Hi All
Core promotions have been lucky enough to get an amazing line-up of
live acts to help us raise some much needed cash.It's going to be an all
night private party starting at 9pm and finishing in the morning @ The
WHERE?HOUSE
www.myspace.com/where?house a great space located within walking
distance from Tottenham Hale Station N15
Tickets £10 in advance
For details and tickets contact Jonathan Shears
mailto:jonathangshears@yahoo.co.uk"
jonathangshears@yahoo.co.uk 07958 686721
or Paul 07957291229
http://www.myspace.com/jonathanshears
www.myspace.com/jonathanshears
Profits donated to Core Arts
www.corearts.co.uk
www.ryico.org
Corro Nevada
The line up in the main room is as follows
The BAYS
What can I say about these guys? if you're into dance
music you need to see them.
"a band who are reinventing dance music" big issue
"...irresistable to hear but seeing is definitely
believing" DJ Magazine
"remind you that music is about experience rather than
shopping " John L waters Guardian
YABBAFUNK www.myspace.com/yabbafunk
Yaaba Funk! celebrates the sounds of 1970's Ghanaian
Hi-Life. The eight core members all met through their
love for African drumming and dance. Their blend of
Hi-Life, 'afro-broken beat' and funk adds up to a full
on party african London stylee
THE CESARIANS www.myspace.com/thecesarians
Had rock and roll been born in 1930's urban Europe,
and not 1930's rural America, it would have been like
this; part Kurt Veil, part Jacques Brel, part Ernst
Kirchner, part klezma. Looking like a band formed in
the mind of Geoge Grosz, The Cesarians capture the
urban zeitgeist via the junk shop instruments of old
Europe . In their hands, a clarinet, trombone, piano,
and drums beaten in waltz time, make raw and raucous
rock and roll.
UNIQUE TECHNIQUE www.myspace.com/corearts will also
be performing their single "Fuck the Olympics" soon
to be released on Homerton Records. Micheal Colombine
has been described as the Eminem of Homerton his
lyrics combined with his live band make a powerful
statement about life in East London.
In the second room we havee
Belle Humble & The House Band www.myspace/bellehumble
Belle is going to host the second room where you can
hear her amazing voice, but also book yourself in to
sing live with the House band, the guys can cover all
the standards and if you have a chat before play most
styles of music.
In both rooms we will be having DJ's continuing the
eclectic party vibe once the live music has stopped.
The profits from the gig will be supporting;
Yrico www.yrico.org
Rwandan Youth Information Community Organization
(rYico) a charitable organisation that works to
support and empower vulnerable young people in Rwanda
who have been orphaned, neglected or left in very
difficult conditions, particularly as a result of the
1994 genocide.
Core Arts www.corearts.co.uk
Charity based in east london providing studio space
and a programme of workshops and classes in art,
music, video etc. for people with mental health
issues.
Corro Nevada
A development project to set up an arts based
sanctuary in the mountains of Sierra Nevada in Spain
for people on the mend from mental health, drugs or
alcohol issues.
Thank-you for your support
Big Love
Jonathan
Core Promotions

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..tr> ..table> ..tr> ..table>..table> 7:48 AM  5 Comments (Add Comment) | 7 Kudos Translate Hello, there. As we're aware you are all busy people, we'll keep it short and to the point just to let you know that we're playing at The Scala in Kings Cross this Friday 30th May, an amazing venue with a fine history of quirkiness and unusual events. In fact, last time I was at The Scala, it was still a cinema, it was the mid 80s and I was attending an all-night festival of psychadelic B-Movies, so there'll be a bonus prize for anyone at the gig on Friday who spots the moment I go into a flashback hole and start playing chords from a film about frog-worshipping bikers (short and to the point, Palmskin, you're losing them). Anyway, Friday's gig is a Production London event, which in a way squares the circle of The Scala's rich history. It's going to be a night full of film and music, with two rooms of live music, DJs, short film showcases and visuals. There's even a singer-songwriter knocking about for those of you who haven't been satisfied by The Bays (we'll be on some time around Midnight), Sunharbour, who are a 16-piece collective who have played with everybody under the proverbial, Moe Foe and their live Drum and Bass set, not to mention a whole heap of Djs gathered from various funky places around the planet, who'll be going from ten in the evening till five - yes, five, count 'em - in the morning. If you're a Bay mailing list person you can get on our Concession list for £8 entry tickets, otherwise you'll have to bring two freshly pulled teeth and - no, no - tickets are a reasonable tenner in advance or £12 on the door. I have a feeling Friday is going to be ushering in that pleasantly unhinged festival atmosphere, so consider it a warm-up for all the other Bays events I know you have in your diaries already - Bloom, Big Chill, possibly even the next outing of our Orchestral Project, on 6th June in Birmingham. But more of that later. Now you can get back to that vital work I dragged you away from. Work hard, my friends, for come Friday we make party, yes? love Simon Palmskin. Powered by English Albanian Arabic Bulgarian Catalan Chinese Croatian Czech Danish Dutch Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician German Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Latvian Lithuanian Maltese Norwegian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Vietnamese
