2 haircuts

john coltrane playing "countdown" from "giant steps", dinah cutting my hair (twice), me having my hair cut (twice) and messing with the video's x

thursdays collaborative improvisation

with gareth mitchell on guitar and darren smart on drums, @ shiftworks studio, recorded by ellis gardiner, (using thomas's wurlitzer) x

dead?

felinity rang earlier to make sure i was still alive, i hadn't replied to a message of hers earlier in the week, and i hadn't blogged since last saturday...

now i think i've always been rubbish about answering messages, but when was the last time i didn't blog for a week?

so, apart from telling you that i'm not dead, lets give you a little run down of my week:

sunday night: saw W(floopy)shaman & T and T returned spski's book the historian to him via us, which i then routed to myself...

in fact that probably explains it... it's a 700 page book and if i hadn't left it at the recording session i did yesterday i would have finished it by now...

but let's move on...

monday: largely lazy day, read alot...

tuesday: a couple of hours work took up much of my day... played piano in the evening,

wednesday: working, meant to be all day but it stopped around 2:30, but my bike was in the menders nearby and not ready until 5:30 so i read the book in the local library... watched heroes in the evening (great)...

thursday: recording session @ lovely E's, with D & G from hammersmith work, ten minutes of which make up this week's improvisation, left the book there by accident, played piano in the evening,

friday (today): up at stupid o'clock for the dawn project (because i slept through it yesterday), then over to W(floopy)shaman & T's for his firewire cable, back to mine to capture the video of yesterday's improvisation, then a nap, then editing video, back to floopy's to drop off camera and lend mic, over to E's to pick up audio of improvisation, which is now rendering...

my boobelah is cooking our shabbat meal downstairs, my computer will be rendering into the early hours, we've been videoing kingdom hospital since wednesday night and haven't yet caught up, that's 3 hours of TV before we can watch tonight's episode, we'll be recording that one as well then... (but there isn't one on tonight, does that mean it's finished?)

and how great is heroes?

retrospective deflea post

for some reason i didn't post at the time of the last deflea, and it's about the one thing i have to do in this blog, so that i know when the 6 weeks are up and know to do it again...

so there you go, i think it was around now...

x

yr2wk5 rhodes & voice & bass

RAM doom improv CD arrives

in fact the improv CD arrived on monday, just been a little busy changing into piano player in restaurant man to have told you...

i think it took 3 weeks to arrive from the states, impractical...

but it looks gorgeous, W(floopy)shaman's work on my basic design is just beautiful:



isn't it?

lovely G from college came round last night to improvise with me, this week's improvisation, the 2nd collaborative one... uploading now...

all day yesterday my computer was freaking me out, i was trying to speed up the film of dinah cutting my hair on monday so that i can have my wicked way with it but vegas kept crashing, i'd leave it alone for awhile do render it's happy little way and i'd come back and my computer would be smiling at me saying "hi, i've just turned on... what shall i do?"

it did the same thing last night with me & G's improvisation so today i had a little look into it and it turns out my old 512Mb RAM was damaged, maybe by the heatsink i have on my processor, so i put in the 256Mb one i'd taken out before, relieved that it wasn't the new 1Gb one that was broke, and everyone is happy today, the improvisation is rendered and... has just finished uploading...

the haircut has also gone through it's 1st stage of speeding, probably another 2 times for that...

so i'm happy x

new person walking the streets

so yesterday i become a new person...

i mean obviously we all become new people everyday, bits of our bodies constantly renew, psychologically we are subtly different day by day, but yesterday i became different slightly more...

i spent the day creating 3 sets of 45 minutes each, come 6 i put on the paul smith suit and i took the tube to fulham... whereupon i played those 3 sets in a restaurant called the farm...

i've never done it before, strange, playing the piano most of my life but i've never done a proper restaurant gig on the piano before...

when JtJP asked me to cover for him for 6 weeks (tuesdays and thursdays) i originally said i'd start next week, give me time to build up a set, but then i realised that i needed the money for this week too so i took it on, knowing that the 1st one would be hairy...

and hairy it was...

i did well, but on thursday i'll be loads better, in fact i'll probably be improving all the way through the 6 weeks, maybe peaking around week 4...

also it was very tiring, 3 sets...

but it's such a nice thing to do, thinking of all the tunes i love and finding the music then playing them...

also nice to look natty x

seemingly unrelated sentences

3:22 am and i should be in bed...

me & dinah have to go to pennies early tomorrow because i'm gigging in O's band in the afternoon...

i'm really enjoying listening to my music, and i just tried to set up a secondary myspace account to showcase my more experimental side - currently it all lives in the same place - but they told me i was not eligible to sign up to myspace...?

i'm about to spend almost a hundred pounds on a new sound card... or am i?

just spent a lovely night round W(floopy)shaman & T's...

i feel good about the world...

this week i start covering for JtJP playing piano in a restaurant in fulham...

x

yr2wk4 rhodes & voice

yesterday's hungover improvisation x

gig last night was a triumph x

gig of RAM and a muffin

needless to say i'm feeling pretty rancid today,

i couldn't sleep so i got up to install the RAM, shushed balthazara out of the room because she was making sounds as if to be sick... which she was, on the stairs...

cleaned that up and narrowly missed throwing up myself in the process...

