Andrew and
I had one of our marathon business meetings today which seemed very productive.
Next season, which had looked like a bit of a disaster with some confusion
between us and certain promoters as to just when the concert dates were, is now
shaping up just fine. The company accounts look OK too, I think.
I bumped
into Mary Ann last night, who'd noticed I haven't written anything here for a
while. Most of my activities have been non-musical, and I figured no-one really
wants to read about me doing my accounts. Robbie's birthday on Monday means that
I now have a teenage son, so I've also been doing generation gap things like
learning to edit video, and discovering just how easy it would be to fill up my
iPod without paying for any of the tunes. I think I'll stay firmly on the right
side of the law in solidarity with the music profession though.
This
morning I took the car across the river for its MOT with my folding bike in the
boot, and cycled back through Pollok Park and the south side of Glasgow, which
for a born-and-bred westender like me is a different country. But to be honest,
the riverside is a different country too: I rather like it, but when I'm there
it doesn't feel like I'm in the city where I grew up: I could be almost
anywhere. I thought joining National
Cycle Route no. 7 and following it would be simple, as the signposting is
brilliantly clear where it exists, but I wandered off on a couple of curious
diversions at unmarked junctions here and there. All the same, crossing the huge
M8/M77 motorway on a cycle flyover in the sunshine is very good indeed.
I've been
invited to be a tutor on a very interesting course next year that puts
traditional musicians together with composers: it wasn't until I'd pretty much
said yes that I realised I was being booked as a composer. Argh. They usually
have real composers - I'm not sure that a bit of TV and theatre writing years
ago, and the occasional wee tune really counts. But I thought I'd go and
propagate my current themes of 'shut up and listen': get people to stop playing
all the time and use their ears instead. Now I just have to work out some
techniques for how to teach listening by next March. A day spent with Bill
Drummond last week planning No
Music Day made perfect sense in the light of this.
I finally
finished reading my little old copy of HV Morton's In
Search of Scotland after about three years: Bob
Deegan recommended it to me at least a decade ago. And I took up Moncton
Comic Book Guy's recommendation of the first volume of Bill Willingham's Fables,
which I enjoyed far more than I was expecting.
Sunday
16 September 2007
Now that
the CD's out, I've updated the gallery with some
photos from the various Lion recording sessions.
Friday 14 September 2007
I'm quite enjoying being a
non-performer for a bit. I was a happily entertained audient at the BBC on
Tuesday night with the Fife Youth Jazz Orchestra, Martin Taylor, the
Burt/MacDonald sextet including the marvellous Keith Tippett on piano, and many
others. Sadly I was so tired that I left before Raymond MacDonald played his
melodica.
Today I went in to the RSAMD to get Peter to sign a company cheque
(not payable to me though), and even with no students around it took me half an
hour to get across the foyer, for the number of interesting and entertaining conversations to be
had with various heads of department and other staff and visitors. Some would
call it networking, but I'm not so mercenary.
I put the radio on in the kitchen
today at lunchtime and heard Kathy Fuge and the rest of us in the middle of Bach's Ich habe
genug. And I thought, 'yes, that's how it goes (mostly)', which was quite
satisfying. From here
for the next week you can hear it by going to the Radio Player and selecting
Afternoon on 3 Friday.
Usually when I'm settled into
non-performing mode, it's very hard for me to imagine myself as a practising musician
again, but just occasionally I hear something that makes me want to get up and
do it.
Tonight it was this: The League of Gentlemen recorded in 1980.
I think
it's something to do with Fripp's reluctance to involve any part of his body in
his playing other than those which are necessary (while insisting that the
League of Gentlemen was a dance band). So he could go from music of extreme
violence to great intricacy with no break: an Alexander Technique student's
dream I think. And a great noise, even if the band messes up the end of the
song, and has to be rescued from a train wreck by RF actually standing up while
playing to give a cue. The organist Barry Andrews once made Martyn Jaques a
wardrobe, incidentally.
Tuesday
11 September 2007
There are already games that go with certain movies: the
Withnail and I drinking
game, the Wizard of Oz/Dark Side of the Moon thing, and I dare say plenty of others. Tonight I came up with one for that more humble of dramatic enterprises,
EastEnders. It's based on the fact that pretty much anything Phil Daniels says could be a line from Blur's finest
hour, Parklife. (Well
maybe not their finest hour, it still sounds like a blatant XTC ripoff to me.)
