tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-216744202024-03-14T06:17:43.363+00:00Do You Do Any Wings?Shane Kirk is a writer, broadcaster, musician, slow right arm bowler, retired goalkeeper and the author of both 'Do You Do Any Wings?' - his journal of a year spent playing in a covers band - and 'All These Little Pieces', a remarkably similar account of being in folk/country/pop/rock 'East Angliacana' group Songs from The Blue House. Shane still plays with Picturehouse and occasionally records and performs under the bumbershoot of This Much Talent. He is married, and lives in 1987.Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.comBlogger361125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-34839462480538774302024-02-24T12:45:00.004+00:002024-02-24T12:45:46.581+00:00“I am breathing in, I am breathing out…”<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw5bjo6R2EwyduZSYv8I2fFEaBag0liYIkFwKEawBLyDxzdzwBCUFZUoOQmDkaaJ7tO1SwzzoK_mj4e0XP3JLhfCZW0YwgaEuJUKiL6aKwJZqitbEf9ULLg51ZLkHWtEuwy3_TA2HeyorGjzfFITtk-BSo2RbvpfXS_eQeX9iq4KPmHZ9EgTUe/s1024/IMG_2752.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="683" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw5bjo6R2EwyduZSYv8I2fFEaBag0liYIkFwKEawBLyDxzdzwBCUFZUoOQmDkaaJ7tO1SwzzoK_mj4e0XP3JLhfCZW0YwgaEuJUKiL6aKwJZqitbEf9ULLg51ZLkHWtEuwy3_TA2HeyorGjzfFITtk-BSo2RbvpfXS_eQeX9iq4KPmHZ9EgTUe/w133-h200/IMG_2752.jpeg" width="133" /></a></div><p> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Once more to The Institute in/at/for Kelvedon (see blogs passim). I am employed this evening as go-to session guitarist for The Tony Winn Band, as we are promoting his latest (and best) album - Blue Speck, upon which I also make a small contribution. My role this evening, under Eno-esque direction, is to play as little guitar as possible - something which we take to the absolute apogee during some parts of the set, in which I am not on stage at all.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">One of the joys of The Institute, aside from its convenient parking, lovely audience, adjacent Co-op and marvellous nearby Indian food is the appointed backstage area, a veritable trove of comfortable seating, occasional theatrical props, a clock to tell the time by, a lit mirror and a fully operational separate kitchen, which has been stocked with tea, coffee, milk and sugar by de facto TM, sound engineer and promoter James Bluehouse, seemingly from a stash of well-plundered hotel, motel and Holiday Inns’ courtesy baskets.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s2">I settle into an armchair and catch up with the rhythm section - on bass, the artist formerly known as Barry Picturehouse, currently engaged in a quest to bring the music of Prince the length and breadth of the UK and on percussion (“Congas and bongas”) Sam ‘Bongoboy’ Thurlow, who tells us of his ukulele-based exploits with his </span><span class="s3" style="font-style: italic;">Anarchy in the Ukulele </span><span class="s2">quasi autonomous syndicalist collective. “Occasionally we break them” he confesses. </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">“That must be popular!” I say, cheerfully. His mood darkens perceptibly as he glowers under beetle brows and mutters in a meaningful half-tone. “Not always…”</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s2">We are joined by Maverick scion Ella Spencer, who is to be the principal supporting artiste and who is gratefully checking the mirror to see if - having enjoyed a curry earlier - she has spinach in her teeth, on her face or (and I quote) in her piercing. “There’s always a first time”. Bass player Trill and I reminisce fondly about what we refer to numerous times as being “Back in the day”*. Ella seems fascinated at the idea that one might book a venue in London, guarantee to sell thirty tickets, organise a coach and then play to the same people at The Powerhaus as you would have done at (say) The Caribbean Club in Ipswich.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-family: verdana;">These days of course, one might set up a phone in a cradle, film yourself with a filter and put the resulting demo on YouTube for much less effort, and without having to pay a clean up fee to the bus company. A passing Tony Winn dolefully recalls the attendance figures at his Edinburgh Fringe residency (spoiler - you could have fitted the entire run’s audience in tonight’s venue) however we brightly point out that the subsequent press merely reflects that he had </span><span class="s3" style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">a show at the Edinburgh Festival.</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s2"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Before too long it is time to mach show ourselves, and after my brief Little Feat-esque groove to ‘South Australia’ (the presence of a conga player named Sam to my left helps enormously with getting into character) and a career-spanning guitar solo, I am off for a bit of a sit backstage and a cup of tea before resuming duties for a bit of light arpeggiation, the climactic audience singalong and some off the cuff volume control swell work. For the arms-linked audience bow at the end, Trill and I engage in lunges, at my behest. “Christ” he says “You could have warned me. At my age!”</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">*To be fair, when I drove La Mulley home from rehearsal earlier in the week she actually </span></span><span class="s2" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody;">said “Of course, it was all fields around here when I was growing up” at one point.</span></span></p>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-12830547378467295842024-01-19T19:11:00.002+00:002024-01-19T19:27:12.560+00:00A to the M to the E to the Ricana<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik_P3qUHyVJJfJQSgdKXgdDuQ8zRVQJdy8I3996GntNT18XRfV_vmz4JGS9om0VvxGcm1p9HgBzku_DKFWTqYHJLmn4Kh_nmpztixqcDX0orHbC8FXt3BNDGIqHKKlL-tVSi5lpCsI0NIZKF9-6RCA_oI42k3j425FI7d5iGvuaDMAsiOZnWK2/s1060/IMG_2735.webp" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><img border="0" data-original-height="852" data-original-width="1060" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik_P3qUHyVJJfJQSgdKXgdDuQ8zRVQJdy8I3996GntNT18XRfV_vmz4JGS9om0VvxGcm1p9HgBzku_DKFWTqYHJLmn4Kh_nmpztixqcDX0orHbC8FXt3BNDGIqHKKlL-tVSi5lpCsI0NIZKF9-6RCA_oI42k3j425FI7d5iGvuaDMAsiOZnWK2/w200-h161/IMG_2735.webp" width="200" /></span></a></div><p></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Jazz” opined the songwriter and philosopher Otis Lee Crenshaw “ain’t nothing but a blues quartet falling down a flight of stairs”, thus neatly labelling an entire genre of music which encompasses everything from Louis Armstrong’s gravel-coated reading of ‘Wonderful World’ to Pat Metheny’s atonal ‘Zero Tolerance for Silence’, which one critic called “…an incendiary work by an unpredictable master” while another called it, simply, “rubbish” which is, frankly, nitpicking. Thus, to define ‘Americana’, we need to dig into its - appropriately - roots. </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1">I was having a conversation about authenticity in music at The Maverick Festival at Easton Farm Park, where if nothing else the presence of horses, goats and sheep lends a bucolic air to the self-styled</span><span class="s2" style="font-style: italic;"> first and finest Americana music festival </span><span class="s1">with a</span><span class="s2" style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span class="s1">visiting musician who posited that folk should really sing in their natural accent, prompted not by an outbreak of MacCollesque revisionism, but by a performer who had sung a song in a broad Tennessee twang and then explained the genesis of the ballad in an accent which reflected nothing so much as a deep immersion in the history and culture of (say) Beccles. My companion nodded approvingly at the next turn, who provided a thorough exegesis of the Appalachian ballads she had wrought regarding mining disasters and backwoods stills. When we looked her up in the programme it turned out she was from New York.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1">And so we try to define ‘Americana’, the granddaddies of which are probably The Band, who after all were eighty per cent Canadian and steeped in rock n’ roll and Motown roots. ‘Roots’ being the term many thrusting young women and men adopted in order to avoid being pigeonholed as ‘folk’ (too finger in the ear), ‘country’ (big hats and songs like “When You Leave Me, Walk Out Backwards so I Think You’re Coming In”) or blues (literally </span><span class="s2" style="font-style: italic;">endless</span><span class="s1"> versions of “Sweet Home Chicago”). Put them all together though, and you have a form which encompasses all the best of everything. To paraphrase Sanjeev Bhaskar’s grandfather character in ‘Goodness Gracious Me’; “Guy Clark - Americana”, “Police Dog Hogan - Americana”, “John Craigie - Americana”. It’s a convenient shorthand for an all-encompassing genre which wends its way from the close folk harmonies of The Black Feathers to the (now) bombastic Zeppelin-esque onslaught of Larkin Poe or the stadium-bound LA-centric Morganway.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">If Beyonce opined that you should really put a ring on it, Americana suggests that if you like it you should put a fiddle on it. Or a dobro. Or a banjo. </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Our old friend Otis might suggest that Americana ain’t nothing but a folk singer in a lumberjack shirt, but the breadth and scope of the genre is the most welcoming of churches. After all, one of the early adopters of the opportunity to simply get up and perform songs from the heart-worn highway in a checked shirt is immortalised on You Tube in an early performance at Maverick.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Local lad. His name was Ed Sheeran.</span></span></p>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-22958934875174045462023-10-22T17:20:00.003+01:002023-10-22T17:20:45.131+01:00“Here today I drift away from carnal thoughts of sin, to the sounds of Little Epic and The Nights are Falling In…”<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAqDM8CIoTCI1sRrobMIX6TzN0K6Qs3rXRmMZ3eF_JBq4Kyl1h9xnBrz0j4v95u271IVJ0k0bR-9FkTLrVk6T7q8uJ6xZaCHAgQy-uTr6olfM-8YrQKljrRLICmzYb7X-w2iXpLVKAPv3NUAb7R4bItw9Ardp5GkuWWos6hgZgKO4jLpcm2zrj/s2077/IMG_2638.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="990" data-original-width="2077" height="96" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAqDM8CIoTCI1sRrobMIX6TzN0K6Qs3rXRmMZ3eF_JBq4Kyl1h9xnBrz0j4v95u271IVJ0k0bR-9FkTLrVk6T7q8uJ6xZaCHAgQy-uTr6olfM-8YrQKljrRLICmzYb7X-w2iXpLVKAPv3NUAb7R4bItw9Ardp5GkuWWos6hgZgKO4jLpcm2zrj/w200-h96/IMG_2638.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">The behemoth that is the This Much Talent promotional tour rolls on - The Bury Milkmaid Contemporary Folk Club one night, The Beyton Village Fete and now, The Coda in Colchester, for an afternoon session with the power trio - that is to say Me, The Bass Player and Helen, flautist, vocalist and registered pole dancer, resplendent in autumnal tones from top to toe. I consider having my colours done, but at present they might be a sort of cod-psychedelic mush. Or just the colour of cod.</span></span><p></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Bass Player and I are sequestered in the tour bus (my Skoda Karoq), he with the general ennui of his everyday existence and me with the sort of hangover that a quadruple gin and tonic snifter to finish a Friday night in front of HIGNFY will only be dispersed - we agree between us - by either a long nap or a serious infusion of caffeine, and at this stage we can’t decide which we need more. We are not aided by a listless wander up and down the high street looking for the venue which we intend to attend at a responsible hour before our scheduled three o’clock kick-off, but which it transpires doesn’t open until half two.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Upon admittance we admire the funky decor, and adopt bar stools. “Am I on a smaller stool or just a lot shorter than you?” enquires Helen. “I’m even wearing heels”. I approach the bar, somewhat shakily, and order three coffees. “What sort?” our host enquires. “Well, it’s after noon, so it can’t be a Cappuccino” I offer. “We’re not in Milan, but I <i>will</i> silently judge you” he responds, before putting together three amazing Americanos for an extraordinarily reasonable rate during which process which I apologise for delaying one of my my fellow drinkers’ orders. He’s just purchased a print of yachts in full sail off the Isle of Wight from the Emmaus charity shop opposite and is happy to chat while the coffee machine clicks and whirrs. </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">We are to play at the end of the session, and so I look forward not only to the acoustic stylings of our fellow travellers on the afternoon showcase highway, but the additional recovery time afforded by the running order. The doors are wide open and so the high street traffic adds an ambient burr to proceedings when not drowned out by the world’s loudest toilet hand dryer. Before too long, and after a restorative Guinness which I manage to not spill entirely from my shaking hand, we are ushered onstage and fixed quickly and efficiently with a monitor mix and a DI pedal which contains an inbuilt tuner. As a veteran of the songwriter’s showcase and open-mic scene, and someone who has decided to play a twelve string guitar with a capo at one point, this is a welcome restorative.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> They also, quite wonderfully, livestream the whole thing on social media, so I </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">would tell you about the performance itself, but you can make up your own minds. Helen works absolute wonders on transforming an old song called The Boy Who Loved Aeroplanes with her psych-folk flute, The Bass Player adds subtle harmonies and weaves wonderful lines throughout, and after a tight thirty-five we are off and able </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">to indulge in the rest of our evenings. “Split the money three ways, yeah?” I quip. “Sure” says Helen.</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“How much do I owe you?”