	Tuesday, October 30, 2007  PALMSKIN GIVES YOU THE GIG NEWS Current mood:wicked Category: Music So it had to happen sooner or later - the inevitable resignation to the fact that we're not going to get an Indian summer after all. One or two sunny days in October is more like a rubbish Autumn in my book, hardly an exotically delayed season. Well, you can't accuse us of not chipping in with the Dunkirk spirit throughout that long mudfest that stretched from June to September. Anyone who made it out to see us at Glastonbury or The Glade, or Connect, or even The Loop festival for that matter, will know that we do not consider wellies and trenchfoot an obstacle to getting down (and dirty) with our usual live deepness. Just how do The Big Chill manage to pay off the forces of darkness year after year to get the good weather?    Anyway, just a quick one to let you know we're heading to Nottingham this Saturday to play Percussion's 5th Birthday at the Marcus Garvey Centre, Lenton Blvd, Nottingham (I will also be Djing at this fine event). I know we've neglected the Midlands for too long, and our October residency at the Jazz Café was a terrible example of putting London at the centre of the map, if not the world, but we've had the jabs, changed up our money, found a sherpa and are ready to explore that strange land outside the M25. Hope to see you there.    If you can't make it, then do come down to the Cultures of Resistance gig we are playing, at ULU, in - ahem - London - on the 7th December. As ever, details and updates can be found on either the website or our myspace page. Simon Palmskin. 10:48 PM  0 Comments (Add Comment) | 0 Kudos Translate Powered by English Albanian Arabic Bulgarian Catalan Chinese Croatian Czech Danish Dutch Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician German Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Latvian Lithuanian Maltese Norwegian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Vietnamese
Saturday, August 26, 2006  Taylor's Tales - Spring 2006 and more ... Category: Life I think the first things to talk about are probably football and Big Brother. As for Big Brother well I wish I had Tourrette's Syndrome, you get loads of birds. In fact all of them I think. In my humble opinion the program itself is an incredibly clever concept though I can't stand to watch it because of all the screaming and twattish behaviour. I do get the feeling it's kind of processed and distilled down so that every droplet of entertainment is rinsed to the max. Whenever I watch it, which is not very often, I always seem to see the same bit, usually when they're being chucked out and crying or when they're in the diary room crying or maybe just hugging each other and crying, but I watch it for a bit and then think, 'Hold on' that person's not even in it anymore'. Of course it goes without saying that the sleeping scenes are for the hardcore enthusiasts only and then there are all those chat shows. I mean there's even chat shows about the chat shows, and what the chat shows mostly do is slag off the people in the house for whatever they're doing or they slag them off for not doing anything. But of course the problems start when they win. Like, OK, yes now they are officially a celebrity but they can't actually do anything very well, like for instance Steve Davis would give you a run for your money on the pool table, give Tiger Woods a putter and you bet your life he'll get it through the windmill on the crazy golf course and even eco friendly Apple bearing Chris Martin could sing a song or two round the camp fire, but what can the poor old Big Brother celebs do to continue their public interest? Absolutely fuck all. Me and Max saw Grace in Covent Garden beaming away with no effect and I hear Chantelle is getting a bit anxsty seeing as all she gets to do is open supermarkets and say: 'Hi everyone...er...yes'. It even makes you almost sympathetic to these hideous media players like Abby Titsout or Tara Palma Boomdiay, even though all they did was blow themselves up on the thermals of media bollocks. At least they did something. Football then. It was football all over the place a month or so ago but now if I see a St Georges flag flying from someone's house it gives me a feeling that can only be described as stale. I personally think that people who fly St George's flags with such enthusiasm are being very slightly racist and getting away with it. England, as a nation, has got no culture, hardly any heritage left and certainly no patriotism so to me the St George's flag very subtly says, 'We're the bloody English' 'This is our country' 'You're not meant to be here' 'Get lost'. I don't understand contact sports they seem to hurt an awful lot, like for instance in rugby you have a move called "the hand-off". Hand-off - a player in possession of the ball fends off a tackler with the flat of his hand. Right, but what