30-Jun-08: Blogging...

Sadly, this will be my last blog entry for the time being. I'll add bits to it every now and again but I won't be adding to it on a daily or weekly basis. Our logs show that, at best, the blog has two, maybe three regular readers and another one or two readers who come by every now and again so it isn't really reaching the kind of audience I'd intended.

Equally, I don't have the time to write anything of any great depth or significance because all of my spare time is going into our main activities, which are the sequencers, the media outfit and the music.

However, I'll try to add something once in a blue moon, maybe once a fortnight or once a month. I may even try to migrate it over to a proper blogging platform so that readers can contribute thoughts of their own. Maybe that's why it's not very popular - because there isn't a mechanism for people to discuss my musings/rants.

Anyway, until next time. Bye for now.

David

  27-Jun-08: Robots, coffee and other nasty habits

Yesterday was a fun day.

I blagged a space on one of the Youth Engineering Show sessions at the nearby The Rainton Arena. The show was part of a programme of events designed to get teenagers into engineering though I went along mainly to see Honda's Asimo robot do it's thing. I wasn't disappointed.

The venue has been through various incarnations in its life. At one point, it had been a state-of-the-art sports hall but it fell into disuse in the late 90's and was then converted into what we used to call The Chav Palace, due mainly to the relentless machine-gun dance/trance/pseudo rave music that used to blast out until 2am. Then, of course, there was the somewhat shabby clientele who would fall out of the place at all hours of the day and night, and whom could often be seen walking home along the side of the motorway (yes, a motorway) after a heavy night out on the White Lightning and alcopops. Mercifully, the new owners have done a really good job transforming this run-down drinking bothy/knocking shop into a corporate venue able to attract some of the regions big industrial player like Nissan and Caterpillar.

Presented by ex-Tomorrow's World host, Michael Rodd, the show hit just the right chord. With one notable exception, the presentations were inspiring and detailed the design stages at our local car plant Nissan, the planning that goes into the Great North Run and the work of BAE Systems up on the banks of the River Tyne, as well as a few others. Only the guy from Pepsico seemed hopelessly out of place.

Asimo took to the stage and he/she/it really was impressive. Fluid, effortless movement combined with a well thought out and well produced demo, it was hard not to wonder if there really was just a small boy inside a robot suit up on stage.

Did Asimo wow the crowds? Yes, absolutely. He received the kind of reception usually reserved for your typical, teen boy band.

After the event, I was button-holed by one of the organisers who had read my business card. She asked if I would be interested in participating next year and, of course, I said Yes because the whole event was just brilliant fun.

Sadly, the day did not end well. I went into the studio to work on Flying over Blue Waters only to discover that the Cubase file had been corrupted. This wasn't an absolute disaster but it came close. After a brief panic, I had a look through the file and noticed that the piece was far longer than it should have been so I checked the end of the arrangement and there was the entire composition, intact, but in the wrong place. I've never known Cubase screw up like this before and so I suspect that this was a human error rather than a machine error. I probably clicked and dragged without checking, and then saved the file away assuming that all was well. Anyway, the track is as it should be and it's been added to the core set list which means that it will feature in all of the forthcoming Ion gigs.

I've just enjoyed my last cup of coffee for the next two weeks.

I've been struggling with my weight for the last 25 years and I've decided that now is the time to get to the root of this problem once and for all.

I've tried dieting and exercise, cut out drinking and switched to sugar-free sweeteners plus a whole raft of other measures, and yet my weight still continues to rise. I peaked earlier this year at 12.5 stone (175lbs) though that wasn't nearly as bad as the days when I was known as Fat Dave.

Back then, dieting made a huge difference. During my first proper diet, in 1992, I used the drink/appetite suppressant SlimFast to get down from 13.5 stone (190 lbs) to 11.2 stone (156 lbs) over a period of about 5 months but I wasn't able to maintain that weight partly because my lifestyle at that time wasn't very healthy and partly because I'm a lazy bastard.

I used the same technique in 1999 to get down from 11st10lbs (164 lbs) to 10st10lbs (150lbs). Also worthy of mention is the Cabbage Soup diet, which worked a treat too but, and this needs special emphasis for those considering a similar weight-loss regime, the side effects were most unpleasant, not just for yourself but the family too. Take heed of this warning. What side effects I hear you ask? Apart from the chronic (and I mean chronic) flatulence, there's the depression and the mood swings to deal with. Not good if you're in a high pressure job involving lots of customer contact and meetings in small rooms.

But none of these techniques produced a lasting change in my weight. This is typical of so-called yo-yo dieting because it doesn't address the underlying problems, which vary from person to person but are mostly rooted in problems to do with low self esteem and a crappy lifestyle.

I spotted an article on the BBC web site a couple of years ago which flagged a link between weight gain and the amount of coffee consumed. Hence, I cut back from 5 or 6 cups a day to just 2. However, this didn't make a massive difference to my weight though I was able to get to sleep at nights and the palpitations stopped within a day or so.

Last week, we ran out of my drug of choice, Douwe Egberts Gold and the alternative was either some dreadful de-caffeinated muck or going without. I chose the latter and drank hot water instead. And that worked wonders. I felt terrific. I slept well, didn't feel sleepy at all and didn't run out of energy half way through the day, which kind of flies in the face of the all of the self-deluding reasons why I pour this stuff down my throat in the mornings.

Simply put, coffee is just another bad habit, a dependency that I need to purge from my life. At the same time, I'm going to see if there's a serious drop in my weight. I hope there is because, frankly, there's bugger all else to try apart from starvation itself.

Finally, The Secret Life of Angels by SkinMechanix is currently sitting in the number one slot over on Magnatune and this makes the second number one in as many weeks. Last week, Ion's Future Forever was in the pole-position and that felt pretty good. To have another disc grab the top spot so soon afterwards is utterly brilliant.

Earlier this week, I dropped a handfull of discs off at a local CD shop, Beatdown Records in Newcastle, which is run by my friend Nick Wrightson. I have no idea how they'll fare but Nick seemed to think that they'll do well if they're put in a good place and at the right place. Of course, my timing is crap because all of the students have just packed up for the summer and I really should have dropped these on Nick much earlier in the year. Anyway, we'll see how they do. It would be nice to get back into selling something tangible again. The future really is downloads and, sad to say, CD's do appear to be very much on the way out, which would be a shame because it would mean the end of little shops like Beatdown, who thrive on stuff that the majors won't touch.

  24-Jun-08: Movie time

I found out where the recent surge of SkinMechanix downloads came from - a couple of SM tracks have been used in some promotional/visualisation videos by the code_swarm/Python Programming group. You can see the videos here:

I was intrigued by the technique so I wrote to the producer/author, Michael Ogawa and asked him how he did it. Michael replied this morning and pointed me in the direction of a new visiualisation tool called Processing.