</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">Watch the This Much Talent Medium-Sized Band here: <a href="https://fb.watch/nR0rysxEZ5/">https://fb.watch/nR0rysxEZ5/</a></span></span></p>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-61941098211740752312023-08-31T21:27:00.002+01:002023-08-31T21:30:26.094+01:00A Guest Blogger Writes…<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAy-QOyyzzeQBiy-8LNEb69pGQM8bJmHfHyZwVGU8R2NlPoGG-oexM-jCmP6ds_tG6it98Xt7D7Ahq5H8jmWhux1fo12E9mizyapU6INqUlOXD8aD-Dt9sU3UCjoGIR9f7qPpYOI3mDJRR4bL2Zu5-CEkzbwMG5NtlY9pwcDzWFxdcVfW8GdRY/s1489/IMG_2615.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1489" data-original-width="1000" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAy-QOyyzzeQBiy-8LNEb69pGQM8bJmHfHyZwVGU8R2NlPoGG-oexM-jCmP6ds_tG6it98Xt7D7Ahq5H8jmWhux1fo12E9mizyapU6INqUlOXD8aD-Dt9sU3UCjoGIR9f7qPpYOI3mDJRR4bL2Zu5-CEkzbwMG5NtlY9pwcDzWFxdcVfW8GdRY/w134-h200/IMG_2615.jpeg" width="134" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <a href="https://thismuchtalent.bandcamp.com/track/showtime" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">https://thismuchtalent.bandcamp.com/track/showtime</a></span></p><div class="gmail_default" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /></span><div class="gmail_default" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">A couple of decades and a few thousand miles ago, I ran a cosy little studio out of my back bedroom in Ipswich, grandly referred to by the cognoscenti as Chemistry Set East. Around about this same time, it came to my attention that the guitar player in almost every local band in the Suffolk-Essex hinterlands looked identical - coincidentally, they were all Shane Kirk. Eventually I encountered at least one of the songs on this EP, with the proviso that this song "had been kicking around for a while." As far as I recall, the only time I played it was in the upstairs room of a pub in Felixstowe which faced the deep blue void into which I would shortly disappear.</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">***recorded at Chemistry Set East, 2005:<br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><a href="https://radarsclownsofsedation.bandcamp.com/track/8-10-89-the-postcard-song" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: verdana;">https://radarsclownsofsedation.bandcamp.com/track/8-10-89-the-postcard-song</span></a></div><div class="gmail_default" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Sometimes, not always, things go round in circles. Some orbits are longer than others, of course, and somehow our world tours didn't cross paths again until late 2017. The onset of the global pandemic had a way of adjusting priorities for us all, and 2020 saw the transformation of my office space/guitar storage hangar into Chemistry Set West. Originally reborn solely as an experiment space for the reconstruction of some decades-old cassette tape montages, #CSW has spread locally and internationally. (#CSW is just a bit under 4000 miles west and a little south of #CSE.) Little did we know that back in the old country, Shane was revviving projects of his own. Imagine my surprise when I found out those old tunes were *still* kicking around.<br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family: verdana;">***recorded at Chemistry Set West, 2021:</span></div><div class="gmail_default"><a href="https://chemistrysetwest.bandcamp.com/track/the-ex-presidents"><span style="font-family: verdana;">https://chemistrysetwest.bandcamp.com/track/the-ex-presidents</span></a></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div></div><div class="gmail_default" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Showtime came to us originally as just a guitar and vocal piece recorded by Ian Crow at Amblin' Man. We overdubbed the rhythm section (Deric McGuffey and Sean Dowdall) and then asked for further guidance from the horse's mouth. "Well," said Shane, "You know some horn players, don't you?" I had to admit this was true. In one of my self-appointed roles, I operate a de facto international dating service for musicians. When temporarily stumped for arrangement ideas, it's always a good idea to consult Trent Jackson, an accomplished songwriter himself, trombonist, and leader of the Unsustainables:</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><a href="https://unsustainables.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: verdana;">https://unsustainables.bandcamp.com</span></a></div><div class="gmail_default" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Jen Strassberg and I rounded out those arrangements with a touch of flugelhorn, after all of which we sent it all back to Ian to work his magic on. Isn't technology marvellous? In the old days, somebody would've had to get on Concorde with a 2" multitrack tape stuffed under their coat. I do hear, however, that 2" tape and supersonic travel are both due for a revival, much like the time capsules presented here. </span></div>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-63883955801972251892023-08-03T11:56:00.000+01:002023-08-03T11:56:08.982+01:00You get what you play for. <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrU86Pvd0sVGBa5ie2R5ziA0n8sHRRFP8A8gXYLKRzWH0bNzNoLYj1UTvbx2P2_3WdXC5u4UQtZyyJUDWeMaWrN4CRGoQhLmr-B4JxXmRtyhgE4gy2XARv7YzUX5ZHfqUpdt6h9ZxY0j0-cpuqKkDe7pnMloBFxXU9Ssc7WsvKTdkxp1tBAaQC/s2100/IMG_20220417_011336.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2100" data-original-width="1683" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrU86Pvd0sVGBa5ie2R5ziA0n8sHRRFP8A8gXYLKRzWH0bNzNoLYj1UTvbx2P2_3WdXC5u4UQtZyyJUDWeMaWrN4CRGoQhLmr-B4JxXmRtyhgE4gy2XARv7YzUX5ZHfqUpdt6h9ZxY0j0-cpuqKkDe7pnMloBFxXU9Ssc7WsvKTdkxp1tBAaQC/w160-h200/IMG_20220417_011336.jpg" width="160" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">‘Twas ever thus – a tale as old as time - somebody well-meaning puts out feelers on Facebook to see if there are any bands prepared to play for </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">no money, but good exposure</span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">, and is swamped in the subsequent pile-on from justifiably annoyed creatives who point out in varying terms of kindliness how you can’t trade exposure for groceries*. The reaction tends to be especially more energetic when the hosts are charging eight quid on the door or, in the case of one country show** I performed at, invoicing traders sixty quid a metre of stall front, plus electricity. It’s all very well claiming they’re providing footfall and merch opportunities, but they’re also advertising your services on the poster in order to entice paying customers.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">And there – just in that paragraph above – is the rub. Yes, I performed at The East Anglian Country Show. It was a nice day out, I was with friends, and the joy of an unpaid gig is that you can do what the hell you want. Any teenage dirtbands invited to an unpaid genteel pub garden beer festival gig should, in my opinion, pitch up in full fishnet and death’s-head make up and play a set of Extreme Noise Terror covers, no matter what genre they usually perform. We happened to do some genteel East Angliacana, as I have at Ipswich Music Day, The Cornbury Festival, The Kelvedon Community Festival, Maverick and countless radio sessions and open mic nights, so I’m not about to start scrabbling around for two sharps, two flats and a packet of gravel with which to cast about my glass house, galling as it is to know that the car park attendant at many of these events is earning more than you are. To be honest, the portable toilets are earning more than you, and they don’t even have to dress up in a hi-viz tabard. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">On the other hand, there’s that marvellous faux-personal ad regarding a dinner party that someone is planning for the weekend and how it would be a splendid opportunity for a chef to demonstrate their talent as many of the guests would tell their friends about the food and maybe even post it on Instagram. Sadly, the ad concludes, the host cannot afford to actually pay for the years of experience and practice their cook will have employed, the kitchen implements they’ll have to bring, or indeed the food, as the budget is a bit tight. Show me a musician who’s played a wedding and I’ll show you someone who has been asked if they can do it a bit cheaper. I frankly wouldn’t swear the same about a caterer, a florist or dressmaker.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">It's a tricky conundrum – and very much one that seems to principally concern those of a musical bent, to whatever degree. “You can play here but you have to sell X number of tickets/fill a coach” is a familiar refrain from the last century, whereas its modern equivalent seems to be “Songwriting Competition – Get Your Song Heard by Nashville Legends!” and then in extraordinarily small print somewhere on the third page you*** click through to “Only ten dollars to enter” by which time you’ve got more cookies swarming over your hard drive than at Sesame Street Sid’s birthday party. It’s the sort of approach that starts with </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Learn Guitar for Fun and Pleasure</span><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> and ends with you**** being advised by the government to retrain in IT.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">It's a rum old conundrum and no mistake, and I don’t think I’ve got all the answers. As a result of playing some of those unpaid gigs I mentioned earlier I’ve shared a bottle opener with Robert Plant’s road crew, won a shiny silver trophy I keep at my Mum’s house, been introduced to Peter Buck, blagged more free pints than I could shake a gnarly old stick at and, on one notable occasion, met the present Mrs. Kirk. All I will say is, that if someone you don’t know asks you to play a show for nothing, then that’s what they think you’re worth. And you’re better than that. </span></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: 8pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 8pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">*Don’t get me wrong – I was there front and centre with my passive-aggressively flaming torch and freshly buffed pitchfork</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 8pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">**in agrarian terms rather than the boot-scootin’ musical genre.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 8pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">***You, not me.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 8pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">****Me, not you.</span></span></p>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-31720442038893672962023-07-08T13:36:00.005+01:002023-07-08T14:14:31.752+01:00What You Give is What You Get<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiete-F1tZ7fzUQ-byl-ZvQUw_f03bM1u5cecbZt_kd_uS6toSHaQB1H9qg2HcUlD2oD7uAVPcRoAKOrkFXzc8TnF0KHuVKmhyUP5ESOGBq29rOCq-lm4TTy_-6SFuLctMXVtIvWFGfeKNlBdQvVCtptn08AxZgDFYdEevW9-mh8PXYAaTldkki/s1080/9BAB8EE2-F97F-48A5-8A23-519C34E1647D.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiete-F1tZ7fzUQ-byl-ZvQUw_f03bM1u5cecbZt_kd_uS6toSHaQB1H9qg2HcUlD2oD7uAVPcRoAKOrkFXzc8TnF0KHuVKmhyUP5ESOGBq29rOCq-lm4TTy_-6SFuLctMXVtIvWFGfeKNlBdQvVCtptn08AxZgDFYdEevW9-mh8PXYAaTldkki/w200-h200/9BAB8EE2-F97F-48A5-8A23-519C34E1647D.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In the town hall square, tuning up for a daytime show with Tony James Shevlin and The Chancers. A massive stage has been erected, drum kit, backline and monitors are all complimentary and in place, the band on before us are tearing through a terrific version of ‘Barracuda”. It’s a long way from clambering up on to the back of a P&O trailer and peering twenty yards to your right to see if the other guitarist is playing the same bridge as you. Lovely, tight forty five minutes. Blinking in the sunshine afterwards I realise what a culture shock it is to come off stage and still have a good couple of hours of afternoon left.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Snap!</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1">The Maverick pop-up Medicine Show has been relocated to a leafy grove and looks, feels and sounds all the better for it. I am to wrangle a series of <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>short solo, small band and off-roading sessions from artists who are (mainly) appearing elsewhere at the festival. Charlie Austen*, who has a self-constructed suitcase-based percussion set up (“I’m playing all this myself you know, it’s not loops”) performs an as-yet unreleased balled called Four Tiny Frames which unaccountably sets off my hay fever**. Red-eyed and sniffing, I congratulate her on the perfect timing with which her sunglasses fell down on to her face mid-song. “I </span><span class="s2" style="font-style: italic;">definitely</span><span class="s1"> planned that” she grins.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Snap!</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Matt Owens is playing guitar for someone else at the festival, but drops by to perform a few numbers of his own. This is the joy of The Medicine Show. He calls in two hours before his allotted stage time, checks out the gear, asks my name, returns an hour later with a beer and we chat amiably about his beautiful vintage acoustic guitar. By this time I would have done almost anything for him. He gently explains what he needs in terms of sound and we tweak things variously until he’s happy, or as happy as an ex-member of Noah and the Whale can be in a field adjoining the goat enclosure. During his set he engages affably with the queue for the portaloos, which snakes along the track fronting the paddock. “Good time to choose to go for a wee” he advises sagely.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Snap!