No Sleep ’til Wigan

Posted on 22 November, 2004 by adrian

Apologies for the lack of content just lately…

The main task last week was to prepare for my weekend trip to Wigan, that unassuming little town on the outskirts of Manchester which has become the traditional location for the annual musical summit of the uk.music.guitar newsgroup.

The main focus of the weekend is “Guitar Idol”, which takes up all of Saturday evening (with a gentler acoustic session on the Sunday morning)… essentially a very well-organized and pre-planned jam session. The only criteria are that you submit a song idea in advance and persuade enough people to play with you. I was involved in four songs this year… a nice easy warm up on Zappa’s “Joe’s Garage”, a slight shock to the system with the surprisingly tricky “Live in Japan” by Mike Keneally, some good solid metal riffing on Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and a relaxed bluesy knockabout with the Beatles’ “Revolution”.

All of my bandmates on those songs were on top form, but one person deserves a special mention… Steve White, a man who can play the drums in a variety of styles at the highest level for six hours with only a couple of short breaks. Without Steve, our Wigan weekends just wouldn’t be the same.

But then, everyone who got up on that stage and had a go deserves credit. Some of us have been playing for years, but a couple of brave souls took their first steps in live performance that weekend. Getting up in front of 50-odd guitar junkies ought to be a terrifying prospect, but there’s something reassuring in knowing that all those faces belong to your mates. When a very tricky Zappa tune (which I attempted on Sunday, backed by the hugely talented Steve Cobham) dissolves into a catastrophic trainwreck, the natural urge is not to quiver with embarrassment, as would normally be the case, but to grin, try again, fail again and leave the stage, laughing like an idiot. *That’s* what’s so great about UKMG!

So after such a total blast of a weekend (not to mention the irregular meals and copious quantities of beer) it wasn’t easy getting up and working this morning. Never mind, it’s events like the UKMG National which inspire you and shore up your creative reserves. And there’s always next year to look forward to…

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Why I do it… no, not IT… *IT*!

Posted on 10 November, 2004 by adrian

That fine fellow Paul Simpson and I probably share a lot of ideas about what “music” can (and should) be, and it seems we’re both delighted by Warren Ellis’ recent blog entry about creativity.

Warren’s descriptions are spot on, and he expresses perfectly the exhilarating natural high that I feel when I’m making music and things are going well. I know there’s a lot to be said for getting together with some mates and bashing out covers of your favourite songs, but for me, nothing quite matches the feeling of hearing a new composition start to take shape in my little studio. It’s as if a part of my brain has taken over and is hurtling into the unknown while my conscious mind can only watch from a safe distance, going “cooool… that’s exactly what I would have done”. That only happens occasionally, but those precious moments are worth all the practising, all the failed experiments and all the frustrating times when too many mundane chores stop me from even switching on the equipment.

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Fine, vote for your moron, but keep him away from us

Posted on 4 November, 2004 by adrian

Well, there’s not really a lot to say, is there? A government that has the power and influence to affect all of us in Europe and the rest of the world, a government that has used that power and influence irresponsibly… that government has been re-elected.

How can so many people be so stupid?

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The inner anorak

Posted on 1 November, 2004 by adrian

For the past few weeks, a bunch of us from the #ukmg chatroom have been running a group on Audioscrobbler. For the uninitiated, this site collects data from your computer’s media player (be it iTunes, Winamp or whatever) to create the sort of statistical output that is probably only exciting to teenage boys or thirty-something men with the minds of teenage boys. Ahem.

Anyway, the stats for the ukmg group are starting to show a few clear trends, as are the stats for individual members. Looking at my page [2010 edit: sorry, no longer in use] it’s clear that I like Frank Zappa, but surprising that I listen to so much of his music. Remember, this doesn’t include CDs that I play; this is just the output of iTunes, which I almost always set to random mode. But then, a cursory glance at my iTunes library shows that, of 3051 songs, 779 are by Zappa. This corresponds almost exactly to the percentage of Zappa tracks among the total songs recorded by Audioscrobbler.

However, with a shiny new LaCie 250GB Firewire drive sitting atop my G4, I’ve now been able to reorganise my hard drive space. The #2 internal drive can now be dedicated to audio recording and samples, while all other types of media (mp3, photos, video) will be able to stretch out and relax on the big Firewire drive. I can now add lots more CDs to the iTunes library, so Uncle Frank’s domination of my playlist is about to be severely reduced…

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Hello Spaghetti Factory!

Posted on 1 November, 2004 by adrian

Thanks to Mark, I have photographic evidence of a new Italian restaurant in Edinburgh, called… The Spaghetti Factory! I wonder if they need any ambient music to enhance their dining experience…

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John Peel R.I.P.

