deflea... jethro tull... mad men

ok, so 1stly i found a flea earlier today... so i've just (5 minutes ago) deflea'd her ladyship...

she took it... she didn't like it... but she took it...

she'll be back in a bit and i'll be forgiven... i hope

i'm currently listening to jethro tull... (lastfm me if you don't believe me)... to do with the shadow of the moon & to do with L @ core arts...

the film had michael collins talking about (amongst other things) how it felt to be left out of the walking on the moon thing in 1969... and there's a tune on benefit called "for michael collins, jeffrey and me"... so i had to listen to that tune in the brief break i took in the middle of the film...

then L @ core arts and me have been talking about jethro tull and it's really nice to talk with him about it... he's a wonderful musician himself...

so today i listened to the whole of benefit, while cycling about town... including the song "cry you a song" which i want to do an arrangement of for the SJP's... i'm now listening to the album before it (stand up)...

and earlier i watched the last episode of this season of madmen... which came to me in a very nice serendipitous way...

on saturday me & E popped over to meet spski in spitalfields market... we were watching the lodger the 1927 hitchcock film... with live soundtrack from minima... it was heavenly... and something in the film brought madmen to mind...

which was odd because i hadn't thought of madmen for several weeks... it's been a bit nutty you see...

about 3 or 4 weeks ago josiah was here... we watched the 2nd to last episode of the season together on BBC4...

then on either the following wednesday or the one after that i was @ the sun ra gig with N & R... didn't even think about madmen...

last wednesday was E's birthday & i was showing her a good time... no thought of madmen...

so by saturday it had been a few weeks since i'd even thought about the program & it seemed likely the season had ended...

but what worked well for me, was that BBC2 was at least a week behind BBC4 and that episode me & josiah watched together was only on BBC2 last week (i guess there must have been something to interrupt it, you know how BBC2 is)

so the last episode was on last night and i-playable tonight... and it was perfect... deeply satisfying... didn't quite make me cry but it was close...

oh good telly... thankyou x

richard ford

it turns out he was just like old friend DR... (PD to some)...

i woke early, went over to beneath the trelick tower...checked out the lesson i'll be teaching in a few weeks, the man who's currently teaching it is off touring by then...

perfectly nice...

then home, found the sports writer which had been missing for a little while... got on my bike, went down to aldwych... bvsh house...

had a fine old time... asked my question.. which i think has a better chance of being aired on the show than last time's question... because it drew an interesting bit of conversation...

he signed my copy of the book, i had a glass of wine, played the thing i often end tunes with on the steinway grand in the room...

then once outside i bumped into him again, he was waiting for his car to take him to the hotel, i offered him a backy, but he said his prostate might give him trouble, he said my prostrate might start giving me trouble too...

i asked him how old he was, hoping he'd say he was 72... because i met the 18 year old me on the train down to brighton on friday night & it made me realise i was surely going to meet the 72 year old me as well fairly soon...

(18 years old (ish), half my age, doing mechanical engineering (mathy) @ university, plays piano, has a stud cat... (we had a female stud cat)... so the 72 year old i'm going to meet will have been doing roughly what i'm doing now... 36 years ago...)

he said no he was 66... oh well, nobody's perfect...

it also turns out that there's a 3rd book to the frank bascombe books (the sportswriter, independence day...) called the lay of the land, which he was writing just as i started reading him... back in 2002...

so that's very exciting... i've got independence day ahead of me, then the 3rd...

so i was totally high on life as i cycled away from bvsh house... went over to le fam pevo to deliver some books josiah wanted them to have (baby stuff)... had a gradually calming down evening with those lovely folks...

it turns out EQ is just about to pop... by friday apparently...

now i'm home & i've got my 1st huge tuesday since the holidays ahead of me...

oh & i met a nice woman on the tube... as you do... (in the 1st half of the day, the 2nd half all bikey)

x

Bean Juice? Human Bean Juice

@ some point in the night i was looking at the book about Sun Ra that N gave me on wednesday...

it's a headpress book, i ended up with about 5 copies of it for some reason, which are going back, but i also have my own copy of it...

it's got a picture of sun ra on the cover - with a blob of perhaps sunlike stuff over him... maybe on his costume, although it's a black & white picture & the blob is in colour...

anyway, i'm asleep... and i'm looking at the cover, and i realise that the blob is my own blood, not much of it, just a little tiny sphere that been squashed between two surfaces...

so i'm about to give the book back, but something stops me... and i realise how i should hold onto that copy, because i've made it my own, it's got my blood on it...

and i feel special...

many hours later i wake up and look at the sun ra book & laugh...