</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1">Our Man in the Field are a trio with a guitar, bass, cello configuration who are setting up under the stars and by the light of a fullish moon which glints off the river. They’re using backline for the guitar and bass which means I have to work with their levels, and everything else needs to be carefully balanced against them. Two of their coterie have already advised me as to their sonic preferences regarding the performance and I have taken their suggestions on board, and then refer back to them a couple of songs in to see what they think. I’ve deliberately kept everything low so that we have to lean in to get the sound. One thinks I’m taking the piss. I explain that it’s a combination of my </span><span class="s2" style="font-style: italic;">character</span><span class="s1"> of ‘Grumpy Sound Man’ and my naturally sarcastic-sounding tone that is probably misleading. Another admits that their suggestion about the balance of the backing vocal was probably wrong. My character graciously reverts to the prior mix. On stage they are joined by fiddle player extraordinaire Chris Murphy, who despite meeting them that afternoon and being invited to sit in, sounds like he’s been rehearsing with them for a decade. It’s enthralling, moving, breathtaking music - the sort that Guy Garvey might have made if he’d moved to Woodstock in 1968 and signed to Warners. I remark to his partner that Chris’s playing is exquisite. “Mind you, I guess I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know?” “Yeah, but it’s good to hear it” replies Barbara Hershey.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Snap!</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Picturehouse have assembled in a community hall to see if our old PA still works and to run through a few of the more untenable numbers in the set for our forthcoming quarterly show in Stowmarket. “It’s a long time since I rehearsed in a village hall” I say. The walls are lined with portraits of benefactors and plaques recording gifts of clocks, indoor toilets and the addition of a kitchen. The Drummer is on his phone. “Someone’s added me to the village WhatsApp group and I need to tell them it’s not my drone” he mentions by way of explanation. “In the old days” someone sighs wistfully “the only way you’d get a call out here would be someone ringing the phone box outside to complain about the noise”.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Snap!</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Bury Folk Collective have invited me - the newly appointed head of a benevolent dictatorship - to bring my This Much Talent project to perform at their monthly contemporary folk night. For someone so used to hiding behind a microphone and an amplifier, the bare bones of an acoustic evening bring forth a whole new set of challenges. Fortunately audience interaction is not only permissible in such circumstances, but encouraged. I emerge from an acoustic guitar instrumental reverie to enquire of Mr. Wendell whether that really was a rendition of Metallica’s ‘Nothing Else Matters’, which he assures me it was. By the time we’re on someone has located the switch for the mood lighting. Gib on electric bass*** and Wendell on Gibson jumbo are seated, I’m front and centre telling a lengthy introductory anecdote about how thrilled I was when Geoffrey Kelly out of Spirit of the West had agreed to play on my new CD****, how that never would have happened during the era of phone boxes and what an incredible job he’d done playing on it. “Whereas, tonight…” smiles La Mulley, holding her flute up to the light. “Such a tiny little thing, and yet so expressive!” remarks a flute-loving audience member afterwards.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Isn’t she just?”</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">*Explaining to my neighbours in The Moonshine Bar, who are back-announcing their turns and then inviting folk to pop round the corner to see who’s on, I explain “It’s ‘Charlie’ as in the BRIT Awards drug of choice, and ‘Austen’, as in the author…” </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">“I had not made either of those connections” remarks MC Smithy, drily.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">**I don’t get hay fever.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">***”Judas!” etc etc</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="s1">****”It’s three tracks and lasts…well, it’s a compact disc, it’ll last for </span><span class="s2" style="font-style: italic;">ever</span><span class="s1">…”</span></span></p>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-63166636027908532482023-06-17T12:20:00.007+01:002023-06-17T12:40:32.018+01:00What Four Words?<p><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvrv8Xh8zwiiObqdjhcbVh6FHrW3Fq2iJfpcje40jXbvfBXf3xkGrxHZFArx5yMdUro0VJSwSkINZSuOJA9YVNaIYKzMoHaq_HJ-Y_8xS402_NSlKILCdCI5KrBhrFOSjkvWGbq9fZ5lPVYH3dZXGSIYzcQNxqKY3R16pA_UvqVksVORZX8A/s1166/IMG_2371.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1166" data-original-width="1159" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvrv8Xh8zwiiObqdjhcbVh6FHrW3Fq2iJfpcje40jXbvfBXf3xkGrxHZFArx5yMdUro0VJSwSkINZSuOJA9YVNaIYKzMoHaq_HJ-Y_8xS402_NSlKILCdCI5KrBhrFOSjkvWGbq9fZ5lPVYH3dZXGSIYzcQNxqKY3R16pA_UvqVksVORZX8A/w199-h200/IMG_2371.jpeg" width="199" /></a></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 15.693334px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 17.120001px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I did my first gig in 1980 - that’s the year before Dare, Moving Pictures, Tattoo You and East Side Story were released. Not that that’s got any real relevance here but I see a lot of biographies that start this way.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 15.693334px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 17.120001px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In between then and now, I’ve been the guitarist in a blues rock power trio, and a baggy-shirted visionary playing The Big Music; a foil in a heavy-big-pop four piece jagged soul band, an acoustic troubadour, an electric wanderer, a founder member of the East Angliacana movement, festival stage manager, three-time author, the quiet one in a Beatles specialist act, and someone who was once part of a group who convinced a theatre audience in our home town that we were a travelling family of Appalachian musicians named the Guitarres. Good times.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 15.693334px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 17.120001px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I was supposed to have sung my final hurrah in Y2K with the release of an album called ‘This Much Talent’ which bade farewell to both my so-called career and the CD format and yet, here we all are. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 15.693334px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 17.120001px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">This Much Talent - an all-encompassing body of artistes and auteurs - first made its appearance on a fundraising compilation in 1989, the purpose of which was to raise awareness on behalf of the Venue for Ipswich Campaign. Veterans of the VIC wars still talk fondly of the infamous Caribbean dressing room wrecking exploits of (probably) Noel Gallagher and in hushed tones of the Carter USM expedition with which certain members of the support band still, to this day, bore their partners rigid whenever ‘Sheriff Fatman’ crops up on re-runs of Top of the Pops. Well, one certain member does, anyway… <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 15.693334px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 17.120001px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I am overly pleased to reflect that some people who were on that compilation (and on This Much Talent Volume 1) are also on this EP - not least my de-facto co-producer and recording mastermind Ian Crow, who probably rarely has thoughts of re-recording the seminal oeuvre of his band at the time, Edible Vomit. Few who purchased the bargain £3.50 twenty-six track cassette look back from a distance with anything but fondness, I’m sure, on the haunting refrain of ‘Chunder Violently’.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 15.693334px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 17.120001px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">However, back to the update. ‘Showtime’ is on that very compilation, albeit with a bum chord which I’ve finally eliminated, and which dates from so much earlier in my writing expeditions that I distinctly remember being inspired by a Bob Dylan quote that someone had pinned up on the wall of our sixth form common room. This dates its writing to about forty years ago.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 15.693334px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 17.120001px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">As is the way of these things, I should point out that forty years before that, people were coming up things like Al Martino’s ‘Here in My Heart’, but it remains to be seen how far we’ve come in the meantime. It has certainly been an education in revisiting the thoughts and prayers of a fledging songwriter with the benefit of four decades of cynicism and disappointment but without barely having to change a word - maybe a tense or two.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 15.693334px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 17.120001px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Here it has been elegantly redressed by Pete Pawsey and his Twenty Bars / Chemistry Set West pals before having a last minute one-take flute part added by Helen Mulley. James Partridge, who recorded the original Tascam four track Portastudio version, insisted on the inclusion of four words which had been excised from the re-imagining, for which I am hugely grateful. It was our “…the movement you need is on your shoulder” moment. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 15.693334px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 17.120001px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">For ‘Stop That for a Start’ I was able to welcome back to the fold Stephen Dean and Richard Hammond, whose combined rhythm section propelled gods kitchen (no capitals, no apostrophe) throughout the nineties and beyond, and who were able to burnish their original arrangement before Nick Zala remotely added pedal steel and then Steve Constable - also of gods kitchen, The World Service, The Company of Strangers, The Star Club, The Perfectly Good Guitars, The Canyons and Picturehouse (no, not that one) – was in one session able to vocalise as Crosby, Stills <i>and</i> Nash and was conveniently on hand to nod meaningfully in the background when Ian mentioned that he had an e-bow kicking around somewhere. Steve also made a long and sustained case for a couple of Neil Young power chords to be subtly re-inserted into the outro right up until the final mix. He won. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 15.693334px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 17.120001px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">‘The Merchant of Venus’ is a recent write and has been through a few iterations. At one point, deep into a second bottle of Pinot Noir one evening I considered that ideally it would have a flute solo by Geoffrey Kelly, whose band Spirit of the West had been a massive inspiration when I was on the same bill with them at a club in Peterborough on the tour which inspired ‘Home for a Rest’. Through the modern medium of the electric internet I was able to secure that very thing a mere week later. Many thanks to Hugh McMillan from the band for facilitating contact and to Geoffrey for his help and encouragement.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 15.693334px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 17.120001px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Helen also sang on this one and Ian added – of all things – an autoharp he had just picked up for a song. As it turned out, this song. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 15.693334px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 17.120001px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Dirk ‘The Drummer’ Forsdyke did a sterling job on the tricky task of putting his part on after we’d done much of the tracking work – never an easy assignment at the best of times – and then Ian was finally reunited with VIC tape producer James Partridge, who added the Steve Wynn-inspired guitar part at the end, advised on some harmonies and reflected on how different his life might have been if he'd signed up for Otley College, just down the road ‘pon the lef’ hand side, all those years ago.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 15.693334px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 17.120001px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;">And so here we are. Thank you to everyone who helped, advised, opined, and all the great performers and writers whose work I’ve absorbed over the years either at a distance or in person, and whose influence has inevitably seeped into every pore of this project. If you can hear it, it’s probably in there, maybe even on purpose.</span> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 21.6px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="line-height: 21.6px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="https://thismuchtalent.bandcamp.com/album/belgian-whistles">https://thismuchtalent.bandcamp.com/album/belgian-whistles</a></p>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-86307212004084569322023-04-22T12:41:00.002+01:002023-04-22T12:41:56.508+01:00Pickerelilli.<p></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXcqRMO_5op6cSyK8pSk0qXa5w_GLhb_GccKLsAcXVWO_QKAhxMaBBRfNSA2ijp5xVene-9bnZcQ-gAUxR6LBAC31yrBJoDjXa-WApX9g7cyGrXWpZOgTdwcjAoWlZnXjO8SH9lbaL-oupb7qScqXlazFGKvDLTgW3-xUVHXedBf4NiCyBMg/s1125/43D64061-A5B5-46EE-8C73-BC1725730141.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="642" data-original-width="1125" height="114" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXcqRMO_5op6cSyK8pSk0qXa5w_GLhb_GccKLsAcXVWO_QKAhxMaBBRfNSA2ijp5xVene-9bnZcQ-gAUxR6LBAC31yrBJoDjXa-WApX9g7cyGrXWpZOgTdwcjAoWlZnXjO8SH9lbaL-oupb7qScqXlazFGKvDLTgW3-xUVHXedBf4NiCyBMg/w200-h114/43D64061-A5B5-46EE-8C73-BC1725730141.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div><p></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Once more unto the Gipping Delta, where Picturehouse are to inform, delight and entertain the good people of Stowmarket, as many as five of whom have turned up on the special VIP meet n’ greet package to watch us sound check. I begin with the riff Deep Purple’s ‘Burn’ (nearly…) The Other Guitarist does ‘Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)’, The Singer knocks off the intro to ‘A Thing Called Love’, The Bass Player masters the theme from ‘The Rockford Files’, and The Drummer hits things, seemingly at random, until we ask him to stop.