To play the game you need a guitar, and enough skill (not much) to play the Parklife riff. If you need help, there's guitar tab helpfully printed in the CD booklet; if in doubt, play an E chord at the 12th fret and wiggle it around a bit. Wait until whatever members of your family watch the thing are settled down
in front of the UK's favourite serial drama. Then hide in wait outside the room with guitar at the ready. When Phil Daniels appears on screen, stroll in playing the Parklife riff, and (this is the difficult bit) the object of the game is to time it so that his line finishes after three and a half bars so that you get to sing 'Parklife' immediately after, which will then make it sound just
as though his line, however unlikely, was part of the song. Trust me, the sense of satisfaction when you get it right is quite tangible.
I've been
reading McSweeneys 23 and Gene Luen
Yang's American Born Chinese
(as recommended by Comic Book Guy in Moncton). Both repay the effort. And Guy
Pratt's hilarious My Bass and Other Animals for tour stories and music
anecdotage.
Friday 7
September 2007
I was
giving Sushil a shot of my bike today, and soon after he asked 'Do you have a
turntable to listen to?' 'Yes.' 'Good.' And he gave me a 7" piece of black
vinyl of which one side has literary and artistic legend Alasdair
Gray singing Sun Ra's Nuclear War. It's astonishing in every respect. And
available for download at www.creepingbent.org
if you don't have a turntable.
Grim irony
of the week. Just over a year ago today I went to the doctor's (mentioning it
here in the diary - and yes, the same surgery pictured in yesterday's news story
link) and I got referred to a specialist. Today I got a letter from that
department's secretary saying I'd just made it to the top of the waiting list
(after a twelvemonth and a day precisely) and 'as it has been some time since
you were referred ... please confirm whether you still wish to attend'. I
don't know the circumstances behind the horrific scenes at the surgery last
week, but I hope they weren't aggravated by a long wait for specialist care.
Told you the irony was grim.
Thursday
6 September 2007
This
morning started with a trip to the sorting office to pick up an eBay-sourced
Yamaha Pianica 36 melodica: it seems like quite an old one. Later on, Andrew
came over and we both proved ourselves completely unprepared for our meeting,
and decided to try again next week when we've both done our homework. Amongst
other things, we're thinking of expanding the range of our CD shop: perhaps it
was the consignment of Tiger Lillies CDs arriving that spurred that idea on.
Our Bach
concert from Perth in March finally gets broadcast next Friday lunchtime (14th)
on Radio 3, and should be available on 'listen again' for a week afterwards on Afternoon
on 3.
Speaking of
the BBC, someone in the drama department wants to use Katherine's tune Carsons'
Lilt in a play - hooray.
Having
taken some time off, I've been using it to run errands on my new bike and get to
know a few more local shops. A change to the morning school run has meant that I
now regularly find myself in slightly different emporia, many of them very
civilised indeed. Well, most of the time - this
happened in my doctor's surgery last week.
Saturday
1 September 2007
I'm just
home from hearing Cantus Cölln doing
early Bach cantatas and the motet Jesu meine Freude in Edinburgh. What a relief
to hear that music played and sung spectacularly well: it's the best live music
I've heard for a very long time. Listen when it's on Radio
3 next Friday at lunchtime, and hopefully you'll hear what I mean. I also
had a very interesting chat with Konrad Junghänel about how conscious the young
Bach was of musical history, and the older Bach of his own musical past. An
unequivocally good musical experience as an audient almost makes up for me
losing my camera earlier in the day ...
Friday
31 August 2007
I made it
to the hat shop today and
emerged not with a pork pie, but a cashmere cap very much like the one I left
behind in a London pub in October 1998 at the end of the sessions for the
Colin's Kisses CD. By a strange coincidence, before going into the hat shop I'd
just bumped into Philip Hobbs in Greyfriars Kirk, who was also in the London pub
that day in 1998, as he'd been engineering the sessions.
