youtube with uncle colin

once more i'm the last one up, about 3 glasses of sherry in me this time, chatting to uncle colin with his wealth of music memories...

after awhile i picked up the laptop and we started watching youtube video's of the artists he was talking about, and you know how long that can take, one minute you're watching del shannon, then it's the everly brothers, sammy davis juniour, neil diamond, hank williams, gillian welch (that was from me)...

uncle colin being of a generation who don't understand computers and the internet... but with his love of music from a certain period i think the internet would suit him down to the ground...

if he could get used to it...

of course it's quite possible he won't ever get into the internet...

but then maybe by next christmas he'll be commenting on the facebook fan page of my cat balthazara...

maybe...

x

Yr3wk28 moog, rhodes, voice

so, black christmas has just finished on channel 4 + 1, i haven't been up before 1:30 pm for 4 days and i'm now in the family homestead in blewbury,

everyone else went to bed at least 2 hours ago...

sleep cycle mayhem tomorrow...

i recorded this improvisation before i came down today (well, yesterday now),

i was expecting to edit the video once me & dinah return to london on sunday but it was just too tempting, an itch i had to scratch, so i did a very straightforward edit and left it rendering, with dinah uploading it to dailymotion from my computer later on...

i'm sipping sherry and about to go to bed... enjoy, happy christmas...

Yr3wk28 moog, rhodes, voice
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

x

Yr3wk27 piano, guitar & 2 voices

Yr3wk27 piano, guitar & 2 voices
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

from thursday, my last day of work in 2008, also me & dinah's 3rd boobaversary,

playing with the wonderful gareth mitchell x

the beatles

i was in the post office today, queueing, and a post office employee came up to me to suggest i open a cash ISA...

i declined,

about 3 minutes later the man in front of me, scottish, smelling a little of alcohol & in his 60's, started talking to me about how they all want your money... how he's never trusted banks... how he's glad he's single and hasn't got a mortgage...

this carries on for awhile, until he's almost at the front of the queue, whereupon he says goodbye to me and wishes me a happy christmas...

after a short pause he turns back to me and turns back his coat to reveal a beatles badge on his jacket lapel...

"the beatles forever" he says... tells me he saw them perform in glasgow on the 3rd of december 1965, it was the opening gig of their last world tour, it cost him 50p, (10 bob) and he went with "a bird" called "nancy fairy", and as soon as the curtains started to open, as soon as that big ludwig bass drum came into view all the women started screaming and ran to the front of the crowd...

at this, he was called away to perform whatever task he needed to do in the post office x

Yr3wk26 hammond, bass & drums improvisation

Yr3wk26 hammond, bass & drums improvisation
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

nothing but improvisations huh?

no posts other than the weekly video for the last 3 weeks...

what's going on?

AND - i recently timed how long this blog takes to load and it's daft... 45 seconds or so...

i really need a bit of house keeping going on... i wander if it's slower now than before i shifted to blogger new way...?

this improvisation i recorded on wednesday night @ a recording for T's tunes x

Yr3wk25 just piano

Yr3wk25 just piano
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

recorded on saturday x

Yr3wk24 longcat with m

just to record waking up today...

dinah up and getting ready to leave @ 8:30am... she brings me a tea and wakes me with kisses at exactly the moment it's ready to drink...

then more kisses a little later just before she leaves...

drifting in and out of sleep now... balthazara wakes me up around 9:50am and we commune for awhile, i find something on the back of her neck, some thing like a tiny scab, just in that place where mum's pick up kittens, the place cats are programmed to accept...

so for awhile i'm stroking her trying to find this small patch of skin there and she's purring really loudly, she settles into the valley of the duvet between my spooning legs and my torso...

pretty much awake now my final alarm goes off @ 10:20am and i clamber out bed...

Yr3wk24 longcat with marco
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

this being sunday's improvisation, i'm going over to SLP in south london to meet uncle T and plan out tomorrow's recording shortly x

rendering

so at 3 pm i start rendering the improvisation,

this is yesterday and the improvisation was recorded the day before - sunday - with M on the bass...

uncle T is coming round later and i quickly realise that the render is going to take too long...

T due @ 7 and the render claiming to take 6 hours,

i can't run cubase whilst i'm rendering from vegas...

so i decide to set it up and render it on my old computer, a little slower but it can just be chugging along in the background while me & T work...

so i transfer over the 10 Gb reqcuired, then remember that i need to install these 2 things, then remember that the video from my new camera needs a different codec, than remember that the logo isn't in the folder for this week so i have to find it, then i have to get a new version of divx...

anyway, what with all this toing and froing i don't start rendering until 5pm...

i pop out to see floopy & T and then come back for uncle T, we don't use cubase in the end, just talking primarily about our recording on thursday night...

dinah gets home around 9, T goes by 11ish...

dinah is in bed by midnight, i stay up for another couple of hours...

the render over on the other computer is saying it needs 9 & a half hours, which means it's going to finish @ 2:30 am... almost 12 hours since i started it on the other computer...

i go to bed @ 2 having done some work on speak&spell which i'll tell you all about later...

the improvisation is now uploading x

Herbert Deutsch invocation

more on the moog,

it was designed after Bob Moog left the moog company in'77, designed by herbert deutsch who had worked with mr moog back in the 60's on the 1st moogs,

bob moog died recently, herbert deutsch is very much alive, he teaches for hofstra university, and i tracked down his email address...

i sent him a hello, with a link to last week's improvisation (featuring the moog),

i sent it on saturday and on monday he emailed back...

"thanks for the improv and the red wine. The opus sounds nice. might be a bit better shape than my old one. Keep up the improvs. I don't think they are "a little bit stupid".
Herb Deutsch"

in that improvisation i was sipping wine (rose as it goes) and midway through (around 10 minutes in i think) i accidentally stopped the recording with my foot, i fixed it but i was kind of muttering about being "a little bit stupid"...

this has kept me a little bit lifted off the ground for a couple of days...

not only did this man who designed my moog, reply to my email, but he watched the 20 minute improvisation as well...

x

other moog related news being that the string section, which it was sold to me as being not working, has life...

i've known of a kind of life it has for a week now but i found other life, in a different form, and it sounds fantastic...

this has just come through leaving the beast on all the time... it's gradually finding itself... i did open her up the other day and clean her a bit and that might have done something... who knows? anyway,

this happens when all the outputs are turned off, it shouldn't be making sound, but it's bleeding through, and it's exactly the sound i want to work, it's just not going through the right amplification bits...

when it works (which it will), there is a circuit which looks out for really high resonance and switches something off, to avoid distortion...

this ghost in the machine sound doesn't have the turning off circuit, so it distorts like nobody's business and this is how i found it...

yesterday i recorded a brief improvisation with the ghost sound, turned up a whole load... turned up some more once in the computer, running it through noise reduction twice to scare off the hiss that came with it...

