Quaint ramblings and occasional reflections of a journeying Aussie musician...

31 July 2006

(quasi)Gig Review - John Abercrombie with Adam Nussbaum

I bade her farewell as I crossed Wardour Street and down the stairs into Pizza Express for my second time there in a week, tonight to see John Abercrombie with Adam Nussbaum. Classic looking band! John's there on the right ( think Buddha meets Shih Tzu meets Confucius meets 70s porn star), with Adam up the back ( think, well, just 70s porn star really) and Gary Versace on B3 to the left. Perched up on some sort of stool with half open eyes and dodgy grin, Abercrombie plays the most beautiful melodies, at a level of the language which speaks to your correspondent wholeheartedly. He quickly turns out to be quite a sharp talker...."Show business is my life; I know I might not look it"....... A dodgy looking character with shoulder length hair and singlet sitting to my immediate right talks continuously through the first set and then between songs offers a ridiculous and request for more bass from the organ. Any awkwardness is immediately dispelled by John who just takes it in his stride...with a bit of back-up from Nussbaum, he immediately smooths it all over with some silly muso comment that brings the house down, a fellow audience member tells this guy to shut up not long after and it's all fine. It was basically just an ordinary jazz gig, but played at the absolute highest level with some of the world's best. The way I have listened to bands and live music has changed significantly over the years. I used to feel like it was me back here in the dark and those gods up there on stage, ten million miles away. Nowadays it's a bit more like I'm sitting with them, or at least the Jazz gigs that I enjoy going to need for me to have that element of invitation to them, like the transcendental secrets of the universe attained through a properly conversing, swinging band are being shared with me. These guys were entirely that.

...well see how it goes....

......So she texted me up for a drink. I knew I wouldn't be able to escape her clutches. And I thought I might be finally ready. So I said sure. .......it was a packed Tuesday night in Soho but I found somewhere big enough with a room out the back to escape the masses. She was late, as she always was, but that was okay. ......the catch up begins....such immediate familiarity! for me anyway, with someone who used to be so close. Figures I guess, but still a little startling considering all the reservations I have had with this particular person.... .......and merriment following the familiarity..... ......the life forces of the earth surround this person, you can literally see them in the air around her, in a flash of those huge eyes or a laugh or that big white smile. She wears her heart on her sleeve, proudly, and despite the history, I still admire that...... .......she lays it all out there, saying how she wants us to be okay, especially since I may not be around for too much longer.... .......and I think I might be okay with that......not to have it forced down my throat like she seemed to be doing, but just easing into it, easing into being friends again, people who hang out, spend time with each other...... .....we'll see how it goes........

20 July 2006

On Tour - Bonn

We were a week in Germany, and some of it's become a bit of a blur, especially the earlier bit, but I'll see what I can fish out. After the kickoff gig in Amsterdam and the French splendour of Brussels and Paris, the word amongst the band on Germany was that things were a little different there in a couple of ways, and my experience would confirm this....

Friday 19th May - Bonn

So I wake up to find that we're in sleepy suburbs. The bus is parked smack bang in the middle of what looks like a free carpark, quite empty of cars, and the usual power line is run from the back of the bus and into the venue. The day rooms were a cab ride away, and the centre of town was further, so as opposed to the day before, there wasn't really a place to go hang as such, so I just ended up mooching around the venue. Sophie, Mosh the sound guy and I walked to a nearby supermarket in a clump of shops - it's Monday morning and the whole place is deserted. Welcome to Germany....
About half way through the day a car pulls up in the empty car park and a large square black haired German guy in a leather jacket strides up into the venue (it may have been the promoter, I can't remember exactly). The word around is that the bus isn't meant to be parked in the carpark, as the venue has had endless noise complaints from the neighbours, but our driver is adamant that the bus isn't moving anywhere. It later emerges that the reason we're even there at all is because of some sort of favour by the venue management to the label during what is usually the venue's closed period of the year.
Wandring past a little later I see him quite clearly flustered and raving to somebody about something. A little later we're watching a video in the back of the bus and the power is cut. It's been cut by the guy. The bus has to move.
Before any further discussion can take place, about half an hour later some other random bloke appears in the car park, standing by the bus. Flustered Guy, in a fit of, well, flusteredness, has dug someone's cousin out of somewhere and paid him 50 euros for the next seven to ten hours as some sort of sound bouncer, to make sure the bus didn't make any noise to disturb the neighbours. We all had a right laugh about that....what's he gonna do if it does make a noise? Walk up to it and tell it to be quiet?!....
The bus was moved. The gig went fine - a sit down audience, a little sedate, but they got into it. As we left, the bus steered out past a couple of cars. Quietly!......