The utility features a programming language kind of like C. I've dicked around with the examples and it looks like something we could use in the forthcoming concerts and/or album artwork. It certainly looks like an interesting tool to experiment with.

  23-Jun-08: My big, fat mouth

One of my biggest problems is that I have a big fat mouth that occasionally runs out of control, as readers of the previous incarnation of this blog will testify. There are certain subjects that are guaranteed to push my buttons, guaranteed to bring on a full blown rant. I'll not go into these here because this isn't the place. Equally, I'm not interested in carrying on a debate because you won't change my mind one iota. Suffice to say that, last week, one of those episodes took place and, well, let's just call it an episode. Actually, I ended up making a real dick of myself. It happens. We all do it every now and again.

Thankfully, these issues, and others, have been put to bed. I've returned to the Modulator ESP board and apologised for my stroppy behaviour, which by and large, seems to have been forgiven. The strangest aspect of the whole confrontational episode is that nobody even bothered to ask why I might be in such an obviously bad tempered state of mind. Yes, I can take things personally. Yes, when pushed, I have something of a short fuse but nobody stopped to ask "Hey, Dave. What's up?". In truth, it was a tough day dominated by tough customers coupled with some external pressures that were not under my control. I just had to ride them out, see where they went.

However, during the dispute, certain members of the board used the contents of this blog as a way of attacking me, of questioning my character, which I thought was a bit crap and this has left me less than inclined to continue with the blog. I logged in this morning only to find that a couple of members seem determined to kick off yet another flame war by making the discussions personal. However, I won't bite this time. They were so obviously a clumsy attempt to piss me off that, well, nice try, chump. Next time, maybe?

Anyway, the Awakenings gig is back on, with Andy Condon aka The Glimmer Room supporting, except that I don't think Andy should be in the supporting slot. More like we should be supporting him.

  20-Jun-08: Gardening...

Chapter One, Page One, Line 2 of Codex Hughes, states:

"Thou shalt not garden"

but, like it or not, I am now something of an active horticulturalist. It is not an overwhelming passion and I admit to being little more than a hired labourer but I do enjoy spending time outdoors, especially in my vegetable patch which is now looking rather splendid with potatoes, lettuce and a few other edibles that might to do something to reduce our so-called carbon footprint. It's fun to realise that we don't measure the number of air-miles used to bring us our salad stuff. It's now more like air-feet.

Yesterday was a holiday and we had planned to spend the day at Crook Hall in Durham, an ancient medieval hall just outside of the city centre, as part of our anniversary thing but the weather forecast looked bloody awful so we instead elected to go to the Metro Centre. However, there are days when I would rather knit spaghetti than visit the Metro Centre and this was one of them. Hence, we pretty much said bugger to the weather and off we went to Crook Hall.

However, as we were packing up ready to leave, we had some unexpected but very welcome visitors to the garden - our family of Blackbirds turned up. Mom (aka Stumpy), Dad and the three fledglings who are now almost carbon copies of their Mom (though with more tail feathers thankfully) but still very much dependant upon their parents for food. We watched them for around 20 minutes, happy that they had survived their first few weeks despite efforts by Dodie, the phantom bird killer to turn them into a kebab.

Crook Hall was a lot of fun, especially the walled gardens and the hall itself, parts of which date from as early as 1246. In complete contravention of Codex Hughes, I am able to identify (with reasonable reliability) a significant number of plant species though I am hopelessly lost when it comes to Hostas and I still hate Geraniums with a passion.

We decided to remodel the garden again, dumping the previous plans which involved huge amounts of decking in favour of raised beds and intelligent planting. Part of this was inspired by Crook Hall's Elizabethan Garden and their Cathedral garden, which were more than a bit special.

Back home, we found that The Secret Life of Angels by SkinMechanix has started to figure strongly in the Magnatune charts, whilst Ion had been bumped off the top spot. That didn't bother me at all (which was strange) but it's another ambition fulfilled.

So, it's back to work today. The episode with the screwed up blood transfusion has taken it out of me for a couple of weeks and so I've been more or less forced to relax a little, not work quite so hard. However, I feel ready to get back on the horse again.

19-Jun-08: Cathedral Oceans

This was a very special occasion and one that we very nearly missed. I found out about this gig at around 5pm on Tuesday 17th June, which gave me something like 24 hours to re-arrange an already busy schedule. I had an interview at 7pm and our anniversary dinner that night, which was hastily postponed for another day. Again. (Sorry Jules). Typical timing, as ever. Wednesday was spent frantically e-mailing the concert organisers to see what time John's performance began, if you could buy tickets on the door and if the event had been moved indoors because the weather forecast predicted heavy rain and strong winds.

The interview/appointment at 7pm was over sooner than I expected and so I high-tailed it back home, scarfed down some food and we left the house in the usual frenzied blur to make our way across to Durham. We dumped the car and walked to the castle just as the first few spots of rain pitter-pattered around us.

Durham is one of my favourite places in the North East of England. I call it "Harry Potter Land" because the first movie was filmed in and around the Cathedral. And Durham Castle looks exactly like Hogwarts, with its wonderful lighting and ancient rock structures.

I bought the tickets and, rather than brave the student bars, opted to go wait in the concert hall. That was at around 930 pm, which is kind of late to start a concert but, hey, this was originally intended to be an outdoor performance so my guess is that they were waiting for the sun to go down.

The hall started to fill up in dribs and drabs. I went to ask one of the security guards - yeah, security guards at an electronic music concert, hard to believe, eh? - who told me that the concert wouldn't start until 1015pm.

By 10pm, the hall was full. I would guess around 300 people, maybe a few more, maybe a few less. Clearly, someone had got the publicity exactly right for this concert.

John Foxx took to the stage at around 1015pm, beginning with some simple string parts, which noodled around a bit without really going anywhere. The atmosphere was greatly enhanced by the video projectors, which were showing sections of the Cathedral Oceans DVD, stills from which are reproduced (without permission) here.

Foxx then began his trademark vocal effects, singing mostly in Latin (I think) and they were stunning. Reserve reverbs coupled with multiple delays creating a huge immersive environment which was, at times, completely overwhelming. He hit the sweet spot with a couple of vocal arrangements that reminded us of some of Pachelbal's arrangements but with that unique Foxx element that make them so irresistible.

I shut my eyes and let my mind wander unhindered through the decaying architecture and creeping undergrowth on the video screens. The effect was so intoxicating that tiny sections still intrude and interrupt days later as half remembered fragments of pure magic.

