good...?

so i lived in this paradigm for a little while, before eventually looking at what the time was, and working out it was all a dream... drifting back to sleep...

i was thinking about it on the tube back from kennington... this trickster in my subconscious... the second time in recent months that i've seen someone in that dream space who wasn't threatening me like previous visitors...

no conclusions... just questions...

so i'm off shortly to have a christmas lunch with various people from londonbridgework... then i'll be in town so i think i'm going to purchase a freeview box... and maybe some christmas presents...

x

1 year today

we have two anniversaries, one on the 25th of september being the first time we kissed... and one on the 18th of december being when we officially became boyfriend and girlfriend...

and check it out, only just over an hour into the 18th and i've already been paid... so i can spend a little on my beautiful girl and me...

just listened to the improvisation that's up on mypace and i love it... i do hope you've listened to it or will listen to it... (me, me, me)

and i think i've decided when to do the internet gig...

i for a long time believed that america were behind us, as in, we would have midday and then they would have it 6 to 8 hours later...

this week i found out that it's actually the other way round, that they're ahead of us...

i walked around for at least a few days believing that i had been wrong and that they have midday before us...

and then i was out with felinity on saturday night and she told me that no... america is in fact behind us... so i'm having to get used to this new fact in my life which is the same fact i always had...

anyway, with this in mind... i'm currently thinking of playing an online gig @ 9pm (GMT) saturday 30th december... so it'll be 1-3ish in america, 10pm in europe...

i know it puts the rest of the world into unsociable hours but at this point these are the parts of the world most likely to check it out... i think...

of course i've got to spread the news and check it out with the man up in the north of england whose ventrilo server i'll be on... it's under the banner of deoxy's socratic hall... if you wish to check it out you'll need the ventrilo client software and the server details, which i'll post when it's all sorted, but that's currently where i'm at with it...

ok... bed...

x

PS - just before i get into that warm bed beside that beautiful woman of mine... any italian speakers care to help out felinity with a little translation?

arkestra

gigging tonight with T's band, 1st one, kind of a warmup, at the south london pacific bar where we've been rehearsing...

and before that i might meet up with felinity over near hampstead heath where she's going to a party...

now felinity is kind of at the centre of this following story, because she has had a shuffle longer than me and always puts songs onto it randomly...

i'm much more straight than her in this way, i choose my music... usually...

but the last couple of shuffle loads have been random fillings because i was thinking about the amount of music i have and the small percentage of it that i actually play...

so this afternoon i was cycling back from waitrose (close enough to home to warrant a headphones/no helmet approach to cycling - foolish yes) and a miles evans/gil evans track had just finished, whole band with wind sections and everything... another very brassy tune came on which i didn't recognise and a voice said over the top:

Sun Ra and his arkestra - ... - 16 December 1971

exactly 36 years ago today...

beautiful track with deep resonant horns, afro percussion, crazy rambling trumpet over the top...

in other news i was looking at a report of the viewings of my weekly improvisations on googlevideo and i made a list, comparing what would be a reasonable expectation against the facts...

a reasonable expectation being that the older the video the more views it has...

so week 1 would be at the top of the list and week 25 would be at the bottom..

and although week 2 is more than week 1, other than this at the ends of the list things do pan out as expected, but in the scheme of things, week 8 appears 3rd in the list, when it should be 8th...

so i had a look at week 8 and it was the 1st one i did on the landlord's grand piano... and it is pretty cool... so i've uploaded the mp3 to my mypace...

ok, off to meet felinity and play the gig...

x

last teaching first gigging

ok, that's me for working in 2006...

taught my last 2 lessons this morning before cycling down to the south london pacific for our last rehearsal before our first gig tomorrow...

largely penniless but for dinah's helping... not too long to go before payday on monday so it could be worse... monday will also be me & dinah's one year anniversary as boyfriend/girlfriend... good timing for getting paid...

a little empty headed so maybe i don't have much to say, just marking this passage into not working...

x

november autumn colours

this was the day my piano arrived... this video is akin to september sky changing... the music is the tale end of this week's improvisation...

Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of atlantic records, has died... that record company did some great, great things...

x

the dead c

uncle filmo has many of their albums... they're a new zealand band who never leave new zealand... but they made it over to london for the all tomorrow's parties festival and a side gig was the gig @ the luminaire last night that me & him made it to...

they were supported by a duo whose name i never caught... i wasn't so keen but filmo dug them a little, the last track was a huge, huge guitar thing accompanied by wailing vocals and i wasn't so keen on the vocals... he thought it appropriate though..

but we were there for the main event and that was amazing...

there are three of them, in the mighty dead c, drummer, 2 guitarists - both of them messing with all manner of electronic gadgetry...

their gig (which seemed to be completely improvised) began with the 2 guitarists tinkering with their electronics, a strange electric sound gradually rising...

yellow shirted guitarist then strapped on his guitar and played a huge chord...

red t-shirted guitarist didn't pick up his guitar for another 5-10 minutes...

the gig went on without stopping for 40 minutes or so before yellow shirt asked red t-shirt to stop for a moment - somewhat nervously it seems...

yellow shirt spoke briefly, announcing themselves as the mighty dead c (fuck yeah)...

they did one more tune which was much shorter - only 5 - 10 minutes - ending with red t-shirt throwing his guitar to the floor and storming off... yellow shirt and the drummer followed and as we were leaving a few members of the audience were trying to raise an encore but it was clear the c had finished for the night...

the sound that they made was incredible... really, really loud and very beautiful... loads of lovely harmonics within the guitar sounds... red t-shirt inserting metal things between the strings and the fretboard, getting a great springy sound... clearly messing with the sound of the guitar all the way through the gig, at one point balancing the guitar on it's tuning end and hitting the back of it directly in front of the amp...

feedback galore and very fine for it...

inspirational stuff

x

half remembered faces - the dead C & a stupid tale

watching the dead C perform last night in kilburn i found myself fantasising that i was on stage at such a gig (the support) and in my mind i started improvising lyrics that i was performing there & then...

i wrote the lyrics down when i got home and today, half remembered faces is becoming a song...

more on the mighty dead C later...

so the stupid tale...:

this is yesterday morning and i hope i tell it right...

i left the house to go to londonbridgework wearing my small coat, i've been wearing the big coat more and more now it's getting colder - even cycling - however work days, cycling longer distances is the smaller coat...

but being a two coat individual these days i forgot to transfer my keys and my travelcard (wallet) into the small coat, a fact i discover a couple of minutes into the journey... i decided not to go back for them, just going to work, i had enough money...

so i'm cycling along and i reach the point near angel about half way through my journey and i get a flat tire...

it's been awhile since i've had a puncture and i'm not at all in the habit of carrying around the doings to fix them these days...

so i think alright, that's ok, i'm near enough to angel tube i'll lock up the bike there and get the northern line in...

so i'm walking my limping bicycle along to the tube, trying to ring work to no avail to get a message to my students that i'll be late, they're not answering the phone, i'm getting worked up by this now, a simple phonecall to let them know where i am would ease my mind and i can't get through...

i try the two students whose numbers i have, i try my friend M who is on the staff, she's on holiday, i try the main work number again and again...

