new years eve

ok so its new years eve... i'm going to spend it with my girlfriend shortly...

i do hope those of you who read this (if there are any of you left, i know i haven't been a very good blogger recently) have a lovely new year and can be proud of what you did in 2009 and look forward to the good you are going to do in 2010...

x

Burning Sand 2

well, well, well...

i downloaded a falling sand game from the internet...

it's called Burning Sand 2...

and i'm loving it...

x

all the fleas are dead

(all the fleas are dead)

and the sky is grey (and the sky is grey)

at least I hope they are... it's been very cold, & they can't be living on balthazara..

both my computers continue to be dead & I managed to upgrade the firmware in this here phone the other day, so I'm going through a hero renaissance...

it's my email, my internet... my phonecalls... my texts...

it's everything right now...

I'm blogging on it from bed in a slightly insomniac way...

loving certain apps... (full list to follow)...

loving the whole HTC hero experience...

ok, sleep... x

deflea

I de-flea'd balthazara this afternoon...

about half an hour later she'd forgiven me & came to see me where I was fiddling around with both my computers, both dead as you like...

tomorrow morning I may forgo cycling, there's a risk of ice...

I just finished Palestine by Joe Sacco, a non-fiction comicbook about the writer's time in Palestine at the time of the 1st intifada... very good, moving account... I wonder how things have changed for the Palestinians in the book in the 17 years since that visit...

quite possibly things have got worse for them...

emivore leant me the book... that being the longcat blog name of the woman I'm sharing my nights with...

my girlfriend... E as was...

ok, not much more in me... I hope I have the strength not to watch flashforward later...

in fact the best thing to do would be to go out to the spanner bigband gig @ the cross kings... but I don't know of I have the energy...

x

last spanner gig of the year

floopy was there, resplendent in purple top hat & coat, videoing the whole thing,

dinah of course, lovely,

it was a private party, we were great, i think,

afterwards i got the bus up to east finchley where i am now, blogging from E's bed while she meditates, just listened to boychild by scott walker...

the spanners are concentrating on recording in the near future...

ok, that's all i've got x

back, but sick - a chapter ends

ok...

so it's been awhile since i last posted...

i'm currently coasting over the top of an illness, E had it, i now have it...

did i tell you about E?

well, she's mine, we're together these days...

i know that we're gonna be together you & me,
for more than a rhyme or two you're time belongs to me...

as john martyn says it...

my more recent computer has died, it's the on switch, it's gone, i'm going to have to open her up and look inside and trigger the on in a different way i suppose...

so i'm back to this computer, which has spent a month of so under my dining table...

it was busy downloading something and must have been writing to the disk at the moment when there was a power cut...

so that drive is dead, i'm running this from my dual-boot ubuntu...

the 1st time i've tried it since that day (at least a month, maybe 2... 3?)

i twitter these days, i can be found here: http://twitter.com/robbielongcat

i can tweet from my phone, for that matter i can blog from my phone also.. my phone which only came with one lead, USB to it... that one lead which you need to connect the charger to the phone and which you need to connect the phone to a computer...

great, only one crucial lead, and i've lost that lead... so my phone gradually dying until i can get another lead (or find that one - i was connecting the phone to E's computer on sunday and when i got home i didn't have the lead...)

sunday, yes sunday,

so if you look at my twitter page you'll see the 2nd last, (at the moment of writing) tweet being about eating lamb... in fact - i'm going to copy the whole tweet - hang on:

"Finally had the roast lamb i've wanted... the holy grail... almost as though it's the end of one chapter & the start of another x with her x"

it was several months ago (august 15th), i was in brighton, on DMT & meow, and i saw some lamb being prepared, or maybe just waiting to be prepared...

i think that that was the event that triggered this current trip down carnivorous lane, and it was specifically lamb that i wanted...

i passed through salmon, (with pregnant K-wo, spski, and EQ wierdly enough)
chicken (with felinity, her G & dad)
pork with ham over it, (with felinity & dad)
chicken (with E)
chicken (with E)

before having roast lamb with E in a pub in east finchley on sunday...

so in a way i'm choosing to see this eating of lamb as closing the period that began with the brighton DMT/meow time, just over 3 months...

also - i just heard through felinities twitter that honey is not long from this world, dad rang her, she may not make it to christmas, i don't know the full story...

very sad, & it makes me all the more glad to have balthazara...

anyway, there you go, long splooge of a post...

booker done tv heaven

read the last booker book this morning in bed...

j m cootzee, summertime, badly named, badly written, occasional bits of good writing but all kinds of unsatisfactory writing...

when he's writing as women I find him pretty rubbish...

so, definitely ended on a low, those 6 books I read...

also I watched monday's flashforward which was distinctly average... just like lost, take the smallest amount of storytelling you can, wrap it in the thinnest drama you can find, pretend it's fantastic...

but the day was rescued by channel 4's HBOfest from 10... trueblood & generationkill...

just wonderful...

and then there's hung.. josiah mentioned it over the weekend... any good?

my cup runneth over...

x

review of FlashForward, True Blood & Generation Kill

in the last week, i've seen the opening episode (or 2) of 3... just 3?... yes, 3 i think...

3 new tv things, all american, 2 on channel 4, one on 5...

Flashforward
True Blood
Generation Kill

flash forward first:

it's the only one of the 3 programs that hasn't already been shown in america...

this is nice...

i watched it on the internet, because demand5 is not yet on virgin V, unlike all the other terrestrials, (4 on demand, BBC i-player, ITV...thing)...

demand5 delivers adverts, at a few points in the show, which you can see as dots in the line at the bottom, also they have adverts before the show starts...

the 2 adverts at the beginning are repeated at least once in the show...

this is shit...

and to think i could be downloading this nonsense and not watching any adverts...

so to the show itself... it's made by the makers of lost... and i remembered this midway through the 2nd episode and i laughed at myself for watching it...

it has a good premise, and the story looks promising, and it good in it's way,

but there were a few too many moments where the cheese got grated a little too much... the main male character, whose wife saw a future in which she was loving another man... keeps giving her a hard time about this... he's dumb therefore... his side-kick / another important male character, spends ages being down on our main characters theories because he didn't see anything in his future and therefore might well be dead...

so already, within the 1st 2 episodes, drama is being inserted with no good reason to insert drama...

in this current world we live in, too often we are expected to sift through flaws in TV shows to find the good that is in them... i don't know if i have the patience for flashforward...

ok True Blood:

which i watched on the TV as it was broadcast, with dinah, after our turkish resaurant/police with large guns event earlier...