i love it...

i think i'll put it on my myspace, but maybe the out there version of my myspace...

i'll let you know if it goes up, it's worth hearing at least once...

on listening to it it occurred to me that it was like an invocation...

i've called it invocation to a long dead god and i'm thinking of something like the god that the prehumans invoked, before homo-sapian, some early homo erectus...

maybe they could make a sound that pleased this god, or could call it... but with our evolution into homo-sapian out throats and mouths evolved to such an extent that we could no longer make the sound and the god fell away...

that's the god i'm invoking with this tune x

circuit boards

so i found a service manual for my moog on the net...

i've been playing around and trying to work out exactly what's wrong with it, then going to the "circuit description" which explains what goes where, then going to the functional block diagram which has a general pattern of all 3 circuit boards...

trying to work out exactly where the fault is...

and i think i'm narrowing it down...

of course once i've worked out a couple of likely suspects i'll need to get myself a multi-meter type fella and open her up... (again)

i opened her up a little on tuesday night, after i'd recorded the improvisation, but could see nothing obviously wrong... although to be fair i didn't see the top of the control circuit board, just the other 2, so there could be something visibly wrong with that once i get to see it...

the whole thing needs a clean anyway, lots of the switches are a little dicky, particularly the continuous ones...

it's very exciting...

x

Yr3wk23 moog, rhodes, voice

Yr3wk23 moog, rhodes, voice
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

recorded soon after midnight on tuesday night, but taking this long to get up there partly to give last weeks improvisation with jair-rohm a bit of time...

with the moog that i'd got earlier on that day...

a whole lot of spinning around going on x

Yr3wk22 rhodes, NORD synth & electric upright bass

Yr3wk22 rhodes, NORD synth & electric upright bass
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

recorded on saturday with JR on electric upright bass, the last we'll see of this particular NORD rack 1 synth,

but fear not the moog is here, i got it this afternoon, wearing my moog T-shirt, carrying the Can record that was part of the deal...

i popped in to marylebone station to see M (sister in law) who was in town, for the 1st time i heard her answer the phone as MK, that was kooky... she's looking very well...

i might do this weeks improvisation tonight, with the moog, floopy's camera is probably going to norway with floopy later this week so it'd be good to take advantage of it being here...

strange that i've been home for an hour or so and i still haven't played it...

x

without a synth

all those months ago, the NORD synth arrived from lovely st L...

and now, today, he came round to collect it,

yesterday i had D & JR round, JR playing bass on this weeks improvisation which is now rendering and which is the last improvisation to feature the NORD...

but all is not lost, because the moog will be with me on tuesday (i think), and thus my synth absence will come to an end...

last night i plugged my keyboard into the NORD, and the NORD into the korg D8, (which i used to records last week's improvisation)...

smoked one, and then set about recording the NORD...

dinah was asleep by now and i wanted to get some NORD recorded before it went...

it made me realise just how easy it is to work with the D8, i could roll up pretty much anywhere (with electricity) with my keyboard and the D8 and start recording...

it's a thought...

anyway, off up to D's to pick up my mic...

laters x

moog google mars

the moog is mine...

today i saw D and he agreed to the price,

i took in my keyboard case to see whether it would fit the moog and it did, it was really mental cycling in with it,

the moog is currently nestled in that case, waiting for me to come back next thursday to pick it up, whereupon i will be bearing the 1st instalment of money and the Can vinyl which is part of the deal...

i'm so excited, i might not be able to wait until thursday,

and google mars... found it this morning and i love it x

Yr3w21 hammond, piano & voice

Yr3w21 hammond, piano & voice
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

x

the other longcats

dinah has recently got hold of a G3 laptop, exactly the same era & style as her imac...

i was plugging the internet into it to make sure it all worked so i typed "longcat" into google...

i'm currently the 5th, 9th & 26th search results...

that's 2 on the 1st page... that's alright...

but just above me was a russian longcat over on livejournal who shares my birthyear...

4th to my 5th...

he intrigues me,

the 4chan longcat meme takes up practically everything else,

when i started being longcat i became aware of the 4chan longcat but didn't pay it much mind, every now and again a 4chan longcatter would turn up and question my existence, but in general i ignored them...

earlier this year there was a demonstration in blackfriars, ostensibly against the scientologists but i think it was more random than just that... a load of people in the guy fawkes masks that were used in the film V for vendetta...

there were a few longcat references floating about in that, this, this & this for example...

also tonight i've found a beautiful longcat image on deviantart:



by pseudo-manitou...

i wonder who came 1st? me or them? probably them, but then i've been longcat since... oh who knows? too late @ night x

barack the builder

can we fix it?

Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther could stand.
Martin Luther stood so Obama could run.
Obama ran so our children could fly.

Rosa Parks sat so Martin L King could walk...
Martin walked so Obama could run...
Obama ran so all children can fly!

2 slightly different texts from 2 different black women i know, both who have a child... Nippy 1st @ 9:44am, then Josiah @ 12:59pm,

watched his speech just now, and it was good, although the bob the builder motif was a little distracting,

and it's true that an awful lot of hope is generated by this election,

and it has already become that much easier to see grace, or R as prime minister (josiah's & nippy's children), just because of the colour of barack obama's skin,

a huge change even just for that reason,

but i'm cautious, i remember tony blair getting to power and the hope that that represented for change, hope that was dashed in the end...

what can one man do against the way the world is?

but don't get me wrong i'm full of hope.... it's a great day x

really going to bed now, honestly

obama sure to win now, apparently, 207, 141,

my bed calls x

still up

and i'm still here a couple of hours later, it is looking good for obama, so hard to go to bed...

175, 76,

that's what the BBC projects, ohio has been called for obama by fox news, but the BBC is more cautious, but the people in the washington BBC studio are talking as though with ohio goes mccain's last hope...

will i go to bed soon? or will i wait for the 270 mark?

x

obama please

palpable excitement about the US election for once...

probably going to bed soon, and i don't really know whether the results on the BBC's website are real or not,

projected... kentucky to mccain, vermont to obama, 8, 3,

this map gradually turning grey as polls close in the east of america... but it'll be 12 hours or so before any real news emerges and another 12 hours before it's sure...

that's what i gather...

popped round to see L today with the harmonium and got to show her & S my primordial palindrome film, S used to be a director for the BBC 20 odd years ago and he had a couple of interesting things to say... L also echoed what spski has always said about my films place being more in galleries than cinemas...

interesting improvisation with L which could turn long term...

going to wait for one more coloured state on the map before i go to bed i think x

Yr3wk20 rhodes & voice

Yr3wk20 rhodes & voice
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

from last night x

Primordial Palindrome

(this from youtube as dailymotion are being slow)

x

wrapped in a blanket with zombies

dinah is out with school friends digging the halloween pub vibe...