All too soon, the performance was over and Foxx left the stage. There was no encore, which was a shame.

Outside, the rain was quite literally bouncing off the cobblestones as we made our way out of Hogworts and back into the real world. A stunning and highly memorable way to spend our 26th anniversary.

18-Jun-08: Never a dull moment?

As of this morning, Ion is still at number 1 in the Magnatune Download chart, whilst SkinMechanix is at number 3. I have no idea why there has been such a sudden rush of sales - I presume that someone, somewhere has been playing tracks from these albums - although it could just be that the publicity machine has finally worked and the metaphorical snowball has started to roll downhill at long last.

Another goal hit. Another ambition fulfilled. I received a nice little letter from Jan Hanford, one of the bosses at Magnatune, offering her congratulations. That was nice.

Of course, the above is tinged with a little sadness. I've decided to leave the Modulator ESP forum for a couple of months due to some fundamental ideological differences between myself and the majority of the board's members. Modulator was a good little forum, with a good mixture of artists from a wide range of fields. Slowly, over the last couple of months, more and more folk have been leaving and sadly the Berlin School mob are now in the majority, or so it seems from this perspective.

I won't go into those reasons here, except that I regret what I said and wish that things could have worked out differently but it's time to move on.

This means that the Awakenings gig, scheduled for September 27th, is now in question. I have no desire to travel to the other end of the country and perform in front of maybe 10 people - if we're lucky - all of whom would rather be listening to something else. Given that we have the Dundee Live and Cathedral gigs around the same time, I am more than concerned about burn-out, not just for me but for Jules too.

I rejoined the committee of the local astronomical society last week. I felt that I could do more from within rather than as an outsider. I said that I would not get involved with lugging great big lumps of astronomical equipment around the North East of England and yet I ended up travelling over to North Walbottle in Newcastle yesterday morning to rescue an 8 inch Perseus telescope from a school that was scheduled for demolition.

The telescope itself is pretty big but I was able to get it in and out of the car without much trouble. It's currently sitting on our kitchen table, much to Jules considerable chagrin. "We're supposed to be getting rid of all this crap. Not bringing more into the house." she muttered last night and, truthfully, I see her point. I've promised faithfully that it will be moved just as soon as we can find a suitable storage facility.

The preparations for the various gigs continue apace. I was able to recover the Audacity file for Future Forever on Monday night, which was an enormous relief. Audacity loses files every now and again and you have to manually enter them in just the right place. Strangely, the mix isn't exactly as I remember it and that will need further investigation.

One other detail that has come back to haunt me relates to the amount of documentation I set down whilst I was recording Future Forever. Given that most of these parts were played in once, directly from a keyboard in real time, I can't remember exactly which notes I played. I can work out the key, which limits the number of notes in the scale but, well, let's say that it's proving to be more than a little taxing.

Right now, I am on Day Three of a diet. This is not so much a proper diet. It's more of a lifestyle change. I've decided to diet to reduce my weight, which has risen steadfastly since Christmas whilst at the same time reducing my dependence upon my drug of choice, caffeine. I was up to 3 cups per day by the end of last month but now I'm down to one. Currently, there are no unpleasant side effects although my mood has been fairly up and down of late, in part due to the success over on Magnatune but equally due to the unpleasantness over on Modulator.

Today is a very special day. I have an interview tonight, which is a huge unknown and frankly is making me more than a little anxious. Afterwards, we have a frantic dash across to Durham for a John Foxx concert that I only just discovered at around 5pm last night.

But, top of the list, is our anniversary. It is now 26 years since Jules and I met at a crowded student party in Newcastle. Time is an illusion and these 26 years have gone by in a flash. It seems like yesterday that we were walking back to her flat in Castle Leazes Halls of Residence at 2 in the morning, wondering what we were getting ourselves into.

Never a dull moment, eh? :)

16-Jun-08: Number One

"What's the point of documenting all of these piddly little podcasts?" asked a friend the other night. "Why bother?"

Indeed, maybe I am being a little bit anal about adding every single track that gets broadcast to the airplay section of our web site but I have my reasons and here's a few of them.

For years and years, we struggled to get airplay. Stations would play one track, maybe two but, by and large, you'd send a disc out into the big, wide world and it would never be heard of again. The disc would then either steadily gather dust on a shelf until it was either dumped on eBay or dropped in the trash. Sending discs all over the world is expensive and, aside from digging a hole in your stock, it's time consuming to package the disc up, walk up to the Post office, stand in line etc.

Last year, we decided that we would no longer mail out discs. Instead, we decided that we would distribute albums to DJ's as MP3s or maybe send a link to a download area on our web site. We figured that the vast majority of DJ's can handle MP3's with ease these days and only a few steadfastly refuse to move into the digital age. Whilst I am genuinely sorry to lose these stations, the future is here and it's an iPod. Time to get rid of your LP's, guys. The days of the vinyl purist are long gone.

This approach has been astonishingly successful. Firstly, the net provides the opportunity to research a station's playlists before you press the Send button and so you have a good idea that you're picking a good target. Better still, sending an MP3 or a link to a track takes hardly any time and it costs virtually nothing so no more time is spent waiting in line at the Post Office. I would say that, most of the time, the result is entirely positive. The DJ's get a steady stream of new material so their programmes stay fresh and vibrant and we get then airplay. It's win-win all round.

So, now that airplay has started to come our way again, I plan on doing whatever I can to make sure it keeps coming in our direction. Radio stations need an audience and if we can help re-direct visitors to the IML site so that they can, in turn, visit those stations on the net or out amongst the airwaves then we've helped them in the same way that they've helped us. It's another win-win situation. That's why I include the name of the DJ, the station identity and a link, if there is one, in every entry in the airplay log.

I also list our airplay as a way of helping new musicians. About a year ago, I had maybe three, perhaps four, radio stations in my address book, DJ's who would be willing to play a couple of tracks on their shows but, alas, even some of these guys had stopped supporting us to we were, to use a polite colloquialism, stuffed. I have no idea why but, once a disc had been sent to these stations then, as far as they were concerned, that was it. They only play new or very recent discs and so we couldn't expect anything from them any longer. So, finding other outlets for our musings became paramount. It took a while but we now have a healthy list of stations willing to play our stuff. I plan on adding to that list too. So, as a way to help other musicians, I include our airplay details so that they can investigate further, maybe grab their own slice of the cake. Does it give me the warm fuzzies? Of course it does.

Every time we get some airplay, we see a small blip in sales. It's not much, maybe one or two discs but, hey, that's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. It means that the music made an impression. It means that someone liked what we did enough to part with some of their hard cash in order to hear a bit more. I like to think that whenever a listener buys a CD or download, an angel gets its wings. The more perverse side of my nature likes to think that another lump of coal gets added to the fires of Hell that will certainly burn under the collective asses of those shitty little internet pirates that persist in selling my tunes without giving me a fair cut of their dirty profits.

