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

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

yr3wk4 guitar, drums, moog

from the HWLC staff party on thursday where much alcohol was drunk...

off now to celebrate my birthday, gin in hand x

yr2wk50 moog, voices, guitar, drums,

we recorded this one a week yesterday, i had it edited together by saturday, but googlevideo has been going through one of it's stupid patches and it only became available today...

glad it's here though x

yr2wk40 guitar, looper, rhodes & voice improvisation with Matt Mars

google being dumb so this took a few more days than it should have done x

vlad contact lens puncture

vlad and the puncture are today, the contact lens thing is yesterday and this morning...

so let's start with the contact lens thing...

yesterday as i put in my lens i noticed that one of them (the left one) had a very small knick in it but i didn't have time to get new ones out so i put it in intending to change the lens when i got home, i had my keyboard with me because we were rehearsing with T's band in the evening, i was also listening to each of the collaborative improvisation i've so far done on my ipod...

so i was travelling from shoreditch to kennington on the 133 bus around 7ish and i was pretty tired, the bus had been fairly empty but it was just about to get really busy, i rubbed my right eye a little too vigorously and suddenly i couldn't focus in that eye...

i started to look around me to see if i'd knocked out the lens somewhere and at that exact moment a crowd of people came in and i moved along my seat to let someone else sit down (hugging my keyboard stand)...

i asked the man who'd sat down to look at my eye and see if he could see my lens... he couldn't, it wasn't anywhere to be seen and if it had gotten on the floor it would have been all over anyway... london bus dirt...

so i had a psychedelic 10 minutes or so, listening to me & D's improvisation from a few weeks back and only being able to focus on one of my eyes and i started to realise that it must be still in there because looking down and left i could see a strange kind of shadow... so i got off the bus (a palaver indeed with my keyboard) and continued the strangeness that my journey had become walking to SLP...

i arrived and went straight into the toilet to look in the mirror and lo and behold my lens was still in there, folded over... i got it out, (also a palaver) unfolded it and put it back in, went about with the rehearsal...

only it wasn't happy about this and that eye was getting sore so i asked T if there was any contact lens solution around, which of course there wasn't... i decided to take it out and throw it away, i could possibly have kept it in water until i got home but carrying a glass of water, along with my keyboard from south to north london...?

anyway we rehearsed until quite late and i got the tube home, all with only one eye to focus with... once back at finsbury park it became clear that i should throw away the other lens (which had a knick in it anyway) and walk back to ours (but only for another 19 days) unfocussed and that is what i did ladies and gentlemen and it was lovely, i do like a bit of blurred at night time, so long as you know where you're going...

the added part of the story is that this morning i got hold of new ones (my last pair, once we've moved i'll have to get some new ones) and put them in, but once they were in i couldn't focus on anything, i blinked several times but the mist didn't clear until i worked out that i'd put both lens into the same eye... which i think i've done before and which is pretty spectacular...

ok, so briefly vlad, it had rained so the roads were wet and this is the classic time to get a puncture, on the way home from a brief stint at work this afternoon i could feel my back tire going down not too far from home, close though i was i decided to pretend that i wasn't to practise my roadside puncture repair...

i turned by bike up-side-down and set about trying to remove the outer tire... after 5 or perhaps 10 minutes of this with no visible results vlad came over to help, he has one of those jobs where you stand around a lot and he's from russia, he helped me get the outer tire off and find the puncture, also clearing the tiny bit of glass from the outer tire when we'd found the hole...

so much for my independent roadside puncture repair... anyway it got to the glueing stage and it became apparent that i didn't have any glue in either of the tubes of glue i had... so i had to carry the bike, still up-side-down, up hornsey road and through the andover estate to home before i could complete the operation... but the kindness of strangers ladies & gentlemen...? bless vlad...

x

thursdays collaborative improvisation

with gareth mitchell on guitar and darren smart on drums, @ shiftworks studio, recorded by ellis gardiner, (using thomas's wurlitzer) x

yr2wk5 rhodes & voice & bass