i've been finishing off an experimental film i started a couple of weeks ago which i'm really happy with...

in fact, here it is (if i can):

last night floopy was round and we smoked and played cards until quite late, as usual the smoke got my head rotating and i couldn't sleep, loads of ideas for the film, for today's lesson...

so in the end i got between 1 & 3 hours sleep, i taught well, but in a meeting afterwards i was pretty dead, bumped into lovely M on the way back, he teaches in an amazing building i've been watching being built on my way into work these last few months...

so all afternoon i was editing, titling,

then i watched sigar ros on virgin central, the last day to catch it as the month brings different free tv things,

at one point a brass band wanders through the concert, it was lovely and it made me cry, lack of sleep partly to do with that...

so earlier on, after dinah had left and my film was rendering, i found "dawn of the dead 78" in instalments on dailymotion, so i watched a few instalments, shifted over to the sofa for the last part of dead set which was daftly gory but still very good i thought... 00's zombies who can run...

now i'm back with the 70's zombies, waiting for dinah to come home and for my film to be embeddable...

x

slightly teo

Yr3wk19 hammond, bass & drums
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

slightly teo because for the 1st time ever in the weekly improvisation i took several bits and glued them together,

like teo macero used to do on miles davis's albums... also he died in february and it's nice to name check him...

this was recorded last thursday but it took until now to get it together... partly because i did a gig on saturday... with the spanner jazz punks... which was great, dinah came and she was invited onto the stage by the magician to great success...

we just had a skype conversation with spski... out there... but actually quite appropriate for him, we were visual but he wasn't...

and then telly...

on E4 every night this week they're showing a 5 part horror/big brother thing created by charlie brooker, he of biting tv review fame... and it's really great, instead of the credits at the end of each episode it just says deadsetcredits.com, it's outrageously cool, davina mccall is a zombie in it...

so that's great (dinah not so keen) and i'm also watching newsroom from the beginning of series 1, (always a good place to start), it's canadian, good so far x

home again

a little while ago, dinah changed the sheets on the bed as she does each week, and balthazara chose those freshly cleaned sheets on the bed to vomit on...

so she's been banned from the bedroom, except at night when we're in there...

and it's been breaking my heart...

that bedroom and that cat belong together...

then yesterday dinah agreed that if i was to deal with all aspects of a possible future balthazara vomit in the bedroom scenario then she could go back to unaccompanied access to the bedroom...

contented cat x

Yr3wk18 piano, voice, harmonium

Yr3wk18 piano, voice, harmonium
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

x

primordial soup

there was a drier in the bedroom, various bits of laundry, cushion covers, underwear, the like...

it's one of these standing up ones, that get thinner as you pull them out, the same kind of mechanism to those cartoon extend-a-hands...

anyway i woke up holding on to it, as if it were the answer... i think that if i'd put it down while i was still asleep it would have remained standing, but being as i woke up as i was holding it it all went wrong and i got back into bed with it lying awkwardly on the floor...

i've been reading a copy of scientific american that floopy & T found when they were moving and assumed it was mine (it wasn't, but it is now), and it's concerned with theories of the early universe...

the words primordial soup came up, and now i'm writing a tune based on a cycle of 5ths going up to exactly the point where another cycle of 4ths will bring it back down to the same place...

this on the rhodes, i'm going to add harmonium & voice later...

it's primordial, and currently quite soupy...

i've got a tin of lentil soup in the cupboard and you know what, i'm going to primordially eat/drink it...

x

dawn project

floopy was round last night, he of mental driving from london to oxford on friday night, oxford to liverpool saturday, liverpool to shrewsbury to london yesterday...

we played a bit of death match then some cards, smoked a bit...

he got in a cab around 4am and i was typically too mentally active to sleep, i played love is lies on later with jools holland (with horns) in my head, always a good creative space for arrangement/composition...

then i realised i wanted to see the world, check out the dawn project and the green man... sadly the sun was a bit misty when it finally got going this morning so not a perfect experiment... but great to be out there, i miss the dawn project, that time for myself in the disused railway, taking video of whatever i fancy...

i was cycling to work on thursday, along the canal and i didn't have a whole lot of time to get there but it was just such a killer day, how could i not stop and take pictures/video?

x

love was lies

i realise that i'm quite affected by the autumn, a mild depression has been around me for a week or so...

and then yesterday morning i suddenly wanted to sing "love is lies" the desperately sad song i wrote over 4 years ago about the situation between me & E, long since over and in fact i haven't set eyes on her for at least a year, if not 2 or 3 years now...

so i had that lovely thing happen where i can remember some of the music/lyrics and i sing what i know, then gradually the whole song comes out of my memory - bit by bit...

i've been singing it for two days and in fact i'm evolving the arrangement of it also, this is because i'm thinking of an album and i'm putting this song into the album - i think...

it's a good day to do it because i'm doing all kinds of crazy things inside my computer so it's good to leave it alone while it thinks...



i'm currently moving all of "berger" (all of my hard drives are named after writers) over to "cortazar", from one 500Gb drive to another 500Gb drive...

once this is done i'm going to convert "berger"'s file system from FAT32 to NTFS - this will mean i can have files that are over 4Gb, something that i tend to have these days what with videos floating about, until now i haven't been able to move such massive video files over to "berger" and i didn't know why...

i'm hoping that once "berger" is NTFS - as "cortazar" is - i'll be able to plug them both in through the eSATA PCI card that came with "berger", currently "cortazar" is not connected by eSATA - it's connected with USB2, which is much slower...

of course making "berger" NTFS might mean the eSATA PCI can't see it either which would mean i'd have to convert "cortazar" to FAT32 as well to make it work with the eSATA card, although eSATA PCI cards can't be too expensive, maybe i should just get another one...

anyway, techyness aside, the other news is that floopy & T have left their house over near seven sisters, they've got a place closer to us which becomes avilable in 3 weeks and in the mean time floopy has got himself a workspace up in enfield where all their stuff now is, cleo (hunka munka) has gone up to liverpool to be with dinah's sister F, T is going to spend the 3 weeks in wales and floopy will be sleeping over @ spski's probably, while working in enfield...

once they're in the new place floopy will continue working in enfield and there are even plans beyond the new place, but they're not certain...

i spent wednesday last week helping floopy move stuff up to enfield and spski did the same on thursday & friday...

it's a mental time and i'm almost jealous of the change - strange but there you have it...