But I digress, as is often the way with this blog.

Getting airplay on a conventional, commercial radio station is difficult. Actually, it's bloody impossible. I gave up 10 years ago, when I naively sent a load of CD's off to all of the local stations in and around the North East of England and only one outfit, Radio Newcastle, bothered to play anything though that was on an obscure Sunday morning show dedicated to odd-ball local stuff. I think it went out somewhere between the dog racing results and Gardener's Question Time. None of the others bothered to respond and it didn't increase our fan base one iota. Worse still, I became convinced that the North East of England had become a cultural vacuum but, as we now know, that's anything but true.

My gut tells me that pod-casts are the future. Why? Because their audience is targeted, focused and highly specific. Instead of broadcasting, it's narrowcasting - precisely positioned media representation.

Suppose you get a review in the Guardian or the Telegraph. Each of these broadsheets has a readership in excess of 1 million per day. How many of those 1 million readers will even glance at a review of a CD produced by an obscure band? How many will feel inspired by the delicately penned Oxbridge prose to go in search of said title, maybe buy it off iTunes or off some hooky bitTorrent site? Not many I'll wager.

You see, reviews in non-specialist newspapers and magazines are not so much about the music. They're really about the writer. They're really about the amount of gushing praise and/or venom and vitriol that the author can inject into the smallest possible number of column inches. Such reviews are, truthfully, a form of intellectual bear-bating. Whenever I read one of these sixth form diatribes, a mental picture of a medieval scene forms, wherein the village idiot is attempting to goad some unwilling victim into action using a bladder and stick.

Radio airplay is better than a newspaper review. Much better. People tend to read newspapers for the news. CD Reviews are not news. They're secondary. Little more than pixelated navel fluff. How many music fans will you reach in the Guardian or the Telegraph? A few hundred or so? Perhaps a few thousand? In your dreams...

Talk Radio aside, people tune in to the radio to hear music. The radio is much easier to listen to than reading a newspaper. Turn a switch, push and button and the radio can provide an instant sound track to your life. However, listening to the radio is by and large, a passive experience. Most listeners use the radio as a means of drowning out the insanity of the every day ho-hum world. Most listeners find something else to do whilst the radio is on.

Pod-casts are different. Yes, they're usually the background to another activity, typically whilst working at the computer, either e-mailing, surfing, blogging etc but the listener is there because they want to be. They've searched out a specific genre of music, and picked this one download in amongst many rival stations all narrowcasting the same kind of stuff. So, you can be sure that their motivation is strong and focussed. It also implies that they're more active than the usual listener, more interested in becoming involved with the artist and what the artist is trying to say. I should point out that I have no hard evidence for this opinion. I have no marketing surveys or hard figures in black and white. It's based purely on my own experience and, indeed, git feelings.

A couple of weeks ago, I started to read all about a piece that appeared in Wired Magazine entitled "Your first 1000 fans". This is old news now but I've been outside of the loop for so long that this was new news to me.

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php

Essentially, the piece talks about the perils of so-called long-tail marketing and recommends that artists focus all of their efforts on finding 1000 true fans on the basis that if 1000 true fans all spend around £35 a year on everything you produce - CD's, T-Shirts, concerts etc - then that's £35,000 in the bank and this sum would perhaps constitute a reasonable standard of living for some musicians, myself included.

Pod-casts fit into this model perfectly because they're exactly tailored to finding those first 1000 fans, who are dedicated and focussed and so likely to invest in whatever you're doing. They're the best way to begin mind-melding with your audience and that's the most important point I want to make. It's about forming a bridge with listeners, so that they hear what you have to say and are willing to invest their time in that message.

So, I explained all of this to my friend as best I could though he wasn't convinced and he still couldn't see any point in publicising something with such a tiny take-up rate. Does he have a point?

If you were focussed on nothing more than the big bucks then, yeah, it might not make any sense. Look at say, The Tangerine Fan Zone Pod cast. The number of downloads for the last show was under 100. In the great scheme of things, that number is utterly, utterly insignificant. In other words, when viewed from the board room of EMI records, it wouldn't even pay for their mid-morning croissants or their breakfast blast of Bolivian Marching Powder.

But, remember, from your point of view, those 100 fans downloaded that show and heard your music because they wanted to. Remember the old army philosophy - 100 volunteers are better than 10000 conscripts. If those 100 fans went over to Magnatune and bought one download for £5 then you're looking at £500 in the bank. If someone walked up to you in the street and handed you £500, would you say "No. Thanks. I have enough. I don't need anymore money."?

Of course you wouldn't.

If you're focussed on paying the water bill or buying food for the next week then it's those little bucks that start to make the difference between life in the slow lane and life in a soup kitchen.

In the end, I kind of shrugged my shoulders and changed the subject. Deaf ears hear very little. His message is the same. "There's no point in doing this anymore. My CDs don't sell. I never earn anything from it so why bother."

But, as of this morning, Ion's Future Forever is sitting at Number One in the Magnatune Download chart and, without wanting to sound like a smug bastard, that feels so good.

13-Jun-08: A review

Jules found a review of December's Universal gig over on Newcastle University's Audio Hub yesterday. I have to admit that it took me several attempts to understand the prose because the full intention wasn't instantly clear. I wasn't sure if it was ironic or sarcastic or just plain takin' the piss but then that says more about my fractured personality than is perhaps healthy to admit in a public forum.

The main body of the review is presented below. I've removed/censored some of the shipyard language because I promised that I would not use that vocabulary anymore - unless, of course, I absolutely had to do so in order to convey my disgust/contept/fury etc at whatever had inspired such emotions. However, the above link does contain a fair smattering of anglo-saxon so be warned if you are of a nervous disposition.

Music & Machines: Improvisation - Tradition & Freedom 12-14/12/07 Submitted by VirginiaPipe on 26 February, 2008 - 20:55.

Improvisation - Tradition & Freedom, ICMuS/Culture Lab, 12th-14th Dec 2007

The Conference - A view from the edge...

Wow. As I reach this stage in the writing, I feel remarkably as weary as I did by this stage in the original proceedings - I can almost not write. Thank f*ck, then, for David Hughes Software, whose dazzling set of post-pop revisionist sheens came off like a tribute act to Tomita and Jean Michel Jarre. Wow! All those synths, and he can really play them! Don't not watch this on MFB, for pity's sake, it's fab.

