David's Blog

Dave's Little Bit On the Side: March 2009

31-Mar-09 : Re:boot Re:Place

Just back from an all-day conference, Re:boot Re:place, at the Sage in Gateshead. Lots and lots of good ideas and an excellent opportunity to mix with a lot of cool creative types. No endless list of dropped names but, suffice to say, I bumped into a lot of interesting people. I only hope that they felt the same.

Arriving late meant that I successfully avoided the dreaded speed networking sessions. I hate these with a passion because, from past experience, you either get stuck with some lamer/retard who isn't very interested in what you're doing and doesn't really want to be there anyway, or you get stuck in front of a rampant egotist who just wants to talk about his or her own whizz-bang idea that, incidentally, is about as original as dry, white toast or myspace or facebook. Either way, you're stuck.

The sessions were pretty full though I got the impression that attendance was a bit down on last year. The audience was an even mix of bright young things, nerds and urban metrosexuals on the pull. In other words, the twittering classes, replete with laptops and palm pilots, and all of them tip-tap-tipetty-tapping their way through most of the presentations like a day trip for OCD out-patients. I got the impression that a fair number of delegates were on a jolly although the pleasures of bunking off work for a day were sadly lost as the ever present-wireless network connection meant that most were in constant contact with the office and therefore still subject to the whims and fancies of customers and supervisors alike, just like any other day in the office. Ho hum. Still, there were a couple of old timers, like myself, who knew what the inside of a ZX Spectrum looks like and who were able to offer a nod and a wink to anyone foolish enough to imagine that they've come up with something truly, truly original. In truth, most of the web is just a new way of selling the same old shit to a different type of consumer.

Do you remember when you were at school and you dropped a book on the floor? Do you remember what it sounded like? Did it hit the floor with a resounding bang? Did it split along the spine and spill its collective guts on the floor? Probably not. But a dropped laptop usually does. And then the air is filled with random yet ever so predictable expletives shortly followed by a mass of collective oooohs and aaaahs as half the delegates whince in sympathy - "I was that blogger!" - and the other half just laugh because they're pricks. I just whince.

Still, I enjoyed this conference like no other, in part because the material was involving and useful and perhaps highlighted a few pathways that we've not explored until now, and because I met up with a lot of people I knew and liked and so wasn't stuck in a corner like Billy No-Mates. These included Rob Meek of Alice Video, Brian Degger of Transit Lab, musician Steve Luck and Promoter/musician/digital troubadour, Martin McAloon. When I mentioned to Rob and Martin that I knew Ron Berry and that we'd been on HFM together over the weekend, they were thrilled since both know Ron from days gone by. Small world.

The bright side of the conference was the sheer volume of new applications and new technologies spilling out in the user space. Most of the public won't even be aware of what's happening - mostly because it's safely hidden away behind a thin veneer of hyped-up bullshit - but the general feeling is that user acceptance of even the most extreme of ideas is just a few clicks away. Wait and see.

Content is everything in the new wonder web, specifically content that you create for others to modify and where copyright is almost certainly going to be a thing of the past. This isn't great news if you've just recorded an album and want to earn more than beer money for your efforts. Likewise, I can't see Sony Pictures giving away their latest motion picture under a Creatve Commons license and I think it's even less likely that they'll entertain the idea of users editing the picture so that it's longer, shorter, has more sex, less sex, more profanities, less profanities and/or a whole new ending where everyone rides off into the (digitally enhanced) sunset or gets down on their knees for the biggest on-screen orgy in the history of cinema. I just can't see it. But then weirder things have happened. It's about as likely as the Home Secretary being caught watching a gay porn film. Oh. Hang on. Wait a minute.

The downside was that more and more programmers/creative types are finding it harder and harder to get paid for their efforts, with projects being shelved and/or abandoned because customers prefer to plead poverty or because some troll with a hooky copy of Dreamweaver will do the same job for half the price without bothering to quote for finessing the site or offering full support, both essential ingredients for a successful job. Indeed, a lot of the emphasis was on working for peanuts and using alternative revenue streams such as advertising or rebranding to pull in the moolah. I just can't see how that is going to get the bills paid, frankly. Indeed, a quick and possibly meaningless straw poll of the delegates indicated that the most popular application that you could develop and that would sell in huge quantities would be an online-app that encourages customers to pay their bills on time. Some hope. Maybe such an application could flash up a picture of the Home Secretary watching a stick vid - the more overdue the bill, the more disgusting and/or hypocritical the image.

Anyway, a good day out and a chance to freshen up some ideas, maybe see the world from a different angle. And good to see so many old/new faces.

30-Mar-09 : The Terry Hawke Show

I am convinced that if you have a good attitude and a good working relationship with the Universe then the Universe (usually) rewards you and sometimes it rewards you BIG TIME.

I never used to believe in karma. I used to think that it was just a load of tree-hugging, new age hippy bollocks. Not so these days.

