The Other Notes...

Curtain

2010-02-04T16:18:00.003Z

...if anyone's still out there reading this, a hearty and warm welcome to you....
....it's with a tinge of sadness and sentiment that I've finally decided to wrap it up here....
....it was great when I started, back in 06 or whenever it was, I really enjoyed it, and I really enjoyed reading my friends' blogs too....
...then I left it for a while....
....then I thought I could get back on the horse, late last year, but it just wasn't to be...
....does this mean that there's less happening in my life now than when I started? Hell no, in fact there's so much more I couldn't even begin to write about it....well, maybe I could, but that same impetus just isn't there anymore....
...so, I think this might be it....
...although I'm not going to close the site down....who knows, now I'm drawing it to a close, a rush of ideas might come to my head or inspiration might suddenly strike, and as the artist in all of us knows, you can't turn off to that....

....so, I guess this is goodbye, maybe forever! maybe not.....but for now at least....

...thanks for reading!...

Unashamed Navel Gazing part 1

2009-10-23T23:15:00.005Z

..I feel I should be working harder at enjoying it all...

...Once again, I'm not entirely sure what this means, although it could have something to do with having led such a blessed life, having so many opportunities made available and having experienced so many amazing things, and still having days and moments where this is not right and that's a worry and if this isn't done then I won't get anywhere et al...

...like I'm just sitting here living my wonderful life and allowing silly, day-to-day, transient stuff, the flotsam and jetsam, just come and bump up against me, and letting it get me down, or not so much that, more like allowing these things to hinder me from experiencing life to the fullest...it's really something, how powerful those small daily miseries can be...

...I guess what I'm trying to say is that I seem to be having some trouble with self-motivation.

....In regards to career, the music business is full of the uber-motivated, and many if not all of my heroes fall under that category. I don't think I have trouble with becoming motivated about things, it's the maintenance of it, seeing projects through to completion, or even just sticking with a project, working at following through...

...As for enjoying it all, day to day....I went to a wedding with my girlfriend last weekend and met a lot of her friends who seem to have loads more fun than I do.....also with the show I work on, I seem to come across a lot of people like this, people not content with how amazing it already is, people who put their heart and soul into wringing from life absolutely every last drop of fun and enjoyment to be had...

...I think I'm feeling like this because of the age I'm at now....

...people seem to shy away from the dreaded thirty years old...maybe they're just saying that....It's been nearly five months now and I'm loving it....it's a particularly amazing time in this life, and even if it wasn't, I feel as though just being this age....it's like a new level of self-respect....after the various self-doubts and insecurities of teenagedom, university years and then the first ten years of being a musician (apparently the hardest according to an old lecturer), it feels like some sort of achievement just having reached this age, being able to take stock of that many years of experience and having them inform you on the choices that lie ahead....

....so, maybe it's the trick of just grabbing the bull by the horns and not letting go...

The Show

2009-10-06T23:20:00.003Z

Currently Listening: Tomasz Stanko, "On The Green Hill"
Currently Reading: 'Underbelly'

....I'm so exhausted!...
This past week has been sometimes twelve hour days, rehearsing all day with the tour cast for the new Thriller Live World tour starting in a few weeks, then going to do the show in town at night....or it's been the usual weekend of doing two shows back to back on both Saturday and Sunday. I don't want to sound whingey by saying that I'm exhausted, it's just that I don't think I've ever worked as many hours on anything as demanding in my life!
Truth be told, it wasn't so hectic on Sunday though...rockstar guitarist D from the town band and I depped out the show (found someone to fill in for us, for those of you not up with show talk) and went and did our little originals gig at a pub in North London.
Show world and Jazz world are so vastly different, I'd like to write about them more in future entries....playing eight shows a week to audiences of roughly nine hundred, our audience on Sunday night began with two girlfriends of band members (of four in the band), and then progressed to about half a dozen...that's right, it was half a dozen because there were four people that paid, earning us a total sum of £20 (which ended up being, yes that's right, £5 each!).
But it was two sets of all original material, and unusually, it was loads of fun!
Just recently (last week in fact) I decided that for myself, playing gigs of original music is far more satisfying in the days and weeks following, knowing that you got your own thing out there, knowing that the compositions all work and are reasonably enjoyable to listen to and improvise over. These factors keep me optimistic about following through to the next one, and also keep me in a state of forgetfulness about how much of a trial they usually are (no money, tiny audiences, potentially psycho band members, difficult venue, rubbish improvising, general failure of realising any sort of artistic vision, et al)...
But then, last Sunday, a couple of things clicked into place with the playing, the tunes all worked on very little rehearsal, and for moments quite a bit longer than the wink of an eye, there were actually times where I genuinely enjoyed myself. And not enjoyed myself in the usual way at these gigs of maybe getting through a passage of music without making a mistake or playing with a passable time feel, but moments where I enjoyed myself like I was laughing with a friend telling a funny story (there was actually a point where I laughed out loud, along with the music)....so it is possible!...

Great Moments In Musical Theatre History

2009-08-30T23:49:00.002Z

...yes yes, regular fans, it's been a while...I could possibly apologise for not writing as much lately but that'd be pointless...it's been summer holidays for E and we've been living it up as much as we can on some spectacular sunny days lately, days that make it worthwhile living in London, make you forget the nine-month winter ever happens! We've just lapsed into this timetable where I get home after the show about 11.30pm and we stay up until about 2, which is normally blogging time for me, oh well....

Just thought I'd share this one with you all...it's halfway through act 2, and I'm conducting tonight's show. Part of the set-up that surrounds my keyboard is a big round red light and an old-school black plastic telephone that's connected to most of the people backstage. Tonight the deputy stage manager has a malfunctioning something that's already made this red light flash in the first act. I've had dreams about this red light going off - it means that I have to talk to someone because something's wrong (bomb? psycho fan? actor with headache? could be anything!).

So we've just hit 'em with 'Dangerous', the powerhouse dance number, and now it's time to grab their hearts at three-quarter time with the power ballad, 'Earth Song'. The subdued synth-based intro begins, and the digital screen that hides the band for most of the show opens and reveals us to the stage, covered in a gentle blue wash of light with a little smoke machine work at the edges.
A solitary singer dressed in white walks to centre stage to take the spotlight and open the first verse.

And what do you think happens after that?

The red light goes off again!

It must have looked great from the stalls...a stage looking like that with a singer wailing about what we've done to the earth, and in the background a flashing pin-prick of red light with the MD madly trying to get someone's attention on a big black plastic phone.

Priceless!...

The Gateway

2009-07-25T23:28:00.004Z

...9am Friday morning, about two months ago...

Everything's green, everything's wonderful...it's a rare sunny London day, and beams shine through evergreens towering over grassy fields. A squirrel darts across the ground to the right...

My path circuits a large pond, carefully sculptured between meandering bank and weeping willow, so that one might accidentally come across past an eye-catching viewpoint.

I'm wandering through Battersea Park, one of London's gorgeous old 19th century parks, now my local park, and probably the only one that borders the Thames River. Between the original village of Battersea (in parts dating back to the 9th century AD) and the city, this part of the south bank was marshland until the mid 19th century.

And when I arrive at the north-eastern corner of the park to cross the river on Chelsea Bridge, one realises just how different this part of town really is.

To my left, on the opposite bank is the green of Chelsea Barracks, and the view naturally follows west along the shore to the next crossing, Albert Bridge. Most Jazz musicians will know of the Billy Strayhorn tune named apparently after this bridge, the one I'm currently walking over, although for the life of me I can't understand why a tune hasn't been written about the other one, it's glittering, ornate counterpart further upstream.

Behind me to the left is the complementary green of Battersea Park. Halfway between the bridges is the recently constructed Buddhist pagoda; apparently a monk lives somewhere in the park, presumably nearby.

In total contrast to this symbol of peace (indeed in total contrast to anything other than itself!), behind me to the right is Battersea Power Station, the dominant feature of the landscape. The largest brick building in Europe, poised strategically at a bend in the river, it appears to be some long abandoned art-deco fortress defending the city from invaders.

It's hard to describe the overpowering nature of this building using words or even photos. Catching the train into work each afternoon, the line passes to the left of the station, running parallel to another trainline situated on a kind of aqueduct which, in the view from my train, hides where the building meets the ground, giving the building the appearance of floating above it, only adding to it's immensity.

There's a certain unreality to it that has passed over into the world of fantasy...a friend of mine who also lives locally recalls moving here a decade ago, seeing it for the first time, and being totally amazed that the building he'd seen on a particular Pink Floyd album cover actually existed in real life!

The station and the two giant cranes directly in front of it, sitting face to face on the river bank, haven't seen any action since the mid 70s. For this massive open space on the river not far from the heart of the city, every few years, various redevelopment plans come and go. What is to happen with this particular part of London? A housing estate complex, looking rather like a fleet of cruise ships, seems to watch with trepidation from the opposite bank.

I reach the northern side of the river and turn right, past a tall, narrow Victorian-era water tower (?) several stories high. The doors of the pumphouse are open to the street and as I walk past I get a glimpse of the giant silvery intestines within. Jammed in next to them are a collection of sidings from Victoria station, nearly a mile away, the ends of stationary trains parked perpendicularly to the road that runs along the riverbank.

What an odd part of town this is, with its giant mysterious structures littered arbitrarily on both sides of the river!

The Groove

2009-07-25T23:19:00.003Z

S has been with us in town for most of the week, and contrary to my earlier blog, has been in remarkably good spirits considering...is it the joy of being off the road and playing a show in the one place for more than a day? Is it the strange relief of the passing of a long-suffering family member? Is it just plain enjoyment of the gig? Customary to our surroundings, S is a pretty reserved character at the best of times, so I guess we'll never really know...
...and in the last couple of days playing with D, our co-number one dep on drums, the groove has been fatter than anything! It's incredible how, especially on a two-show day like today (matinee 4pm, evening show 8pm), when you're playing a show centred on groove-based music and the groove is great, everything is great!, everyone's in a good mood, the sun shines...well, it feels like it anyway...

From The Road: Pasta of Love

2009-07-23T13:26:00.004Z

...so S has just had a fairly major death in the family, and I'm feeling pretty terrible having just paid him out in prose (unbeknownst to him of course). However he had his first show in town last night and was in remarkably good form, so I thought I'd relate an anecdote from our three months on the road together (which I was going to do anyway, really!)...

It was about six weeks in, the tour was up and running, and some dates were approaching where the production company (for some unknown reason) decided to offer three nights of accommodation at a Butlins.
For anyone not from the UK, Butlins is a chain of ultra-cheap holiday camps dotted around the country, infamous for getting exactly what you pay for.
I didn't quite know how I was going to break this one to the band, but I had a fair idea how they'd react. I had already accepted staying there - it would end up only being two nights for me, and I guess it was part of the adventure. The three English members, well aware of the situation, all opted out immediately. The two continental members however were quite unknowing, even though S had been here for ten years!
On my weekend home beforehand, E and I found photos this particular one on the internet and it looked uncannily like a concentration camp - six miles from town, a complex of long blocks of flats in the middle of nowhere by the sea.
I rejoined the tour on the second day of their stay, and when I met S and G at the theatre they were pissed off, and rightly so I suppose. Having been an effective employee of this production company for more than two years now, one becomes glazed over to the liberties it regularly takes with people who work for it.
Cabbing back there after the show however, the situation turned a little for the better. Unlike the norm, where everyone's accommodation was dotted throughout whatever town we were in, dancers and crew were only in the next block over, and there was absolutely nothing to do out there, so S decided to cook his Pasta Of Love. Word spread to our two favourite dancers who were torn between joining us or the crew for spicy pepper soup (I think they somehow ended up making it to both!)
It was a rubbish situation and everyone had complained far more than enough about it, but at the end of the day, literally, everyone made do...some of us even enjoyed the camaraderie of staying in the one place, a holiday camp after all.
I couldn't believe how S made it and so simply...pasta, tomato sauce, olive oil, a little salt, but cooked and timed absolutely to perfection with generous helpings of parmesan. I've never had pasta quite like it, before or since...and there we were, the three immigrants of the tour, in the flat, waves breaking in the night breeze not far away.

Meeting 'S'

2009-07-16T23:55:00.005Z

...saw S a couple of nights ago at the theatre. Hadn't seen him since I left the tour more than six weeks ago.

Astonishing how once I left the tour and came into town, unintentionally the blinkers went on and it was all about Town World, as opposed to Road World I guess. Previously, during the three months on tour, I'd come in to the town production to fill in for the odd show and the band guys, good friends of mine whom I'd worked with closely on four tours over the past two years, would look at me with a faint suggestion of, "Yeah I remember you"...and now I know why!

S was in to observe the town show as the tour is going abroad next week for two weeks, and our resident bass player is doing a swap. Our guy goes out on the road, and S comes in to fill his place while he's gone. Dashing needlessly yet again between stage and bandroom, I chance upon meeting him in the backstage stairwell before the show...his large frame, shaved head, and wiry goatee belie a quietly spoken, gentle manner. For most of the show I was looking forward to a cheerful post-match drink, a catch up on the current tour gossip, maybe even a laugh over an anecdote in days gone by...

Usually in ones and twos we file out of stage door, through the nightly throng of audience well-wishers and autograph hunters, across Great Windmill Street to the small stage door pub, funnily enough called the Lyric. It appears to be pretty crowded outside with cast, crew and associates, and S is standing with the rest of the bandies directly out front.

We couldn't have been more than half a dozen sentences in, just catching up on the tour, searching for a subject to latch on to, and it was on an alternate work offer for S where things seemed to change sharply, and I felt I had to look for something to hang on to as the vibe of the conversation started hurtling inexorably downward. Personal difference this and politics that and money issue the other...we'd worked together six nights a week for three months, I hadn't seen the guy in a month and a half, and this is what I get?

I let him finish his rave, unsure of how to respond to such negativity.

Amidst waves of chatter, we're suddenly on an island in an ocean of show talk, just he and I.

Hours seem to pass....and then....

"So how is it working out in the flat, with your girlfriend?"

Yeah, that's it mate, don't work too hard, it's only been six weeks...and you're joining us for how long? How many of these do I have to look forward to?!

Sure enough, I only learnt today that continuing family problems for S might have cast a shadow over his mood, which could be understood completely...but then, was my hope of a silly bit of laugh and talk just too much to expect?

Up To Speed

2009-07-11T23:11:00.004Z

...Saturday morning, late May...

Summer is coming. You can feel it your bones. Any sense of warmth from the sky and air brings a shiver of anticipation. Winter's endless grip is failing. And yet the newfound mid-morning sun is only just enough to wake to.

The train is crossing a river somewhere in the west of the country, rolling green fields, with a nice little collection of white buildings down by the bank...

Hang on, didn't we just pass that same building?

Or was that a couple of days ago?

What a week it's been, one of those ones where you literally don't have half an hour to scratch your head.

Monday, 30th Birthday! Much frivolity with girlfriend, breakfast in Angel, afternoon on Primrose Hill with a bottle of champers, looking over London underneath a stormy sky, then night-long dinner/bender with friends, mostly people from both town and touring productions.

Tuesday, afternoon rehearsal with originals band for upcoming gig, then playing on the town production in the evening.

Wednesday, back to MD the tour in Torquay.

Friday, four hour train back to London to play with the town show.

Saturday, back to MD the tour in Cardiff, two shows.

How did I end up in this mess again!?

And what an intense year...after the best part of two years and four tours, Flying Music, the production company that kicked the whole thing off, at the start of January finally put the show in the West End at the Lyric Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue, a stone's throw from Piccadilly, right in the heart of London theatre land.

For the first time, a second production was created for the fifth Thriller tour, this time mostly UK, but a little of the continent, and after much deliberation, given the option of taking the cushy, stationary town gig, or stepping up to run the tour as musical director, I somehow came to the decision of taking the latter. From mid February until the end of May, I was in probably the first leadership role of my life ever, of anything! At times I had to scratch myself to believe it was all happening.

But lo and behold, it certainly was, in every way imaginable...our tour took us all over England but this time with a difference...no more the relentless grilling of two months of one-nighters like previous tours...this one had us staying in most provincial cities for a week, sometimes less, but it made all the difference.

I'm not long at the theatre in Cardiff and the drummer calls...he's driven up from Torquay today on an infamously difficult route and is somehow stuck in traffic, may not make the soundcheck...right, so we're straight back into it then! He's not getting it...we had a day off yesterday, he's had more than 24 hours to get here, and besides, there aren't any excuses, this is show business!

The two shows in Cardiff are a resounding success. In an open concert-style venue, we play to two packed houses full of people from a country that knows all about great voices. We trudge through Saturday night carnage back to the hotel, one of those new shiny business one-nighter ones, so in the generic weirdness of the hotel foyer, most of the cast and band gather for drinks, partly to celebrate my last night with the tour before I join the town production.

It's in a daze that I sit at a second breakfast at a sushi place in Paddington station when a text comes through asking me to take vocal warm-up before a two show day! Crazy! But I'm happy to take it, partly because the guy sending me the the text is always more busy than I am, even this week. And I've arranged for someone else to play my chair for the second show...why? Because I'm moving house! After the matinee!

Curtain comes down about 5pm and I'm out of there like a shot on the nearest bus or train...walking down my street in Hackney for the last time, she pulls up in her little silver car, gets out in a dress, and says, "I'm here to take you away", and that's when it really hit me, in the Sunday dusk...I'm doing it again, moving in with a girlfriend, for the second time.

I don't have much stuff and my awesome soon to be ex-housemates have done most of it in my absence. It's a tight fit but it fills most of Eri's car, of course leaving no room for a passenger. She speeds off with all my possessions, I hello the new guy and farewell my two wonderful housemates, Ruth and Tammy, from one of the best sharehouses I've had the privilege to live in...sorry to see 'em go...

The trains are down, so it's looking like one big long bus to Victoria station, and it's the first slab of time in about a week where I haven't been on the train to a show or conducting or drinking a skinful, and so I seem to have no choice but to partake in a little public transport nap. It's Sunday night and there aren't too many crazies around on the 38, the big long bendy bus, the free bus, the robbery bus...of course forgetting the route of the 38, I'm stirred into waking somewhere in town, and it's Shaftesbury Ave, and I look out the window and THERE HE IS! The big spangly silver jacket on the big red square sign...aaarrrgh! Whether it be out on tour or here in town, I just can't bloody get away from the show!...

It takes me an hour but I finally get to our new place, and my gorgeous girlfriend has lugged just about all my stuff up two flights of stairs. I help her with the rest, and then it REALLY hits me...creeping carefully through the hall of our new flat, the smell of the bare white paint, the boxes everywhere...and all the thoughts, the daily noise, suddenly quiets in my head...the start of another chapter, a new beginning...

Who's It All About?

2009-07-11T00:38:00.002Z

....I couldn't believe it, how incapable I felt writing out this silly card for a friend of mine!
When I was in full swing with the blog a couple of years ago, the creative juices felt like they were flowing, I was getting a bit of wordsmithery out here and there, it was all good....but then sure enough, life took over for a bit in the form of 'Thriller Live', the show I've been working on since May 2007, and it started to fall by the wayside.
I also went through a period where I couldn't help feeling that the whole thing was a bit self-centred. Me, writing about me, attempting to lend a descriptive edge to my daily goings-on...I didn't want to add any words to existing reservations about the self-centred nature of being in show biz.
But then, I'm not forcing anyone to read this, right? You can drop by if you like, or not. I've never swayed from my firm belief in lending a creative edge to one's daily existence (perhaps to share with the net at large) being a worthy pastime, nay, sometimes crucial for one's daily sanity.
So it might be a bit clunky at first, but that's the same as when I kicked the whole thing off. And it might not take the form it used to...I might just put random stuff up if I feel like it, it's my choice, right? But eventually I'm hoping that it'll get back into the rhythm.
AND I'm looking for any help I can get in terms of assisting my literary skills...writing competitions, grammar websites, anything....if anyone out there finds any links I'm all up for it....I was about to say 'well' up for it...there, it's already improving, right? (hee hee!)...
There also might be some exciting (and hopefully intriguing) recent developments to share with you all.

CURRENTLY READING:
Paul Auster, New York Trilogy
If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, Italo Calvino

CURRENTLY LISTENING:
Pat Metheney, The Way Up
Cold Chisel, Breakfast at Sweethearts

The Card

2009-07-09T23:21:00.001Z

...Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, half eleven, one evening mid week, about two months ago...

...what to write, what to write...

...I want to show him my appreciation, but not have it sound not too sycophantic...

...do I need to fill up a whole card? How bout less is more?....

...no, he's too wordy for that, you gotta speak on his level...

...okay, here goes...

In the middle of a hugely busy travelling week, and with the stage door guy about to burst in on his closing rounds, I press pen to paper in a slightly desperate attempt at a thank you letter...

...yeah, that'd sound clever...

...no, not so much, but what about...

...never know what to write in these things...

...are the other boys still at the pub? It's nearly an hour since curtain...

...what about this turn of phrase?...

...oh no! a scribble out, a mistake! terrible!...

...and another one!...

I get to the end of the second half of the card and cast an eye over the results...not impressed, a little disappointed even, but more importantly, what will he think? Have I just written a love letter to my effective employer?

And precisely at that moment....in the corner of my eye, at the end of the room....one of the famed Lyric theatre mice darts by!

Everyone's left the building, the residents are in, it's time to go....

And so I trudge out stage door into Great Windmill Street, past the gaudy red neon of the adjoining strip club, head hung at a most unimpressive attempt at a show of appreciation for the last two years of working with him.

But despite my dismay at a poorer hold on the English language than I'm sure I used to have, I'm guessing that the humorous card and mid-price-looking bottle of unfamiliar Aussie red might do something towards communicating the idea...

And what to do about these diminished abilities?....

The Arts Centre

2008-08-27T08:28:00.002Z

...a nice pub by the river, Putney, South London, Friday afternoon...

The need for a pint after a play is, well, it's like ---, and of course it being the end of the week (even though weekdays don't mean anything to me anymore), the urge is just too difficult to resist, so after a rewarding session on organ with guitarist D in his tiny but cosy apartment, we wandered down to the Thames and met up with his loverly yogic guru partner the Mudgee Girl for a little tour of the establishments in the area.
It was two pints, maybe three, with no lunch or dinner and it went straight to my head and I'm off on a tangent about the most recent trip back home to rural New South Wales. And it's a full tangent, complete with descriptive passages leading to (hopefully) some sort of glowing fact about the place that I can relate to my counterparts, also originally from a similar place, that they won't find too boring in place of the football on the telly behind them.

"...he describes everything...it's okay, he always talks like this!" says D to Mudgee Girl and I'm broken from my reverie.

I don't know why it was, maybe it's because no-one ever actually said those words to me before, but it just hit me in a huge way that yes, that's how I talk. That's how I attempt to communicate to people, by trying to describe as much as possible of my subject in the hope that they will come to as complete an understanding as myself.
In general conversation, over a pint!
The son of teachers!
With little or no view to assumed knowledge, to suggestion, to the idea that the listeners might like to draw their own conclusions or make up their own minds about something, or that they simply may not be as interested in what I'm talking about as I am.

...and then, in the days and weeks afterward, subsequent conclusions about how I'd always had an immediate distrust of people who withheld information or gave no thought to inconsistency and fabrication, and how this was obviously at odds with my occupation as a musician, with the particular element of hanging out and talking with people in bars....but then conversely it also occurred to me how patronising I might sound in general conversation if I'm trying to explain too much to people.

And I'm suddenly working all this out within a year of my thirtieth birthday?...

The subject I was talking of at the time was a source of great excitement to myself and a host of people in my hometown, that is, the ongoing evolution of the Cootamundra Arts Centre. Before my three year sojourn in the UK, the idea of transforming a disused woolskin factory into a community-owned complex for the promotion and production of multiple artistic disciplines originating locally and beyond was mere talk, and anyone who lives or grew up in a small country town knows that there's no shortage of that.
Via an immigration scandal involving a false international company (a whole other story) and the intervention of a committed group of local citizens, on my eponymous return in December 07 I was amazed and delighted to find that it was up and running, a work in progress no doubt but already a functioning venue for visual and performing arts, complete with white grand piano. Consequently, before my return to the UK I held two concerts there with different groups of musicians imported from Canberra and Sydney to excellent turn-outs and crowd responses.

Now, in this fifth week (of hopefully no more than nine) of my return to Australia and subsequent bureaucratic incarceration, I was lucky enough to be bribed into performing solo at the Arts Centre this very afternoon for a group of sculptors, here in Cootamundra today for the official opening of the Bradman Walk, a series of bronze busts of all the various Australian cricket captains, complete with a full-size of the Don himself who would have turned 100 today.
After the official unveiling the sculptors were invited down to the Arts Centre for a reception/afternoon tea, for which yours truly was the monkey organ grinder installation. After they all trailed off there were talk amongst the locals that the sculptors, all from out of town, were all impressed with the establishment, complete with plans on display for the 120-seat theatre to be built in the largest of the sheds of the complex.
It just thrills me so much that one of the potential drawcards of the town is artistic in nature. In this region of New South Wales there are a collection of towns of a similar size to Cootamundra, all of which can propser or fail with the potential, realised or un-realised, for visitors and passing trade. In previous years, here in Coota it was things like the rail freight centre and public offices that pulled people through and into town. With these things now gone, the town needs to constantly keep it's eye on other attractions. If this Arts Centre can become a fully recognised venue for visiting performing and creative artists, still within easy travelling distance between the nation's capital and it's largest city, it could be very promising times for the Wattle Town indeed.

