Samba-reggae is funkier than funk

I may have mentioned this before, but when playing samba-reggae it often occurs to me than it’s almost literally funkier than funk itself.

Just came across a clip of the group I play with captured at Notting Hill.

Check it out – it’s funky!

Huzzah, finally! A documentary about German instrumental progressive rock between 1970-1979. And about time too.

Tonight: BBC4 Krautrock: rebirth of Germany
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nf10k
(tons of great krautrock youtubes on there too)

Following on from last week’s Synth Britannia (which was really only about early 80’s pop music and the bands who we are all overfamiliar with these days), I’m really looking to learning some new things tonight.

Despite my claims that my new band On Rails is inspired by Krautrock, I’m not actually a massive obsessive of the genre. I used to listen to Can and Faust a bit, but I don’t know that much about them. And I only heard Neu! for the first time a few years back. (At which point I realised  that Stereolab weren’t quite the sonic pioneers I’d previously thought…)

Thinking about it, I was more on the electronic side (surprise!), so was far more obsessive about Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Klaus Schulze, Manuel Gottlieb etc. I expect those guys will get a mention too, but I think the programme will concentrate more on the ‘rockier’ and more experimental bands.

Anyway, am looking forward it.

One caveat: I notice on the programme’s press release they cite Kasabian as influenced by Krautrock. Surely some mistake? They may ’say’ that to get a bit of credibility, but they pump out the same dreary indie-rock as anybody else – and are about as related to interesting music as Robbie Williams. Fuck off Kasabian. And Franz Ferdinand, while we’re at it.

If you want to hear a proper modern band influence by krautrock, listen to On Rails. Can you see that getting to #1? EXACTLY!

British Na[z]tional Party

Oh man, that was awesome, poor old stupid Nick Griffin. Not very bright is he? Manipulative, obviously, for getting elected to the European Parliament, but not actually very clever.

Here he is in the olden days, not being racist:

The Mirror

What was all that stuff about the only true English people are those descended from ‘indigenous people 17,000 years ago’? When actually the only people on the European continent were the now extinct Neandathals (as Bonnie Greer pointed out). What a very peculiar man.

Luckily in Britain, we tend to resist strong ideologies, I think we find anyone that earnest about a mere idea somewhat laughable. At least, that’s my theory for why the 20th century European movements of communism, fascism, anarchism, futurism, etc, never really got a foothold here.

But, really, and this is my perspective as a musician, can you imagine what life would be like without  being allowed to listen to music from ‘other’ cultures? Thicko thicky Nick Griffin must literally only listen to northern brass bands and watch Morris Dancers if he follows his thicko thicky creed to it’s logical conclusion.

It would mean he wouldn’t be able to listen to:

• GF Handel (German, non British), JS Bach (German, non British), Mozart (Autrian, non-British), Ravel, Beethoven, Mendelsohn, Satie, …in fact I assume he refuses to hear the entire European Western classical cannon.
  He would be allowed to listen to the few British born ones who are considered to be any good: William Byrd, Purcell, Vaughn, er, Gustav Holst (well, he was born in England, but his grandfather was Swiss, so actually we should probably exclude him)
• Ragtime, Blues, Jazz, Rock. All derived from varying blends of African, European and American Indigneous music. Better not turn on Classic Rock FM eh, Nick, nothing for you there.
• Soul, RnB, Swing. Well, no need to explain these – definitely off the musical menu.
• Pop. All derived from the above categories – and with other things like Bhangra thrown in for good measure – thus abhorrent and are ‘weakened’ versions of the true genetic strain of True English Music.
• Any World music, whether my beloved maracatu, or the life affirming pop of Ghana or Mali, the extraordinary sounds of Tuvan throat singing, etc, etc. There’s a lot of music out there in the world, but Nick Griffin mustn’t allow one note of it to enter his mind. Just in case, you know, er, he finds he likes it. And then he might need to admit that people are just people at the end of the day.
• Dance music. Well, it’s the machine descedant of the hypnotic drumming of Burundi. Forget about it Nick – this isn’t for you either.