by this time i've reached the tube - where i'm aware i won't be able to make the phonecall and i'm accepting the fact that i'll be 10 - 15 minutes late and i won' t be able to let them know...

so i reach into my pocket to get the keys to lock the bike and only then do i remember that i've left my keys at home...

so i cannot lock up my bike...

this was huge... my brain just couldn't take it in for a minute or so... i had a puncture, no repair kit, too far to walk home or to work...

i remembered once i was with felinity and i'd forgotten my keys and we were going to the cinema (also another time - in camden... who was i with?) and both times i found a way to hide the bike, or actually in camden the staff took it behind their counter...

so with this in mind i went into the station and asked someone what i should do and instead of saying, alright, just put it in here, come back later, as i was hoping (foolishly) a man in there suggested i take it to a police station, there's one a few streets away from the tube...

which i did, the police station turning out to be right where i got the puncture, i waited in there a good 20 minutes and then was told that no, sir, that's not something we do here...

so i walk out of the police station, really not knowing what i should do...

and then i hit upon the notion that i should have thought of all along which was to find a bike shop... leave it there... or better still, get them to fix it, go on my way...

i ring spski who thinks for a moment and then tells me the name of a bike shop on essex road... (amazing mind that man) and i trundle over to mosquito, by now i've walked 1 & a half miles with my limping bicycle, mosquito charge me a little more than normal to fix the puncture i cycle on my way...

i arrive at work over an hour late...

the dead C deserve their own post... all that stupidity has taken up too much space... later on x

day after soup & week 25

last monday i went over to the landlord's & finished off the soup from the gig the night before...

today i went down to my own kitchen and finished off the soup from the gig last night...

T, dinah's mum, did a reading of her poetry in our front room... Wfloopy(shaman) did a little piece on the guitar as an intro...

it was very good, her poetry is right up my street... the poems are all taken from a collection of hers called bone woman & other tasty morsels dealing with dark subjects, old fairy tales, crones, the like...

T also cooked the soup which we consumed after the reading.. (& today)

as you can see i did an improvisation today, just using my sm58 mic going through the ROLAND space echo that still lives in this house (but for how long?), so my voice & my piano swathed in that beautiful tape delay... long though - 17 minutes -

and then i've been thinking about my hard drives, so much information going through them... my main drive (MURAKAMI) is due for a defrag and it tells me it needs 15% of the drive free to do it's defrag properly so i've been archiving like a mad thing to get that much space on there...

just now it's burning one last archive onto DVD then i should be able to set it defragging before i go out to T's rehearsal,

it's been a long time since i last defragged and i have no idea how long it will take... the 5 or so hours i'll be out? all night? several days?

i hope you like the improvisation...

x

dance

ok, so i did enter the David Brent Dance Competition, although inexpicably i did not win the flatscreen TV...?

that handstand was well recieved though and it got me through to the final dance off, which none of the 4 contestants wanted to do... making a dancing fool of oneself once is one thing...

so that was thursday night's dance event and then last night i went to dinah's college to see her dance as part of a 3rd year students choreography assessment...

strange to be in her environment without her,

there were about 12 or so pieces of which dinah's was 9th, so i had to sit through all of them pretty much but it turned out to be really great... wonderful to see dance and expression to music, it reignited my desire to write music for dance...

dinah was great, very sexy, a sultry character making love to a chair (i know) in amongst a range of different characters... later on she was spinning towards the front while all of the others hurried to get their chair out of the way, the piece ending with all of the other dancers gathering at the front of the stage sat on their chairs while dinah danced for them... she rocks...

another experience again of perceiving her... the way she is personally to me and to others... the way she is performing with the watts, rocking out which i often feel is like watching aliens take over the body of my girlfriend... and now dancing dinah, just another distinct way to see her...

....

lazy day today, i think i'm going to go and see zidane @ the prince charles in a little while...

x

weather (including this week's improvisation)

i saw the flash of lightning this morning as i was preparing to go to work and i heard the long roll of thunder after...

moments later rain was noisily pelting my window...

i'll take the tube i told myself...

the first time in ages i've got public transport to work and it was a moment of weakness... but it gave me a chance to read on the train which was nice...

also walking along with an umbrella tapping the ground is a groovy thing...

so i get to work and there is news that a tornado has hit kensal rise... a tornado..?

i used to live in kensal rise...

strange times...

i'm about to cycle to londonbridgework for the christmas party, at which i will not be entering the david brent dancing competition and i will stand no chance of winning the flat screen TV... i really intended to learn the moves yesterday but one of these spells of lostness hit me and...

and it brings to mind last years christmas party that i did not attend for some reason...? i was upset about something and i have no idea what it was, somehow i think bo might have been involved but that's just a guess...

strange to remember the results of an upset but not the reason for it...

my rhodes/space echo video is currently uploading to googlevideo even though i have no indication that it won't look rubbish... (it turned out alright and is up there above this)

oh and i've been invited to perform at a socratic hall event, very modern... virtual... don't know how it will work but i'm digging the notion...

x

longcat rhodes & space echo improvisation week 24 (not)

ok, here it isn't, last night's improvisation... only youtube rejected it because it's too long... oh googlevideo... sort your shit out please...

E's space echo sounding beautiful through my rhodes (and vice versa)

Hcello coming round in a little while...

similarly lost like last early evening as the dusk gathered tonight...

cup of tea should sort me out though x

and because the video didn't come through here is my wordcloud:

still lost

taught this morning, search & reflect to the teaching course, where i discovered that one of my students has been checking out my improvisations via this very blog... a nice fella by the name of L, not that i could say "god i hate that man, what a pain in the A he is" being as he'll read this at some point but he actually is nice...

earlier on this evening/late afternoon i had about 3 things to be doing and i just couldn't start any of them... but i've managed to climb out of that place and by now, about to watch the soprano's with gordy i've managed to achieve most if not all of them...

right now the gig on sunday is playing, but i'm going to stop it for the soprano's...

i recorded an improvisation tonight, this week's even though last week's has only just gone up...

mainly because the space echo is still here and i don't know exactly when it's going...

rhodes and space echo, it's pretty good i reckon... although googlevideo are still arsing about so i won't upload it just yet...

anyway... soprano's...

x

longcat voice & piano improvisation week 23

know what i mean?

it's rubbish quality, oh googlevideo you used to be so great, what's happened?



let's see if youtube does it any better?

now this is odd, before you start the video, gogglevideo's one looks much better than youtube's, but once the viceo is running, youtube's looks much better than googlevideo, almost as if the googlevideo one is showing you what the youtube would look like and vise versa...

the improvisation was done as part of the gig on sunday x

post gig blues

woke up today with a puffy eye, the same one (the right) that was funny a few weeks ago...

i think it's the stress of putting that gig on last night and i'm just thankful it didn't arrive before the gig...

i was hoping to include in this post the video of last week's improvisation which i performed at the gig but google video made it inexplicably low quality, so i'm uploading it again in a slightly different version to see if that will make any difference...

i'm a little low today, post gig, an emotional business, even though the gig was a success i feel,

so the gig itself:

well, the projector and the space echo arrived in the afternoon (courtesy of E) and we rigged them up, producerG brought his collection of various bits and pieces, i just had my two mics with me along with gordy's laptop which the film was coming from...

