Dave's Little Bit On the Side: December 2008

 

31-Dec-08: Lurgie II

For some unknown reason, my head cold has reappeared and I am, once again, struck down by the dreaded lurgie.

This is getting tedious. I just got over the first round and was gradually learning to live with my semi-permanent winter cough when the sneezes and general all-round shitty-ness kicked in again. Jules has been loading me up with all manner of remedies, potions and tinctures in the hope that it will restore my compromised (and badly run-down) immune system.

Apologies to those who called and didn't get past the answer machine. (Sorry, Stuart!). I'll return your calls in the New Year. Right now, I just want to crawl into a hole.

2009 was already looking fairly busy but two additional events - both lecturing opportunities - dropped into my Inbox yesterday. One is (probably) in Darlington and another will be at the Centre for Life in Newcastle.

Monday brought the news that Tangents by Ion was voted one of the best long tracks of the year over on prog-rock station ARfm. Wow. It was placed joint 5th in what I consider to be a very strong field. Well, what more can you say except, well, Wow!?

And to think that I nearly discarded Tangents because those who should be ignored thought that it wasn't up to much. Kind of proves my point about ignoring them, doesn't it?

This is absolutely my last post of 2008. What a year? At last, I felt that we were doing something right. We started to get noticed. We started to get played right around the world. We didn't just exceed our goals - we kicked 7 bells out of them. Maybe this was our turning point? Who knows? What I do know for certain is that we wouldn't be in this position without the help of a lot of folk who merit our sincere thanks. Here's a brief list of those folk who really helped:

I've probably missed off a few people and I apologise if your name doesn't appear in the above. Let me know and I'll do the honourable thing.

22-Dec-08: Voice

The issue with the troll passed over without incident, which was good. Apologies were handed out and gracefully accepted. At the very least, the outburst has precipitated some discussion, which was what was needed. All parties agree that the current state of affairs cannot continue much longer.

Our first Round Robin dropped through our letterbox on Saturday. We're supposed to hate them, so the Cultural Stalinists at the BBC demand but, actually, I quite like them. Why are we supposed to hate them? According to the BBC, the typical author comes from a two-point-something-children family with a doorstep, a nice safe job and a mortgage. Round Robin letters are, according to the BBC, not written by pathetic losers or folk who live in a council flat. So nice of the BBC to group those two social demographics together, isn't it? And, yes, there's also an ego-issue involved. Apparently, those who rattle off such missives do so under the misguided impression that we're all desperate to know the ins and outs of the author's lives, how much their children are earning, who did what in the school play etc etc etc. Presumably, this extends to those folk who prattle on in blogs?

What this not-so-subtle nonsense is trying to achieve is beyond me but I suspect that it stems from the BBC's on-going war against middle England, in particular white, middle class England, against the kind of people who read The Daily Mail over breakfast and who tut-tut quietly over their marmalade soldiers and runny eggs at the misdeads of various lower orders. That's mingers to you and me. It's all a bit crap, really. I suspect it may also be aimed at those people who are too busy typing up their round robin letters to participate in the Beeb's latest money-making fix-up, namely Strictly Come Dancing or whatever crap they're flogging to death this week. The BBC really is up it's own arse these days.

Anyway, back to the round robin. Usually, such missives are full of bright cheery news, written in an upbeat, joyous tone intended as a substitute for the lack of contact in the previous year. Sometimes, you wonder why certain friendships die and there's a regret that some associations do seem destined to fade away to nothing. Then again, there are those individuals you meet along life's highway that you wish would just crawl back under their rock of choice, and stay there.

But this round robin was tinged with a bit of sadness - the recent and unexpected death of a child. I didn't know the child or its parents but I can empathise with their loss, and so the letter wasn't all warm fuzzies and glowing reports of school plays and trips to Cornwall with the Brownies. I'd far rather have this communication than not. It puts Christmas in perspective. Count your blessings. Remember those who are not as fortunate as you. Be kind to eachother.

As many readers will know, we've been keeping a record of airplay in the last year. Our airplay in 2007 was miserable. 7 plays worldwide in 12 months. That's pathetic. At the start of 2008, we decided to do something about that. We set ourselves a target of 30 airplays. It seemed reasonable, achieveable, realistic.

