photo shoot film fest

so last night i travelled down to tooting to see felinity and also to be there at 6:45am when i woke up so i could get to tooting bec common for 7:30am...

felinity and me had a nice quiet night sipping beer and going through her pictures of the wedding, also catching an episode of a bit of fry and laurie which was great, particularly hugh laurie's legs...

her G rolled in around 4am, really drunk and unable to lock the door behind him,

i rolled over and did indeed rise @ 6:45, making it to the park on time, meeting K, followed by T & M, with O rolling up 45 minutes late...

we had a good morning taking shots for the band, K with his fancy camera and me videoing with my little one, which i'm tempted to make into a scratchy video for one of the tunes that T has recently finished mixing, i'm listening to them now and they sound amazing, it's the recording we did ages ago with the strings we added later, and the other little bits of sessions we did over the last few months,

i think T has put some of them on his myspace,

after the shoot and a lovely green lentil soup from the cafe in the park i went back to felinity & G's for tea and much hanging out with felinity & hungover G, making it back to my ends in time to eat our customary veggie roast with dinah then straight off to the islington vue to meet with felinity (again) for the angel film festival which was truly great,

it was the final of the festival and the quality was very good, we laughed a lot at a very small ahaaar, we were moved by a sad tale of saving suicides on beechy head, we were frankly amazed by a film called surprise...

altogether an inspiring day, just a bit of work for teaching tomorrow and fixing a puncture for dinah then i can go to my well deserved bed x

yr2wk15 rhodes & synth

recorded yesterday and beset by wierd little problems, but it came out good in the end x

synth frustration

so dinah got the advert job and i didn't, they didn't want any keyboard or piano players, they wanted synth players, 8 of them, they had 5 synth players and there was a possibility that i could have been one of the 3 keyboard players synthing themselves up but it didn't happen, which bummed me right out yesterday...

i worked this morning which was great, search & reflect with the production course @ CM, always interesting...

it's a bleak rainy day and i was going to do my improvisation only my batteries are low, charging them up now and i guess i'll try again in an hour or so, or i could just go buy new ones, it's just that it seems like such a waste buying non-rechargeables...

i did begin the improvisation before my camera died and i'm using rhodes, voice and synth, daring the world to accept me as a synth player, a strange new experience, and once again it makes me want to have access to these great sounds in my computer at gigs...

so i'm a little frustrated what with the improvisation all set to go and then the waiting and in a broader sense what with the not getting the advert, although dinah is doing it and it's much better one of us doing it than neither...

x

sore

well, the wedding was great, we had a great time, i got some french laughs and some english laughs for my bestman's speech, me & felinity lindyhopped on the dance floor after dinah tutored us for a little while, i forgot my shoes which i discovered an hour before the wedding, but for some reason my dad had brought 2 pairs so it was all alright...

he wears a lift in the left shoe so i spent the day very slightly higher on my left...

the father of the bride crowed like a cock on the hour, every hour of the meal, at one point i was getting the laces off the grooms shoes while the sister of the bride tried to get my laces, so i pushed my feet all the way under D's chair whiich didn't stop her, once i had D's laces i made my way back to where they were taking a chair away each time with E still sitting on my legs extracting my lace...

my tunes went down alright, but of course they were background music for the wedding so it was a touch anticlimactic for me after all the work i did on them, but they were perfect for the event... dinah sang her tune really well on mum's guitar while they signed the register and it felt just like being in a film...

cousin M bought me a cigar which i hated but i tried to smoke a little of before giving it to felinity's G...

the bride was beautiful, me & dinah cut a dash or two (outfit change midway through the day), felinity was lovely and my mum was looking regal, me, felinity's G, trave & dad were all in matching mossbros suits which apparently looked ok, i was much happier in the paul smith suit later on...

dinah and her mum had swore at her dress for weeks to get it right and made and she was absolutely gorgeous x

reprieve

on monday i reorganised a couple of things to make way for the advert that i still might be in...

it meant that i had to teach this afternoon which wasn't ideal but it had to be done because of the advert...

so today i woke up and i knew i had an awful lot to achieve before i went to work in the afternoon and by midmorning i was motoring along but it was beginning to look a little tight, the 3rd piece was beginning to come together but i still had to get to muswell hill to pick up the suit for tomorrow, write the speech, get it translated in places...

anyway, M from work rang and told me the class today had to be cancelled due to lack of space... so i actually had all afternoon in the end which was a relief...

i got the track into a good state to leave it and went up to muswell hill for the suit and i stopped off in manolos's new place on the way back... by chance his new waitress is french...?