As Sir Thomas Beecham said, ‘There would be life without music, but it wouldn’t be worth living’. And similarly, there would be life in the UK without the cultures of the world to experience, but it probably wouldn’t be worth living it.

Synth Britannia

Damn, my private obsession going public! How annoying…bugger off, everyone else, synths are my thing.

Still, it should be fun and I’m looking forward to it.

Here are my predictions:

[ ] It will be mainly talking heads reminiscing about the early 80s. Only some of these will actually be musicians. One of them will be Paul Morley (who I dig, actually)

Most were musicians, actually and instead of music journalist Paul Morley like I’d thought, they had music journalist Simon Reynolds.

[ ] Rick Wakeman gives an amusing anecdote about how he bought a MiniMoog from another musician who thought it was broken cos it only played ‘one note at a time’ (it’s a monophonic synth)

No Rick Wakeman.

[ ] Amused, but ultimately disparaging references to the dinosaur prog-rockers who used massive modular synths in the mid 70’s and made music that ‘wasn’t popular’ (though it actually was at the time.)

Yes. A couple of shots of Keith Emerson in ‘King Arthur’ regalia in front of a wall of synth. making the point that synths at this point were too expensive for mere mortals to buy. Which was true enough.

[ ] How the pop-charts were turned ‘upside down’ by Depeche Mode using synths (also: Gary Numan, Human League, OMD (hopefully!, Yazoo (urgh), Soft Cell) The whole programme will actually just focus on these types of groups as if that’s the only music ever made with synthesizers.

Yes. This was the entire thrust of the programme. But it was done well, with lots of the actual people who were there using the first synths, etc.

[ ] How synths are more punk than punk (‘easier’ to play)

Ha, yes! I must have remembered this point from Simon Reynolds’ excellent book: Rip it up and start again.

[ ] There will be no mention of the synth heroes of the late 70s and early 80s who inspired me when I was 8 and who are now tragically unhip: Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis, Tomita, Wendy/Walter Carlos, Marek Bilinski, et al.

I thought I was going to be wrong on this one as they started with Wendy Carlos’ music for A Clockwork Orange and I got quite excited, but no mention of any of the above for the rest of it. I’m sure all those Depeche Mode and OMD guys listened to this stuff, and they’re just pretending they didn’t cos it sounds unfashionable to say anything other than Kraftwerk these days. Tangerine Dream got the briefest of mentions.

[ ] There will be no interesting history of electronic instruments: ondes martenot (unless they get Radiohead’s Greenwood on), theremin, musique concrete

Yup, no history.

[ ] Beatles might get a mention. Nope.

[ ] KRAFTWERK BETTER GET A MENTION. How awesome if they actually got an interview with Ralf or Florian. Doubt it though.

Bloody hell, an actual interview with Florian! Well done!

[ ] There will be no mentions of: VCA, VCF, LFOs, Modulation, Filter, Resonance, Oscillators, keyboard tracking, sample rate, digital vs analogue.

True.

[ ] There will be amused references to how the early synths were ‘supposed to sound like real instruments’ – cue rubbish trumpet sound, and how realistic they are today

Not really.

Bring on the (synthesized) noise!

Yeeah, it was a fun programme, but too much about bands we are too familiar with. Would have been interesting to go beyond the obvious big bands – the League, Kraftwerk, Mode, OMD, etc and see what else was going on at the time. I would have liked it a bit geekier as well, more interviews with synth designers talking about filters and stuff.

The Venn of Doubt

You may doubt it, but I am able to deploy the following Venn to describe some facts about the bar I popped into late last night to hear DJ Adamix play out one of our latest remixes:

Notes

• Kevin Spacey was dressed all in black with a black woolly hat (or ‘beanie’ as he might refer to it)
• Gary Davies was the Chris Moyles of the 1980’s.
• A band called JLS were also there, but as someone had to explain what a ‘JLS’ was, I have not included them on the Venn of Doubt.
• Bar Music Hall is in London’s trendy Shoreditch.
• John Venn was born in 1823 and was educated in Highgate, London. He graduated from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1857. He was ordained a priest in 1859 and wrote the splendid Symbolic Logic in 1881.