I guess it's just a state of mind, an attitude that makes it easier to get through the day, even when you've been royally shafted by people you formerly considered friends. That's life. It's the rough and the smooth. Live with it.

However, I am constantly amazed at what the Universe throws at you dressed up as chance. Skeptics might say "coincidence" and I'd probably reply (in a Gene's Simmons voice) "Yeah, probably, but can ya' just keep on throwing some of those coincidences right back at me, baby!".

Take, for example, Saturday afternoon. The interview is in 6 hours. My nerves are beginning to get to me. A couple of other issues are beginning to piss me off. Money is an issue. Certain bills are not going to get paid this month. I'm behind on my build schedule. I was up until 11 pm the previous night re-writing a 3 minute piece as an exclusive play on Terry's show so I'm exhausted. In addition, we have a 400 mile round trip ahead of us and we won't get back until 4 or maybe 5 am. I'm also feeling more than a little ashamed at the state of the car. I've just cleaned it out and whilst it's looking a lot better than it did, it's still covered in dog hair. I wonder what Ron (Berry) is going to make of it. He's going to be stuck in the back seat for the next 8 hours and picking dog hair of his clothing for the next month.

Worse still, and this is starting to worry me a bit, my licensing deal at Shockwave has just dried up - nothing for 15 days now - and I'm beginning to think that the joy ride is over. That's when I start to ask "Why am I doing this?"

Out of curiousity, I check my account at the Shockwave site. Great. There's a new sale. A couple of bucks? Hardly worth it?

No. It's a Mass Market/broadcast license - the track Future Forever has been licensed for use in a TV programme, a film or a computer game.

Thrilled, I check up on the PRS site to see what this means. Their recommendation is "JOIN! NOW!" or you're missing out on BIG BUCKS. "Yeah, they would say that. They need your money." says the cynic's voice in my head but it can just piss off because this is really good news.

However, I can't afford to pay the £100 membership fee but Jules steps up to the plate and offers to pay it for me. Now I'm in a better mood. I can see something positive in all of this. Suddenly, the nerves start to melt away.

Skip forwards 5 hours and we're in Terry's studio at Harborough FM, getting ready for the interview. We're late because we missed the turning on the motor way and had to drive through 40 miles of tiny villages with their tiny speed restrictions. Although we're here, in one piece, and with 20 minutes to go before showtime, Terry's still clearly a bit freaked because he was wondering if he would have to resort to Plan B, which would mean busking it for and hour and a half.

Terry hands me the cue sheet and says "You're on in 10 minutes. You okay with that?"

Yes, no problem. I read the cue sheet. The first track he's going to play is... Future Forever. Wow. Karma.

The interview is a dream, with no nerves whatsoever. Ron and I bounce off each other, cracking jokes at the other's expense and the atmosphere is just totally relaxed and a lot of fun.

Terry: "Tell us about 'Future Forever'"

David: "It's actually a track that I have no recollection whatsoever of writing. It just happened."

Terry: "Why's that? I should point out that Ron is making all sorts of wrist gestures. Were you drunk at the time?"
David: "(Laughs, drinking gestures continuing...). Err, no... (serious voice) Just that it all happened very quickly and... " (Retires from mike, giggling audibly)

Later...

Terry: "So, Ron. You've been at this game for a long, long time. How did you get into all of this?"

Ron: "I first heard a Moog synthesiser in the 70's"

David:(Cutting in rather rudely) "That would be 1870's. He bought his first synth off Michael Faraday."

And so on... Good vibes all around.

Terry plays six Ion tracks, including Magnificat by my Great, Great, Great Uncle William Ions and the new piece, Please Be Quiet. We even persuade Jules and Ron to read the dreaded weather forecast, an in-joke amongst Jules and I. It's her first vocal broadcast, straight into the microphone and then out to the Universe. She's nervous but it sounds fine, even if she thinks she fluffed a couple of lines.

The interview ends and, 10 short minutes later, we're heading back up the A6 towards Leicester, listening to the show on HFM. Terry is playing a dance track - I don't know who it's by but it's a good one, a solid foot-tapper. Terry's voice cuts in "Good Luck, safe journey to Ron, Jules and Dave. Thanks for visiting." It's a priceless moment. Really priceless.

HFM's signal quickly fades out as we leave the valley behind and then we're left with silence.

And a few more good memories.

26-Mar-09 The Universe

I know that I said I wasn't going at add anything else to these pages for a while but I felt that I just had to comment on this particular event.

Just as things started to look a little bit bleak and the world had perhaps gone a bit sour, something wonderful happened.

At the start of the week, I was pretty sure that the recession was about to claim yet another victim (namely me) and, to make matters worse, a couple of people whom I had formerly regarded as close friends actually turned out to be just a bunch of witless, ignorant, arrogant arseholes. Their sudden and somewhat unexpected departure left a bit of a hole and that took a bit of getting used to. So, as you might imagine, there were a lot of bad vibes floating around last weekend.