17 July 2006

Meaningless Minutiae

"My best days may be behind me, but I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now."
Samuel Beckett

As a counterbalance to the weight of my most recent entry, round about lunchtime on a sleepy day at my deskjob, I am now to relate to you a series of random unrelated things that will now pop into my mind. A full tour and holiday recount is still on the way, but I've realised with all that that the true nature of blogging is the now, the last 24, and so to get a bit of that vibe back into it, here we are....

* - Getting the old latte and croissant from my local Nero, I've realised that bad coffee actually makes me feel bad. This is quite apart from that other bad coffee phenomenon, like the stuff from a service station where you're so amazed that it tastes so bad but you're still hypnotised into drinking it. No, I'm talking about where you finish it and it's about an hour later and the heightened state of awareness you thought you were going to get from it is now in equal parts to the dehydration and absolute thought jumble that ensues. And I'm realising that just after all that, it actually makes me feel a little depressed. This town is full of bad coffee; served way too hot, way too much froth, never enough actual caffeine (or flavour for that matter). Thus, here is a list of your correspondent's favourite cafes in the city:

1) Flat White, Berwick St, Soho - run by Aussies and New Zealanders (naturally), they actually serve the real thing and do good food. Wood floor, nice interior, quite reminiscent of a certain Brunswick outlet I used to frequent back in Schmelbs. Last time I was there with Mr N, the owner alerted us to the pub just across the street with an astroturf beer garden - hooray!

2) Coffee Plant, Portobello Road, Ladbroke Grove - White exterior, glass front, full of anti-Bush 9/11 conspiracy articles all over the walls, with all the sacks of coffee and grinders up the back. Also run by antipodeans (naturally). When you drink in though they still serve it in paper cups which is a bit lame.

3) Tinderbox, Upper Street, Angel - Wood finish, airline seats up the back (if you're lucky). This is one of the better chains around London, so as it goes there are apparently 0nly about half a dozen others although I've never seen any. You can get a mega coffee which is basically a bowl with two handles. And you're smack bang in the middle of Angel - yeah.

* - Bought a bike a couple of weekends ago from my mate JC out in Clapton for £50. 1957, dual alloy frame, racer, goes like the clappers. I rode back from his place all the way down Victoria Park and back along Regent's Canal. Stopping off at Broadway Market for fish and chips and a ginger ale, I went up to London Fields, found a bench, people watched in the long UK dusk.....it's times like these when I wonder if my best years are still ahead of me.....
Got a chain last weekend, and just on a couple of preliminary rides, London is starting to open up to me, after all this time. It's such a closed off place, but the counter to that is that when you find a cool bit, you feel like it's just yours....

* - Bought Thom Yorke's new solo album, 'The Eraser', on Saturday. It rocks! There is a very small list of artists that your correspondent will buy from without prior investigation, and that's the thing that rocks when I go get that stuff. I know that it's gonna be good, and I wasn't disappointed. Definitely coming from Radiohead but his own thing too...sounded very produced i.e, not too much acoustic instruments going on, which I guess I always associated with his haunting tones. Oh well, go get it if you're keen....

