Hello folks,
Just a little note to let you know that there are several new posts over on my Blogger site Here. I've been writing a road diary for Clare Teal, plus a little anti-MySpace rant you might enjoy.
As my little online social-media adventure continues on apace, I am finding MySpace less and less useful. If you are subscribed to this blog, go over to my blog site and subscribe there. It's far more interactive and frankly, it's the only place I actually post now. So if you want to be kept in the loop, go check it out!
There's also a bunch of new tracks up on my solo bass podcast for you to listen to and download. You cn also find them all (plus one extra bonus!) on my shiny new Reverb Nation page. Hope you like them. Do feel free to leave all your comments and ratings on the Podbean site. I really do appreciate your feedback.
Cheers
Si x

I just found out that one of my favourite composers and musicians, Hector Zazou, died on Monday aged only 60. According to various reports, Hector had been seriously ill for several months and had had to cancel several shows throughout the Summer due to this illness.
Hector Zazou, for those of you unfamiliar with his work, was an Algerian born French composer and producer. A serial collaborator, he has worked with most of my favourite artists; including David Sylvian, Peter Gabriel, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Björk and Lisa Germano.
Hi albums Strong Currents and Lights In The Dark have been on heavy rotation here of late. If you haven't heard Hector's music, Strong Currents or Sahara Blue would be a great place to start.
I am particularly saddened by this news as Hector contacted me towards the end of last year asking me to travel out to Paris to work with him on his upcoming 'J@zz' project. This was a great honour and it was truly humbling to be contacted directly by Hector via MySpace. Sadly, due to Hector's other commitments at the time, we never actually got it together. Although we never actually met, I still remain a huge fan and admirer of his work.
He will be dearly missed.
Simon

Hello folks,
Just to let you know I've just recorded my first solo improvisation on Chapman Stick for the Solo Bass Podcast over at Podbean. It's been exclusively solo bass until now, but I've been listening to Trey Gunn quite a lot today and got all inspired! I'm having slight difficulties with the Podbean server right now, but you can hear the track in all it's glory either on Last.fm or better still on my Reverb Nation page, where you can sign up to the mailing list for updates on the forthcoming solo album.
Cheers
Simon

Hello folks.
I've just posted a write-up of Maggie's show in Poland at the weekend on my Blogger site Here. Just click on the link and you'll be magically transported into my weird and wonderful world of blogging fun. You can subscribe via email now via the form in the blogger sidebar. There's been a few new posts up there recently, so do check it out.
Si x

Hello folks,
Hopefully some of you who read my last blog will have checked out my new Reverb Nation page, where I've been posting tracks from my Solo Bass Podcast.
Today I posted a brand new solo bass track on the Reverb Nation page. This will not feature on the podcast and is an exclusive download for my fans on Reverb Nation. All you have to do is click on the link here and sign up to the mailing list to receive this exclusive download.
Enjoy!
Simon

Hello folks,
Please take a moment to check out my new Reverb Nation page and sign up to the mailing list to keep up to date with what's going on with my new solo bass project. There's a link to the mailing list on the main profile page if you don't fancy going 'off-myspace'!
Also, if you haven't had a look yet, check out my Solo Bass Podcast, where I've been posting various tracks documenting the process I'm going through.
Your feedback would be great. You can leave your comments, ratings and suggestions on the Podbean site. In fact that's the whole point of the podcast!
Also, I'm not really posting my regular blog here anymore. I have a dedicated blog site Here at Blogger, where you can subscribe either with your regular server or via email (recommended) to keep up to date. There's a few new posts up there right now so do have a look and sign up.

If you are a Facebook user, please go and have a look at my brand new Facebook Music Page and, if the mood takes you, become a fan! (it's a very exclusive club thus far) It's a bit basic at the moment, but you can listen to a few tracks from my Solo Bass Podcast, if you haven't heard it yet.
On another note, I'm generally putting blog posts on my dedicated blog site Here at Blogger now. You can subscribe via email if you like, just click the link on the Blogger site. Just posted a new road diary this afternoon...
See you soon.
Simon