I must send a link of this entry to D and Mudgee Girl, in the hope that they'll finally know what I was on about!...

Workin' Day And Night...

2008-04-28T11:26:00.003Z

I got in quite late, about half three…the previous times I’ve stormed the stairs of her house she’s been kind of awake, but this particular night I knew as soon as I touched her that I was waking her from an unmemorably deep sleep…exhausted from a week’s touring I curled up beside her and watched as she sank back into the realm…

My walk to the tube later in the morning was marked by the growing realisation that the English summer is definitely on its way. It gets in under your clothes, stays with your every thought like an old joke you can’t quite remember. For after the English lion of a nine-month winter, one's memories of the warmer times almost vanish into the drizzle until sure enough the thaw comes around. A concept such as drawing heat AND warmth from the sun simultaneously (usually mutually exclusive in this country) becomes a frightening possibility.

My second day ‘off’ from touring was spent at the Pineapple studios on Langley Street in Covent Garden, a day of auditions and recalls for JM’s other show for which I attended as faithful organ grinder monkey piano player for willing contestants. Last week we were at the top, today in the basement, under absurd conditions. Intimate bedroom scenes played out before us were accompanied from the room to our left by rehearsals for the new production of ‘Chess’, then at times from the rehearsal above of the new production of ‘A Chorus Line’. Then of course the Chess people wanted air conditioning, which in a typically absurd English building kind of way set off the air conditioning in our room as well, noisy and cold. What were we to have next, burst Victorian water mains from the floor as well?!

So I didn’t play much but got to watch some stellar acting and great singing…
In the afternoon I called a good friend of mine who was at a bit of a loose end with hemispheres and freelance music career and relationships and stuff. Having had some experience with these matters, a stir-fry led to a bottle of wine led to another excursion into Henry VIII's old hunting fields of Soho to meet up with PR for another night on the lash (is that the expression?) at Gerry’s. This was meant to be my off night, nice takeaway curry with Medusa at her house, quiet movie, but no, it’s back into the den of iniquity on Dean Street….
We flew to Amsterdam today for Thriller’s Dutch leg…it’s so nice to be back in the continent, little things like people being happy and stuff working and looking nice…I didn’t hit the nightlife of the northern town of Zwolle like most of the rest of the guys, instead sitting in at the hotel bar with the band boys and some solid scotch…

Hometown

2007-12-20T14:00:00.000Z

...'You can stay here forever if you like. What, did you think I was gonna start charging you rent?'...
I was being too polite again, just thought I'd ask me old pa if I could stay another month on top of the two and a half already planned. Dunno why I asked really, just wanted to make sure is all.
But what a thought! Stay here forever, in this beautiful little country town with my mum and dad in our gorgeous townhouse, wander down every day to the Arts Centre and get a flat white before a couple hours on the grand piano there...surrounded in my room by the books of my childhood...wake up to the sound of rain on the tin roof...not go back to the UK, not even Melbourne, just stay here and practice and read books for the rest of my life. What a wonderful thought!...

Barthelona!

2007-11-15T19:30:00.000Z

NFA Day 56

...so she has pale skin a-freckled, and a big mop of black curly hair, and shimmering, dragon-green eyes like creamy jade...and last Sunday she took me to this great place on Southbank, near Waterloo station, behind the restaurant Las Iguanas, right across from Royal Festival Hall....for any Londoners I thoroughly recommend it....it's like French patisserie meets Italian antipasto and all kinds of nutty breads and full desert....scrumptious stuff...
What an afternoon that was...I remember now! I used to do this with someone on a regular basis, a good while ago, in a land far away, before a money-driven bachelor working life took over, motivated by the Edge of London, fuelled on baked beans and meals at gigs. But not last Sunday...a nice walk, and loverly conversation, over a gorgeous meal on a lazy Sunday afternoon where the commanding hands of the clock hung loose and limp. A welcome change from tour buses and half an hour to grab a £3.80 sandwhich at a random services on the M something somewhere among the green fields....
So it was this same place on the waterfront that I took my old and fine feathered friend D-Funk on Wednesday night. He's got an inkling that I'm not gonna be around here for a while, and so on Facebook instigation we met at the great southern rail juncture of the city and headed for the river. We've known each other for ten years, and tonight would be no exception...two bottles of red later, we wind up at Gordon's Wine Bar on the other side of the river for what? some more! and then another pub just up the road for some BEER! If she hadn't scooped us off the pavement and whisked us away, I don't know what would have happened....
...which of course made the next morning far more entertaining as her and I coached it up to Stansted for an early morning Ryanscare flight to Spain's great coastal city. Nooooo, don't make me walk any more from the bus station to the apartment check in, and then another fifteen minutes? I can barely stand, in fact I can barely stand being alive right now....first tip to anyone thinking about coming here...those regular city blocks on the map are far bigger in real life, especially with a lashing hangover...

A Meal

2007-11-13T19:20:00.000Z

...I cooked a meal! A massive one, for all the people I was staying with and a straggler. Two things: One, after living no fixed address for fifty-four days on the trot now, it's such a treat to cook a meal, and two, it was for a whole bunch of new friends! Sure, it was a super-easy university-dorm-level Mexican thing, but it was massive and it filled five bellies and we all sat around on the couch afterwards and watched TV - what a treat!, for me at least.
At this transient time in my life where I don't know if I'm coming or going, what hemisphere I'm going to be living in for the near future, hanging out with a certain someone where it's felt the best it has for a long time, and also having been recently extracted from my main source of employment/big bunch of travelling mates with the show, it was just plain great to sit in someone's house and eat a happy-making meal, that I cooked, that was enjoyed by all.

London Tourist

2007-11-13T00:26:00.000Z

NFA Day 54

...and so I find myself back in London, currently gigless.....well, aside from a three-dayer with another show in Germany in December. It was all politics, my friends, which resulted in the two weeks notice given....yep, was well looking forward to six months of steady work next year, but after five months and with merely three weeks to go before the winter break, not even memorising the pad and playing it better than the guy who wrote it, nor my impeccable professionalism and conduct, could keep me in the keys 1 chair of 'Dancing In The Streets'. And so last Saturday it was farewell to my newfound friends, the company I felt I'd only just gelled with, the people I was looking forward to working with for a while yet, for another itinerant return to London for a while.
The last couple of visits I've felt like a real tourist, compelled to take photographs of stuff I come across - a church with a dragon windvane, or a pedestal with a golden eagle on it on the other side of the river.
About a fortnight ago the show was in Dartford, about a forty-five minute train ride away, and on a particular commute around dusk, the train trundled over Charing Cross bridge, the sun was at just about the right level and there it was, the semi-fabled Waterloo Sunset, where the pallid grey gloom of the buildings that face the river were suddenly awash with pink. In three years, London had never appeared so beautiful.
But like most things in this town, blink and you miss it...that late summer sweetness has given way to the cold and gloom, when this place becomes real depressing, and I'm enjoying being a visitor once again, especially in recent times keeping company with a certain pale-skinned, freckled girl with a mop of black curly hair and shimmering green eyes. We're off somewhere totally new this Thursday, somewhere I've always wanted to go, and if you're lucky, noble reader, I may even write here about it!...

Dancing In The Streets - Southport

2007-11-01T12:39:00.000Z

NFA Day 42

We’d been here about three weeks ago with Thriller, at the same venue, but hadn’t gotten past the seaside. I get the impression that Southport was built in the Victorian era, what with the grandeur of our hotel, The Prince Of Wales, and the massive boulevard that I assume is the ‘high road’. After a couple of drinks at the smallest pub in the UK, not far from the theatre, and then one more at the Wetherspoons across the intersection, Matt and Andy and I stumbled into the foyer to find a free PC to check email. But no, it was not to be, as cookies are disabled. What the hell is a cookie?
‘It’s our paranoid IT guy,’ says the concierge. ‘Someone tried to look up the lotto the other day and was denied.’
After three glasses of red I suddenly replied, ‘The words ‘Fawlty Towers’ spring to mind.’
‘That’s right, and you’re only staying here the night!’

Coventry

2007-10-20T01:18:00.000Z

...so it's been a nutty two months, as you can imagine...after Berlin I had some time off before Thriller 'went out' again for six weeks, mainly UK but just got back from 12 days in Denmark and a one off in Gothenborg in Sweden - more on that later. So after a rip-roaring time it's straight to a week in the Midlands....I was warned about this place.....
So, on this, my last day here, highlights of this week have included:
* - Lots of concrete, due to heavy bombing in WWII and subsequent redevelopment of the city into white boxes...
* - More than eight hours of rain on Wednesday
* - The Lady Godiva statue - depicted with a cunningly placed piece of cloth, and riding side saddle (so naked through the streets on horseback was fine obviously but still a lady)...

* - Coventry cathedral, which is amazing - walked in to the theatre from our B and B the other morning and had a look - the ruin of a 14th century masterpiece is adjoined perpendicular by the new 50s era cathedral...WWII history isn't ingrained into the streets of London as much as it is in Berlin, and so here was a tangible, walk-through reminder of those dark times....

* - Tonights performance which was signed, something a little different, watching all those famous Motown lyrics in hand gestures....
So it's a 4pm matinee and then our last show tomorrow night before a day off and then a week in Dartford, Essex - wow, can't wait for that one! Living the dream I guess....due to my current status of no fixed address, I'm currently planning a succession of couches across London to stay on across the week before a fortnight of one-nighters on the road in places like Stoke-On-Trent and Swindon....more from this terribly exciting life soon enough...

Escape from Berlin

2007-08-15T00:51:00.000Z

On my last day in this incredible central European capital, I took advice from yesterday’s guide and ascended the Reichstag. For free entry it’s one of the best views of the centre of town – the dome was shut that morning but normally one can walk right to the top.

The city is known for it’s museums – the World Heritage-listed island full of them in the middle of town was my next stop, but waiting in the queue for the Pergamon, the one full of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture, I realised that after Ludwig’s magnificent palaces and indeed most of Munich and Berlin, I’d seen enough imagery of antiquity for a while, and hopped the U-Bahn south to my plan B, the Jewish Museum.

Quite a recent addition to the city’s historical collection, it’s harsh, angular, metallic exterior houses a building of sloping walkways and empty concrete shafts spanning from basement to ceiling. An enduring motif here is emptiness, not only a reflection of Jewish history in this country, but also a stylistic feature of architect Daniel Liebeskind, in that the features of the building are left open to interpretation.
After a bilingual history of the Jews in Germany and various periods ranging between social acceptance and indiscriminate slaughter, the circuit ended with the Garden of Exile, similar to the memorial at the Tiergarten but set at a steeper slope, the vertical concrete blocks much closer together, more constrictive, unsettling.

Upon leaving, that larger question for me remained, of why such a learned, cultured people have been subject to endless persecution across the globe since ancient times. Some light was shed on various myths surrounding the Jews; for example, under the Holy Roman Empire, one of the only occupations through the Middle Ages allowed to Jews was money lending, creating a certain historical reputation. But that larger question still remained, for me, unanswered.

Before the late flight, I went back to Bergmanstrasse for my last meal. After a couple of miserable days, summer opened the skies back up again, inviting a quick scout around the neighbouring streets, some perfectly preserved in the style I’d seen in the north in Prenzlauer.

I learnt only later that in the West Berlin days, Kreuzberg was the hang of visiting rockers and artisans, an area worth checking on my next visit.

Secret Berlin Tour

2007-08-14T00:34:00.000Z

Oh how wonderful it is to be in a country where the weather changes naturally, gradually. Yesterday’s raininess was followed this morning by what? Oh my god, it’s a sunny day! And set to stay for most of the day. I was all fired up to hit the museums but two and a half years of vitamin D withdrawals commanded me from the sub-atomic level to stay outside as long as possible.
I found a secret Berlin walking tour (that is, of old secret stories in Berlin) and hooked up on that near Zoo station, the old hub of West Berlin, which basically looked like it hadn’t changed since the mid 60s. Our guide took us back and forth across town, including the Wall Memorial; a storeys-high platform looks down upon a recreated part of the original ‘death strip’, the space between the two walls. Just along is the newly built Church Of Reconciliaiton, a traditional looking church stuck in the death strip until 1985 when levelled by the GDR, replaced after 1990 with a small concrete and wood chapel.

In total contrast, the guide then took us to Karl Marx Allee, previously known as Stalin Allee, a good couple of kilometres of yellow and white tiled model apartment blocks in Stalinist style, still immaculately preserved, built in the early 50s to show the rest of the world the marvellous accommodation available for the workers of the GDR.

Not far further on the S Bahn was the Stasi headquarters, a bleak collection of office buildings, where the tour ended.
In all the stories told to us by the guide of ordinary people and officials bucking the various systems, a recurring theme was the ‘threshold’ – where was that space, that moment in time, what was that particular motivation, where citizens stopped being compliant and started resisting?
I guess this tied in with my own interest in the tour, in the society of Nazi Germany but also of the GDR. How did these people (indeed, how does any people anywhere) go around their business, in a relatively functioning society, with the daily knowledge that a massive secret police system, the Stasi, as well as a system of civilian informants (almost triple in number to the Stasi) was keeping an eye on their every move? How could you trust your neighbour, your family, indeed, anybody?
On this, my last night on the continent for a while, I took advice from the tour guide and walked about fifteen minutes south of my hostel to Bergmanstrasse, a gorgeous old suburban street lined with huge trees, full of cafes and restaurants.
In my role as travelling musician, I felt a little remiss at not having made more effort to check out the local scene, seek out some live music, but I was on holiday and I decided to do ordinary person things instead (like watching ‘The Simpsons’ movie at Potsdamer Platz last night – it was okay, but I liked ‘Transformers’ better)…

A Work In Progress

2007-08-13T16:02:00.000Z

I tripped back up to Prenzlauer for some breakfast, a little less successful this time. My two favourite cafes didn’t open until midday so I had to settle for one round the corner. Most of the museums are closed here in Berlin on Mondays, and since the weather opened up in the morning I decided to take a stroll through the Tiergarten, the huge tract of parkland west of the Brandenburg Gate.
Part of the way from Prenzlauer to Zoo stations was on the S-Bahn, the German equivalent of London’s ‘overland’ but is practically the same as the underground. Travelling east to west, across the river, the museum island and buildings north of Unter Den Linden, it’s another good aerial viewpoint of the city, a moving platform from which to observe a work in progress.
I came up to the Victoria statue atop the pedestal at Groser Stern and was impressed at the fact that it was bigger than I expected, probably due to the fact that it was bigger than the one I saw in Munich about a month ago. This Berlin one must be at least ten metres high, and one can walk right up the pedestal to its base. Taking a couple of grey landscape pics, wanting to beat the ensuing rush back down a tiny spiral staircase, I legged it over to the nearby café for a Schofferhoffer, a Wiener Schnitzel and a read of my current book, Hemingways ‘A Moveable Feast’, no mean feat itself sitting in front of six lanes of traffic with more than the occasional rain droplet leaking through the tree above.

In Seventeen Years

2007-08-12T00:10:00.000Z

I went back up to Prenzlauer for some afternoon breakfast, deciding on a corner café round the quieter end of Helmholtzplatz, devouring a tasty panini and trying not to stare at the model-looking friend of the waitresses who was sitting at the end of the bar. Still rubbish weather but it didn’t stop me taking the four o’clock free walking tour from Brandenburg Gate, including the Holocaust Memorial, Hitler’s bunker site, Checkpoint Charlie, the site of the 1933 bookburning and finishing up at the Museum on the island.
I’ve only been here two days, and walking amongst the streets I’m starting to find that the whole place looks, as our tour guide put it, like it’s still all under construction. Barely seventeen years after the wall came down, a random, broken-up feel pervades – turn a corner past some baroque magnificence and you’re at an old GDR apartment block, or an empty patch of land, or a really hip café. It’s all jumbled up, and as a result still open for change and development, which is of course a thrilling prospect. I’m trying to imagine what it’s all going to be like in another seventeen years.

Prenzlauer Berg

2007-08-11T00:09:00.000Z

You live in a four star hotel for three weeks with loads of friends and everything’s taken care of. You stay one day in a hastily booked hostel and it all comes apart. After a disastrous morning of practicality gone wrong, I finally get out into a decidedly miserable afternoon. From Alexanderplatz, tramming it to the northern reaches of Prenzlauer Berg, my roaming in search of some cool café was cut short by something I realised I hadn’t seen in years – a continued session of rain, strong and hard for a long time. As far as I can tell, there’s no drought in this country.
Stumbling across the Kulturebreweri, site of my gig here with Sophie Solomon in May 05, I picked up a nice little booklet which told me in English all about the neighbourhood, and so my afternoon was taken with revolving between the two squares of the area. The first I came across, Kolliwitzplatz, was billed as the more affluent, with an incredible market down one side. Wending my way through picture perfect period apartment buildings, I found the other, Helmholtzplatz, billed as the less affluent, to be more to my liking. This particular area, once on the borders of the city (a nearby park held Berlin’s first water tower), had a varied history as housing to the wave of immigration from the countryside during the Industrial Revolution. Narrowly escaping total demolition during the GDR, the area was now the hippest café scene in town, populated largely by the young and their families. Pulling up in one particular darkened cushioned place, my hunt for the best coffee remained unfulfilled.

Escape To Berlin

2007-08-10T00:09:00.000Z

On a last minute decision the night before, I decided to opt out of the return flight to Ol’ Blighty, and after clearing it with everyone concerned, I took a five hour train ride to Berlin to hang for a cuppla daze. The countryside became less picturesque and with progressively less sleep and more drinking over the past few days, I slept most of the way – after a bit of transport confusion, after check in to the hostel that I’d booked that morning, I was released on the town about 9pm.
Absolutely starving, I found that once I started walking and checking things out, the hunger subsided – wanderlust….wunderbar! From Hallesches Tor, the old southern gate of the city, a walk up Stresemanstrasse took me past the Holocaust Memorial to Potsdamer Platz. Previously a no mans wasteland during the Cold War, the spectacular new buildings on its borders were no more than seventeen years old, giving the place an exciting, forward-looking feel.
Wandering on past Brandenburg Gate and down Unter Den Linden, my hunt for a feed took me to Hackesher Market – gorgeous array of open air eating. After the meal, still exhausted from a week’s partying, I found the travel bug got the better of me and still kept walking – on a particularly touristy street, I got sucked down some sideways archway and into an array of hidden away bars, the alternative vibe, looking run down and retro but where drinks are all still the same price.
On trusted advice I made my way west up Oranienburger Strasse to an abandoned looking apartment building – once inside Tacheles, marvelling at the graffiti interior, I ascended the six storey staircase and wandered into various studios of artists who lived and worked in the building. Behind the building was a huge beer garden of sorts with numerous stalls, and a huge empty lot behind that surrounded by three massive walls, one entirely painted over with street art, one with a particular mural, one still an empty canvas.
Back up the street, past a couple of incredibly opulent looking Thai restaurants (umbrellas, open fires, couches), I managed to find a salsa bar right next to a shish bar. Open air dining and drinking is huge here; I managed to find a bench seat more or less between the two places, mixing salsa tunes floating through nearby from the dance room out the back with the various odours of flavoured tobacco and a couple of mellow mojitos to end an awesome eve.

Koneigsplatz

2007-08-08T00:08:00.000Z

The post gig drink hunt on this particular eve took us into Marienplatz, the old town, to a couple of traditional stein-swilling taverns, and then a bout of intrepidity into something JM I think has pioneered – night tourism. Screw daylight man, just walk around and check it all out when there’s no-one around. Making our way past the Residence museum, traditional home of the Bavarian kings and electors at the end of the long avenue that runs north out of town, it wasn’t far to Koneigsplatz, and JM started reaming facts about it faster than I could keep up. Those Roman buildings on the first night we had seen had once bordered a square, forming part of the complex that was the original home of the Nazi party. I knew that Munich and Bavaria was where it had all started, but I had no idea that their base of operations was barely three blocks from our hotel.

Chiemsee

2007-08-06T00:07:00.000Z

As the S-Bahn train hurtled through the picturesque countryside I thought to myself, we’re going to a palace on an island in the middle of a lake. A palace, for starters, amazing enough. But on an island? In a lake? Is this real?
Prien am Chiemsee was about a fifteen minute walk from the ferry. We alight from the train and Dave our crazy Scottish baritone sax player preceeded to have some sort of attack, aping about taking photos of everything and licking a nearby pole. Too much sunshine for him I guess.
It’s a ten minute ferry and then about a ten minute walk from the terminal to the palace on the other side of the island. We come out of the forest to immaculately manicured gardens leading up to no less than three fountains, one centre and two behind to either side, ancient Roman imagery in abundance.
Another smaller Versailles, this one featured a more direct influence, complete with Hall of Mirrors but slightly longer than the original. The whole place felt quite bizarre in a fashion – incomplete in various parts, the project bankrupted the Bavarian coffers, all for the fanciful notions of the last Bavarian king. It remains in immaculate condition because it was only ever lived in by one of them, Ludwig II, who ended up going mad, was transported to another palace for his own safety, and was discovered dead days later in a nearby lake.
Our ticket took us back on to the ferry and to a neighbouring island where real, alive people lived, and a quick circumnavigation was followed by a hearty Bavarian meal – pork knuckle, bratwurst, potatoes, and a stein of weiss (wheat) beer or helles (lager). Some incredible views of the German Alps were to be had from the ferry back, and on our return to the mainland, a quick radio control boat ride took us out on the water for the sunset, digital cameras ablaze with the magnificence of it all, so very pretty.
After two weeks of partying every night, the resulting increasing alcohol intake and decreasing lack of sleep was resulting in recurring bouts of déjà vu, nearly one a day. The one catch with staying in a four-star hotel was that we shared rooms, I with Damo, a single bed each, who became more and more agitated each day with my apparent snoring. By contrast, when asleep he just lay there, this guy twice my size, silent and motionless. So I wake up one morning in a disoriented haze and who’s the first thing I see? OH MY GOD! No no it’s all right, I remember now, who I am and what I’m doing here….phew…

Unterfahrt Again

2007-08-05T00:06:00.000Z

On entering the club I could tell it was a far different vibe from last week, more a free-for-all, which worked fine for us as we invaded the stage en masse. The assistant musical director within me suddenly sprang forth, and I’m sending orders to rhythm section while talking over heads with horn players and such. I think we managed about three songs which was fairly generous I thought, then the post-match banter. I somehow ended up talking to just about everyone. Then there was some drunken vain hunt for a beach party, yeah, like there’s gonna be a beach party on the Isa river at 5am…

Nymphenburg

2007-08-04T00:06:00.000Z

Former summer residence of the Bavarian kings, previously on the fringes of the city, Nymphenburg palace was a short tram ride away from Hauptbahnhof. Like a smaller version of Versailles which I had visited with my parents a year ago, suitably opulent, but this time with a Bavarian bent. Entrance hall in white, akin to some of the churches we had seen, there were two memorables from this particular trip. One was the furniture – incredible tables and dressers made of exotic woods, inlaid pearl and other such materials. The other one by far was the room of thirty-seven beauties, paintings commissioned by Ludwig I. Adorning the four walls of one particular high-ceilinged room, a few of them had stories, the most outstanding of which would have been that of Lola Montez, the Irish dancing girl pretending to be Spanish, who must have made an enormous move for the time to the court of Ludwig I who proceeded to bestow numerous royal honours upon her, resulting in the disgust of the people and his subsequent abdication.
Damo, JM and I took a stroll in the gardens, again like Versailles although on a much smaller, more manageable scale, passing various villas in groves and one of those rotunda thingys one would expect Pan to dance through playing pipes and such. The boys left me after a time and I preceded to the northern side, running past a monastery type building. Muncheners definitely used this public resource: joggers on a circuit, elderly couples on their favourite benches dotted throughout forest and field. I caught the tram back in a happy summer daze, no London edge here, more like some warm Australian autumn afternoon.
One thing I definitely wanted to find while I was here that wouldn’t have been on any tourist map was the factory where they built all the incredibly beautiful women littered amongst this city’s streets. I thought I had found it one morning at the bagel place (free wireless) just up from the hotel, just in front of an archway that obviously led to the courtyard of an apartment block. I swear, every ten minutes some gorgeous young thing in a big skirt would bicycle out like a production line.
But no, the place I was looking for was ‘P1’, only the most exclusive nightclub in town, situated under a museum on Printzregenstrasse. Ray, one of the singers, had somehow sweet-talked the door guy and so we skipped this massive queue into one of the nicest clubs I’ve ever seen. And the girls check you out too, as you pass them. Clubbing’s not usually my thing, but it had been a while and I was hanging with the cast for the first time and before I know it we’re all dancing our asses off.
We’re standing on the dancefloor eyeing off the scenery and before I know it I’m getting randomly massaged from one of the hottest blondes in the room in this black miniskirt. Wondering if she was trying to solicit some sort of business from me (or maybe just a free drink) I wandered off a little, but then a couple of minutes later when I gestured her to come dance, she turned slowly in disgust with her back to me. Ha! Like she had any idea what she was missing….