HBO made which counts for alot...

great so far, but a little too much "local colour" here and there, something heroes did with it's new orleans characters...

not only from black characters, but mostly from them, larger than life, sassy, performances which distracted a little from the story i found... not that i'm faulting the acting, it's the writing i'm unhappy with,

but not too unhappy, this is a smaller complaint than i had with flashforward and i think it'll be worth sticking with true blood... the magic, the sense of real connection the main woman feels for the vampire... and already a good story...

i loved buffy the vampire slayer and so i was always going to like true blood anyway,

it's quite explicitly rude for TV which is nice... the characters are coming along nicely, no 1 dimensional people as far as i can see, although there's time...

so to Generation Kill...

watched last night on catch-up, on the TV, after a mental few days of not enough sleep, a few pints and some smoking (which is exactly the right idea after a mental fews days on not enough sleep)...

then watched again this afternoon, again on catchup, after a lovely night's rest..

made by the team that made the wire... and just fantastic, no flaws to speak of... (as indeed the wire was flawless)... a huge cast of characters that it's quite hard to follow, and no easy explanatory TV, which is a strength in my world...

i'm curious who wrote it, as in, which character is the writer, it's from a book and it seems likely that the reporter in the story wrote the book... but not for sure...

it shows a side to the tank loving boy audience, lots of hummvees... in formation rolling through the desert... a nod towards the glory of the mechanisms of war... while showing the stupid choices of the military...

just as in the wire there are people in the military world of this show who are willing to do a good job, and there a people who are motivated by other things, greed, power, and for many different reasons do not do a good job...

a great character who wistfully pisses on the desert while talking about the destiny of the white man... a curious mix of racism in a seeming lovable character...

a seemingly true account of what it was like in that unit... with porn magazines, chewing tobacco of some kind, drugs, well almost drugs... homophobia, racism, comradery, stupidity..

hasn't put a foot wrong yet...

so that's what i think x

from bed

hmmm... a sedintary life for me, the booker prize all done... the last one I read won it, the great wolf hall... I got through 5/6 with the 6th now in my possession, I don't know if i'll read it... we'll see...

blogging from my phone, in bed, just to check it out really...

not working Wednesday but if I can i'll pick up my fender rhodes x

yr4wk11

x

my friend (with yr4wk10)

the weather today was very appropriate for my emotions...

these days i can go from feeling really low to feeling great and back again in such a short space of time...

and today's weather was doing exactly that... i left the house to go & do some errands and it started raining, so i put on my waterproof trousers, but took them off again by holloway road because the sun was out again...

my friend GM, the guitarist came round in the evening, he's just left, we had a lovely time, playing music, eating @ lavas, (turkish place near me), playing music, talking...

we're performing together at the core arts gig tomorrow night, just a couple of tunes, walk on by, and one or 2 of mine... one of which is so new it's as yet unwritten...

the main line is written, and i'm fairly sure of where the chords are going, but there's a whole load of lyrics that need writing before tomorrow night, and i'm working all day...

in fact, tomorrow is the beginning of my mental weekend, i'm covering for GM in the morning, running my regular jam in the afternoon (which will be largely taken over by the needs of the evening gig) then gigging in the evening...

tomorrow i'm being picked up around midday, we're driving down to bristol, we're gigging as the spanner jazz punks, stripped down... then i'm being dropped (i hope) in bath where my mum & dad are celebrating their ruby wedding anniversary with all us kids and partners and grandchild...

makes me a little sad, not being with dinah no more, but then dinah would have tried to get out of going anyway, not a huge socialite when it came to my family that woman...

so i'm basking in the family celebration until monday, then limping back to london...

and i haven't done my improvisation this week...

oh - that reminds me, last week's improvisation is here:

yr4wk10, voice & hammond improvisation from longcat on Vimeo.

yr4wk9 piano

yr4wk9 piano from longcat on Vimeo.

x

yr4wk8

yr4wk8 moog & overdrive from longcat on Vimeo.

x

5 year return

i'd been talking to someone about the 27 year saturn return, when it became clear that i had a kind of 5 year return going on...

a week ago - on the wednesday - i get a text message from josiah marking the 5 year anniversary of grace's naming ceremony...

@ which i played the piano & sang...

a week ago i was on my way to a small gig in brick lane, promotional thing for CM, lovely H was there DJ'ing and he dropped a few choice textures behind my playing...

i was videoing it with the idea of using some of it as my improvisation...

so, two piano playing events in the open air, exactly 5 years apart...

back in 2004, midway through my version of the song for grace (wild is the wind i think...?) some of witchy godmother's kids came and started messing about on the keyboard as i was still playing...

2009 - i had, 1stly a small group of asian kids, playing the odd note on the keyboard, then a small child, playing notes on the keyboard, but this time i'd invited them to play and i was happy with the situation...

in 2004 i was a bit flustered by it...

now please bear in mind that i had no conscious thought of this link while i was doing the gig, although my subconscious could see what was going on i'm fairly sure...

anyway, it was on friday/saturday when it became apparent, i like it, i don't know what it means beyond me moving more towards acceptance, but i like it...

just to say, friday/saturday/sunday i was in brighton and i had an old fashioned weekend, with more than a little bit of indulgence... which i'm still paying for a bit...

x

yr4wk7 overdrive heaven

yr3wk7 mopho, hammond & blackstar overdrive from longcat on Vimeo.

thursday... very late, no good... but don't you just love this overdrive?

fixed my puncture yesterday, had a fine day of cycling as a result...

went down to an odd fete in a park in poplar for work, met a few nice kids...

then back to whitechapel (although to be fair this was all taxis' from whitechapel to poplar and back)... a lovely chat with G & H @ CM's office...

then into town to see felinity, no cinema but some food & a few gin & tonics, a lovely night, much laughing... walked her to waterloo, then sat in the royal festival hall for awhile using their wifi for my phone... then a cycle home with herbie hancock in my ears, magnificent, foolish yes, but beautiful... i love that bike..

x

sometimes a hero comes along

what is that song?

no, not that song, this song... "i'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me"

anyway...