about the speed and force with which you are "fended off" or the fact that the hand may not be entirely flat and seeing as the tackler will be bending down to grab the oppositions' legs I think the difference between a very Queensbury Rules type "Hand-Off" and a not so Queensbury "Damn Good Punch Up The Bracket" will be very minimal indeed. You see Snooker is far more civilised, I can hear the commentary now, 'Éand Ronnie has to just make sure that his position on the black enables him to free that difficult last red on the cushion but oh here comes Mark Williams who earlier today very accurately stuck his left thumb hard into Ronnie's eye socket...' Personally I think that football has just got too many elements in it. Firstly you've got all the head butting and pushing and shoving that goes on which often isn't about the game at all and is entirely personal. Then you've got all that laying around on the floor pretending you've hurt your knee. I can see footballers are much more convincing when pretending that some part of their leg has been hurt, when they're holding part of their arm or head it just doesn't have the same artistic resonance but I suppose they wouldn't be rolling around on the floor if they'd hurt their arm and if they weren't on the deck they wouldn't get noticed so in this case the rolling around on the floor has to be pure acting. I can't remember which match it was, I think possibly one of the Eastern European combos, but this player was in the opposition's area, got tackled and fell down and then when he saw his side still had possession got up again, but then when the ball went out of play a second later he got down on the ground again, it was absolute comedy. It seems to me that they just get into the habit of hitting the floor as soon as they feel any contact from someone standing behind them and I wonder if when they're down the local and someone taps them on the shoulder they immediately collapse on the floor out of habit and picking themselves up and dusting themselves off they have to explain, 'Oops, sorry about that, thought I was still in Stuttgart for a minute there'. And finally you have the part of the game that is more or less civilised, where they have to hit a ball at a target, as in between two metal poles and below a metal bar. Now I don't mind watching any of the above activities, and I may be accused of being autistic when I say this, but I just don't like them all happening at the same time. My solution would be to split the game up into 3 completely different sections. Firstly you could have say 20 minutes of Thai Boxing/Judo. Then you could have some kind of play or melodrama based on somebody having hurt their leg. And finally you could have the bit that's based on hitting the ball through a big kind of hoop and to my mind croquet would fill this slot perfectly. From the team managers point of view it would be mush easier to choose the right player for the appropriate role in the game: '...and yes as usual Hulk Hogan is now being substituted for Leonardo Di Caprio as we go into the 20 minutes of melodrama about someone having hurt their leg...' Also it would be much easier for football supporters to organise their weekends: 'Have we got time to go to the shops dear?' 'Yes love, we're just about to go into "melodrama about someone having hurt their leg" time so I don't mind as long as we're back for the croquet'. Las April we played The Melkveg in Amsterdam, the venue of my very first Bays gig. It was a kind of festival of jam bands put on by Jam In The Dam and an American band called Disco Biscuits. We had Russell Rock with us along for the ride and he made it to Andy's for the 7.30am pick-up on time. We'd had a bit of a night the night before and had met up with Simon who wasn't feeling too chipper but Andy persuaded him to come along. After buying some fish and chips we went back to Andy's to eat them. 'Look I'm fine' Simon's saying 'I don't want anything' 'Go on, look it's lovely fish, fish you like fish, just have a bit of fish' says Andy, 'You can't have any of my chips though' I peevishly added. Then the door bell rings and Andy says, 'I'm not answering that', but after it rang another three or four times Andy goes to the door. 'This is my friend Mervin' says Andy and this lanky, lugubrious black guy in one of those fishing hats starts telling everyone how he's just come out of mental hospital after suffering from depression. Andy then gives Mervin a glass of wine that is gone pretty fast and then a massive glass of rum. I think he even got a few puffs on a joint before rapidly downing the rum and following us out the door and down the road to the pub. 'Do you think the kind of drugs they give you in mental hospitals mix well with wine, rum and marijuana? What do you reckon?' I'm saying to Simon under my breath. 