Beware! The Leopard

Last gig - recorded!

Alright, here's the gig in all it's glory from Tuesday's performance at the River Bar.  I think it went really well except for a few glitches here and there. 

Beware! The MP3 is large.

Thanks again for all the support.

Download R09_0001

A big thanks!

To everyone who came out to the gig at the River Bar last night.  It was a great night, we put on a great set and the response from the crowd was fabulous. 

If anybody has pictures of the night, send them in.   There will be recordings up in the next couple of days.

What a fantastic night, thanks again!

Yarrrr there be a recession

There is an increasing dichotomy between two sides of my personality, the musician side, and the music fan side.  As the economy enters into a recession, and my paycheque shrinks appropriately, my ability to purchase the music I want to listen to becomes taxed.  When I was in university, it wasn't uncommon to use my new access to highspeed internet for illicit downloading of tracks, but I have done my best since leaving the ranks of the student world to purchase all the music I listen to, whether it be via pay downloading sites, or actual physical CDs.  As a musician, I have always felt that artists should be properly renumerated for their work, especially artists struggling to make a living on the indie side of things.

Now this principle is coming into conflict with my lack of funds, and I find myself making excuses for downloading things for free that I perhaps should be paying for.  These excuses include things such as saying to myself "I would love it if people downloaded my music at all, let alone for free, therefore so should band X", or "I'll buy this album when I can afford it", when I know that I probably will have forgotten the existence of the band by the time the next paycheque. 

So I'm trying to figure out how to market myself and maintain my principles.  If I am going to continue as a music fan, which I undoubtedly will in some way or another, I have to find a better way of gaining access to music without pirating it, at the same time as providing potential fans with access to my music at little or no cost.  Any readers out there have any good ideas? 

Pre-gig jitters

So tonight is the big night, my first "paid" solo gig.  I'm not feeling as jittery as I could be at this time, but neither am I feeling as confident as I would like to.  Whenever I fuck up in practice, I tend to blame it on the equipment -- if only I had another pedal so I could trigger this or that -- instead of blaming myself for not practicing enough.  Tonight will still be a good show, but after seeing Andrew Bird last week, I know I need to up the ante if I'm going to be successfull.  Granted, he did have roadies and a proper sound engineer, both of which I will be lacking tonight (although a friend or two do make decent roadies), but I still feel a need to perfect my stage show.

I am reminded of a seminar I went to while a member of Permanent Daylight, where a professional "rock choreographer" gave us pointers on providing the audience with a nice visual as well as aural experience.  Of course, the importance of this aspect is increased when performing solo because you are the only focal point for the audience, and can't rely on a charismatic front man to take the brunt of the attention. 

So tonight, as always, I'm going to do my best to perform the music really well, but also show a bit more of that charisma that is lurking under my anxious skin somewhere. 

Christmas Gig

For all you Londoners in town on Christmas Eve, I will be performing a 30 minute set at Powers Bar in Kilburn, this is going to be a great night with some great sets and sing-a-longs and the whole lot.  Come out, have a whiskey or two to warm the nether regions, and enjoy some live music.

Full details on Myspace.

Andrew Bird Live at St. Giles Church

Well last night was a musical revelation. I sat and listened to a full hour and a half of music I had never heard before, without a noticeable hook in earshot, and was completely mesmerized. 

Andrew Bird, showcasing tunes off his forthcoming album (due in January), and I have come to the conclusion that he is an absolute musical genius.  The sheer scale of his compositions would be enough to drive many composers to fits of jealousy, but the fact that he pulls them off live, with nary a misloop to be heard, pushes me towards lunacy. 

He started the show off with a long build up, full of his typical looping antics, violins were reverberating around the church as if I was sitting in the middle of the London Philharmonic, and when he added hand claps, his amazing whistling ability, and a spectral vocal harmony, it was bliss.  He slowly worked his way through a number of songs off his new album, some more traditional (well as traditional as Bird gets), and other far more experimental than I am used to, all of them sonic masterpieces that were only highlited by the fact that the acoustic properties of a 300 year-old church were designed for concerts such as this. 

If you have the opportunity to see Andrew live in concert, I urge you... no, I plead with you, to go see him, it is an musical experience not to be missed.

OMG

I am totally in man-crush mode on Andrew Bird.  I am too worked up to write, but I promise a full review tomorrow.

The sound of sweet sweet drumming

So I managed to get out of my funk and lay down a drum track using some drum replacement software.  Yep, that's right.  Fake drums.

For someone without the budget to hire a session drummer and go into the studio, fake drums are the next best thing.  Drum machines/samples have come a long way since the early 1980s when they were abhorred by everyone and their guitarist, including me.  But these nice new sounds do bring up a kind of musical conundrum.  Is the song as authentic if acoustic style sounds were actually produced by a computer?

As an artist who tries to remain as authentic as possible, I struggle with the concept of using pre-recorded drum sounds.  For some reason, I think there's a difference between listening to something like Eraser by Thom Yorke, where you know the majority of the sounds are electronic, then if you found out that all the sounds on Metallica's latest album weren't played by Lars, but were programmed into a computer by a monkey with glasses.  I mean, acoustic drums are supposed to be played by drummers, aren't they? 

At any rate, until I find somebody willing to drum for free, who has a studio to record said drumming in, I'm left with these pre-recorded sounds.  Let's see if we can get something good out of them, shall we?

Pining for a desk, made of pine, or some other wood like substance

Seriously.  Laminated chip board would do. 

This is the problem when you move a thousand miles away from home to follow your dream.  You are required to leave behind some of the creature comforts that you have come to take for granted.  Like a desk to sit your computer on. 

I know the concept of a laptop is that you can put it on your lap, but when doing audio-recording, having the laptop on your lap and attempting to play guitar at the same time is a difficult feat.  The setup I have now means that I'm hunched over my computer.  Igor the sound engineer.  I miss my nice big comfy office chair that I had in the last house, with wheels, two big 19" monitors and real speakers. 

Oh how I miss the creature comforts.

Rainy unproductive days

Yep, that's right.  Another gripe fest.  Well not really a gripe fest, but a down in the dumps, feeling sorry for myself fest.  Doesn't that sound like a festival you want to go to?  I can see the lineup now, Radiohead, pre-deceased Elliot Smith and Nick Drake, throw in a little Smiths and Joy Division and we can all cry ourselves to sleep in our rain soaked tents.

Ok, it's not that bad.  I've got a paying gig in a little over a week, and I'm having a tough time nailing down the songs I want to play.  I'm trying to write at least one, and possibly two, new tunes for the gig that are more in the style I want to continue with for a while.  But it is hard to get them to sound significantly different.  Think of Picasso during his Blue period.  How did he get out of it?  I mean, here he'd painted thousands of pictures with the same 5 colours, and then all of a sudden he says "ok, I'm done with that, bring on the red!". 

I'm having trouble letting go of that blue paint.  My vocal melodies and lyrics all tend to mimic each other.  I'm in a rut, and I need a push to get out of it. 

Any of you have a couple of hands you want to lend?