Then, in the midst of all of this shite (for want of a better word), a ray of light appears on the horizon. Amazing.

That's all I plan to say in case I put the so-called knockers on it but it really is remarkable how just as one or two doors are closed behind you (and some are actually slammed on your sorry ass), another series of doors open up and the world looks a different place again.

Totally cool, and nice to get one's mojo back ahead of the interview with Ron Berry on the Terry Hawke show this weekend.

23-Mar-09 A break

I've decided to take a bit of a break from the blog - probably for a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months, just until I can get my head back together. I need a rest from a lot of things, the blog in particular.

I'll still keep the various News sections up to date so check back every now and again for concert details and other band announcements.

Cheers for now.

22-Mar-09 More facelifts than Joan Rivers

I've been experimenting with the look and feel of the Thinking Metal site and I've now found exactly the identity I've been searching for.

I've had an image in the back of my head - one that just wouldn't go away - for around two months now and it's an image that has lingered on into the wee hours, occasionally surfacing during the day as well, one that seemed to be ever so right and yet ever so slightly out of reach.

The motive for the changes in the look and feel of the site, its graphic appearance, has to do with my attempts to root out the label's identity and direction.

For the last couple of years, I've felt that the label lacked a direction and a purpose. I've felt that we were stuck somewhere between that nebulous and ill-defined never-neverland currently infested by the Tangerine Dream-wannabees (and all of their shabby ilk), and a more commercial orientation, something closer to the New Wave movement of the late 70's before they went AWOL and bought into the frilly collars and tartans of the New Romantic era (Gag!).

This is the logic behind the stark black and red theme currently in place. This styling has come the closest so far to capturing the mood I want to convey. This is probably just a personal feeling but the whole primary red styling screams 1979 and it does so in big, HUGE letters. Why? I really don't know, but I think it has a lot to do with the image of something raw and unrefined, untouched by anything whatsoever to do with Photoshop or Illustrator.

I spent 20 minutes in the studio this morning taking pictures. No attempt has been made to tidy up the studio or beautify the pictures. The studio is more or less exactly as it was following Saturday night's rehearsal/practice/warm up. I've maybe rearranging one or two pieces of equipment so that they made some interesting shapes but essentially, the place is a mess, full of bits of manuscript, half empty coffee cups and Jules' semi-legible notes on lead lines and arrangements.

For personal reasons, I wanted to remove myself from the pictures and so those currently in place feature nothing but equipment, the basic studio furniture. This is an interesting dichotomy in that, for years, I have been screaming at anyone who would listen that the gear isn't important. But here the gear features more than the musicians. Now get your head around that. :)

The resulting high contrast black and whites - devoid of any colour, any mood, any feeling - seem to touch that perfect sweet spot, exactly where I was aiming. They may just be photographs to some but, to me, they're exciting, thought-provoking and engaging. Styling, look-and-feel and a band's image are often just as important as the music itself, in that these factors help to give the music a direction and shape that (sometimes) wasn't there before.

Is it just a psychological crutch or is there something more tangible at work? I don't know. I just have to go on what feels right and it most certainly does. It feels like another piece of the jigsaw has finally clicked into place.

20-Mar-09 A Very Petty Affair

This post has been deleted because of number of c*nts involved has exceeded the legal maximum permitted under company regulations.

18-Mar-09 Knob head

Today has not been good. It started off well but, from roughly one o'clock onwards this afternoon, it has gone down hill rapidly, in a manner that has much in common with Eddie 'the Eagle' Edwards and one of his more spectacular landings. I have achieved very little of what I set out to do and, worse still, screwed up those jobs which I ought to have left well alone. My mistake for listening to enthusiasm over common sense.

Having done the Mea Culpa thing in front of a pissed off customer - Yes, I really should have known better - I lost my temper and, in a sudden and uncharacteristic loss of karma, I kicked the dog's bed across the room. (No, the dog was not in it at the time!) Alas, I kicked it so hard that I now have what I think is a broken toe.

So, in the words of the famous Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli when, in 1877, he discovered that what he had previously thought (and announced to the world) were Canals on Mars subsequently turned out to be an optical illusion caused by a mix of cruddy optics and poor seeing, "Oh fuck!".

If there is, somewhere, a small Demon sticking pins in a wax effigy of my fat, wobbly ass, I would please ask him (or her) to stop. It hurts and I get the message. Okay. Sorry.

16-Mar-09 Birthday /Long weekend

I'm sort of glad I'm back at work this morning because it's a lot quieter than being at home. ( Okay, yes, I work from home these days but ya's sees what I mean, like... :) )

That was a long week.

It kicked off on Wednesday night where I had a long, long meeting to attend, which passed off without a hitch but was still very tiring.

Thursday was the night of the Science Fest Dinner at the Centre for Life in Newcastle, an event that I'd been looking forward to for a long time.