Caucasian Chalk Circle – reviews

Some reviews of the play I’ll be appearing in next week. (These reviews are for the Leeds production, with a chorus drawn from that area; our is the London production with a different chorus)

Guardian – 3/5

The Stage
British Theatre Guide
Online Reviews
John Baker’s Blog
Stage Beauty

Times Online – 3/5
Trust my paper to criticise the  bit I’m involved with:  “And the 30-piece choir is a big distraction.” Well, if Dominic Maxwell  knew the first thing about Brecht, he’d know that one of Brecht’s interests was revealing the artifice of a play – characters step out of character and talk directly to the audience, etc. So the choir on stage both reflects the audience and reminds them that they are watching a play at all times.

Silly Dominic! (Mind you, he watched the Leeds production so goodness knows what they were getting up to on stage)

Anyway, all pretty good reviews, I’m pleased to say. I look forward to actually seeing the thing, as so far I’ve only been in rehearsal learnin’ the songs. I’ve not seen a scrap of actin’ yet!

Roll up, roll up, get your tickets here – it’ll have nearly as much acting in as a Premier League footballer rolling around for a penalty..

Richmond Theatre, 20-24th October
Unicorn Theatre, 24-29th November

Q3 Round-up

Some stuff I didn’t get round to mentioning that I need to remember that I once did:

Moon - I enjoyed this. A pretty good story pretty well told. Didn’t think they quite everything right (some dodgy CGI and some of the emotional stuff didn’t work), but liked the pay-off at the end. Interesting sound track, great set design and model making. I liked the reverse-HAL concept and managed to be a unique take on the ‘What is identity’, though less philosophical than Solaris, Bladerunner, etc)

Hamlet, with Jude Law: good. To my shame, it was the first time I’d ever seen Hamlet. Thought it was a good play, but slightly surprised at the comedic mix-up of poisons in the last scene. After all the heavyweight pyschodrama that preceded, to end on a typical farce set up of accidentally swapped drinks seemed odd.  But who am I to criticise the great bard?

Futurism at the Tate. Can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this yet. I love the Futurists and their wild mixture of splendid enthusiasm for the modern and worrying tendencies towards fascism and war. Unfortunately I don’t think the exhibition really did it justice. It didn’t manage to capture the contradictions and absurdities of Futurism and their manifestos (pasta should be banned, orchestras should be scrapped and replaced by pnuematic devices, anything modern should be embraced – especially war, and anything old should be destroyed – especially art)

It also basically needed better pictures. I believe the exhibition only contained pictures and sculpures from the 1912 Futurist exhibition which is why it was kinda patchy quality-wise – it was early days of the movement.  (But it was interesting to see how the British Fauvists couldn’t really match the boldness of the Italians – we were too twee, even then)

The best part of the exhibition was actually just outside the main gallery space where they had many amusing quotes which were much better at summing up the general vibe of the Futurists, including the immortal ‘The Futurists got into an argument with their opponents – many hats were rendered useless’

Caucasian Chalk Circle

Hello you lot. I’ve got myself roped into a theatre production of Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle. In an unusual take on the play there is a chorus singing some bits to punctuate the action. So I’m part of the chorus doing some singin’.

The script is by Alistair Beaton, who’s done stuff on the telly-box and it’s produced by Shared Experience who’ve been around since the 70’s, and are well respected for their work.

It’s a novel experience and it’ll be interesting to see how the songs we’re rehearsing fit in with the play itself.

Hey! Why not come and see it?!

Richmond Theatre, 20-24th October
Unicorn Theatre, 24-29th November

Apparently ticket sales are brisk, so you might wanna get in there quickish!