so i qiuckly set her to worktranslating a few choice phrases for me which i recorded into my minidisk and i hotfooted it back here to complete the track - which i have now done... and it sounds great...

dinah has just cut my hair, we have a few more things to achieve and then we're out of here x

yr2wk14 longcat piano improvisation

18 minutes long, with the piece i'm writing for the wedding guests sitting down very much in my mind, and in fact that piece will probably be made up out of bits of this improvisation... mix of composition and improvisation...

just went to see 3:10 to Yuma with spski... very good x

wedding tunes

i started and finished (mostly) one of the tunes for the wedding on saturday today...

i hope the happy couple like it, i'm still scared because i have most of the speech and 2 more pieces of music to write...

arrrrgh x

sleep stories

i've watched ovingdean so many times now i have no idea if it's any good?

so, grabbing a couple of minutes to tell you the sleep stories, 1stly:

some night last week balthazara came into my room while i was asleep and jumped on the bed, demanding stroking...

in my dream i was stroking a cat and i slowly started to realise that the cat i was stroking was just like my own cat and this surprised me... what was balthazara doing in that strange dream place?

the 2nd was just over a week ago, on a friday night, i woke up holding down a chord on my piano, i'd played a few notes, really loudly, and this had woken me up... dinah was saying something like: it's not the time for piano playing now...

x

ovingdean

that's me & grace wandering into the sea from this saturday x

yr2wk13 rhodes & voice

recorded yesterday early evening, me & dinah shaping up to travel down to brighton today for grace's birthday - a few sleep stories i wanted to tell you but they'll have to wait x

GRRRP new cycle maps

i had just numerically ordered my old cycle maps from 2002 and 2004 as part of the GRRRP and i thought, wouldn't it be great if they'd updated them by now, i was expecting an update in march 2006 but it hadn't happened...

imagine my delight when i found these brand spanking new cycle maps that were made in august 2007...?

i heartily recommend you order yourself some if you live in london with a bicycle... they are excellent and they are free.... you can order 6 at a time...

i was cycling around fulham the other day following one of the 2004 ones and it led me the wrong way down a one way street and i thought, you know they should update these... AND THEY HAVE!!!

the numbering system has changed, we used to live on 5 and get the 10 out when we got to town but it's all changed now, can't wait to see them...

and yes, the GRRRP...

being the Great R's Room Regeneration Project, (R being the 1st letter of my real name), me & dinah, although much more her than me, are undertaking it... if i was doing it on my own i'd have moved everything how i wanted it by now and there would be a huge pile of random stuff in one corner of the room that i would then cover with something and forget about for a couple of years, but no, we are boobelahs now and dinah has a way with these things,

all the stuff is being gone through carefully, much, much recycling and throwing out, order is being returned to this room of mine... it's amazing, she's amazing, i have no real stomach for it but she's a trooper, just how long it stays this way is another matter but it is a miracle in the doing...

so the big objects have yet to move but the stuff is diminishing...

more as the GRRRP continues...

x

yr2wk12 piano & tenor sax longcat with Simon D'Souza

part of my trip to brighton, playing with this wonderful saxophonist, more stories to tell but a little drunk & tired now x

yr2wk11 longcat with tony cannam & gareth mitchell: voice, guitar & keys improvisation

about to get on a train bound for brighton, go see my lovely grace and josiah, just waiting for last week's improvisation to upload, recorded last wednesday and only just got hold of the audio last night...

then tomorrow i'm going to see S d'S to talk about a course of his i'm taking over, and also to do this week's improvisation...

i was up this morning as ever filming the dawn project, beautiful day... then i travelled to W(floopy)shaman's new abode, as i always do post dawn project, only now he's a little further off... but only 15 minutes on the bike so nothing too strenuous...

ok, there it is x laters x

just before bed blog

repacked my keyboard just now, from the chaos of post gig, freeing up the stage for the next band, no dressing room to sort it out... got it home and now it's waiting by the door for the morning...

switch my head back from T's band to the reluctants over the course of the night and the long drive up to sheffield...

apparently we will be on T4 (channel 4), although probably not tomorrow, it turns out the singer is from sydney so i'll be getting information from her about where felinity and her G can go to when they're over there next easter...

very tired and no dinah to rest my weary head against in the night... oh well... the rock'n'roll life x

nuts

i'm about to go to my first rehearsal with the reluctants, a band i joined on tuesday, then straight from that rehearsal to a gig with T's band, then home tonight, only to be picked up tomorrow morning @ 9 by the reluctants to travel to sheffield to audition for mobileact...

it's all a bit nuts x