'You're not even supposed to drink tea I don't think'. In the pub we meet some lowly over enthusiastic NME photographer who's also on a strange drink and drug combo and is being very hyper. I tell him that Max from Clor is my son and he nearly shits himself. Luckily Tom steps in and turns all business networky and I get let off the hook. For some reason I end up sitting on my own in the middle of the standing crowd on a strange chair that looks like a really wide piano stool, all ornate and woven with gold. As the NME bloke looks down at me I hunch over my red wine and do a very convincing "old bloke that looks like a tramp and definitely needs a haircut but is rumoured to be a genius" pose. I think he bought it. After that we went to The Palm Tree, where I was caught nicking an ashtray, and I'm being blanked by the landlady but Simon is supposedly trying to get me to deal with it but really just wants me to make a twat of myself. Again. What happened was that one Monday night after a weekend of gigging and clubbing, and God knows what else, we ended up at the Palm Tree. I was in a terrible state, just at that point where you really can't get any more drunk but you still don't feel numb enough, and this big Asian bloke has recognised Andy and is chatting to him at the bar. I was vaguely listening to them and I started to get the feeling that the bloke was trying to get at Andy. I think what happens is that some people, when they meet a famous person, aren't really happy with just talking to them they want to react with them somehow and they can't help prodding and poking about like at a scab or a spot, til it bleeds or bursts when the best thing always is to just leave it alone. Anyway so this bloke is making Andy take his hat off and I step in and tell him to leave us alone. The bloke doesn't seem to be able to take in any part of what I'm saying at all, maybe he doesn't understand that he's being a pain or doesn't understand that I'm Andy's mate or he's just too engrossed to even hear me. So I start to be a little more forceful and tell him point blank to fuck off. 'Hey, where are you from my friend?' he's starting to say to me and I just can't believe he's not getting the hint so I tell him to fuck off again and it's at this point I realise the pub is in the middle of a park, it's very dark and nearly at chucking out time. So I tried to smuggle a heavy glass ashtray into my coat pocket in case he went for us but it fell out of my jacket on to the tiled flooring right in front of the landlady. 'He tried to nick an ashtray! He tried to nick an ashtray!' the bloke starts screaming hysterically and we made a sharp exit. We got about 50 yards out into the creepy dark and the bloke came out of the pub and shouted 'OI YOU!' and I turned round to face him and Andy grabbed me quick but it was all for show really because the bloke went back in the pub and I would have run as fast as I could if he hadn't. So now they blank me in The Palm Tree or give me evils. The next morning, before we even left Andy's house, Tom held his passport aloft and Russell Rock said, 'BOLLOCKS!' 'Have we got time to get it?' Now Andy is properly in indecisive mode. There are more or less only two things that are absolutely sacrosanct to the Andy Gangadeen operational system. One of them is not being unprofessional and late, and the other is looking after his mates, and at this point the two are compromising each other. Russell Rock is trying to ring this girl in his flat that he refers to as "that mental bird" and she's apologising for being mental the night before and he's explaining where the cab office is that she's left her handbag in. 'What's mental about her?' 'Oh she's lovely, goes like a barn door in a gale, but after 15 pints she's fine, then after 16 she turns violent, totally loses the plot, 15 fine, 16 Myra Hindley'. This confirms what I was saying before about some girls and drinking. 'I can't make a decision' says Andy 'Time's getting on' I'm saying. You see even though I'm not that professional I care even less for other people, but in the end Andy just drove fast and we were ok. I mean you can't leave Russell Rock behind. The turn out at The Melkveg was somewhat less than remarkable. Like I said before I don't know what's happened to Amsterdam. Four years ago there were more people here to see us than now, admittedly Marky and Patife were playing too which would have made loads of difference but we've come back quite regularly, we did an amazing gig at the Paradiso in September 2002, we totally rocked Lowlands last year and still the audiences are quite thin. At a guess I'd say it was because we're either not dubby enough [anymore] or not quite 80s trendy enough, though I'm only guessing. This time though we played one of those sets that makes everybody smile, you could see people really loving it without trying to, it might make a difference. I didn't like it when Elan cut the mic before I'd finished my speech. I stood gold-fishing for a bit with everyone waving at him from the stage and we only got his attention after Harry whistled and he looked up. I think Elan is in that position where he's made a few mistakes that have been noted which is making him nervous so he makes more mistakes. We met Armand from Disco Biscuits before we went on stage but we didn't see him after we'd finished. I think I might be the only person that doesn't mind America at the moment. I can ignore the people and I love vast expanses of wasteland, I love nothingness, I love repetitive blandness, it makes me feel safe, maybe because it means I can hide and become anonymous. I was driving along the M11 the other night and became suddenly desperate for a piss so I ran up the bank. I came upon an