Wednesday
29 August 2007
Today's my
first proper day off at home for about three months, I think. I'll gradually
deal with the countless piles of books and papers that litter the study.
Saturday
was great fun. Enough of the audience were noisily enthusiastic for us not to
mind that the critics didn't enjoy it particularly: a gig that like that in a
venue like that is never going to please everyone. I'd forgotten that the Usher
Hall organ has a carillon, which I hope wasn't too corny when I played it at the
end of the big Orpheus saga. Lots of extra points to Johnny doing the lights who
lit the entire organ up in red as I sat down to play it.
the
view from the organ console in rehearsal
With five
minutes to go, I mentioned to Adrian Huge that I hadn't managed to get any
headgear for this gig, and he lent me his new black pork pie hat that he'd
bought in the Grassmarket hat shop. I'll be going there on Friday I suspect. I
decided against wearing one of Em's earrings though (see below).
The
prospect of free time approaching means that I may get to start the reading the
enormous pile of books that has been building up. What with the comic shop in
Moncton (where the guy behind the counter bore a startling resemblance to Comic
Book Guy in the Simpsons), the Edinburgh Book Festival, and the very excellent
local bookshop at home, my reading list is now quite long.
At the Book
Festival on Sunday morning, we went to hear Michael
Rosen who was jaw-droppingly good. He just shambled on at 10am with his
rucsac and performed for an hour, and it was like stand-up meets performance art
meets poetry: completely virtuosic and seemingly effortless. What a master. I
suppose 30 years and more of performing in schools teaches you how to work an
audience and keep their attention.
later I hope Bill won't mind me sharing this sentence of his, from an email to
Andrew: it's too good not to.
There's
something about playing the theorbo to accompany a singer who's busy pounding
the shit out of a Steinway piano with a black rubber dildo while screaming
'Hallelujah Satan!' in falsetto to an audience of thousands that has given me
a new sense of perspective about everything else I do.
Friday
24 August 2007
Good
rehearsal. Then good dinner.
a
moment of levity
Hermann
Goering in his Bavarian bellhop phase, as played by Adrian Stout
Emily's
patented paper bag sun hat
The
splendid Mark Fisher recently interviewed Martyn about the show here.
Wednesday
22 August 2007
Back at my
desk late, writing arrangements for our encores. The Tiger Lillies are very
impressed with Andrew - Day 1: Adrian S's bass came apart (after it got rained
on in an open-air gig in Russia), Andrew had it back from the repairer covered
in clamps by the end of the day. Day 2: it's the accordion's turn to be ill, so
Andrew has found a nice hospital for it for the night. Day 3: Martyn is hoping
to do the gig dressed as Hermann Goering. I think Andrew might just prefer not
to find a solution to that one.
Rehearsal
from the organist's viewpoint: L-R: DG, Emily White, AMcG, Bill Carter, Martyn
Jaques, Adrian Huge, Adrian Stout
Can
you spot the extra device on the piano (used in the Tancred & Clorinda piano
solo)?
Emily
and Bill practise the opening of the show, watched by an upside-down rubber
chicken on Adrian Huge's drumkit
DG
and his tea in the gardens of Edinburgh Academy
Tuesday
21 August 2007
Catching my
breath after our first day of rehearsal with the Tiger Lillies and Keith Lewis.
Hard work. Fantastic fun. Buy a ticket for Saturday if you can. Emily somehow is
virtuosic both on sackbut and baroque violin, and we all get to sing cheerful
obscenities thanks to Martyn's rewriting of a few lyrics. Jonathan Mills even
dropped in either to wish us well or to check that we weren't behaving
ourselves. I'll try and take some photos of the glorious chaos tomorrow.
Saturday
18 August 2007
Eat your heart out JK
Rowling: Haymarket station in Edinburgh now has a platform zero. I'm now heading home after cycling in
the relentless Edinburgh rain between Olli Mustonen's morning concert in the
Queen's Hall and sushi with Kathy Fuge on Lothian Road. Unfortunately I have programme notes to write, so diarising will have to
wait: there's just time to mention that I got a really bad haircut
yesterday.