jai shri krishna improvisations galore

Yr3wk17 rhodes & sax with Dan Spanner
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

well, it's been awhile seen i posted my improvisations, so these 3 videos are the last 3 week's improvisations, i was going to wait until dailymotion had sorted out them out but for some reason they haven't yet dealt with the 1st 2, but they sorted out the 3rd one (this week's),

probably because the following 2 are both over 20 minutes long, so maybe it's a different department who does them, i wonder if they will ever sort them out? anyway here they are:





i went into jai shri krishna yesterday, after having seen it existed when me & dinah were on the top deck of a bus going out for for a meal and drinks the night we'd been kissing for 3 years (also the day i did the 1st of these 3 improvisations - the one at the bottom)... it's in turnpike lane and it makes me so happy it's there, the original jai being just too far to get to from here...

the food was good, not exactly like jai's but close and fair enough, it's got to have it's own identity...

anyway, laters... x

no improvisation but science

it's been a funny week for the improvisations, very synthy...

last thursday i recorded last week's improvisation, i lost a day or so through that LAME mp3 mess that was inflicted on me, then then finally it was ready to upload on sunday, standard fair really, i've fallen into doing the improv on sunday fairly frequently recently...

the video was/is 24 minutes long, i uploaded it to dailymotion, who have a 20 minute limit, unless you specify that it's creative content, in which case someone has to check that it is, and then you can publish it...

well i didn't realise this at the time, i was just confused that i couldn't put it anywhere even though it was up there, also i'd uploaded it to googlevideo and they'd just lost it, it didn't show up anywhere in their system, so i thought, forget googlevideo, this is why i'm moving over to dailymotion anyway...

but after a few days of dailymotion not confirming my video (i think they take anything between 3 & 6 days - that's a guess), i decided to upload it again to googlevideo - who magically found the 1st one i uploaded, so that's now adorning my myspace and longcat.net, but i think i'll wait until the dailymotion one is done before i put it up here... dailymotion will be the better quality of the two...

so yesterday i did this week's improvisation, partly spurred on by the thought of losing the NORD synth, and partly consciously doing it early in the week to give dailymotion more time to sort themselves out so i can publish it by sunday,

and this one (rendering now) is 22 minutes long, over the dailymotion limit so the same thing will happen with this...

i'll start uploading it tonight and dailymotion will hopefully get it through before sunday...

in general, what with my working week being so empty at the start of the week it does make sense to do it this way,

the new...

rehearsed again with spanner jazz punks last night, it could well be great with them... gigging in some kind of circus cabaret with them on the 25th of october

x

inspiration

i didn't notice back in february but teo died,

he of in a silent way, bitches brew fame...

only fairly recently did i discover that both these wonderful miles davis albums had been made by Teo Macero stitching together 50 minutes / 100 minutes from all kinds of hours of miles davis taping everything...

i've been listening to some herbie hancock 70's albums after talking about them in last week's spanner jazz punks rehearsal, also a couple of talk talk albums that yimkin put me onto, their last 2,

then i was reading about in a silent way and i found out teo was gone so i find a teo interview... he raves about all these crazy audio machines he had the technicians @ columbia make for him, this being the 50's and 60's and they didn't have what we have now...

he describes putting "he loved him madly" (a miles tune on get up with it for duke ellington, who died in 1974 when the album was made) through one such machine and suddenly it sounded like it was duke ellington's band, and teo mixed duke ellington so he should know...

in the meantime i've got hold of chillout by the KLF, probably because bill drumond came to a bookshop in woodgreen last week, although i couldn't go because of said SJP rehearsal...

this 1991 album strangely intertwined in my head with the talk talk stuff, different worlds, but overlapping none-the-less...

then in another moment i read that spirit of eden (the 1st of the last 2 talk talk albums - 1988) is partly inspired by the miles tune - he loved him madly...

linking in these worlds as well...

i don't have he loved him madly in digital form, but i've got it on vinyl and i listened to it this afternoon with a crafty smoke, and it is heaven on a stick...

listening to it made me want to plug the NORD (which is leaving me sometime soon, back to it's original owner, lack of funds) into the effect loop of the rhodes to take advantage of the vibrato...

so i did and i've been making some great music with it x

rendering

leaving aside the fact that this week's improvisation took 30 hours to render (because of foolishness), in a normal week, with this new way of working with dailymotion,

let's say 9 hours of rendering, plus 2 hours of uploading...

set against 3 hours rendering and about an hour's uploading...

that's quite a bit of extra time, every week,

when i 1st started making video's i was rendering bits of video which took 30 minutes or so, sometimes as much as an hour and i was surprised... i had my rhodes right there by the computer and in the period i wrote a number of different chord sequences, 2 of which became songs for my dinah (the neurotic love song, long may this be true)...

over time i got used to the amount of time video took to render, it became less special, the time flew by and i didn't necessarily do anything productive like writing chords...

but this new paradigm, it's such a leap in terms of time, i'm really noticing it and it's like a gift of time, time i can't spend in front of this computer....

i'm reading more,

harmonic experience is looking at me with a suggestive tilt... motioning (or implying motion) towards the harmonium...

i have an album to write now, i don't know if i've mentioned it, but i think i want to do an album, songs from the past few years, including pre-dinah tunes like:

love is lies,
harbour walls,
on my mind,

and then dinah's:

long may this be true,
the neurotic love song,
stardust,
it ain't gonna stop,

the stranger tune...

when i wake up? - maybe,

and then who knows how many other tunes i have yet to write...

also, while i've got this small work life i want to take advantage of the freedom,

time...

PS - i didn't get out of bed before 11:30, the dawn project part 2 will have to wait a little longer x

dawn project part 2

so, i know it sounds unlikely, but i think i'm getting up very early tomorrow to check out the dawn project part 2...

when i do it it will only take half a day, from 8am ish to around 1 pm...

i want one of these amazing days like we've had for the last few...

my moog improvisation is still rendering, it's rendered twice already, i downloaded some software for an obscure purpose and it messed up my rendering, even though it wasn't involved in said rendering at all, it messed it up,

and i didn't work it out until after i'd rendered it twice, 10 hours each time,

i'm fairly sure i've fixed the problem, the piece of software was a demo and it said it would only work for a few minutes until i registered it,

well what they didn't say was that they would also make someone else's codec (which is free, and which i was using already) not work for more than a few minutes...

the LAME mp3 codec that i use with virtualdub to achieve nice high bitrates for mp3 audio, this retard piece of software made this not work after a couple of minutes of audio...

this is what i think happened... tomorrow i'll wake up and before i go and investigate the dawn project part 2 & i will see whether this last render has worked or not...

i uninstalled the troublesome program, reinstalled all my codecs...

fingers crossed...

x

waking up (or not)

so i slept through my alarms yesterday, i've got this groovy little 2 day work pattern for the minute that starts on a thursday and ends this afternoon and from monday to wednesday i was kind of sick, eating jai krishna food 2 nights in a row...

spent wednesday in my pajamas not leaving the house,

so i woke up with no time at all to spare and not showering would have got me to work faster, but i hadn't washed in two days and for two nights running i'd deliberately sweated a lot to get this cold thing out of me..