overgrown fence and some artificially planted shrubbery and as I looked over the fence into the thick wet grass I had an overwhelming desire to just lay there forever thinking, 'no-one would ever find me here' but of course they would because they'd see my car and there's all cameras up and down the motorway and I'd be dead from the cold anyway but I know what I meant. So Harry tried to get some sleep in the van before he had to drive home and we woke him up before very long, piling into the van rather loudly and insensitively. It was about 5.00am and freezing beyond belief so Jamie gave Harry his warm woolly hat. Harry is my stepson that I've known since he was 5 and now he's suddenly given the thankless and nerve wracking job of driving us out of Amsterdam in the dark. We were chatting the next day and his brother, my son Max, was saying, 'Amsterdam isn't really made for driving in at all' and he's right, there's trams everywhere for a start, and the roads go narrow on you all of a sudden and you bump up and down on cobble stones like you're driving in a field, all this combined with the fact that you're on the other side of the road and it's the middle of the night make it very hard indeed. After a few wrong turns we eventually ended up at the port with about half an hour to go. Harry got some kip on the ferry and drove towards London and just at the last minute we found the slip road off the North Circular was shut and was causing nose to tail traffic for about 2 miles. We set off through Walthamstow, like everyone else had and it added 45 minutes to the journey but right at the end and after 28hours of virtually sleepless work. We really know how to burn people out, and fast. Subclub 5th March We turned up in Glasgow on the night after the opening of the new bouncy floor in the Sub Club. I knew something was going on because my nose was tickling. They had some quite big names, but I can't remember who, to open the vibrating floor and it might have been the end of the night but it didn't look all that busy to me, on the other hand we had about 500 pre-sales... Hurrah. After a few drinks I had an interesting conversation about The Battle Of Stirling and The Romans and tortoises [they are related] and went to bed. Sure enough the next night it filled up nicely and we started. About 10 minutes in it's going well but someone stood at the front of the stage shaking his hands up and down with the palms up doing what is the international gesture for, Play faster, or Play louder, or Play more notes, or I'm actually arrogant/pissed enough to stand in front of a whole band and try to direct them even though I'm probably not a musician and probably wouldn't know what I wanted them to do even if I was. Later on I had another one signalling me over to talk to him and I was making gestures to him that I couldn't hear him but he was quite insistent shouting 'COME ON, COME HERE!' and I was just shaking my head which you would have thought was enough but after a while he started putting something in his phone and held it up to my face. Sure enough it said, 'Funk it up a bit'. Now I was wondering what the international gesture was for: "I totally understand if that's your opinion, and you're not the first one tonight who seems to have voiced something similar which makes me think that generally in Glasgow people do like things a bit more breaky, lairy and less slow and groovy like weÕre doing, but we've worked really hard to get the slightly lower tempos rolling like this because we've found if we just bang away it leaves us with nowhere to go dynamically. Now just chill out a bit and listen and you may like it also you're more likely to remember it because it's not like everything else. Also I'm just the bass player so if I start funking it up, [which means what incidentally? Slapping? Playing Good Times by Chic?] and everyone else stays where they are now it will sound ridiculous." So I just shrugged, and felt a bit bad as he walked off because at least he was interested and I probably just came across as a haughty egotistical ponce. A funny thing happened to Simon though. He always gets loads of women chasing after him and tonight was no different. He was DJing in the funny little booth on the other side of the dance floor and this young lady in a very short skirt and thigh length boots came up and did the old chat, whatever "the old chat" is seeing as I've never had it. After we'd played he came off the stage and walked past her saying, 'So hey what do you think?' which was met with a completely blank and uncomprehending stare like she didn't know who the hell he was, but as soon as he went back in the little booth she was straight there saying, 'Hey DJ man how's it going?' 'That's a bit inconvenient really' I'm saying. 