Wednesday
15 August 2007
The Tiger
Lillies arrangements are coming on: Martyn's songs are still growing on me even
now, so I'm looking forward to next week very much. I also saw Keith Lewis on
Monday just before his taxi came to take him to the airport (I cluttered up the
foyer of the Sheraton hotel with my bike), and our plan for the first half of
the concert to include some actual Monteverdi is shaping up just fine.
I was back
in Edinburgh this morning and watched some of Concerto Italiano's rehearsal,
which was absolutely stunning. Individually and collectively, it sounded like
music, it sounded like Monteverdi, and it expressed something. That'll do. And
the two theorbo players were facing the singers rather than the audience, which
given their function in the music, made perfect sense.
Monday
13 August 2007
On Friday
you can hear the Janis Joplin gig from St Magnus on Radio
3 at 1pm: oddly, we're credited as Concerto Caledonia, even though we hadn't
branded ourselves as such for that particular event. I wonder what it sounds
like.
I sat
through a pretty sloppy concert performance of Vivaldi's Orlando Furioso in
Edinburgh last night, with some dreadful singing from singers who should know
better. But it was made bearable by a genuinely wonderful aria from Philippe
Jaroussky with the SCO's Alison Mitchell contributing a spectacular flute
obbligato alongside. Conductor Jean-Christophe Spinosi is a lovely guy with
great infectious energy, but his interventionist approach to the music was a bit
much for me. Negative capability it certainly wasn't. And I realised as an
audient that in 99% of baroque opera recitative, which is incredibly hard work
for the continuo team and singers alike, even if you pull it off well, the
artistic rewards are feeble. Perhaps there are better ways to spend your time.
Saturday
11 August 2007
I'm
shackled to the computer today working on the Tiger Lillies arrangements. You
can get a sneak preview of some of the material for our Edinburgh concert here.
Those of a nervous disposition might want to make sure that the volume isn't set
too high before you follow the link.
And I've
got a new bike. It's one of these.
Not quite as much of a classic as Meg Munck's Brompton but we'll see who goes
the faster in Edinburgh next week.
It was
cheering to read in
today's paper of Agnes Owens being described as a literary hero. Quite so.
Tuesday
7 August 2007 Newark Airport
Having a very calm journey so far. DG reminded me to check in online from Kirsty
and Ethan's place last night, so I've got front row aisle seats on both flights.
On the way here the cheery attendant kept me company and made me cups of tea
while I happily continued my re-reading of Chris Ware's Jimmy
Corrigan, a book which repays reading several times, and if you're tired is
just beautiful to look at. Flying is usually horrible so let's hear it for
Continental.
My blood
sugar levels are currently regulated by the beautiful cookie that Kyla made for
me, so let's hear it for four-year-old girl's cookies too. This morning we sat
on the sofa with Ethan and watched Poko
in its home town, so my cultural life is not being neglected.
Monday 6
August 2007 Halifax, late
This morning started strangely, as I came downstairs in the Sherbrooke telephone
exchange to find a teapot, two boxes that kettles had come in, but no kettle. Not
even a saucepan to boil water in. And I had some fantastic tea with me, that Yola had
given me in Shelborne a week ago. How frustrating. So once DG came to get me, he
took me to the cafe on the main street for breakfast and we sat in the shade and
pretended to be on holiday. Marlys and Chris had left
for Lunenburg very early.
After a
three hour drive along the coast, with some of the best views of the week, we had time
to drop in at DG's place in Halifax to see Kate and Owen on the way to Port Williams.
Owen's balloon modeling skills are quite spectacular: he had produced a macaw in the
course of the morning, and he also showed me how to unicycle with handlebars
on a separate wheel, which is really funny, like riding a bike with the frame
missing. When I get home on Wednesday I should be taking delivery of a Dahon
folding bike, but I don't think it will be quite like this ...
In Port
Williams, Chris played his tune The Flower of Port Williams in the village for
the first time, which was quite an event in itself, as the tune is an elegy for
his mother who grew up there. A few damp eyes in the church then, some of them
on stage.
