Eurovision - a serious point

While I love the cheese and glitz (if not the musical quality) of Eurovision as much as anyone, it's worth remembering some what went on around last year's competition. Have a read of this article from Amnesty Internation.

The Young Person's Guide to Songs

My daughter has a fondess for travelling on the Park and Ride bus. I don't know why exactly but later this morning we'll be on it as we travel to Oxford. What she doesn't know is that we're going to her first gig.

In our house (and in the car) we listen to a wide range of music. As she's grown up Freya has expressed interest in everything from King Crimson to The Beatles to Richard Stauss. But she's also keen on more straightforward children's songs. An awful lot of these can sound cloying and annoying after a few listens but, one man has managed to produce albums of songs that work for her, her younger brother and the rest of us.

Nick Cope, once of Oxford band The Candyskins (and possibly someone I went to school with) is that man. We love his songs. Freya's first independant CD purchase was one of his albums (My Socks) and even Jude, at two, can be heard sining what he thinks the lyrics are while he's playing with his alarmingly large collection of toy tractors.

Of course, we haven't left yet. So the next post could well be all about how we nearly saw and heard Nick Cope. We'd better get going.

Trainee

Trainee, a photo by WJCruttenden on Flickr.

We took a trip out to the local park where they have a tiny steam railway. Jude and I took a ride on it and then, as we walked away, he kept going back to the fence and waving to the people on the trains. Or possibly he was waving to the trains.

Taking it in

After my dad came back from hospital with his terminal diagnosis he took to his bed. After a few days it dawned on me that, since he wasn’t thinking clearly, he might not have understood that he had only a few months to live. So I went to see him and asked, “did you understand the diagnosis?” He told me, no. So I told him the surgeon had suggested he had, maybe a few months left, at most.

“A few months till I’m better?” He asked. Which, of course, broke my heart. But I still had to find the words to explain the truth. “Should we tell your mum?” He said. And then I knew she hadn’t taken it all in either.

Ashes

We’re planning to scatter my dad’s ashes later this month.

Last weekend we had a pub lunch in honour of his birthday. I have a nasty feeling that was a far more suitable and meaningful tribute than pouring a container of ash into a field. Deeply symbolic or not.

Symbolic ceremonies aren’t really my thing. The practical horrors of, say, a sudden change in wind direction are though. I attended one similar ceremony where the ashes had been carefully thrown into the air so that they covered a large part of a beautiful garden. The, as if in slow motion, a group of Women’s Institute members walked through the middle of the scattering, presumably picking up parts of the departed as they went in search of a teashop.

Maybe I should do some research.

Today

Today has been quite a day. I've been celebrating my dad's birthday in a low key way. I went to see my  mum and drank a pint of Kentish Ale. But I also picked his ashes up and, on getting home suddenly found myself faced with the problem of where to put them. In the end he's been tucked in next to the booze and by some knives. I think he would have appreciated that.

Also today, my daughter ricocheted off her Space Hopper, into a wall and broke her collar bone. I bought extra chocolate and ice-cream and that, along with her brave spirit, meant we got though the day without trouble.

Work in Progress

Last night I got together with fellow members of the Eclipse Trio and we tackled our ‘difficult’ tune.  In the recent recording sessions it had resisted being played properly and had been similarly awkward when we played it live. Nothing too obvious, but obvious enough that we wouldn’t want it enshrined on CD unless it was played correctly.

So, we had two plans. One was to add drums to the problematic second part and play along, then remove the drums once we’d managed to play all our parts in time. Plan two was to analyse exactly where we went wrong and try to avoid the same mistakes. Plan Two won out. We found a section where the rhythm guitar part effectively grew an extra beat and then threw the rest of us off. We took the tempo down a little bit and played through to see if it happened again. Thankfully we were recording because, for whatever reason, this take came out perfectly.

Hugely relieved, we spent the rest of the evening sorting out minor fixes and then dumping the separate tracks onto CDs ready for mixing and mastering. I also took the time to make a roughly mixed version of the album, which we played, at volume, while packing up. Considering nothing had been panned, eq’ed or given the tiniest hint of reverb, it sounded pretty good.

Next week should see more progress with my other band. This one started in a very humble way (as an exercise in keeping playing when none of my usual bands were active) and has grown into quite an amazing group. These are exciting times.

The Voice

Dreams are funny things. Last night I managed to fit in two of them, between bouts of being woken by a small child who was either kicking me in the head or pulling the covers off me.

At first I dreamt I was in a place similar to where I actually live, except the sky was made of mist and there was a huge cinema at the end of the street. It had a big eyeball on top and I could see a picture of Grace Kelly. The film showing was Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Rear Window’ but in place of Hitch’s name I could see David Bailey. Right.

Then I was in the kitchen at my mum’s house. From the dining room came my dad. In the dream I knew he was dead but being a polite English type I didn’t bring this up. I can remember looking at him closely, aware of the texture of his skin. I remember hearing his voice (which is one of the things I miss the most). Sadly I don’t remember a word of what he said. Then, after what felt like five minutes, he went back into the dining room and I knew he had gone forever.

When I woke up I thanked my subconscious for this quite amazing and precious gift.

Recording with The Eclipse Trio: Day Four

For the last day we knew we had to be done by five o’clock, so there was a bit more pressure than before. While our piano man was out Russ and I played the remaining song for our other album. This allowed me to use my much loved but rarely played electric upright bass. Martin (piano) returned and we began the process of fixing our problem song.

On and on we went. It would have been easy to gloss over the few bars, layer something on top, or hope it could be fixed in the mix. But, with my producer hat on, I knew (as did everyone, really) that we had more work to do. The first half of the song survived but the second half would get fixed only by playing it again. That wasn’t likely to happen for another two weeks, which was frustrating but unavoidable.

So there we have it. Four days, an album’s worth of music (just about) and a tired, smelly bass player heading home to his family.

There will be more on this album later.