(unrequited's for losers...)

now, many years ago, i did my 1st ever tax retun, and it scared me, and i rang up a helpline...

a very nice man, very calmly told me what i had to do, what numbers to put in which boxes...

all very easy...

i love that man...

on thursday i was in brighton with grace & her mum & her 2 cousins...

my phone had stepped up it's irritating behaviour and i'd been threatening it for awhile (you're days are numbered, i'm getting a smartphone)...

so on thursday, this entire troop of people, large & small, went into the orange shop in brighton, and a very nice man gave me a new smart phone...

all very straight forward... i love a good bit of customer service...

these people are heroes...

but not only that...

my new smart phone is a hero...

i'm teetering on the brink of the smartphone way of life, just as soon as orange text me that they've enabled my internet...

x

nothing for nobody

i'm taking some time off...

i've got 2 weeks off from my work, and i'm also taking a break from all the rehearsing, recording, mixing i'm doing for other people...

off down to brighton on tuesday to see my glorious god daughter & her lovely mum...

dinah's in poland,

my time is my own...

got hold of a BlackStar HT-Drive overdrive pedal this week... i'm just listening to the improvisation i recorded tonight with the hammond & the mopho going through it...

valve distortion... it's a beautiful thing... of course whether anyone else other than me will like it is another matter, but right now i'm in a pretty much - it's all about me - zone anyway...

x

yr4wk6 moog & voice

yr4wk6 moog & voice from longcat on Vimeo.

yr4wk5

yr4wk5 rhodes improvisation from longcat on Vimeo.

recorded last saturday night, just as the pub was getting going,

the last bit of recording i did with the rhodes before TC broke it on monday... x

books & notes

but 1stly, just a quick note to say, although those 4 songs do indeed capture some of my emotions... it is not only through their lyrics, it's largely through their music & sound, and where the lyrics are reflecting how i feel it is not that the lyrics reflect how i feel about dinah, necessarily...

i know... quite odd to start with that, but me & dinah are in a note writing phase, and i don't have access to her kitchen work surface to leave my notes on...

she's not sleeping here at all now, it all happened quite quickly, one minute she was here, the next minute she was gone and the only way we communicate is through notes she leaves me when she pops in to pack when i'm not here...

odd... but you've got to do what you've got to do...

anyway books...

i popped into my friendly, neighbourhood bookshop yesterday to buy the next book by mark leyner... this is after a morning spent crying intermittently, something i've been wanting to do for weeks and that i've got a lot more of in the post...

the lovely S, on asking him which book to get next, told me they didn't have it in stock and couldn't get hold of it... so he went home to pick up his copy of this book to lend to me...

he went out of his way to not sell me a book...

this morning i noticed the book tokens that mum & dad had given me for my birthday poking out from my john sinclair book... and i knew the universe was looking out for me...

x

peter green

"i can't about help the shape i'm in,
i can't sing, i ain't pretty and my legs are thin,
but don't ask me what i think of you,
i might not give the answer that you want me to..."

so it's difficult, this whole breaking up with dinah thing...

funny that...

anyway, all kinds of different emotions are floating around and popping up to the surface these days...

and a surprising number of them are reflected in 4 songs by peter green from the late 60's...

so of course i'm listening to these songs a fair bit...

oh well,
albatross,
man of the world,
the green manalishi with the two pronged crown,

now, peter green was away from the music scene for long time but as i understand he's back...

and how much would i dearly love to do a weekly improvisation with peter green?

x

yr4wk4 mopho & revelation

yr4wk4 mopho & revelation from longcat on Vimeo.

i announce it in this video i made in the early hours of my birthday, so i announce it here & now...

me & dinah are no more... not as a couple... friends still... always will be i hope, and still living together - at least until august...

it's difficult, for both of us... a sad time...

x

36

i was reading in bed yesterday afternoon, dinah had brought me tea, toast, berocca & cake in bed and life was good...

i'm currently reading et tu, babe by mark leyner, and it pleased me no end when i read that he was 36 was he wrote it...

the night before i'd done my improvisation @ 2:34 am and i'd opened the card my brother sent me, telling me that 36 was a square number, a triangle number & a 13-gonal number...

sunday night i was in a pub with felinity & dinah & i arranged 36 mini-cheddars into 1st a triangle, then a square, but failed to arrange them in a 13-gonal shape...

this afternoon i took 36 pennies arranged them into a triangle, a square and a 13-gonal shape, although the 13-gonal is a bit rubbish...

yr4wk3 juno 6

yr4wk3 juno 6 from longcat on Vimeo.

just my voice and the juno...

while it was uploading i did this week's improvisation, just hours into my birthday, G out there in the world drinking to her drummers birthday x

yr4wk2

yr4wk2 moog, hammond, voice from longcat on Vimeo.

tuesday night...

i'm gaining...

x

Mark Leyner

so i was in my favourite bookshop and lovely S recommended a book to me - even while saying he knew it was dangerous recommending books to me...

the book was - my cousin - my gastroenterologist,

i started reading it late on wednesday night and i finished it late on thursday night...

it was out there, laugh out loud funny (and please note that it wasn't lol funny - it was laugh out loud funny), well written...

a bit of a rollercoaster of a book...

x

yr4wk1 hammond

yr4wk1 hammond organ from longcat on Vimeo.

the 1st one of the 4th year... just hammond x

yr3wk52 rhodes & cymbal

yr3wk52 rhodes & cymbal from longcat on Vimeo.

again getting to the wednesday before i've done the improvisation chores... slack...

this working lark really does take it out of one...