In the interval I was
talking to some audients who'd been at our August 2004 concert with Suzie in Halifax, and
had witnessed Chris and me giving DG scores out of 10 for his fiddle solo using the hymn board numbers
we found in the vestry (see here and
scroll down for photo). Well, tonight, Kirsty had come along to hear us and be our angel
roadie, so we took the process a bit further this time, and with some creative
use of the words used to describe which Sunday it is in the Anglican church
year, she sent us a variety of helpful messages from the balcony during the second
half. We'd run the McGibbon
sonata in imitation of Corelli into the Arses set to make The Gibbon's Arse,
which prompted the brilliant piece of linguistic invention below. It's just as well the
audience were laughing at the silly bits in the music, as I was corpsed
completely.
As I was
standing on the steps of the church afterwards in the dark, somebody handed me a plastic
tumbler, which I assumed had some water in it. Then I sniffed it and found it
was Caol Ila. I was very happy. Time for farewells to Chris, and off we went to
Halifax with smoked salmon on pumpernickel sandwiches. A roadie from heaven
indeed.
Sunday 5 August 2007
driving along Prince Edward Island to the ferry
Last night's concert with Suzie and Betsy in the Indian River Festival was made
even more dramatic by the thunderstorm going on outside: there was a perfectly
timed thunderclap overhead at the end of 'Joli Bois'. And a surprise hello from
Sarah B-B's brother Peter who lives just down the road.
St
Mary's, Indian River
This
morning's frisbee location at Fermanaugh Farm
Then it was time for a
very sociable gathering to
celebrate Chris's birthday (which is really today). In fact we'd already started at
lunchtime by going down to the Malpeque Oyster Barn and eating lots of, yes,
you've guessed it, oysters. PEI is very
appealing. If only there was time for a day off before leaving.
driving
down one of many red dirt roads
Sherbrooke,
NS, one
sunny ferry journey and an indifferent meal later Coming through the town of Pictou is quite unnerving, as besides all the
stuff about the first Scottish settlers in the 1770s, among the usual
clapboard houses are some made of very familiar stone. Betsy tells me that they were
built using Scottish ballast which was emptied out from the ships to make room for cargo on the
return trip. So there are isolated houses and half-houses which could easily be
in Ayrshire.
a
house with one Scottish wall - note the red sandstone details behind too
But now
we're in the rather spooky 'Historic Village' of Sherbrooke, where the guides
are in period costume but the road is still tarmac. The Courthouse where we're
playing looks and sounds quite wonderful - but what a shame that we're not being
lit by the chandelier of oil lamps.
Sherbrooke
courthouse inside and out
later
still Well, the audience seemed to enjoy that. So did we I think. Marlys was
selling large quantities of CDs and said that two people said to her that they
could die happy now. And chants of 'we want more' from the audience at the end
are pretty unequivocal I suppose. So job done.
We've
reached that point in the tour where tiredness sets in during the day and
sometimes you forget to prepare things. Last night we all made it onto the stage
and then had to wait for a few minutes while Chris tuned his pipes, a process
which looks and sounds a bit like plumbing a sheep. Tonight I'd left the
harpsichord lid down to keep the sun off the soundboard, and then forgot to put
it back up, so the first set of jigs was accompanied by me trying to find
somewhere to put the melodica and then clambering around to raise the lid. At
the very opening of the show, Chris was a bit late coming in on Ton Bale as he
hadn't actually put his flute together or got it out of the case yet. Oh well.
It's all added theatre.
Back to
Roly and Ellie Burton's log cabin afterwards under a spectacularly starry sky where DG and I
played some tunes whenever we could prise Roly and Bob away from the piano. Ellie gave me some lavender oil for my leg scars
and my fast-growing collection of grotesquely swollen insect bites. Every time I come to
Nova Scotia I get eaten alive.
DG
making sure that my post-gig carbohydrate needs are met
Chris,
Marlys and I are sleeping on site in the village tonight above the old telephone exchange.
If you're going to play old music you might as well go the whole way and live in
a museum.
Saturday
4 August 2007 Moncton, NB just after midnight Too tired to write much, so here's another photo story from the day that's
been.
my
hotel room office this morning, where I got surprising amounts of work done (and
some ironing)
Chris
and Marlys doing something inexplicable with her hair, just before the show
Chris
and DG with Pascal Lejeune in rehearsal
Suzie
awaiting her cue - note the melodica, which she was going to play but the TV
people said it looked like she was on a life support machine. Oh well.