Bye Victoria

2007-08-03T00:05:00.000Z

I farewelled her on the train this morning. Such a chilled out girl. She laughed at all my dumb jokes (‘You finally found her!’ says Dave). Touring can be allowed to be quite lonely sometimes, and for a sweetener to come along like that was just something else....

Olympic Village

2007-08-01T00:05:00.000Z

Fending off the boys’ questions about my little rendezvous last night, a squad of us tripped out to the Olympic Village. While Dave and Andy peeled off to the BMW factory, Damo, JM and I wandered off into the the site of the 1972 games. An immaculately designed layout housed buildings still looking quite contemporary, forty years later. The various arenas surrounded a small lake, overlooked by a large hill, and so we hiked up the hill for some cool photos, as well as the telecommunications tower, back across the expressway, which gave the most amazing view of the city and surrounding Bavaria. BMW plant, Olympic village, expressway, urban planning to perfection.
I met her after the show again. Her name is Victoria and she lives near the palace so she must be a princess. And of course (in what appears to be a recurring theme in the love life of your correspondent) she’s leaving town on Friday for three weeks, back to her native Siberia. But it’s all right, it lends a sweetness to the amazing time I’m already having, and as much as I love sharing a room with my mate the Ginger Ninja, it’s nice to be out of the hotel and away from the bar and not drinking for a couple of nights…

Victoria

2007-07-31T00:04:00.000Z

I met her after the show and was hoping she’d have the scoop on some wikkid bar in town but she had no idea. I had to take her to the only place I knew, back up near the old Roman buildings near the hotel – it was a great place and she didn’t mind me paying for the cab or the drinks, but no alcohol for her? Okay, more for me then I’m feeling as though I’m needing it. But it’s all right cos the bar’s closing and suddenly her hands are at the edge of the table and we take a little walk down to the platz but it’s way too cold and there are homeless people amongst the columns so I just kiss her, there and then, in the open, on some street somewhere….

Andechs

2007-07-30T00:03:00.000Z

Ollie, bassplayer, our local guide, took us out on the S-Bahn today on our first full day off, toward the south-east and the Munich lakes district. ‘There are five,’ he told us, ‘the smallest lake is number one, the largest is number five…there is my local lake and some people walk around it clockwise and some anti-clockwise…you can only walk one way though, if you walk that way you just don’t walk the other way’…….mmm, sounds serious!
At the first lake we came across, Horace our tenor player surprised us all by stripping off, running past us on the jetty and diving straight in for a long swim. He said he was gonna do it, and did so straightaway. It wasn’t exactly the warmest of days either. One thing I do love about the Brits is their stoic attitude to the elements, making the absolute best of their time outdoors, whether it be by the ‘seaside’ (that is, where the land meets the sea, not necessarily the beach, which is most often the case) or out in the open fields, or indeed at any place at any time of year on that weather-tortured isle.
Herrschinge was the end of the line, yet another cute moneyed-up village, where it was an hour’s walk uphill through the forest (‘Stand By Me’ vibe) to a monastery at the top. A magnificent church with all the Baroque trappings, and via the tourist store, a beer garden with the local ale brewed by the monks (holy water perhaps?) accompanied by the best of Bavarian cuisine – pork knuckle, sauerkraut, potato salad, and the biggest steins imaginable. Back over the fence the magnificent views of a countryside so picture perfect I wondered if I hopped over the fence and walked ten metres that I might be touching it as a painting, a la end of ‘The Truman Show’.
And of course we’re late for one of the hourly trains back home, so there’s nothing for it but a short stroll down to one of the local gardens by a lake for some more steins and ample digital photography of an immaculate sunset...

Unterfahrt

2007-07-29T00:03:00.000Z

Brian our trumpeter had spent some time in Munich over the past few years on various gigs and tonight it was time to check the local scene. On the south side of the river Isa, a short walk from Max Weber Platz takes one to Einsteinstrasse, a complex of buildings, and a long walk down a white tunnel leads one to Unterfahrt, one of Munich’s two clubs. It’s a jam session and there’s always a current of nerves on these things, especially in a new town, but after going to these things for years, it didn’t take long to realise that it was a pretty friendly one, and we were surrounded with fellow cast and band, all very supportive.
Tenor and Trumpet and I stormed the stage for a bout of ‘I Love You’, then a singer gets up for a number which we manage to make it through. It’s after the jam is over and between chatting with the local players the singer approaches me, and she’s friendly and there’s that look and uh maybe I should get her number and she’s going now and was my handshake a bit off-putting or something but it doesn’t matter and maybe the coming week was about to get a little more entertaining…

'Oh Look, It's One Of Those Things'....

2007-07-25T23:59:00.000Z

After an all day dress rehersal for the local press and opening night, the next day it was time to venture out and see a bit of this remarkable place, seeking whatever daytime adventures I could find. My first was a request from old mate J-Sax, to find a ‘wave’ artificially created on some canal somewhere that people surfed. I ended up finding something resembling, but as with any good adventure, I came across a whole bunch of other stuff in the process.
‘Oh look, it’s one of those things,’ was the phrase of the day. A tram ride took me to the Haus der Kunst, one of the many museums and galleries dotted through town. Walking south east along some major boulevard I hit the river, and across the bridge was a huge pedestal, atop of which stood (or floated) a gigantic gold-leaf angel. The river was lined with beautiful parkland and massive trees and I headed south-west, upstream, to the next major crossing of the river, where I found a massive palace, former residence of Bavarian kings. All these monuments and statutes to whoever, all that ancient Roman classic imagery, obviously very important to the people that built them, but who's original meaning is probably lost to tourists and Muncheners alike who are just content with preserving the beauty around them.
It quickly became apparent, as the following days ran into each other, of how gorgeous the place is. All the trappings of continental urban life in a chilled-out, rural setting. All those things that Londoners give up on, just to get by, are here in abundance – people are nice!…stuff works!…the weather changes gradually…people take pride in their environment…it’s easy to get around etc etc…

Munchen

2007-07-23T23:48:00.000Z

In total contrast from the Thriller tour, our four star hotel on Dachauerstrasse was conveniently situated less than a ten minute walk from the Deutsches Theater on Schwanthallestrasse, with Hauptbahnhof, the main train station, sitting between the two. It also appeared that we were smack band in the middle of the red light district, allegedly in a run-down part of town although it still looked nicer than certain parts of central London. General milling in the foyer turned into a quick migration to one of the major beer gardens in town, a couple of blocks away.
And so it began! The drinking festival that I knew would envelop most of our lives for the next three weeks, and what a gorgeous setting. Anyone knows what a beer garden is, but these people invented them, and they know how to do them. There must have been at least five hundred people at the Augustiner, all peacefully nestled together on long tables, sheltered under a canopy of dark pine-looking trees. As I looked around in amazement, we were all in agreenace that something like this just wouldn’t work in the UK; it’d be too edgy, people would starts fights or something….
A slab of pork and several steins later the tour was getting off to a fine start. It was a mix of familiar faces from Thriller; Damo, the swarthy red-headead guitarist (left-handed) from Mudgee, my original connection to this whole adventure; JM, our illustrious musical director from Manly; and Ollie, a Munich native, bass player, tall and thin, bespectacled, quietly eccentric in a way difficult to describe. His local knowledge would prove quite useful in our later forays into the countryside.
The night was steaming along in time-honoured fashion when all of a sudden, seemingly from nowhere, a strong breeze struck the tops of the trees, the lamps started swaying, and people started leaving, much to the amusement of our table of tourists. Clouds were brewing in the not too distance and we thought we were in for a downpour, but it passed without event. We later learnt that there was a word for it, a sudden type of localised storm that just appears, obviously related to the alps nearby.
Our later adventures took us back past the hotel and to the north about three blocks to this beautiful little cocktail bar off the main road on what I think was Nymphenburgstrasse, a major road running from a palace in the west to what appeared at the end of the street to be some massive Babylonian-looking temple. Behind the two massive square towers was a huge square bordered on northern and southern sides by massive Roman porticoes and steps, tonight holding hundreds of people there for late night open-air cinema.
Back to the cocktail bar and it was happy hour 11pm-1am. The Cuban theme with low lighting, black leather chairs and glass front open to the street was a gorgeous place to while away the small hours as sip half-price mojitos, as it started to bucket down on the street outside. Ahh, the continental vibe; it’s good to be back!

The Call

2007-07-16T23:54:00.000Z

It was like any other phone call for a gig. I’d done work for these people before, and I knew it was on the way, but I wasn’t going to lift a finger until I got the offer from the main guy. It was only after I got off the brief call that I realised how different this circumstance actually was. This wasn’t a one-off in the burbs somewhere, or a fill in Soho café gig. I’d just said yes basically to the next six months, possibly a year of work, From a two minute phone call.
The call came on the Monday, which was supposed to be first rehearsal day, and so it followed that across the next two intensive days, we only just covered the material. The show is basically a Motown review, about forty songs all-up, of maybe three or four minutes each, largely at similar tempos, with a variety of solo, three part, four part and all cast appearances vocally. In short, a truckload to learn in two days for a six month world tour, starting three weeks in Munich the following Monday.
But that wasn’t such a concern this time around, as it was quite a different situation from the work I’d done for them previously. The Thriller tour in May was a new show put through a month of one-nighters across the UK. It took a lot of extra hours from an already well-prepared, hard-working band to get it together – there were times when we were writing and arranging charts on the bus on the way to the next gig! In contrast, this show just finished a three year run in the West End, and half the band had been doing it for most of that time, meaning that us guys that made up the newer half were dealing with a more established situation.
So what did I do, between the Thursday after rehersing and the Monday fly-out? Got trolleyed every night with my house mates of course!, as well as playing about five or six gigs in the meantime. And so it was on the following Monday that we all left from dHeathrow, maybe a little under-prepared? for the opening run.

What A Month!...

2007-07-15T12:26:00.000Z

Was it only four or five weeks ago that we all parted ways from the flat in Mornington Crescent, the guys that I lived with for a year and a half? What a great place – with one of those happy sounding names that makes you glad to live there, it’s basically south Camden Town, which gets a pretty bad rep from most of the rest of London thanks to all the supposed ‘crazies’ frequenting the high street, but once you get back a block or two from the high road, it’s inner city living, about half an hour tube to anywhere in town.
I loved my time there and the guys were great, although the same old drift apart happened with Mr P. After a couple of rows and him basically not talking to me for about four months, I finally knocked on his door to confront him about it and get it all out and try and sort it out, not just leave it to sit there and stew, and he brought up all the relevant events but just all misconstrued, viewing in them in a totally different way to how I saw them, and I knew that it would be futile to try and reconcile them. And then he basically tells me that I’m not his friend anymore. And tells me again! Wow, I didn’t know we hadn’t left primary school….
And so, with a weary sigh, I watched as another ‘friend’ of mine, after yet another living situation disagreement, drifts off into the ether. We went to New York for a week together; I thought that might count for something. But no, I’vebeen through it all enough now, it’s just variations on a theme, so boring and nerve-racking at the same time, but that’s just the way it seems to be I guess.
Thankfully, the ensuing house hunt was circumvented as I already had a place lined up in Whitechapel, in the East End, in a rather extraordinary circumstance. Son Veneno are an absolutely rocking Latin Hip-Hop Funk band from the Emerald City of our great southern homeland, who have all moved over, as a band, to make it big in the Ol Dart and maybe even the world.
The main idea here is a sense of community – a lot of the gigs that these guys do are community festivals, as well as it being a band that lives communally, sharing rooms, food and money. It’s close quarters living in a dodgy looking three-bedroom ex-council flat in the the heart of the East End, paying cash gigs in pubs and clubs, a difficult existence at the best of times, but one totally worth every effort, and don’t they love it!
What an awesome muso house – there’s always an album on, always someone to play or hang or drink with, always adventures afoot. Living there not as a band member works out reasonably well for me; as much as everyone’s in each other’s pockets, they all tend to do things together as a band, and so if they’re all on a gig then I get the place to myself, which works out just fine.
It’s a bit of a first for me, living with musicians, and it’s also a welcome return to the circumstance of having musical instruments actively and regularly played in the living area, a truly soul-enriching experience for anyone who’s been lucky enough to grow up with it, something definitely missed through the years of sharehousing. With acoustic music being now so removed from people’s daily lives, living with these guys is a privilege..
Alas, they’re back off home in September, and for the two or three weeks that I was around in the flat, I was just getting into the Son Veneno groove, whether it was laughing about Oz lingo over a 7AM beer with the great Loochador, piano player/composer, one of the most extraordinarly positive people I’ve ever come across, or talking career with Will, the fast-talking English recruit percussionist, or running off to the local Moroccan bar to smoke a shish with Marty, trumpet player/studio guy, and Cesar, the bassplayer, one of two brothers in the band. With grinning, cherubic face, his even temper and quietly spoken manner seem to preside over the never-ending carnival of activity.
But sadly my time as an East Ender with the Band from Oz will be somewhat limited in the coming weeks, as I am currently writing from a bagel bar in Munich, at the beginning of the second week of a six-month world tour with a West End musical theatre production by the name of ‘Dancing In The Streets’….

Triple Play

2007-07-14T23:27:00.000Z

...had another triple play yesterday, that is, three gigs in one day. It happened for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and again today as part of a glorious summer, of feeling wanted as a freelancer...
First cab off the rank was a 10am-3pm audition piano session at a church hall (underground) in Covent Garden for the next Thriller tour, due to set off in September. They're looking for new male leads, so some of them were on recall from a session the other day that I did. They also had to see, Daleele and Shaheen, the two younger kids that we toured, with which was a bit of a laugh.
"So, do you know any Michael Jackson songs?" joked JM, the MD, as Daleele came in.
"Yeah."
"Which ones?"
"All of em?"
When he said it, there was a look in this unassuming twelve-year-old's eye which I had seen many a time before, like looking at the horizon from the beach. It reminded me of a particular afternoon on the bus when a Temptations DVD came out and he knew every word. Here was someone who was about to make music his whole life, if it wasn't already, someone who had an inkling of it's true powers and the inspiration it held, for himself as well as others. That far off look in his eyes was one of the true believer.
Dashing off early to the next engagement in Dagenham East, I only just made it in time for a set with Omar Puente, Cuban violinist, a gig I got through Dorance, a friend of mine, today on bass. For all the musicians I've ever known, Latino and otherwise, Dorance's cool and collected manner and expert musical direction distinguishes him amongst so many lunatics. Someone who's chilled out, just wants to get the job done and do it well - why are there not more like him out there?
It's a bit of a thing now, here in England, playing Cuban music with really good Cuban musicians. I don't get to do Latin gigs half as much as I used to, so on my rare outings, it's my sincere hope that I'm doing the material justice for these guys. In all honesty they're probably more focused on their own thing, just as long as I'm holding my end together....there was Temo on congas, easily distinguished with dreads and skin so black as to have a bluish tinge - his English isn't great but you don't need it to get the vibe that he's a bit of a dude! We played one set to the locals who were more or less into it. Scamming a lift back to the tube with a friendly event guy in a van, he said that if they didn't like it they usually would have walked away - promising I suppose. He also told me about the BNP demonstration in the morning - Dagenham happens to be situated in a borough where a quarter of the councillors are BNP members. A reflection of the people's wishes, one can only gather...
I ended up tubing it straight to my next one in Waterloo, a late three sets at Cubana, the hippest Latin bar in town. Getting there with about three hours to spare, I took a stroll down to Southbank and decided to treat myself to a sit down meal, in a restaurant, an occurrence that is becoming less uncomfortable as I get older...
From uninspiring wine and pasta that I could have done better myself, my attention turned to a bit of people gazing, ideal from my position outside at the front of the restaurant. A young couple arrive, present themselves to the staff. The girl is voluptuous to his slender frame, she is perhaps a little older than him. They're all over each other, it seems like early in the piece, like they'd just gotten together, when all that body language between two people is just immaculate, and conversation is magically effortless.
She idly casts a hand down his shirt and into the small of his back and I think yeah, I remember that. I remember what that was like, from now years ago, when you're so into someone, like the rest of the world doesn't exist, or if it does then it exists just for you two, to present you with a park to frolic in, a movie to see....it's not the dry touch of someone you're trying to make like you, someone you're trying to force into some sort of relationship. It just happens, of its own accord, and there's nothing you want to do to stop it.
But do I miss it? If I did miss it that much then wouldn't I seriously do something about it?
Miguel and the bass player were late by an hour and a half. It was yet another scattered latin jammy bunch of songs, the usuals, massacred with called missed endings and rubbish sound. I've done this, I've done this scene so much before, years of it in Melbourne, but I'm such a gig slut. It can be a hard habit to break, staying home on the ones you shouldn't venture out do to any more. But the bar is cool and I meet new people, so it's not so bad. And the girls are so fine, to look at from afar anyway....

An Extraordinary Night

2007-06-27T22:38:00.000Z

(P.S. Bit o housekeeping has gone on - see right for new photos in Flickr, my 'Facebook' profile, and plenty more writing in the works...it's all about meeeee!)

Some people back in Oz have asked me on occasion whether I see any famous people around town, and for the last two and a bit years my answer has been mostly no. For some reason they just seem to elude me, maybe I don't hang out in the right parts of town or something, or with the right people.....
That is, until last Monday night....

It's a rainy blustery Saturday afternoon and I'm hanging out at this park gig funnily enough on the lawns of Alexandra Palace, the phone lights up and it's Paul, my occasional employer from Monday nights at the Black Gardenia. I stumble into an unfinished shed at the side....
"She mentioned 'Good Morning Heartache' the other day, so have a look at that one"
"Okay, no worries. Is she really gonna come down and do it?"
"I think so, yes."
"All right, I'll have a look at it. See you then."

Monday night, bout 10

"She wants to have a chat about it, figure out the key and stuff. Go have a chat with her."
"All right."
So I leave Paul for a second and sit down next to her and her husband Ian, her producer.
"I don't know keys and stuff."
"That's all right, sing me a bit."
So I get the first phrase out of her and it's all good. My chart's in C minor, but I know now I'll be going to E minor, a major third up, another uncommon transposition. Semitone fine, fourth down no worries, even a minor third. But a major third? I fetch the chart and take it back to Paul's table and do the maths in my head.

Paul and I get back up for the second set and wend our way through show tune fairy land for a couple of numbers and then he brings her on, unannounced. She brings a stool. I noodle through the first eight as an intro, my head buried the chart, just hoping I get all the voices and tensions right....
She starts off mellow but really takes it somewhere, fills up the whole room and I follow, maybe a bit too hotel, not bluesy enough, but it works, more or less...a mass of applause for perhaps an unknowing audience?
Paul waits to the end of the set to announce who she is....
"And please give a big hand for our special guest tonight, Lisa Stansfield!"
And the audience is knowing! And I can put it on my CV!....

Housemate X has joined the fray, and while Paul goes to get some smokes, we wend our way down to the Groucho Club where Lisa and Ian have signed us in. Next thing I know I'm sitting next to her, just 'hanging out' with this world famous soul diva and Ian's keeping the red wine flowing. Paul eventually joins us...X and I don't say much, we don't have to, it all seems to be unfolding in front of us....
There's a break and Paul leans over, "See that guy at the bar? My brother in law used to work for him when he was Tommy Scott and the Senators!"
I didn't really register this comment until Paul said it again, and then Lisa goes over to the bar and it's none other than Tom Jones, and then Jools Holland!* All just standing at the bar at closing time like it's no-one's business. Wild!
The night comes to a close and Paul says, "I've got a present for you." He pulls out Lisa's album 'Real Love' and a pen, to which she happily signs - he knew for sure that Lisa was coming to sit in tonight and so he goes out of his way to buy a copy of her album for me - what a nice guy! What a night!

*For non-Brit readers, Jools Holland is a celebrity music TV show host, A-list without a doubt

On Tour

2007-05-24T21:21:00.000Z

...so here's the next instalment - no dates, can't remember em, don't matter anyway!....

MJ TOUR GIG 6 – Bournemouth

After the gig we cab it to the hotel which turns out to be a typical English seaside affair; carbon copy of Fawlty Towers, complete with Portuguese ‘Manuel’ who stayed on at the hotel bar well into the morning. The band were there first, watched everyone come in, and when everyone peeled off to sleep at an un-civil hour we were the last in classic muso form….

MJ TOUR GIG 7 – Plymouth

It’s a four hour drive and in what’s becoming a regular habit, the bus pulls up at the roadside services about half an hour from the venue and takes a forty-five minute break….huh!? We’re pulling in to town and the bus driver says, “There’s the hotel,” as we pass it on the way to the venue….and then when we get out of the bus at the venue we’re expected to go find it ourselves, a foreign suitcase-dragging tribe wandering an unknown town like we’ve just been dropped off some passing spaceship. On finding the hotel at 2pm we’re told there’s no check in until 3. The nearest food, a Chinese restaurant, serves lunch until 2….
Aaaarrrrgghhhh!
On checking in there somehow isn’t a room for your correspondent, as we’re known simply by the name ‘Musician’ followed by a letter which we only realised later on represented the instrument we played (I was somehow Musician K for Keyboard).
Post-show nightlife was a chav-tastic nightmare – a port town I suppose, what does one expect, but then – we pulled up in some horrible bar and all the human flotsam and jetsam on the street was enough to drive me back to the hotel room after not too long… Strong bouts of déjà vu are constant, nearly every day, and this morning I woke up and forgot where I was for a good couple of minutes. There were bagpipes off in the distance and I wondered whether I’d woken up in Glasgow already?…

MJ TOUR 11 – Southend

You know, I’ve completely forgotten the gig, but more importantly, our digs that night was a hacienda looking place at the foot of a runway of some local airport. I got back to my room and Matt rings me and says you know there’s a nightclub rand ere with half price drinks and a truckload of American air hostesses who today have all just pass their exams! Woohoo says the other single guy in the band, but of course the fantasy didn’t quite materialise.
I guess I was expecting the full stereotype; busty uniform, blue shirts, cascading blond locks – we found two Irish lasses fresh out of high school who couldn’t even remember the safety demonstration (‘Two exits at the front’ etc)…..remind me not to fly on your airline…

MJ TOUR 12 – Gateshead

I’d been looking forward to this one for a while, simply for the venue. Don’t know if anyone’s seen photos of The Sage but I have for a while – a silvery slug-shaped building by the river designed apparently on the visual of sound waves and divided into three, the middle section of which was the concert hall. The bus pulled up and it was gorgeous – venue to the right, Newcastle’s iconic through-truss arch bridge to the left and across the river, the city in between. Hmm, curved bridge over water and world-class music venue looking similar and very close to each other – sound familiar anyone?
Tonight’s Travelodge was out in the sticks but everyone was so keen to get into it that we all dropped our bags and cabbed back in. Matt and Mike had done Newcastle before and so recommended us the ‘Jazz Café’, your typical run-down room with local band, late night hang, wouldn’t normally go there unless you were already well plastered but it was that or doof doof nightclub, which we ended up at afterwards anyway.
After much prodding which I shouldn’t need I got to talking with the gorgeous blonde dancer (as opposed to the gorgeous Asian looking one, or the gorgeous Irish one)….and it was all right, I was way too drunk to be nervous but also way too drunk to think of anything interesting to say, and then she’s gone….
We all found the casino but after the usual entry interrogation but no bar, so it’s back to the hotel as the morning glow awoke behind us to the east at around 3.30 – bloody hell, how far north are we? And what day is it again?

MJ TOUR GIG 13 – Liverpool

We’re pulling into town and our eternally grumpy bus-driver is at the wheel ON THE PHONE taking directions, and then as we lug into the venue he pulls away with the boot still open.
But aside from the daily transport palava, there was something quite special about standing there on Hope Street. I wondered how many places in the world one could stand facing a world-class music venue and be equidistant from two cathedrals, one built in the last century, one before. After soundcheck Ollie took us a nice pasta bar round the corner, a little closer to the older cathedral. Less than a block down the road was the arts school John Lennon attended and the building over that was the music school that Paul McCartney attended (or maybe it was the other way around?). The street we ate on was immaculate, sometimes used for TV shows – for an industry town looking grim on the way in, it was a gorgeous area to spend a few hours in.
The venue was beautiful, bit of a Frank Lloyd Wright slash castle influence out front, great hall and the audience were wild, on their feet half way through the first set no less. Damo had secured us some wheat beers after the show which was a bit of a first, to hook into something straight after we come off stage as opposed to waiting around for the bus and then propping up some nondescript hotel bar somewhere, which is what ended up happening anyway….