the space echo's tape broke a couple of hours before the gig, and even though a replacement tape was included with it i had no idea how to deal with it so sacked it... T from the brian jacket letdown was one of the 1st to come and he offered to nip home and fetch his LM9 (i think) delay... which he did and which proved to be equally broken...

so the heaven's had decided i wasn't to have delay for the improvisation, i suspected that had we access to a 3rd delay unit it too would be found to be broken when placed on top of the piano...

the time of the gig rolled around and by then i'd got dressed up in the suit, dinah had cut my hair and the mexican moustache had been redefined... (uncle filmo, resident at the landlord's, said i looked like a wee hard man)...

and it went well, i'd guessed that we'd have 15 people in the audience and we had around 17 in the end,

the acoustic set was the scariest, including the 2 tunes that i'd finished that day, the weekly improvisation and the open letter to grace which is mostly improvised lyrically...

it went well, and having done the scariest bit 1st i was in a good space for the rest of the gig,

producerG had cooked up a lovely tomato & lentil soup which we ate before the film, both being well received...

then the electric set, 5 tunes with both producerG and myself,

i hardly spoke in between tunes, we pushed on through the set and it felt great, producerG recorded it and i'll be able to listen to the recordings once i get hold of them tomorrow, which always casts a slightly different weather over one's impressions but right now i feel good about it...

i've been over there today to pick up my bicycle and i had a good play on the piano, sharing the last of the soup with M (landlord) & H,

even though i'm a little low my impressions of last night, of the whole experience, are good...

x

BANNER SCROLL DOWN gig on sunday 3'rd december BANNER SCROLL DOWN

finished?

i'm about to start the film rendering, i've finished it but it may need a tweak or two before i show it on sunday, should be meeting up with E to pick up the projector (and the space echo) fairly soon so my plan is to set it rendering, go out, meet him, maybe eat something, then by the time i get back it will have either finished or not finished and i can try it out on the projector...

scary, but hopeful x

rendering

did something stupid, in fact it was a pretty stupid night for me...

the improvisation section proved to be harder than i thought it would be, mostly because i was in a not very clever headspace...

a daft wrong move late on meant i had to back track a little but my main stupidity was setting the whole thing rendering at 1 in the morning... being as i have to work in the morning...

10 minutes at the most i thought...

it still has 6 minutes left on it and it's been going for over an hour...

and it's not even finished, but i'm getting close...

i was playing around with the image of my piano playing when i realised i needed a firm idea about it, not just messing about... so i thought, render it as it is, watch it, go to bed...

foolish of me...

and the classic playing the piano and using the rendering time to write music is not on because it's the middle of the night...

oh well...

laters x

editing well

so today was all about the editing of the film and now, at the point where i'm about to go to bed...

i've got the thames footage to about 2/3rds of the length of the film... just at the brink of the improvisation section...

so today i completed the intro, the 1st 2 sections & the middle breathing section...

i need to work out how to achieve the last improvisation section but the way i now have of working will stand me in good stead tomorrow night when i come back to this...

in other news i went down to producerG's music forum where we performed 3 of the tunes from the electric set, interesting comments from listeners (including mars),

i also spoke to E from hammersmith (who i'll be seeing tomorrow) and he told me he has a projector that i can borrow, which is a huge weight off my mind...

and finally i've made a little progress in both of the songs i'm writing this week...

so it's going well, deadline central...

x

tired

i'm pretty tired right now...

taught all day and then went to producerG's house to practice the electric set...

it sounds great...

getting the projector for sunday is going to be hard, do you have one?

also, i spoke to josiah and she can't do the gig on sunday, (she was just a hopefully) but she asked me to do a couple of covers for her & grace and that would kind of solve my acoustic set worries... but i have another solution - the weekly improvisation - so i'm not sure what i'll do...

but look, i'm way too tired to make much sense right now, tomorrow is all about the editing...

bed now x

words done

just a quick one to say i'm on schedule, the words are written and recorded just in time for me to get going to the rehearsal...

x

schedule

so i've got this gig on sunday @ which i'm doing 2 sets and showing my film...

one of those sets is ready..

for the other i'm writing a couple of songs this week...

and the film is far from finished...

which means i've got quite a tight schedule to get everything done... the 1st item on the schedule is getting the voice for the film recorded today... so i've recorded the sung part, i'm now getting together the script for the whole thing...

ready to record in about an hour, maybe sooner...

then @ 6 i'm strapping my keyboard onto my already not right back and heading down to a rehearsal with T's band, tomorrow i'm working all day, followed by a rehearsal for the electric set @ producerG's,

wednesday i'm back on the film treadmill, editing together the video from the shape of the voice (that i'm recording shortly)... then off out wednesday night to play @ producerG's music forum @ londonbridgework, a chance to run through one or two tunes from the electric set...

working on thursday and friday morning, back to the film on friday afternoon, by which time i should have got hold of the projector for the film...

at some point within all this i'm writing the songs i need to write...

hectic but good...

do come to the gig if you can,

x

double vision

strange day...

woke late to discover my glasses had broken in the night... i know i moved around a bit and i guess i must have knocked them to the floor and maybe trod on them...

anyway the screw and the lens and the frame were all there, just a question of getting it all back together again, so i spent a fruitless 20 minutes or so, just having woken, without tea (dinah had made me one before leaving in the morning but i'd slept through it's acceptable temperature)...

no luck... i was already late... so i decided to put in the one contact lens that i'd found on saturday night looking for my lenses... just one... new, in it's packet... i was sure it meant there had to be another one around but i couldn't find it...

so i put it in and i cycled to hammersmith with one good eye and one hazy...

the journey was fine...

working proved to be a bit mad after a few hours but i got through it...

coming back was madder still...

on the way there the image from my right eye (focussed) was in charge... i had to close my left eye every now and again but mostly the focussed image reigned...

but on the way back the unfocussed left eye started to throw it's weight around... unfocussed lights are much bigger in darkness... i like it actually, walking along without glasses or lens at night, appreciating the different way that points of light appear to you...

each point of light is a splash instead of a point... and so the image from the unfocussed left eye, with it's splashes of vivid light was more prevalent than the focussed right eye and this was pretty psychedelic...

i got home safely though, just a bit inwardly confused...

i got back to the glasses issue and found a slightly bodging way of fixing them that got me through this evening and hopefully tomorrow morning then i'll take them to the opticians after work...

but once they were fixed i just curled up and hid in my bed until dinah got home... really odd day having taken it's toll... dinah was lovely...

i somehow want to right a song from this... but i don't yet know how to begin...

x

longcat piano improvisation week 22

this being the piano that arrived here yesterday...

x

piano

blogging with my head tilted back, because my monitor is on top of my piano...

now how great is that? to be able to say a statement like that?

my piano...

my piano.

my piano!

i raced home from my morning session of work because they said they'd be here by 2 (finished work @ 1.30) and of course they didn't arrive until 2:45...

3 of them, it took them about 20 minutes...

and now it's sat here...

it's a tiny bit out of tune... but i only notice that when i play it with the rhodes, certain notes...

and it's probably going to get a little worse over the next week or so while it gets used to being where it is... then i'll get a tuner in and it'll be nothing short of beautiful...

i'm going to have to lose quite a few bits of furniture to make room for it and i'm going to use freecycle i think - that and the landlord...

and...

and nothing...

tomorrow's improvisation will be with it and you can check it out yourselves...

