Saturday, September 23, 2006

The On Song Festival

I have been working as a tutor for a student songwriting festival organised by Mykaell Riley (used to be percussionist for Steel Pulse, and started the Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra), and last night was the finale of their course, at the Academy in Islington; some of them had been working with a band called Eleven, from Devon, and some of them had been working solo.One or two of the songwriters pulled it off really well- rapper called Chasney did his song, 'Hip-hop Makes the World Go Round', just with a piano backing, really powerful, and Eva Eden rocked out with the band. There was also a bloke called Vincent Vincent who had come along to talk at the seminar, and he was really good; he was dead nervous about playing after the students because they are very competent musicians, but he didn't have to worry- he's an absoultely brilliant guitarist. He plays a vintage Hofner that looks like the guitar version of the Hofner semi-acoustic bass I used to play in the Chefs; it's got a rough, lively sound and his hands fly about all over the fretboard, billions of chords but not sounding like a naff jazzer at all- more like King Bo or Chuck B. Lots of energy there too. Sometimes I want to steal people's style (is this a form of jealousy?) and I definitely want to nick his creative chordery.
Talking of the Chefs, I've found a couple of old rare Chefs tracks which I must send to Carl to listen to. I found the demo of the album that we recorded for Graduate and it is truly awful so I guess We Won't Be Releasing That.
Someone sent me a recorded radio interview I did many years ago and I sound like a complete cheeky brat. Ugh.

1 comment:

ANTHONY said...

Reading your Blog, and i spotted something regarding GRADUATE, is that THE GRADUATE, and did you star alongside Dustin Hofmann, and Anne Bancroft. Soundtrack by Simon and Garfunkel. Then Helen, you are famous, you deserve an OSCAR!