Friday 3
August 2007 Moncton, NB just after midnight A great big hotel room with free internet and an ironing board: whoopee. I'm
back there now after a very long camera blocking rehearsal which we left at
11.20pm when it still had quite a way to go. Earlier on, backstage at the Capitol Theatre
we made our own entertainment with the help of the relay camera and the big green
room monitor.
The
harmonium and melodica player's view on stage:
and looking
the other way ...
Suzie and
Chris hiding backstage with trusty Macs
Still life
with melodica and smallpipes:
Thursday
2 August 2007 on the road from Georgeville, NS to Moncton, NB
A wee photo album from yesterday.
DG sporting
the haircut I gave him in the morning. I didn't tell him until afterwards that
I've never cut anyone's hair before.
The venue:
it looked like it was in the middle of nowhere, but when we looked out with five
minutes to go there were cars everywhere and a long queue of people who weren't
going to fit in. Great audience too. I think Katherine would have enjoyed
this.
But first
we went to the beach to swim, throw a frisbee around, and engage in
contemplation (in my case).
I didn't
see all of the sharp rocks under the water ... ow. I apologised to the audience
later for the state of my legs.
This
morning's frisbee location on Nancy Leyden's lawn.
Tuesday
31 July 2007 Lunenburg, NS It dawned on me yesterday that this is the first time I've done a tour
with more than four dates in it since I worked in theatre 15 years ago. Somehow I've managed to keep away from the
intensive touring life where you play the same thing every night in a different
place (not that we're playing the same thing every night on this tour of
course). The good thing about long tours is that you get a concert fee every
night. The downside: well, many books have been written about the downside.
But, on the
other hand ...
6pm
Great Village, NS I climbed out of the pool to take this picture of DG, Chris and Suzie.
7pm
Our dressing room.
Monday
30 July 2007 Shelburne,NS
chez Forbes
and Yola Christie
Arriving at the Osprey Arts Centre
yesterday, I took my suitcase up to the dressing room, and there on the clothes
rail was the Muji folding coathanger I left behind about a year ago. Back on the
stage, meanwhile, was this:
a
terrifying image which I'm not going to try to explain
Among
lots of socialising and some very fine food in civilised and civilising company
today, we managed to rehearse a bit, and gave the first live performance of ‘A
Good Start’ as part of our set. We asked for audience suggestions for a name
for our trio, but the best one was the way we were described on the staff rota
board at the arts centre: Boxwood Explodes.
After
being plied with more food, several single malts, and Forbes and Yola’s 1880s
New York Steinway, the three of us ended up playing again around midnight and
finally pegged out around 2am. The end result of this is that I have
now acclimatised to the local time
zone and I woke up at a respectable 7.30am this morning rather than at around 5.
Also
yesterday, I picked up a pile of email which included an epic 20 minute song
which will be a key chunk of our show with the Tiger Lillies. So that is moving
along nicely too.But now I’m
heading next door to Roland and Kathleen’s
where Chris is going to make us all pancakes for breakfast. Isn’t touring
tough?
just
after midnight, still on the road to Lunenburg
We had a different kind of gig tonight in the big church at Wedgeport: suddenly
being further away from the audience left us a bit bemused about how to engage
them. But I think we won them over somehow. I was totally thrown afterwards by
the reception for the audience being held in our dressing room about a minute
after we came off stage. But once we'd cleared up a bit it was good to do some
gentle socialising, and very cheering to meet a regular reader of this diary in
such an unexpected place.
Sunday 29 July 2007 Annapolis
Royal,NS
– at the home of Geoff
and Judi Butler I’m sitting up in bed listening to the birds out on the shore, after the
thunderstorms in the night. Last night was the first gig of our ‘trio with no
particular name’ tour: we’ve been The Jolly Boys, Joli Bois, and HTF, and
yesterday for no apparent reason we were ‘The Garden of Nuts’ after an
unfortunate piece of word-setting in Mackenzie’s oratorio ‘The Rose of
Sharon’ which I heard last week and made me laugh so much I couldn’t
breathe.