As some of you may already know, I've recently set up a solo bass podcast through Podbean. This is something I've been meaning to do for a number of years now, but it's taken my recent slump in gig activity to spur me on to actually getting it started.
I've been an occasional dabbler with looping technology and as anyone who's seen me with Maggie Reilly over the last couple of years will know I'm not shy of using a few effects live. My current setup offers two looping possibilities. The first is a Boss DD6, a standard digital delay pedal that also offers a six second loop facility. This lives on my touring pedalboard and gets played with the most during those niggling lulls in soundchecks! The second is my RC20 Loop Station, which is a dedicated phrase sampler and can handle much longer loops and also enables the user to store a small number of loops internally. At some point in the near future I fully intend on investing in something more versatile (probably a Gibson Echoplex) but at this stage I'm finding the limitations imposed by my current setup force me to play more focused ideas.
The basic premise behind the podcast was to post 'work-in-progress' tracks played 'as live', ie: no overdubbing or postproduction trickery. Thus far (I've only submitted three solo bass tracks to date) I have only deviated from this rule once, in pasting a short section from the beginning of 'A Little Light & Shade' at the end of the track to create a sense of thematic unity. If I'd have been using a more advanced looping setup this would have been possible live so I've allowed myself this minor deviation…
The first hurdle I've had to overcome was getting used to recording myself looping live. I must say it's been a while since I've used this gear seriously and the recording process really shows up every little glitch in timing. In fact I sent out a despairing Tweet at the time, prompting a very thoughtful and timely response from solo bass maestro Steve Lawson, who said "Looping is like learning a whole new instrument, both conceptually and physically".
I've put a lot of thought into the concept behind my approach to solo bass. When I finally decided to start up the podcast, one of the main questions I had to ask myself was to whom I was playing. I had no intention of producing music that would only interest other bass players. And to be frank, I'm not that kind of chopsy player anyway. I wanted to be able to communicate something far deeper and more melodic.
The bass is not naturally a solo instrument. There are not many bass players who have successfully managed to produce solo music with a broad appeal. Probably the biggest influences on me as a bass soloist have been Eberhard Weber and the aforementioned Steve Lawson. Both have used electronics to create vast soaring soundscapes using the bass as both a lead and accompanying instrument. I am working on incorporating some of these textural elements into my own playing, looking at the layering of different sounds to create a broader canvas for melodic improvisation. Harmonics and arco work have proved particular favourites this week…
At some point in the future I would like to record an album of this kind of material. The process of focused practice/recording/podcasting has already proved useful in refining some ideas. Obviously, none of the tracks I've posted are the finished article. As I mentioned earlier, they are intended to be viewed as work-in-progress (I must apologise for the tuning in Bells II, I hadn't played that particular bass in a while!) and I'm finding the podcast is a fantastic route to get some of my ideas out in an organized and structured fashion.
My podcast can be found at Simon Little's Podcast or you can subscribe in iTunes if you want to be notified with new posts.
I've already got some great feedback from a few listeners via the Podbean site and Twitter. I'll definitely continue posting music fairly regularly so do subscribe if you're interested. I do like to hear your thoughts, comments and suggestions, so feel free to leave them here or on my Podbean page.
Hope you enjoy it.
Simon

ps. For those of you interested in hearing the masters at work, I'd recommend checking out any one of Steve Lawson's albums (there's four on iTunes) or Eberhard Weber's 'Pendulum' or 'Orchestra'
pps. At some point I'm going to introduce the Chapman Stick in the podcast, but at this stage I don't want to get ahead of myself!