Jules and I were the only representatives from Newcastle Astronomical Society present. Others had been invited but declined. I have no idea why. Then again, I wasn't invited to the committee meeting where this issue was discussed, my invitation and agenda having been lost in the post, so I don't know their reasons. Maybe they were busy. Maybe they were at home, washing their hair. Maybe they just couldn't be arsed. Who knows?

Anyway, this was a terrifically enjoyable event - good food, good company (in the form of fellow Newcastle Uni Alumni Dave Newton and his wife) and an interesting guest list full of the Great and the Good from the local hoi oligoi and a fair smattering of scientists from around the region, plus Mr. David Lesley Wood, The Lord Mayor of Newcastle.

Even though we were the customary 10 minutes late, we were just about the first couple to arrive and we both wondered what was going on. We met Dave Newton and his wife straight away and, similarly non-plussed, we just stood around waiting for something to happen as serving wenches poured a strange, orange liquour into our glasses and smiled the kind of smile that says "Drink too much of that and you'll be on your arse in 20 minutes". At the same time, a tribe of itinerant Street Entertainer-types patrolled the waiting area like a pod of killer whales eager to pounce upon any visitor foolish enough to move outside of the safe area. Actually, I didn't envy them. The geography teachers and the journalists might have found this kind of fairground bollocks entertaining but the scientists and geeks did not. Like I said, tough crowd.

Once seated, we discovered that the menu had a Darwin theme - food and drink that Charles Darwin himself might have enocuntered on his travels. What a wonderful subliminal message it conveys. "Yeah. Let's go to the furthest corner of the globe. Let's seek out new life and new civilisations, boldly go where no white man has gone before and... then eat anything that moves." Wonderful, really.

Anyway, we began, as one does, with the appetisers - char-grilled fish which, according to Noel Jackson, Head of Education at the CfL, Charles was fairly fond of. We then discovered that the weird orange drink served up in reception was a Tangerine-derived liquour which CD was apparently very fond of. I'm not surprised. It was quite potent.

The second course was, wait for it, chicken and chips. Huh? Yeah. Chicken and chips. Or rather I should say 4 chips. Yeah. Just 4. (A post-dinner visit to Munchies on Percy Street seemed to be on the cards). The chicken was on the menu because Darwin had encountered its forebears - the Guinea Fowl - in his travels and although it wasn't particularly memorable, it tasted fine even though some of the guests on another (less refined) table complained that it was a bit rubbery. Sure, if you're more used to over-cooked, mechanically recovered mush then it probably was. I prefer to actually taste my food rather than just stuff it down like a bucket of MacNuggets.

Dessert was amazing, a kind of ice cream littered with some very different flavourings - real Mint (not the crap you get in a mint-flavoured chocolate chip ice-cream) and red currants mixed in with a dash of rosemary. You get the idea. Different flavourings to match the different stages of Darwin's voyage. Neat.

Dinner was rounded off by some interesting chat with former Radio Newcastle DJ Julia Hankin who regular readers may remember from earlier missives. For those not familiar with this blog, Julia interviewed Dave Wilson and myself on her afternoon show when we released The Fabulous Neutrinos back in 2001. She floored me with the first question - Didn't this style of music die out 25 years ago?", and I suppose it did. I spent quite a while talking to Dave Newton about his time on the committee of Newcastle Astronomical Society and the book-burning episode which precipitated his leaving. Sadly, I learned much that is not to like about my collegues at the astronomical society.

Anyway, we decided to leave at around 10:30 and, after grabbing coats and the like from the cloakroom, we were handed a parting gift of two bottles of Darwin Breweries' Natural Selection beer, which was nice.

All in all, a very enjoyable evening.

Friday and a long lie in beckoned. Sort of. My 47th birthday.

I'm used to birthdays now. I have accumulated a fair number of them thus far and these days, I prefer to spend them with Jules doing something interesting rather than, say, involved in a drunken orgy in the company of one's peers. Last year we went to the Captain Cook Museum in Middlesbrough. This year, we went hiking in Hulne Park near Alnwick, or HarryPotterLand as I like to call it.

Hulne Park is part of the Duke of Northumberland's estates and the route we took was a long hike by Jules' standards - 4.5 miles - capped off with 30 minutes spent exploring a ruined 12th Century Carmelite priory in the middle of the estate. Very enjoyable and we were both utterly knackered by the time we got back to the car, some 5 hours later.

Friday night was Comic Relief night which, for personal reasons, I try to avoid. We both bought red noses and support them where we can but I don't like the programmes and so don't normally watch them. We did this time even though they always upset me. Sadly, this was no different and we went to bed early, both wishing that we'd done something else.

Saturday was manic. Shopping, followed by more shopping, followed by a trip into Newcastle to visit the Maker's Faire - a huge collection of geeks, nerds and smart arses from all around the world. Lots to see and do, lots to enjoy though I was royally pissed because the bloody camera announced that it had a flat battery more or less as soon as I switched it on. Wanker.