took my PC into the front room so as not to wake dinah, out with the old RAM and in with the new...

then i starting being sick in earnest...

but let's rewind 12, 15, 19 hours...

i got up to do the dawn project, it went ahead, W(floopy)shaman hadn't got out of bed when i arrived at his to drop off the camera so i pootled off home, woke dinah with a coffee, made myself a tea, saw spski...

all very nice...

once dinah had arisen she went and checked the post and i was very excited to find that my 1st ever ebay snipe, 1Gb of RAM, had arrived...

also a present and a card from my folks and a card from my brother D...

went off to work where there wasn't very much for me to do, a few of us (including lovely D) went off to the cafe and had a meal, so i was about to pay for mine when i saw a chocolate muffin, and i knew i had to have it, i asked the man behind the counter to give it to me, being as it was my birthday, saying that if he didn't i would still buy it...

and he gave it to me...

which made me enormously happy...

i went out onto the street and started singing to the world of my muffin and my gig of RAM...

also yesterday we played some music, improvised as we tend to do on a thursday, me & D, sometimes with JtJP, today it was with G - a guitarist, who i'd seen play with rediffusion once before it turned out, lovely player, i hope to get him into the weekly thing real soon...

then there was the staff party @ work where i had a couple of glasses of red...

then i cycled home where dinah had prepared a lovely meal but i was late and felinity & G were @ the pub and they were going to have to go soon so i went to get them, helping felinity drink her bitter while i was there, brought them back to ours where we drank champagne...

all abit mad and a few different kinds of alcohol which explains my feeling like this today... anyway, must dash, gigging tonight with T,

my improvisation is currently rendering, i'll upload it probably tomorrow now...

x

dawn project week 18 ON MY BIRTHDAY

oh yes....

birthday...

x

rescued collaborative improvisation

me & tooting tone, had to work hard to rescue it but rescue it i did x

lost improvisation russian visitor

T came round yesterday to do probably my last session for the recordings, some piano, some clav, some hammond and also my voice...

good session, closing with the 1st of my longcat collaborative improvisations, T on voice, me on voice & hammond...

and i half knew it would happen, but somehow i thought if i waited long enough it would right itself...

cubase freezing at the moment i pressed stop, we went out to the plough after to wait it out and when i came home much the worse for wear 4 or so hours later it was still frozen, so the improvisation is lost...

it's happened before and i really need to get into the habit of saving just before i press stop... or maybe set up auto saving... foolish, and it means this week's improvisation will be recorded later today on my own...

i did however meet a man in the pub who said steven seagal is a great blues musician... this is going to make me laugh for weeks...

and then also at roughly the same time i had my 6666th visitor, sadly @ 8:04pm on the 6th of the 7th 07 and not 4 hours later on 7/7/07 but it's still great...

and tonight i'm meeting with felinity to go the circus courtesy of spski which is lovely, i was meant to be going with my dinah but some work has come up and though i'm very sad not to have her on my arm it's great that felinity can come...

oh yes, and where did my 6666th visitor hail from?

well i'm glad you asked, they hail from the great city of st petersburg.

x

numbers & rain

it was the last day of term for my students today, and therefore it was a bit mad...

i was pretty vacant being as i'd had not that much sleep, nervously waking up on the hour from 4am onwards...

i started cycling back with D and within a few streets we'd stopped to put on our jackets, then a few streets later our waterproof trousers...

we parted company, as we always do, @ ladbroke grove and i found my way (as i always do) to the regents canal, by which time it had started to chuck it down some...

i was really enjoying the look of the raindrops hitting the water and i stopped after awhile and left my little camera running facing the water, under a bridge, so the raindrops ended in a line in the water...

i was listening to my shuffle and just waiting while my camera filmed, if the rain had let up a bit i would have set off but it just got worse & worse...

i turned the camera the other way and was delighted when a family of geese swam past, one of the gosling's swimming right by the camera...
oh, and numbers,

i was hoping that we might have a coincidence of numbers on saturday, which is the 7th of the 7th month 2007, and it might still happen that my counter over there on the right hits 6666 on 7/7/07 but looking less likely now that it's 58 tonight and there's all of tomorrow to go in between...

either way, whenever it comes i will be doing my customary thing with the 6666th visitor, assuming i can see where you're browsing from i'll post a picture of your town...

x

dawn project videoblog week 17

freed in gaza

VERY good news, delighted that mr johnston (the BBC reporter) has been released into the hands of hamas officials in gaza after 4 months...

x

mesa of lost women

i bought this DVD with 3 films on it because of the 1st of the 3, carnival of souls, which is excellent,

every now and again when me & dinah are stooging around for a film to watch i suggest watching mesa of lost women which is the 3rd of the 3, and over the weekend she succumbed and we watched it...

as she has said it would have been much better if we'd been drunk or stoned or hungover...

anyway this dance from the film is just amazing, amazing for it's badness as well as something else than i can't put my finger on...

so i've put it on youtube, not sure if i'm allowed, but i have x

a moment

boobelahs rolling in @ 4am, the full (ish) moon looking so lovely just before it disappears behind a cloud, the sky beginning to lighten and being such a beautiful shade of blue...

sleep cycles messed up & dinah not overly impressed with the late hour but a magical moment,

cycling through deserted streets @ this hour is one of life's pleasures x