Baked Alaska Sheet Music and Ukelele Chords

Transformation

Is Jeremy Clarkson turning into Michael Barrymore
or is Michael Barrymore turning into Jeremy Clarkson?

The Rrrants Christmas Special

Fortified by miniature chocolate LPs (oh all right then- After Eight Mints- it's the sleeves that do it!) I headed on down to Camden, an easy journey for me. It was heaving with people, even at 6.30 p.m. but they were setting up in The Camden Eye and I took a pew to wait for the proceedings to start up.
I was soon joined by an extremely inebriated young man who demanded a hug, asked to borrow my spectacles, showed me his tattoo, asked me how old I was, told me how old he was, and was a thorough nuisance.
Luckily, my Champagne Friend turned up and I was able to escape; the inebriated young man turned his attention to the next lady in the row and I could hear him pestering her in the distance.
There was a selection of very interesting acts: I really enjoyed the Anti Poets and the Russian Spy, but was not so sure about the spoken word chap who entertained us with lurid physical sex-details: but who am I to complain, who wrote a song called 'Thrush' when I was a mere teenager?
The Bruvs Big and Little turned up with their partners (hi Sarah!), and so did Lester Square, and I hove to the stage to be joined by Paul Eccentric and his spangly band the Rrrants (the keyboard player was lost for a while, but we called 'BEEFY!!!' a few times and he appeared out of the crowd).
We played a jolly rendition of Loverman, a remarkable soulful rendition of Heaven Avenue (the trumpet player had written some lovely brass parts), a rackety On New Year's Eve (I forgot the chords but pretended that I didn't), a splendidly funereal Temptation (the trumpet player, when I looked round, was clutching a euphonium to his lips: I threatened to go downstairs and get my big guitar), and Footsteps at my Door, the fastest I have ever played it.
Do you know what? It was huge fun. They are really good players and it was a massive thing that they had learned all the songs so well and seemed to enjoy playing them so much. There was drums, double bass, keyboards, self on guitar, tenor sax, trumpet/euphonium and two other vocalists: a big band! What a laugh! I hope we do it again!
I've been recovering today and enjoying a feeling of total relaxation.
The horrible term is nearly over, the tension is leaving me, the Christmas tree is up, the Glasgow and Edinburgh gigs are next weekend, I've finished the therapeutic Baked Alaska story, and already made a New Year's Resolution: never again will I allow work to crush imagination and creativity out of my life!

The Delights of Droring

Of course, now the students have decided that they like me and they realise that what I have been teaching them is not, after all, pointless, but if they listen to what I teach, they will do well in their assessments.
As always.
My outlet over the past ten days has been rising to the challenge set by Gina and The Gluts to a draw-off between my Baked Alaska and The Gluts' Arctic Roll I have become thoroughly absorbed in the task and now have a piece of fake sheet music to send them when it is finished on Monday morning.
I have really enjoyed it, and it's given me a lot of spin-off ideas.
I also sent off for a book of Aubrey Beardsley's drawings, which have been inexplicably (!) censored so a lot of the chaps are wearing big anti-artistic black capes that Aubrey himself didn't draw, to hide the very rude extremities that he did draw.
I love the blackness-and-whiteness of his style; although I draw really differently, having the work of such a brilliant artist to hand stops me from slipping too far into the ditch of dumpster scribbles.

Today is Tree-day, and Christmas Special day.
I went to buy a little tree and decorated it this morning, fuelled by some very strong coffee, as Offsprog Two cooked Christmas Dinner for some friends last night, and clearing up afterwards (well, that's a good thing) took two very loud hours and rapidly started to approach morning.
The tree smells delicious!
And later, I'm off the Camden Eye to sing. I have rather a sore throat which may have been caused by the vicious anti-moth spray I've been using, but I'll just have to sing a hole in it and if I wear my party clothes then maybe it won't matter so much if I'm a little hoarse.
Giddy-up!
I'm really looking forward to it!

Gig Tomorrow, Camden Eye

Saturday- it's my Merry Christmas gig at the Camden Eye, a wink away from Camden tube station.
It's a Rrrants Collective benefit night with loads of bands- I'm on at 9.30 but it starts at about 7.30 and costs a fiver to get in: all proceeds go to buying poetry books for secondary schools.
I have borrowed Paul Eccentric's Big Band for the evening so it will have a different twist!

The Definition of Hope: Plane-spotters at Luton Airport on a Foggy Day

Light Bulbs

Are they called Low Energy because they haven't got the energy to start up when it's cold?

Moths

I've just bundled up as many jumpers as I could find into black bin bags and shoved them into the boot of the car: I found a moth-hole in one of my woollens this evening, and I have heard that a blast of sub-zero temperatures kills the grubs.
How dare they eat my clothes!
The offending garment is rolled up amongst the frozen peas in the freezer, although I may end up throwing it away because the hole is big and undarnable.

Why did I buy that moth-eaten knitted vest at Spitalfields market?
It's lurking in the car sniggering unpleasantly and if it doesn't shut up immediately I'll put it on the compost heap with the potato peelings and onion skins; and the sticky toad that (I suspect) has interleaved itself amongst it all as it rots to keep warm.
HA!

Beautiful Tree with Lights in the Fog

P.S.

Thanks to Wilky for the much-appreciated Friday cheer-ups and to Anne for the very funny naked angel!

Sticky Skeins

Been away: Offsprog Two filled house with friends, and dishwasher with food-filled pans.
I know they ate lasagne.
How?
Webs of solidified mozzarella, spun between the tines of the forks.