There was the inevitable speculation that it was part of some elaborate practical joke by Colonel Rawls - either that, or a payback in one of Major Valchek's ongoing personal beefs (still on Season Two, obviously) with Frank Sebotka. Certainly, the dead reception from the floor had the same effect. Except for me and No Wind - we were ecstatic! And not necessarily from a puerile sarcasm that the misguided my attribute to us - David Hughes's orgiastic pentatonic glossings were such a poignantly brutal counterpoint to any collective ground those gathered might feel they had won over the conference, that one suspected it was motivated by fear mongering on the part of the organisers: relinquish the restraint and sobriety of a rational improv orthodoxy and you might be condemned to an eternal massage in synth-pad purgatory.

So, what does this mean? I've thought long and hard about what the reviewer was attempting to say and, well, I have to admit that I gave up, convinced that I don't have the vocabulary or the smarts to follow this intellectual strudel. The first part is pretty straight forward. But the references to Frank Sebotka et al were lost on me - they're characters in a TV series "The Wire" - but "relinquish the restraint and sobriety of a rational improv orthodoxy and you might be condemned to an eternal massage in synth-pad purgatory" feels like a slap in the face with a dead herring.

If so motivated, I could probably track down the author with my pack of dogs and a bullwhip and maybe take him/her/it to task but, alas, I fear that I'd be swamped by a large collection of long words fused with pop psychology and semi-mystic ramblings about the true nature of music and the art of communication. And life is too short for that. Indeed, I too could wax lyrical for hours and hours about what I want to say and how I want to say it and... well, it's all blah! blah! blah! frankly. It's tedious, dull, clunking waffle. You've heard it all before. Yawn. Indeed, volumes and volumes of intense, intellectual prose have been written, digested, examined, conjitated, tossed in the bin, re-written, pulled out of the bin, re-examined, ingested, re-digested, crumpled up and then tossed in the bin again etc etc etc... but it's all just meaningless navel fluff.

I will however, leave you with what are, imho, perhaps the most inspirational words ever written about music. This says it all, in one sentence. There is no need to comment any further.

"Music can put life into a dead man...", Ravi Sathasivam

12-Jun-08: The anxiety dream (second stanza)

I had the gig anxiety dream again this morning.

It went like this:

We're about to play the Cathedral gig. It's 10 minutes until curtain up and the pews are starting to fill with friends, acquaintances, journalists and the odd civic dignitary. That's when I discover that I've left all of the power strips at home. Oh dear. Here we go again...

I begin the search for alternative power sockets but there are none and clearly we're in deep trouble. Things get worse when the back of the Cathedral suddenly morphs into my old school, Rutherford, and the guy I'm looking for is a lab technician called Frank. Frank is a real life figure from my past. There's a history here and he isn't in the slightest bit inclined to help me. See? You knew that what you did to Frank would come back to haunt you one day, Dave...

Back out in the corridor, one of the teachers, Mr. Fothergill aka Big Foot Bilbo, stops to tell me that someone has started a fire in a locker on the top floor and he wants to know when I am going to call the fire brigade. I point out that I don't actually work at the school, I'm merely a visitor and that perhaps he, as a member of staff, should make the call instead of whatever else he's doing at that point. He doesn't like this idea one iota.

The quest for the power sockets continues. There's 5 minutes until curtain up and, again, I'm stopped in the corridor by a member of staff, who turns out to be the actor George Takei, Hikaru Sulu, from Star Trek. He also tells me about the fire in the top corridor and asks if I've called the fire brigade.

I run into Jules, who has found some power cables and we're able to start the concert. We make our way down to the Cathedral, hook everything up but then I can't remember what we're supposed to be playing...

It's at this point that I realise that all of the foregoing is a dream and one that I'm highly familiar with too. It's the gig anxiety dream, an old friend. It's a wake up call, albeit a somewhat belated wake-up call because I've been working in the studio preparing specifically for the gigs at the end of the year, for the past two weeks and so it's arrival is strange and unexpected. It's left me on the back foot a little.

Anyone who has been reading this blog for any length of time might just remember its original incarnation, as a collection of essays, which were penned around 2003. I had no idea that they were being read - I made them public because I felt that I had something to say although that may just have been my runaway ego gobbing off as usual. The response from one or two folk convinced me that the blog was a good idea, which it was, for a time.

I detailed the original series of anxiety dreams in that space, in an essay entitled 05:10 am and The Little Green Worm, which is an odd title for a piece of writing. Read and enjoy.

Of course, on this occasion, the premonitions didn't work and The Space Center gig was a disaster. It was our worst gig ever. Turns out that the sound engineer on the night was a replacement for the normal guy, and he was completely out of his depth. He connected our hot mixer outputs into cold inputs on his desk and either he didn't know about pads or simply forgot to add one in but we sounded dreadful - compressed, distorted, truly messed up. The gig was a nightmare both for the audience and the band. But that's a matter of record elsewhere.

So, here then, is the original entry, from around 2003.

05:10 am and The Little Green Worm

"Ladies and Gentlemen" screaches the announcer. "Put your hands together for..." The name of the artist is lost in the almighty din as the crowd roars, the lights go up and the backing begins the booming chant which heralds the start of our first number.

I walk on stage clutching my trusty Takemine 12-string, a touchstone of faith today because stagefright and nerves are a real problem. I walk over to centre stage, find my mark under the glare of a single spotlight and prepare for that all important first chord.

But there's a problem here.

I can't play the guitar. Never could.

I try to play. I really do. I practice (at least once a month) but I never seem to get any better.

I make a chord shape, an Emajor I think, and prepare to strum. The hand comes down, the chord rings out but it's hopelessly out of tune.

The audience are laughing. They're laughing out loud and pointing. But they're not laughing at my lousy chord. Not at my lousy stage gear. They're laughing because I'm not wearing any pants.

Then I wake up, heart pounding, mouth dry, palms sweating.

A dream.

Thank the Lord it's just a dream.

I look at the clock and it reads 05:10am. Then I remember. We have a gig in less than a week.

Sleep is out of the question. I wander off downstairs, switch on the kettle and wonder what I'm going to do for the next two hours. I never knew it was so dark at this time in the morning.

This is, literally, a wake up call. I realise it's significance and act appropriately. I also thank the Little Green Worm in my head for this kick in the right direction. Later in the day, I get the band together and we agree to schedule a couple of extra practice sessions. I also walk through the technical details of the show, the visuals, the mixer, the backup plans in case of equipment failure. I look for problems and look for solutions.

A week passes, the gig is a pleasant memory and, whilst it wasn't the Royal Albert Hall or the Telewest Arena, it was a success. We even sold some discs and made some money!

Now, we don't gig very often so skip forward eighteen months or so. Yes, we have another gig, this one in less than two weeks. It's a big one and we're top of the bill. The main act.