...

very happy

x

still stupid but changing

the party was great in the end, i sang my song with the help of elphara playing just one note all the way through and he's interested in doing some more playing with me which is nice, the very 1st gig @ the landlord's back in january 2003 had him involved... Hcello can't play @ my gig there in a couple of weeks so it's tempting to get elphara involved (violin) but i don't think i will, keep it simple...

i found some energy from somewhere and me & dinah made it to bed finally @ around 5:30,

the watts rocked... me & M, gordy, T & Kwo moshed for all our worth during their set which set me up nicely for dancing afterwards...

most of T's band showed up, along with D whose mad recording session i did a week ago today... nippy was there... me & nippy, me & T, and just me... we all at times performed in the impromptu performance space... at one point while me & T were jamming, nippy got up to join us and then variuos people who were listening got up until the entire room was joining in...

afterwards someone who i still don't the name of told me it was like a cross between a chart song and a knock about in the park...

so it all worked pretty well... spski wasn't there but that's becoming a regular thing these days sadly...

and tomorrow i'm receiving delivery of the piano at long last and so today i'm making this room ready, or at least that's what i'm telling myself... i have to make space for it today but i've so far done nothing at all towards that goal... stooged around on the net, been to manolis's where he proved to be pretty grumpy... i wasn't so much more cheerful... the cold continues and i'm not quite all over the party so things are moving slowly..

x

my naked flame

so tonight me & dinah have been officially together for 11 months...

and there's a party @ our house which i've had mixed feelings about but it seems to be really coming together...

and i'm going to sing a song at the party, in an early section, me, gordy, R, & M are each doing a small thing... ready for the watts to do their huge thing afterwards...

but i'm in the grip of a cold thing and i feel wiped out already...

don't see where i'm going to find the energy for the party, but i often feel this way just before hand...

x

cycling

just a quickie,

i cycled 27.8 miles yesterday...

over to hammersmith to work, (which was pretty grim, i had to put someone on report and it shook me up)... then from there to london bridge to drink with M & producerG from londonbridgework... which included an indian meal...

then M went home and me & producerG raced (me on bike - him on tube) to nottinghill gate to catch goldielocks who had L (another londonbridgework tutor) playing synths for her and looking amazing in dark goggles and a guitar style synth...

part of my shaken state @ hammersmith had been because i got an angry text from a friend and it was pretty strange that that very same friend was @ the gig in nottinghill... slightly at arms length at first as she wasn't ready to speak to me and let go of her angry thing but it wasn't long before we were back to our normal laughing friendly status... i guess sometimes you know a friend is truly your friend when they are ok with letting you know that they're angry with you...

anyway i didn't hang around long after goldielocks's set, she was great, i skipped out and bid farewell to producerG who had been buying me drinks and food and had got me into the gig, last night before payday as it was...

and i found my way from there to my usual route home from west london and that is how i managed to cycle 27.8 miles in one pretty wet day...

oh and i bought myself some waterproof trousers today... (payday)

x

longcat rhodes & mellotron improvisation week 21

cats distortion napping

i'm listening to this weeks improvisation, trying to decide whether i should do it again on friday, or even in the next half hour...

some pretty ugly distortion on the rhodes which i could hear when i was improvising but i thought wasn't being recorded...

to do it again would be against the ethos of the improvisations but...

?

so earlier tonight i was sat in jai krishna waiting for my food... i was just about to start reading this neil gaiman book of short stories... i'd taken off my glasses...

a scarf with something wrapped inside it hit me in the side of the head...

earlier on i got home and i'd napped... for a little too long... and i was in (still am) a bit of a strange headspace because of that...

mind you just before this i'd been cycling home and a falling leaf had hit me in the face and this had freaked me out a little...

anyway i didn't take at all kindly to this scarf hitting me in the side of the head and even when i saw it was C who used to live in this house, with her man E, who she'd met when she helped me & josiah load up E's van with all josiah's stuff which E was driving down to brighton...

i could barely raise a smile...

we spoke briefly and i went back to the book...

it wasn't until i'd read a short story that i could return to them and start talking normally...

amazing how vulnerable one can be when without glasses...

so in this neil gaiman book i read a story called the price which began with the idea that, just as tramps used to leave marks on gate posts to tell each other what kind of household it was... perhaps cats do the same thing...

and william burroughs had expressed exactly the same idea in the cat inside which i read on saturday...

nice confluence

x

i've decided to keep the improvisation... it's uploading now...

x

vinyl & mellotron

so i turned 33&3rd yesterday, and though i hadn't organised it we had my 1st vinyl party... W(floopy)shaman rolled up with a few choice disks and i carried some more of my records down to the basement and we played a couple of games of chess (which i won) then proceeded to play cards with dinah & gordy... playing shithead but with a joker thrown in and whoever lost (becoming the shithead) deciding on the joker rule for the next game...

progressively crueller rules coming out...

all to the sound of vinyl...

and then today D came round, who i'm doing some recording for tonight, i took the opportunity (and the momentum) to set up my vintage keys module and i'm loving the mellotron flute sound... i used to use the vintage keys for it's hammond organs and it's possible i may bring it out with me one of these days, for the organs and mellotrons...

and i'm over half way through gilgamesh in a translation by stephen mitchell.. floopy lent it to me ages ago and i've finally picked it up... lovely... epic...

x

the longcat inside

woke up today and lazily finished the novel i've been reading for ages now...

your face tomorrow - part 1 - fever & spear

by javier marias, right near the end there was a long section that almost lost me but it closed well with a satisfying morsel, the 1st of a trilogy of which the 2nd is out in hardback now, waiting for it to come out in paperback and then it'll be mine...

this novel i read mostly on tube trains as used to be my practise, only it was slow because i only take the tube to ferry my keyboard to rehearsals and back with T's band these days...

i think it was the last band rehearsal last monday i was travelling to and i was walking along hatley with the keyboard on my back and duchess ran up to me, or if not duchess then the younger duchess like whitish cat that has superseded her...

i hardly ever see duchess these days (or indeed her younger self if there are two cats)...

the reason i'm bringing this up is that i've been reading the cat inside by william burroughs today... i picked it up and was reading passages to dinah this afternoon and i've just finished it, 2 novels finished in 1 day... it is a very short book...

william burroughs talking about the cats in his life, running up to him...

very moving...

reminds me of my song midnight that i wrote about duchess and balthazara, 3 years or so ago...

a lovely song but i've pretty much left it behind these days, somehow i don't like the chorus...

i recorded a blues this early evening called the in love blues, just my rhodes through the WEM copicat...

and i'm listening now to the last few weekly improvisations... starting with the grand piano 3 weeks ago, through the newly fixed rhodes piano last week and yesterdays effects laden rhodes, WEM & voice improvisation...

very satisfying...

oh and one last thing, T phoned up today and it seems he's hooked me up with a guy doing a recording on monday night who needs a pianist... a little money involved... perfect timing for my finances...