Highlights of the faire included a couple of neat Arduino boards making noises, a set of plushies that could be used to generate music, some very clever image processing from the BBC R & D department, who were the event sponsors and, best of all, a synth/sound source made out of garden plants. In other words, plants with light and stress sensors hidden amongst the foliage producing patterns of light and sound on a nearbye high-res screen. A lot of fun.

I also found a flyer detailing the MiniAstro series of talks in April. Nice to see my name in print, glory-hunting, wannabe-celebrity media-whore that I am. :)

We got back to the car at around 4:10 pm, only to discover that someone had written the words Please Clean Me in the dirt on my rear window. Okay, so the car does need a wash but, with so much salt still on the roads following the recent spell of cold weather, there didn't seem much point in washing it off.

A little bit of careful inspection followed. The bay was empty when we arrived, which was why I chose it - specifically to give Jules enough leg room to get in and out without assistance from me. Plus, the bay was off the main thoroughfare and so nobody else would normally pass this way. At that moment, there were two other cars in the same bay and the one on the left had been similarly adorned. The remaining vehicle, a smart people-carrier with a lot of child-safety seats in the back, was unmarked. It didn't take a great leap of logic to work out who the culprit was.

I wrote them a note and stuck it under their windscreen. It read:

"Ha! Ha! Ha! Very funny! Now, just try polishing *that* scratch out!"

I used a piece of note paper from a company we no longer deal with because we don't like the way that they do business so, if anyone gets into any trouble then it will be them. Arf! Arf! Dennis the Menace would be proud.

Sunday was spent in the garden, tidying up and digging over the site of the proposed wildlife pond. That area of the garden floods every year anyway so I felt that it would be a good place to put in a pond. The digging was tough and I buggered both wrists in the process so I was in no fit state to work at the computer or in the studio. I went to bed and stayed there until the pain went away.

A meeting at Sunderland Astronomical Society followed in the evening. The subject material - The history of the telescope by Dr. Jurgen Schmoll - was pretty much the same as my proposed talk in the Mini Astro series so I went along to get a quick refresher and hopefully cut down on the amount of additional research I'll have to wade through next month.

So, having spent the last 5 days running around the north east of England, it's going to be nice to spend a couple of nights at home.

12-Mar-09 Second Life : Newcastle Quayside and The Sphere

I forgot to post these earlier this week... images from the party in the Second Life version of the Newcastle/Gateshead Quayside Project and the total immersion sim, The Sphere.



The RL Quayside never looked this gorgeous...	In front of the Guildhall building...

Dossing in front of the Virtual Baltic Gallert	Flying over Newcastle's Swing Bridge

The Sphere	Total immersion video-graphics. I wish I'd had a projector handy!

11-Mar-09 Amazed

I've seen two examples of current CGI technology this morning. Both blew me away. Totally. You REALLY have to try this...

http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/#/augmented_reality

And...

World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

Is this the shape of things to come?

Lord above! I hope so!

10-Mar-09 For Stuart...

09-Mar-09 Fraud? / That Generation Thang / Teenage Angst

Part of my deal with Shockwave Sound is that they can sell my album Future Forever as a fully licensed, royalty-free work for a fairly modest amount of money - about $100, of which I receive $30. This is a lot cheaper than licensing each track individually especially when you consider that, in addition to the normal audio tracks, the customer also receives several 30 second and 60 second samples from every track, samples which have been optimised for looping.

By and large, I think that this is a reasonable deal. Not as good as say, Magnatune where I receive roughly 50% of the purchase price but... I don't mind. I'm not greedy and, as I've said before, this isn't really about money any more. With luck, I'll earn a something extra from the performance via The Performing Rights Society if any of these tracks end up on TV and, with download sales dropping off thanks to the recession, licensing music is the way to go.

I started sending off potential tracks as long ago as 1990 when I was working as a hack journo for Sound on Sound, on the assumption that scribbling monthly missives for that esteemed journal might actually earn me some credibility in the eyes and ears of a commisioning producer. But, alas, this is the music business where qualifications and experience actually (usually) mean sweet FA so I came away disappointed. None of them wanted to use the material but, none-the-less, I kept beavering away, undeterred. A shame I thought but (sh)it happens.

Skip forward to 2008 and I sold my first license through Magnatune - to a Norwegian Photographic outfit. I sold a few others through Magnatune but not as many as I would have preferred.

Six weeks ago I discovered Shockwave. I mailed them, along with a link to Future Forever and waited for a reply. I didn't have to wait long. I'd dealt with Bjorn Lynne, who owns and operates Shockwave, via the ill-fated Zonk Music download service, which was a bold venture ahead of its time. Bjorn liked what he heard and Future Forever was accepted straight away. It's been selling well ever since even though Bjorn maintains that this quarter has been fairly quiet. Well, I'm certainly happy. More so because, last week, someone bought the whole album as a licensing deal.

I've since uploaded another batch of tracks - mostly SkinMechanix pieces - and we'll see how they go down. I'm optimistic because I've not got a potential home for all of those thousands of unfinished fragments that have been littering up my various hard drives for the last 20 years.