The dream begins again, like the return of a long lost friend. The Little Green Worm stirs in my head.

I check I'm wearing pants this time and there are no guitar parts to learn. I also make sure I'm the one who pushes the button to start the backing tracks. The lights go down - "Jeese, it's dark in here. I can't see my keyboards!" - and the backing starts.

But then the panic begins. It looms out of the darkness like a brick wall rising into a dense cloud bank front of me. Fear overtakes logic and common sense. All of the rehearsals and the practice sessions, they mean nothing now. I can't even remember the names of the keys...

I look around, search the deep, forbidding gloom for the other band members, Dave and Jules,. They're looking at me and their expressions tell the complete story. Confused, lost, frightened.

"Pick a note, any note..." I shout but they can't hear me over the backing tracks.

I take a chance and hit a C. Everything I write is in either C major or C minor, isn't it? Right?

Wrong. The key for this song is G#minor.

I wake up before it gets any worse. The clock reads 05:10am. Again.

Only a fool would ignore this warning. The Little Green Worm has done it again. I call the band later in the day and, again, we agree to schedule some additional sessions.

It does the trick and the gig is a major success. We walk away with a nice fat cheque and plenty of kudos for a job well done.

This Little Green Worm thing is a puzzler. Just where does that abstract come from?

When I was a student, a bunch of us got seriously drunk on Tequila in a friend's apartment. This was the good stuff, not the cheap rot-gutt that you buy in Supermarkets. And this particular bottle of Tequila had a Little Green Worm floating in it too so that you knew it was the Real McCoy.

I clearly remember someone in our small party of apprentice alcholics asking what the significance of the worm actually was. The 'explaination' was that the little sucker got into your head and stayed there, forever questioning the common sense of getting blasted on Tequila in the first place. Being very, very drunk, this mental image sort of stuck and, for all I know, that Little Green Worm is still in my head. It's a fact that I rarely, if ever, drink Tequila these days.

Another year goes by - I said we didn't gig very often - and this time we have two support slots. The first is for the Classic Rock Society, with Swedish Prog Rockers "ACT" at the top of the bill. A month after that, we're doing a support slot at a rather prestigious venue, The National Space Centre in Leicester, and we anticipate a good, solid turn out.

I wonder if the dream will come again. Is the Little Green Worm still on duty? Three weeks before the CRS gig and there's no sign of the dream. Two weeks, nothing. A week before, still nothing.

The CRS gig comes and goes but the dream doesn't. I wonder why. The concert itself was OK. Average. Good enough. We made some bum notes, the sound was a bit bass heavy but it was OK. We weren't boo'd off stage but we weren't invited back for a future concert. So who knows...

Quickly, the gig is a fading memory and we can relax a bit.

But, with a week to go before the Space Centre gig, The Little Green Worm sneaks up on me and, this time, I hardly notice at all. The Dream begins again...

We have a new studio assistant. He's bright, enthusiastic and knowledgeable if a little headstrong and opinionated but then, name one teenager who isn't. Let's call him "Mop-top" to save him some blushes.

I leave him to resolve another nightmare, the wiring harness at the back of the main equipment rack. Over the years, as the complexity of the studio has grown, the wiring harness has become something of a Gordion knot. Sorting this mess out is the least popular of all studio tasks but someone has to do it.

An hour goes by, two hours, three. I hardly notice because I'm deep into something else.

Then, suddenly, we're on stage, at the venue and I can feel that old familar sense of panic welling up inside me. I check my pants, something I always do before I go on stage. They look OK but, this time, something else is wrong.

This doesn't look like my gear. My bank of synths has been replaced by a pair of turntables which I don't actually own and the backing machine, our trusty Akai DR8, has been replaced by what looks like my Mum and Dad's old Decca Radiogram from around 1960.

"What the hell is all this?" I ask our new studio assistant.

"Synths just aren't cool anymore. I swapped 'em for some decks." he replies.

I can feel the rage rising up. "We have a gig in twenty minutes? What are we going to play?"

"Just mime. Sing along to the backing. No one will know." he says, cocky as ever.

"But we're an instrumental band. There are no bloody singers!"

"Oh!" says Mr. Curly Mop-top. "Well, I'm off home then..."

"No you're bloody not! Where's the backing?" I ask.

"It was an old piece of kit. I reformatted the disk for you." he says, "You only had three hours of audio left on it."

I wring my hands and look for a suitably blunt object, my intention being to knock some sense into his stupid head.

The show promoter comes back stage and mercifully interrupts me before any physical violence takes place. "Ten minutes to show time. Everything OK?" he says, cheery as ever. He's disappointed by my response.

I look around at the complete state of disarray. For some reason, the Radiogram is playing something by Jim Reeves. The crowd are in the hall now, waiting impatiently for the show to begin.

My brain kicks into overdrive. Never mind. We can borrow some synths from the main act and I remember the safety copy I made of the backing tracks, just in case. They're on a DAT secreted away in the 'Junk Trunk'.

This is getting tiresome, predictable even. The DAT isn't in the 'Junk Trunk'. It's been 'reorganised'.

"Where's the safety copy of the backing tracks?" I ask but I already know the answer.

"I reorganised your tape store yesterday." says Mop-top.

"And the safety copy is...?"

"In the tape store, with all of the others."

Then the shouting starts. Mop-top wants to go home. In fact, we all do.

Let's wrap this up quickly because it's getting boring. The dream gets aggressive, violent even. Any good vibes or funky karma have simply dissolved. I tell the show promoter that we simply can't play. Of course, he refuses to pay us which means that we're out of pocket for the whole thing. What's more, we look like a bunch of amateurs. What the hell are we doing here in such a prestigious venue? We'd should have stayed at home. We have no business being here.

Of course, Mop-top is sacked on the spot but then, strangely, he asks me for a reference and the remainder of the dream is spent writing out a few lines for his potential future employers. I get the impression he won't follow a career in the pro-audio world.

I force myself out of the dream and check the clock. Again, it reads 05:10am. Weird.

The gig is just over a week away so there's time to take the appropriate action. We're still sharp from the gig with the Classic Rock Society but that doesn't stop me calling the band and re-arranging our rehearsals.

I don't need any additional prompts. I've come to trust the Little Green Worm in my head. It gives me a gentle kick up the ass every now and then and it's an indication that something, somewhere isn't right with the world and that I need to do something about it. The problems and issues come sharply into focus, you begin to work at the gig, push in the right direction and then, when you're certain that you've done everything in your power to make the gig work, the good vibes start and that unmistakable buzz begin again.

At the time of writing, I don't know how the Space Center gig will turn out. It may be our best yet, it may be our worst and, OK, something will go wrong - it always does - but, with luck, a bit of planning and a Little Green Worm pushing all of the right buttons, the show will go on and that's what counts.