MJ TOUR GIG 14 – Glasgow

The drives are getting longer, the drinking’s getting heavier and the sleep is getting shorter, but today’s foray was into the welcome unknown. Once we crossed the border, it became quickly obvious how sparse the population must be up in the far north. One’s gaze stretches with the rolling green of the bare stony hills…
You only have to pull up at a venue and see it from the outside to know it’s gonna be a good one, and the Royal Concert Hall didn’t fail to impress. The soundchecks are becoming noticeably shorter and so we managed to foray into the town a little – the architecture is markedly different here. Our tireless MD, after dealing with the multitude through the afternoon, still found the energy to get down to the Clyde river and see a little more than us spaced out bandies did.
It would be an 8AM start for an eight hour drive to Leicester in the morn but that didn’t stop anyone in the post-show expedition – after a couple of bottles of red in Mike’s room, he took us to a nice piano bar to meet a friend of his, and then it was on into the night where we ran into four real young girls on their way to the late night feed where you had to pay before being served. We were all gone – Mike had suddenly acquired a Scottish accent and I was desperately failing to copy him – all of a sudden they disappeared and we stumbled back…

MJ TOUR 15 – Leicester

Two hours sleep later and it’s the longest bus trip of the tour, from the middle of Scotland to the East Midlands (Melbourne to Canberra I guess), and the bus is starting to look quite lived in. Our first stopover must have been the most picturesque I’ve ever seen, the intense green of the hills and the brown glass lake below us.
Leicester didn’t seem much – on what has been the quickest soundcheck the whole tour, we had two hours to kill in one of the least interesting places yet. This East Midlands city however has a large Indian population, and once again Matt knew someone local who knew the best curry house on the high road. And so an idea rumoured amongst the band for a time finally came to fruition and we all got to have a nice sit down meal as a band, all tired and spaced out as hell but thoroughly enjoying the experience.
And so another semi-conscious motorway trip, down the M1 past midnight traffic and road closures and big lights on arcs in one’s peripheral vision and off back home to who knows where, for a day in the sun and washing clothes and tidying rooms before back into it for another week….

Snapshot - Black Gardenia

2007-05-17T23:07:00.000Z

Monday, 3pm, a couple of weeks ago...

The black cab pulls up on Dean Street and it’s a white sky afternoon as I drag my gear to the doorstep marked 93. This evening’s engagement isn’t until about nine-ish or whenever the place starts to fill, but on employer’s request I’ve come in a little early today to run some tunes at the club beforehand.
A good knock raises no-one’s attention indoors and the Big Issue guy on the corner says, "You just missed them. A whole lot of ‘em headed off about ten minutes ago.”
Great, so I’m standing there with all my gear on the footpath in gigging gear, pinstripe and hat, all dressed up, seemingly nowhere to go…
Another character emerges from the melee to knock on the same door – ginger hair, earring on the left, shiny purple suit, another one of the characters in this little village. We’re obviously after the same people and I feel compelled to say something…
“Are you after Ronnie?”
“Yeah, you seen him?”
“I think they’re out for a bit. I can call him if you like?”
“No, it’s fine,” says the serious guy in the purple suit, “I’ll come back,” and paces off into the ether.
Perhaps I should ring someone for myself I thought…. And suddenly, before another moment has time to pass, totally out of nowhere this guy appears directly in front of me, no, somehow below me, crouching on the pavement…decked out in fedora, black glasses and grey trenchcoat, my own sartorial selection has somehow caught his eye.
“Excuse me,” he says in some sort of eastern European accent, “are you a jezzmen?”
(That’s why I still love those words, like ‘jazz’ and ‘groove’ and ‘swing’, because people from all over the world pronounce them differently, which maybe says something for the diversity of the music that they describe)
The freelancer emerges from within. “Well, for tonight I suppose I am, yes.”
“Can I take your photograph?”
“Er, yeah, sure….”
….and then swings out one of those old square cameras with the big circular bulb up and off to the side and FLASH, it’s done and he moves to leave…
“Hang on, can I get a copy?”
“Here’s my card.”
…and disappears! As quick as he emerged….

MJ TOUR, GIG 9 15/5

2007-05-16T08:20:00.000Z

Band is really starting to come together. Nottingham is orright, a lot nicer than the grimness of Plymouth…there’s a little tram and the restaurants are a bit vibe-ier. Hotel is once again a good walk away, and on check in, my designation, as dictated on the fax from the production company, had moved on from the other day as ‘Musician K’ to ‘Keys 1234567789’. Are our real names too hard to understand? ‘I am not an animal! I am a human being!’….
Same after show carnage at the nearby pub, joined by everyone this time. The presenter of the show is Jeffrey Daniels – ‘A Night To Remember’ was one of his hit singles as he used to be in a band called Shalimar that I don’t think anyone remembers funnily enough. Part of his nightly act is a little reminder of what he did where he sings and dances a little bit from it. So sure enough, we’re all sitting around in the pub with this little music show on in the background and up comes the film clip for it and we all flock to the TV for a laugh….

Off The Wall

2007-05-04T23:52:00.000Z

....so it's 10 to 1 on Saturday morning and I've just finished four days of non-stop rehearsal for a Michael Jackson tribute show set to tour the UK for a month starting Sunday (yeah, that's right, tomorrow night....). It's been twelve and sometimes fourteen hour days, today with no break for your correspondent, but well worth every hour - top fellow musicians, excellent musical director and great material, starting from Jackson 5 right up until all the syrupy ballad stuff (cos lets face it, when's the last big MJ hit you heard recently? Bout ten years ago maybe?).....
But let me tell ya it hasn't quite had that pop produced slickness and smoothness to it - all week we've had charts flying in from various parts of the world in various different keys and with parts missing - tonight was the 'dress rehearsal' that didn't even clear the second act and we sightread one of the songs, there and then. Across today's fourteen hours it seemed that every possible combination of random elements that could go awry did so and promptly, but true to form our band of otherwise freelancers marched on with aplomb. A recurring phrase amongst the guys was that we don't open till Sunday....
....the old muso joke of dodgy innuendo on the song titles is rife ('I Want You Back' becomes 'I Want A Smack', 'I Want Some Crack' et al- any entries in the comments are most welcome)....but not too loud, cos the show has been put together half by the production company I'm working for and half by a squad of MJ ultra-die-hard fans who have taken their local tribute show of twelve years running* to the the stage for the first time. If all goes well over the next month then talk has arisen of it touring Europe and maybe even settling into the West End somewhere? Who knows....
....loads of Aussies in the fray, including the two male leads, the guitarist who got me the gig and our unflappable MD who's worked on a ton of name shows we all know (anyone who wants comps for Dancing in The Streets when the tour wraps up, give us a shout) and kept such a cool head under enormous pressure and disorganisation.....
.....a mention of Jeff Harvey came up in the conversation (for those that don't know, bandleader on a famous Oz TV show), and as we were playing, that's exactly what it felt like, a TV show band with all the lights and stars out front....oh well, good reading, good experience.....a good honest job that's paying well** and that other stuff might come from, maybe.....
.....killer grooves, real nice guys in the band, ridiculously hot dancing girls.....it's all right for now I guess....

* apparently held every year on 'MJ Day'; anyone know when that is exactly?!
** The Old Zen Master turns to the window looking out to the backyard and sighs with relief, for a time at least!....

Hidden London: The Black Gardenia

2007-04-16T01:08:00.000Z

....on the homeward journey from faraway teaching, Instead of alighting at the usual Kings Cross I decided to take the Vic line one stop further to Euston and walk back up. My new little acquisition, the iPod, had me in a total vibe with the Kurt Rosenwinkel album Heartcore, and as I floated up the gentle slope and back into the purple dusk of the Crescent, I really felt like I was heading All The Way to Rajistan....
....a little later, standing in the curry section of the local Sainsburys, deciding how lazy I really was going to be on an evening at home, listening to albums, writing some tunes, the mobile rings and it's Zimon, owner of the Black Gardeina, a little place I've been playing at recently. It's 8pm, and I should have picked what was about to happen...
"Mike, it's Zimon."
"Orright mate."
"Orright....er, listen, Mike are you gigging tonight?"
A chuckle - I couldn't help it...
"No, what's up?"
"How would you like to do a gig with Jake, with Jake's band?"
"Yeah sure! What is it?"
"Well, it's weirdo soundtrack blues he'll explain it when you get here. Listen, just forget everything you've ever learnt about music and, well, take it from there really."
"Sure, no worries. What time?"
"Well, when you get here I guess..."
"Er, sure....see you later then."
"Cheers Mike, see you later on."
Wikkid! I get to try out my new organ module. The Nord Electro is really changing my life....after two years of doing hotel gigs on real pianos, I'm getting less enamoured with the idea of playing a piano sound on a keyboard. I'd rather play a really good electromechanical instrument synthesis, which is where this little magical red box comes in. Plug it into the MIDI slot on your keyboard and you're away, virtual organ synthesis, and it sounded like a gig where you could do whatever the hell you liked!
So I took a bolognese home and inhaled it and then jumped a black cab with all the gear (including tux and hat) and zoomed into town.
The Black Gardenia, at 93 Dean Street Soho, is not your average club. Staff are all in vintage 40s swing rockabilly gear, and there's always some Fats Waller record on in the background. The cab pulls up out front and I greet one of the waitresses on the footpath, tending to some sort of Chinese garden-looking ornament.
Zimon and Ronnie are there at the top of the stairs - Zimon, the owner of the place, is like a tall lanky Chet Baker, smooth talker, tangental...Ronnie's in fine form - pork pie hat, pencil mo, gold chains, black and yellow hawaiian shirt (?), tattooed arms and chest - and some of the nicest guys you've ever met.
I limp in with the gear and meet Jake - gelled quiff, refrigerator size, immaculate yellow zoot suit jacket, keychain made of dice, didn't say much in the lead up. Near to where the band sets up is a mirror wall and a 9mm projector playing "Sweet Sweet Back's Bad Ass Tale" onto an old LP inner taped to the mirror. Here we go!
I'm unravelling the various cords and leads and Jake comes over and says, "I'll just call out the feels, like blues or tango, yeah?" And at once I realised that was the entire sum of musical direction I was to get for the evening. "Yeah sure, no worries!"
Denna, the barmaid, is looking gorgeous as ever I must admit....big black hair, beauty spot, cherry red lipstick and all those curves in all the right places. And I just can't muster up that flirtatious talk that I see the bodgy slick haired older drummer doing later on, with her posing in all the right ways in front of him....
Bass and trumpet arrive a while later, dressed entirely vintage, for the part, nice guys, equally mystified as to what we're to play.....more time passes....'Fever' strikes out from the desk and one of the more gorgeous women floating around earlier starts the strip show for the evening.....it just gets better!
So finally it's time to play and yes it's as random as hell. I suddenly become the musical director - one of those things where as long as bass and organ agree on a chord then it's stay on the groove while Jake vibes over the top.....this is one of those gigs where there are absolutely no musical concerns whatsoever, so it's performance time! And I'm on ripping organ and loving it, churning out all those slides and trills and blues licks that everyone loves and the place is packed and people are dancing....
This is it! These are the gigs I've been craving, after two years of playing stale pianos for fat city boys and their trophy wives talking about their chateau in St Moritz while drinking 15 quid champagne cocktails....it's down and dirty and people are in funny costumes and there are girls gyrating and this is the place I should be, that I want to be....."with those of my kind / Libations, sensations, that stagger the mind..."
Speaking of which, I managed to scam about a bottles worth of house red out of the bar across the course of the evening, but there's no qualms over that - I've done some other last minute work for these people recently and I think they might respect that.
So it comes pay time finally and Jake hands me the notes and they look a little short. I'm pretty sure I got shonked last weekend and so the money nerve is still feeling a little raw and without catching myself I say, "Oh, I thought it was 50, it's always been 50," and Jake is like, "Oh, I'm only getting 30," and shows me his bills....
Ah shit, I missed it! I wasn't actually being shonked here, I had a cash employer who was actually honest and open....damn. And then later on he comes up to me with another tenner! That's how nice these people are....
I spend the rest of the evening propping up the bar with Paul, a partner in crime from recent excursions down there and the talk goes to standards and old films and the musos we love. The place closes and we decide to stagger on to Gerrys, the private club two blocks down the road through which I kinda ended up doing these gigs.
More on Gerrys later....closer to Shaftsbury Avenue, it's an old thespian hangout.....been down there with B, a sax playing friend of mine, and say hello to all the regulars, but it's thinning out there as well....eventually realising how incredibly drunk I was, I take my leave and find the last place open in Chinatown. I think it was that Szechuan Beef with all that hangover preventative chilli that saved me the next day, as I staggered back to Tottenham Court Road and caught the 29, the 'free' bus, up the old main drag and back to the flat, wading through the brown of a braindead dawn....

Gemini

2007-04-10T23:22:00.000Z

Wed arvo, bout 6ish....

Home, washing dishes....Housemate P comes home....hello how are you fine...."I think we should take it in turns to pay the rent. Can you take care of it tomorrow?"
Our landlord comes to pick up the one cheque from us every month, meaning one of us has to write a cheque to him and collect three cheques from the other housemates. For our entire time this has been Phil's job but for some reason he doesn't want to do it anymore, and it doesn't seem open to discussion for some inexplicable reason. For our entire time here I have taken care of three (i.e most) of the bills and J does a lot more cleaning than she should.
"Actually P I'd appreciate it if you took care of it."
"Yeah well I think we should take turns."
"Yeah but I take care of three bills..."
"Yeah but you don't have to do it very much."
There it is, at a volume a little louder than mine, very quickly, and a final statement, one that leaves no opening to discussion. And the response from your correspondent? Silence.
Why would I step up to the plate over something so trivial? And of course before I have time to respond, in that second of deliberation, P leaves, and that old feeling of frustration and tiredness arises.
Great, I'm about to have a row with my housemate. This is SO NERVERACKING AND BORING AT THE SAME TIME, a recurring theme in my sharehousing experience, and at the risk of self-righteousness, it's never been me. I've never given any reason for anyone to give me any grief in the sharehousing situation. But then, it's not about me. It's always been someone else - everything's putting along hunky dory and then someone decides to be lazy and self-centred and the rest of us have to put up with it.
And then things started to shift. Row with housemate will turn into awkwardness will turn into eventually moving house. Yeah, moving out of here, as much as I've loved living with these guys, but times will change, and soon, and the knowledge of that.....the weather here is finally turning, finally emerging from the miserable winter and the freakish multipolar nature of the last month and the warmth is settling in, solid, somehow reliable for a time, so I opened the window, let in a little of the Camden breeze, put on a couple of Bjork albums and started tidying my room.
And I mean, tidying...digging out an old box full of rubbish, holding stuff still from my last relationship, the whole catalyst for my coming over here....digging out these old things from the past, sorting, throwing away......I must have spent at least four hours in there and made some progress....

I come back from a gig later on in the night and a cheque is left for me by P and a note....."Sorry (ever the Brit), but I think we should take turns, like I said, next time it'll be my turn."
Well, am I going to sit here and let these people walk all over me like I've always done? You know what I could do? I could take this cheque and knock on his door right now and tear it up in front of his face and call him names, but in the interests of housemate co-operation, like I've always done, I'm going to acquiesce on this occasion. I'm just going to swallow it and do it and take the cheque and be done with it.
But this won't rest. Not this time. I've put up with friends and lovers letting them walk all over me because it's easier, because I'm trying to think of their best interests over my own. And even if it is simply a voicing of opinion over something so trivial, it's an important step.

Thursday night, park up from Charlie Wrights, Hoxton, about 5 am

It was a huge night at the local Thursday hang, at least two birthday parties I was aware of, wall to wall people.....the jam started, it was free, sax bass and drums, no chords, and there was a ring of about thirty people standing solidly around the band checking it out, and apparently someone was in the middle dancing. Damn I love this place!....
So later on a hard core few of us (about 20 I guess) spill up the road to the 24 hour off licence and the local park, and there I am, the sky lightening it's blue, propping up the garbage bin talking to this girl who I've been talking to all night. There's a sense of relaxation and also of desire in her dark eyes....
"So I'm flying to New York tomorrow for three weeks."
"Cool."
"Wanna come?"
A moment of drunken thought....
"Yeah, sure, why not."
I couldn't believe that I said it. An almost total absence of deliberation. Things changing all right.
A smile from her.
A smile from me.
And then, a kiss! A beautiful drunken sweet kiss, right there as I'm leaning next to the garbage bin. How romantic!....

Job Description

2007-04-03T01:07:00.000Z

Thought some of you might get a laugh out of this....the twelve year old son of a family friend has an assignment due in a couple of days, a profile of a profession that he may want to pursue in the future, which at the moment happens to be 'musician' (crazy little feller!). I thought it might be entertaining to blog my emailed responses....I was surprised at how long it took me, as I really wanted to get it right for him. I also started wondering what I would have made of this if someone had told me all this stuff when I was twelve. I probably wouldn't have understood it really...

Questions for Michael:

Michael, as part of an assignment for school I have to look at a career that interests me. I have chosen a musician as I like music. Part of the assignment is asking some questions of someone who works in the area.

My Mum suggested that I ask you!

Did you have to go to TAFE or Uni. If so, for how long?

Yes. I studied at Australian National University in Canberra for four years, and completed a Bachelor of Music (Jazz Studies) with 1st class Honours in 2000

What age did you start playing at?

I started playing piano when I was seven years old.

Do you play in a band?

I have played in many bands over the years, but as I am a freelance musician, currently I am not a regular member of any band. At the moment though I am in the process of getting together a couple of small ensembles.

As a professional musician, is this enough to support you? (my mum suggested this one!)

Unfortunately no, although it possibly could in the future sometime (I hope!).

Have you always played the one instrument?

No. Through high school I played the tenor saxophone in a concert band, rock band and jazz ensemble and later studied it as an elective for two years at university.

What do you have to do in your job? What does your job consist of?

Being a freelance musician consists of many different facets, usually depending on what type of performances or ‘gigs’ you want to do and the style of music that you want to play. Types of gigs can vary wildly. They can be regular or one-off, and can range from a blues band in a club in a nearby city to a solo piano gig in a hotel just around the corner.
Meeting lots of people and making contacts among fellow musicians is very important as these people will hopefully hire you for their gigs and you will hire them for yours.
Freelance gigs usually fall into two groups; either you are hired by somebody or you are the bandleader and hire other people to perform with you.
When hired by somebody else to do a gig, you might be called by the bandleader, or you might be filling in for somebody else in an established band, which is usually called ‘depping’. Many different aspects of the gig need to be considered, including things like the style of music to be played, whether there will be a rehearsal, the time and location of the gig, what kind of band is playing the gig, what kind of musical equipment needs to be taken, appropriate dress, whether food and drink will be supplied, and of course the amount to be paid and method of payment, whether it is cash on the night or cheque.

The nature of many of the freelance Jazz gigs that I do is that sometimes the bandleader running the gig may not have a regular band or may require a different combination of musicians than what they’re used to playing with, which is why a long list of musical contacts is very useful. Often, because many freelance Jazz musicians know a generally similar repertoire, bands can be formed specifically for a particular gig, often with no prior rehersal. This can sometimes be a challenging situation, but also very exciting!

If YOU are the bandleader, then of course it is up to you to organize your band, keep a track of all those things involved with the gig and stay in contact with the people you have chosen for your band as well as the venue and the person who is paying you. Being a bandleader requires a lot of organization and phone calls but can often be rewarding.

Did you start playing at a young age? If so, did any of your friends play as well?

I started playing when I was in year 4, late primary school, and have been playing ever since, so yes, I suppose that was an early time to start! From what I can remember, none of my friends played piano at the time.

Do you have any tips for me?

If you stick with the music you love and work hard at playing it well, then you can’t go wrong!…

What is the best thing about playing music for a job?

Working long and hard on something that you love doing and being able to make money from it. Also, experiencing those moments where everything comes together, when you’re playing with a great band (or sometimes just by yourself) and the music sounds amazing, you’re able to make people in the audience feel something emotionally, and most importantly that you’re having fun with it.

What is the worst?

Sometimes as a freelance musician, if you are attempting to make a living solely off performing, then often you have to do gigs that you may not prefer to do, playing styles of music that you may not. But then sometimes that’s all part of the adventure…

Thanks Michael. Hope I can listen to you play one day. Luke PJ Smith

Nice Little Life...

2007-03-30T19:30:00.000Z

.....it's a nice life at the mo, this current 'transitional' phase I'm going through....not much to do during the daytimes....get up bout mid-morning, make myself a cawfee, never quite reach the amount of practice I always intended to do before running off to evening teaching in far flung fields and then a suprising gig or two or partying....it's a funny little window which is at times amazing and depressing at constantly bi-polar extremes....one day I'm totally sold on being a musician, next day I wanna give up, and back again and I'm already repeating myself from previous entries.....but then I wonder if that's what it's supposed to be like, those extremes, maybe only by embracing them fully, right now for the first time, can I get some sense of where it's all going.....
....my piano playing is changing rapidly for the better in so many amazing ways....things are just happening, stuff is coming out of its own accord, stuff I never thought I'd be able to do....for the first time ever, after eight years private lessons and a music degree and one two three four five six years out of uni, I feel as though I'm able (or at least have finally discovered the skills necessary) to actually play the piano, be at one with it, the material, the sound, the keys, everything. How could I possibly consider throwing it in?....
....but this nice little life at the mo has it's limits, and they're encroaching it's borders with quickening pace....decisions must be made soon...house, employment, location et al.....but the most important thing to remember is that it's all moving, and when things are moving, in a state of flux, that's when some of the greatest learning takes place....and as long as I'm committed to getting out of my nice cosy solitary bed in the mornings and embracing the day and everything it has to offer, then I know I'll be okay.....
....well, that's enough self-centred navel gazing waffle for this entry - here's the current media watch....

BOOK: Inner Game of Tennis - just finished Cloudstreet and all it's beautiful Oz imagery, so onto the next self help - since I opened it yesterday I can't put it down....offering alternate takes (as it were) on material I've already sifted through with 'Effortless Mastery', 'Everyday Zen' and 'Free Play'....looks like I'll knock it off in another cuppla tube rides as well.....

MUSIC: Monty Alexander - with Ernest Ranglin and Solo - mentioned that before, but also a little Aphex Twin and some organ stuff, Jimmy Smith, getting the basics together....

until soon friends,.....

Jay And Silent Bob (of Camden Town)

2007-03-23T19:46:00.000Z

....bidding farewell to D-Funk at Lock 17, J-Sax and I wended our way briefly by the side of the canal, across the bridge and down the unusually quiet high road. I was propositioned with skunk only the once last night, bit disappointing really, expected a bit more from the boys, and was quite displeased at the fact that not once last night was I called Charlie. What's the place coming to, I mean really....
All drink and no food makes Mike a moody boy, so we cross the bridge and head for the first dodgy pizza place we come to on the corner....
And the vibe is strong! Glowy christmas lights adorn the awning and 'Don't Stop Till You Get Enough' is blasting from somewhere inside. Eerily enough for Camden Town, the street is pretty quiet, no-one else is around.
And seemingly no-one is behind the counter. But there's a tall lanky guy drifting around next to us - trucker hat, aviators, stubble - who may or may not be working here. J-Sax and I are in the thick of muso talk but something is already seeming a little curious.
A moment goes by and no-one emerges....
"Don mine him man he's jes doin his fing yo no" says 'Jay'.
.....(all right, and who might that be?).....
All of a sudden, 'Silent Bob' backs out from no-where, moonwalking without a doubt, does the turn to face us - brown hat, collared white shirt, red jumper - speechless.
He's looking at us - another moment goes by....
"Orright mate, I'll have one of those thanks," I spurt out tentatively....
Bob dances off somewhere. Jay is back behind the counter, sometimes. J-Sax and I are still in the thick of it....
"This is a wikkid song!"
"Damn straight. The bridge bit with the fat brass....."
"This was with Quincy Jones, right?"
"I think so"
"It's not happening for Mike these days though is it...."
".....Yeah, it all went downhill after Quincy left...."
Bob dances back in front with a 'What would you like?' look on his face, still speechless. I pointed to a tasty selection and he whisks it off to the microwave. Jay starts talking to us....
"Man, this is the place to be on the High Road!" I tell him, and he's into it, I think. J-Sax agrees....
"Could I get some vine leaves too thanks mate?" I request from Bob, looking at the four for a pound sign. He whisks over and gives us each a free one. Nice! No four though, that seems a bit too much at this point.
'Don't Stop Till You Get Enough' is still blaring....
"Hey, did you hear that story about 'Billie Jean'?"
"No?"
"They're in the studio and Mike's done heaps of takes and just isn't getting it, and Q is drunk apparently, so he gets the irits, goes into the studio and beats him up!"
"No!"
"Yeah! and so Mike makes one more take and that's it! That's the one we hear!"
"Wow....talk about chill studio vibe..."
'Don't Stop Till You Get Enough' fades off.....and starts again? Bob must be really working on his fing.....
(.....This wikkid little Fellini-esque vignette playing before us is up there with that time I took a girl to 'Booty Wine' round the corner after hours, where the guy behind the till mutters another language through the half-shut roller door and suddenly a hand comes out from underneath with a six quid special in a brown paper bag....one asks no questions in a city of such mystery...)
....Bob whisks over from the microwave, gives me the pizza slice, goes back over to open the till and THEN comes back over for the money....and not a word, the whole time....
"Thanks boys, have a good one." Phew!
Camden Town, that kinda place....

well...