x

yr3wk51 moog & juno

yr3wk51 moog & juno from longcat on Vimeo.

i really love the canal video that's in this improvisation... it was a lovely sunny day coming home along the regents canal last thursday... my camera sat just on the waters edge, rush hour on the canal, in the 15 minutes i left it filming there were many, many people, walking or cycling past...

x

john berger sleeplessness

yesterday (tuesday) was such a long day on so little sleep that today (wednesday) i was very glad to sleep in and do very little...

i watched the 2nd half of the miniseries battlestar galactica... it had a tiny bit of not very good television in it, but largely it was very good...

the 1st series is arriving fairly soon...

i have high hopes of it...

but before i watched the thing i watched today, i made it over to jai shri krishna for the lunch time special, 12 - 2, i arrived @ 1:58...

whilst there i finished the book i've been reading from A to X by john berger - which was beautiful...

around about 2 they put the radio on in jai shri krishna, i think it's to get rid of the customers so they can close...

i finished the book with the radio on and whilst it was great, i felt i had to reread a bit of it... so i did, around 6ish, lying on the sofa with balthazara curled up beside me,

i'm going to lend the book to dinah's mum, i think she'll be interested in some of it, maybe she'll read the whole thing - although she reads an awful lot -

x

yr3wk50 bass clarinet & rhodes with Dan Spanner

yr3wk50 with Dan Spanner from longcat on Vimeo.

it really did take just over a day to render... it finished just before i left the house for my mental day of work yesterday - 9:30 - 9 in 2 different places...

so, wednesday, late for an improv but finally it's here x

1 day

woke up this morning (bom, bom, bom, bom, bom, bom)


and i was half hoping the video would be rendered...

but was not ready for the news that...

it's going to take (current estimate) 1 day...

24 hours...

that's big...

my mum in town... x

brief check in

i've just finished editing my weekly improvisation...

i've set it rendering and i'm going to bed... it'll probably take 10 hours or more to render... then tomorrow i'm going to check it out and re-edit it if necessary...

a little late but not the end of the world...

i'm playing chess online again, as of the 1st of june... it's been a few months without it and i'm enjoying it again...

also i'm watching big brother again... this time all the way from the top... me & dinah watched the 1st eviction today and we were both sad that it was B...

oh well...

also i've started work @ a new place, just 1 & a half days a week but it'll really help my finances...

ok... anyway... just checking in... sleep now x

yr3wk49 rhodes alone

yr3wk49 rhodes alone from longcat on Vimeo.

no words for quite some time...

i guess i'm just not in the habit of it...

x

yr3wk48 tonematrix & moog

yr3wk48 moog & tonematrix from longcat on Vimeo.

if you haven't played on this tonematrix i heartily recommend it, (you need the latest flash)...

enjoy x

yr3wk47 rhodes thru mopho

yr3wk47 rhodes thru mopho from longcat on Vimeo.

the music from a week & a half ago on a wednesday, the sky video from last week... monday...

x

yr3wk46 mopho juno 6

yr3wk46 mopho juno 6 improvisation from longcat on Vimeo.

i was in such a rush to get ready to "broadcast" by sunday that i forgot to do the last bit, putting it here & on my blog & my webspace...

the blue sky/clouds footage was shot on friday the 8th may, and it was when i was cycling home from there that all the phone calls, assumptions, photographing happened as told in the last post...

x

Charlotte Sarah

i spent an idyllic hour or so on the thames... filming footage for last week's improvisation that i'm putting together this weekend...

lowtide getting lower, me on a bank near the side of the thames, with receding water all around...


anyway as i'm getting ready to come home i start thinking about M & D and the impending event...

so i ring their house and they don't answer...


a little later i'm cycling through town and i can't stop myself from ringing D's mobile..

after 2 rings he sends me to the answerphone...


this is significant i say to myself and i start singing to myself about how the 8th of may is going to be my neice/nephew's birthday...

i leave the centre of the city and i can't stop myself from ringing felinity and we speak for 25 minutes or so...


by which time i'm in finsbury park...

i relax as i approach home and a couple of streets away i take these pictures roughly as my brand new baby niece Charlotte Sarah is being born...



x

fando e lis

so awhile ago, old friend J who mainly lives in mexico these days (i think) told us about this director whose name i don't know how to spell - jodorouski -

so we put his films on our lovefilm list...

many months later the 1st DVD arrives and we watched the 2 films on it yesterday, the 1st film was great - the cravat - short, very funny, arresting...

the 2nd film was disturbing... it seemed too long, it had lovely, great moving bits but also abusive, nasty bits too...

this scene i present to you is from about midway into the film, just as you're beginning to realise that all is not well...

x

yr3wk45 (honestly) mopho & drums

yr3wk45 Mopho & Drums from longcat on Vimeo.

last week i presented the LHC 2.1 video as yr3wk45, but it was only a brief lack of thinking...

last week thursday i recorded this here improvisation with lovely D on the drums, it's the 1st of the improvisations to go through the slightly longer allowed time frame, from here on in i'm improvising, then posting last week's improvisation on sunday...

it gives me more time to work on the sound/video for the improv's... it came about because the LHC 2.2 was taking forever and a day to get ready and i realised that sometimes i do need more than a few days to make it happen...

so LHC 2.1 went out the following week (when this one should have gone out by the old system), even though i had recorded this one already...

and in fact on friday i recorded the improvisation that's going out next sunday...

lovely thing with the juno & the mopho...

i hope it makes sense...

enjoy x

Longcat Hadron Collider version 2 chapter 1

Longcat Hadron Collider 2.1 from longcat on Vimeo.

there's an owl that toots at 7:45 am...

it woke me up...

so i came to see if chapter 1 of that large scale improvisation had uploaded...

and here it is x

great tits & apple blossom

apple blossom time

i'm down in blewbury for the weekend, came to see the blewbury opera which was great, noye's fludde by benjamin britten...

it's been a long time since i was here at this time of year, the apple trees in the garden are all in different moments of blossom, a couple of them are bright white with dashes of pink... lovely...