</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">We reconvene in the car park to exchange pop trivia, holiday tales, retirement plans, four day working, weight loss plans and golf trips and wait until we are at least outnumbered by the audience before performing. It wasn’t always like this, you know. Whilst en vacances only last week I was regaling the family with a story about the time The Drummer tried to secrete a fan in the van on the way back from a gig in Lincolnshire. In a shock twist my father-in-law tells me a very similar story involving the West Ham reserve team and a trip to King’s Lynn. Seems there’s nothing new under the sun.</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">As per, once the music begins, folk are lured in by our Siren-like* tones and are soon frugging away en masse. We seem to have a different crowd every time, from the Young Farmers’ night out to the Halloween dress-up gang, and this evening’s throng appear to be some gals who have probably organised the night on their WhatsApp group, along with some gently nodding types in beards, bandanas and leather jackets and - inexplicably - someone who appears to have channelled his Breakfast Club Judd Nelson to an impressive, if unsettling, degree.</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Being the party soundtrack people we are, the packed area front of stage** grooves to the lilting tones of 5ive’s ‘Keep on Moving’ as we segue effortlessly into Radiohead’s ‘The Bends’ - a dance floor filler if ever I’ve heard one, and a song which does at least offer me the opportunity to make sure that at one point all the little red lights on all of my effects pedals are all on all at the same time. There’s even time for a (genuine) encore, at which point the slightly damp and wheezy drummer*** is as delighted as you might imagine to learn that he is expected to sing ‘I Fought the Law’, which, triumphant and climactically, he does with dignity and aplomb.</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In an aside worthy of the great Douglas Adams he concludes the set. “I wish I’d brought my towel”.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span class="s2" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody;"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">*The mythological temptresses, not the fire warning.</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">**Carpet.</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="s2">***Incidentally, as I turn out</span> of the car park afterwards and head for the A14, the first song on random play in the car is Camel’s ‘Breathless’.</span></p>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-19068549150859417312023-03-20T19:03:00.001+00:002023-03-20T20:20:49.518+00:00The Passenger<p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBHLCMVE2gzH5BLEPhHY41uAUCtDu5y4_5xiToejJZdagR8MORpWS1C04uvWYaX-3HsDnnXElsS7Rce30swno0dAnEpeoAD6QVLn3Azr-eqbfWu5ZATaaLkymRGou3GRJDpCQQQuLpM-Lgb9mNOD_5jcA6_q6GmQ31cI7FLxacWF3RiF8u2Q/s631/E5EB17F0-C153-4A6E-9FAF-0D81BD02AAE2.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="444" data-original-width="631" height="141" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBHLCMVE2gzH5BLEPhHY41uAUCtDu5y4_5xiToejJZdagR8MORpWS1C04uvWYaX-3HsDnnXElsS7Rce30swno0dAnEpeoAD6QVLn3Azr-eqbfWu5ZATaaLkymRGou3GRJDpCQQQuLpM-Lgb9mNOD_5jcA6_q6GmQ31cI7FLxacWF3RiF8u2Q/w200-h141/E5EB17F0-C153-4A6E-9FAF-0D81BD02AAE2.jpeg" width="200" /></a></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I have, after many years and quite unexpectedly, joined a new union - that of the behatted bass players (official chapter). In lieu of a scheduled Helstock this year - times are tough for all of us, and the expense and inconvenience of assembling any number of bands to celebrate the official annual passing around the sun of La Mulley is tantalisingly beyond all of our reaches this year - I have been invited to step in to do the low notes for the Tony Winn Big Band in support of the estimable Marty O’Reilly at The Kelvedon Institute, and a mini-cheese fest has been laid out backstage in a nod to our traditional Helstock repast. Not in metaphorical terms - there’s actual cheese.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Marty himself is being filmed for what promises to be an - if you will - Rockumentary and is gamely discussing the journey so far through a fug of fatigue and Lemsip fumes. Tony, Helen and I are running through the set, which involves a selection of his back catalogue, and old song of hers, and me gamely thumping through the tunes channelling my finest Billy Peterson on a Westone Thunder bass which is - in common with de facto promoter, sound engineer and road mangler James - a veteran of the punk wars. Gamine co-support Lily Talmers enquires of these punk wars of which we speak. “He was listening to Neil Young” remarks James. “And we won” I respond.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Compere with the good hair Tony steps up on stage to set the scene and I remark that it would be amusing if he got his own name wrong during the introductions. Later he will throw his arms in the air despairing that he had got Lily’s name wrong during hers, but this is yet to pass. After a flawless rehearsal I inevitably fluff a couple of notes but, employing the tried and tested method of bass players through history in repeating them in verses two, three and four I present to the audience that when the progression resolves itself during the last chorus, it’s almost as if it was a deliberate attempt to build the tension throughout. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Nevertheless, the post-show reaction is positive - in Kelvedon it is rarely anything but - both from front of house and from the Old Soul Orchestra sequestered behind the velvet curtain and stage door which separates our backstage lounge from the packed auditorium. It’s very kind of Jeff - another paid up member of the (BBP/O) union - to not point out my unique, jazz-inflected approach to doling out the low notes as he, unlike myself, does not play the bass like a guitarist who has been handed an octopus. Lily is magnificent. Marty and the boys even more so. They play an hour and a half of intense semi-improvised wild country-blues-jazz folk before they finish with a call-and-response gospel singalong, unamplified on the floor. It is wonderful.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Tony thanks me once again. “Any time” I say out loud. Internally I’m thinking “And I hope I passed the audition”.</span></p>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-58388388468203313882022-12-03T15:32:00.003+00:002022-12-03T15:32:43.998+00:00Back in the Garage.<p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-KJgiG9lfBXw03eaX8JcPLoMWfCcIQJOr4dVlLKtiOvoJJyWmujQ4P3xgGWKwNr8SpSJo9YQK7jXsuSSEwWkguCCcuDutg2En5z0u7rOyuUeNfKssqhJqH3nYqpMwR15CMpEsH72QFS5Xizsl6B3yHXCRfNfqrOnn3c8uC-jxDHdCGWlM4A/s2040/9555CAFD-9F54-487F-A74C-71BC9CDF812D.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1528" data-original-width="2040" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-KJgiG9lfBXw03eaX8JcPLoMWfCcIQJOr4dVlLKtiOvoJJyWmujQ4P3xgGWKwNr8SpSJo9YQK7jXsuSSEwWkguCCcuDutg2En5z0u7rOyuUeNfKssqhJqH3nYqpMwR15CMpEsH72QFS5Xizsl6B3yHXCRfNfqrOnn3c8uC-jxDHdCGWlM4A/w200-h150/9555CAFD-9F54-487F-A74C-71BC9CDF812D.jpeg" width="200" /></a></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I am to commence recording again next week - honestly, the absence of pressure one feels when embarking on an enterprise that absolutely no-one has any interest at all in hearing is extraordinarily liberating - and I though that now might be the right time to revisit an old, old song of mine which came on in the car the other day and of which I was reminded that the demo we did around - I’d guess - thirty years ago had a couple of distinctly bum chords in it that we never got around to correcting, replacing or redoing - pushed, as we were, for time at the, um, time (it was a Sunday morning if I recall correctly). We probably couldn’t be bothered to demagnetise the heads again or something, and we’d already used up precious minutes forwarding the tape and then turning it over and doing it again so that it was properly stretched prior to recording.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Turns out I didn’t write down<i> the words I now needed in my big book of things I made up out of my own head</i> and so have spent no little time on a Saturday afternoon sitting in the car scrolling through many, many bits and bytes on a memory stick looking for something called ‘Unknown Album’, tracking down the song I need which I’m sure was somewhere in the middle of it, and then play and pausing whilst typing, then cut and pasting the fragments of lyric I *could* remember onto an iPad. This never used to happen when you had a cassette you’d mailed to yourself and a biro to wind things on with. Honestly, it would have been quicker to write a new one.</span></span></p>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-23491747782453680432022-10-08T09:26:00.002+01:002022-10-08T09:51:46.711+01:00Libraries Gave Us Power…<p></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span class="s2" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody;"></span><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3KIAXy0egied_xNR2_oQIj8O2-fChqbyoSAUufAfLawVGAYozFiD7rQ6AEoA5GpObXyRRoLrkJtDeQDz0-90iPyW8BTbYZlV-p-1sQOPTKtKlhaZ1Jk_bCTNuOzgm4YbwWOvz6TDrCxFuaqUIeTFeAv6xWUQursuC2OWUbSZSkTlqSgHl5w/s296/F1CEE574-EC94-4E4B-9629-E485CE1BD73D.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="170" data-original-width="296" height="115" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3KIAXy0egied_xNR2_oQIj8O2-fChqbyoSAUufAfLawVGAYozFiD7rQ6AEoA5GpObXyRRoLrkJtDeQDz0-90iPyW8BTbYZlV-p-1sQOPTKtKlhaZ1Jk_bCTNuOzgm4YbwWOvz6TDrCxFuaqUIeTFeAv6xWUQursuC2OWUbSZSkTlqSgHl5w/w200-h115/F1CEE574-EC94-4E4B-9629-E485CE1BD73D.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">There is a theory, admittedly discussed principally over three hour lunches and mostly with my good friend and occasional musical employer, award-winning songwriter Tony James Shevlin, that prophets rarely prosper in their own land. He posits the example of being denied access to the open mics, speakeasys and songwriters’ showcases of Chicago, until a well-placed expression of disappointment in this country’s finest Hugh Grant diction magically gains him entry. If Richard Curtis had been directing this would probably be the bit where Andie McDowell breathlessly intones “Is it still windy? I hadn’t noticed…”. The third wheel at one particular recent lunch attests to the power of the foreign accent* - “Meanwhile, I’m stuck out on the door like a dick”. Our colonial interlocutor is one Scott Stilwell, who much like a minor character in <i>Love, Actually,</i> Tony has met in a bar in America and who has followed him home.</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I’m exaggerating for comic effect, of course - a trait, once again, I share with the esteemed writer/director of <i>The Boat that Raped</i> - however the very presence of Scott attests to the beguiling power of the non-indigenous performer. He is here to take part in a short tour of England**, at least in American terms, and on the penultimate night of the jaunt a healthy following has assembled to see the pair of them trade songs, stories, and occasionally accents in the convivial surroundings of a local library. The show is sold out and whilst I am impressed. I am also slightly jealous, as a recent planned expedition to a theatre in Colchester by my musical paramours had to be pulled as advance ticket sales meant that the audience would only just have outnumbered the band, and even for a seven-piece, that’s a sobering statistic.</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Tony relates some well-worn and road hardened anecdotes while Scott, an owlish character in full moon glasses, a John Deere cap and double denim, is more of the moment - a fact I only glean because he uses something I said to him in The Green Room*** during one of his introductions. Although individual songwriters in their own right, these two have collaborated, and as they alternate between playing and listening raptly (as are the rest of us) there are subtle additions to the others’ performance, mostly in the form of keening harmonies which bring to mind the best work of (say) Boo Hewerdine working in tandem with Darden Smith. I can see how the most in demand product on the tour so far has been the album that they’re both on which, in an ironic twist, doesn’t exist. At an earlier show they have been upbraided for performing songs that haven’t been recorded, which seems harsh, even for Stowmarket.</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Although struggling with a head cold, Scott gamely goes for the notes anyway and his suffering gives him an attractively husky tone which in the interval**** I mention brings to mind the best work of John Prine. In a further twist, he performs a song called <i>Dear John Prine</i> in the second set before giving way for one number to another of Tony’s songwriting collaborators and performers. Me. It’s terribly generous of Scott to make way - this is, after all the reason he’s here in the first place - and it’s very kind of Tony to invite me up. It’s also slightly nerve wracking as if this is the one song they don’t like, it’s going to be pretty obvious what the uncommon denominator is. Fortunately, we make it through to the end, harmonies intact, and pausing only to savour the generous applause I return to my seat.</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The boys finish off the rest of the set, the lights go up, there is the sound of chairs being pushed away across the floor, creaking limbs being unfolded, the rain outside has abated, and the vapers are already in the car park. As we make our way toward the cloakroom, I feel a tap on my shoulder. </span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Nice song”.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span class="s2" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody;"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span class="s2" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody;"></span><br /></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">*It’s exaggerated for effect. Tony’s actually from Burton-on-Trent, but you know what they say, just because you’re from Burton, that doesn’t make you a pint of Bass.