if ever i needed a shower...

i got to work ok, and clean... did my 1st proper sessions over @ hammersmithwork which was less trying i think than previous years, although it still can get trying before it gets easier if it wants to...

i improvised on my own afterwards on D's moog which he offered to sell me for a very reasonable price... not a price i can afford on two days work a week but at some point in the future that baby is mine... there's a certain record by can that i possess that D wants and that's going to have to be part of the deal...

and here i am,

dinah woke me with a tea, thankfully, didn't have to rely on the alarms although i think i would have done it ok today... she's now gone off to work and i don't leave the house for an hour... it feels really wierd, bright sunlight, time to spare...

my main computer is currently rendering the improvisation, 24 minutes of it, dailymotion have persuaded me to try it at a higher bitrate so it's slower again than the previous two hugely slow renders... i set it going before i went to bed @ around 1:30am and it's due to finish around noon...

i wonder if this push for better quality video will mean people with slower machines won't be able to see it right? and in that setting does the sound come through ok, i think it does... and the sound is the main thing... anyway, tea... breakfast...

x

it's in my nose

i took the precaution of popping down to jai krishna's with my keyboard on my back last early evening and i think their wonderful food moved it along...

it had been in my throat for a few days,

it made me about 10 minutes late for my 1st rehearsal with spanner jazz punks, an 8 piece band run by D spanner, 5 horns up front and keys, bass, drums behind...

the tenor player was missing, and of the remaining 7, 2 of them were me & D,

leaving 5 new to me, of which i already knew 2...

one of whom was sox, he of leaving CM fame, for awhile he's been the longest surviving old school Cmer, but with him gone the mantle falls to me now... strange title...

i now D and him go back quite away so it wasn't much of a leap...

but the other one i know used to be in my blues workshop many, many years ago...

it was my 1st ever teaching job and i did it for maybe 3/4 years... around the time i was still in hotel full of cops... he played cornet in that band, but he's a trombone player now... strangely similar facial hair to me, although his moustache keeps going when it reaches the chin and goes in opposite directions to the ears...

i've found a new provider for my internet video hosting...

a french group called dailymotion who've been around apparently since before youtube...

they offer better definition than either youtube or googlevideo and although i like the idea of keeping all the improvisations in one place, googlevideo have been getting worse over the last few months in terms of bugs and irritating things...

so here's the LHC from a couple of weeks back in the new place:

Longcat Hadron Collider
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

in particular i like how the longcat icon is better defined in this version, the sound might be better too...

i'm going to have a period of uploading to both while i check out how dailymotion do it, but i think this is where i'm heading x

yr3wk14 rhodes & hammond drawbars

with spski on the drawbars x

glass books god daughter

rather typically i arrived at victoria with only moments to spare and as i was buying a ticket i could see my train pulling away,

meaning that i had 30 minutes to wait so i locked up the bike and went into smiths to get grace a book...

roald dahl compendium... too small writing it turned out, me forever thinking she's older/cleverer than she is...

got onto the train about 10 minutes before it was due to go and got out the glass books of the dream eaters which i've borrowed from floopy and is to be honest even more addictive than half-life 2 was last week...

pleasingly the main character of the 1st chapter got onto a train and just as my own train started moving, so did hers... i found myself looking around me to compare her surroundings to mine but there was no comparison... i did however really enjoy looking out of the window, at the sunlight on the grand buildings around victoria, very much bringing to mind half-life 2 somehow...

i found myself thinking how good it all looked - a moment away from thinking how realistic it all looked,

this reality sure is realistic...

anyway the train pulled into brighton eventually and i cycled along the undercliff path to the beach where it was going on... the only really out of towner this time...

fellow godparent S, josiah of course, her M, S's R, (& H, O, D) H 13 now and asking if he could ride my bike... of course i let him...

josiah's friend P and her R & C...

lovely time... much red wine drunk...

watching the sun set into the sea...

grace wonderful, couldn't quite believe that she's 5 now...

then back to josiah & grace's and some time more or less with grace, R & C... at one point walking around josiah's living room with all three of them dangling from me... so glad grace is in my life and very happy she's so accepting of me even though i only see her about once a year these days...

photo meme

take a picture of yourself right now.
don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture.
post that picture with NO editing.
post these instructions with your picture.

techy

windows xp service pack 3,

arrived this week, and disabled the bottom part of my screen for a few bootups...

this time it's ok but i really hope it's not an intermittent problem, my old computer used to have it and it drove me balmy...

the next time the problem comes back i'm getting rid of sp3, a whole lot of people on the web saying they have problems...

in other techy news i finished half life 2 last night... great game, great story...

good to have it gone though, all together too compulsive...

and finally i'd like to morn the demise of smartftp, free version,

this week they upped sticks and moved to the pay only way and i'm afraid that means i'm parting company with them,

not to worry, filezilla comes running into the fray, a new face (for me), i'm just marking this transition, one gets used to seeing things a certain way when one does a series of actions every single week...

ok another techy thing, i'm thinking of changing the way i do the rendering for the improvisation, it's been a certain way for years, video & audio, wmv & wma, which i learnt from someone as a way to get good clear images on youtube, googlevideo converts it into divx with mp3 audio, so i'm tempted to start delivering divx with mp3 audio straight to googlevideo...

but vegas won't deliver that, at least not with high enough mp3 rates, (56Kbit/sec), so i've found a great program that will make vegas think it's rendering uncompressed video/audio, but is actually freezing time (quite matrix) and delivering the video - frame by frame to whatever other program you wish,

so i'm going from vegas, through frameserver, into virtualdub...

i haven't yet found the best results but i'm heading in the right direction...

x

longcat hadron collider

it always feels strange when i haven't blogged in between 2 weekly improvisations,

it was such a mental week last week, including this improvisation, that i simply haven't had the time...

of course part of that mental has been me playing half life 2 which is entirely self inflicted nonsense and indeed did delay the video editing for this improvisation by a few days...

the video editing which took me much longer than usual, partly because of the 4 camera's, partly because of the projector that we forgot to turn off which was projecting the windows xp logo all over the place which i decided to replace with a kaleidoscope wherever i could, and partly for the mad sequence @ about 2:50 minutes...

and if you're in the habit of not watching my improvisations then - shame on you - but apart from that, it's worth checking out at least up to about 4 minutes, even if you don't catch the whole 20 minutes...

it happened on wednesday as promised, the same day the LHC turned on over in switzerland, and of course it's all died down now but around wednesday there were all kinds of news buzz type things going on around it - around the large hadron collider rather than the longcat hadron collider which is what you see below this...

i also had an audition which i'm assuming i didn't get... geek chic jazz trio, met a great double bass player through it though...

anyway i must to bed, just wanted to get some words in there to balance the video's...

at least to 4 minutes if you will ladies and gentlemen:

yr3wk12 rhodes & voice

x

Rachel

felinity came round last night to share the Big Brother final with us...

and frankly it was a shock all the way through...

at the start of the evening i had reluctantly accepted than Rex would probably win...

but the 1st one to leave out of the 5 was Darnell...?

which threw us right out of our expectations... he gave a good interview... i always liked him, he could be way too mean and mixed up at times but he was for me the most honest...

then Rex left after him and it was all too much... we realised that things weren't at all like we thought they were and we dared to believe that Rachel might win...