reminds me of the old song that's been floating around my head for a month or so anyway...

this house was built on one half of an orchard, cleared of most of it's trees of course, so i've always been around apples, and i love them...

but i was eating an apple last night and i couldn't remember the last time i'd had an apple...

it's just me & mum & dad, dinah was due to come down but she couldn't in the end...

i've been relaxing, developing sounds in my mopho which i decided to bring in the absence of the piano that used to be in this house but is now in me & dinah's flat...

went up the hill earlier, watched the sunset justlike i used to...

as i was walking up i was listening to this week's improvisation - recorded on thursday but not yet in video form... just me & D (drummer) me on the mopho...

a couple of times i'm playing a repeating line while changing the filter, the sound opening out...

and both times the sun came out from behind a cloud...

so i'm walking, with the sun behind me, and as the music expands outwards the light comes out on everything... the sun close to the horizon... everything i can see is lit up by this lovely bright spring sunshine...

quite something...

today i've been imagining doing a gig on my own, with all my sounds... with sequences from the mopho mixed with piano or organ, maybe singing and playing a harmony line on the organ...

imagination such a rich ground to get music from...

x

Longcat Hadron Collider version 2 chapter 2

Longcat Hadron Collider 2.2 - Yr3wk44 from longcat on Vimeo.

it took me so long to get this together, well, actually, just over a week, recorded last tuesday and brought to you here on this thursday...

it doesn't sound too bad does it...

but it's way late for last week's improvisation...

so today, i did an improvisation with lovely D, the drummer from the last LHC i did, also the man i bought the moog off... but it'll go out next week, this week's improvisation will be the 1st half of the LHC (2.1), so that in the future, i'll be improvising with at least a week to go before it's going out to the world, giving me time to deal with it all...

such a mad time of it i've had...

the other lovely D, omnichord player on both LHC's, helped me mix the one you see above here... both mixing and teaching me about mixing it was...

i recorded D's drums today and i'm quite confident i can mix them myself this time... using the drums we mixed together as a template...

so much time has passed and so much has happened... what to tell?

on the day after we did this improvisation i cycled down to the studio to meet a piano tuner, (who was great), but my bike decided to take that opportunity to completely lose all of it's brakes... leaving me midtown, no brakes...

so i gradually drifted down to the river, leaving it by waterloo bridge (the ladies bridge) - returning for it the next day with P who i'd been teaching, cycling with her along the river, slow enough to be able to stop with my feet... her playing tunes on her phone - including "rock me amadeus" by falco...

left overnight for a brake service in pretty much the only bike shop i trust these days and picked up the next day, good as new...

a consignment of tea arrived, a joint venture between me & spski... dilmah all the way...

floopy & T's cat cleo passed away on tuesday which has hit my beautiful dinah quite hard, cleo being the cat they had when she was a girl... and now that floopy & T are away she would normally be going round to feed cleo... sad times...

cleo is the cat who inspired my song "hunka munka poo bum"

yr3wk43

yr3wk43 moog rogue, mopho, piano from longcat on Vimeo.

recorded last tuesday... the day before the moog rogue went home to HK (and indeed the opus 3 came home to me)...

x

yr3wk42 mopho & rhodes

yr3wk42 rhodes & mopho from longcat on Vimeo.

from last wednesday, not an april fool...

unlike my post on that day, but what can you do? old traditions surely are worth keeping hold of...

anyway, the improv recorded at the studio, the 1st one in ages on the rhodes...

i just hope i can take advantage of the studio to let out all the musical ideas i have all the time x

piano geek

so the musical is going well,

just hitting it's stride with tonight's performance, the 5th, although we've got a long break before the next show...

i'm still making tiny mistakes and it irritates me, so i've set myself quite a grueling practice regime in which i do 2 handed scales just like i get my students to do, but while i get them to do a major, natural minor & harmonic minor scale on each note (gradually, throughout the year),

i'm getting myself to play all the modes of the major scale on each note...

i've been doing it for some time now (tonight) and i'm not quite half way through,

i do it in the order suggested by W A Mathieu in "harmonic experience", where each change of mode adds one more flat, staring with lydian:

lydian,
ionian (major),
mixolydian,
dorian,
aeolian (natural minor),
phrygian,
locrian,

i'm working on a tune at the moment and i've got my gigging keyboard out with the GEM module being the piano, insane, what with the piano right there, but that's the weird place i'm in right now...

i was just playing through the same list of modes, but improvising while holding down notes with my left hand, not to sound the notes but in order to free those (imaginary - digital) strings and let that strange reverb ring out... as in this section of this improvisation...

the tune is currently called hay fever, but that'll probably change, i can't decide if it's right yet, or whether a certain section needs changing, but i love it, i play it whenever i can...

being paid to improvise

so i just found out that a very large music management company really like my improvisations and they've offered to pay me £1000/week for improvising...

so i can give up my day job and concentrate on the improv's...

and indeed anything else i may want to do as improvising only takes up a day - or a day & a half, out of the week...

so i'm not going in to work tomorrow (today) or indeed the next day, i quit, effective immediately...

x

yr3wk41 MOPHO, moog rogue, juno 6, from longcat on Vimeo.

did the 2nd show of the musical tour last night, in an amazing church in hoxton, with angels on the ceiling...

the same church i was in on tuesday (the day i did this improvisation) and the vicar said i could do an improvisation there if i wanted to...

came home (last night) to an empty flat, a little broken somehow, spirited away was on bbc4 with the japanese voices and it was just what i needed, i missed the beginning and a bit in the middle because i cooked something for myself, but it was still great... i've seen it before...

then afterwards there was a film on itv4 called the beast which i've seen the end of once before and i've been waiting for it to come back (itv4 tends to repeat films a fair bit)...

started @ 12 & finished @ 3am, my brain not working out that this was because the clocks changed last night...

it was also really good, a russian tank in afghanistan, all the russians played by americans... made a couple of years before the fall of the berlin wall...

and now americans are in afghanistan...

x

1985 books mopho

what happened in 1985?