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">**It is revealed during the show that Scott once took a three hour drive from his home to see Tony play in Kansas City. On a slightly deflatory note, Scott confirms that he would also have driven that far for a barbecue.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">***The dressing room - not the high end coffee shop down the road from where we had lunch. I’ve never seen so many electrical sockets in one room. Again, at the library, not the coffee shop.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">****There’s a raffle, of course there’s a raffle.</span></span></p>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-48116185246889643652022-08-10T13:21:00.003+01:002022-08-10T18:14:41.094+01:00"... about four and a half minutes" <div><p dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-9d162b47-7fff-e4c5-6cfd-00edd67858c7" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6cPLsFC55E14IQKCFfS1q7vA8--x0mN8jHUHDrCQtltaEiO5AhsVifsuj2nLGbyIikdL17JC1PJTJp4Cr9aVPig-e-MLUMG0sBe3QHB9rOLlY-gllVuEgUU4A-D_TSE_qwRHevBoLzI49feE0oRxu9HBKXCCoyyXQ1NXZnORzpESrHhrOSg/s960/FB_IMG_1632387432832.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="488" data-original-width="960" height="102" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6cPLsFC55E14IQKCFfS1q7vA8--x0mN8jHUHDrCQtltaEiO5AhsVifsuj2nLGbyIikdL17JC1PJTJp4Cr9aVPig-e-MLUMG0sBe3QHB9rOLlY-gllVuEgUU4A-D_TSE_qwRHevBoLzI49feE0oRxu9HBKXCCoyyXQ1NXZnORzpESrHhrOSg/w200-h102/FB_IMG_1632387432832.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Another lovely Doghearsal last night – and they’re not <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">lovely by any means, but this one was – as we hone our set for a forthcoming theatre show in the heart of swinging downtown Colchester. I’d reverted to Takamine type and was feeling much more comfortable with the weight of guitar on my hip, Mr. Wendell had retrieved his capo from his wife’s handbag, Turny Winn had remembered to bring the right harmonica, and remembered not to sit on the banjo just in time. After each of the first four songs in the set Mr. Wendell reverently intoned “…and </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> should be the single”.</span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Upon my return to Kirk Towers I considered that in order to maintain our online presence* in light of our forthcoming engagement I should probably post something to try and whip up our small but enthusiastic fanbase and any of their friends with convenient disposable income into buying some tickets, and so I fired up “What’s a Rainbow” (or alternately “What’s the Moonlight For?”) from our ‘Back of the Big’ EP and posted it into the ether. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Upon relistening I was struck by a couple of things – firstly, that’s a </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">really</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> good recording and, courtesy of Fiddly, beautifully mixed and mastered** and secondly, how clever the wordplay constructed by Mr. Winn is – something you don’t always get to appreciate when you’re trying to remember if it’s this verse the key change comes in or not. He rhymes ‘Jealous’, ‘Fellas’ and ‘Cinderellas’ in one verse and although ‘…told me’, ‘…rosy’, ‘…know me’ and …cosy’ is straying into Chris Difford-like artistic license, there are many lesser*** writers also ploughing the same furrow, and it’s a fine club to be in. Mind you, he (Tony) also wrote a song where (deliberately) none of the lines rhymed, so he’s either better at this than he’s have us believe, or has far too much time on his hands. Or both.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Last week there was a temporary reunion of Songs from The Blue House. One of our better-loved songs among the rural community was always ‘Breaking These Rocks’, a cautionary tale of burglar-killing amongst the farming community – imagine Peter Gabriel’s ‘Intruder’ only where he gets blasted with a twelve-bore half way through – which is loosely based upon true life events and which once again received a resounding roar of approval when aired in the rural heartlands of mid-Suffolk. It’s not – strictly speaking – a celebration of the event, but has been streamed to buggery in the area for the last week or so, so we’re not really ones to complain about our art being misrepresented. Folk make up their own rules about what a song’s about once it’s out there.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Also performing at Shed Fest were The Neighbourhood Dogs. We have a song called ‘Nelson’, which usually gets a lengthy introduction on stage regarding its exegesis, and indeed for those parties interested in pursuing the matter further, there are blogs passim regarding the whole writing and recording malarkey. Shortly after it being performed at the festival I was taken aside by a frankly taken aback member of the audience. Bearing in mind that La Mulley came up with the words based on a couple of shared ideas we’d discussed about a lighthouse keeper I was surprised to be asked the question. “Oh my god – you wrote that about Dad, didn’t you?” </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I quietly considered the verse, bridge and outro. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“I have now”. </span></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*“We’re on all the usual platforms – Ceefax, MySpace, Friends Reunited…” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">** <a href="https://helenandtheneighbourhooddogs.bandcamp.com/track/whats-the-moonlight-for" target="_blank">Don’t take my word for it.</a></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">***fewer</span></p></div><div><br /></div>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-28316606160530501742022-05-01T21:47:00.000+01:002022-05-01T21:47:05.374+01:00A Bullet From The Heart.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY3dKaA8J4WuN8xHcUCbVe05rYh_JGHeymjZC4dE1CuzgQGWQgGWftw-vV5n3BB1zOFPI_LyOQhd6PT5TyAajtA0nxRoublbKm7b8341JJeyMbS_F7VOIqN-uyknux05Lh8pjOWduB5cblJ8wBXPmLOulj8cmaTZX9ymt55jZHTHo2WSI4cQ/s700/0A0C1752-0261-4DCD-9B72-049949DDE57E.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="700" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY3dKaA8J4WuN8xHcUCbVe05rYh_JGHeymjZC4dE1CuzgQGWQgGWftw-vV5n3BB1zOFPI_LyOQhd6PT5TyAajtA0nxRoublbKm7b8341JJeyMbS_F7VOIqN-uyknux05Lh8pjOWduB5cblJ8wBXPmLOulj8cmaTZX9ymt55jZHTHo2WSI4cQ/w200-h200/0A0C1752-0261-4DCD-9B72-049949DDE57E.jpeg" width="200" /></span></a></div><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> I’ve been blessed by being able to play with some really, really good drummers and bass players. Two of the finest were Stephen Dean and Richard (Gibbon) Hammond, here channelling The Attractions, recorded in a caravan on a Fostex four track by the inestimable James Partridge and with my singing bolstered by Steve Constable, the David Crosby that my Neil Young always relied on to get me out of a harmonic hole. It’s Bandcamp fee-free Friday next week, so if you want to own this, maybe I can start saving up to re-do it.</span></p><p><a href="https://bluehouserecords.bandcamp.com/track/stop-that-for-a-start"><span style="font-family: verdana;">https://bluehouserecords.bandcamp.com/track/stop-that-for-a-start</span></a></p><p><br /></p>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-62250360673175475712022-04-30T10:18:00.002+01:002022-04-30T10:18:40.459+01:00“Look at you jumping…”<p><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRgPTZukeMFgQNxg1xq5TPOWZm53Zy6o2kM5oi2hNhVMGiLK33222WiLzPyo9yNokKSaYvVLYpmt7pVFVU43QQG2Wr5xjkkv6OaKG_rUUrWu2G4mTHcuzB-szN3ze_JPMKz5nLJz7PsoWqnZNADJwP8TrdZ7YLFFGaGcMOJZbZo9d20y4v1g/s1908/EB78A64A-CFA1-4B51-8A8F-A078D966E2E5.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1908" data-original-width="1272" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRgPTZukeMFgQNxg1xq5TPOWZm53Zy6o2kM5oi2hNhVMGiLK33222WiLzPyo9yNokKSaYvVLYpmt7pVFVU43QQG2Wr5xjkkv6OaKG_rUUrWu2G4mTHcuzB-szN3ze_JPMKz5nLJz7PsoWqnZNADJwP8TrdZ7YLFFGaGcMOJZbZo9d20y4v1g/w181-h271/EB78A64A-CFA1-4B51-8A8F-A078D966E2E5.jpeg" width="181" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">I am contacted by an old friend and musical confrere who is rooting through some old flyers and photographs and wonders if I remember playing on the same bill as him at a school concert in 1982? He lists the band members, as listed in the programme, and I confirm that not only do I remember the show, I remember what we started with, which was “Free and Easy” - a song from Uriah Heep’s non-charting 1977 album Innocent Victim, and a good indicator of the sort of person I was, given that I was shoehorning it into the set of our school band a mere five years later. We weren’t even all at the same school.</span></span><p></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I reflect on my forty years on the fringes of the music business* later that week with the most recent iteration of my musical ambition in tangible** form where we are gathered to run through our entire repertoire in prospect of an increasingly rare public engagement and in the absence of Mr. Wendell, who is poorly. The first business of the evening is, naturally to check on how Turny’s vegetable patch is coming along, and much grave discussion is given to the plight of the allotment-holder without a handily accessible source of standpipe irrigation.*** Fiddly thinks he needs a pond - also so that he can develop a self-renewing methane gas facility to wean himself off the grid - someone mentions a bowser, Gibbon reflects that at certain times of day they actually pay you to use electricity and La Mulley steps in just as discussions look likely to turn heated, given the bent of the conversation toward gentlemen of a certain age being unable to retain water for any length of time, and encourages us toward the rehearsal room. Or ‘shed’.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">A perfectly agreeable eight song forty minute opener is run through before we perform the remainder of our oeuvre - mainly through muscle memory although at one point Gib remarks on the similarity of the structure of one song to a number by one of our previous bands before I realise that I am, indeed, playing Songs from The Blue House’s ‘Bike’ by mistake. As Ed Sheeran has remarked, there are only twelve notes, chances are there are going to be some harmonic similarities cropping up somewhere along the line. I believe that John Fogerty was once sued by a particularly vengeful ex-publisher for plagiarising himself, so I’m in good company.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Sheeran crops up again later in the week, as I am enjoying a Friday pint with m’esteemed compadre, award-winning songwriter Tony James Shevlin. Essentially, I’m recounting most of the above, Shev mentions that at the exact moment that he and the bass player from Frisky were persuading the drummer not to walk around the outside of our hotel on the third floor ledge someone had the presence of mind to take a photograph, and we Waldorf and Statler across many topics including fetes, festivals and garden parties. He recounts the occasion when Ed Sheeran’s application to play Ipswich Music Day was rescued from the bin (his CD wouldn’t play) after one member of the panel insisted that this kid was going places and that he should really be given a spot, despite a functioning demo being strictly part of the selection process. I wonder if they would still have named a stage after him if he’d been canned? </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">We reflect that so much of our collective musical heritage is down to chance encounters, the intervention of seasoned veterans of the scene and good, old-fashioned common sense. The sliding doors moments of rock. As we finish our drinks and prepare to depart, I remind him that we - The Neighbourhood Dogs - are playing a local pub in a couple of weeks and invite him along. “I’ll be there” he attests, showing me both a text message on his phone and his Musician’s Union diary. “Because we’ve been booked as well”. We write down the fee that both of us have been offered for the same gig on the same night, slide the folded paper across the table and look at the two different figures. I say “You take it”.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><a href="https://bluehouserecords.bandcamp.com/track/swell">https://bluehouserecords.bandcamp.com/track/swell</a></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">*At the Cropredy Festival one year a solo acoustic Midge Ure similarly recalled his four decades “…trying to entertain people”.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">“Don’t you worry Midge” called a wag in the crowd in response “You’ll get it one of these days!”</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">**Or ‘fungible’ I guess?</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">***I know, I know. The footage is hardly going to prompt Sir Bob to organise Live Aid 2, but you can only play the hand you’re dealt.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></p>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-24756784423514161072022-03-05T22:32:00.003+00:002022-03-05T22:37:59.477+00:00Look out Mama…<p><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi3KOflFS35UlY8wriZpDB8PnIm2tBVN0qBD202NDL-NrocjyFAiENUY-RzwHQPik3S88nWHZeP22BmmmP8bYthkBRTNXsURihohMBkdQbEO0ZAn1EDZGrdgJiFQZjUJ0cuvL5zN-PtrK0zci5OGaYmQ0T1WHnXlp9gEXN2OybCWGj-fpoA2g=s414" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="414" data-original-width="414" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi3KOflFS35UlY8wriZpDB8PnIm2tBVN0qBD202NDL-NrocjyFAiENUY-RzwHQPik3S88nWHZeP22BmmmP8bYthkBRTNXsURihohMBkdQbEO0ZAn1EDZGrdgJiFQZjUJ0cuvL5zN-PtrK0zci5OGaYmQ0T1WHnXlp9gEXN2OybCWGj-fpoA2g=w200-h200" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /> Who wants to hear my Saturday day in version of a Neil Young song. Anyone? Anyone. Bueller?