thankyou T, (& thankyou universe)

x

20th weekly improvisation

rhodes piano, voice & WEM copicat x

reluctant musical theatre fan

spent the last few days feeling run down, not sleeping properly and not eating particularly well...

one of my hammersmith lessons was supposed to have been observed yesterday and i got all the paperwork ready (always a stressful thing for me), briefly checked the original email telling me about it only to discover that it was the earlier, rowdier class that was being observed... freaked me out a little, but in the end i decided it was better, having my boss in the room would probably make them less hard work...

so anyway, i cycled in.. passing through hyde park & kensington gardens which was amazing... all kinds of yellow leaves falling from the trees... some deeper colours as well...

arrived at work, finished my preparation and went to teach that session, expecting any moment that my boss would walk in but she never arrived...

on reflection this was one of the last days before OFSTED come in to hammersmith next week so she was no doubt rushed off her feet, madly preparing in a similar but much larger way to my preparation...

i left there as the sun was leaving and cycled home, feeling dead already straight to crystal kebabs where i ordered my customary half falafel half halloumi wrap and someone knocked over my bicycle which in turn broke my headphones...

raced home and consumed said wrap, me & dinah hit the streets very shortly afterwards and we tubed it down to her old workplace where we met felinity, her G & her new flatmate C...

& we settled in to watch the producers, the 2nd time for me, although the 2 leads have changed since i saw it last... reese & cory (first name terms, being as dinah dressed them as part of her job before she became a student) were really great, cory enlgish is a natural, powerful singer & comedian and reese shearsmith is also very funny, a groovy mover and less experienced a singer but still pretty good at holding those melodies...

it brought tears to my eyes at points and the combination of dance and singing/orchestrations was just magical, i realised i'm a sucker for good musical theatre, something i've resisted most of my life...

so today i've been into work in hoxton and on my return i popped into manolis's dinah joining me there, he had money on a horse and we got involved in the televised race... his horse (an outsider @ 14/1) was briefly the leader near the end of the race but no cigar...

and then home to record this improvisation which is rendering as i write...

denied

strange day so far...

cycled down to the south london pacific to practise backing vocals with T & B (drummer) O (bass) also rolled up... making us 3 backing vocalists with T being the lead...

it was good, it's going to sound great and i can't wait to gig with this band and invite people to see us because i reckon we are going to be rocking...

that was in the morning and by 2ish i was hungry, so i cycled to londonbridgework which was on the way home to grab a bite to eat, bumped into mars who teaches there today and spent lunch with him and his apprentice...

then skipped over to waterloo bridge for a few games of chess with G the book seller, that guy from friends was directing something and to do with running and once in a while i glanced over to see if i could see him but he didn't show his face... to me, playing chess 100 yards away... fool that he is... imagine the publicity he could have got here in this blog... foolish smalltime actor/director that he is...

i won 2/1 at the chess and then came home so that i could record my weekly improvisation or do the paperwork i need to do before tomorrow's observed lesson...

but i did neither because i found that i'd left my camera @ work yesterday (where i passed through today)... it took me so long working this out that i didn't get any paperwork done and now i'm going out again to see felinity who is taking me to the pictures...

oh well...

x

copicat

spent much of today in delay heaven, setting up 2 different versions of the arcdev dubb box for my weekly improvisation, one for my voice and one for the rhodes...

then tonight i braved the cold to go south on the tube with my keyboard on my back for tony's rehearsal...

and i was talking to him about tape delays and he told he had a WEM copicat delay that i could borrow... so i carried it home from the rehearsal and there it now sits atop my rhodes piano... it's pretty simple, you can't change the speed of the tape so it pretty much only does one thing that i like, but it has a sustain (feedback) knob which is fairly cool...

the tape itself is really old it seems and i'm tempted to get another one to see how that would change things...

but all that aside my rhodes sounds great through it... i won't be throwing away my arcane device virtual tape delays yet (based,as they are, on the more sophisticated ROLAND space echo) but to have this beast that is even older than my rhodes is really nice...

the tape delay journey goes on...

x

delayed fireworks

so me & dinah set off to ally pally last night but were let down by the W3 bus... rubbish service...

so we went to W(floopy)shaman's house and he lit a fire and we bought some sparklers... later on we did a zilch... i'd only heard about it before and i'd never seen or heard it...

pretty strange & wonderful...

i video'd it so i won't explain it here, but i'll be uploading that video and it'll make sense then... (it involves toxic gas and plastic bags... and fire)

so we eventually rolled out of there at around 2... a second night of debauchery with floopy...

then today after eating to our smiling faces delight @ the amazon he was round ours, trying to sort out dinah's printer troubles and meanwhile i was in my room, experimenting with a virtual tape delay made by this cat...

based on a roland space echo, it has kept me very happy for much of today, pausing only to accompany dinah out to victoria park to see walk the plank do another show, pretty inferior to last years burning of the houses of parliament but a great tiger and a monster firework display which had us both screaming with glee and even brought tears to my babies eyes...

before we went out to see the fireworks i'd been messing around with my rhodes going through the tape delay, once home from the fireworks i introduced my voice to the tape delay and it has been quite an interesting journey...

1stly having a copy of my voice thrown back at me is very interesting and throws a certain light onto my voice which is both scary and very useful, i intend to practise with the delay therefore until i can get rid of the less tasty aspects that i hear...

but also just experimenting with timing, having the same delay running (a set tempo), but playing in different ways that emphasise different pulses, basically swapping between a 3 and a 4 feel... cookie business and an interesting adjunct to the rhythm tree that i've been teaching along with my apprentice @ college recently...

so strange also that i've been playing around for hours and i go to save my work but i've recorded nothing... just twiddled knobs and sang to the air...

x

me & george

it's now one of the tunes over on my pace... me & W(floopy)shaman traded some mp3's and one of the ones he gave me was george thorogood & the destroyers playing a tune called delaware slide... well he was coming round last night for the shabbat meal and i found a section in the middle of that tune that was/is eminently loopable... so i sampled it, found some crazy chords to go over it, solo'd over it and made a little tune, ready to play to floopy...

i love it... it will no doubt grow into something else at some point but for now it's just the product of that initial energy...

the mouse is still at large, thinking about it does my head in a little, knowing it's around and probably isn't alone...

me & dinah are meeting floopy to go up to ally pally in a little while for the fireworks, we 3 who were up until 4 last night drinking & smoking & laughing, a really good night it turned out to be... saw off the last of the bombay sapphire gin that he'd bought me sa a thankyou for the recording i did for him just over a week ago...

ah... there's my beautiful girl calling me.. must go.. later...

x

mousing improvising

i've been really looking forward to today, the chance to improvise with my newly working rhodes piano (must remember to stop calling it a fender rhodes, they'd dropped the fender part of the name by the time they made mine)...

i got the room ready and then made some food for myself and then started improvising around 5... already getting dark...

it's rendering right now, turned out to be pretty long, 15 minutes or so, but that doesn't really surprise me, it's been a couple of months since my rhodes has been part of the weekly improvisations and i had a lot to say...

mostly spoken voice part, although sung vocals did creep in towards the end...

so i was editing it in cubase, putting on a hint of reverb and cutting the beginning and ends right when i saw a small shape scurry across my room...

really freaked me out...

a little later i saw this tiny mouse (i hope) climbing up a speaker lead to my shelves...

