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

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

film star

filmed on one of the coldest days of the year, and first shown on one of the hottest...

me & dinah met up with spski & Kwo, plus a host of others but we were the film makers, for last night's straight8 screening at the curzon mayfair...

Kwo's direction, spski's acting and comic planning, dinah's staring and my bearing...

(old friend tracey said i gave good bear)

it was the 1st time any of us had seen it, as is the nature of that competition, and it was great...

we weren't the best thing that was shown last night, but we were fabulous x

in other news my old windows XP operating system is out of the cupboard and dusted off, primarily because dinah's internet wasn't working and it was one of the things i tried to make it work again, but since it's been back it's turned out to be a much better system for the downloading that i do... (the wire series 4 is in my life now)... also i can use the cubase on it to try out the DML stuff i've been wondering about, this afternoon i was connected to P but not musically, we'll get there...

so ubuntu is taking a back seat for a moment, i'm also considering buying a router, take the weight off ubuntu into a way that i understand... although we're still in the summer drought so it would have to be cheap...

i've also got blender working on my new computer, also XP, i have big plans for my logo, big learning curve...

and of course the gig is on this friday, do come if you're in town, a string section, a great venue, a killer band, great songs...

what else is there?

x

string, wire & earthquakes

there's a minor earthquake afoot in my work life... deep underground because i'm not working now... the ripples... the aftershocks... i'll feel when i get back to work...

but 1st string & wire...

or arranging strings...

and watching stringer in the wire...

it took me long enough to get around to it but i arranged the 2 tunes for strings that i'm responsible for in T's set on august 1st...

composition, and even though the tune was written already, writing the strings is certainly composition... works best for me when i can get it to a certain point, then sleep on it... i don't always have time for that... also i have great ideas in the shower, it's always been a place rich in fantasy, and i know that sounds slightly rude, i don't mean it to be...

so the 1st tune i arranged, track 5 in the set a week on friday...

i got it done then realised that my strings were a little close together... did a version with the same notes but spreading the octaves a little... slept on it, listened to both... combined them, bits of close, bits of further out... because these strings have a place within the 5-piece band they can't be as far out as they would be if they were on their own...

it's interesting to be able to check out the alternatives and to choose... expands my string arranging head somewhat...

the other tune i arranged is the opener on the night and i wasn't so elaborate, partly to suit the needs of the tune...

all done and emailed off to T, along with one of his i tidied up... getting excited about that gig... i don't know if i've mentioned it much but it's a week on friday and i'm pushing more than i normally do to get people there... headlining @ the clapham grand is an event... so i've set up a facebook event for it, T has set up a myspace event, (or so he says, i can't find it)

check it out if you're in town next friday x

and then the wire... just finished watching the 3rd series and it is great...

the 5th series is coming on FX any day now, but i've got the 4th series in between me & that so i won't be watching it just yet, although i may catch it up through my means... but going back to normal TV with adverts, once a week, when you've had it with no adverts whenever you want... it's a different deal...

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!3rd series spoiler!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

stringer bell... what a great character...

and what a great end... i leapt out of my chair and cheered when he got it... i love good TV...

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!3rd series spoiler over!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ok so back to to the earthquake, some background, quite a few years ago i gave up my "working for all kinds of people" life and settled down to only working for one company... at the time there was ample work and i flourished, got a taste of having more money, not buckets of it but more than i was used to, liked it...

then gradually over the years that company cut my hours... every time it happened i was pleased, more time for creativity... the improvisations, the compositions, band stuff, film making....

but less work means less money... and the current earthquake takes away more work, although it's a big change and it could possibly signal more work in the long run... i'll believe it when i see it...

what it means is that my "only working for one company" notion is no longer working, now i started working for another college about 3 years ago and that's been good, even opened another horizon with the maths tuition, although i found out in the last days of work for the academic year that the maths tuition is being taken away, which disappointed me much and makes me feel somewhat undervalued over there...

so...

here we are, and like every other time work gets taken away i'm faced with a choice, celebrate the extra time my creativity is being given, or find more work...

and like every time i think that this time it's gone too far and surely i'll get more work now...

but will i?

it's funny, having less teaching work could also open the door, or give the space to, more music work, playing in restaurants and suchlike...

watch this space...

& watch the wire...

& come to our gig @ the clapham grand...

x