</span><p></p><p><a href="https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/xH9DS7R3aftMzZ4g6"><span style="font-family: verdana;">https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/xH9DS7R3aftMzZ4g6</span></a></p>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-1704611472113783092022-02-20T12:22:00.001+00:002022-02-20T15:30:06.933+00:00The Magnificent Five in ‘Return to The Pickerel’<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgmApAex1fbFa5XEppiXkfkNh5uD7SZeG_eJpbFqRmgm-bL6sqspA6D5CQfRF7DxM6GcweUX8RylVtzEfQG0NVegICLHiVl1EwQJwrLOuvKk1-mRCu_YyhFER-eg01zzD6il9eVb53UqFyBSj4qNLXVIkTW2fTfa_OkJKkH0r5D0r259DW61Q=s610" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="610" data-original-width="473" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgmApAex1fbFa5XEppiXkfkNh5uD7SZeG_eJpbFqRmgm-bL6sqspA6D5CQfRF7DxM6GcweUX8RylVtzEfQG0NVegICLHiVl1EwQJwrLOuvKk1-mRCu_YyhFER-eg01zzD6il9eVb53UqFyBSj4qNLXVIkTW2fTfa_OkJKkH0r5D0r259DW61Q=w154-h200" width="154" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;">As has been posited in these very pages, if you do one gig a year, you’re - technically - still in a group. With this in mind, The Picturehouse Big Band decamp for one of our occasional soirees in the heart of swinging downtown Stowmarket, where the post-storm debris can be seen lying in gutters, fences are strewn across gardens and the A14 displays its own sorry harvest of boughs. They say in Barham there was up to a thousand pounds worth of improvements caused in a single night.*</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Singer and The Other Guitarist have both scratched an itch an have turned up with brand new guitars - Wendell with a new Fender Deluxe and Kilbey with a left-handed Squier Tele - The Bass Player is trialling a new monitoring system for his keyboards and my Secret Santa gift has finally arrived from the in-laws and as such I will be deploying the joy of compression to lift those vital guitar solos above the melee, with the unfortunate consequence that now, of course, people will actually be able to hear them.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">We have a healthy crowd, and notwithstanding the post-soundcheck, pre-gig discourse in the toilets (“‘As gunna be a fucken racket tunight ent ut?”) are looking forward to trying out another new song which joins the one we added only last year in a whirlwind of new tune admissions. This one, by The Icicle Works, is a mere thirty five years young, and so a positive nod to the new young generation of Picturehouse fans coming through the ranks and filling the banquettes at the back. Paul McCartney’s “Your Mother Should Know” springs to mind.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">There is no sign of our great enthusiasts from the last Halloween gig who, resplendent in leather bustiers, heavy eye make up and fishnets, insisted on being given drum lessons at the close of festivities, which did hold up the pack down slightly. Partially because we couldn’t move the gear, and partially because it was quite the spectacle in itself. The Drummer is a kind and patient man who will give a quick lesson in the basics to pretty much anyone, but by the time they’d been in the business end of the pub for four hours or so, some of their hand-eye coordination seemed to have gone out of the room. Perhaps that’s why one of them fell over a stationary pile of mic stands?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">This evening’s high drama is limited to a large, sticky drink being kicked over a pile of leads (the landlady waved a towel at us in order to help, which initially made me wonder if she was surrendering) and a temporarily misplaced pair of glasses, which did mean that The Singer’s snake-hipped Jim Morrison moves were temporarily replaced by a sort of faux-Velma Dinkley routine which, niche as it is, doesn’t really have the same affect on a baying crowd who want to know when this riot we keep predicting is going to kick off. I guess it keeps them from alternately wondering whether they should take it easy, or whether to keep on movin’.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">“A few hiccups, but everything mostly seemed to go well” I say, after having my pub band membership card restamped for another season. “Yes” replies someone. “But I wish Kilbey would stop pretending he’s left-handed.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">*Trad. Arr.</span></p>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-34655500740259953842022-01-15T19:45:00.005+00:002022-01-15T19:45:59.189+00:00You’ll have to excuse me…<p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <span data-offset-key="7dtg4-2-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgbDD847d9LIMLbofnlnJDE_48dIgEKSvwy-ej6ZVztPUjvcc5XluKAtpalbRZxdBhL_k4QAnNwHgPSswei7NTVxjqHy7QlfggICxZj1WIt7VHZhPcEmJHBjUpMns4bh7AcB5wxJ8bHKwS0Ix40yLbARBDfs2upBxJ4ZNwD-L86tBbh3ZaOPA=s2003" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1662" data-original-width="2003" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgbDD847d9LIMLbofnlnJDE_48dIgEKSvwy-ej6ZVztPUjvcc5XluKAtpalbRZxdBhL_k4QAnNwHgPSswei7NTVxjqHy7QlfggICxZj1WIt7VHZhPcEmJHBjUpMns4bh7AcB5wxJ8bHKwS0Ix40yLbARBDfs2upBxJ4ZNwD-L86tBbh3ZaOPA=w200-h166" width="200" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: verdana;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;">Turns out that if you want to get a bloody legend to play on your recording, all you have to do is ask. </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-68326416742690812702021-12-24T13:32:00.000+00:002021-12-24T13:32:55.922+00:00The last great white rhino in the reserve.<p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiNp_7rSya_zyh_FzjeF30hJKIzKRWmk2YpwySehksd6ykmixNdXA1mefYqtAlcHb7W3ee3Xj6TsZDEJi5i1PGLKG93ug43upCcrTdhPnAu8S77L4EcOnhc0mGbuiPgvqUc8nN6SE606JwYG9GKTST_O8gLSIqSefAFBHnwoKHYHGAZ2bl6wQ=s5120" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3840" data-original-width="5120" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiNp_7rSya_zyh_FzjeF30hJKIzKRWmk2YpwySehksd6ykmixNdXA1mefYqtAlcHb7W3ee3Xj6TsZDEJi5i1PGLKG93ug43upCcrTdhPnAu8S77L4EcOnhc0mGbuiPgvqUc8nN6SE606JwYG9GKTST_O8gLSIqSefAFBHnwoKHYHGAZ2bl6wQ=w200-h150" width="200" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Around the start of The Great Unpleasantness I got a call from an agency. Would I be interested in helping out at one of these Covid testing centres the army were setting up around the country? I thought this might get me off the sofa for a few weeks, and so I duly responded, and a couple of days later found myself standing outside a portacabin on the newly deconsecrated Park n’ Ride somewhere near Copdock.</span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Little did I know that twenty months later, I’d still be reporting for duty, albeit without the cheery farewell to the family which for some time consisted of the mantra “Cheerio, Daddy’s just off to collect phlegm in a bucket!” before the morning meeting in which we might be informed that (for instance) if we saw any drones overhead we should get under cover in case of a remotely-launched acid attack.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Over time the job evolved into something pitched as a hybrid somewhere between Big Brother and Love Island. The first wave led to a firm and lasting bond between the brotherhood of the Exit Bays - me, Craig, Callum and Tom - one of the driest and funniest people I’ve ever met - and our honorary fifth wheel, Sarah - My Lil’ Princess, for whom we had to bring in the kids’ version of the Trivial Pursuit questions and who would, if she didn’t know the answer to a geography question, answer ‘Australia’.*</span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">There were a lot of nicknames around site - <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>That Crazy Russian, The Duchess, Sexy Harry (and of course Non-Sexy Harry), Young Blud, Thing One and Thing Two, Surallan, The Doc and - possibly my favourite - My Sex Dwarf. Someone would bring in a tray of cupcakes. I would arrange the sandwich deliveries in order of palatability. There were quizzes. At one point a Backgammon school was established.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Once the first few of a bewildering number of revolving door-style management changes put in place their squad rotation policy, the old gang broke up and we moved into a new era. Admittedly this allowed for making new acquaintances since I was no longer in an isolated outpost at the end of the car park, and from these conversations in shared adversity new friendships and bonds were formed. The long winter days just flew by.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">By the time we celebrated my birthday with a themed quiz we knew each other so well that over seventy per cent of the respondents answered the question “Who would Shane like to see wrestle in jelly?” correctly and most of them also got the bonus answer to “What flavour?”.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">We toyed with the idea of making our daily lives into a sitcom, but reasoned that many of the sits would be too far-fetched to be acceptable as ‘com’. The morning brief where we were informed that we needed to wash our hands more but use fewer paper towels overall and the Afghanistan-based rant by one particularly unhinged boss were merely two such examples. One of the guys and I wrote a song about it.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Time moved inexorably on and folk started returning to their roles in the real world. Students, bankers, chefs, airline pilots even. All with the tell-tale bikini-strap marks of a Summer spent wearing a mask outdoors. I got a job running one of the mobile units we operate out of the site, which meant I got to travel the length and breadth of the county and beyond. “Standing at the dock in Harwich” hasn’t got half the resonance as an opening line to ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’ as it might have.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1">Anyway, today I picked up my Employee of the Month certificate, and had cause to think back on all of those people I’ve shared a birthday cake, a portaloo or a game of On Site Bingo with and who, for better or worse, have helped to make me the person I am today. I’d like to </span>say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition.</span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody;"></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">*You should have seen her face that time the answer was actually ‘Australia’.</span></span></p>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-48285333938935578002021-10-31T09:21:00.000+00:002021-10-31T09:21:01.145+00:00Green and Red<p></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPRUyr8qJLMR3IkZ2Q6sEGMz1o_tviTuAJmQPKwN1vCnwQrw5-xNdJGmPgfy8hWQbQpM1OJQHiowi8EAGsMuKkXzV6prL6V9zwvA0iPMhw-XFWGlL2dZkbmeQdPe4K47LGM3w4/s960/43B227FD-7464-4168-ACB3-76070ABA17B7.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="496" data-original-width="960" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPRUyr8qJLMR3IkZ2Q6sEGMz1o_tviTuAJmQPKwN1vCnwQrw5-xNdJGmPgfy8hWQbQpM1OJQHiowi8EAGsMuKkXzV6prL6V9zwvA0iPMhw-XFWGlL2dZkbmeQdPe4K47LGM3w4/w400-h206/43B227FD-7464-4168-ACB3-76070ABA17B7.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">After two years of The Great Unpleasantness interfering with our plans, The Picturehouse Big Band made its return to the live arena in Stowmarket (natch) and despite fearing that we might have forgotten how these things work, by the end of the evening I think we had firmly reestablished the central tenet and mission statement of the group in that it’s just like going to the pub with your friends.</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">From TAFKAG’s* studious reprogramming <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>of his keyboard sounds during the day (he also literally dusted off his speakers, which is when he found one of the tweeters rolling around in the cabinet where a tweeter is not supposed rolling around to be), to the surprise guest singer toward the end of the set (modesty forbids identifying the party, but regular ‘Swich gig goers will be astonished to learn that he did not perform bearfoot…) we had an almost literal riot.</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Admittedly <i>Last Nite</i> was a bit tawdry around the edges, but it was still better than The Strokes’ version, and that second encore meant that at least we got to re-do <i>Band on the Run</i>, but properly this time. </span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Many thanks firstly to my Picturehouse brethren, everyone who rocked up to a packed Pickerel (especially Linda Stix for the photo), that nice girl who played drums in the full Nell Gwynne corset and Harvey Two-Face Halloween** make up while we were packing away, Pat for PA, and lastly Greenwich Mean Time, for letting us have an extra hour in bed on the morning after.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">*The Artist Formerly Known as Gibbon.</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">**At least I’m assuming she doesn’t go around like that all the time.</span></span></p>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-20312440075038910892021-10-14T10:27:00.003+01:002021-10-14T18:10:52.118+01:00“A Picture House in Every One Horse Town”<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRGBn2911EyHt8-iaMQROB-l-_8cVxcnd9s8PnXE-QL4lYd2uRiaEs1Bhyphenhyphen_DXx30FSXF8yVY__Ywh1CvWBuYvo2snBK_9vAfgQL3n8O601lz4tS62M8E4rjbAtfEE7MlZTlGPd/s306/22A23202-FC1C-47AA-BAAE-AC358CFEE27A.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="165" data-original-width="306" height="108" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRGBn2911EyHt8-iaMQROB-l-_8cVxcnd9s8PnXE-QL4lYd2uRiaEs1Bhyphenhyphen_DXx30FSXF8yVY__Ywh1CvWBuYvo2snBK_9vAfgQL3n8O601lz4tS62M8E4rjbAtfEE7MlZTlGPd/w200-h108/22A23202-FC1C-47AA-BAAE-AC358CFEE27A.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I am having everything above the neck trimmed and tidied when Danny, my hairdresser* enquires as to my plans for the rest of the day. As they do. I am to rehearse with Picturehouse prior to a forthcoming engagement, as we in the band figure that muscle memory alone is not going to pull us through, what with The Great Unpleasantness having put off our gig schedule by about two years, and we’ve never been the best at remembering to rehearse anyway. I realise that this will probably actually be the first time I’ve sat down with (say) The Drummer for about two years. I know, right?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Everyone having remembered where he lives, we gather at (indeed) The Drummer’s house, he plugs in his electronic kit, tiny tiny amplifiers are produced seemingly from out of nowhere and we start to work through the set list, which The Singer has resisted the temptation to put into chronological order. Since he, The Bass Player and I are also in this country’s premier proponents of East Angliacana, we have seen each other only recently, but it is splendid to hang out with The Other Guitarist again, he resplendent in the almost ubiquitous (these days) thick framed glasses**, his flaming ginger thatch calmed by the passing of the years into subdued autumnal strawberry blond. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">During a break in proceedings, The Bass Player recounts a visit to a mutual friend of ours, who is reluctantly selling his drums. Due to the nature of the Suffolk rock, pop, folk and ambient loon jazz scene, we all have various connections in common, and so he - the vendor - had enlisted help in identifying who it was in the picture he was going to use to advertise the kit online. He knew that it had been taken at The Moon and Mushroom, a bijou establishment in Swilland***, twice named Suffolk Pub of the Year and at a gig by his band Cara Cleibh (also featuring Helen and The Neighbourhood Dogs’ Fiddly Richard), and also that the support act was on stage at the time. It was a good photo of the kit, it was just that they couldn’t work out who was playing just in front of it. Drummer Seamus**** suggested it might be The Other Guitarist.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Bass Player squinted at the picture and pointed out that The Other Guitarist was, and remains, left-handed and that the ginger guitar player in the photo was demonstrably not. “That” he pointed out “Is Ed Sheeran”.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">*And beard, and ears and eyebrows.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">**Only Gibbon, on bass and keyboards, has resisted the temptation to let his eyes decay with age.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">***Literally ‘Pig Land’.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">****Seamus Hussey. When we’re in the band gods kitchen together I’m Ted Bidits and Gib is Justin Credible. Stephen is Wendell Gee and Steve is Kilbey. Keep up at the back, there’ll be a quiz later.</span></p>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-67056591980729592792021-10-12T18:00:00.007+01:002021-10-12T18:06:51.005+01:00 The Heaped Plaise of Frattery.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6ePaU8an8BgZcAeoQeWCN2AJQtTN4sgiZn19QHzeDYMjVJ-xRUgXrbmZXTRpcfEO2MKpyS-KP5wf-Z5v34bBXkY4RVqB3iYFtBMFFe38do9VDPR2v3dw90LpnqgiZNv73WNKH/s717/E1BBBFAA-CD4E-4AA3-BE07-76345C4D2FF7.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="559" data-original-width="717" height="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6ePaU8an8BgZcAeoQeWCN2AJQtTN4sgiZn19QHzeDYMjVJ-xRUgXrbmZXTRpcfEO2MKpyS-KP5wf-Z5v34bBXkY4RVqB3iYFtBMFFe38do9VDPR2v3dw90LpnqgiZNv73WNKH/w200-h156/E1BBBFAA-CD4E-4AA3-BE07-76345C4D2FF7.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">To The Snug, where a full complement of <a href="https://helenandtheneighbourhooddogs.bandcamp.com/">Dogs</a> have assembled beneath the hopbines in order to [<i>dramatic hand gesture</i>] create. We haven’t got our heads together in the country for quite the time due to The Great Unpleasantness and so it is with some trepidation that we take to our seats, sofas, deckchairs and, in one case, exercise bicycle and collectively wonder out loud what we’re going to do. La Mulley suggests that we warm up with something we know, and so a slow, countrified version of <a href="https://youtu.be/Vnz1NTrcsss"><i>Not That Kind of Girl</i> </a>is extemporised.*</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Suitably warmed up, I suggest something I’ve been working on, tentatively working titled <i>The Merchant of Venus</i> and before long we are locked back into the familiar cycle of hesitation, repetition and deviation - almost the anti-<i>Just a Minute</i>, and during which we learn that Helen has never seen an episode of Taskmaster, Mr. Wendell and I discuss our top five favourite Waterboys gigs, and Turny Winn buys a snake.</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Over in the corner by the Marty O’Reilly poster, Helen takes a pencil to the extended, breath-defying opening line. I suggest an alternative to one later couplet, to conclude with the phrase “…surfers in The Suez”. Someone suggests that this deliberately invites a Mondegreen, and although I agree that “…in the sewers” might perform the role admirably, it’s nowhere near that time TT wondered why ‘cokehead’ might be such a deliberate term of endearment to employ in <a href="https://songsfromthebluehouse.bandcamp.com/track/in-my-arms">an otherwise perfectly serviceable love song</a>. “It’s ‘coquette’”.</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Before too too long we have an acceptable demonstration version available, which we commit to Garageband for reasons of austerity and Mr. Wendell, as usual, lasers in on probable sources and influences.</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“It’s that Nagasaki thing” he suggests, and I am indeed reminded** of the first night I saw Channel 4, taking a break from work in the hotel restaurant, and slumping down in front of the staff room TV to see this strange fusion of rock and folk music***, the likes I’d never heard before, and which was probably the first time I discovered something for my very own self - probably why I dove headlong into the oeuvre, and still haven’t properly surfaced to this day. I used to perform a couple of Christy Moore songs during my folk troubadour phase, and indeed I did Moving Hearts’ <i>Hiroshima, Nagasaki Russian Roulette </i>which it turns out has an extraordinary number of verses and is tongue-twistingly tricky at some points, and which is possibly one of the reasons that I have been venting my frustration on Helen by presenting her with similar challenges ever since.**** (My belated sympathies with various audiences in The Albion Mills, who’d probably just nipped out for a pint of mild and a game of darts and had to listen to me earnestly performing<i> Sacco and Vanzetti</i> instead. In front of the dart board).</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I<a href="https://youtu.be/q0qq0ZC1A5A"> looked it up today</a> and although I’m not sure it’s the same gig, it sure looks like it. None more eighties, even down to the hot wired Strat neck pick up and the out of phase lead guitar solo (see also The Home Service, whom I similarly fell heavily for and for whom still hold a candle).</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: verdana;">So there you go - musical fellow travellers who know you better than you know yourself. Mind you, he’s gonna freak when he hears JJ Cale’s <i>Carry On</i>…</span></span></p><ul class="ul1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><li class="li3" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="s2">*Yes we will, probably.</span></span></li><li class="li3" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="s3"></span><span class="s2">**This part’s a bit like that scene in Ratatouille - bear with…</span></span></li><li class="li3" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="s3"></span><span class="s2">***The next week they had The Damned doing White Rabbit, so things could all have turned out so very differently.</span></span></li><li class="li3" style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="s3"></span><span class="s2">****”Tell me about your relationship with your mother…”</span></span></li></ul>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-9274311433196164982021-09-23T18:06:00.004+01:002021-09-23T18:06:36.025+01:00“…and Leon’s getting LARGER!”<p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuOQu5fITo4oqfVLhs9PY8iFrWVwOIHMsau4yZOZ5sECpBL7QnK6Z668NMega2ZTPryDm7-hjzdr8vjS9xhzJ6pF5V8ZwpaJ7S8bP5-_-BzLNQVXn3tdlsyaB8onGjVxVGQdz_/s2048/B821E1A5-732C-414B-94BD-859CB879E9F8.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuOQu5fITo4oqfVLhs9PY8iFrWVwOIHMsau4yZOZ5sECpBL7QnK6Z668NMega2ZTPryDm7-hjzdr8vjS9xhzJ6pF5V8ZwpaJ7S8bP5-_-BzLNQVXn3tdlsyaB8onGjVxVGQdz_/w200-h150/B821E1A5-732C-414B-94BD-859CB879E9F8.jpeg" width="200" /></a></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">“It’s about that time of the evening - when you’ve had a dreadful day trying to corral the twins - and you finally snuggle up with a boy under each arm, fresh out of the bath, them smelling of talc, their tousled hair sticking out at angles, ready to hear the bedtime story you’ve been working your way through for the last few nights…” Helen emotes to a hushed audience, introducing the next song.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“…and then you remember you don’t have kids…” interjects Mr. Wendell, drily.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">We are exploring the second rule of songwriting at <a href="https://fishertheatre.org/FisherTheatre.dll/Home">The Fisher Theatre</a> in the heart of swinging downtown Bungay, a much delayed return to the theatre of dreams which has been put off so often by the great unpleasantness that we are not sure if anyone will remember who we are from the last time we played. To be honest, a few of us are having the same issue. Nevertheless, we have been warmly welcomed to the venue by sound engineer Dan, who regards the seven-piece line up phlegmatically, and enquires as to whether we’d like onstage monitors with an air which suggests that he would really, really appreciate an answer in line with the one that small children asking if they can have a fourth chocolate biscuit wouldn’t. Of course, in order to maintain the eternal balance between the talent on stage and that of the technical expertise deployed backstage, we insist that we do. And another vocal mic wouldn’t go amiss while you’re down there…</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Monitors in situ, old-school DI’s and snakes appropriately routed, we soundcheck and retire to the dressing rooms (plural) to consider our good fortune. There are mirrors, lights, an unfeasibly large collection of theatre costumes (including what looks very much like a lioness stole and a tiara, which La Mulley seriously considers adopting for the evening as a ‘look’). There are also five members of the group considering the paisley button-down which I have placed on a convenient hanger. </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Is that your shirt?” Turny Winn asks, solicitously.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Yes” I reply truthfully.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Are you planning to wear it onstage?” he continues.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Yes” I affirm.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">He indicates the rest of the group in a manner reminiscent of a shop steward in a Carry On film from the golden age, with a waggle of his thumb.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“We don’t think you’ll get into it…”</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Infamy.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">After a lovely set from our co-traveller <a href="https://youtu.be/pI3l5N5C9U8">Tony James Shevlin</a>, we are unleashed upon the good folk of Bungay, who seem as pleased to be back in a proper venue listening to proper music as we are. They are kind, solicitous, engaged and appreciative, and buoyed by their vibes we, in turn, take our chance to shine. Up in the gallery Dan - it turns out - has spent some of the set with headphones plugged into the console, enjoying his own private concert experience. </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">We relax into the show. Everyone is on top of their game. I even eschew the opportunity to do a banjo joke. That’s how in the moment we were. The theatre audience - two thirds full, not one third empty - grants us an encore.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“This is unprecedented in the history of pop music!” quips Helen. “Another song!? Well, I’m not sure we have anything prepared…”</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">By the time I get home, there are already laudatory comments on social media. I retire far too late (tell me about it…) with a warm glow, not entirely Pinot Noir-dependent. The next day at work a woman in a posh car drives over the cleaning equipment we’d put out to mop up the mess where some bloke had taken the opportunity to spit at me. That’s the thing about fame, fame, fleeting fame. Some days you’re the BMW, some days you’re the bucket.</span></span></p>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-7603848278840795242021-09-06T09:38:00.003+01:002021-09-06T09:57:40.213+01:00Schrödinger's Acoustic Spot.<p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQHRF4a7kYAzBfKdmEyd_l0sskzkbbpbxQmfbwnJbYI4pKXwnz751uC947CRk4kEQmhO2XkRcYAXboBx_8QSS1J5FZB7PLaFOvRIvef78opq2l4GdUQsSW5glcgzN7vkPRN500/s942/89D2B023-0379-4D5A-B5DF-21642A06ACE0.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><img border="0" data-original-height="799" data-original-width="942" height="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQHRF4a7kYAzBfKdmEyd_l0sskzkbbpbxQmfbwnJbYI4pKXwnz751uC947CRk4kEQmhO2XkRcYAXboBx_8QSS1J5FZB7PLaFOvRIvef78opq2l4GdUQsSW5glcgzN7vkPRN500/w200-h169/89D2B023-0379-4D5A-B5DF-21642A06ACE0.jpeg" width="200" /></span></a></div><p></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">After a short delay (of about a year and two months), I am off to The <a href="https://maverickfestival.co.uk/">Maverick</a> Festival (see blogs passim) for a weekend of country, blues, folk and Americana in the country, and this year - due in no small part to the ravages of The Great Unpleasantness - with added East Angliacana in the shape of <a href="https://helenandtheneighbourhooddogs.bandcamp.com/">Helen and The Neighbourhood Dogs. </a></span></span></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">We are contemplating our name on the playbill outside The Barn Stage prior to soundcheck and considering - even with the Americanisation of dropping the ‘U’ - how much room it takes up on posters. “I’m thinking we might change our name to ‘The Neighbourhood’ confides Mr. Wendell. “Yes, but those three, four and five letter words aren’t really the issue here, are they?” points out WAG Becky phlegmatically.