i didn't know i was scared of mice before this point, but it turns out i am...

so i shut down my computer and moved a few bits of furniture so i could get at the shelving and then for a tense hour or so (it could have been 30 minutes... my sense of time went) i was shining lights at it, placing cookie crumbs into a clear plastic box as bait, while it hid behind two piles of books on one particular shelf, occasionally poking it's tiny head out and looking at me...

the cookie crumbs were no good, it knew it was a trap, another clear plastic box had once been a minidisk store and that got pressed into service, and it had a lid...

it was looking good, mousy was venturing in there sniffing about... i chose my moment to strike and close the box but both times i tried it i was too slow..

the second time i think i caught it's tail as it eeked in pain before running back behind the books...

by this time i was gradually removing the books one by one, so that it would have nowhere to hide and would have to come out and be caught, i had no real idea how i was going to catch it mind you, the plastic boxes weren't doing the trick and i didn't want to touch it...

which led finally to it climbing on top of one of the few books left and staring at me, i was clicking my fingers at it to make it scurry back which had worked before but this time it made a run for it and leapt off the shelf...

making me scream a little...

so i went back to dealing with the improvisation, (which is now uploading to googlevideo), but was bothered every now and then by the sound of the mouse, rooting about... so i did what i should have done straight away... i went and found balthazara and sat her down in my room, gave her a little love and then got on with things...

once i'd dealt with the improvisation i looked up and balthazara had been feigning laziness but had just leapt up and chased into a corner of the room, seeing her prey...

and that's where she still is now, still not triumphant but now the mouse knows who else lives in this house and will hopefully go and tell all its little mousy friends to not return, wishful thinking there but it was a stressful hour or so and i think i deserve a little indulgence...

x

walking with miles

ok, so i got hold of porgy & bess, the miles davis/gil evans one, which, now i remember it was one of the 1st cd's that dad got with his new cd player when he retired & i was either a late teenager or very early 20'ser...

a beautiful album, accompanied me through many different parts of my life...

i remember how neatly prayer (oh doctor jesus) & fishermen, strawberry & devil crab used to fit exactly into the cycle ride from my house to my work when i was working in that vast windowless room for directory enquiries in leamington spa...

also how the entire album fitted into the journey time from here to a past lovers house...

the way gil evans makes the musicians rise & fall so gracefully and seemingly without structure while miles floats over or plays his part within...

so anyway, i carefully didn't listen to any of it until it was all on my shuffle and then me & dinah went over manolis's where we were in a perfectly stupid laughing mood... i left her @ the busstop heading to college and put on my headphones and set off walking down tufnell park road...

strange mix of familiar emotional reactions to the music and contemporary sights & sounds...

i walked in a wide arc from there (walking away from ours) back round to our road and our house...

found this beautiful rainbow of leaves, similar to the leaves that turn so wonderfully red in our garden for a couple of weeks each year... but so many different hues in one place...

found myself taking loads of pictures and a few videos - all on my phone - greyish autumn day throwing up strangely satisfying dark glimpses of landscape and buildings...

then these wild flowers that i carried for awhile in my buttonhole, destined for a jar on dinah's desk...

all to that album, to miles & gil...

i was concerned that when i got to the main roads i'd have to cross to get home the cars would interfere with my listening pleasure, but crossing both holloway & hornsey roads was remarkably easy and natural, you know when you don't even have to stop walking, just drifting over in a gap when the traffic is stationery, or the traffic in both directions thinning out miraculously to let you cross...

and so i was about to cross over into our road when the album came to it's huge end and i'm very happy that it's back in my life...

x

emotional

just listening to a CD i've made for an old friend who i don't see so often any more...

bo is the name i call her, and when i was going through the recordings of past gigs me & josiah had done i found a tune that we'd dedicated to bo, being as her mum had just died...

so i'm seeing bo tonight @ volupte, me & dinah are going out to celebrate dr K's birthday and many of that old circle of friends will be there and it seemed daft to just give her this cd with only one track on it, so i rummaged around and found a beautiful selection of tunes to give her and that's what i'm listening to now & it's bringing me quite close to tears...

last track now, allen ginsberg reading howl...

not so easy blogging while listening to his strange monotone voice...

but i wish to describe a couple of things from this last week... i intended to blog it yesterday but the rhodes got fixed and all else left my brain...

so firstly porgy & bess that godma G had free tickets for and which we went to after attending part of producerG's music forum on thursday night, (at which i sang my naked flame tune which godma G told me later had been tender as an autumn sky)...

i know porgy and bess from the miles davis/gil evans album, that great musical partnership which only gave us 3 albums (give or take a few reissues)...

it was a great production and i was pleased to hear what i thought were direct borrowings of gil evans arrangements in some of the tunes, great story, great performers, although a couple of the voices weren't quite up to the amazing gershwin songs in my opinion...

it's made me really want to find the miles davis version, which i have on minidisk and maybe even on cd but i'm trying to find on mp3 through soulseek so i can hear it on my shuffle (strange the way today's technology pushes me in strange directions - my computer so full i'm reluctant to import direct from the CD even though it would be exactly the same amount of memory that downloading it would be... hmmm... where is that cd?)

and then yesterday going to volupte to pay for my & dinah's tickets for tonight, placing me in the right part of town to visit the lebanese bakery that i used to eat at when i worked round there (farringdon) seeing F who runs it and who's opening line to me was how many years has it been? ... 8... 9?...

x

home at last

sore hands playing beautiful chords...

the same hands i just used to screw back in those 10 screws in the side of my suitcase rhodes piano...

playing with that beautiful rich sound... the vibrato light blinking at me even now...

you can't believe how happy this makes me...

...

early on in mine & mars attempt to fix this beast he brought back a fuse for the plug from his house... just to check, because it would be mad to find out it was the plug after taking it apart...

anyway, even with the working fuse the rhodes remained steadfastly silent...

so i was reading this thread over on the rhodes site and it suggested i amplify my rhodes just like a guitar, leave it powerless and take an output from inside the upper half (the harp)...

so as an interim thing i thought well that would be nice... to be able to hear it amplified at least until we can fix it... so i pull over my mixing desk, feel around on the floor for a power lead and pick up the rhodes kettle lead... plug it in to my mixing desk and nothing happens...

because the rhodes kettle lead has something chunky and odd at the rhodes end of it... so while we checked the plug end we didn't check the rhodes end...

so i suddenly got very excited, plugged a different kettle lead into the poweramp bit of the rhodes that has been separated from the main beast... immediate red light and activity...

i lean the amp bit against the rhodes, plug in the speakers, go slightly mental trying to find the connector lead and eventually set it all up, switch it on again and my fantastic little rhodes piano is purring away being as sexy as it ever was...

albeit with potentially cat frying amounts of electricity open to the world so i write a quick post on the rhodes site to spread the word, settle down to screwing it all up again and that leads us back to where we began...

sore hands playing beautiful chords...

x

post gin post

having a slow post gin day...

as opposed to a post sloe gin day which would perhaps be worse...

i've achieved almost nothing so far... cooked myself some breakfast, downloaded the new firefox 2 which has a built in spellchecker so my blogs will be getting better spelled...