2007-03-22T01:21:00.000Z

...so I'm recording this demo on Tuesday, thinking that I've got all day Wednesday blocked out for teaching - I've been doing some through some music shops in the north and they've rigged me up a day at a 'school of religious character' - and I get this call from the teaching guy saying that the people at the school want to meet me before I start and can I come in this afternoon. They have to interview me before I start, meaning that if I don't come in this afternoon I can't start tomorrow. And even if I did, the pay isn't gonna get to me for another month anyway.....
....and there's that sigh, that weariness at the backwards inefficiency of this whole place, worn briefly from this new Londoner and shrugged off in an instant, but what of those who've lived here their whole lives?....
....yeah fine, I make the call and arrange an interview the next morning, speaking to Gerry who keeps going on about 'timewasting' students and how we have to get rid of them. Haven't even bloody met them yet!
So it's an early morning tube off to Totteridge and Whetstone, one of the quainter named stations and the second last stop on the High Barnet branch of the Northern Line. The place is easy enough to find, a couple of brown wood buildings near a field on a private road. The electronic gate shuts in my face.
In this bitter cold we've suddenly had this week (after a balmy precursor to summer), I had to laugh. All part of the continuing adventure I suppose....
So I meet Gerry and Graham, seeming patriarchal moral overseers of the place with their Ultra conservative uniforms and haircuts and they talk me through the guidelines of the Brethren, the particular variance of Christianity that this school falls under.
No recorded music at home: radio fine, but none of that ghastly modern popular music. Beatles and Bob Dylan is fine, but then Gerry's lately had some reservations about them too, so maybe not. So I can show them something from a recording, but I can't give them one to take home or ask them if they're into anything at home - they won't be because they don't have any.....
So Mike, what's your background? And I go into this pre-fab rave blah blah honours music degree did you catch the honours bit blah blah taught in schools for over a decade variety of students blah blah but it's not my main thing of course (all the while screaming in my head SHOW ME THE ROOM, SHOW ME THE PIANO, SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!!!)
They attempt some banter at the usual junctures and I'm so not up for it.
They hand me the guidelines of the school which I flip through on the tube home. Here are some highlights:

"...a way of life which is governed at all times in every detail by the Holy Bible"
"....The Theory of Evolution is regardes as a falsehood..."
"The Trustees regard occupation with, and the study of, computers damaging to the proper development of children's minds, and only serve to reduce and limit their thinking capacity to be conformed to programmes and the manipulation of a keyboard and screen. it is regarded that computers in many fields represent a misuse of physical and natural phenomena created by God."
"Brethren children have not gone on to study at Universities since the 1960s, but have suffered no loss through this...'

I'm still interested to see how this all turns out. Apparently music creation is very strong in homes among family members, and the previous teacher has left me a list of the students and where they're at and from a teaching perspective it sounds promising. Maybe the last minute interview request and week's delay set me off about it all. I'm taking the gig because financially, it'll pluck me from a potential pickle...
.....and don't get me wrong here, I have the utmost respect for anyone who chooses a religious path for their life.
It's just the social rules, the conventions, that get me, all those little restrictions and forbiddances, the details that people feel they have to impose on themselves and their families.
An essential part of my experience as a travelling freelance musician has been the observation of human experience. Branford Marsalis has been quoted a couple of times as saying that musicians are basically social commentators, and from my own limited experiences I've seen that the human experience is vast, so much more expansive than setting oneself and one's family to sets of rules derived from a book written long ago and far away.
It's the 21st century, it's suburban London. We shall see.....

Requiem For A Dream

2007-03-19T00:30:00.000Z

....I had this bizarro dream last night.....I don't seem to remember my dreams anymore and I don't usually tell anyone else my dreams, mainly because they turn out to be open-ended stories that go nowhere and the person you tell can never fully associate, but this is a bit of an exception.....
First of all, real life - Did the Belvedere last night again - it's a four hour gig, and as I said before, no soft pedal, it's a loud piano, and the diners are really close. The management came up twice in the first set to ask me to play softer - it takes me enough concentration to just play solo piano with a working time feel and good tone and interesting harmonic movement without someone bugging you from the side. Of course the more people that came the louder I was able to play. Oh yeah, and they interrupted my meal for me to play Happy Birthday which I have to say was pretty annoying.
So came home, stayed up a bit, some wine and Google Video, went to bed - and then I was in this sort of psychedelic Victorian era version of London, doing a gig in what looked like some department store, and I'd go to play a song and there was this woman in one of those massive curly Baroque wigs who was barking at me, really having a go at me about how wrong it was or how loud I was playing or it was the wrong song, so I would stop and try something else and she wouldn't let up.
So after about five attempts at songs, I blew my top, stood up and yelled at this lady, something about leaving (this version of) London and never working for her again. "You can't do that," she said, "you need to work here! This town's too small, you can't just walk away." "Watch me," I said, or words to that effect. And then she said the line, the kicker....

"You'll be doing these gigs for years!".......

That's what got me - imagine a Simpsons-esque echo of that line to end the dream and me suddenly awake sitting bolt upright in the bed.....
....damn, I gotta write and perform me some original music!.....

Rocksteady

2007-03-17T01:11:00.000Z

....the kiddies are doing my head in! There's only so much you can show seven year olds the C major scale without wanting to flip your lid and go screaming running down the street tearing your hair out....but I keep my patience....don't get me wrong, I enjoy teaching one on one and just as well, but just lately I've been feeling it a bit....
Practice is in remedial stages at the moment, trying to think around those barriers that for the first time ever I can see and feel quite clearly and distinctly....after Saturday's revelatory experience, various things are clicking in but the transmission, the signal, is still unclear and inconsistent. It's just as well Hanon is dead cause I woulda killed him by now, but then I put my own chromatic thing on it so I guess I'm to blame.....been practicing a lot of technique lately, fully knowing that technique is only as good as the message one wants to convey. And what might that be, pray tell?.....
Bit of a side note here - couple of books that have helped me on my path. 'Free Play' by Steven Nachmanovich (think I mentioned that one previously) and 'Everyday Zen' by Charlotte Joko Beck - the main thing I got out of this one is what is it SPECIFICALLY that holds you back? Identify it's details, and then you can overcome it......
Additionally, I'd like to put in an honourable mention for the album I'm listening to right now, Monty Alexander and Ernest Ranglin....after a long day of self-centred musician worries, I chuck this on and ivryting arie, nahmean?.....
For the first time ever I feel as though I know exactly what it is I want to do with the music and how to go about it. I'm just hoping that there are enough days left in my life to be able to get to where I'd like to get to. And there are still a couple of blanks in the equation. The big one is what. Still so bewildered by music and all it's forms, it's history, where it's been, where it could go, and what parts of it to take to call my own. Gotta start some where, right? Where might that be, pray tell?....it's the practicalities that get me too, continuing an intense study of an artform that disappears into thin air as soon as you create it while paying tax upon bill upon......
As always, it BAKES me that for the work I've put in, I'm probably never gonna earn a decent living off performing alone. And what bakes me just as much if not more is the thought of the guys who I know, some of them good friends, who have put TEN TIMES more work than I, who are far superior musicians than I, and they've got just as much struggle to deal with. No-one's got it easy in this business.
But then there's that little teaser, that thing that comes along out of the blue, that keeps you on it. 'We live in hope,' said an older muso I've played with recently, 'it's who we are.' More on that little story later.....
It's such a ridiculous form of existence, the carrot that disappears and reappears when you least expect it, where giving up and total committment aren't at opposite ends of the spectrum, they're in fact side by side, maybe even touching, like parallel universes.
'No, you've got it all wrong,' said jazz piano great John Hicks when drilled by students at a workshop about how to make a living after study, 'playing Jazz IS the reward.'
Right now, with my girlfriendless existence, playing Hanon after coming home from gigs, at least there's red wine, right?....

By the way, did my first gig on controller keyboard last night! at a local pub just up the road. After the Nord Electro arrived about a week ago, got a call for a dodgy pub trio thing for not much, so I hoiked my mini-amp into the backpack, Nord in a side sling bag thingy, and carried my four octave non-weighted controller keyboard (with more dials and sliders than you could poke a stick at) WITH ONE HAND as I strolled up the hill toward the pub. We were parked right on the bar and it was total blag session and I loved it. The Nord gave me all the fatness required, and best of all, at the end of the night I caught the bus home EASILY! No bazooka-carrying scarecrow on some military exercise changing tube lines across greater London.....heppy heppy daze!....

...No More Mr...

2007-03-14T11:01:00.000Z

...there's this thing, that's been following me round now for far too long....
....I was okay with it at the start, even adopted it, but too much has happened....
....it's gotta go....
.....I'm talking bout.....
.....the letter Y.....
....at the end of my name....
.....the ubiquitous....
.....mikeY.....

IT"S GOTTA GO!

....I mean, 'Y', why!?....
....sure, if you're on a personal list of loveables like my Mum and a SMALL number of some other friends, it's okay, I'll let it slide, but it's just been hanging around for far too long....
...it first appeared at the very first gig I went to check out in Canberra....there I was, after hours, underage, fresh off the bus in flannelette shirt and big purple shorts sitting near the door in case I got found out. My new mate Jimi, who'd sold the gig to me that afternoon, strolled off stage, saw me sitting there and said those fateful words....
...."I'm gonna call you MIKEY!".....
....and it stuck - he didn't even have to tell anyone about it, it just came around, became part of my Canberra identity.....
....'What is it that bothers you about it?' asked the Guru as we wandered St Germain in the early hours....
.....it's the little brother connotation, I explained, it doesn't fit in with the sophisticate city-dwelling musician image I'm trying to cultivate here....and instantly he jumped on it!....'We'll, maybe because you...'...and then the trail off....as is his want, playing with it, sending it back to me at every chance to bother and annoy me, a light jibe between friends....
....the other thing is, with my last name, it just doesn't swing. 'Mike Guy', two syllables, accented quarter notes, a product, almost catchy..... but 'Mikey Guy'? it's the triplet with the accents on '1' and 'a', that extra third, awkward loping syllable in the middle, like 'Hokey Boy' or 'Country Hick'....
.....consequently it's especially irritating in a professional context, being announced on gigs as such, being introduced at gigs and bars.....indeed, that same weekend, after repeatedly telling another friend to drop it, I'm dashing off stage into the darkness after the set and he announces me to the Paris audience as Mikey and straightaway the Guru is at me with it!....
....people might have got it from my email addresses, which I've recently changed so that doesn't happen, but it's STILL happening, with people that never knew me from Canberra and never had my email address!....
....IT JUST HAPPENS!....
.....will it ever leave me!? Will this urban sophisticate persona actually triumph? or will I forever be stuck with it and it's connotation, everyone's little brother?.....

The 'Y' must die!

Perceptual

2007-03-12T00:20:00.000Z

...it's nearly half midnight....i bought a bottle of red earlier this evening in an attempt to save some money on drinking, but it seems to have largely vanished and the resulting dehydration is stinging my eyes, but I'm gonna press on regardless....I've waited in the past for some sort of event to write but as I told Mr N, I'm on the net more these days than ever before but somehow blogging less....but not from now on! Be warned that in some ridiculous catch-up mission, some of these entries may drop back in time on occassion somewhat to certain musical touring and familial continental holidays.....

First, let me tell ya bout yesterday....

It started like any other day, coffee in the morning....I've gotten past the two cup threshold by the way. Since I became a social drinker, it's one which kept me up late and two which would keep me up all night, but now being the proud owner of one of those silver kettle things I've busted through to three, and as a result I don't seem to be sleeping as much anymore, increasing one's abilities to fit in those extra couple of hours a day of life in this burned out burb....
Student at 10, rehersal with singer at 12, some other silly errands and other stuff rumbilng on into the afternoon and all of a sudden I can't open my gmail account, meaning I don't know what time the new solo residency gig is on tonight. I ring my mate Lucky, who's done the gig before, and get a check on start time being an hour earlier than I expected....
So it ended up being the dash for cash, in the pinstripe suit, along Holland Park Road and round the corner on yet another London gig adventure to the Belvedere Restaurant.
Small place in the middle of a park, but classic West End old money - I thought I'd gotten used to this by now, dashing in to some venue absolutely dripping with history and pounds sterling, but the immaculate art deco trimmings and windows looking out onto some sort of fresco were too much to ignore. Brief introductions and polite laughter with the waiting staff ensued, and my four hour stint began.
It's a loud upright and the diners aren't far away, so I got told to play softer about three times in the first half hour. I ended up barely wiping the keys with my fingers....
And then, about three quarters through the night, it happened. And it didn't happen for two bars, or half a form. It happened for a good sizeable chunk of time, say half an hour, maybe even more, before the sadly inevitable fading....
It was all there - swing, legato attack, arched fingers, weight transfer through wrists, some new 'closure' of the inner wrists, no awkward random articulation, no fighting with the keys....I was watching it happening before me! Recognising that thing I heard on that album....new stuff was coming out that fit so well....I couldn't believe it....eight years of private tuition, four years of a music 'degree', six years of wilderness...and here it was, finally....
I left with the cash and literally RAN home to practise, and there was that inner glow, that smile on my face that transcended any momentary satisfaction. That same glow I've felt in those incredibly rare times throughout my life when an advancement is made, when the playing really happens.....driving back with my folks from saxophone lessons in Yass in high school when they'd never seen me happier, or that gig with Col and Eric and Lachlan at the Kurrajong where everything just CLICKED, when my friend of great intrigue pulled up at the lights on Northbourne and London Circuit, absolutely glowing....
"I'm so happy," said Phil Woods once, "I could take on a lion in a phonebooth with a toothpick!" On nights like this I know what he means....
It all connected up - musical content, self-confidence, detatchment, bodily awareness, accurate awareness of levels of focus....My idols, my friends who are much better piano players than I am, I'm still in awe as to what they do and how they do it but after I came home from that gig I KNEW what it is that I had to do, how I could play the piano and have it feel like I've always wanted it to, effortless, beautiful....
And of course, on my gig this very night with some other incredible muso friends, out from Oz for a while, it wasn't there....of course it wasn't! Why should it be? How could I deserve it to be? The intricate conection between all those things that you have to take care of when you perform wasn't entirely there for all of it...but it was for some of it. And that I suppose is what we hang on to, that's what keeps us going.
That's what keeps an average player like me at this whole thing. And lately, it's been wildly swinging between one day YYYYEEESSSS I will suffer poverty for the rest of my days in search of artistic freedom and creativity and satisfaction and the next day NNNNOOOOO what the hell am I doing what if I actualy ever wanted a family or to own a house why aren't I an orthodontist like my folks wanted me to be when I was still doing all right in junior high school!?....
It's the sweet torture of the muse....a female presence, undoubtedly, who only reveals to you the next stage, the next step of development, when you least expect it. You could be battling away on something for months, years even, and then something else random happens and you wonder why you're still at it and then the penny drops and you work out what's going on and you wonder well, maybe I will stick with this....for a while....

Media Watch 2

2007-02-25T13:00:00.000Z

....forgot to mention last time a cuppla things....

....so, as I've said before, the lappie has taken over my entire life and I really don't know what I'd do without it.....we got broadband wireless in the flat (where has this been all my life!?) and so lately I've been sitting up a little too late on the nights in watching google video and youtube....

....I'm never gonna watch TV again! It's too good, there's too much stuff, no sitting through ads, it's all only 10 mins long etc.....there's a certain bent to the stuff I've been watching which I'm sure you'll pick up........just type in the phrases, you know how it works....

* Keith Olbermann on MSNBC - some of his Special Comments criticising Bush and the administration are excellent.....this is a guy in a suit who obviously loves his country, frequently talks of the lessons learnt from its history, and is articulate and intelligent in saying that the US government is doing WRONG THINGS in Iraq....

* His seeming arch nemesis, Bill O'Reilly - what a horrible person! hugely biased, arrogant and rude to his 'guests', often factually wrong, and somehow still has some sort of commanding reporting position at Fox, which is basically the TV advertising department of the Republican party, something I've only just learnt through the excellent documentary Outfoxed (check that one too)....

* Some full shows to check out - Iraq for Sale, Loose Change 2nd Edition Uncut, The Power of Nightmares, Robert Newman's History of Oil...and whatever Daily Show with Jon Stewart that can be found is well worth a laugh.....

...so of course any heads up from y'all ou there about anything else I should be checking out of a similar persuasion, I'd be glad to hear it - drop a comment here or zap me at my new email address - mikeguymusic@hotmail.co.uk - laters....

Media Watch

2007-02-23T02:57:00.000Z

At 3AM on a Friday morning in London, the gloooooooorious Nation's Capital, Mike has been checking out, of late....

BOOKS:

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton - Good Aussie reading, some positively beautiful imagery, makes me think of all those dry yellow fields swaying under a.....whatever!

Free Play by Steven Nachmanovich - more about THIS one soon, picked it up from the footnotes of 'Effortless Mastery' by Kenny Werner, covering similar material but am finding it in many ways to be much more stimulating and inspiring....on those doubtful days of late where contemplation of one's musical existence reaches unbearable zenith, I pick up this book, read a couple of pages and I'm like RIGHT, baked beans until retirement, I'm an artist forever! And then I pick up a phone bill or something....

MUSIC:

Bundeena, Bernie McGann - Oz saxophone national treasure - I get the impression sometimes that players seem to only like music (or think that others like music) that involves the particular instrument that they play i.e, trumpet players only listening to trumpet music, and I've come across this in various people's record collections, but not so here. Nevertheless, I'd kind of forgotten about this until I saw a great gig with UK trumpet player Tom Arthurs the other night at Vortex, and so went back to this particular side, with only bass and drums....a pure treat, ARIA award winner and all....

Robert Glaspar, Canvas - I came home the other Sunday afternoon from lugging my keyboard to the end of the Northern Line for £20 and for various reasons felt like giving up, the whole thing, going and getting a 'real' job earning something allegedly 'real' like money....then I put this on and thought I have to be part of this music, not just a listener, there is hope....wikkid outing from latest US pianist on Blue Note, gorgeous originals la la la.....

Michael McDonald, What a Fool Believes - Did a funk gig with a sax player the other night and we started talking about 80s music, so much attitude, so I opened up the Standards Real Book to one of it's highlights, a chart of this song - the opening piano part isn't just piano, it isn't even 80s piano....it IS the 80s! When I hear this music and particularly that really high style of singing that was around in late 70s early 80s, I start thinking of the toy department in my local Woolies back in the hometown (i.e, piped music), but when you get into it, this song has awesome lyrics, tells a great story. And of course Michael McDonald is of course an awesome singer, having done BVs for, that's right, Steely Dan....

And of course that brings me to an honourable mention of a couple of music websites I've come across lately, namely acquisition.com (mega fast free downloads of anything you can think of)....just like to add here that although free downloads are killing the music industry, I think we're all guilty of it a bit, and I sure didn't think twice bout a couple of songs here and there from Lionel Ritchie or Michael Jackson whose careers I'm sure won't be drawn and quartered by such action....

.....have a go too at pandora.com, which creates a radio station based around the musical characteristics of a particular artist or song of your choice....chekkit!....

The Good Life

2007-02-15T01:14:00.000Z

...January, and indeed February, are dead times. After the hullaballoo of the silly season and the turn of another year, the first two months of the calendar are either time to lie around in the sweltering heat or stay indoors from the freezing cold. And so, coupled with a sudden change in employment circumstances, your correspondent finds himself of late with a whole lot more time on his hands, time to think, time to practice, time to dwell....
So in continuation from the last entry, the work permit worked out fine. Two weekends ago, a quick jaunt to the City of Light and a fax later bought me another six months here. We'll see how we go...
....Today's foray from the flat took me to neighbourhood of Old Street, a huge crossroads being the meeting point of the City of London and the East End. A similarly aged friend of mine remembers cycling down streets in nearby (now trendy) Shoreditch that hadn't been rebuilt since the Battle of Britain, and in a way the surrounding area still looks a bit the same in parts. My mission was offices of the national ballet organisation whose name I've already forgotten, to inspect and pick up some copies of music for a potential gig playing for classes at a local specialised high school. I took the plunge and bought both books, it'll be a bit of sightreading which is always good and some more work could come from it.
I stumbled past a bar with posters in the window - that's right, today's Valentines Day. Oh well, no concern here I thought as I trudged along.
And then, a sudden memory of someone I used to be with, someone who's life force was so strong it swept you along with it, kept you coming back for more, and now the absence of that feeling, and where it left me....
On the way back home I dropped in to my local Bangla store for a couple of jars of Mr Naga but alas, they were all out! You mean other people in this town are crazy enough to eat that stuff? This is nuclear powered chilli paste we're talking about here, interdimensional capabilities. Next week I suppose....
.....Back to the flat, to the piano, to those same nagging thoughts about my situation and it's various conditions.....
....NO! I won't let this happen, not again.....
....Time for some sugar. I learnt this a while back on a drunken late night recording session - slumped in some ridiculous self-centred brood, a friend whisked me to his back shed at three in the morning to record an accordion sounding part on some old contraption he'd bought from Vinnies or somewhere....unphased by my sudden mood slump, he plied me up with toast layered with loads of honey and a cup of tea with about five sugars. It didn't solve my problems but it gave me that little kick along to get me out of my anti-reverie and oompahing away in his backshed recording studio in the freezing Canberra winter....
....So that's what I did. I lined up a hot chocolate. I put some washing on. I listened to some Marvin Gaye. I went and found stuff to do. And it worked. It's a process of digging yourself out of it, and after what seems like such a long time, I know that I'm getting better at it, little by little....

Stormy Weather

2007-01-20T01:09:00.000Z

.....hey folks, just stoppin by to let yers all know that I'm still on with this whole blogging thing....just seem to come in and out....got some writing ideas for the future, trust me!...........it's funny too because I was going to write that the laptop has now invaded ALL areas of my life! People say they couldn't survive without their mobile phones and I never quite believed them because how did we get out of the primordal slime in the first place right but I'm fast nearing the point where I could quite honestly say that I couldn't do without the ol happy slappie lappie....I'm on it at least an hour or two a day and I'm not even playing games.....and that thing that I got in the first two weeks where I kept coming up with new ideas and new combinations of things to do with it, that hasn't stopped yet! itunes music shuffling, journal, business, myspace, it just goes on and on....ridiculous!
....the most recent one is shuffling through my itunes library, putting on new albums while listening to what's there, usually late at night when no-one else is around.......haven't been hanging out at gigs much, it's kind of how I've been feeling lately.....
The whole visa bizo is the main agenda at the mo.....it all goes down in a couple of weeks when I train to Paris and come back in on my new work permit.....it's looking like it's a goer (touch wood*) but still not entirely confirmed.....(sigh) what can one do but live in hope methinks....
Not now....they can't deny me now, not when I've just gotten a whole bunch of stuff together....it can't happen now, they can't send me back now, not just yet.....please! If any one knows of some secret holy shrine to the Home Office hidden somewhere in central London I'll gladly go and kidnap a couple of goths from up on the Lock to offer in human sacrifice to the great bureaucratic Olympus....
Peace and goodwill to all round the world....more soon my loverlies, I promise!

*just learnt the other day where that expression comes from....pagans used to touch trees in the forest to bring out the good spirits in them....in a world still dominated largely by religious extremism, maybe it'd be a better place if we all just went around and touched some trees now and then....guess that wouldn't work in the desert though..........

New Year Happy

2007-01-05T02:34:00.000Z

...due to singularly popular demand, I thought I should drop a note for those who seem to pass by....please be assured that updates on Ireland, Paris Xmas 06 and others are on the way....
.....daily timetable has altered of late, due to no shift work and no teaching.....get up 10ish, practice, brunch 1ish, errands and more music until abou 7ish, dinner, then more music until net surfing on my new best friend the happy slappie lappie until about 1 or 2, then bed.....
....a bit bonkers maybe, but then those thirty seven year olds CRAVING the C major scale await next monday....but that's all right, because Mike's new life post Feb 1 involves LOADS of well paying gigs and not very much teaching atall, so it is predicted.....
.....my GOD I love red wine, and as we sit here with twenty minutes to go until three past time measured at the meridien of this planet I pause to contemplate the existence of our fragile mortal beings....
....long live MUSIC I say in this regard....
.....love and the spreading of the collective consciousness to you all....
Mike.x
P.S.New pics in that flickr window to your right...finally got around to.....

Chart

2006-12-14T12:56:00.000Z

....screw this prosaic elegaic crap, none of us have any time for it in our busy lives anyway, so I'm just gonna give youse a chart of how I'm doing, plus or minus rating....

'So, Mike....'

'ARE YOU OK?'

+

'SLEEPING?'

-

...not much lately, but that seems to be more okay as I get older

'EATING?'

-

...two-minute dinners just aren't doing it for me anymore so I'm branching out into real cooking, but it's tricky for one - recipe suggestions anyone?

'WORKING?'

+++

...constant rotation between teaching, shift work and gigging - have you ever stepped back while reading an intense novel to marvel at the river of words before you? I had this experience with 'A Hundred Years of Solitude'.....anyway, I was scribbling away in my diary the other day and did the same thing....

HANGING/PARTYING?

-

...reasonably....the odd coffee or drink with friends is countered with days of hermitude (is that a word?)....