Now, $30 might not seem like a lot of money for a license, or as a reward for the months of effort required to record that album, but, for me, it's utterly, utterly priceless. It feels like we're finally, finally moving in the right direction.

Thanks to the airplay / promotional programme, more and more of my efforts are finding their way out in to the big, wide world, away from the narrow confines and limited niches normally associated with the pretty much defunct UK electronic music scene. Better still, I suppose I can now legitimately put soundtrack composer on my C.V., which is another ambition fullfilled. Yeah....

I have to say that, hand on heart, this feels good. Very good.

Some readers might remember the good old days when I would pretend that I was enjoying myself and promise follow-up albums and concerts that would never materialise. And the amount of time I spent in the studio and the frequency of releases emerging from the bowels of The Laboratory really did speak volumes. They told an altogether different story. In truth, I'd come to hate my studio. Really, really hate it. It had stopped being fun.

And that attitude was reflected in practically every aspect of how I approached the business from album deadlines to concert performances, from internet chat rooms to web page updates.

Why? Well, it all stemmed from my involvment in a scene which is/was full to the brim of shysters, charlatans and footpads, snake-oil salesmen who would sell their Granny to get one step ahead of the competition, if only they could get off their fat arses and do something worthy with all of their priceless gear that they wave around in cyberspace as the substitute phalluses they really are.

Now, many of these opinions and criticisms have been discussed in previous entries. Go read up on them if you wish. They're not worth going into again. I don't feel as though I'm a part of that whole adventure anymore. I've stepped outside of it and those people no longer concern me. They still twitter away in the background, pontificating from their virtual soap boxes as if their opinion really matters, as if anybody really gives a crap, which, by and large, they don't.

I went into my studio last week, sat down at the master keyboard and began playing around, hunting for ideas, looking for a couple of new hooks. And, after about 20 minutes, a thought occured to me...

For the first time in a long, long time, I didn't - not for a single second - feel like a fraud anymore.

Priceless.

I spent a major part of Friday night at a party in the Second Life version of Newcastle's Quayside. A lot of fun and a whole new social scene. The model is pretty good though there are some problems with scale that become obvious when your avatar stands next to say, the Guildhall and my virtual head pokes though the first floor windows.

I got talking to the sim's designers and they're full of bold ambitions, which include extending the existing model to include a major part of Newcastle's City Centre and then up towards the Town Moor. Given my involvement with the Freemen of The City of Newcastle, I was quite interested in what they had in mind and agreed to take some of their ideas to the Freemen to see how they felt.

Silence. Mmmm... odd...

My guess is that it's a generational thing. With all due respect, the Freemen are just coming to terms with the idea of using a forum to improve communications. Adding a virtual world to their list of concerns might just be one step too far. We'll see. I don't plan on pushing it hard. I'll just see where this whole thing goes.

This generational thing is interesting though.

Jules and I went shopping on Saturday morning, which is utterly normal and completely mundane. We bumped into one of our neighbours, who was lamenting the state of the nation's youth. She mentioned that they'd been asked to look after their friend's daughter for the weekend and that said daughter was proving difficult to contain. She wanted to be outside, with her friends, hanging around on street corners until all hours of the night, drinking cheap cider and snogging various scruffy urchins in the back of a urine-stained bus shelter. A trulu weird way to spend an evening. I might add that she's only 14.

You might want to put this behaviour down to the problems of being an adolescent. Speaking from experience, puberty is just bloody cruel. Hormones raging, spots everywhere, hair sprouting uncontrollably from many different and previously inert parts of your body. (Much the same happens when you hit middle age, sadly, though nobody makes a fuss about that!)

I would now beg to offer an alternative explaination. I have a sneaking suspicion that this bad behaviour (as defined by readers of The Daily Mail) might possibly be due to the fact that her parents had buggered off to Tenerife for the weekend and opted not to take their daughter with them. More so, rather than leave her alone int he house and treat her like an adult capable of behaving responsibly, they dump her on someone else.

Maybe they had their reasons. Maybe they just needed time away to themselves but, whichever way I look at it, I can't help but think that it's a shitty thing to do. Truly, truly shitty.

04-Mar-09 Why?

I have woken up this morning with the theme to the 1970's Hanna Barbera cartoon series The Hair Bear Bunch lodged firmly in my head. Why?

I have no idea but I sincerely wish it would bugger off!

Last night's adventure in the studio went okay but my focus was constantly interrupted by a series of persistent flashbacks to the nightmare that was 1999. Little wonder then that the piece I tripped over in the studio, a slow ambient floaty thing, was christened Flashback 1999.

It would be about this time 10 years ago when the whole Alfa Centauri adventure started to unravel. We'll not dwell on that topic because I've done enough Mea Culpa in recent years and so the topic is officially old. Certainly better to focus on the future rather than the past. You can't fix the past, merely rearrange the furniture to protect the innocent.