* - Don't you love that Beckett quote? I saw it when I was in Ireland on a bookmark with famous Irish authors and their best quotes. It was below a photo of him looking like an incredibly crusty wrinkly old man. I like it because it feels like it's about making the most of the time you have, whether it be a lot or not much. I guess when you're in your late 20's, the time of your life, being aware of the small time before and the long time coming up, that there's a certain niggling in the back of your head, perhaps a pressure (if you allow it) on whether you're making the most of it. Then again, if you do spend too much time thinking about whether or not you are, then I guess you're not putting enough action into actually doing it!

Oh dear, I got a bit heavy towards the end there...can't bloody help myself.....but there we have it. Lotsa love, more soon....

07 July 2006

July 7 2005

Today

Revelling in the central location of our new flat, it was about a quarter to nine when I staggered out onto Camden Street in search of some sort of public transport to get me to my sleepy day job. Well looky here (in an experience not uncommon to Londoners), there's a bus that goes from the stop just outside of the estate to where else but the tube stop just near my work!
Bus is packed, rush hour, whatever...we wind our way through the new Eurostar terminal, come out on to the main road and I look up to see a floodlight on a raised tower thingy....strange. The bus swings past Kings Cross Station, and it's only when I see the half dozen reporters on the other side of the road, standing in front of more floodlights and cameras pointed at them with the station in the background, that I twigged.

It really was a year ago today, wasn't it.

An eerieness quickly crept in when I realised that the time happened to be a couple of minutes past nine o'clock, almost exactly the time, on this day a year ago, that the station was evacuated and I poured out with the river of black white and grey on to this very street, to search in vain for a bus to the next station.....


A year ago...

As the cliche goes, it started, as any one who was in central London that morning will tell you, like any other day. To an overcast morning, I awoke alone in the one bedroom flat I shared with my ex-girlfriend at the time, donned the white shirt and grey pants (too small) necessary for the full-time temping day gig, and ate my cereal and banana in silence before trudging down St Paul's Road to the melee of my local tube station.
Descending into the bowels of the beast, my journey started that day with the Victoria Line, the light blue one, always fast, always packed in the sleepy angst of a London rush hour. "I'm not one of you, you know," I kept telling myself back in those days, even though I fully realised every day what I had (or hadn't) done to end up in the position I was in. And being determined to make it to work every day of those stupid-ass jobs was my way of getting out of it.

I distinctly remember thinking in the couple of days before that things couldn't get any worse.....

Making the change at Kings Cross station to the Northern line, I was standing there with the swaying masses on the southbound platform at what must have been 8.50 AM, when I happened to be staring up at the lights in the ceiling of the tunnel and saw them flicker, and my mother's voice in the back of my head instantly thought that can't be right.
Already running late for the job, I missed the crush for the oncoming tube...damn I'm gonna be late....turns out it didn't matter that day.
The next tube is halted at the previous station. An automated male voice tells us to leave....the usual hissing from the tube crowd....it was that flicker, wasn't it.....overheard someone mention an electrical fault.....
Pouring out with the sea of black white and grey and into the streets of Kings Cross and the already overflowing bus stops...screw this, I'll walk to the next station.
And so I ended up following various lines and stations, cutting southwards across the city, encountering more and more crowds of confused commuters. The Square Mile was cubically full of law and finance minions as far as the eye could see, but there didn't seem to be any sort of confusion. A random foreign woman came up to me out of the crowd, asked me how to get to a station on the other side of the city. I advised her that pulling up in the nearest cafe was probably the best option.
I never twigged, the whole time. I overheard someone mention a bomb, but despite the crowds, despite the occasional fire truck and helicopter, I never stopped to ask anyone or find out what was going on. It was only my fourth month there, still getting used to the place, and absolutely determined to earn some money that day.
It was only when I pulled up at Tower Bridge, the eleventh or twelfth closed station I came across that day, and read the tube info sign advising to 'get out of central London' that I realised something heavy had gone down. Not long after I saw a panicky looking cop hand signal a bus into a driveway. As I walked along the main road heading east out of town, entirely filled with cars both ways, I noticed that the sound of sirens, which had been building continually all morning, had been non-stop for about half an hour....
After three and a half hours walking, I got to within a block of my job when ex-girlfriend A called me up (on a rare mobile call to make it through that day) and filled me in.
I had to stop on the corner for a second as the weight of the events hit me.
I looked up at the lights on the tube platform. The lights flickered, and people died. Meaninglessly.
I soon found out that the most casualties of the morning were on the Piccadilly line, between Russell Square, the next station along, and where I was standing. It could have been any one. The bus explosion at 9.47AM was at Tavistock Square, about a kilometre from Kings Cross, which was about the time I was wandering around that neighbourhood. The bus was a number 30, one of the routes which went past our flat, a bus that A and her sister C caught all the time. Could have been any one.
The next day was like Day of the Triffids, eerie. Angel station was deserted. I entered the DLR carriage to find about half a dozen people with newspapers who all shot a quick glance as I stepped in.
For the next month the city was in lockdown, everyone was wound up so tight. I was living between friends places at the time - heading to a different job one morning, carrying a large black bag with clothes and a small keyboard amplifier, I got pulled over by a bobby at 8AM for a 'regulatory search'. That was some quota they had to fill.....