We then began sending out links to our download area. We sent them to radio stations, podcasts, record labels. Most didn't respond but those that did played the choonz. We exceeded our initial goal in 6 months, which was quite satisfying. Then airplay really picked up and, by September, we were up to 70 or 80 plays. In June, we scored two number one's over at Magnatune. October came and went and the tally continued to rise.

We passed 130 airplays over the weekend - one hundred more than our initial target. Thrilling. Absolutely marvellous. And we couldn't have done it without all of those friends and DJ's who continued to support our efforts as often as they could.

Next year will be a challenge. We have a lot of live gigs arranged, as we try to push the music onwards and upwards. Let's hope that airplay and exposure continues.

My voice has now failed completely. This is the follow-on to my head cold of last week and my larynx feels like it has been gently buffed with sandpaper then washed down with a cocktail of sulphuric acid and kerosene. At best, I can whisper. I worst, I sound like.... actually, I don't really know what I sound like, except that it isn't Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra, unless they've been gargling petrol. Groan...

Today is almost certainly my last blog entry for 2008. It was a good year, a fun year. I enjoyed it a lot.

So, I'll sign off for 2008 by wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. See you all in 2009.

19-Dec-08: We all love a good troll, don't we? Don't we?

The internet has changed a lot over the years. There's a lot more of it for sure and whilst the quality of certain areas leaves a lot to be desired, it no longer has that Wild West feel to it that we used to know and love. What I miss most about those heady days of lofty expectation was the sudden and somewhat random appearance of that highly elusive beast, the troll. For those who don't know what a troll is, it's an individual who enters a newsgroup or a chatroom for the sole purpose of making trouble.

Maybe I don't hang around in the right places any more but, well, trolls seem to be very few and far between these days. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing. It's just that the occasional troll and the associated blood-letting made for interesting if somewhat gruesome reading. At least it provided a diversion from all of those ever so worthy (and ever so dull) conversations about the merits, or otherwise, of Tangerine Dream.

Most internet users of a certain age will well remember that famous uber-trol, antiorp who had a habit of turning up just about anywhere. He/she used to hang around the Kurzweil forum and bemuse and baffle us with bewildering outpourings of incoherant socio-political clap trap. I wonder what happened to her?

My own personal hate figure went by the name of Dano. He picked a fight with anyone and everyone, even his close friends. On one occasion, he burst forth determined to win his battle, no matter the cost, by publishing details of one of our earlier conversations, wherein I had unfortunately made some comments about a mutual acquaintance. Of course, that mutual acquaintance read those comments and was pissed, and is still pissed 15 years later, as was the intention. So it goes. I've never been so candid again. What surprised me most was, with the battle long over, Dano subsequently attempted to sweep our past differences under the metaphotical carpet. He seemed surprised and not a little upset when I declined to renew our friendship, which gives a measure of the emotional maturity of the man. In the common parlance of today, Dano would be termed a hater, one who hates everything for no other reason than he is a hater. He can't help himself.

So, trolls. You gotta love 'em, right?

Right.

But what do you do when the individual who just trolled your newsgroup, the person who ploughed in, sword in hand, swinging from left to right and back again, and leaving a trail of bodies behind them, is actually known to you and, more so, is a member of your own family?

I'm dealing with that situation right now.

This all happened a couple of days ago. I've had to walk away from the arena, let the dust settle, allow some of the heat to dissipate. Maybe what was said needed to be said but a lot of people are clearly very upset, and for good reason too.

Do I agree with what was said? Yes and no. Yes, we need change. No, we need to change at the right speed. I didn't think there was any need for some of the language used. It wasn't a team performance. It wasn't politically sensitive.

I'm not happy. My position is now difficult at best, impossible at worst. I set out to do something good, something fun, something worthwhile and a lot of that hard work has now been undone. I wouldn't be surprised if the result is a mass resignation, which will make life difficult for a lot of people, especially me.

Well, the damage has been done and we'll just have to live with it. See where the pieces fall.

16-Dec-08: Tyneside Cinema Gig

Serves me right for jumping the gun too early. Looks like the Tyneside Cinema gig won't happen. Seems we're not what they're looking for. Ho hum. Maybe next time.