(the serial number of my mopho is 01985)

which books am i reading?

well in fact i finished one of them today, after watching the film...

but 1st the other, it's the 3rd book of "in search of lost time" by marcel proust and it's almost exactly the same size as my mopho...


2 of the 3 dimensions are very close...

looking down at the book or the synthesizer they are practically the same...



the mopho is a bit bigger looking at them end on, but a paperback book with more pages would do the trick... i might find a haruki murakami book that fits the bill...

so to the other - watchmen... i've been reading it for a few days - just in the house - and i got within two chapters of the end last this morning, so decided it was a good time to see the film, which i saw this afternoon... finishing the book when i got home...

the book is great... the film is also good, it's a touch flawed here and there for me, but it's good. it fits the book very well, departing in a few details later on but not too much...

once or twice in the action sequences i wasn't entirely convinced, and action in a graphic novel is easier than in films...

rorsharch is great, great as a character and very well played by jackie earle haley, also his moving rorsharch pattern face, alluded to in the book, is done excellently in the film...

the film also does something i like with rorsharch that the book doesn't do... mirroring the scene on mars where there's a reference to the comedian... (carefully not giving anything away)...

so, what happened in 1985?

x

tv mopho church

so i saw last week's mad men on the i-player... great TV still... i found out that joan, the very sexy - all woman - in the office character is played by someone who was in a couple of episodes of firefly... the scifi thing made by the guy that did buffy...

so i youtubed those 2 episodes and watched them too... i'd watched all of firefly a while back when the film came out, some other computer has the video files on it, maybe the one i left in finsbury park...

also good tv, not as good as madmen, but not trying to be, very pleasing none-the-less...

red riding also turned out to be excellent, i watched the last of the 3 episodes on saturday... very grim, very satisfying...

and i still love my mopho, i noticed today that falling off my keyboard @ the gig on sunday did a little damage... the 4th assignable parameter knob is a little hurt, just cosmetic hurt, it still works fine...

i like it... my serial number is 01985... i keep trying to think of what happened in 1985 but i'm not sure anything did, i was 12/13...

played a song from the musical in an assembly this morning - in a primary school... that was cool, also got to play the piano in the church we're in on saturday, a kawai upright, very nice, with heaps of natural reverb... an amazing place... the whole ceiling covered in angels or saints... i'd like to do an improvisation in there one day if i can...

x

lullabye mopho musical improvisation

yr3wk40 moog rogue & juno 6 from longcat on Vimeo.

on saturday i went down south to see spanna and her beautiful baby, the lullabye i wrote for her is currently the top song on my mypace...

old friends galore, all 4 of us who used to live in kensal rise together, F with her 2nd child, T with her usual wit, spanna with her brand new Mara (and indeed her man A) and me with my hayover...

curious mixture of hangover and hayfever which i was just emerging from when i arrived...

it was due to the red wine i'd drunk the night before after the opening night of the christian musical... really mental day it had been, finishing the lullabye (which involved recording a drum part by the wonderful J @ CM), picking up my brand new mopho which had been delivered to CM, doing the opening night, drinking...

the mopho is heaven on a stick...

i ordered it on wednesday (when i recorded the improvisation above), it was delivered to CM on thursday, picked it up friday, gigged it on sunday...

being last night... i was so excited by the new mopho that i forgot my keyboard stand and had to use the venue's keyboard stand, with sharp, loose screws holding it together and sticking out of it...

the mopho fell off a couple of times... it fits beautifully on the edge of my keyboard (it being ridiculously small) but it's not very stable, must find a better way of stowing it...

N was there - my sometimes benefactor (in fact the mopho is the only musical instrument i've bought recently without his help, he had a hand in my getting both the hammond and the piano module)... he was there with B, the 1st vocalist from hotel full of cops... the band i was in with N... it's probably been a decade since i last saw B, he hasn't changed, except that he's mellowed a little...

there is talk of a HFOC 2.0 in the air...

my beautiful dinah was there too, whooping and dancing...

it was a spanner jazz punks gig... it was good it think, i drank a couple of pints before playing so i was probably a touch ragged but i think we were still good... hard to say, we went down well...

i'm off soon to see TC down @ the studio - which i've started calling Blood Sunset Studio...

bought the watchmen book, i'm going to read at least some of it before i see the film...

x

yr3wk39 moog & juno

yr3wk39 moog opus 3 & roland juno 6 from longcat on Vimeo.

red riding suit wearing writing for tv bheki mseleku

slept late, did my improvisation chores, smoked a small one while watching last thursday's red riding on the i-player...

very, very good...

channel 4 are making some damn good telly at the moment.... and it makes me want to be writing music for tv,

particularly because channel 4 are british and they seem as though they're open to newcomers...

redriding is a three-parter, this 1st part was fantastic...

killer opener, lets just hope they don't f*ck it up, the devils whore was another recent channel 4 outing and it had a killer opener also... to be fair it was good all the way through, but it did slacken just a little bit in the 3rd episode (of 4)...

i've just been invited to our cousins wedding, the 2nd of 4 brothers to get married... also to play the organ which is a lovely thought...

x

oh and why was i wearing a suit all day yesterday?

i played a massively long gig in cecil sharp house, solo piano for a vintage fashion fair... a longer gig than i've done before... 4, 45 minute sets, longer than the jazz gig last summer, but for the same money, money which was small for that gig, let alone this one...

but it was lovely... a grand piano in good condition, i met a lovely woman who was one of the stall holders... she was the 1st person to thank me, thinking i was leaving after my 2nd set...

her mum was a jazz singer and she recognised some of the songs i played, songs very few people recognise... i think it was her singing along to a tune earlier on and later she mentioned "wait 'till you see her"... she wrote down a couple of tunes and put it on the piano while i was playing, tunes i couldn't play her because i don't know them,

but i'm certainly going to track them down if i can, she has great taste...

i also met 2 other women i've met before (quite apart from my beautiful dinah and her friend who there), 1stly an ex-student of mine who had a portable gramophone with her, she played 78's in the 45 minutes between my sets... great combination...

also the owner of mishka just north of crouch end where i go and get presents for my dinah...