It's not a remarkable story. I certainly didn't see any blood stained people staggering down the street, didn't hear any explosions, didn't know anyone affected. It's quite a pedestrian account, considering I now live with someone who emerged from his central Manhattan apartment at about 9AM on the 11th September 2001 to witness, shall we say, something new.
But everyone has that special memory reserved for where they were when certain world events occur; a scratch on the surface of the collective consciousness. So I guess that in the future, whenever anyone mentions July 7, then I can say, quite honestly and wholeheartedly, that I was there.

That Guy Returns (again)

For anyone who is hospitalised on an IV drip from starving themselves waiting by their computer for my next blog entry.....well, I salute you! For anyone else, the scramble of the last two or three homeless weeks is finally over. We've all moved into probably the tiniest but nicest little ex-council flat in Camden Town in the most amazing location - two minutes walk from Mornington Crescent and five to Camden Town tube itself (for those who are unfamiliar, take my word that that's pretty bloody good!). Quite a turnaround from the last place, but totally welcome....
So now I have somewhere to practice and store things and sleep, and with the onset of teaching holidays, I'll have far more time to pay attention to self-glorifying activities such as the one you're currently reading....tally ho! what what.....

03 July 2006

On Tour - Paris

Thursday 18th May - Paris

Sucked up in the twister of alcohol, I rubbed my eyes mid afternoon to peer out the curtained windows upon the eternally inviting boulevards and cane chairs of none other than the City of Lights. This was a trip to the gig like no other. I knew this one would be a highlight, one that would go down in the books, and I sure wasn't disappointed.
As everyone knows, parking in Paris is utterly ridiculous, and so we had to lug everything right there on the street and straight into the venue, after which the bus headed back to somewhere on the Peripherique. During one of those time windows that pop up between sound check and getting ready, I dashed down the street for an Evian. Feeling that warm Parisian glow from all the buildings in their faded yellow glory, caught up in some personal reverie of the momentousness (for me at least) of the afternoon, I couldn't help but spare a brief thought back to that very first paid gig I ever did, back in the Coota Town Hall, eleven years ago...
The venue was ace - La Scene, Rue de Talliandiers, 10th (I think?) Arrondisment, near the Bastille, a medium sized pop venue in quite a hip part of town. The promoters showed up and took us out to dinner in this exquisite restaurant about a block from the gig...the weather was gorgeous.....nothing could wipe the smile off my face!
Housemate X and some friends rocked up with about an hour to do - having friendlies in the audience always makes the gig feel that little bit more worthwhile. As always, we rocked the casbah, then repaired to this bodgy establishment a couple of blocks away with loads of cute American girls but a totally inept mother and son running the bar, before the beige monster suddenly appeared to whisk us away to the east. Ah Paris, it was only my second time there and again, you blew me away!....