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I am also here in my guise as Stage Wrangler for The Medicine Show - a pop up boutique stage for the off duty talent to stretch out with some covers or, in some cases, simply warm up for the main event. Tucked away in a paddock behind the bar, I am doing the equivalent of tightening the rigging and checking the bowsprit for woodworm when I hear the first of the turns being announced in The Barn. At which point I remember that we’re the first turn on in the barn…</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">A short sprint through the crowd later I have managed to retain both my stage shirt and my dignity and we haul away into our opening number. The unspoken advantage of being bottom of the bill is that you are, necessarily, often top of the list for sound-checks, and so we are buoyant from the off, confident that our pre-show run through of The Byrds “You’re Still On My Mind” has settled the nerves of the sound crew, and Helen, who did ask if we could follow it up with “…something we know”.*</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Fiddly seems unencumbered by the lack of most of his pinkie, which he apparently managed to remove with some sort of mechanical implement earlier in the week, just as Turny’s banjo-fingering digit has grown back after that incident with the secateurs some weeks ago, and we are all - band and audience - pleased to be back in the room/barn, doing what we like to do best. We, telling stories with wood and string, and they listening, applauding, and buying our records afterwards. </span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">A VIP area has been set up to thank those who retained their tickets throughout The Great Unpleasantness but it is empty. No-one wants to be swanning around drinking free<a href="https://www.bigdropbrew.com/"> Big Drop</a> when there’s an actual, physical manifestation of a festival happening just over the velvet rope. There’s a palpable sense of relief all round, an exhalation of pressure - one agent mentions that we’re the first band he’s seen play live in two years. Poor bastard.</span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Job done, and back to the acting, I welcome the legend that is Jon Langford to The Show with the immortal words “THE Jon Langford?” He is a grizzled old veteran of the punk wars, hunkered down in a big hat and sheepskin jacket that makes him look like the sort of rancher who has had to deal with his reckless youngest son shooting off his mouth in the saloon in town once too often. He also greets me with his beautiful deep Welsh burr by name all weekend, enquiring after my welfare each time. The sort of turn you are prepared to crawl over broken riders for.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I take time out to burst into Dana Immanuel’s backstage enclave to wish them well for their show. “You won’t remember me!” I exclaim. “I do…” purrs cajonista H, albeit in the sort of tone which suggests that somebody may have forgotten to renew a restraining order. “Do a fabulous show!” is all I can think of to blurt. I resist the temptation to go the full Wizard of Oz and continue “…and your little doggie!!” in case I’m dragged away by security but do manage a strangled “I love you!”** The next time I saw Dana was at two in the morning singing ‘Wagon Wheel’. As you do.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Saturday dawns full and bright, and I have another day of my virtual twelve hour house concert to enjoy. M’good friend and occasional employer Tony James Shevlin puts in a shift in the afternoon and then later again in the Stygian gloom of the evening, where we are delighted to bump into Rich Hall, later to appear in his own show, but currently mournfully regarding the line up for the John Prine tribute to take place in The Peacock Cafe (another barn in all truth), which has been COVID- safeguarded in terms of ventilation <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>by the simple expedient of taking out about a third of the wall. </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The queue for the stage is considerably larger than some of the audiences I’ve seen, but Rich is kind enough to look obligingly like he knows me for my souvenir snap. During a gap in proceedings on The Medicine Show I take to the stage myself, indulging in a few songs just in order that I can say I trod the boards as a solo artist once again. Helen is later annoyed that I didn’t summon her to perform and I gravely inform her that this constitutes misuse of the radio under the Stage Manager’s Code. She nods solemnly, abashed.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">On Sunday I have a lighter line up than I deserve, and so have mostly to make sure <a href="https://tonywinn.org.uk/">Tony Winn</a> doesn’t fall off the stage during his return to the live arena. He is ably supported by The Fragrant and Charming Helen Mulley on vocals, who is keen that her offspring should be attendant to behold her magnificence. The boys are working the festival and so I offer to summon them via the power of wireless communication. “I thought that breached the Stage Manager’s Code?” she suggests.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I summon my inner Captain Barbossa. “It’s not so much a code, Missy” I explain piratically. It’s more a set o’ guidelines…”</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">*Diva</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">**That from me to them, not the other way round, in case you were wondering.</span></span></p>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-80858718523481855872021-07-23T17:49:00.005+01:002021-07-23T17:55:42.804+01:00“You can dress me in Prada and uncomfortable shoes…”<p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdKfmogZQZSCqb-BAMJ-qtaYu-VaLp4X4AXoYkCxJlBJZtYdz2YxrzcxyHTX6BAXOJ0xSdOwDgUxPyEJlK9HNGrzVdLSUENOwi8rQUZCSlzYk8o7IBnafrwiQxG8EiQEUAlB6z/s2048/826C3092-D07C-4577-8A6C-5143936B9582.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdKfmogZQZSCqb-BAMJ-qtaYu-VaLp4X4AXoYkCxJlBJZtYdz2YxrzcxyHTX6BAXOJ0xSdOwDgUxPyEJlK9HNGrzVdLSUENOwi8rQUZCSlzYk8o7IBnafrwiQxG8EiQEUAlB6z/w200-h150/826C3092-D07C-4577-8A6C-5143936B9582.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div><p></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Finally, a return to the live arena for Helen and The Neighbourhood Dogs as we are engaged to perform at an end of term/retirement party at a local Primary School. The audience is overwhelmingly female - I haven’t played to such a gender specific crowd since that time The Star Club did a graduation party for student nurses, when bass player-come-booking agent Kilbey, upon being informed of the generous fee, replied solemnly “Well, you’ll have to give us time to raise the money…”</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">We are to perform al fresco, which gives us a sense of health and personal safety during the time of the great unpleasantness, and the familiar setting of the sports field gazebo lends us an enormous sense of wellbeing, as does the reassuring presence behind the sound desk of Blue House James, who has merely had to haul everything out of his shed, set it up, plug it in, and hope it all works as well as it did last time*. He regards a mildewy microphone solemnly. “This hasn’t been cleaned in about a year and a half” he explains “But neither has it been used”.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I am trying out the Nashville Tuning of which I have been reading so much recently, which essentially involves buying a set of twelve-string light gauges, and throwing away all the thicker ones. It gives a few of the songs a lighter, jangly, almost mandolin-y feel, aside from all the ones where I’ve put a capo on the fifth fret to give it a lighter, jangly…well,you get the idea.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Turny Winn, having secateured his banjo fingering hand into uselessness, is on one-handed melodeon, taking time out mid-performance to play a short set of his love songs** to the accompaniment of the Head, who has also delivered a stirring speech thanking the staff for their sterling efforts over the past year and a half, and which delivers the sort of analysis of the performance of certain ministers of state over the same time period which is most akin to the reviews of Spinal Tap’s 1980 Polymer Records comeback album. He also points out that the event (including our stipend) has been independently funded (just in case you, or a passing columnist for The Spectator was unduly concerned).</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">At break time we retire to a classroom to enjoy a hearty repast, including (somewhat appropriately) Eton Mess Cake, home made coleslaw, chicken satay and a vegetarian option for Mr. Wendell who, as with most of his kind, usually exists on crisps and crudités if and when Green Room catering is provided. He spends the second set slightly bloated as a result. Luckily (for him) he doesn’t sing much. “Don’t let me do that again” he entreats.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">As the sun sets magnificently behind the gazebo, the full moon emerges from behind the sports centre, and Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Radio Nowhere’ soundtracks <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>the pack-down, Fiddly reflects on the incomers to his village over the course of the pandemic. “All looking to garden” he says. “Topsoil’s gone through the roof”. We consider this scenario, solemnly. “You can tell they’re not locals” he concludes. “Country folk don’t buy dirt”</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">*It does, it really does.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">**</span></span><a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/0cvHvKgRbopVHstmRsH67D?si=ARd5Df_iR9eLvMqXlqu_0A&dl_branch=1"> https://open.spotify.com/album/0cvHvKgRbopVHstmRsH67D?si=ARd5Df_iR9eLvMqXlqu_0A&dl_branch=1</a></span></p>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674420.post-46664839843315366002021-06-30T09:35:00.010+01:002021-06-30T10:03:02.973+01:00Whoooahhh - your secateurs are on fiiirrre!<p><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX_s_zY1ScGC2X-aivZ3s4bsSRqRwUKlcp2rqtmTI_q0e8RieXaArVtb6hpyHsIEjcZK2yhKIVjahs8enKzDDjFusMyTdMhcqPz-S1yfoOybsdW3kO5B0RMn87mpUiu2iSlfqc/s862/4111B777-0CC7-45DE-B35A-FBABEA3EECCE.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="492" data-original-width="862" height="114" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX_s_zY1ScGC2X-aivZ3s4bsSRqRwUKlcp2rqtmTI_q0e8RieXaArVtb6hpyHsIEjcZK2yhKIVjahs8enKzDDjFusMyTdMhcqPz-S1yfoOybsdW3kO5B0RMn87mpUiu2iSlfqc/w200-h114/4111B777-0CC7-45DE-B35A-FBABEA3EECCE.jpeg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Which one is The Mendlesham Mast?” I interrupt the discussion to enquire. “Is it the tall thin one, or the one that looks like The Empire State Building?” Mr. Wendell is momentarily nonplussed. “I always thought it was that one” he waves<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">peremptorily at the gargantuan structure off the port bow. He doesn’t shout “Robots!” though, which is what my son used to do on his way to nursery.</span></span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">We are deep in discussion regarding the wisdom of boxed sets - currently The Esher Demos are receiving our attention, and if you don’t know what The Esher Demos are, you’d probably best sit in the back with La Mulley, who is bathed in the warm reflective glow of her mobile device and letting talk of the Bob Johnston sessions wash over her like cool rain on a summer’s night. It is also, coincidentally, both summer, and raining.</span></span><p></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">We are on our way back from Fiddly’s, where we have been workshopping the festival set in anticipation of our return to the live arena at the tail end of next month. In terms of social distancing and isolation, we are essentially the poster band for government guidelines in that it is astonishingly rare for us to be able to assemble all seven members of the band in one place at any one time anyway, hence the last-month preparation.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">It is doubly egregious then, to receive the news that Turny Winn - our esteemed banjoista and Edinburgh Fringe veteran - has been occupying himself in the garden and has inadvertently pruned an integral part of his left hand. “Is it his whole finger?” someone asks, anxiously. “No, I think it’s the one next to it”. He regards the workshop full of awls and bandsaws cautiously. Fiddly takes the precaution of turning the nearest one off at the wall, first pointing out the scar from when he dragged his own finger across it. I quietly regard the bit where a sliced my knuckle with the sharp bit of the dog food can that morning, feeling a bit like Richard Dreyfuss in that bit on the boat in Jaws.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">There have already been a number of less-than sympathetic exchanges on social media regarding the impact that Turny’s mishap might have on his technique - my own contribution is to point out that when Deep Purple’s Tommy Bolin was similarly incapacitated, the guitar roadie simply tuned his guitars to a number of open chords, pushed him out on the stage and told him to get on with it. Mind you, there were 14,000 eager Japanese fans waiting to see that performance, not a small group of teachers eager to celebrate the end of term with some gently applied East Angliacana in Colchester.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Mr. Winn compensates for his banjo-less fortune with some hastily adapted melodeon parts (ie he plays some new arrangements on the squeezebox, not that he uses the bellows to strum a G major on the Appalachian frying pan, that’s much more a Fred Frith kind of turn. Although a lot of our stuff is in G, so it couldn’t hurt). As when we had a bass player who played stand-up string, we are playing the same songs, but a subtle shift in instrumentation means that they now have a more pastoral, Trad. arr. aspect to them. </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">This is pleasing to us generally, Turny aside, who enjoys playing it and is concerned that this might be part of a greater plot to oust the five string calfskin racquet from the ensemble. I assure him that this is not the case, however someone points out that with the reduction in percussive attack afforded by its absence Young Young Bob is going to have to work a lot harder on the banging and shaking front.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“That’s fine” says Gibbon, over by the bobbin sander. “He is the youngest. Anyway, what did I come in here for..?”</span></span></p></div>Do You Do Any Wings?http://www.blogger.com/profile/16464188169541771585noreply@blogger.com0