I just checked my diary for the next two weeks and I have no idea how to fit everything in - one or two events will have to fall by the wayside if I'm to stay compos mentis. Apart from the usual society meetings, there's a Second Life party at the Tyneside Cinema though I could skip the tedious journey into Newcastle by hooking up via Second Life itself, assuming they actually send me the SLURL so I can get there.

Then there's a dinner/buffet for 'Friends of The Centre for Life' wherein all of the speakers from the forthcoming ScienceFest and the Mini-Astro talks get to mingle with the organisers, various sponsors and the usual Hoi Poloi that infest these type of events. Then there's the Maker's Faire, an exhibition for a large number of Makers i.e. people who make stuff. I only found out about this last week, well after the deadline for exhibition space had expired otherwise we'd have a table with some sequencers on it.

And it's my birthday too. Another year closer to the Big 50.

Bollocks.

03-Mar-09 If in doubt, build a birdbox

Writer's block, or the fear of writer's block, kicked in again on Sunday morning. The entry below might give you a clue as to how that came about although my gut feeling is that it has been circulating for a couple of days.

So, instead of pounding the demons into submission in the studio (coupled with the certain knowledge that failure is inevitable), I did something else. I built a bird box.

It's not hard, even for a rubbish carpenter like myself. All you need is a wooden batton 180cm by 15 cm x 1.5 cm, a handfull of screws and a saw.

The wooden batton was a poor choice in that it was warped - another piece of Homebase junk - but I was able to work around this defect. Cut the sides, cut the top and bottom, screw them together and you're 75% of the way there.

The front face is a bit more difficult in that it needs to be cut to the right size and then tapped with the entrance hole. You size this hole according to the birds you want to attract. Blue tits prefer a hole roughly 25 to 28mm in diameter. Great Tits like a hole roughly 28mm to 30mm in diameter. Above that, you'll get sparrows. We were after Blue Tits so I tapped a 25mm hole in the front, screwed it into place and, apart from a small gap in the bottom, it looked okay.

The final piece is the backplate but, before you screw it into place, you have to plug any gaps in the other surfaces with wood glue to keep ants out. Ants will injure or kill the weaker fledglings so a couple of drops of No More Nails is pretty much guaranteed to keep them at bay.

Jules provided some nesting materials - off-cuts from a dress-making operation - before I screwed the backplate into place and drilled a fixing hole so that the assembly could be screwed to the tree at the back of the house.

I fixed the box yesterday and it's still there this morning. I'll be chuffed to bits if we get something in there. I may have left it a bit late but we'll see.

Was it worth the effort? Yeah, I think so. For one thing, the garden is a bit more bird-friendly and I spent the day doing something positive instead of tearing my hair out in the studio.

01-Mar-09 An unusual celebration

Today is the 30th anniversary of David Hughes.

It's 30 years since I dumped my old family name and formerly began using my Mother's maiden name, Hughes.

I've wondered if I should post this entry. It's kind of personal and concerns my family, and some stuff, I believe, needs to be kept out of the public domain for reasons of privacy. However, I've decided to include this story because, essentially, it's so damned funny that not passing this message on for future generations would, indeed, be a crime against humanity.

So here goes...

Back in 1979, my parents went through an extended and rather difficult rough patch, and both pretty much decided that they didn't like what their opposite number had become. My Mother was suffering from Multiple Sclerosis and had been in a wheelchair for 10 years. However, through good luck and sensible management, she had been able to hold the household together, put food on the table, pay the bills and keep a roof over our heads. Not bad going, really. On the other hand, my father had become an idle, work-shy, chain-smoking drunk, content to lie in bed during the daylight hours, only rising from his earth bound coffin, much like the fabled Nosferatu, when the DT's became too much to bear and the urge to binge drink kicked in all over again.

After a couple of months of my father's never-ending drunk talk, his bad tempers, the constant bullying and the irrational, self-destructive behaviour in front of his impressionable teenage sons, my mother decided that she could do without this in her life. She confronted him, head on, and told him that she wanted a divorce - on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour. He protested, claimed innocence and then promised to change his ways even though both he and she knew that they were empty promises that he could never hope to keep.

With hindsight, my mother had taken a terrible gamble. At the time, divorce still held something of a stigma and our financial security wasn't 100% guaranteed. However, we all realised that the risk of falling behind on the mortgage payments would be a small price to pay if it meant that we no longer had this ill-tempered, free-loading bum in our lives.

When the news broke, the family pulled together, got behind my Mother and provided much needed support. Father, suddenly confronted with a number of people all eager to see the back of him, accepted that his cushy number had expired and, after some protracted negociations, decided to leave.

However, hit full in the face by the realisation that his easy live was now a thing of the past, he retaliated with what became known as The Great Sulk - a period of much wailing and lamenting, of much wringing of the hands and of much tearing at the sack cloth. In his eyes, he was the victim, the innocent. He'd been driven to drink by the pressures of his job, by the demands of his family and by his very public failure as a city councillor. Well, I have some sympathy with his feelings but, frankly, attempting to escape from reality via an alcohol-induced stupor is no way to fix any of those issues.