Posted on 26 October, 2004 by adrian

Celebrity deaths often seem distant and impersonal to me, more like the cancellation of a popular product than the sad end to a person’s life. John Peel, though, was different. It wasn’t just that he came across as “a normal bloke” or that his influence in the music industry guaranteed the survival of so many bands (among them several of my favourites) who would otherwise have been swept aside by mainstream blandness. It was the way he always seemed as though he was on our side. Cutting through the bullshit of music industry marketing gloss to find the real music… the gritty, music-for-music’s-sake music.

It doesn’t matter what music you like, or even if you couldn’t bear to listen to anything from John’s radio shows… just celebrate what he stood for. Human creativity and freedom of expression. And if you can, play “Teenage Kicks” by the Undertones all day…

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It’s cool to be a control freak

Posted on 21 October, 2004 by adrian

As you probably know from previous ramblings, I’m very keen on seeing how people find ways to sidestep the mainstream, avoiding the homogenising effects of big business by remaining independent. There’s something so satisfying about seeing someone create a product (whether it’s a guitar, amplifier, CD or piece of software) completely on their own terms. So here’s a quick advert for friends of mine who are Doing Their Own Thing…

Bill Jehle is a hugely talented guitarist from Alabama. I’ve known him for a while as a fellow member of the recording collective we both take part in, and he’s released a number of independent CDs of his music. As far as I’m aware, Bill’s latest release, ‘control FREAK’ is unique… it’s a seven-track album recorded with guitars he built himself, but the CD also has an interactive section where Bill takes you through the processes of building those very guitars.

Two regular denizens of the #ukmg chatroom are even more heavily involved in the nuts and bolts of guitar gear. Trev Ridney has recently started designing and building valve amplifiers to his own exacting specifications, and judging by the audio snippets I’ve heard, Tipton Amplification deserves to be a huge success.

And at the other end of a curly jack cable, Paul Creedy is building, repairing and modifying guitars under the name of arrowheadguitars. Go on, get him to build the custom guitar of your dreams…

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The Yin/Yang of sex

Posted on 15 October, 2004 by adrian

So, in the red(faced) corner we have those crazy asexuals from the Asexual Visibility Education Network.

And in the thoroughly blue corner we have the Australian woman who just can’t stop having sex with strangers in her sleep. Never has the phrase “sleeping around” seemed more apt…

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Find a pub with SMS!

Posted on 7 October, 2004 by adrian

Okay, you probably won’t believe me, but…

A few months ago, probably while walking around a town I’d never visited before, I pondered the amount of time I waste in such situations by looking for a good pub. Now, I’ll admit I’m something of a beer geek; while some people would walk into the first vaguely structurally sound establishment they came to, ordering a pint of generic lager, I’m a bit fussy. I want a place that pumps proper ale, and if there’s a choice of places, I want the most interesting ale.

So, I thought, wouldn’t it be great if you could use your mobile phone to get information about the pubs in your immediate vicinity? My mind returned to this idea occasionally over the next few weeks, but I hadn’t thought about it in a while until I read Gizmodo this evening. Bah! Someone got there before me.

It’s a great idea, but it’s flawed. It seems to work by establishing your location based on the cell you’re in, which is perfectly reasonable, except an average GSM cell can cover a lot of pubs and a *lot* of walking. I’d far rather have a system where you could enter “streetname/town” or somesuch. Something like that could then work dually via a WAP site as well as SMS.

But the biggest flaw is that they used the Good Pub Guide for their pub database, rather than the far superior CAMRA Good Beer Guide. This, combined with the lack of geographical accuracy, meant my first try (from home) generated the name of a pub over two kilometres away, when there’s a truly wonderful CAMRA-approved place just 50 metres away. Still, it’s early days, and I’m grateful that someone has put cellphone technology to another good, practical use.

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Please queue up and ridicule this man

Posted on 3 October, 2004 by adrian

This man is Robert Kilroy Silk, the UK Independence Party’s Member of European Parliament for the East Midlands region. He used to be a daytime TV talk show host, but even that doesn’t excuse the stupidity of some of the things he says. Here’s, thanks to Jeremy, is his latest brainspew, regarding those mythical hordes of asylum seekers who pour into Britain every hour of the day, taking our jobs and our women and lowering our house prices…

“We’ll have no more than 100,000 in and every one of them will have to show they have skills, aptitudes and abilities that make a contribution to British society and the economy.”

Let’s go a step further. Let’s also make sure that this country is in a fit state to receive those fine, upstanding immigrants who satisfy Kilroy’s criteria. Every single British citizen should also show that they have the skills, aptitudes and so on. Yes, Kilroy, you ludicrous cock, that means you too.

Well…?

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