.....................................................

i have all these copies of this book because on wednesday night, me, N & his R... (who he met in thsiland, lovely woman) went to cafe oto to see the sun ra arkestra, led by marshall allen...

it was one of the most inspirational gigs i've been to...

influences from throughout the history of jazz, from the 40s onwards...

able to go to some very scary 60's free jazz type places, which felt like an opening out of the heart... play a chopin piece which was the most beautiful thing i've ever heard... play some old jazz standards in a swinging fashion... (stars fell on alabama).... do lovely vocal melodies with lyrics to do with freedom & peace & love & losing your mind... they ended on a few outrageously cheerful tunes that might have been disney tunes... he did a few arrangements of them apparently...

in particular there's a kind of sun ra tune i've come to love, where parts of the band are doing complex, but rhythmicly working things... african type rhythms & cuban type rhythms... like the guitarist wil be gently plucking a rhythmic pattern... sometimes very quietly... and then gradually, some of the horn players will start playing a slow and aching melody over the top, more & more horn players join the melody... in sometimes strange & beautiful harmonies... the rhyhtm also grows...

just perfect x

also hafa was there - hafa who N has kept in touch with over the years, who i know/knew, back when i knew N the 1st time around... (hafa's blues was a tune we used to do in the cops, one of the few i produced... with hafa's voice...) - in fact, it was only on wednesday morning that i found the minidisk i'd recorded hafa's voice onto, which i'd sampled from...

hafa used to talk about sun ra back then... he knew him...

hafa (from wednesday): if you want to talk about music go & talk to marshall, i never talked about music to sonny, me & sonny used to talk about "the ascension of the name"

this was in the break between sets & me & R were talking to hafa who was a little irate to begin with...

i took me leave and crossed the room to use the toilet, and on my way i bumped into marshall allen and i shook his hand and told him how happy i was that he was there and that the spirit of sonny was alive in that room... he told me that it was what kept him going (he's 80 odd)...

then on my way back from the loo somebody yelled for me and i had a little chat with a guy i've met over in homerton, bass player (very sharply dressed that night)...

it was a truly lovely night... aided in part by a little tickle of something which might have a name but i don't know what the name is...

3 different T's combined.. very pleasant...

x

life worth living

sometimes i am so glad that i live in this city...

met up with felinity to go check out possible venues for her 30th

it will be taking place 2 days before her birthday in a secret location...

there will probably be a facebook event relating to it for those of you interested in coming...

so anyway, we started in angel, got a bus down to holborn,

popped into conway hall where an old fashioned dance was taking place...

we crept into the balcony and looked down on the dancing partners...

stopped in on G, out drinking in the place where it will be taking place... as it happens...

then got another bus down to the southbank... sat in the royal festival hall for a couple of cups of tea... dropped her off @ waterloo,

lovely to spend time with her, nothing quite like being with someone you've known since you were 7...

she got on her train, i was about to go down to the tube...

but something in me wanted to walk for awhile...

so i popped on my comedy over sized headphones, listened to julian joseph's version of "the other side of the tracks" for the 7th, or 8th time today (loving that tune) in fact you can find out exactly how many times i've listened to that tune today over on my lastfm...

should you want to...

then just south of the river i started listening to my lovely herbie hancock playlist..

butterfly,
sun touched,
bubbles,
people music,
gentle thoughts,

it carried me over the north hungerford bridge, up passed charing cross, passed trafalgar square,

walking up charing cross road...

down onto the picadilly line @ leicester square...

& in fact it carried me all the way out to turnpike lane, starting to repeat the 1st tune again as i arrived at my door...

lovely to walk in london, over the river...

joss fucking stone

me & dinah came back here last night after the gypsy hotel gig...

a way station on her way home... a smoke to take the edge off the adrenalin...

& we were listening to al green... when suddenly "how do you mend a broken heart" came on, but with joss stone singing over the top...

most unnecessary...

& now here i am, having recorded a couple of minutes of piano through the new mics, watching eragon, and who should turn up as a shabby looking fortune teller?

indeed yes, joss f*cking stone...

(because i can't spell that word in the content of this post, but strangely i allow myself to spell it properly in the title...?)

the gig was triumphant, a bit like that gig down in bristol... great crowd...

put me back into a good place... went to bed around dawn...

x

april fool

so, the long weekend stretches out in front of me... it must have been a full moon recently (or perhaps in the next couple of days) because it's easter...

spski & the family are meeting me tomorrow @ the ICA... we're going to see the billy childish exhibition...

i drank last night without eating properly, and i woke quite hungover... got out of bed around 7:30 to wait for the new microphones to be delivered... i was lying on a blanket near the front door napping when they arrived @ around 9:45...

i left for work about an hour later...

so a bit short on sleep, and although i was intending to start testing the mics tonight i found myself watching "the dark is rising", here through love film, and i was dropping off near the end wondering if it really was as bad as it seemed of if it seemed that bad because i was so tired...

it's been a night in front of the TV, i woke up a bit and watched madmen from last night (very good as ever)... then i started watching "this is england" which was looking great, but i realised after awhile that i needed to eat and didn't have food in the flat so i gave up on the film (which will be on my lovefilm list any minute now) and went out to lava's for a takeout,,,

then came back and watched wallander (swedish one) which was also great...

(incisive reviewing you get here - such great descriptive words as - great... and... bad... oh, hang on, maybe it's bad reviewing... oh...)

so anyway, slightly reluctant to be going out tomorrow, as i really do want to start recording that piano with those mics, but k-wo, baby bird & spski are some of the best people in the world so once i'm there i'll be perfectly content...

gigging on saturday night with the SJP's, seems a long way off but it's not too far...

oh dear, largely pointless post... just wanting to mark how foolish i feel on april fool's day x