'Yeh, Scotland's miles away' 'No, I mean if you ever wanted to meet her again in order for her to recognise you you'd have to permanently be wearing a cardboard cut out of The Sub Club DJ booth'. Audio, Brighton: Simon's Birthday/Tom Middleton DJs This particular Audio gig was on Simon's birthday where we'd driven around for ages trying to get some decent fish and chips. I think I've told you before about how when we go out for dinner after soundcheck we always walk round for ages looking at loads of different restaurants and then end up at the first one we went to which nearly always turns out to be not very good anyway. Well getting the fish and chips right was no different. How it was decided which fish and chip shop we went in was by Andy looking through the window at something or other, probably the batter, and then saying yes or no. Still after about the 6th fish and chip shop we decided on one that once again seemed no better than the others only it took about half an hour longer. So we had fish and chips and a cake at Tom's house and Simon seemed quite touched that A] We'd remembered, and B] We'd bothered. Tom Middleton was DJing on this gig and I must say I have the utmost respect for Tom, he's been an ambassador of The Bays for many years and played, I think, probably one of the best guest DJ slots we've ever had. We played a great set too, one of the best at Audio for a while which is amazing really seeing as how the gig was surrounded in chaos. It started when Harry was sent off to pick up the splitter van from a different hire company in White City and found that they wouldnÕt allow him to have the vehicle because of his license. So we had no van right at the last minute and had to squeeze all the gear into our cars. We made it ok but after the gig the gear ended up getting spread far and wide; Andy's traps case ended up in Willesden with Elan, Some stuff ended up with me at Tom's in Brighton, Jamie took some stuff home to Ongar and Harry took quite a lot, including Andy's electronics to Ely. On the sunny Sunday morning after we'd celebrated Simon's birthday at Tom's we had a gorgeous drive back through Sussex, stopping at a few hostelries on the way, including one in Staplefield near Handcross, where me and Andy have particularly fond memories of getting into trouble with the locals, which I told you about once but we took it down off this site after I got threatened with physical violence and legal action. I'm only surprised it doesn't happen more often. April, BBC 1Xtra Now the concept of this was to mix Dancehall MCs with Drum and Bass and it was aptly named Dancehall And Bass. As I said before chaos ruled throughout, partly on everybody's side, but mostly on ours. The original plan was to have a rehearsal. We were supposed to learn all this music before hand but Andy was only given it a few days before the session and the gear being all over the place just added to the problems. The main thing was that Andy's main electronics ended up at my house in Ely. All this fell down the inevitable hole that opens up between everybody's responsibilities but I tried to fill it. I was doing my best not to do the 5 hour round trip to London and back just to drop them off so I tried to organise either Harry, Max or Barbara who were going to London anyway, to drop them off. I think Andy was out of town or about to leave so I told Harry to drop the stuff at Musicbank on the way to his rehearsal. He left it until after his rehearsal and Musicbank randomly shut 3 hours early that particular day so they ended up in the Clor lock-up in Waterloo, which is not that far away but enough of a stumbling block for Andy not to want to get a cab ride to get his stuff which he should just have had in the first place. So it went from: A full band rehearsal at Musicbank To: Andy and Simon working in the programming suit in Musicbank To: Andy going over to Simon's studio to work out some sounds To: A run through of the material on the day at Maida Vale To: Bashing through all the stuff first take without any preparation whatsoever. I'm very impressed by the way some MCs can sing tunes in their original keys when all the music they are singing with is in a totally different one. Extraordinary. We had a guitarist with us though called Alan Weeks who was absolutely down with all that Roots and Reggae stuff. An absolute God send, he was one of the missing links between the MCs and us. The other links just remained missing. I heard a few mumbled complaints from the MCs about not hearing us play any of their own music whatsoever and I amused myself by rocking out some Q-Project basslines. Well spotted that person on the forum, I'll send Q-Project a percentage of the large royalty cheque I'm sure I'm about to receive. Any day now. Bournemouth mid/April For this particular Consortium gig we had scratched our heads regarding the guest DJ for sometime until we came up with the brilliant idea of booking Rodney Roots Manuva. One day I will write a book detailing the unexpurgated version of events that will of course mean I never work in the music industry again but will nevertheless be very very funny indeed. As Andy always says, 'You couldn't script it' which is true but sadly I can't write about it yet either. All I'm going to say is that Nat, the club owner, dealt with it all brilliantly; he was an absolute star and a gent as always. It was nice to see him having a drink later to get over the shock. Harry deserves a hearty round of applause too. But even some of the crowd, not our fans of course, were idiots. Do you ever have that thing where even months later something someone has done still makes your blood boil? Well it had been a really tough night for us all and I was trying to get to the stage through the crowd with some gear saying, 'Sorry... sorry' to everyone I squeezed past until this thick set young lad just ahead in a white shirt starts leaning in to me more and more making it impossible for me to get past. When I do finally get round he turns on me all aggressive saying in a Northern accent: 'But ya not sorry though are ya? Ya not sorry at all? Are ya?' 