'LOVE LIFE?'

---

...non-existent, may have to do something about this....

Xmas Cheer....

2006-12-14T09:39:00.000Z

Camden High Street, about 5pm, last Saturday....

I am walking towards the markets, I can't remember why, in the permanent dusk of an English December afternoon, with about 57 million other people, a sea of black, goth teenagers everywhere....I feel like every molecule of this place is repelling me, every brick, every post, every grim face, every puddle in the mis-shapen bitumen mess outside my ex-council flat....

....for a moment there I was considering some sort of sniper action against all those goths, down there at the lock, maybe from up top of that little castle thing above Starbucks, with a slug gun or maybe a paintball rifle shooting white paintballs, have that constant depressing river of blackshirts all running for cover, falling backwards over the bridge and into the canal....

....and the really crazy thing is, despite the obvious overwhelming sense of conformism, I don't actually have anything particular against goths....

I GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE! I NEED A HOLIDAY!

....but that's all right....most people I know here get to a certain time limit with this place before they have to run off and hang somewhere else for a bit, which is thankfully pretty easy. Mine's about two months, so I'm well past that now, but my escape route is all planned, another Aussie orphan Christmas in Paris...loads of mates, cheese and baguettes, red wine, general merriment skipping down all those gorgeous boulevards - it's not baking Aussie summer Chrissie with family (something I'll be missing quite a lot), but it's about the next best thing I can imagine....

...the plot thickens!...

2006-12-03T01:55:00.000Z

...so when I did my three gigs at Park Lane Sheraton, currently a stop on the Polonium Tour of Central London, I just remembered when recounting the whole thing to someone the other day that I was subbing for a Russian guy who runs the gig, who doesn't live here! I got a 3pm call for the 9pm gig from my man NK because the Russian lawyer guy who actually runs the gig got stuck in Moscow thanks to a grounded flight! Bloody hell, I'm closer than I thought....and this bodgy Russian MP3 site that I joined won't accept my credit card payments anymore....what's going on over there, seriously......

Been feeling it a bit lately, the old 'saudage' as the Brazilians say, the longing, for the homeland....whenever I flick through anyone's Myspace page from Australia, the photos always look so colourful...round ere, with all those pallid stone grey buildings in town set under a sunless sky, it seems like all the colour got rained out of this place and washed into the Thames years ago.

From my fellow Australians, I also miss the humour, and the directness, in speech....I've been in conversation with Brits and Continentals on numerous occasions, and I don't know if they even realise it, but they'll launch into an opinion about something and all the passion and articulation will be there but they'll get to the end of it and they won't have actually SAID anything. I've sometimes listened for 20 minutes, half an hour, and they keep cycling around the same things and I have to hold back from saying, "Yeah, but you haven't actually SAID ANYTHING!"

Aussies don't have time in their lives for any Old World rhetoric...it's probably another Irish inheritance...whenever I talk to anyone back home, you can feel it there, the immediacy of communication, and the funny thing is that they may not even realise what they're doing either. I was talking to my mum not long ago on the phone and she said something and I can't even remember what it was, but most importantly, it was straight up, and it was so refreshing to hear....and all of a sudden I got a flash of the sun on those endless fields, and Jugiong Road, and then, a sigh....

.....coming up to Christmas as well, this one rapidly encroaching will be my third in a row away from family.....we've got an Aussie orphans meet up happening in Paris again which'll be fun....

....it's looking like I might be able to stay here as well....I met a guy today who's helped out others in my situation in the past, and he gave my application the nod....I won't breathe easy until that stamp is in the passport, but it's looking promising....as the grimness of the winter sets in.....

You Know You're In London When...

2006-11-30T23:13:00.000Z

1.KGB SPY POISONED TO DEATH BY POLONIUM - Anyone outside the UK following this? The tabloids are eating it for breakfast. Put simply, ex KGB spy died here about a week ago after Polonium poisoning, which is a form of uranium that's only lethal when ingested. Turns out after they found he was about to go, traces of it have been found throughout the city wherever he'd been...his home in Muswell Hill, a sushi bar in Piccadilly, now on various aeroplanes, and a couple of places relatively close to home for your correspondent i.e, the Sheraton Park Lane, where I've done three gigs! and the poor guy died at University College Hospital, one tube stop down the road in Euston where a girl I was briefly involved with is studying medicine of all things....
So the back story is that Putin in Russia is about to hand over power and this guy knew some secrets that could blow the whole process. It seems like an incredibly obvious way to get rid of someone, as well as a pretty good way of sending the largest city in Europe into radiation frenzy....

2.WHALE SWIMS PAST COMMONS - this was about six months ago, and I was walking back from Prets (sandwhich shop) to my shift work office when I saw the headline by the newstand. It was like something out of 'News Of The World' and doubly bizarre considering that I was in the city of London at the time, a handful of blocks from the river. They gave it a name, and the inevitable happened.....crowds of onlookers, poor thing got confused, it stayed around for about five days, they tried to ship it out to sea and it died on the way. Perhaps another remotely related sign of what we're doing to the planet on a larger scale?....

3.OUTBREAK OF EBOLA VIRUS IN DALSTON - this is more an urban East End myth I think, but someone was telling me a while ago that the fairly deadly and contagious Ebola virus, known to exist in certain parts of Africa, is stored in dead animal flesh, which could possibly be illegally imported as bushmeat through various African communities and into central London for a possible second outbreak. Third world Africa and the East End, eh? Still, I reckon Londoners should be more worried about the proliferation of places like Chicken Empire - there's some wrongness in those two pound hamburgers somewhere....

....moral to the story? This is a town where absolutely bizarre and potentially life-threatening events occur on a regular basis.....

....but the strange thing is, with all that and the old world inefficiency and ridiculous bureacracy and pollution and how small and cramped everything is, it's almost as if you start to warm to the wrongness, a case of contempt breeding familiarity.....

.....just another day I suppose....

Round Midnight

2006-11-16T00:37:00.000Z

....Hidey ho, Kermit the Frog here with another fast breaking news story about your correspondent and his hedonistic life running endlessly through the rat race of this burned out burb, here in the North-East Atlantic, where the sun is already starting to set round mid afternoon, as the ol' girl is regresses into her seemingly natural state of cold, dark and grey.
But it's all right cause you end up not caring really, just flowing along with the rest of the eight millions....currently riding the wave of one of those times where every night is busy and every day filled to overflowing, fuelled endlessly 'off coffee and two minute dinners. Usually these times, like slipping into some wormhole of your own universe, seem to last about a week for me, but this one seems to be spilling over into the fortnight...
No complaints here though, as we're in the middle of the London Jazz Festival, and your humble correspondent has gone all out - Wayne Shorter Quartet last Friday, Cassandra Wilson Monday, Spanish Harlem Orchestra last night (muy sabroso!) and tonight was Michel Camilo and Tomatito. Support act was a Senegalese singer with guitar and percussionist...slept through the first half of course but it was truly great stuff. The main act was incredible - I've been a fan of Camilo for a while now, wouldn't say I love his stuff but it was definitely worth a look....all these big double handers and this little whispery right hand downward thing I'd never seen before.
Currently on world tour to promote their second album, it was to be expected - lots of Spanishy flourishy stuff, famous covers and burning originals, tumbao, flamenco, Cuba, Spain, Argentina, the works, a real concertgoer's concert.
Alas, having napped through a twenty-five quid gig, here I am at a quarter to one AM, sleepless. What to do, what to do...
.......by the way, J-Sax put me on to an Oz show I've been watching on google video called 'The Chaser'? Bloody hilarious!....
So I suppose the main news of late is my impending deportation, due in now less than three months. In a nutshell, all my options seemed closed off, my hopes dashed, and I had resolved to leave. Under a stormy sky I rode up to Primrose Hill with the journal and thrashed it out, made the decision....and then lo and behold, the next day I'm talking to a friend and he puts me on to another friend who may actually have a chance for me. It'll require some heavy blagging and an exorbitant applicaiton fee, but at the moment it's a risk I'm willing to take. More on that as news comes to hand...

Thus Spake Zarathustra

2006-10-29T02:25:00.001Z

....this is the music I'm hearing, the Strauss, aka theme to 2001 A Space Odyssey, as I JUST BOUGHT A NEW MAC LAPTOP! It's got a whole swag of stuff, including built in webcam and mike, so any Skypers or iChatters out there, let's talk! I picked it up on the way to a gig in town, came back home, and now it's half two in the morning - my social life is now over!
....More soon....

New York - Brooklyn Sometimes

2006-10-23T20:37:00.000Z

Customary to the Jazz musician's pilgrimage to The City is the acquisition of a lesson, some time spent with someone personally considered to be a great, a source of information to glean from along the way of the lifelong journey, mostly for one's own benefit but in certain cases to absorb that information to be passed on to friends and colleagues. Of course these 'lessons' may not necessarily be of an entirely scholastic or academic nature: having taken a few now I've found them to range wildly, from actual discussion of notes and chords and rhythms, to tangental discussions of philosophy and astrology...
Sometimes it's great to just to watch a guy, to observe a certain bend of wrist or turn of finger while playing. Sometimes it's just to spend time with a guy, to maybe pick up one thing not even necessarily even musical, which was part of the reason why I went to his gig. After hanging with him for a bit I figured that I still wanted to talk to him, that there was still some to be learnt, so after checking out of the hostel, some scattered phone conversations led me to take the 'orange ones' heading east from the island.
The carriage emerged from the tunnel into a white misty sky, and the vista of Brooklyn had my vision entirely occupied. DJ said something a while back about this largest borough of the city, if free-standing itself as a city, would be the nation's fourth largest. It certainly looked that way. The line ascended into an arc at the top of which was my station. Barney's apartment was easy to find, and I took a seat next to a kindly old upright.
Having been in this situation before a few times, I had emailed some questions to him a few weeks before in the hope of a specific approach, at least to start with. But as I have written before, one gets swept along with these people, these incredibly optimistic, forward thinking people, and it always, without fail, ends up somewhere else. No flat fives or sharp nines here folks! today's tangental territory wandered into Cuban religion, santeria, the Orishas, and Yemaya, goddess of the ocean, mother of dreams and secrets - love it!
But don't get me wrong - Barney answered all my questions as well as giving me a whole bunch more to think about, as well as loading me up with a DVD of original charts and influential music. The 'lesson' was cut short by the arrival of Gary, a stalwart New York horn player of some twenty or thirty years and one of Barney's closest musical collaborators. We ended up watching parts of a video of Barney's recent gig with legendary ex-James Brown alto player Maceo Parker.
Taking my cue, Barney called me a cab, I paid him the nominal sum he'd forgotten about and sped off toward JFK. It had been a markedly positive experience spending part of the morning with him, and he'd plied me up with more than enough musical knowledge to keep me going for a good time to come.
Thoughts wander on the cab ride to the airport, but this time around I somehow missed out on the common dread of impending return, still transfixed by the dreamlike nature of this place, seeming eerily quiet and still on a Saturday afternoon. Caught a poster at a lights on the opposite side of the intersection - "Divorce only $300 - no spouse signature required." Strolling down a boulevard on the way was a middle age black man in a canary yellow suit and brimmed hat, complete with walking stick....
It was like a dream that I didn't want to wake from. At various times in my life I thought I'd never get there. But I did, and I can't wait to go back...

New York - Island of Lights and Love

2006-10-10T20:37:00.000Z

....Alas, dear readers, the last full day of my stay on the island yields little to report, as almost a full week of non-stop walking by day and partying by night had me well and truly bedridden until late afternoon. However, a cute and kindly Spanish dancing student who'd been living there for a week took pity on me, made me a coffee, and we chatted pleasantly in the darkness of an empty room on a Hell's Kitchen afternoon. DJ had been looking amorously her way when here earlier in the week, so I didn't consider pursuing anything, but we swapped emails as she said she was passing through London early next year. That's the hostel vibe I guess. She told of a health food supermarket on Columbus Circle, about three blocks away where I eventually hauled my sorry shaking corpse for a massive metal bowl of curry and salad.
My last eve saw me return yet again to the Village to meet up with Rob and Lucy, friends from London, who had arrived that very day, and we checked out a stonking set by Jimmy Bosch at S.O.B's (Sounds of Brazil). This was a regular Friday night classic salsa set but with that all important difference of it being in New York, with some of the best guys in the country. Trombonist Jimmy was up front in colourful shirt and leather pants singing coros when not soloing. The lead singer was hilarious - ultra slicked back hair, big brown shades, white shirt and tie, grey pants - classic! Completing the front line was the classic little tres player guy, who's obviously been doing it for fifty years, half the height of anyone else on stage and almost dwarfed by his own instrument, but ripping out ridiculous solos all night.
Farewelling my companions, I wandered down some of the more gorgeous back streets of the Village and into the 'chess' district for cheap bodgy internet on the way to Gonzalez y Gonzalez, near the corner of Broadway and Houston, the late night salsa hang. Big long room painted in yellow, full Mexican cantina vibe, sombreros with lights, streamers, a big moose head on the wall (ahh, taxidermy and live music! a lasting and important connection...)...band kicks off 11pm, free entry, dancefloor packed - my kinda place. The band were all right, not quite what I'd just seen but doing well enough, and all actually dressed in the same uniform (first time for everything)...
I felt as though a week wasn't quite long enough. While I definitely put in the hard yards and got to all the clubs on my large list, there was still a couple of places I didn't quite get to. In terms of cheesy tourist stuff though, everything was pretty much taken care of - the only way I could have done better in that respect is to have gone to more museums or galleries. That kind of added to something DJ said a while ago, about the place being mostly for work. While there's obviously plenty to do and see, if you wanted to spend some time there it would be for a distinct purpose, which also shed a new light on all the stories of all my muso friends who'd come and gone to give it a go, or indeed who were still there....

New York - Bad Sneakers (and a pina colada, my friend?)

2006-10-10T19:50:00.000Z

Thursday 21st September

Today was kind of filling in the blanks of the island, the parts I hadn't seen, of which there weren't many by this stage. After another massive oil grease and salt laden bagel (by this stage in the week I had taken to eating twice a day), I wandered the three or so blocks up to Carnegie Hall - okay, great, but nearby I happened to walk past a plaque (yes I'm one of those people that actually reads that stuff) indicating classic example of studio architecture from the 20s or 30s or something - buildings specifically designed with high ceilings and large ground level windows for artists to work in, with their accommodation upstairs.
There it was again, that cultural interest - more people, more money, more history, and consequently more of a desire and appreciation for paintings, sculpture, live music et al.
Not far from there in the part of the city just south of Central Park was Radio City Music Hall and, behind it, the rest of the Rockerfeller Center. This was real New World stuff, complete with Rockerfeller's own grand statement on humanity and such...
A section I hadn't been anywhere near yet was east Midtown, and with good reason - once again, not much for the wearily wandering tourist, but it eventually melted back into the Village, throughout which I wandered gleefully. Making my way back up Seventh Avenue, I decided to dial it down a bit. After five and a half days of walking non-stop daytime and clubbing nighttime, my feet were killing me and the rest of my body needed some rest, so I picked an artsy corner cafe not far from the Vanguard, pulled up a hot chocolate, reefed out part of the mass of live music street press I'd collected over the week, and nestled in amongst the locals.
Too much to see, to do, too many gigs to go with a couple of days to spare, but checking the dates, I already knew where I was going tonight. Hanging with Sean and Echo the other night, they took me down into Times Square to Sophia's, a solo gig Sean used to do, and on the chalkboard I found the name of someone I had wanted to meet, someone I'd been in contact with prior to coming.
Hostel, dinner, then to Sophia's. A small circular bar, there was about six or seven people there and he was one of them. Not wishing to disturb (...same old nerves coming back...) I took a house red and sat alone on the other side, probably standing out for all to see. In over ten years of doing this kind of thing, going to gigs, meeting guys, shaking hands, there's still that hesitation at the straight-up self-introduction...really quite ridiculous....but then Barney saved me by coming over and introduced himself.
We'd been in touch and he kind of knew I'd be there, and as I had expected, he was a thoroughly nice guy. I have so much respect for these guys, so much admiration and appreciation, that sometimes it's like too much respect, and I end up being unable to talk to them like a normal human being, not being able to think my words through properly, becoming paranoid over saying something wrong and then saying it, with their look of an eye or a turn of face entirely misread...I might be continuing with conversation, all the while going through some sort of momentary internal meltdown, and I look over his shoulder and I see me sitting at the bar, looking back at myself shouting, "You're doing it again, SNAP OUT OF IT!"....but no, I know plenty of people like Barney, with their relentless goodwill toward all and endless enthusiasm about the music, and none of it mattered. He let me sit in with the bass player, agreed on a lesson time and fee (sort of), and I bid him adieu, reeling from oversensitivity and self-absorption and too many house reds, into the miles of flashing neon and TV screens to be sucked into the metro again, again, off into the blackness of the night...
I ended up at the bottom of the Village at Zinc, a tiny Latin bar, didn't know who was playing, ramped up the eve from there - incredible six piece descarga outfit. It seemed throw-together, hand signals, improvised coros and piles of photocopies abounded, but the best throw-together small Latin band I've seen yet, ever. Wailing post-bop tenor player with all the Latin history....harmonically outside intense keys player....cranking percussion....the swirling carnival of Salsa and Jazz....
Back to Fat Cat, the hang, drunken email checking....and a familiar face appears from nowhere. It's MJ, a bassplayer I've come across occasionally back in London! MJ's a pretty driven guy but still cool enough to come say hello, and he showed me the side room (somehow I'd missed it the last two visits) where we slumped in a couch watching a dodgy jam, just as bad as the worst ones I've seen across the world, and he tore it apart, and then vanished!...

New York - Como Se Gozar En El Barrio?

2006-10-09T12:34:00.000Z

(NB - I just got around to figuring out how to put up some pics in some of the New York entries - thanks again Sherd...)

Wednesday 20th September

'Lost in the Barrio, I walk like an Injun...'

'Throw Back The Little Ones' - Steely Dan

The haze cleared entirely the next day, and I Metroed to Lexington Avenue and somewhere in the 90s, east of Central Park, for a good long wander through Spanish Harlem (referred to here amongst Latinos as 'El Barrio'). The electricity of the place was incredible; hard to describe (it wasn't like people with trumpets hanging out of windows), but just watching people go about their business, hearing people talk, seeing Cuban flags up everywhere, you could definitely feel it.
Reaching a major intersection on Lexington Avenue, I spied with my little audiophile's eye a record store. Amazing! Floor to ceiling, glass cabinets, full of every single kind of Latino music you want. Of course, having discovered Internet CD purchasing not too long ago, I know that I didn't need to buy anything from there as it's all way too e-accessible, but it's the romance of it, the seeing the cover art right there in front of you, the exchange of a couple of words with the knowledgeable guy behind the counter, the breaking of those annoying plastic covers, the suddenly urgent need to find the nearest CD player...
Venturing further up Lexington, trying not to look at my guidebook too much (I figure I must've been advertising to locals that I was some kind of tourist), after about fifteen or twenty blocks I hit the intersection with Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard, turned left and headed into Harlem proper.
Harlem looks like it's doing pretty well for itself these days - any stereotyped images of rundown urban decay were quickly dashed by the immediately obvious encroachment of gentrification. Still, it was hardly peace and quiet - as I went to cross the street a young man and woman started up about something, wailing in each other's faces to disapproving looks. Yelling at them to stop came from a large woman on the pavement nearby, seated at a wooden table with a sack of what must have been chess pieces and a pile of boards (something I saw a bit of as I continued on). Must have been bad for business...
Reaching the intersection with Malcolm X Boulevard, the major crossroads of the suburb, I decided to leak back off the main drag and see a bit of the neighbourhood. Like the constancy of the horns and sirens, the dominating sound of these sidestreets was that of construction: circular saws, dump trucks et al. A quick stroll through Marcus Garvey Park and I was back on Lexington, heading south in search of a quick Latino feed that never eventuated.
Continuing with the theme of the day, the first stop of the evening's festivities was a venue but not live music - John Zorn's The Stone at the bottom of Avenue C, for a Latino film night. Getting there a little early, I decided to wander one block east to get a peek at Avenue D, the edge of Alphabet City and indeed the streets of the island, sometime home of saxophonists Charlie Parker and Dale Barlow (Steely Dan also give it a mention).
So I take my seat at The Stone, aptly named (prominent absence of bar and accompanying furniture), and the film collector running the night announces that we have about half a dozen local Salsa legends in our midst, notably Jimmy Bosch (who I later saw on Friday night). The movies were wicked, starting from early 20s footage of a Cuban son band (bright whites and cane hats) all the way through to a mindblowing 50s era descarga, live on TV.
After a while it turned into a bit of a local reminiscence fest with the old Salsa guys, so I bailed and headed to the opposite corner of the island to scout out some of the clubs I'd heard of on the Upper West Side. I found Smoke in the hundreds somewhere - stonking organ trio sitting on a turnaround for about ten minutes, but the place was packed to the rafters and a drinks minimum that was a bit too maximum for me. Half a dozen blocks further south was Cleopatras Needle, again quite full - these places were more schmick restaurants with music than clubs to hang at, which wasn't really my vibe at the time (do enough gigs myself in that world), so I ended up walking for about another ten blocks to the nearest Metro - not much to see up there that time of night.
Headed back to the Village and Smalls - didn't care who was on cause I knew it was going to be huge and it was, a quintet run by the bassplayer. Here for the first time, in that tiny basement, I got to feel and see and hear the intensity that I'd only heard about from my fellow muso friends back in Oz. Everyone was so into it, so into doing a great job, so into creating amazing music right there on the bandstand. No slackers, no half-ass playing, no band member too drunk or stoned (from what I could tell)....everyone's soloing and comping were massive, everyone's tone was huge...the live sound again was amazing - no feedback, no level issues. This was the real thing, a New York Jazz club where new music was being performed and created, and, thanks to it being reasonably affordable, a place to hang and meet guys and get into musical adventures....

New York - Alone (Again)

2006-10-05T13:56:00.000Z

Tuesday 19th September

After truly incredible weather to start the trip, a white sky set the scene for our breakfast mission, a wander into Tribeca, in roughly the same area as last night. Warehouses sporting trendy shops was the order of the day, and we came across the first proper deli that I'd seen. This place was WIKKID - think your local store but with a massive salad bar and hot food bar right in the front door. It was time for another tourist box-tick - I ordered a lox bagel with cream cheese and took the complimentary pickle. The nice blonde lady next to me ordered the same and DJ was most impressed at me, thinking I was some kind of local. He regularly gets impressed about stuff like that.

On a brief side note, we'd been checking out the 'form' since I touched down, and I have to say we were both rather impressed. Must be all that proper food, gym culture, space to move and such...it's been a while for poor old DJ, and I had hopes for him but it just didn't happen, oh well...meanwhile, I bought a statuette of Liberty for eight bucks for my speshal frenn back in London (and y'all know where THAT got me!) at some bodgy store Downtown before I farewelled comrade DJ, thoroughly chilled from the weekend's activities.
And so it was that I was alone, a travelling experience I still feel a little unaccustomed to. I proceeded to ring the people I knew in town, and got through to Sean. As these things go, he had a solo gig that night not far from the hostel, and so I basically walked the streets until then. My first destination was 'the Village', home to almost all the clubs and the scene I was after. Starting from the Metro on West 14th Street, I wandered down Seventh Avenue in the grey afternoon, totally succumbed to the traveller's amazed daze.
A lot of the clubs I was after just seemed to appear before my eyes - Smalls, Fat Cat, Village Vanguard, SOBs. Peripheral vision would draw me to beautiful side streets, framed circular with trees and the stoops (those classic stairways leading down to the pavement). At the end of the village I headed generally westward, including Houston (pronounced 'How-ston') Street, trendy Soho, Canal Street and its plethora of two-dollar stores...
Finding myself on the Bowery, I stumbled past the Downtown Music Store, an actual avant-garde Jazz record store! There is one in the world! It's narrow rectangle comprised one wall entirely of the fruitiest stuff I'd ever seen, names I'd never remotely heard of. A find for any audiophile...

Dinner was at a pavement restaurant on Mulberry Street, central to tiny Little Italy. Dunno if it was all year around but the length of its three blocks were closed off for this crazy side show thing. Any questions about safety in New York were answered here - there was a cop on every corner and half a dozen at the end of the street.

For anyone who watches Seinfeld, my hostel on West 55th Street was directly above the Soup Nazi! Returning there before the night's hang, I fully checked out the closed shopfront (with sign saying 'Now Franchising') and tired old sign next door for Kenny Kramer's bus tour. Business ain't lookin so good dees deys...