After
more civilised sitting out on the deck this morning accompanied by a 4 year old
fairy princess, and a stocking-up trip to Julian’s excellent bakery round the
corner, DG came and got me from Halifax and we set off for Lunenburg to get
Chris and take in the ‘morning after the end of Boxwood’
atmosphere, also encountering Andy Thurston and Suzie LeB.Then it was time to pack the harpsichord and everything else and get on
the road.
the
Jolly Boys on the 'tour bus'
Somehow
we managed to put a set list together in our universally weary state and we
played a hot and sticky gig with only an acceptable number of train wrecks, to a
very enthusiastic audience. Our encore was cut brutally short when DG’s A
string broke. ‘I’ve never broken an A string before!’ Audient: ‘How’s
your G string though?’ ‘It’s doing just fine, thanks.’
I’ve
not written much in this diary for a while as I’ve been just too busy. But the
Lion CD has been released for sale here on our website and has gathered a very
enthusiastic review (‘the recording of the year’, no less) in The Herald,
and on Friday a nice feature
in the Scotsman, which I read at the airport. I’ll get around to posting both
of these eventually.
Friday
27 July 2007 9am,Glasgow
airport
You can still get porridge for breakfast here. This is good. Flight is delayed
but porridge is tasty. I don’t usually have a pint of Guinness to go with it
at breakfast though.
Midnight,
Halifax
NS, 17 hours later I’ve just been sitting out on
the porch in the starlight at 23°C with Kirsty and Ethan, some Caol Ila and a
beer.
On the first flight to Newark
I dozed a bit and then got excited working on the Tiger Lillies arrangements:
but on the second flight I was so tired I would still have slept if someone was
jumping up and down on my chest.I don't think anyone was.
Tuesday 10 July 2007
I've been reading
Wimbledon
Green by Seth, a book that he takes considerable pains to point out started as doodling in his sketchbook and is not a serious finished piece of work. I enjoyed it much more than his more polished
Clyde Fans. Similarly, Joel Priddy goes out of his way to point out that his classic story
The Amazing Life of Onion Jack was thrown together in stick drawings to meet a deadline, before it became
(to his slight annoyance) his most celebrated piece of work. Sometimes when you stop trying to polish something on every level and just let it out, it speaks more directly. XTC's records as The Dukes of Stratosphear, thrown together in a
hurry and a spirit of fun, sometimes sold better than their official releases,
often recorded at vast career-crippling expense in top flight US studios. Is this my excuse for letting the Tiger Lillies release Songs of Love and War with my off-the-cuff busking on it? Possibly. But sometimes art tries to satisfy on too many levels and should settle for just one or two.
I find good comics fascinating: Ivan Brunetti suggests that the form is just reaching the maturity of middle-age. The last year or two has brought three really excellent anthologies:
McSweeney's 13 edited by Chris Ware (from which the other two take much material), Harvey Pekar's
The Best American Comics
2006, and Brunetti's Anthology of Graphic Fiction for Yale University Press. All highly recommended. But why doesn't
Leviathan make an appearance anywhere?
Reading biographies of cartoonists, it's interesting how many of them play in bands.
Perhaps I should join a design collective in retaliation.
Monday 2 July 2007
On holiday, hooray. It's a short walk across the road to ringed plovers, wagtails, oystercatchers, terns and shelducks. And not far to Islay House Community Garden where they dig
up the vegetables only when you buy them, and the brewery
next door where you can take away very fine cask beer. And lots of other stuff too, you don't need to hear about how good my holiday is.
At least we weren't flying here. Lots of sanity points to our First Minister Alex Salmond for pointing out that suicide bombers are individuals. A lot better than the knee-jerk 'let's all stand together in the war against terrorism' BS that came from our new prime minister: what a disappointment. Yes, it's depressing that there are people prepared to commit mass murder just along the road from where I live. But it doesn't make me more afraid. The combination of bravery and perhaps stupidity that led members of the public to beat the crap out of the bombers rather than run away seems hearteningly Glaswegian. Life is already scary; some idiot who can't get past an automatic door in a jeep loaded with gas canisters isn't going to terrify us further. But if in our name our government chooses to bomb someone else's country back into the middle ages, we can't expect there not to be consequences. And that really is depressing.
concerto caledonia