'Listen I'm just trying to get to the stage to set my gear up, believe me I'd rather be anywhere than here right now' 'Oh well then' he says in a very patronising tone 'if you're a performer then be my guest' and he makes this big theatrical sweeping gesture with his arm'. What a first prize prick. But later on we pulled off a blinder like the professionals that we are, unlike some we could mention, probably the best that we've played there yet. It's always the way, maybe because the crowd are that much more behind you or you're not thinking too hard about the music, but whenever there is a massive catastrophe we always have a great gig. But it's not easy. And it never gets any easier. Then we went off to Birmingham to do a charity event entitled Drop Beats Not Bombs. Simon wore an orange boiler suit, in the name of peace and Guatanamo Bay and stuff, which comprised mostly of a lobster outfit he'd made to go to a fish themed fancy dress party. It had claws and a hat/shell and everything and after the fancy dress party he decided to head for another party, the theme of which was 'drink all the drinks in my drinks cabinet before I move', run by a friend of ours called Kay. Kay lived in Bow, and Simon remembers trying to hale a cab dressed in full lobster regalia somewhere near Limehouse. Now I've seen Simon's cab haling technique before which involves a lot of shouting and wandering around in the road. In the end he was picked up by some Jamaican bloke who he thinks wasn't even a cab because he didn't ask for anything like enough money for the journey. The Beats Not Bombs thing was quite a production, on a big stage over the pond in the middle of The Custard Factory. I hope the event did what it was supposed to and I enjoyed playing our set but it was quite wet and cold and I have this picture in my mind of us driving off listening to a band play some kind of acoustic drum and bass to a hand full of mates in the rain. Anyway I got back to Ely just about in time for something I had to do and found all the chickens in good health. Apart from the ones who had been eaten by a fox, but aside from that they have a fairly high quality of life, and I was talking to a friend of mine recently who said his missus is still in a lot of discomfort after a long and painful labour and it makes me think that there must be a way that posh birds can get themselves genetically modified to enable them to lay eggs. It's much less painful. Just lay the eggs and put them in a temperature-controlled room or do it the natural way and pay a nanny to sit on them. Talking of inventions I was watching a bit of Dr Who the other day, The Claws Of Axos, and there's this bit where this big orangey brown pod lands on the beach at Dungeness and eats a tramp on a bike and then all these aliens in gold leotards give the earth people a big ball of stuff called Axonite "the source of all our growth technology which can absorb, convert, transmit and programme all forms of energy." Kind of like a Sony Ericsson W810i. I've given up my golf again now. The trouble is that it's hard to sustain anything that doesn't provide money or any furtherance of this trying career all us musicians have chosen to pursue. Or has it chosen us. Often after gigs I get asked: 'Did you enjoy that?' which sounds like a perfectly normal question and is relatively straight forward as far as what the conditions had been like on stage, but in terms of actually enjoying the gigs in the same way as the people who have come to see you play. It gets very complex. Back to football again and imagine whether Lampard or Beckham actually enjoy the physical playing of the game any more, it's obvious that in terms of the priorities of a match that particular consideration is way down on the list, and it's kind of the same for us musicians, so many obstacles, some self imposed, come into play around a gig situation that the carefree pleasure of music itself lies hidden under the strata of life issues. I remember reading a music tutorial that said something like, 'Notice how, when you pick up an instrument you don't normally play, you just enjoy the process of getting it to make a sound regardless of the mistakes you're making. Try to find that same pleasure when playing your own instrument'. Apart from a very few, when you make a mistake on your instrument it's like a burning spear piercing your sense of self, which just goes to show how much sense of self you have locked into your instrument over the years. Days of pleasure do drift by now again though. Now and again. To be continued... 14 Aug 2006 by Chris Taylor 12:08 PM  4 Comments (Add Comment) | 4 Kudos Translate Powered by English Albanian Arabic Bulgarian Catalan Chinese Croatian Czech Danish Dutch Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician German Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Latvian Lithuanian Maltese Norwegian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Vietnamese