It was mighty good to see Sean and meet his wife Echo - while I'd been entirely consumed by tourist activities, I wanted to also see some of the living, meet the people I knew there and share some of their experiences. From what I could glean from the both of them, times were difficult and it was a struggle, but they knew the reasons why they were there and they weren't about to bail.
Sean was hacking away at a solo gig the likes of which I knew all too well. The surroudings were a little schmicker than I was accustomed to, but it was the same vibe - clean, gleaming fixtures, piano herded into one corner by the chatty indifference of an audience too consumed with themselves and each other to notice. Still, like myself or any other player who's just keen to play and make a quid, Sean has an obvious appreciation of the day-job like aspect of these gigs, and as I sat and chatted with Echo, he willingly plugged away.
I bid them adieu in the next set break and headed to my next juncture, back up the top end of Seventh Avenue to the Village Vanguard. Earlier in the afternoon I nearly missed it - a tiny door with a red awning obscured from the street by scaffolding.
Paying my excessive cover and minimum for the late set, as I stepped past the cover charge guy and saw the room, the sight of the place really hit me. All the famous names and all the famous live recordings throughout the history - Coltrane, Rollins, Josh Redman et al, and a slightly nervous Bill Evans on that Sunday evening in 1961, the last time they would perform together before Scott La Faro died a week later. The room looked old, and smelled damp, but it was the original and there was no denying it.
The late set was the Fred Hersch trio with Drew Gress and Eric MacFarlane (right surname?) - a smattering of people littered the front and I took place by myself near the bar up the back. Fred's recorded work is nothing short of stellar and tonight he didn't disappoint at all. I couldn't believe how good the piano sounded, as well as the overall live sound, something which I would discover at every single gig I saw through the week.
Satisfied with the evening's performance, not wishing to bother Fred, I somehow took a wrong turn and got lost on the way out, before making my way to Fat Cat, the late night hang. There seemed to be a bandstand in the middle of pool tables, as well as much needed internet (I walked the entire island for a week and found about three cafes, all quite expensive), so I pulled up a pint of something and proceeded forthwith...and then took the late night Metro home! After 12.30 pm! Another box ticked about this place.....

New York - Monday

2006-10-05T13:37:00.000Z

Monday 18th September

Our morning wanderings took us back past Ground Zero, this time in the garish light of morning. Construction has already started on the horrific new tower they're going to build there - I remember reading in an architectural magazine not long after 9-11 about various proposals and some writer suggested the idea of not having to actually build some new gigantic structure there. Did that have to happen?
Traversing the site on some elevated caged walkway, we hit the Hudson River and came back around the island toward Battery Park, the towers of Newark standing at attention to us from the other side.
I was initially reluctant (and with good reason) but the morning's cheesy tourist mission was the Statue of Liberty. Five gazillion people and a massive security check later, the ferry came past the front of her and it was amazing - once again, smaller than I expected but no less impressive. Walked all over, up on the pedestal, down by the river, all around. The stillness of the harbour was once again incredible, all encompassing of ones senses.
Afterwards, DJ took me to another couple of tick-box tourist sites; Washington Square, in the Village, student hang from NYU; Union Square, a bit dodgy; and then to the East Village, like Camden Town but far less grubby and a whole lot trendier.
DJ was good enough to give the Blue Note a go the night before, so on his last night in town I left it up to him. Sadly (!) being barred from entry to 'Hogs and Hooters' in Chelsea cause DJ had no ID(ea), we ended up in the Meatpacking district, in some bar he remembered from his past time here, with a lit-up floor straight out of 'Saturday Night Fever', ending up shooting the breeze with a married Aussie bloke and his gay mate out for some drinks at 2AM before work the next day. That kinda town!....

New York - Saturday In The Park

2006-10-03T12:00:00.000Z

Sunday September 17th

....and awoke, to the constant sound of sirens and horns! Jet-lagged and exhausted enough for them not to keep me awake, I knew from the moment I woke that they had remained ceaseless through the night.
DJ had run off to watch a football match, and so on my first morn I was left alone to wander the three or so blocks up from the hostel to Columbus Circle, the bottom left hand corner of Central Park. Stopping off at the nearest deli, I was wiped out by the choice, and that's what it's all about there. Above any deli counter there are at least half a dozen different panels with bagel fillings, sandwhich toppings, different combinations of whatever you want. I thinking that the vibe of the street-eating New Yorker is to charge in and demand a very specific pre-set order, as opposed to my gluttinous wide-eyed bedazzlement.
Settling on some sort of festival of eggplant and garlic, I traversed the Circle to the huge stone entrance and let the park envelop me in it's wooded glory. It was about midday by then and while there were plenty of people, the park never seemed crowded. Walkway melted into roadway into woods and hills, all carefully molded out of the countryside. I found myself regularly stumbling onto fountains and statues...and the squirrels! Out in the day, no time to waste, in groups of sometimes half a dozen. Hardcore, man! I wondered why they weren't ever near the hotdog stands when I figured that they looked so hardcore that they probably owned all the hotdog stands (and had shares in the Yellow Cabs)...
One of the more prominently beautiful features that I'd failed to notice from years of Sesame Street and movies were the rocky bluffs that can be found across the entire park, natural elevation from the rabble of passers-by.

As I continued wandering, these bluffs seemed to flow upwards alongside the paths heading northward.
I really couldn't believe how truly huge the place was, how much space there seemed for everyone. I stopped for a time at the top of the central reservoir - a huge expanse of water right in the middle of the park, stretching to either side. Along it's western edge were the magnificent apartment buildings of the Upper East Side, below it, the rest of the park and the beginning of Downtown. Incredible.

Reaching the very top of the park in a couple of hours, I discovered Duke Ellington circle - Edward Kennedy himself, standing by an open grand piano (big stick), supported by three pillars each comprised of three naked maidens...yep, that's a memorial I think any male Jazz muso would be happy with! Not far from Duke Ellington circle was Tito Puente way....streets named after musicians - now we're talkin'!

I met DJ later on at the Guggenheim, dismal from the street due to renovation scaffolding, but the space itself was gorgeous - I admit it was the first thing in New York I found to be smaller than I expected, but no less impressive. DJ's architectural knowledge commanded us to take the lift to the top and walk down the spiral, as is apparently the proper way.
Back into the park, it was later and cooler in the afternoon and many more New Yorkers were out enjoying the lungs of Manhattan. We crossed to Central Park West and sat by the Museum of Natural History before subwaying it to Brooklyn.
Can I just indulge in a slightly nerdy rave about how good the subway is? Why, thank you kind reader....

itz reely cool cos there are express trains which get you round real fast as well as local trains which stop at all the stops and it's also well cheaper than the tube cos I paid $US25 for a week to go everywhere as opposed to £24 for zone 1 and 2 and of course unlike the tube no huge escalatory journeys down into the bowels of creation and there's also air conditioning on the carriages....

Ahem....my eerily constant fascination compelled DJ to threaten a quiz when I got back - I think I must need a special hat or something....

Emerging at Brooklyn Heights, we rolled down to the East River for some incredible views of lower Manhattan, then simply wandered up to where the bridge started.
It was probably the highlight of my trip, walking across Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan, with the sun low in the sky and that wall of buildings, the magic of the island, all laid out in front of you. Travellers in a daze of bewilderment had to take care to stay to the left of the path to avoid the heat of oncoming cyclists in their dedicated right lane (I got yelled at a couple of times!).

....From the Statue of Liberty and ferries on the harbour to Downtown and Midtown, then Empire State, standing out from the 'crowd', then the river and the other bridges, Manhattan, 59th Street and Washington et al, to the expanse of Brooklyn and far off to the Verrazano Narrows, the mouth of the harbour, the start and the end of it all.....
Ending up near Town Hall, DJ took me to Ground Zero. While fully aware of the tragedy and weight and significance that the place had, I didn't feel moved to sadness. It just felt strange.
DJ was a little reluctant at first, as was I (as I always am when trying to sell something called 'Jazz' to my non-muso friends), but true to form, he gave it a go and we headed into Greenwich Village for the first of my marathon gig haul for the week. West 4th Street was first stop, none other than the Blue Note, for the Bad Plus and Jason Moran's Bandwagon, the first solely piano trio, the second same plus guitar.
From both outfits it was heavygoing for these ears - I gotta say that I'm still coming round to Bad Plus, and tonight's set wasn't the most enthralling. It was something about the Chicagoesque blues and occasional freeness of the Bandwagon which left me a bit more satisfied. Or maybe it was those incredible slices of pizza from Joe's Pizza just round the corner (there were no toppings, only cheese and the sauce, and it was that good!)....

Dumped On The Phone

2006-10-02T11:20:00.000Z

...So I got dumped on the phone last night. First time for everything, right? It was on the set break at Oxo, and I'd been trying to ring her all day and talk over what happened the night before, so I finally got through to her and it was categorical, there was no correspondence to be entered into. We said our respective apologies, and I knew there was no point in trying to keep it going, and she was fairly direct.
The night before had been her 21st. She'd told me her ex would be there, her ex of not too long before we'd hooked up, and how he kinda looked like me, and at first I was okay with all this in my tried (well tried)and true manner of being easygoing and accepting with these things. But of course, rocking up to the party after a couple of reds and consuming vast quantities more of same seemed to change my sensibilities somewhat.
She was doing her social butterfly thing and that was okay, but it seemed whenever I looked over that she was hanging with this guy. It got to the end of the night and I wondered where she was, and there I run into them on the stairwell. So I slink back into a couch and hold my head for a bit and next thing I'm outside and she's apologising tremendously but I must have appeared not to have been listening, mumbling rubbish about not being mucked around ever again. So I left, in a cab, by myself.
She told me I was a great Guy and all but she'd finally realised that she didn't want to be in a relationship with anybody right now. And it was done. Back on for the second set, so Caroline picked a bunch of tunes for the Dumped set ('Mean To Me', 'What A Difference A Day Makes' et al), and we had a laugh and such.
After a warm September, the Autumn is finally here, and while it remains my favourite season of all, it's still that stepping out the front door at the start of the day and realising you're wearing too much, or not enough, and a breeze picks up and the weather gets up and inside you, you get caught out. I seem to feel it the worst on my upper arms, biceps, in between elbow and shoulder. I made sure I was wearing plenty of clothes today, that I would keep nice and warm and that I kept myself well fed and watered, as I was reminded of an eve not too long ago, wandering around Leicester Square by myself, in a big blue coat to keep me warm, dropping into bars to sit for a while, watching the lights, wandering, not knowing really where to go or what to do. No tears, no joy, just alone, but okay, I guess.
You just wear it. And the whole thing is kinda good in a way. After the three year epic with whatsername, there went a long enough time before any involvement with anyone. Then there was one, for a while, now this other one. It was the whole thing of getting back on the horse, so in a way it kind of feels like mission completed. And they were both gorgeous and we had fun, and I'm still here and alive and running my own show all right.
And now, friends, marks a new chapter in the love life of your correspondent. I'm feeling like I'm gonna go solo for a while, just see how that goes. For the first time ever I just want to do my own thing, not feel as though I desperately need someone to make my life complete. Dunno how long that's gonna last, but it's okay for now....

NOO YOICK!

2006-09-20T04:57:00.000Z

....so it's 10 to 1 AM on Wednesday, and after virtually walking for four days, I'm sitting at the first easily accessible internet I've found since I got here. It's near the bar, which is near a bunch pool tables. In the middle of these pool tables is piano bass and drums....this is a VENUE! and a reasonably well known one, but it's strangely also pool hall and internet cafe as well. Part of the mystery I suppose of this incredible town....

More soon my loves.

New York - City of My Dreams....

2006-09-16T05:02:00.000Z

Kings Cross Station, Saturday morning, 7AM

No Piccadilly line between Kings Cross and Leicester Square. Due to UNplanned engineering works I imagine. A brief heart flutter at the prospect of missing my flight...but no, I can Victoria line it to Green Park and pick it up from there. I suppose the ol' girl wouldn't let me free without some sort of spanner in the works.
But I don't have to put up with that for a while, dear friends! No more old world grubby cramped inefficiency for me this week! No, I'm off to traverse the shining ocean to the west, on a much-needed escape to a mythical city far across the water, with it's tall, shining towers and expansive bridges, where the streets have no name - indeed, the city of my dreams.
Weekend jaunts to the continent have been loads of fun, but this day marked the the first time ever that I would be going to a place I've always really wanted to go. Throughout my years growing up in small town country New South Wales, I remember having four or five separate and distinct dreams, each quite vivid and realistic, about walking those avenues, seeing those buildings (eating those hot dogs!). Back then the Big Apple might as well have been the moon. But not this day.
Recent plaguing doubts of career and future seemed to fade with each tube station passed. And, as the Picadilly line surfaced and I stared out the window at the ol' girl's tired buildings and pervasive grey gloom, the realisation immediately dawned on me that it's not every day you get to fulfil a lifelong dream.....
The flight seemed to vanish in an instant; consequently of course, the bus from the airport seemed to take forever, the promise of that island only intensified by the traffic of the Long Island Expressway. But it shifted, eventually, the brown of Brooklyn cleared and there was that wall of buildings, lining the east side of Manhattan, immediately imposing and welcoming.
An easy meet up with DJ at the fabulous halls of Grand Central Station was followed by my first walk down those grand streets and avenues. Obviously being able to catch a train everywhere, I would have nothing less than to walk the whole way to our hostel near Times Square.
I'd seen pictures, but a real sense of the length and breadth of the streets can't be fathomed until you're there, and you can see all the way up or across the island, all those tall buildings keep your gaze forever skyward. DJ, who had lived on the island for a year, was good to put up with my constant stopping and pointing ("Wow, that's the Chrysler Building!"), and cheesy thumbs-up pics at Times Square ensued.
First stop was the Empire State Building, which took countless security checks and a maelstrom of people to overcome, but the 83rd floor beckoned and it was quite a sight. The stars of a pitch-black sky had fallen upon the lattice of the bridges and the islands towering, glittering domes, with darkened cliffs of the buildings below forming the chasms through which the lava red energy of the avenues poured, raw and relentless into the night.

Compared to how the rest of my week would turn out, we took that first night pretty easy. I think we went to a vegetarian restaurant in Soho (also quite unlike the rest of the food that would end up consuming me) and then some bar just down the road. The girls were all a bit blonde and generic - DJ agreed with me on a certain Essex vibe, and he referred to the local phrase 'bridge and tunnel' (i.e, that's where they all come from for the weekend).
Weary from the day, I drifted off easily to the sounds of constant car horns and sirens, never-ending....

Cuplla things....

2006-09-15T15:10:00.000Z

Peace and love to all and sundry,

My most profound apologies to my more avid readers as to the absence of recent entries. This has been due mainly to the turning of a larger portion of my attention towards more pressing matters (i.e, my impending deportation), and henceforth my subsequent neglect and lack of focus upon the written word and its concurrent deliverance to YOU, my humble reader, of that highest quality of semi-factual prose throughout this blog from which you have hopefully come to expect.

Right, now after all that ridiculous wordsmithing, two things:

* - Those of you who wish to follow my adventures on the May tour and hols with my folks, I'm going to start putting the ones I've already done and entering new ones where they actually happened chronologically. That is, you're gonna have to delve back into previous entries to check em out, but I'll put a little note in to tell you where to find them.
I felt that by writing about things that happened four months ago it was lagging behind and shifting against the electrokarma and purpose of the whole blog thing, so there you go.

* - Tomorrow at midday, I'm flying to NEW YORK CITY! Yep, that's right folks, Big Apple and all that, staying for a week, just for a look see - meeting up with housemate DJ for a bit, but also got a bunch of muso mates over there as well as referrals to a ton of gigs, plus all the (as my French housemate X says) touristIC stuff like Central Park (staying not far from there), Empire State, Brooklyn Bridge yaddah yaddah, plus a cuppla greasy hotdogs, some lox bagels, and the odd cup of CWOHfee....I've been dreaming about this day my whole life, and it's finally happening! WOOHOO! Can't wait....

Brotherly electrohugs to y'all, and more soon, hopefully from Manhattan Island!....

P.S.Third thing I suppose - check some new links on the sidebar over there....

On Tour - Hamburg

2006-09-06T10:21:00.000Z

Wednesday 24th May - Hamburg

The venue was in average city type area in the shadow of a giant white telecommunications tower, so once I got past this, an overcast day found me wandring long wide streets bordering on a huge park. Quite contrary to central London, the whole thing had that large spread out feel, perhaps a little reminiscent of Fort Lauderdale (uggh!), and the American vibe would definitely continue with the place I was headed.
Most people I know, when recounting their travels of the continent, speak of endlessly beautiful churches and nice meals and beers set on a gorgeous landscape of rolling green fields, snowcapped alps or hot Mediterranean beaches - the cutesy trappings of the Old World, saturated (sometimes beyond comprehension for us New Worlders) in culture and history....
Screw that man! I'm a touring rock (folky klezmer) star muso, dammit, I got no time for that crap! Nope, after nine nights of sleeping on a bus, playing gigs, drinking myself stupid and living off a scattered array of meat and cheese and egg and chocolate, I'm just wandering the streets in a daze, alone, in that daily window between falling out of the bus and the soundcheck, happy to drop in on whatever I come across while heading for one particular desintation - the Reeperbahn.
Wander the winding lanes of Soho after midnight, floating amongst the flotsam and jetsam of the creatures of the dark, and you'll find a myriad of gay bars and sex shops and toy and video stores and brothels, their colourful circus proudly open for business in the wee small hours, but ne'er to be seen by the garish light of day. No such hidden mentality exists in central Hamburg.
I get to a major intersection, and notice on my left a large cylindrical cluster of trees, at the centre top of which I could just make out the scalp of a stone head. Large human representations aren't something we get much of back home, so I figured that was worth a look on the way back. But for now....
I turn to the right and there it is, the Reeperbahn, in all it's full smutty glory. It must stretch on for a couple of kilometres, four grand lanes. As I strolled down this American style boulevard, lined both sides with massive video stores and live sex shows and cinemas and parlours and such, I was reminded of something someone had said on the bus earlier, about the US military presence after the war and what they'd brought with them. Doors were wide open, and it's Wednesday afternoon.
I was amazed by the sheer unashamed size and length of it. Anything you're looking for, whatever you want, in any combination you want, it's there. Descending the hill, my bodgy tourist map pointed me towards a grittle of side streets on a rise to the left where I would find my second destination - Helenastrasse.
Took a little while but I found it - one short straight street, lined either side with glowing red windows and the madams on their stools. At either end the street was gated with large red iron walls, labeled with a sign forbidding entry to those under 18 and, as is generally known, women. Apparently if you're female and you enter, the prostitutes come out and attack you in the street. There was talk of us all going down and disgusing Soph as a man, but needless to say it never eventuated. She didn't miss much - once again, it's the middle of a weekday, and besides a couple of manufactured saucy glares, it's pretty quiet.
It's time to head back to the gig, and as I wend my way back towards the top of the Reeperbahn, I pass the obligatory rough looking bars with the squads of headshaven blokes with big jackets, sitting in doorways. The red light district in Amsterdam seemed to have some sort of old-world charm - this place was just edgy. Any kind of novelty had completely worn off by now.
Returning to the major intersection, I decided to investigate this mysterious grove of trees which seemed to grow taller and larger as I approached it. While occupying a prominent raised location, there seemed no front entrance to the street, and yet the space inside was obviously quite sizeable, with presumably some large stone statue in the middle. Entering the trees, I found myself clambering up an embankment for quite a way until I got to low circular stone wall.
I looked up and there he was, head bowed, almost staring at me, clenched fists one atop the other meeting at his torso, holding a giant sword with it's tip at his feet, like something straight out of Gotham City. Encircling the statue I found the entrance stairway at the back, and at its base a plaque - Count von Bismarck.
An eerieness pervaded the entire site - closer inspection revealed square stone reliefs of incredibly muscular young men, loinclothed, in various Classical poses (I would later find this sort of thing in a park in Bremen). The place didn't seem to get too many visitors, and consequently a worrying number of spraypainted swastikas (accompanied with what looked like local chapter numbers) were littered throughout...
The gig wasn't much to speak of, the last official date of the tour. On this, the second last night of the trip, our bus driver, ex-army, who up until now had been generally well received amongst the band, dropped a comment openly displaying his opinions of the orientation of our openly gay accordion player. Right there, in the dressing room. I couldn't believe it....love that shit....
Most of the band took hotel rooms for the night except for a couple of us who stayed on the bus to save the money, but as midnight turned I legged it from there to the lobby for some birthday drinks - the guys were really nice about it, they'd bought me an inflatable keyboard for a present and signed a card and everything.
After there we strolled back down the hill, found a Turkish restaurant, and kicked back with a hukkah for about an hour. Never having (or since) smoked a cigarette, I thought it'd make me sick, but instead it gave me this all over body rush that had me stomping my feet on the ground and laughing non-stop for about five minutes. It was nice as well just to chill with these guys, shoot the breeze for a bit, perhaps get to know a little my temporary work colleagues....

On Tour - Heidelberg and Frankfurt

2006-09-05T14:09:00.000Z

Saturday 20th May - Heidelberg

...This part of the tour gets a bit hazy, not the least because there was actually a mistake in the organisation of the dates. Our first gig in Bonn was fine, but it was originally meant to be Frankfurt and then Heidelberg, but it was only because of Soph looking at the poster on an in-store gig in Bonn that she noticed that the venues were advertised as the other way around!
Some frantic calls I'm sure thus ensued, but a slight change of plan was all that was needed.
Our venue was the old train station, a large but cute house shaped building sitting right next to the railway as it tunneled into the hillside, a short walk from the old town. Looking like a well-worn tourist stop, old Heidelberg is classic oldey worldey Europe (Gothic architecture, jewelery and chocolate stores ad nauseam) sitting in the middle of a narrow valley at the edge of the modern city, overlooked by a giant 17th century castle still relatively well preserved, visible from every street.
The daily window between brunch and soundcheck opened up, and after umming and arring and mooching around I figured I may never be here again, so dashing up the back lanes of the village and up the steep slope, I found some random staircases that led past absolutely gorgeous old period homes, buried in trees.
Scaling the top of all that, it levelled out above the castle ruins, and the tourist entrance appeared. With limited time I spedwalked through, ogling as much as I could. Strangely, in one of those vague moments that seem to happen to me too often, where I know I should've done something plainly obvious but didn't for some inexplicable reason, I had left my camera behind.
Incredible! A hazelnut brown wall of four or five storeys of almost perfectly preserved windows, stone sills and frames, stood high and alone into the air above maybe what used to be the moat? A carpet of green led ones gaze to a tower at the corner. Strangely reminiscent of some sort of expensive nut-filled chocolate, a major chunk a couple of stories high had fallen off the tower, revealing a cross section within of how the wall was built. The entire vista, castle, valley, town, was glazed in a perfect sunset.
And that's about all I had time for.
After the gig we met up with this audience member who took us to the nightlife, a cavernous dive not far from the bus, where he then proceeded to crack on to everyone in the band! After he got the vibe and left, some drunken mayhem dancing ensued before the wander back, before the speed off into the black, the next autobahn, the next town....

Sun 21st May - Frankfurt.

Not too much to report here I'm afraid. Suburban gig, like Bonn. Miles from town. Rainy day. Scrabble. End of Story.
No, hang on, there was one funny thing...after the gig, there was a DJ and this open free dancing session, where single middle aged people presumably from the nearby neighbourhood leeched out of the woodwork to come and let themselves go, to 'freely interpret' the sounds, while of course standing the regulatory couple of metres away from each other. Trying to stifle our laughter, the band couldn't resist joining in - I think D the guitarist grabbed a tablecloth as a cape or something before being told off by a regular....fruity!....

..."as the light wind lives or dies"....

2006-08-21T17:00:00.000Z

Hello All,
So it's central London in the late English summer, as the sun noticeably gets lower in the sky with each day that passes, and the warmth surely and quickly bleeds from the air (to who knows where) as the old girl returns to what feels like her natural state.
The season is moving, the times they are a changing, a constant reminder of the uncertainty of my own situation....
....so as you can see it's the same old rollercoaster....feeling fantastic one day, other stuff the next and a whole jumble more in the meantime......but it's also an intriguingly exciting time too.
Big news of late - I'm going to NYC in September for a week!
It had been a couple of months since Ireland with my dad, and I'd basically gone the rest of the summer without tripping anywhere. I was thinking maybe a region somewhere (southern Italy? Spain?), but then housemate DJ bought his weekend break to the Big Apple and it got me a thinkin'...
So there I was motoring through Hanon chapter 1* wondering about where to go and then it was a big HANG ON!? What about all those distinct separate dreams you had throughout your childhood, visually distinctive dreams, about walking the avenues? What about all that music and the history? What about dodgy hot dogs and lox bagels? C'mon man, there's no choice here, it's five hours across the Atlantic! One of the three places in the globe that you've always wanted to go! The city of your dreams, man!....
And so it was done. I expect the first cuppla days to be partying with housemate, then when he goes I'm thinking of checking out some gigs and hanging with a couple of muso mates over there. When I'm not distracted by the 57 other things on my mind at the moment, I'm literally excited beyond belief....
So, as further procrastination to those of you aching to read of the end of the tour and Paris and Ireland, I shall offer you a piece I often think of at this time of year, probably my favourite poem in all literature.
Until soon, loved ones....