Steve Albini at The Art of Record Production Conference

I didn't take anything along to write notes down at Steve Albini's keynote speech, so my Musician's Union Diary, already full, bore the brunt of my spidery black scrawl, all over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and around the continents, crammed into the blue of the seas where I could read it.

Albini learned how to record musicians in the 1980s, working with assertive punk rockers, and therefore has only ever called himself a recording engineer. None of the bands he worked with back then wanted an 'auteur' producer with their own artistic input, spreading ideas-goo all over their songs, so Albini learned to record bands the way they played to their audiences, and has done ever since.

He said that he realised that he was not a 'record producer' when he saw a couple of 'record producers' in action (at this, the audience burst out laughing).

He told us that digital recording technology was developed from audio editing products, not audio recording products, hence the emphasis on working on the sound after it has been recorded rather than beforehand. He called this trivial, and the work that engineers do in digital studios 'circus tricks'; well, on this point I have to disagree slightly, having done such a lot of analogue recording in the past.
Many of the engineers and producers I worked with were prone to 'circus tricks' and it was just such a waste of expensive studio time back then as it is now. But the fact that digital recording was invented to 'solve the problems' of recording does ring true, and that is why the Take One album was recorded so simply and as a series of one-takes.

He told us how he built his studio out of adobe bricks that he bought in Mexico for 35c each and transported to Chicago for five times that amount. Adobe, being mud, totally deadens sound and is perfect for a studio that does not want reverberating walls or floors: it doesn't transmit anything, almost working as a sponge for sound-waves that want to bounce around all over the place.

Apparently at his talk in London the night before he talked a lot more about his recording methods, rather than the bigger picture. I wished I had been there for that too, as he's such an interesting speaker. Listening to an enthusiast is always inspiring, and I am beginning to think that I might set up my own recording studio- digital! But using Pro-tools for good live sound.

After a five hour drive up the A1 (McMum was worried about jacknifed lorries so I decided to avoid the M1 which I suspected would be chaotic) I did see one high-sided vehicle, tipped over all three lanes on the M58 and blocking the exit; we crawled for a while, in temperatures of -4, but it wasn't a bad journey.
I didn't have time to get 'I-am-going-to-present-an-academic-paper' terror, but more or less had to launch straight into it.
Although I only got about 1/3 of the way through, I managed to show my Futuremusic slides of nerdy white guys nestling in their studios, and I had some good feedback afterwards, mainly in the form of chaps who teach music technology to mixed groups asking me how to keep the girls interested and the boys from taking over. I had an idea on the way back in the car; I hope these guys will keep in touch because I'd like to put it in to action.
I also met some interesting female engineers, and was delighted that Paul Theberge, whose writing I really like, came to the presentation and told me afterwards that he had enjoyed it.
It was a trip well worth making, and it was a pity I couldn't afford to stay for the rest of it- especially the papers on song writing in the studio and King Tubby! (wow, that would be an interesting one!)
I have to save up for next year's conference. It's in San Francisco. I want to go, and I want to do some gigs there while I'm at it!
A New Year's resolution, made in December.

The Frozen University of the East

Well, I was there at 8.30, although it took two hours... the three students who made it in were grateful. It had been four, but one of them hurt his eye, and his car was written off, in a skid-induced head-on collision: I tried to get him to go home but he wouldn't go till his sister came to pick him up.
Now that's dedication to learning for you!
We had an intensive two hours on essays; afterwards I scoured Zoe's Slits book for the story about Dennis Brown and the assumption by Island Records that he'd be able to mix Grapevine in the studio; of course, he's a vocalist, not a producer. The tea lady did it, with The Slits.
I think it will fit in rather nicely with the bit in my paper on stereotypes!

Dunno if I'll get to Leeds. It's going to be so cold tomorrow that I think I will wait until the water in my car radiator has a chance to thaw out and set off a bit later. I really, really want to present the paper after all this work. The part of me that wants to loll about at home with a hot water bottle and a cup of chocolate tomorrow evening has lost the battle with the part of me that got a buzz out of digging about for obscure articles and mashing them up and making something new.

Girl Power Point

I've spent much of today uploading images from Futuremusic to Powerpoint. It is a specialist magazine for music technology consumers and it has pages and pages of nerdy white males sitting in graphite-coloured nests made of keyboards, audio machinery and computers. I was going to do the same with another mag but it was a laborious process and I think the point will come across. Halfway through, the anti-trip Apple lead fell out (OK! I tripped over it!), corrupted all the files and I had to trick the computer into recognising the jpegs again.
This is my final image: I've decided not to talk about hip hop but I did want to put this nice hip hop honey in front of a mixing desk to see what she came up with. She is visiting Futuremusic from XXL, a specialist hip hop publication, and she's just getting dressed again (did you think she was stripping?) before she gets to work editing her audio samples and rapping over the top (that's rapping, not raping!).
If the snow carries on, I probably won't even get to the conference (Leeds seems to be particularly badly hit). Caroline Coon has read the draft paper and she says I should do another book! I need to re-work the first one first, and then I need to have a very, very arty rest; writing academic papers and books is so meticulous and time-consuming and I do so hate sitting still. I want to dash out there and do loads of gigs, and I want to go to play in New York in the spring, and festivals in the summer.
I've parcelled up all the articles in neat files to take back to work tomorrow, and there are three bags full of academic books in the boot of the car where the CDs used to be. I've brought them in as I don't think they'll survive sub-zero temperatures.
Part of me thinks I know the whole thing backwards so I won't need notes; the other part thinks I'll be struck speechless if anyone looks at me funny and I'd better make some prompts. Will I feel like doing that tomorrow evening after work? Maybe I should do it later this evo...

Moo

Those four-litre milk containers- like having a bloody cow in the fridge.
SPLOSH!