been finding out about the rhodes piano online, found a fantastic recording by herbie hancock from the 70's extolling the virtues of the rhodes... my desire to have my rhodes back and working is tangible and it hurts slightly...

met with producerG on tuesday and we played through most of our tunes, making a first stab at a brand new one...

oh and i left nippy's band on monday, due to the tensions between me & edge...

last night W(floopy)shaman & dinah came back from a watts rehearsal and we drank said bombay sapphire gin which was floopy's thankyou for the recording... playing chess and also therapy - a board game...

and i'm going out in about 20 minutes to producerG's music forum @ londonbridge work, i'm going to sing a song and accompany one of the students... then me & godmaG are going to see porgy & bess @ the savoy - free tickets she's got hold of...

so i'd better just do this one thing for hammersmith work before i go, after all, it's there that i would be right now if it wasn't half term...

x

chess improvisation

ok, so this is how many games i'm currently playing over on gameknot... notice the amount of them labelled 26th gameknot tournament, which i'm through to the 4th round of and i'm scared... we're down to 10 groups and the ratings of everyone else in my group range from 200 more than me to 350 more than me... not that that means i won't win, just a little scary that's all...

recorded the piece of piano music for W(floopy)shaman which i should have learnt at least yesterday but in fact learnt this morning, so it took quite a few takes to get enough usable material...

recorded the 18th weekly improvisation straight after... beautiful piano...

it looks like i'll be doing a gig on that piano around the weekend of the 2nd december... still need to finalise the date with my musicians but pencil it in if you fancy it... should be great... even though i say so myself...

x

greek DVD

about to pack up various bits and pieces and go over to the landlord's piano to record a piece for W(floopy)shaman... recording this week's improvisation while we're there...

but more importantly manolis has recently had a DVD player put into his shop, me & dinah were there when it arrived last week some time, i was over there just now and he had an amazing DVD of greek singers doing greek classics on... which i really, really want to get hold of, absolutely packed full of amazing videos, men singing while strumming that guitar shaped greek instrument and sat opposite a grumpy looking man who has nothing to do with the music...

a woman in a stripy jumper dancing madly in front of about 20 men all strumming a mandolin style instrument...

a group of musicians on stage, one of whom is singing, accompanied by a woman with nothing to do who looks nervous and slightly annoyed...

i'm going to try and borrow it from manolis and rip some choice scenes destined for youtube...

unless of course some bright spark has already put it on youtube?

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journeys within

mars came round to orbit the fender rhodes again tonight, lovely man... that last recalcitrant screw just had to have his drill shaken at it to loosen...

and then we had that whole bit off and in our hands, spent a good hour or so puzzling over it, back and forth between the thing and the circuit diagram that rhodes helpfully supplied, and that i amazingly have, even though i never paid for it and it came to me through being left in a store room... previous owner was very sensible when he gave it to blewbury village hall, keeping all the papers within the lid...

this process that me & mars are going through would be so much harder without the circuit diagram...

so we move ever forward in our quest to fix the beast... he's taken the circuit diagram home with him and he's going to phone a friend...

it's been a really nice process, partly just marvelling at the way it's been put together, loved, can't work out whether it all dates from 1979, which would be the most obvious answer, or whether just the keyboard half of it is from then and the amp from later...

(the number stamped on it means it was made in the 29th week of 1979)

mars said '79 seemed early to have a solid state amplifier (no valves)...

so it's lovely seeing inside my beautiful beast, spending time with mars, as he said when he left, the journey as opposed to the arriving... even though i so want that arrival i'm digging this journey...

x

broken fender rhodes improvisation

with voice, 17th weekly improvisation...

an experiment really, seeing if could record the unamplified rhodes, just with my audio technica mic right by the tines, using only an octave or so...

not wholly successful but a magical call to the universe to allow my fender rhodes to be fixed...



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imminent deflea

hanging out in the basement waiting for balthazara to show up so i can put this defleaing stuff on the back of her neck, which she'll hate, then avoid me for about 5 hours or so, then gradually forgive me...

completely ran out of money today, as planned, payday tomorrow... mars couldn't come round in the end tonight as planned to visit the fender rhodes and i didn't find out until late, but i realise that having no money at all isn't that conducive to going out, which is what i was planning to do if i'd have known earlier that mars would not be orbiting the rhodes tonight...

so kat i'm sorry to have missed you again, friday looking good though, as is monday...

ok, messaging through blogging,

which reminds me, i have no idea who left the arty arranging of my words in the comments last week...? please identify yourself arty one...

comments...

i get roughly one comment every now and again, so comments (plural) is not the best name for it... but it feels wrong to say - in the comment -

our set top box is not currently functioning so i'm currently downloading this week's episode of the soprano's, 95.9% & counting...

day off tomorrow, i hope to get some work done on those words...

but you know as well as i do that this post could go on forever... playing for time while that beautiful creature lolls around somewhere...

come on baby...

oh, and look at that, my beautiful girlfriend on the door ust as i typed that...

ok... i'll be chilling out with her... instead of inanely typing nonsense here...

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day off (look at this kitten)

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beat

in the american sense of being tired... rather than the ...poets or indeed the... (ska version of tears of a clown - oh yes please) nothing to do with a policeman's walk, or indeed the musical/rhythmic term...

no, just tired...

me & dinah watched the brother's grimm last night way too late... we are earlier birds than we used to be (a bit) now that she gets up weekday mornigs to go to college,

she didn't fall asleep about two thirds into the film, with me not waking her up to point out good bits to her...

i liked the film, terry gilliam after all, kind of silly but a good story...

anyway, the film finished, dinah was not sleeping away beside me and foronce, instead of gently not waking her up as i normally do i was more than a little sleepy myself and i let myself drift off into a nap...

now the film's finished there's no shame attached to falling asleep in that room, so i'll stop putting the italic negative's in front of dinah's sleeping state...

so every now and again i'd wake up, look around me, hold her a bit closer, drop off again, one time i got it together enough to take the DVD out of the machine... another time she woke up...

anyway, at 5:15am i woke up enough to wake her up and get us out of the TV room, into our respective abluting regimes and eventually to bed... and could i sleep?

could i chuff...

finally dropped off around 8ish, had a further 2/3 hours before getting up and escorting dinah to the amazon, she bought my breakfast for me, then home to get the keyboard before heading down to the south london pacific for another of T's rehersals, whole band this time...

rehearsed for 4/5 hours, chatted with the rhythm section & T for a little while and eventually strapped my keyboard to my back again for the return journey, and here i am now...

shagged...

really enjoying T's band, O & B on bass & drums great to play with, T himself a fiery ball of energy, M the guitarist a little green and not so disciplined but good, irritating in places, but we'll get there... the south london pacific bar never ceases to amaze me...

found a beautiful piano in a mad back room there... would love to go and play it a fair bit, especially as the landlord's piano is leaving my life relatively soon, which reminds me i must organise a goodbye gig for that piano... sometime in december i guess, you are all cordially invited, i'll let you know...

ok, exhausted ramblings, about time i wrapped up... loving these mp3's while i'm writing this...

x

many pens

dropped off dinah @ her class... picked up a london paper for the sudoku... went to the bike shop to get waterproof trowsers and decided to get a new back outer tire...