Rachel who had been nice and lovely all the way through,

Sara was out next...

she shouldn't have been in the final anyway in my book,

and then it was just Mikey and Rachel left...

either of them would have been a good winner but we wanted Rachel even as we thought it would be Mikey...

the look on Rachel's face as the winner was announced was just so shocked... the look on Luke's bitter and mean face later was very pleasing indeed.... we felt like good had triumphed over evil and we yelled with pleasure...

i'm glad it's over, and i'm glad sweet, nice, welsh Rachel won...

lovely to share it with felinity..

goodbye BB9 x

the wire & strangers

so finally it ends, dinah away for the night at floopy's feeding their cat and giving her some love... so i choose to watch the last two episodes of season 5 of the wire...

knowing that it's the last series and there is no more...

it was may when i started watching it, virgin central gave me the 1st episode and i did what i do to get the rest of the 1st season...

then the 2nd season, then the 3rd, the 4th...

and now i'm genuinely sad that it's left my life... such great characters and such a ring of truth to it... truth in a TV way, like i know anything about baltimore police, but it rang true...

anyway, i still want to do the longcat hadron collider next wednesday, i have a few possible believers... i hung out with yimkin today and i look forward to doing more music with the man,

but a story... this concerns my trip into the world on monday, searching for video to my hammond organ thing... i see a man sat on a bench by a bit of grassland... near the reservoirs... and he speaks to me - or rather him being there speaks to me, and late on monday night i realise he could represent another verse in the stranger song...

i don't believe i've mentioned the subject before but it's about a stranger, well several strangers... and somehow after seeing this man (who i also video'd, asking his permission to use it afterwards) another verse and a bit started to work out for me in a way that i love, as though the truth of the situation i'm writing about, or maybe my position within it is becoming clear because of a mad creative journey i went on to do with a different piece of music...

anyway, on tuesday i realised i had to go back to that place near the reservoirs, listening to the instrumental, to write the lyrics... so off i pop, it takes me just over 15 minutes to cycle there, i stay there for awhile writing, it gently starts to work...

i decide to check out closer to the reservoir and the river lee and i get a puncture, and me with no stuff (pump, tire levers, puncture repair kit) so i have to flag down passing cyclists, of which there are many, it being round about rush hour by now and the river lee being quite the bicycle highway...

i get about 5 no's before i get a yes, a nice australian man who works in industrial design, and not only does he have all the necessary stuff but he sets about fixing the puncture for me as well...

so now i have another stranger... another verse if i want it, or maybe a middle 8...

like many things in life, you start looking for something and suddenly you've got too many of them...

longcat hadron collider

as well as my weekly improvisation this weekend, i also recorded another hammond organ improvisation, 15 minutes and i'm kind of addicted to it...

it has something of the interplanetary to it... i think...

so today i went out on my bike with it in my ears and took all kinds of bits of video and pictures (some panoramic) which it's my intention to string together with the music into a film...

in other news, the large hadron collider is due to turn on next wednesday and to mark the occasion i'm considering doing an improvisation with more than the average players and calling it the longcat hadron collider... it'll be yr3wk13..

more on that as it takes shape...

x

yr3wk11 hammond organ improvisation

bites

woke up kind of blue and at some point in the day balthazara came to see me and we had a love-in, always just the ticket...

a little later than this i was lying on the bed with my hand outstretched, reading the new scientist, balthazara was near my hand...

she was in a slightly different mood from the lovely, purring, stroking balthazara, for a little while she was lying half on and half off my hand and she took to licking my hand, then her own fur, then my hand,

i knew what was coming, i smooshed her, (dinah's word) meaning i touched her belly, and she continued to lick me, but suddenly her back legs kicked in and she was kicking at my hand, then biting my hand, then biting and kicking at once, i left the hand there and we did this a few times, drifting from one state to the other...

she bit really hard, not breaking the skin (that fleshy part of the hand between the thumb and the wrist) but stinging quite a bit...

i love that cat x

persepolis... & beyond

i forgot to eat breakfast,

ran out the house down to the prince charles cinema to see persepolis which was wonderful, if a touch too long...

during the film i found some chocolate in my bag from the night before... strange breakfast...

then afterwards i got on the bike and rolled gently downhill to the river, crossing the (non) jubilee bridge, (it doesn't make me cross anymore but i mutter to myself as i cross it these days), then up by the south bank, delighted to see the water sculpture back again (appearing rooms), although the day yesterday was a bit grey for it...



up past the Hayward and through that little passage underneath waterloo bridge, down some stairs and then the booksellers under the bridge...

i found my chess opponent and defeated him a couple of times... eating a few nuts he had,

then continuing along the river, past a crowd of people looking down onto the beach where no doubt someone was sculpting sand, all the way to the tate modern so i could check how long the cy twombly exhibition was on for (until 14th september)...

then over the (non) wobbly bridge,

all this in the way that i used to love doing, still love but somehow i don't have occasion to do it so much anymore, probably since CM moved east and further away from the river, drifting on my bike amongst the bank holiday crowds, (those who weren't carnivaling)... slowing for knots in the people, speeding up when there was the room for it, only having to put my foot down once from waterloo bridge to the tate, slowing to walking pace when necessary...

all the while listening to music, mostly the instrumental version of the song i'm working on at the moment, although the lyrics have slowed to a trickle again for now,

so over the (non) wobbly bridge i go, up toward st pauls, round the side, eventually finding my way onto high holborn, by which time i know exactly where i'm going,

to that church where i lost that piano all those years ago,

and they've got a new grand piano, not brand spanking new but newer than the (lovable) wreck they used to have... it's rolled into a niche so you can't get at the keys easily, but i played a few notes at the top of the keyboard and i'm considering how to get a gig in there...

on leaving there i headed straight up to floopy's and by this time, all that cycling, so little food, i was in quite a strange state... floopy insisted i ate a cheese sandwich and i just about made it home, slumped out in front of an episode of the wire, the last series now showing in my computer, being as i looked and it seems we don't have FX... i though we did, but we don't x

a cautionary tale

this is kind of a continuation of last mondays post... money woes, but hopefully brief and not too glum...

so on monday i thought i could just go to the post office and get money out from my savings account...

this is not true...