Whether his departure was right or wrong is still up for debate. I would have much preferred him to mend his ways and put his life in order, perhaps take his responsibilities as a father and husband seriously but, alas, we all knew (my father included) that the lure of the bottle would have been too strong and he would have eventually fallen by the wayside yet again.

The date for his departure was fixed - March 1st 1979 - and, as you might imagine, those 3 weeks between the initial confrontation and the last exit did not pass smoothly. There were a lot of hostilities between us, hostilities which took many, many years to heal and in many ways colour my attitudes to my own family today.

Let's gloss over those hostilities. They're unpleasant. They're history and the guy is dead. We'll leave him be, okay?

Skip forward 3 weeks...

March 1st 1979. 9 am. The house is perfectly still, perfectly silent. None of us really knows which way this is going to turn.

The doorbell rings. It's the taxi, come to take my father down to the railway station.

This is a great parting. I won't see him again for another 10 years. I don't care if I ever see him again.

He kisses my mother goodbye though refuses to shake my hand or have anything to do with me because, in his eyes, I am the architect of his downfall. He does, however, have one last parting message - "May you reap what you sow, David.", which is somewhat profound and deep for a drunken bum about to be made homeless. I reply with a single word - "Likewise..." - and...

He leaves, in one hand a suitcase crammed to bursting with everything he owns plus a few other trinkets that he does not. In the other hand is a collection of plastic bags filled with fluff, detritis from is rapidly receeding former life. He can barely stagger down the garden path. Whether this is due to the weight of his baggage or the after-effects of the previous night's extended drinking session is open for debate.

I do not stand and wave him farewell. I don't even go to the front door. The taxi pulls away and he is gone forever.

I can only imagine what was going through his mind at that time, as he went out of our lives for that last time. All of his success reduced to nought. All of his dreams and ideals, gone. All of his hopes for his sons, abandoned. Dispossessed but free, homeless but hopeful, a free spirit able to roam at will.

An alcoholic without a fix.

And then the party began. Word went out that the beast was dead, that Gwendle had been crushed. Relatives and friends called and came running to celebrate. Neighbours who hadn't been through the front door in years, suddenly arrived bearing gifts and smiles. My Grandmother fairly danced a jig as she scurried round the houses telling anyone who would listen that the Great Ogre was little more than a cloud of dust on the horizon.

10 minutes later, the door bell rang and our hearts sank. The one thing that we'd feared more than anything else was that he would change his mind and return, guns blazin'. We had the local Police Station on speed dial, ready to summon assistance should he lose faith in his own future and try to regain entry. A couple of lengths of 2" x 4' had been left within easy reach, just in case.

However, framed in that huge doorway, his vehicle parked conveniently out of sight, was the taxi driver. And, curiously, he had a large and disrespectful smile writ large upon his face.

"The gentleman asks 'Can he have his false teeth, please?'" says the taxi driver.
"False teeth?"
"Yes, his false teeth, please."

Barely able to contain the hysterics, I ran upstairs, tipped my father's filthy, disgusting false teeth out of the shabby plastic mug where they used to fester day and night, and wrapped them in a lump of toilet paper. Downstairs, I handed them to the taxi driver who was now barely able to contain himself. He said "Thanks!" and walked down the garden path visibly shaking with laughter.

The moral of the tale is this... If circumstances demand that you make a retreat, no matter the hopelessness of your position or the eventual outcome, always make sure that your departure is unhurried, dignified and courteous. And certainly make sure you have your false teeth in.

From that day forwards, I dropped my original name and, for better for worse, became David Hughes.

Skip forward a few years....

I only remembered the following details whilst discussing the entry with a couple of friends over on the Modulator forum.

My father made his way down to London where his old regiment, The Coldstream Guards, took him in, supported him and tried to get him off the bottle.They didn't quite succeed but I think they recognised a hopeless case when they saw one. In time, they eventually found him a job, got him settled and off their books. Their support was all the more remarkable given that he had not had any significant contact with them in 30 years.

In time, he found out about my change of name and, because I was only 17 at the time, attempted to use legal means to force me to use his surname on the basis that he felt that I had been coerced by my mother. As a result, I had to formerly change my name in front of a Judge, which was a strange and somewhat surreal experience, and hopefully the first and last time that I find myself up in front of the Beak.

After that, according to the records of the Freemen of the City of Newcastle upon Tyne, I became the first Freemen of the City to change his surname in over 700 years, and so my oath paper is unique in that it bears both names, something that had never happened before or since.

My father broke off all contact with us after that although we know he kept up to date with what we were doing via my Godmother, who really ought to have known better. He took to drinking again and, although I saw him once or twice in 1986, I had no further contact with him after his second divorce. After a lifetime of binge drinking and heavy smoking, he died of a heart attack in 1995, aged 65.

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