it's been skidding a bit in the rain my back wheel, scary...

so i asked if they could put it on for me and they said leave it and we'll do it in the morning, so i strolled back home, throwing out most of the paper, just leaving the sudoku section, wandering along on this beautiful early evening without a pen, scrutinising the difficult sudoku, but numbers kept coming to me... difficult? i ask myself...

anyway i strored up number in my head and stopped random people in the street asking for pens, writing down the numbers i'd got in my head then moving on... 2 different pens before i got home, from asking about 10 people...

just completed it... not so difficult but pleasing none-the-less...

and then my fender rhodes...

mars came round again last night to fix it, he who had cancelled & rearranged several times and then made it round on tuesday without his circuit tester... came back last night, and we couldn't get all the screws off...

i found the bits from rhodes, the circuit diagrams, got hold of a screw driver and between us we got 7 of the 10 screws off... after he left i applied some WD40 and managed to get 2 of the remaining ones off but one remains...

stubborn as you like...

so it's proving to be a long project, the fixing of this beautiful beast... slightly concerned for mars who is a busy man, that it's taking several visits, and probably at least 2 more on top... maybe i'll make his myspace for him... last time he fixed the rhodes it was a one visit deal and i did a lovely recording session for him with the rhodes...

but we are planning a couple of social things, chess playing is one and pretending to need saving in that big church on seven sisters road is the other, just so we can see the interior...

hmmm... maybe i'll have a go at the recalcitrant screw right now...

x

longcat organ & voice improvisation

but enough wingeing... i recorded this last night... week 16

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hard work

these 2 classes @ hammersmith really do me in... less so last week, somehow because i was hungover things fell into place easier... and this gave me a false sense of things working... today really did my head in, found myself getting annoyed at points in both classes and it's been awhile since that's been going on...

getting angry, but not expressing that anger in a good way,

oh well... over now, my boss is observing the 2nd class next week so it won't be as chaotic...

sorry, just a small moan...

good to express it

x

another stab at the words

(for the film)

you can't see me...

you can't see me because i'm not there...

you can't see me because the angle is too narrow...

you can't see me because it's the wrong time of day...

walking, stumbling, carrying my bicycle over the rockier bits,

immensely impractical as it is, having a bicycle down there...

all about poetry, and nothing to do with practicality,

except that it was practical tonight, having cycled north from G's place in gypsy hill, wanting the darkness and the desolate nature of the beach, wanting to listen to a few john martyn songs while i rested from cycling at that midpoint on my journey home, walking from the tate modern to waterloo bridge where i got back on my bike and cycled home to finsbury park...

my own G in bed,

walking, stumbling, as you do on the rocks and the shifting sand,

you can't see me because my phone was dead and i didn't have my camera with me...

no visual record of that walk, only the mud & the sand on my bicycle tires and on my shoes when i got home...

my bicycle, which in a way, this film is all about, i started filming from this place because i passed it each week, cycling accross town between two different teaching jobs, it was one of two places where i put down my camera to film the same scene on different days,

this walkway covered in trees that you see before you, my main experience of this is cycling along it,

sometimes also playing chess with one of the booksellers underneath waterloo bridge,

the national film theatre on the left a useful toilet, and wrapped up for me in london, just before i moved to this city that late august day ten years ago when me & luke hedge caught the train in for the nottinghill carnival, my 1st carnival, wide eyed and foolish, luke leading us up to the national film theatre that night where by chance nick cave was providing the live soundtrack to a french surrealist film of joan of arc..

a few months later having moved here, finding myself by the river one night, sad & alone but revelling in the romance of this river, these skies, a romance that hasn't left me these ten years...

the poetry of this place... step by step, bridge by bridge...

something about improvisation, about that stumbling walk along the beach, carrying my bike at times, step by step, bridge by bridge...

millenium, blackfriar's rail, blackfriar's road, that strange bridge that doesn't exist, just pillars,

walking passed the jetty from which this is filmed, passed the side of this walkway... lowtide... the whole area only temporary,

something about walking there, in between the land and the water,

step by step,

about this being the improvisation...

improvisation not just the water... as i'd seen it before, but the graceful or clumsy steps between land and river, some solid sand some mud...

but my bed now, maybe more of this tomorrow, very glad to have found a way in to the words

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a story

i hope i have the energy to write this... i wanted to tell this story last monday but couldn't give away to dinah which shop i'd been to to buy her presents...

then i wanted to tell it on wednesday after she'd had the presents but had to wait until there was either a happy ending or not... all will become clear...

so, in parts:

prologue:

last saturday (over a week ago) i was rehearsing at the south london pacific bar with T, a couple of people floated in and out, it was my 1st rehearsal with T and it rocked...

part 1 - not recognising people straight away:

on monday (a week ago) i went to manolis's, at 1st i didn't recognise who was in there, ate my breakfast, then worked out that two of the three people in there drinking red wine i'd met there before, the inventor and the designer...

so i chatted to them for a little while, glad to have bumped into them again, but didn't stay too long because i was travelling down to radio days, a vintage shop near waterloo that producerG had told me about, to buy presents for dinah's birthday...

it absolutely chucked it down on the way and i got soaked... when i arrived in the shop one of the guys in there helpfully hung up my jumper which was very wet... i started looking around the shop trying not to drip too much...

i was buying the 2 items that i got from there (a magazine from 1948 & a silver brooch) & was listening to one of the two guys talking to another customer about music... i ask about it and he offered me a flyer... for the south london pacific bar...

i tell him i was only in there on saturday and it turns out that both men in that shop had been in the bar on the saturday... one of whom (who owns the shop with his partner) had dreamily complemented us on one of the tunes we were playing...

small aside - apple cathedral:

i left there, cycled into town to get the 3rd item for the birthday (black holes and revelations by muse) and to pop into the apple store to see about my ipod shuffle, broken...

in the apple store i see one of my new students and he takes my broken shuffle from me, woefully beyond it's warranty, and says he might be able to sort something out...

part 2 - the losing:

fast forward to wednesday, day of the birthday, my beautiful girl turning 25, she loves the presents and we go out in the evening to a pizza place in crouchend which has cocktails... she is wearing the brooch...

we have a delicious time, drinking and eating, the cocktails are great, the food lovely... we stumble out of there a few hours later and we're happily wending our way along the road when dinah notices that the brooch is gone... she had been aware earlier that it was a bit fragile...

so we went back to the restaurant but they can't find it, we go up and down the road about three times scouring the ground for it... dinah is upset... it's sad but there is more birthday frivolity ahead so i make her laugh as we get home, opening a bottle of cava... drinking more... completing the lovely birthday...

small aside conclusion - keyboard class:

i try and ring the restaurant each day but they don't seem to answer their phone, friday comes and i have a keyboard lesson with the student who works for apple...

he hands me a small package, my musical world is returned to me... happy day...

part 3 - conclusion:

so i finally got through to the restaurant tonight, just before M was coming round to have a look at my fender rhodes and they had the brooch... i cycled over there to recieve it, put it in the same box i'd originally given it to dinah in and left it on her table with a note to look inside...

the prodigal broach, now more valuable than before for having been lost and found...

there - you have my week of losing and finding... meeting people again... getting a new shuffle...

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