10-Jun-08: Don't fear the Reaper...

The planning for the Generations concert is now well under way. We have a gig plan, which also extends to the Awakenings and DundeE-Live events, and a good idea of what we have to do in terms of rehearsals, new material and deadlines. I've decided that I won't be participating in the HJJ or the Synth DiY events this year because I need to conserve my time and resources as much as possible and I know from experience that these events will be a massive draw on my energy.

The main concern is, of course, the new Ion album. I've started work on this, in part by developing some pre-existing pieces but also by working on some new ideas. Part of this development process is to become more familiar with the studio again whilst, at the same time, learning my way around a couple of new tools and techniques.

I decided that I would not be using the Audacity package this time around. It's a useful tool but there were too many problems with clicks and skips during the recording of Future Forever and I want to avoid those, if possible. Instead, I decided to work with Reaper, to take advance of all of the VST's and sophisticated enhancements that it offers over Audacity.

However, last night's session with Reaper did not end well and now it won't even load past the title screen. I've made sure I'm using the latest version but it's still unusable. I'll see if I can fix it today but we may well be using Audacity after all.

One thing I won't do is rush the new Ion album out the door. It will happen at its own pace, in much the same way that Future Forever came together, without hurrying and without the pressure/stress/paralysis from looming deadlines.

Last Friday, Jules and I went over to Ron Berry's house for cheesy nibbles and polite conversation. We had a wonderful time, and didn't leave until well after midnight. Ron's wife, also called Julie (or Jules), is an artist so the girls were happy to chat amongst themselves whilst the boys got on with the serious business of checking out the synths. I only wish I'd been better company because, as has become apparent in recent days, I'm still not up to 100% following my encounter with the Blood Transfusion Service last month.

There are other events that are swirling around me at the moment, events that I am inclined to document herein for sake of completeness but I am not entirely sure that I should do so in such a public forum. They are personal and have nothing to do with music but they seem likely to become an important part of my life. Should I? Shouldn't I?

For the time being, I've decided to keep them to myself. Some things need to remain private, especially with the gigs coming up in the near future and the probable elevation of our profile in the local media. Speaking from experience, journalists like to twist and turn events and situations to fit their own somewhat obtuse agenda and I am quite sure that they'd love to make hay with these particular snippets. :)

I will end this entry by leaving this subject dangling in mid-air, if only to stimulate the reader's curiousity in the vain hope that you will return to find out what I'm jabbering on about in a future missive. :)

04-Jun-08: Generations

Last night, Jules and I sat down in front of our aged, beige studio Macintosh G3 and began work on the first of the Ions' scores, a religious Preces and Response penned by William J. Ions in around 1860.

I'd already prepared myself mentally for a major struggle because I've only used the score editor in Cubase a couple of times and we did not get on well. Let's be kind and just say that the Cubase Score Editor has a steep learning curve.

Jules looked on with abject horror as I began adding individual notes by hand, one by one. She felt sure that she could play in the passage from a keyboard and save us both a lot of time and stress. Whilst this is certainly true, we both looked at eachother in complete dismay because the resulting pattern of dots and squiggles looked like nothing we'd ever seen before. And yet it did sound fairly close to what she'd played. A bit of quantising and clipping helped but that changed her original flowing sequence into something more closely resembling one of those dreadful orchestral arrangements belched out by the likes of K-Tel records in the early 80's. Clearly, Cubase's idea of what the score should look like doesn't match our expectations. Is it right? I don't know. All I know is that it sounds roughly right - according to Jules - and that's enough. We decided a while ago that we would interpret the Ions pieces rather than repeat them parrot-fashion, which means that they can be different from the original score without losing the original concept.

So, it's back to adding the notes in by hand tonight. However, we did have enough to record a small passage to hard disc and, with suitable synthesiser sounds, it did sound remarkably good. I'll append a sample in a future update.

One minor addition... We were both highly amusing by a small paragraph of text stuck to the bottom of the original score, possibly added by William Ions himself. It reads thus...

N.B. In these Responses for Occasional Use, the Emotional element has been admitted; expressed in the progressions and harmonies of the present day. And the Tenor has been relieved of the monotonous and fruitless task of leading the People's Plain-song, which for centuries the "People" have persisted in not singing at all.

Some things never change, eh?

This morning, we have a new arrival in the back garden. A pair of Blackbirds have built a nest in the ivy on the back wall and this is the first year that they've been successful. We've been able to hear the chicks for around a week now but we got to see a couple of scruffy looking beaks for the first time at the weekend so we know they've hatched at least two chicks. Since then, we've both been watching nervously as Mom (aka "Stumpy") and Dad have been flying back and forth with beaks full of worms and various other bits of ever-so-slightly alive insects in the expectation that there will be an escape from the nest sooner or later.

Sure enough, Pooh spotted one this morning - a fledgling sitting on a log not far from the nest. I recognised the tell tale signs - the expectant stance, the urgent wagging of the tail, the raised ears - so I grabbed Pooh and shoved her indoors at once, lest she alert The Bird Killer General aka Dodie, who has a knack for spotting small birds and mammals though usually they're dead by the time you realise what she's found. I'm determined that this little mite isn't going to suffer the same fate.

Since then, the good news is that we've seen Stumpy fluttering back and forth with food for the escapeee so they know he's on the ground and they'll keep him safe as best they can. I'm staying well away from the drama. I'll make sure the cat up the road does the same.

  03-Jun-08: The Blues

I have a dose of the blues this morning. This is not a bad dose. It's not a great Biblical whaling and gnashing of teeth, nor of the beating of the chest variety but, instead, a more subtle mood, which lends itself to quiet, reflective thoughts, a sense that something is pending, perhaps unwinding, for want of a better word.

Such feelings are commonplace after an adventure, and the radio interview at the weekend was just such an adventure. Was it worth the trouble? The stress? The effort? Truthfully, I don't know. Financially, I doubt it. But then, as I'm fond of stating over and over again, we're no longer in this for the money. Critically, you have to ask if the adventure was fun and I would say that yes, without a shadow of a doubt, it was fun. For me, anyway. I know that Jules has her doubts. I know she doesn't enjoy being couped up in a car for 8 hours, getting home at 4am just as the sun is coming up and sleeping away the better part of a perfectly good day. Sorry about that, Jules.