the 1st 2 sets went like a dream, easy (kind of), improvised sections, tunes, beautiful tunes...

by the 3rd set i was starting to fade a little and i wasn't as good as i should have been... don't get me wrong, i was still fantastic, just a little slackening, like the devils whore... 3rd of 4 is a difficult place to be...

in the 4th set a different stall holder came up to me and asked if i could play something more upbeat to wake people up a bit... i did my best with a version of "closer to the source" by bheki mseleku which drew a very small round of applause from her, but by this time it was about the furthest thing from what i wanted to do...

now searching for his name, (largely because i'd forgotten how to spell it) i came across his obituary... that is a sad, sad thing...

my memory is terrible (particularly just now) and i honestly don't know if i'd heard in september 2008 that bheki mseleku had died... i must talk to my dad about it...

he was a huge part of me becoming the pianist i am today... in my late teenage years and into my early 20's he was it for me...

there is a tradition in jazz (and indeed in many fields) of imitating one's idols when young... modelling yourself on them and being them as close as you can be... it's a stepping stone to becoming yourself, becoming the adult you...

in the years after i was a student, living as i briefly did in leamington spa, experimenting a little with drugs... i read a journey in ladakh by andrew harvey...

i loved it dearly... in that book AH describes a method of meditation where you learn the appearance of the buddha in very precise detail...

the object of your meditation is this image of the buddha and you become (as close as you can) this image of the buddha...

back then i related this to the jazz tradition of becoming your idol and i was helped in this relating by the beautiful fact of bheki mseleku's early arrival in the london jazz scene, where he made a bit of a splash, but then went off to a buddhist monastery to meditate for 5 years...

i loved him dearly...

it's one of my regrets (although it doesn't trouble me overly these days) that i didn't play with him when i had the chance... i was sat with my mum & dad in a concert hall in the docklands and bheki mseleku had played a lovely 1st set... (this is early in my london living - early to mid 20's me)

somebody announced at the beginning of the 2nd set that bheki would like it if there were any musicians in the audience to come and play with him... if they were pianists he would play bass...

mu mum was very keen that i should do it and she didn't keep it to herself...

i didn't do it..

it's possible that part of the reason was some daft thing in my mind in relation to my mum, freud would certainly encourage that notion, but then as my dinah says: freud's a w**ker...

check it out, 2 swear words in one post...

anyway, yesterday, after the gig i went straight up to the rehearsal for the musical i'm involved in... long, penultimate rehearsal, pepped me up though, gave me that energy i needed to get through it, it was walking from the rehearsal to crystal kebab that i had the lovely footsteps moment i mention in the earlier post x

yr3wk38 upright piano

yr3wk38 upright piano from longcat on Vimeo.

this is from tuesday afternoon, it's the 1st time i've used a mirror video effect in an improvisation, and it's also the 1st time the audio has gone through the computer in the studio, a couple of UAD effects on it...

it's also been ages since i did one on a real piano - (actually that's not true - me & gareth did one using a real piano only a couple of weeks ago)

now - yesterday i was in the suit all day...

after it was all over i was walking along tufnell park road, my smart shoes making a loud sound with every step... i overtook another man, also wearing loud, smart shoes...

i was really tired and a bit frazzled and it was very pleasing to hear the sound of my steps and his steps ringing out, slightly different speeds, but very close, mine slightly faster than his... 2 rhythms gradually going in and out of phase...

eased my troubled mind...

x

rain and no rain neve joy

last night around midnight, cycling by the thames, the houses of parliament on the other side of the river... lowtide, mad, mad rain pouring on me... joni mithcell's hegira in my ears... as though the river was so low because all the water was falling from the sky...

tonight, around the same time, (a little later), no rain, clear, crisp sky, a bite in the air... carl craig in my ears...

last night, coming in and having to take every single item of clothing off, not even my T-shirt escaped the wet... a hot shower, careful arranging of things on radiators...

similar shaped days today and yesterday... well, yesterday and the day before yesterday if you're reading this on thursday... me being in the early hours thereof...

saw spski yesterday, he of job interview fame, lovely to hang out with him, popped in for a tea around 2...

today i was supposed to meet one of the actors from the show i'm doing, to go through his big number... he didn't show, wasted 90 minutes of my life, time i could have spent fetching the proust which has arrived at the bookshop...

then, yesterday and today, i spent a couple of hours being a session piano player for the students @ CM, yesterday with MM running the class and today with yimkin in that position, yesterday i recorded my weekly improvisation after, today i recorded some current compositional ideas...

had a bleak moment or 6 around 6 o'clock and i was very glad of that piano to play... came up with some melancholy drenched thing... worked on the "dreamt i was bach" piece, just learning how to play it on the piano...

yesteday i went and got spski again, dragged him out of the flat to get a curry, today i met yimkin, (who had in the mean time been @ ginger B's studio) and we got a curry -

yesterday on my own but meeting T (and M) there, today with yimkin in tow... i went to the studio... down in kennington... new home of my rhodes...

yimkin & me got something working in the system, UAD plugin's which i thought we had but which weren't showing up... the PULTEC of which i'd heard tell and several NEVE plugins's - channel strips or EQ's... so very sexy...

i'm going to put this weeks improvisation through some of it... in fact that all worked really nicely, recording @ CM and then opening exactly the same file in the studio...

good times ahead...

much work to do on the studio but it's going to be so, so sexy...

of course it's quite alot of time away from my dinah which is sad... this week she's a studio widow... last night dripping wet me found her asleep on the sofa...

tonight she'd gone to bed by the time i got in...

and that's where i'm headed now, hammersmith work tomorrow and i'd like to cycle in, i wonder how the distance compares with the studio schlep? hmm... and weather..?

i'm rehearsing with the spanner jazz punks tomorrow night so if i cycle i'll have to get back here and then strap the keyboard on and hit the tube...

anyway, must sleep, i want to get that proust in the morning, and in fact that would be beautiful, the whole tube journey to hammersmith (barons court), to try and start this proust, then head down to the studio, do my thing with the improvisation, then skip over to the rehearsal...?