The Divine Comedy headlined the Wychwood Festival at Cheltenham Racecourse last night. It was only the forth year the festival has been running and from the sound of it it's getting bigger every year.
Last night was The Divine Comedy's only UK show this year. We'll be playing two shows late September at the Cite De La Musique in Paris, but for the time being Neil is concentrating ..ing Swallows & Amazons.
We had three action-packed days rehearsing before the show. We haven't played together as a band for a whole year so things were a bit rusty to begin with. I got a shock when the intended set list came through from Mr Hannon. The Drinking Song had reared it's ugly head once again (I swear I have nightmares about that song... it has got so many changes it's almost impossible not to cock it up) and there were a couple of tunes I'd never even heard before. Neil wanted to put in a couple of the 'French' songs in preparation for the Paris shows later this year. I'm using inverted commas because only one of the songs is actually in French: 'Je Changerais D'Avis' by Francoise Hardy (it might be a Morricone tune... we're not quite sure). The other one was 'Home' which Neil wrote for Jane Birkin's last album. By all accounts, our version is better! To be honest, I was hoping for a version of 'The Songs That We Sing', but I think this will have to wait until September.
My Bloody Valentine were rehearsing in the studio next door. I say rehearsing... apparently they had to spend an awfully long time trying to figure out how they actually played a lot of their songs, they used a lot of funny tunings and obviously a huge amount of guitar effects. I didn't go in but Neil had to sneak a quick peak and said there were literally hundreds of pedals covering the floor in their studio. When they did finally start actually playing the sound was awesome. There were a few more coffee/fag breaks after that juncture to facilitate us standing around listening outside!
We had an eight-piece band this year, including the triumphant return of Ian 'Squeezy' Watson on accordian and Charlotte Glasson on saxes & flute.
Wychwood is quite a small festival. It takes about 10 minutes to walk around the whole thing. We were headlining on Saturday night. I arrived at the site at about 4pm just in time to hear the last couple of songs from Palladium. They sounded fantastic. Wish I'd got there half an hour earlier really. The Blockheads were on next, followed by Duffy. She put on a great (although very short) set with a fantastic band. Went out front to watch her with my friends Clare and Muddy who came to see me play. Duffy resorted to playing B-sides halfway through (she obviously doesn't have that much material, hence the early festival slot) but I thought these were the best songs in her set.
Duffy was followed by Orchestra Baobob. I went backstage. They were great fun but to be perfectly honest I can only stand about half a song of that kind of music before it all starts sounding the same. And their set ran over....
We were on at 9.30 for a ninety minute set. As usual, I have no set list so I can't tell you exactly what we played. All the usual suspects were in there, as well as some old favourites making a comeback: Billy Bird, Songs of Love, A Drinking Song. There were a few rarities dropped in too: Count Grassi's Passage Over Piedmont made it's debut live performance, we played Sweden for the first time in years (love that song) and we did a great new T Rex-y version of Europop which went down a storm.
The crowd were fantastic: shouting, screaming and singing along! We all had a ball. Neil even suddenly decided to give everyone a solo during National Express for the encore so I got a bit of 'foot on monitor' action in. I expect that will be the first and last time you will ever hear a bass solo on a Divine Comedy show! Definitely the only time you'll hear me slapping!
We had a great show and hopefully we'll play Wychwood again some time. We all agreed that if we were to do only one UK show this year, then last night was the way it should be. It's been a while since I've done a big festival show like last night's, and to honest I really miss it. Hopefully there'll be some more in the near future...
For the meantime, we're all looking forward to the Paris shows which by all accounts are shaping up to be a true TDC extravaganza! Miss it at your peril!
Until then....

ps. If anyone's knocking about town tonight, I'll be playing with Lea Delaria at the 606 in Chelsea. Our special guest is the amazing American blues singer/guitarist Chris Bergson. I was meant to play the Leicester City Blues Festival with him yesterday, but obviously I was otherwise engaged. Looking forward to it immensely...

pps. I'm really into Last.fm and Twitter at the moment. My Last.fm usermane is simonlittlebass if you want to be friends, and my Twitter page is at Twitter if you want to follow my updates...

I've just managed to put together a little podcast on Podbean. My intention in future is to post up some of the solo bass and Chapman Stick stuff I've been working on, but for the moment I'll be occasionally posting a few little gems I have locked away here at Little Towers. It might take a while for me to get to grips with the whole home recording scenario, but fear not, I'm on the case.
There's a Podcast player embedded on the main page here, but if you want to subscribe for future updates I would suggest going to my Podbean page and clicking the 'Add To iTunes' button. I've tested it and it seems to work fine. The address is Simon Little's Podcast
Also, if there are any Twitter users out there, I'm using that now. My profile page is at Twitter if you want to follow my updates: find out what I had for breakfast, what hideous traffic jam I'm sat in etc..