To Autumn
by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind,
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

* technical exercises for piano

London Calling - A Sunny Day In Camden Town

2006-08-04T14:57:00.000Z

I don't know how anyone else wakes up, guess I've never thought to ask, but for me it's usually a highly confusing tornado of memories and music and things to do in the day ahead. Here in the nation's capital at the moment it's warm enough to keep the window open, so the noise of the council flats and the street somehow infuses into this morning jumble, waking me into a greater confusion with which to start the day. But it's the sounds of the hood, so I kinda like it....
So, as I've said before, this new flat rocks! I'm feeling totally at home in it, holed up there in a rather grim looking block of old council flats, but it's all right. It's a room to sleep and have my keyboard set up and put stuff. Now I think of it, it kind of reminds me of the old B and G days where I had pretty much the same thing, and how much I enjoyed that. Screw the whole big house thing - as nice as that is, the flat vibe is going great for now.
Now I'm smack bang in the middle of ex-council flats, there seems to be even more people in the general vicinity. Woken into a hungover fug by the BT guy come to connect us, I just ended up hanging around the kitchen and staircase for a while to make sure that no-one came in to rob the place.
Eventually moving to the keyboard, I ended up doing about half an hour on 'I Loves You Porgy', real slow, first only the melody, then harmonizing two parts, then three. To any players out there, it's simple stuff I know but I've been really trying to get the techinque together lately. Age old problems are finally starting to define themselves, and in doing so becoming easier to remedy.
Brushing my teeth before going into the job, I hear the workmen outside through the bathroom laughing and yelling and carrying on as they've been doing all week, taking the scaffolding down from outside our building. This particular morning sees two of them scraping all the paint off the little railings that define the edges of the tiny little courtyards outside each one of the flats. Watching them hunched over with their scrapers, this is one of those days where I feel quite happy and lucky to be a musician.
One of them turns up the radio and it's the new Lily Allen single, 'Smile'. Musical analysis brain goes into overdrive, a reflex action.....faster reggae feel, two chords, melody largely within an octave so everyone can sing along. It's in that miserable, apathetic English talking singing voice that I suppose most people associate with here.
Analysis finishes....well, do I like it?
Well, maybe yeah, kind of....
Every once in a while a dumb pop song comes along and it seems to just fit the mood you're in, and with the summer and holidays and everything it just slotted in, didn't leave! I wasn't listening to the words, no-one does anyway. They didn't mean anything for what I was drawing from the tune, because it provided that bittersweet soundtrack to your day. I think it was Neil Finn that said once that the best pop music is the happiest sounding chords with the saddest sounding lyrics? That's basically what the blues is about, to me anyway, the avoidance of emotional absolutes, the crossover, those feelings when things are happy and sad and other stuff at the same time. And that was all okay....
I now have a bicycle, and London is mine! The Londoner without personal transport any faster than walking tends to navigate around town largely through the stark modernism of the tube map, further disoriented by the fact that it's all underground. On a bike you start to see the bits inbetween the tube stations. The ride to my day job takes me past the craziness of Kings Cross station and down Gray's Inn Road, so for about ten minutes there it spreads out, gets a little quieter and greener.
So this particular day, I suppose a mental image I can leave you with is your humble correspondent, mid morning on a bright hot London summer's day, riding along, grinning, humming a silly song, all edged with the thought that this nice little niche life I've carved out for myself here could all wrap up in six months.....
I get home after an afternoon of no work, don t-shirt and shorts and stroll down to my local pound shop to buy some cleaning supplies. One thing about this part of town is that you can wear anything you bloody well like down there and no-one will bat an eyelid.
I walk back up the street with my domestic haul and a little girl loses a ball across the street....the grimace as it somehow dodges all the cars and ends up on the other side of the road....I look back and she's hugging the fence, all sheepish, so I do my good deed for the day, walk over to the other side of the road and throw it back.
You see, folks, the people of Camden Town, they respect each other. We share the love in this community. On this same stretch of my street only a week before, I was walking home with my Sainsburys curry wondering how I was going to cook it since there's no microwave in the flat....and what do I find sitting under a tree? A microwave! Walked up, made sure there was nothing inside it, picked it up and took it home. The folks on my street are giving as well!....Camden Town, what a place!

(quasi)Gig Review - John Abercrombie with Adam Nussbaum

2006-07-31T18:14:00.000Z

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....

2006-07-31T18:13:00.000Z

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

On Tour - Bonn

2006-07-20T16:55:00.000Z

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!......

Meaningless Minutiae

2006-07-17T12:35:00.000Z

"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....

July 7 2005

2006-07-07T15:41:00.000Z

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)

2006-07-07T15:16:00.000Z

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.....

On Tour - Paris

2006-07-03T22:00:00.000Z

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!....

On Tour - Brussels

2006-06-27T16:45:00.000Z

Tue 16th May - Brussels

Woke up to find us parked next to some old botanical gardens thingy just on the edge of the city. Our little mobile home was parked on the curb and would be so for the next 48, making us basically the best paid homeless street people in town that week.
The venue was pretty similar to Amsterdam - basement vibe.....ticket count wasn't too sure for early on, but it got much better come gig time. It was more for the people from the label, to see what the show was all about, and they dug it big time. Late night cab to the Turkish kebab street for some ridiculous slabs of meat and bread which are always gluttinously delicious - the late night muso's curse.....

Wed 17th May - Brussels

Strangely enough, our one day off through the whole tour was after the second gig, so we wandered around town for a bit...a nice enough place, very French. Left the crew after a while to scout out some touristy things and take photos I'm sure everyone else has taken. Vietnamese for dinner, drinks after, and then those of us left over, in a vain attempt to find some late night carnage, followed the accordion player round a bunch of gay clubs....on tour, eh!

N.B.

2006-06-27T16:30:00.000Z

Apologies for any of you waiting for new entries with baited breath, as it's been kinda nuts lately....just briefly, in a bizarre turn of events to go down in the annals of sharehousing, I've been homeless since Thursday, staying on the floor at Mr N's place, with my few belongings distributed amongst north London, until the new house comes together sometime towards the end of the week. I've got this new girl, but she's taking off, also at the end of the week. I think I'm about to lose some teaching for the new school year, but the gigs are up to about three a week which is good. Oh yeah, and my visa runs out in six months, and so in the face of challenging prospects I'm trying to figure out some way to stay here in this godforsaken maelstrom.....

Bloody hell!

Oh well, on with the show....

In My Solitude....

2006-06-19T13:30:00.000Z

Sometimes you just wanna run away from it all.

It could all be going great guns, or it could all be going insane, or (and I'm seeing the world more and more like this as I get old and wizened) both and other stuff too. But just sometimes, you want to leave it all behind and find a spot in the world where you get to do just want you want to do, responsibility free, with absolutely no-one else around. A fantasy of solitude, if you will.

Mine is living in a hut in the middle of the forest with a nine foot Steinway and a tape player learning to play stride piano. I could happily burn up twelve hour days eating baked beans out of a can and fully absorbing the intricacies of Tatum, Erroll, JJ Johnson and all the others....build up a massive left hand while watching my body waste away.....

So that's mine. What's yours?

Just curious.....

On Tour (finally!) - Amsterdam

2006-06-16T17:20:00.000Z

In a nutshell, my honours year was about six months of hanging out with my girlfriend who lived across the road, and about six months of intense catch-up practice and research. It got so full-on there towards the end that I literally couldn't take a free breath until the night of my graduation recital, in fact, until the very last chord (I remember it being more of a cluster* actually).
And so it was that my last Sunday in the Big Smoke was a bit of an echo of this. After taking Girl out to breakfast and putting her on the Bakerloo line, the next ten hours were madly rushing around, making tons of tedious phonecalls and emails, ridiculous last-minute leavings, and then at about 10PM I realised I still had to PACK! Nevertheless, the cab swung by and I loaded up for the short trip to Sophie's for the coach, leaving midnight Sunday.
And so it was, after two weeks of madness, it wasn't until the bus set off and I cracked open that first beer bottle (of many) that I could breathe easy, sink into the upstairs couch, and talk a little with the seven or so people whose pockets I would be living in for the next two weeks.
Now, sure enough, I could give you a classic rave about each date, but I've decided instead to provide a series of vignettes, if you will, little grabs of each place I seem to remember....

Monday 15th May (bus from Earls Court to Dover, ferry to Calais, drive to Amsterdam)....

Trying to read 'A Clockwork Orange' on the ferry at 5AM, with a beer. Note to self, o my brothers - nadsat is far less tedious and easier to read when you're drunk!

Monday 15th May - Amsterdam

A and I made for the nearest hash bar and then walked off into town. No real reason to stop, so we just kept going, for hours, until we found this place called Westerpark. Think the village where the hobbits live - a moat surrounding a very green park looking place with all these little huts on neat gravel streets, and it went for kilometres. Too curious to resist, Andy and I found one of the few bridges and wandered in, promptly getting lost, wondering if we would be suddenly be sprung upon by murderous Ewok-looking people and chopped up for sellable body parts...

It ended up being a complete Amsterdam experience:

1) Smoked some hash
2) Saw plenty of weirdos in town
3) Visited the little wood people in Westerpark
4) On the way back, saw some prostitution take place in a carpark

....lost in the Jordaan somewhere, we were surfing the old rolling cobblestones as they flowed down the street over tree roots towards one of the many bridges. On the corner was this gorgeous restaurant with people sitting having lunch....in the corner of my eye I picked up the flutter of sycamore leaves in a breeze.....what a beautiful place....

First gig rocked - basement vibe, and old mate Lucky dropped by (got him in for free) so we hung after for a bit.....all engaged and stuff, with his visa about to run out, he was destined for the homeland with his fiancee.....bye to yet another friend, for a while.....
Farewelling him out the side door I was bustled past by fellow band members, their arms full of consumables from the dressing room, destined for the bus. Okay, so I've been doing this for ten years and I finally hit a well-paid engagement, where everything is taken care of, and we're still racking stuff after the show? Nutty....

More soon....

* cluster - a collection of notes played simultaneously but not quite a chord, sometimes played with fist or open hand or perhaps buttocks if you're Frank Zappa....

THE COUNT IN

2006-06-12T17:24:00.000Z

A Thursday afternoon, long ago.... So I'm battling through my last week in cold London town, madly trying to reorganise my ridiculously busy teaching schedule, but of course I still managed to drop cute Japanese girl an email the next day, not expecting anything at all. Gotta give these things a go, right? And to my ultimate surprise she wrote back the next day with her mobile number! Bloody hell, I thought to myself, this is gonna happen, innit!? Right in the thick of it, at the worst possible time, just before I go away for a month. It's how it's always seemed to happen in the past. Oh well, it's not gonna stop me, right? I took the Thursday afternoon off the day job, funnily enough forgetting to tell anyone, and took my place on the pavement outside Green Park tube, wondering if I'd be able to recognise her on the Sea of Piccadilly. But sure enough, she emerged out of the melee and we took sandwiches and coffee into the park on a gorgeous London afternoon. The nine-month winter was finally over and we made our way to some shaded green. No pint-oversized confidence now, just me, her, and the pallid afternoon sun leaking through the leaves. Her English was a little slow but definite and intelligent, a suitable counterpoint to the native speaker sitting before her, bubbling away off a strange brew of nerves and caffeine high. Eventually I took a couple of deep breaths and levelled out, physically and mentally, and for the first time in I can't remember how long, I started to open up, chill out some, lying on my back on a sunny afternoon in a park (wow, when's the last time I did that?). Just the usual stuff, London, Oz, Japan, travel, all very amicable....she seemed to laugh a lot at my dumb joke-like statements...... We got to a natural pause in the flow and I asked her if she wanted to stroll some more. "No, I would like to sit here," she said slowly but surely, with those dark eyes and enigmatic smile, as the breeze sang softly through the boughs overhead.... She loves Brazilian music! My stars! AND she's going in two months to visit Salvador! Capital of Bahia, the African state of Brazil, home of music divine. I was instantly envious.... ......Well, I thought, there's nothing for it but to wander east to Guanabara, the hippest Brazilian club in town, to listen to some forro and drink cheap caipirinhas.... .....we get lost amongst the Circus and the theatres in the long afternoon.....the cool windowless club quickly melts the eve into night.... .......the music is crap so she knows another place, in the East End, some French Brazilian place...... .........yes you'll have to take me there after this one.........or the next one..... ......tube to Old Street...........tall palms indoors..........a table up the back........ ......dark eyes......smile..... .....lost...... A Friday Morning, long ago...... .......vapour..... .......herbal tea....... ......window in the kitchen....... .......a view across the terraces in the low morning sun....... .......wearing yesterday's clothes......... .......lost among the grim faces of a rush-hour crowd, while trying to hide the occasional smirk upon my own..... .......standing facing the girl in the tan jacket, with those dark, intelligent, humourous eyes and enigmatic smile...... ......"I'll see you soon, yeah?"....... ......"Yes."............ ......a peck on the lips in a crowded tube...... ......and gone.......

The Lead Up....

2006-06-12T13:20:00.000Z

....and the more that came in, the more it was actually going to happen. The biggest sub of them all, to date at least. G-Man had put my name forward for a short European tour with Sophie Solomon. Eleven shows in twelve days: Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, and a week across Germany. From full time office work and no gigs less than a year ago, I was about to do the real thing, on a bus, with a band.
After a bunch of phone calls between G-Man, the manager and Soph, I finally met her for a coffee in Portobello Road where she gave me a copy of the album and some charts. I already had the album at home funnily enough through G-Man, and so shortly thereafter I hooked into learning the material with great gusto. An all day rehersal was scheduled in about two weeks, more than enough time to get the show together.
Sure enough, the day came around, and I was well prepared. It's an amazing thought really - a proper show where I had recordings and charts and ample time in which to learn the material before a direct, time-efficient rehersal where everyone knew their parts and knew what was going on.
You mean like a REAL job!?
After getting the material together, my next thought was a clothing upheaval. If I'm gonna be a touring rockstar, I need to look like one! So for the next available sunday morning, I called up my two most supa-stylin' mates, D-Funk and Mr N, to accompany me upon an excursion through the rambling markets of Camden Town in search of a list of crucial items. A resounding success on all counts, I walked away with a new suede jacket, new hat, not one but two new pairs of shades, and two crevatts (although I forgot how to tie them as soon as I walked out of the shop, but I'm sure I'll remember one day!). Their services were kindly repaid with a free lunch of their choice from the markets, and then Mr N and I took a walk up to Primrose Hill for the usual view and obligatory ales at the local establishments.
The evening saw us retire to D-Funk's apartment, and that's where it all started to go a bit blue and hazy, so by the time the Scorpion Dog requried my alliance on a dodgy venture to the usual East End haunt, the night had taken a far more inebriated turn....
Finally getting to the jam session at Uncle Sam's in Dalston, Mr N and mate were already there amidst a sea of long weekend revellers. It didn't take him long to find a Brazilian photographer sitting near to us, and it took me even less time to find the cute Japanese girl sitting beside her. I'd been drinking for most of the day, so in an uncharacteristically total lack of hesitation whatsoever I just launched in. It must have been like something straight out of Coota RSL - loud drunken Aussie, pure class!
Somehow all the usual questions of how are you finding the place went to can I have your phone number, and I was amazed to find that she was obliging with her email address, which I thought might have been a blow-off, but it ended up in the phone anyway, somehow! I knew that through the oncoming week of life upheaval and teaching reorganisation, it'd be worth dropping a quick note, just to see how it went....

I Just Called....

2006-06-12T12:50:00.000Z

A Wednesday morning, long ago.....

Great! A free Wednesday morning. No little kiddie keyboard groups to battle with. The better part of two whole hours to go practice piano....

Sidling up to one of my preferred mistresses in room two down at Jaques Samuels, I dumped my stuff, eased onto the stool, started concentrating on breathing and posture, and laid my hands to the black and white....

Phone Call 1: didn't answer....left message....some teaching thing....deal with it later....

Right, back to the breathing....

Phone Call 2: answered strangely.....silly gig up north...said yes, then realised it would be no....handball it to D-Funk....deal with it later....

Okay, back to posture and breathing....hang on, someone tried to call while checking message two....

Phone Call 3: old mate G-Man offering me a European tour.....

Hold on a sec.....that's the kind of call you don't blow off. G-Man had been murmuring to me about this for some time now, but as I've found with most things in the freelance music world, I wasn't gonna start up a mortgage on it.

But this was for real.

Called him back straight away, and as he spoke more, I believed it more. And then I couldn't believe it!...

Gig Review - Marc Ribot and Ceramic Dog

2006-06-11T21:39:00.000Z

One Sunday afternoon, long ago...

Your correspondent had the privilege to share an intense hour and a bit with Ceramic Dog, Marc Ribot's new three-part invention, recently on tour through here and the continent. After house reds and a bowl of wedges with J-Sax, my usual concert-going partner-in-crime, we ascended the steps at the Royal Festival Hall to the Purcell Room, one of the best settings for small ensemble music I've seen in this city to date.
Surrounded by a to-be-expected black-shirt die-hard weirdo audience, Senor Ribot and co slinked their way through the one door at the back centre of the stage. A welcome unexpected beginning to the gig was going from customary fiddling and tuning straight into the first free improv. We had the name to the left on guitar with various electronics before him, then centre stage was Chad Smith, this big surfer looking guy who accompanied any athletics on the kit with an unusual slack-jawed sway. Then to the left, by far the most interesting looking player in the room, was (forgotten his name)....this guy somehow missed out on the Weet-Bix at the childhood breakfast table....tiny head, wearing a giant shoulder-padded jacket from which emerged long spindly unnatural looking arms, also fortified with various electronics and an empty water-cooler bottle.
Free improv melted into tune melted into wacky bleep-infested groove and so on....first highlight was 'Todo El Mundo Es Kitch', which I suppose was Ribot's sung/spoken version of Paul Kelly's song about every city feeling the same....'In Paris, we sat at a cafe / we were drinking coffee'....by far the other lyric highlight of the afternoon was 'When We Were Young We Were Freaks.' "This next song," went Ribot's intro, "was written by the leading gay S and M poet in the East Village in the 70s. He was also my accountant at the time......"
Some cubano grooves popped up, well appreciated by your reviewer who originally came to know Ribot's work through the two outstanding albums with Cubanos Postizos (The first, self-titled, and the second "Muy Divertido"). Various instrument swapping went on throughout, as well as using each player to his full extent (J-Sax recalls the Martian-looking bassplayer pulling out some groove with big toe on keyboard on beat 1, one hand on bass and other hand on some electronic thing, I think)....
After the dramas of a forgotten battery, the session came back to earth with a final lyric contribution ("George Bush, fuck you! Tony Blair, fuck you!") before encore. In the obligatory post-gig recount, I agreed with J-Sax's early observation that it sounded pretty much like you would expect it to sound, but this didn't detract from the product one electronic bleep. Original but accessible, unusual but not confronting, highly original. Ribot is definitely one to keep an eye on.....

That Guy Returns

2006-06-11T21:20:00.000Z

Yes, friends, back from one of the most amazing months of my life....so much to recount I'm not quite sure where to start, so I guess it'll come through in dribbles, here and there.....here's the first one.....

On The Road

2006-05-20T11:30:00.000Z

Hez Kids,

It's about 1 o'clock in sunnz Frankfurt, and while I've got this spare fifteen minutes I thought I'd drop a quick note to zou all on this the halfwaz daz of the Sophie Solomon European Tour! It's all going bloodz great as expected, and I reallz can't believe that I'm alreadz halfwaz through it. I'll wait until I get back to London to expand on all the goings on. Germanz's a funnz place, lots of meat and cheese and meat and cheese, and this kezboard has some funnz letter placements on it, one in particular, can zou guess which one?

Lots of love to z'all.....

"Gonna be a bright....sun shiny day"

2006-05-05T12:10:00.000Z

I opened the front door and took two steps out and it hit me, through my clothes and all over my skin. It wasn't just light in the sky this time but warmth in the air...our first real summers day! Absolutely awestruck, I ditched my big grey coat on the bed and strolled out onto the street.
And as I turned out the little green wooden gate at the end of our yard, it just occured to me that it's been a whole year....

Step

That's right, it was May long weekend, wasn't it....

Steps

That awkward afternoon in London Fields with all the crew, and the drive back in the vet van, knowing full well what was about to happen...

More steps

And the four long months that followed...

Steps

Wow, how about that....I almost forgot!

Steps

I almost forgot? I've always enshrined those kind of personal history dates...how could I have almost forgotten that one?
And where's the rest of it? Where are the attachments? Where's the anger, at self, at her, the frustration, the endless examination of events spiralling out of control, as they did? Where's that tired, aged feeling?

Gone.

WHAT?

Gone. For today, at least, perhaps back another day, but never as intense, and at this moment, they are nowhere to be found.

And I realised, dear friends, as I was pacing up the street in that glorious white light and warmth of the English morning, that at age 26, off to another twelve-hour pound-earning day doing mostly music related stuff, local gigs in the book and a European tour in a couple of weeks....emailing this cute Japanese girl I met at a gig last weekend....striding up that street in my black pin-stripe shirt....I realised that, despite the tone of recent entries, that for single Mike, things aren't so bad after all.

And to top it all off, it's a beautiful day....

The People That You Meet - Marc Anthony

2006-05-04T14:17:00.000Z

During the many hours of hanging...before sets, in between sets, after sets, at other people's gigs...among the usual types there (musos, non-musos, bar staff, managers et al), another breed sometimes emerges, the hangers on.
These guys love the scene and they're keen to hang, but what sets these guys apart is that they kind of want to be musos as well, they want to play a part that's a little more involved than just being mates.
Marc Antony was one notable example. The Latin scene's short statured stalwart, on the regulars he'd rock up every night - trademark waistcoat, shaded glasses, goatee and slicked back hair, always darting about talking to the next guy, always whingeing to me about how W the bandleader (who'd be constantly taking the piss out of him) never got him in for free on the door or bought him drinks (much more about W later). He professed to being a promoter, showed me his card, talked about plans, always plans....
Nice enough guy, but I kind of feel a little sorry for him...it never happened on the Latin scene of course, but I know well enough there would be Jazz guys who wouldn't want to give him the time of day. Never being one too cool for school myself, I always seem to end up talking to these people when no-one else will.
Sometimes, because these guys are so keen, they'll do stuff for you at a gig (these people are always handy for absent-minded musicians such as myself, as long as you don't abuse the privilege). I rocked up to a duo gig in a hotel basement bar recently...it was the first time I'd lugged my gear in a while and the one thing I forgot this time (there's always something) was the power plug for the amp. A simple enough D-plug, like the one in the back of your kettle, I expected a major central London hotel to probably have a load just lying around. Come gig time, and it became quickly apparent that this was somehow not the case.
Scratching my head on stage, I look over at Marc Antony, who is sitting there at the bar with the reluctant-looking singer, telling her how he just got back from Budapest from meetings with the girl group he's allegedly promoting.
The singer on the gig and I didn't know what else to do, so I beckoned him over and asked him to run off and get us one. Sure enough, halfway through a jerry-rigged solo set, Marc Antony came bounding back from out in the driving rain with something he'd dug out of a pub about three blocks away.
But you know the really odd thing about this guy? And why the ancient Roman reference? Because Marc Antony isn't one person, but two. I knew a guy called 'Marco' at the Latin gigs back in Melbourne who fit the description, and strangely enough, in some bizarre quasi-doppelganger echo, 'Antony' is a guy who I've met and known on Jazz gigs here! Same person - short, glasses, quasi-promoter, always hanging around. Freaky...

Stereotypes

2006-04-27T10:58:00.000Z

My dad used to by the odd lottery ticket now and then, or go place some bets on the horses on a Saturday afternoon, and so in a similar vein, to break up the routine, I bought a copy of Esquire magazine this morning. Apparently there's some tips in there on how to be a perfect gentleman, as well as some revealing (but not pornographic) pictures of big busty blonde chicks. I'm appreciative of women in all their beautiful forms, but sometimes....and then I was thinking that this is kind of contradictory of me really....
Ever since I can remember, I've built up this stereotype in my head of the guys that get all the girls. Back in home town in rural New South Wales, it was the footy jocks, all built up like stockings full of chestnuts in their blue and white Coota Bulldogs jackets, not-real-bright-but-can-lift-big-weights, some small dolled up platinum blonde accompaniment by their side. Those guys seemed to get all the hot girls in town looking at them. I felt about ten thousand light years away....
In Canberra they were still around, but their presence was a lot less stifling as there were new and different people to meet who were into other things like books and music and compound sentences....
So it happened that this breed seemed to vanish out of my general milieu for a while....then D-Funk and I went out for his birthday at my favourite club in town last year. They were everywhere! battalions of them, just in a slightly different form....spiked up hair, collared white or stripey shirt, blue jeans, chiseled jaw, some sort of arrogant look....and sure enough, there were the accompaniments, by their sides.
So then, how can I despise that male stereotype so much, that apparently gets all the girls, have my own things that I look for in women, and still have my head turned by the latest vacant-eyed stereotyped bombshell on a magazine cover?
That male stereotype is all crap anyway....all you gotta do is dress right, talk right, laugh and a smile, and it's a start. And of course, why would I want to go for girls that are after Mr Brainless Human Sandbag anyway?
I'm Oz, professional musician, in central London, I can converse with people reasonably well on a wide variety of subjects, I dress all right.....I like to think I have a couple of things going for me, and yet out there on my horizon there's nobody. None at all.
But then again, in the near future, that could change....