which to choose? bike or tube?

x

yr3wk37 moog, juno, hammond

yr3wk37 moog, juno, hammond from longcat on Vimeo.

this from thursday morning, a couple of weeks ago it was the juno on it's own, now it's joined by the moog and the hammond organ...

i find in certain sections of this my arm looks really odd...

i formally welcome anamoglam to these pages, although he(?)'s been watching for a little while it seems...

x

yr3wk36 with Gareth Mitchell

yr3wk36 with Gareth Mitchell from longcat on Vimeo.

such a nutty week last week, with that marking even now hanging over me muddling my plans... yesterday i realised i hadn't finished editing the improvisation i'd done last tuesday with G...

monday and it hadn't even been edited...

bad...

so i got it going, in such a way hat i could still work (mark) it finished rendering last night, i uploaded it...

here it is...

quite out there in places...

i'm still marking... but i intend to be in a prince charles cinema & 3:30 watching hunger... so that's my final deadline...

x

studio

i had my camera with me but i didn't take a single picture or video...

we made an amazing thing...

a little different to our original plan and indeed the slightly different plan i took along...

when we started doing it T said it was a Y-fronts plan... by the end it was a little less pant-like...

drummer K was there and in fact he did most of the drilling and screwing... i did something i'm sure, handing him screws, the drill, moving massive panels...

but i also played the rhodes a fair bit (i knew i would - i have to)

came up with something... it's been wierd actually, since the rhodes went i haven't had a keyboard set up in here, there's the piano, but i haven't found my way back to it yet...

it's really odd not having something to hand... i'm still in marking hell at the moment, meant to be out of it by the weekend but life...

so as a treat between successful stages of this final marking surge i'm going to set up one of them... don't know which...

x

idyllic

i had a good teaching session...

covered the circle of 5ths... 9th chords... composing using the chords of the major scale... good receptive students...

finished @ 1:30... got home just now - 6:10 or so...

so how did i spend that 4:40 hours?

well spski is currently working in that area and last week i found out that his lunch break started @ 3... so i had a notion that it would to still be around 'til 3...

chatted with M, owner of the juno synth... about acoustics... stuff... good talk...

then i popped up to the office to drop off my register and i bumped into HK, one time student there, now around every now and then helping out... had a lovely chat with him about all sorts, synths... music... drugs... moogs... arranged to go and improvise with him in about a month and swap moogs for a few weeks - his rogue for my opus 3...

then i went back down to pack up and i started to play the piano... playing this piece i wrote the other week on the juno 6 - with it's arppegiator - trying to play the arppeggiator bits on the piano...

very interesting... it's basically a 7 pattern against a 4 pattern and because of how the notes work it is quite a large pattern before it repeats itself...

i got caught up in that and lost all sense of time...

once i had done it enough i got on my bike and rang spski, thinking it was 3... but he was just finishing his lunch break... i accompanied him back to work and he helped me with my bike a bit, a puncture that had become a looming bulge that has now just disappeared as a puncture...

it turned out it wasn't 3 at all and in fact it was 4... i must have looked at my phone believing it was 3 and not taking in the real time...

got back on the bike and realised i was hungry... so i decided to visit an old friend around faringdon, the owner of a lebanese cafe...

i cycled over there, only to find to my horror that his cafe had become a posh looking french restaurant... i enquired how long they'd been there and expressed my disappointment that my friend had gone and they told me he was just next door...

where indeed he was, lovely Faisal, only it was no longer a cafe he was running it was a shop, with a falafel stand in it... one of those shops that sells everything you can think of and much more besides...

he made me a falafel and a tea and we talked some... "life goes by so fast" he said, "only yesterday you used to come here and you were 23... now you're 35..."

we talked a bit about love & warmth as against cold money... not a million miles from the conversation i'd had with HK earlier...

and i left there with shuggie otis in my ears... in a part of town i hadn't been in in ages, not sure how to get home from there... pootling about until i hit upon a route i used to take, passed the british library, through camdem, up to holloway, then pushing through, over passed the dawn project place, through crouch end and home...

what a lovely afternoon...

x

moses jones no sleep

so if you're astute, you'll have seen from the time of that last post that it was from 8 in the morning...

and if you know me... you'll have wondered why i was up that early...

the truth is i had a couple of hours sleep that night, but by 5am it was clear that was all i was going to get right then, so i got up...

smoked a little (a peculiar pleasure at the hour) and got on with my business - recording music from the D8 into my computer... sifting through the stuff i'd already recorded...

at some point i ate some cheese - i remember thinking i was smoking AND eating cheese if i could have slept my dreams would have been marvellous...

around 7 i was thinking i should try and sleep again...

but then before i knew it it was 8 and dinah was up, she made me a tea...

then the day started to impinge on me a bit and i realised i needed floopy's camera, then he agreed to drop it round and pick up my mic...

which meant waiting for him to arrive...

i finally crept into bed with a hot water bottle around 9:45 am... with my alarm set to 11:45 am...

but no sleep was evident... around 10:30 my friend D rang me out of the blue... he agreed to ring back later... this was the final thing... no sleep was going to happen... it was nice though, being in bed with a hot water bottle...

i decided to get up and watch "moses jones" on catchup from the night before (monday night)...

it turned out to be the final episode and it was disappointing...

still enjoyable, but a real let down after the promise of the 1st episode... looking back, the 2nd episode had shown signs of not quite being great...

and it makes me sad,

in american TV there's a tradition of following a fantastic opening series with a flawed 2nd series...

lost, heroes, desperate housewives... to name a few...

in england it's as though the model is that much smaller, we can do a really fantastic opening episode, but can't sustain it...

having said that the devil's whore was great...

i went out to meet G later on, to go through his tunes and talk about approaches to recording, we also improvised... really odd improvisation that i have no idea what it's like...

there are few people i'd want to be around on only 2 hours sleep and G is definitely one of them... lovely guy...

we went over to the queen elizabeth hall in the evening for a night of music & chance which was a little patchy, but had some great moments in it...

particularly the charles ives piece they did...

x