then all this week i've been waiting for the savings people to send me a "crossed warrant" which behaves like a check, and i've been convinced that such a thing will clear straight away...

this is not true...

it arrived this morning and i raced over to the bank and paid it in, hoping to be told it had cleared already and i could start getting money again...

the cashier told me it would clear by next saturday... it took me an hour or so to believe her... kind of like that time i arrived for my flight just minutes after the cutoff point and i wouldn't believe that i couldn't just get on the flight...

a little bit like those chickens you hear about who carry on running around when their head has been cut off...

in the airport i refused to believe the truth and it took a concerted effort on the part of the person telling me the truth before i finally accepted it...

today in the bank the cashier was very busy so i raced home in a grump... rang up the bank to be told that neither the person i was speaking to, nor indeed her manager, had ever heard of a crossed warrant... they said go back to the branch...

so i raced back, arrived at the bank but realised i'd left my keys at home and so could not lock my bike up, so i cycled home... got keys... arrived at the bank for the third time, was just about to lock up my bike when dinah rang and told me she'd rang the savings people and they'd confirmed that a crossed warrant still has to clear like an ordinary check...

my lifeless chicken body slumped to the ground...

the world is a bleaker place now that i know the truth...

i'm sure it won't stay bleak for long but bleak it is x

oh and i said it wouldn't be glum... sorry x

yr3wk10 piano & hammond

i look slightly lost in this one, don't know why...

my solution to our financial nothingness was going to arrive today and it hasn't...

the bank holiday looms without funds...

ho hum x

gigged

so my new box has lost it's gig virginity,

went over to hammersmithwork to see G and we ran through the set, me teaching him 2 of mine and him teching me 2 of his...

one of mine being brand new and beautiful... (i think)...

a whole heap of acoustic guitars and vocals on the night, plus us, doing our strangely terrifying thing, a great little band called the mayfly trio, got chatting to them and found them somewhat similar to semble, that great and beautiful now defunk 3 piece from kingston... the mayfly fol not similar musically, but socially i think...

lovely D from hammersmithwork came with his S, along with JTJP... nice to be supported, and to meet S after hearing about her so much from D...

and now i'm simply knackered, still with no money but we do have gas now...

x

yr3wk9 beatnik trio & gig news

and i'm playing a gig @ the cobden club on wednesday, wednesday the 20th of august, going to be me & gareth mitchell, he of the many improvisations he's done with me...

still in a gasless universe over here so we popped over to floopy's to cook & bathe, play chess, cards, smoke, listen to tunes,

an idea for a song came to me while shaving... might come out on wednesday night...

x

money, or lack of it

so we reached one of our "we have no money" moments last night, but dinah had just been to the shops & i knew i was being paid today so it's alright.. scary but ok...

now this money i'm being paid today is from last month when i didn't work, so it's just fictional money, money the tax office thinks i should get back, which is fine because lloyds bank took a big old chunk of my very little money last week in charges, pushing me into my non-existent overdraft and setting me up for more charges next month...

so i knew the money coming in today would get me back into the black and then i was going to go and get some money from my savings account to put into the lloyds account ready for my loan repayment tomorrow...

a few weeks back N-power decided to put our gas on one of those card things, subject to running out in the middle of the night and when we put £10 on it only £3 makes it into our gas supply, some goes as payment for letting it go into emergency and some for the debt which N-power thinks we owe them, which is largely the previous tenants debt...

i mention this because i woke up today to the gas having run out again... still with no money, so i check online to make sure i was paid and by some perverse set of circumstances my orange mobile phone bill has taken up all the spare money from my paycheck that wasn't paying off the overdraft...

so i have no available money until i get the money from the savings account...

so i start to cycle off and get that money, but i remember midway there that i need my passport for proof of meness and i start back again...

and that's where i am now, no hot water, no money, searching around my room for this passport which is nowhere to be found...

but it will be found and all this will be dealt with, my loan repayment will go off fine tomorrow, i'll put money on the gas i'll shower,

just an extreme moment in amongst all this summer drought situation that is worth noting so i can laugh about it in a few months time when i'm swimming in money x

the right place at the right time

finally met the woman who moved in to the house when we moved out...

she works for the organisation which put on my week's work this week, along with CM,

she told me she liked the tune that i worked on with 4 very talented young men, part of the work,

my part in it very much being in the right place at the right time, very easy working with talented people sometimes,

and the improvisation on wednesday was also very right in my mind, even though it was somewhat strange for dinah, the video almost done, just need to go over it once more,

a real leap into the dark for me, never having heard these players before, but going on D & N's recommendation, lovely people and lovely players,

also met a young me this week, black and church going, like so many great musicians, i showed him a few things and he picked them right up, one day he was looking at my fingers in awe and the next he was doing it himself...

i hope i'll get to carry on teaching him...

so the week's work was hard but great, very good feeling about it, good to work with the 2 teachers i was with...

and naturally floopy came round for shabbat and we drank and smoked, laughed a great deal, played cards, saw the kills & the fratellis on live from abbey road,

and like often when i've been smoking and i'm inspired i can't sleep, and i'm sat here at 6 in the morning, having got up around 22 hours ago...

but no work next week so in one way it doesn't matter, just don't want to drift too far from my love, she was just as decadent tonight but she's been asleep for a couple of hours and she's still working next week...

oh and i almost forgot, it arrived, almost 5 months later it's here and it's beautiful, next week's improv for sure will be on it...

x

yr3wk9 in progress

it was nuts... and lovely...

30 minutes long,

i've got to go to bed but, numbers:

30 to 35 minutes long,

mp3: 27.7Mb
old camera: 46.7Mb
new camera: 3.63Gb
sony floopy camera: 7.16Gb

x

notions

a few different notions floating around my head today...

i have thus far made the magnificent longcat logo that floopy made for me into a 3d shape in blender...

and what i want to do, is to make an animation/film, in which the camera floats around the 3D logo before plunging into one of the eyes, coming to rest, then a hatch opens in the side of the passageway and i beckon the camera into the hatch, the room beyond is my room with my rhodes, piano and such...

although it might be better if balthazara was the one popping out of the hatch...

and actually, i went round to see john sinclair yseterday, his computer is being odd and i picked it up and took it to floopy who had a look at it...

the house john was in is up in woodgreen - 5 minutes away on my bike - it's the home of D, who i really hope to get in an improvisation one day soon, also his two kids stay there with him half the time, it's the london home of john and it's soon to be headpress's office, headpress under whose name i bought my hammond organ, but who are a book publishers...