I first noticed these odd moods after various trips away to music festivals up and down the country in the late 80's and 90's, when the world was a more civilised place and it was nice to be able to slide in and out of events, to watch from the sidelines without any pressure to perform. Listen to me. I sound like I'm some kind of big-bucks, mega-star whereas, truthfully, I'm very nearly but not quite, almost completely unknown in what is a tiny field, a field that is, I'm sorry to say, shrinking, year on year. Some say shrinking. I say more like disappearing up its own highly pretentious backside. This is why we've put so much effort into escaping the so-called UK EM scene, which I think has reached a point when there are more contributors than fans, a state that is hardly good for its survival. Mercifully, the internet has given us a world-wide EM scene and it's currently easier to reach fans around the world than it is to get a spot on our local radio station or a slot at one of the few festivals still operating.

But this is an old rant. Back to the blues.

I actually like the blues. I enjoy these moods of quite introspection and odd sulky periods because they herald the arrival of a new productive phase. Some adventures really do take it out of you, leave you drained, exhausted, frustrated, often resulting in a lengthy break from things creative. There's nothing left in the batteries and the batteries have to be recharged before they're ready for use again. Typically this will take a couple of months before they're ready to resume work and the arrival of the blues usually indicates that said batteries are just about ready to start up again, see where we're headed, see what's over the next horizon.

And so I will disappear for a few weeks, go dark as one of my customers so delightfully put it, and see what manifests itself in the wee small hours. It's all about letting that still, small voice come through. If you've never heard the still, small voice then I would politely and respectfully suggest that you switch off the TV, the radio, the iPod and all of the myriad of other distractions that have embedded themselves in our daily lives, then find a corner of a field on a sunny day and slide into that delicious solitude that only the creative, the angst-ridden and the truly pretentious can fully understand.

Now, where are my sack-cloth and ashes.

  02-Jun-08: A British Tar...

From HMS Pinafore...

A British tar is a soaring soul
As free as a mountain bird
His energetic fist should be ready to resist
A dictatorial word
His nose should pant and his lip should curl
His cheeks should flame and his brow should furl
His bosom should heave and his heart should glow
And his fist be ever ready for a knock-down blow

We set off at around 6pm on Saturday night and made good time down the motorway, arriving in Market Harborough at around 930 pm. The trip was largely uneventful, which is just the way we like it - some road works, a couple of right knob-heads driving at excessive speed, the occasional traffic cop to keep you on your toes. Travelling anywhere in the UK is stressful at the best of times, more so when your destination includes a two hour radio interview, broadcast world-wide over the net. Gulp...

However, on the way down, Jules introduced me to a new stress-busting technique.

Like most folk, I seriously hate the sound of my voice. To my ears, it always sound thin and weedy and very, very nasal - your original white honkie. Whenever I have to speak in public, which isn't very often mercifully, I have a couple of vocal techniques that I try to use to improve the tone although none of them work well and I still sound bloody awful.

Jules' novel technique involves singing sections from various operettas by Messrs Gilbert and Sullivan. I am not a singer. Never have been. Not since my voice 'broke' in my teens. When I say 'broke', I mean it fractured into a multitude of pieces and not even the entire cast of The Mikado could put my voice together again. Truthfully, my singing voice sounds like the QE2's fog horn.

Anyway, Jules taught me the first couple of lines and I managed to get those almost right, and then we moved on to the second section and, by the time we'd mauled that, we were both laughing so much that any nerves had been completely dispelled. Better still, I felt that my voice felt richer, smoother and a little less nasal.

Then the spectre of a traffic cop reared it's ugly head and I wondered what might happen if we'd been spotted singing and subsequently stopped.

The Major-General's song from "The Pirates of Penzance"

I am the very model of a modern major Traffic cop,
I've pulled you off the road, flagged you down and made you stop,

My camera caught you speeding,
You were going far to far to far to fast,
Your tires, they are balding,
When did you think to change them last,
I am sure your tax disc doesn't look quite right,
I think you bought it off some bloke,
Down at the pub the other night...

And so forth (and with suitable apologies to Sir Arthur Sullivan...)

Terry Hawke was our host for the evening. He met us in reception, took us up to the main control area at the top of the building and then went through the procedure. I'd be the second interview of the evening, with a female composer from Germany called Antonia on first. My friend Susan Baird would be on last at around midnight.

Terry had picked out a couple of tracks from the SkinMechanix live album, Fallen Angel, (Dimension Jump and Fallen Angel, as well as a bunch of T-Bass tracks, which were not my preferred choice. I asked if we could change them because, firstly, I'd recorded 3 special tracks for the interview and these were all exclusive for Terry's show. Secondly, T-Bass isn't really my main concern at the moment. SkinMechanix and Ion currently are getting far more airplay and when the time comes to resurrect T-Bass then it will get the airplay that it deserves. Until then, it's on the back burner.

The tracks were: Dome, from the Voltage Terrace (unreleased), Faraway Piano from the new (untitled) Ion disc and Dacota Plains from the Rapture set (Awakenings in Leeds in December 2005).

Terry revised the running order and I joined him in the studio to listen in on Antonia's interview, occasionally nodding in a sage-like, approving manner but more often then not, shaking my head in total disbelief - Antonia is an astrologer and big on the whole spiritual scene, which is not my kind of thing at all.

Then a piece of paper was stuffed under my nose, which I was invited to read. It was the weather forecast. Huh? Okay, I read it as best I could and didn't fluff up once.

We found Jules a spare seat in the studio and the interview kicked off at around 1115 pm with Dimension Jump playing in the background. Truthfully, my mind is a blank in that I don't really remember much of what I said. I know I talked about the forthcoming gigs including Dundee-Live and Awakenings but I also announced the Generations gig in December. I also rambled on about music in general, tossing in the odd snippet whenever it felt appropriate. I have a recording of the interview, which I have yet to listen to but I'll tell you how I felt it went later.

There were a couple of problems that put me on edge. What you hear in your headphone is what the listeners are hearing, so it's delayed by a fraction of a second. That can be a little off-putting. Plus there's so much going on around you all the time - Terry's arms moving across the console, queuing up the next track, adjusting volumes etc - that it's easy to get distracted.

Jules took a couple of pictures, skilfully managing to hide my double-chin, and the whole interview flew past so quickly that, well, before I knew it, it was over and Terry was talking to Susan down the phone link. I did get to do the weather report again though I mumbled it a little. "What's drain?" asked Jules, afterwards. "It's a combination of rain and drizzle..." I said, somewhat shame faced... :)

We stuck around to say "Hi!" to Susan but I was anxious to head for home, which was three and a half hours away. The journey home was uneventful and we made good time with only one or two stops on the way up the M1.

So, a little more airplay, which should raise the profile a little higher, get a few more bums on seats at the various gigs and maybe sell a couple of extra downloads. Is it worth all of the extra heartache and stress?

Of course.

 

Copyright 2008 David J. Hughes and Thinking Metal Music