Tuesday 9 June 2009

Just cycled back from lunch with Steve Portnoi to talk about possible recording projects, and once again I'm surrounded by preparations for our Edinburgh concerts. In amongst all the scanning, notation, typing and paper, I must remember to do some practice this week, as in a fortnight's time I have to be fighting fit as a performing musician again for the summer. But the planning and preparation of four different programmes is quite a big job. 

Meanwhile, for entertainment I've started using spotify which is rather good from a user's point of view. Whether any music providers ever get an income from it remains to be seen of course. I read one of those 'don't make copies of this CD' messages in detail the other day, and was surprised at how strongly it stressed that copying is 'hurting the artists who created the disc'. Well, yes and no. As a rule, artists have never earned much, if any, money from the sale of recordings unless they're the ones actually doing the selling; the money generally goes to the running of, and the shareholders in, the company. Not that that necessarily makes record companies evil: recordings are useful to artists in many other ways, and they make other income streams possible. But record companies trying to suggest that there's a direct connection between purchasing a CD and money going to the artist, is at best dodgy if not a downright lie.

Anthony Browne is the new Children's Laureate - great! A really intelligent and quirky illustrator who's not afraid of technique, or of silly gags. As part of my screensaver I have a page from the original 1977 version of his A Walk in the Park: I think he has a bit of a downer on that one now, and it's destined to remain out of print, but that's a shame, as it has a particularly cheering kind of 70s charm.

Last night I was out at a kind of mini school reunion: three of us from Hillhead Primary's class 1a of '71 (me, Bambi Chen, and Graeme Dempsey visiting from Vancouver with partner Jeffrey) revisited some old haunts before repairing to the University Cafe for ice cream: what a good idea.

Jeffrey about to sample the legendary ice-cream for the first time - 
they had those dishes in the 70s too

Earlier on I was watching a pair of dunnocks exhibiting rather peculiar behaviour out in the back garden - but now I know that was going on was cloacal pecking ...