D took me up to the roof room and there's a lovely view south, in the direction of this flat, and if i took a picture of that view, put the longcat 3D logo in amongst it somehow...?

so, on to the techy side of it and all those who wish to not be geeky turn away now please...

so, a little internet research showed me how to easily export from google sketchup into blender, so i can make things in sketchup which i find quite easy, such as buildings... simple buildings of course, nothing too fancy at this stage,

maybe the view from D's house is cut out as a bezier curve, imported into blender, the bezier curve becomes a mesh and it's extruded, exactly how i did the longcat logo,

the picture itself then put on the front of the shape, (something i haven't yet done but it shouldn't be too hard?)

and now i think about it, i could cut out a few different shapes from the picture, several different horizons, then create a kind of staircase effect, looking straight at it it would look like the picture, but as you travelled over it, different parts of it would become visible...

hmmm, makes me want to go over there right now and take a picture...

anyway, a combination of this and sketchup versions of some kind of town in front and behind the longcat logo would be nice...

then flying around the logo is done in blender although i don't yet know how to do it,

then the chroma keying, green screen as it used to be, get a solid sheet and colour it accordingly, (whichever colour is least in either me or balthazara), put a hatch into the sheet, put the sheet at the right angle, camera on the other side, video me opening the hatching and beckoning,

i also thought about using the colour black as the chroma key colour, putting the camera in the loft in compete darkness, pointing at the hatch, then i open the hatch and appear.. easier... i might try it...?

anyway, having exported the blender movie into vegas, chroma key, or maybe just use the bezier mask to cut out the right shape, but it moves of course... hmmm...

so techy thoughts over...

that's what's swimming around my head at the moment,

we watched the first episode of GBH just now and i have the rest waiting for us, although each episode is over an hour and i'm not convinced dinah is really up for it... we'll see...

x

yr3wk8 hammond guitar drums foolish story

the fruits of thursdays trip over to hammersmithwork...

i so love this hammond organ, not to mention these 2 musicians,

so, how much to tell?

i've got another piece of musicalness arriving next week i'm fairly sure...

they contacted me this week, the pre-story being that i'd ordered and paid for this item back in march, it should have arrived in a week...

many times since then they've said, oh no, can't get it to you when we said, it'll be this other date now... each time i thought, well - at least i've paid for it,

many events, the 1st of which was the recording i did @ the townhouse, the last of which was the gig last friday @ the clapham grand, "oh well, at least it'll be here for... (insert name of any number of events).."

so i get a phonecall... "we're having a bit of trouble with your credit card"

but i paid for it back in march,

"no, that's not how we do it, you pay for it when it's here with us, it's ready to be shipped now, it's sitting on my desk, so if you can just sort out the money?"

thinking back i do remember being pleasantly surprised how much money i still had after paying for this thing...

now... it may not come as a surprise to many of you that even though i could afford this thing back in march, i certainly can't afford it now...

i didn't say this exactly to the man from germany but i think he got the message...

"3 days to come up with the money or your piano module is sleeping with the fishes"

i panic, i phone N, he of john sinclair managing fame, he saves the day, super hero that he is... swinging in with his cape flying behind him...

i'm going to train him how to make radio programs on his computer, he's paying for the thing, i'll work it off or pay back the remainder...

worked out nicely in the end x

gbh andrew harvey dark night

me & dinah, with T & floopy, went over to the muswell hill odeon tonight to see the dark night...

it was very episodic, i was quite taken with it in places, for awhile i was sat there thinking - oh yeah, posthumous oscar - just because he died... la la la...

but heath ledger is very good in it, the joker is by far and away the best character,

it's not good all the way through and jonesy from carnivale was pretty ropey as the DEA,

nothing like as good as the wire - nearing the end of season 4 as i am and it remains fabulous...

or indeed G.B.H. which i haven't seen since the early 90's when it was on the telly, (and which could therefore be nothing like as good as i remember it, but it has a good chance of still being excellent), virgin central are giving me the 1st episode of 7, just like they did with the wire a few months back, and i'm doing exactly the same thing...

thankyou the world for this great telly you give me...

tonight we fell into watching a very interesting but fairly badly made docu about a 14th century or thereabouts arabic traveller, a little spoilt by the presenter but beautifully shot and a great story to tell.. one shot reminded me of the cover to a book i loved back when i was 19/20/21 around the time i saw G.B.H for the 1st time, very happy to have found it still in my possession, i might read it next, having finished the 1st century after beatrice , which i wasn't right for this time around, but which is great,

so much rereading and watching things for the 2nd time... now i've gone past 35, into the downward slope of the 2nd half my life...

the book is called a journey in ladakh by andrew harvey and i probably read about it in the guardian...

oh the london review of books, i must get that back in my life...

yr3wk7 rhodes improvisation

recorded this afternoon, before i came down to blewbury where i am now x

gig tonight

ok pop pickers...

i'm about to go to the sound check, we rehearsed last night with half the string section...

i'm getting excited...

see you there?

x

(clapham grand tonight on stage @ 10, the Tony Cannam Set)

x

dawn shenanigans

so i was up last night blogging away, my head in the clouds, i look out of the window and i see this sky...

so how could i not go and check out the dawn..?

all manner of video's coming out of that little trip, but for now just these pictures and my cycling extravaganza...





x

hope?

watched a bergman film called wild strawberries on film four, very good, rich... close to an edge...



my first bergman,

also had a random cycle trip, going over to leytonstone to practise vocals with T & S, for friday's gig, sounded great, it's going to be fantastic on friday...

so i cycle to the station in 10 minutes, just in time for a train that would take me 5 minutes from S's house...

but the train doesn't come, a man with a megaphone tells us the train will only go as far as the next stop... there's been a fire... i get talking to an older guy who runs a computer shop and lives near the next stop...

i have no map with me but i'm already late, (S is also late, she works on this same line)

so i start cycling, get to the river lee and cycle down to springfield park, then over that bridge and along through that mad bit of walthamstow marshes, by the reservoirs...

all this i know the way, but once in walthamstow i have only a vague notion of how to get there... so i cycle onwards in that same direction for a bit, roughly the right amount i think... stop and ask directions and get a few different opinions, but im not very clear about the address of where i'm going...

i'm travelling by a piece of partially wooded srcubland, along a road with town on one side and scrubland on the other and S lives on such a road, and i'm near enough now and really expect her house to just appear but strangely it doesn't...

i talk to T & S and S directs me in... i've been on a massive circle...

anyway... we rehearse, we're great, it's too late for the train back but having done it once without knowing where i was going, i'm happy to cycle home, i travel up to walthamstow and cut across the same path by the reservoirs through the north bit of walthamstow marshes... now dark and a stretch of it with no lights at all, i turn off my bicycle lights and let my eyes get used to the limited light around and it's beautiful...

such a lovely day and then night to be out cycling...

ah and the hope...

this being a combined hope for the world a few months from now when , (as seems likely) both Barack Obama and Tzipi Livni will be head of their respective powers...

now as to whether either of these individuals are worthy of the hope, or rather, whether any individual can make a difference in this very corporate of worlds who can say?

but tonight, i have hope...

x