14-Dec-08: Lurgie II : The return of the snot monster

It's 1:17 in the morning. I feel like crap. I can't sleep because I've already slept most of the day. We had to cancel dinner with our friends Ron and Jules tonight and that pissed me off big time. I was looking forward to that but, realistically, they wouldn't have wanted to be in the same room as me. I am the galloping snot monster.

Every surface in this house is covered with tissues and various other cold-related detritus, the kitchen looks like the shabby back room in Boots the Chemist and the couch has a hole at one end in the shape of my fat, lardy backside.

It's 1:17 in the morning and I'm e-mailing DJ Terry Hawke at Harborough FM. He too is suffering from man-flu so we're having a communal on-air whinging session about the evils of this rotten friggin' bug. So it goes.

I've just jumped channels - sorry, Terry - to hear the latest single from Dave Maughan's band, The Morris Quinlan Experience, receive its first airing on Radio 2. Cool. Meanwhile, Terry is playing Dimension Jump and Evensong. Or I think he is. I can't be sure. Maybe I'm suffering from hallucinations.

As an open plea to whoever is working on a cure for the common cold, please, please, please... would you pull your finger out and hurry up? I'm fading fast...

12-Dec-08: Lurgie

Today, I have a dose of the lurgie. In the popular parlance, "man-flu". I feel like crap.

It probably came about as a result of running around like an idiot for the last couple of months, and the last few weeks, in particular, have been very stressful. Web sites going live, web sites going down, trying to get enough cash into the busines to stay afloat, learning not to get too dispondent when that old familiar mantra is dragged out like a well-worn shoe "The cheque is in the post". Then we had our first real blast of Christmas shopping on Monday followed by multiple meetings on Wednesday. Not really surprised I feel like a piece of crud.

The good news is that a couple of concerts and events seem to be falling nicely into place though I'll add more on those when the dates have been firmed up. Better still, our on-going Outreach programme seems to be attracting some interest so much so that I've created my own little corner of the Thinking Metal site just for my diary of events.

I think that the re-worked Thinking Metal site now looks good. Lots of bold colours and nice round curves instead of all of those bland CSS-style boxes. Took a bit of effort, and a pox on Microsoft for not implementing the CSS tags before:: and after:: since that screwed up my first version of the site no end.

I'm sitting here in our nice warm house on a bloody cold Friday morning, waiting for a nice fat cheque to turn up from a customer. That will keep us safe for the next couple of months at least. "It's probably stuck in the Christmas mail!" they say and, well, it probably is so we'll give them the benefit of the doubt. I have more work on at the moment than I can comfortably manage. I'm hard at work on a couple of new instrument designs and they have got me seriously excited.

But I can't help thinking about some of my bretheren who are not going to enjoy a particularly fun Christmas. Of the 6 people sat at our table the other night, 3 will be out of work on Monday and another won't have his contract renewed in January. If this cheque doesn't turn up in the next week or so then I will be joining them. And all through this farce, our witless irresponsible government is digging deeper and deeper holes on the back of a credit crisis that it ignored for far too long and that it now seems hell bent on fuelling all over again. Madness. Complete madness.

Anyway, what can you do except chin-up, be positive, go see where that cheque has gone.

02-Dec-08: More concerts, more news

Sunday was terrific. We spent most of the afternoon in Newcastle, taking pictures for the Freemen's web site but also so that Jules could visit the Iceland ofn Tyneside event at The Guildhall. I took a whole bunch of pictures that I was quite pleased with although, with hindsight, I now realise that they're a bit thin in certain areas and an additional trip will be required to cover the ground that I missed. We also took in the so-called Nordic Festival by the Sage Building though it was a major disappointment, with only a handfull of the stalls present offering anything even vaguely Nordic. Most seemed to be the usual fare - cheeses from Northumberland, Beer from the Tyne Valley, Woolens from Wooler. It made me think of the old Armstring Bridge weekend arts fare. I started to think that some of the faces looked familiar. Maybe this was their second pitch. And what a miserable pitch it was too. Cold and damp, with only a few customers able to afford their inflated prices.

We got home at around 4pm, shortly after the sun had gone down. I checked e-mail and another possible live date dropped into my In-Box. This one is scheduled for January / February at the Tyenside Cinema in Newcastle. Something to look forward to. Straight away, I sent the invitation to Ron Berry and Norman Fay since it seemed right up their street aswell. We'll see what happens next - it would be a good way to start off the year.