Hello folks
Just got back from playing a festival in Struer with Maggie Reilly. Struer is a city in Region Midtjylland on the Jutland peninsula in Western Denmark (I nicked that little snippet from Wikipedia... to be perfectly honest I have no idea where most of these places are in reality... I just get get off the plane and play my bass. I also found out that Struer has a population of 11,364.. so there you have it). Anyway, it's a very pretty little place by the sea.
Because of it's location (particularly relative to Copenhagen), there really aren't that many flights in or out at useful times of a weekend. Hence we've been away for three days to do the one show! And, let me tell you, three days in Struer is plenty. We soon discovered that there was really only the one place to be (day or night) and that was a little bar/restaurant called The Happy Penguin (translated into Danish of course). We managed to visit said establishment a grand total of five times in the time we spent there. Everything else seemed to shut as soon as they saw us coming.
The show was a big outdoor affair with just over two thousand people in the audience. There were five bands on that day with us being the only non-Danish act on the bill. We were preceded by a Danish band (the name has gone I'm afraid) who were apparently big in the 80's and have just made a comeback. I really didn't get the point of the band that went .. us. They were a tribute band for a start. The word on the street was that they were a very convincing copy of Denmark's biggest ever band (again, the name escapes me I'm afraid) who were massive in the late seventies. It was that kind of generic bluesy rock that regularly graces the stages of many a sweaty pub up and down the country. But the audience went berserk. They were singing along to all the tunes. The locals were raving about how authentic the band sounded and looked. Didn't get it I'm afraid. I could never imagine a tribute band playing on the same stage as proper bands at any festival in the UK. Needless to say, we made a swift exit about five tunes into their set.
We had a really great show (particularly since we hadn't played together for six weeks!). The sound was one of the best I've ever had on a festival and what began as a really cold blustery day suddenly turned into a beautiful Summer afternoon the exact moment we stepped onto the stage. We got a fantastic response from the audience and everybody at the festival really looked after us. They put on a big show like this every year for the locals and this was the first time they'd had a foreign band so hopefully we'll get to play there again another time.
The Danes have a great music scene. It seems a lot of the small town put on shows like this every year and a lot of them are state funded. They really support their local artists far more than we do in the UK and on a much grander scale. Danish folk music and jazz also has a massive following. They are very proud of their own music. I think we could learn a lot from that attitude.
After the show we retired once more to the Happy Penguin for some food and drinks. As the only decent place in town it soon filled up with merry festival goers and we had a great time chatting with the natives!
Our next show isn't until July in Poland with Chris Norman from Smokie. Maggie's been checking out the venue and she says it looks beautiful. It's somewhere near Gdansk... that's all I know. We're all looking forward to that one. I've never been to Poland...
On another note, if anybody's knocking about town on Tuesday, this month's "Wall To Wall" show with Lea Delaria features Julian Seagal on sax and we'll be playing the music of Stevie Wonder. Should be a corker!
Simon

Hello folks.
Just a quick parish notice.....
I've uploaded a couple of tracks from an trio session I recorded back in 2002 with my old trio with Ross Stanley and Richard Barr. The recordings are a bit rough and ready, but I was listening back to them last week and realized that these tunes just don't get played anymore now that I have no band of my own. Shame.... I'm gonna have to think about putting something together again...
Just go to my proper Blogger site at http://simonlittlebass.blogspot.com and check out the two most recent posts.
Let me know what you think, either on the Blogger page or on here...
See you soon.
Simon

ps. Where has the "What I'm listening to now" bit gone on here? I used to find that really interesting when reading people's blogs... shame on you MySpace...

Hello folks,
Well as some of you may know, I signed up for Facebook during the week. And it's been a very interesting experience let me tell you...
The only reason I originally signed up was because there was a link on he Warr guitars website for their Facebook page. Unlike MySpace, you cannot view anyone's profile unless you are a member, and more often than not, accepted as their friend. Okay... So I signed up. Next thing I knew I was up until 6.30 in the morning hunting down all my old school mates, people from college and all my muso friends.
Judging by the number of people I found that are using it already, I'm a bit behind the times... but I'm now thoroughly obsessed with Facebook. It's like a drug. I find myself booting up the laptop far more often than normal, mainly to see whether it's my go on Scrabulous. I'm thinking this cannot be a good thing. Can't be healthy...
Facebook has been great for finding long lost friends. I've finally managed to find my best friend from primary school, after years of searching myspace etc. And a bunch of people I'd completely lost contact with have come out of the woodwork and sent me little messages. Hopefully I'll go forth and actually meet up with them in the real world rather than over the internet... We'll see.
I always thought of Facebook as a poor-man's MySpace, mainly aimed at bored office-workers. And to a degree, I still think that's probably the case. But having immersed myself for a few days, I can see the attraction. I've come to the conclusion that Facebook can be a great tool for keeping in contact with your friends and colleagues. Kind of like a free version of Friends Reunited, coupled with an elaborate messaging service.
I can't see me getting any more gigs off the back of Facebook. Unlike MySpace, which serves as a virtual shop window for musicians, Facebook seems more personal. But I don't think thats a bad thing. I'm notoriously crap at keeping in contact with my friends and I'm hoping that Facebook will somehow help to readdress this situation. I find myself chatting with people I haven't spoken to for years, simply because they're online at the same time as me.
So anyway, if you haven't had a look yet, maybe give Facebook a whirl... you never know who's gonna pop up.
Must go... I think I've just been poked...
Si x

Check out this video: korean baby singing hey jude

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Eddy posted this a couple of days ago and it really made me laugh.. check it out....

Calling all Lea fans!!!
Tonight is your lucky night! Lea has added a last minute show at the 606 club in Chelsea this very evening! If you are around later on, don't miss out on what promises to be a great show at London's finest jazz venue.
We've got Janette Mason on piano and Paul Robinson (ex-Nina Simone) on drums.
Hurry Hurry Hurry!!!
See you there.
Simon x