Alderney, a tiny island

We flew this weekend to Alderney, one of the Channel Islands, for my cousin Alice’s wedding.

The plane that took us there from Southampton seated 16, and was the smallest plane I’ve ever been in.

This is actually take off from Alderney – as you can see it’s very picturesque and I was strapped to the underbelly of the aircraft in order to take these pictures.

I lie. This is the interior. The air stewardesses had a hell of a time getting the trolly down the aisle.

It’s ok though, the airport authority of the States of the Channel Islands are a totally professional outfit.

They only had the one lampost on the island, but it was massive!

Even better, they’d mounted a foghorn on the top of the rental cottage under the giant lampost. Couldn’t see where to plug my ipod in unfortunately, so the islanders were denied a 500kw preview of the new Cassette Electrik album.

This picture doesn’t do justice to the incongruous combination of:
a) a 1938 Northern Line tube, taken out of service in 1996
b) a WWII look-out post
c) a Dr Who style abandoned quarry
d) a rusting quarry machine (in distance, not really visible)

One of the things I didn’t know much about before arriving was the fact of the German occupation of the island between 1940-5. However, there is evidence of it everywhere. This is actually just a water tower built during that time, but it just exudes a sense of dread. (check those evil spikes – for long since disappeared cladding? Or just to enhance the Nazi evil?)

Some of the islanders haven’t really let go of that part of their history…

On wall above the bar: “DON’T MENTION THE WAR”

Detail below of three Hitlers flying up the wall (and newspaper headline ‘The Herd Reich’)

Which is ‘fine’ – except for the fact the small group of us who went in there included a family member who happens to be German…

Still, that was only a small part of the weekend. The wedding itself was fantastic and we had a great time walking around the three by 1.5 mile island. It’s extremely picturesque, and the wildlife was quite friendly too.

Notting Hill 2009 & Maracatu & Samba Reggae

Maracatu : Sunday 31st August

Having had a bit of a break from the London group Maracatu Estrela do Norte I’ve been looking forward to playing with them at Carnival for a few months now and have been to the rehearsals down in Peckham, etc. (Maracatu is the drumming music from NE Brazil, which I played for several years and even visited Brazil in 2006 to study further)

Here are the drums unloaded from the van, as it’s important to know what a pile of drums looks like. It looks like this:

I haven’t seen my good friend Marcus for about three years since he moved to Luxemburg to translate ‘words’ for the EU. He’s extremely pleased to see me too:

Maracatu is an extraordinary music and culture that has it’s origins in 16th & 17th century Brazil, the time of slavery. During carnival celebrations in those days the slaves were allowed for the duration to dress up as the King and Queen of their group and to represent them in the parades. A whole Louis XVIth style court would be represented, including parasol holder and below, an ambassador as well.

Accompanying the court and their drummers would be a retinue of dancing girls, with choreography reflecting their daily lives of tilling the land, domestic duties, and other activities. Our dancers are led by a beautiful Brazilian lady called Mariana:

Here are the drummers. I’m at the back somewhere out of shot..

Here I am, out of shot at the back again:

We had a great time parading round the Notting Hill streets. We were actually taking part alongside the Jamaican Twist float, which is why we’re wearing slightly incongruous Jamaican flag t-shirts, despite playing the music of Brazil!

There were so many people filming us and taking pictures that if I find any videos online or indeed an actual picture of me to prove I was there, I’ll post ‘em!

Update: Footage found!
@ 10 seconds & 5 mins

Monday 1st September – Samba Reggae

Monday is party day at Notting Hill and the sun also came out to party with us, which was great. On Monday we played Samba Reggae – a very different Brazilian style to maracatu, and one that originated in the 70’s in the region of Bahia. As the name suggests it takes it’s influence from the very Brazilian style of samba and the Caribbean/Jamaican sounds of reggae.

It is, in my humble opinion, funkier than funk itself.

v

It’s difficult to take pictures of us playing when I’m also playing, so these pictures are of us at rest.

This is Sam, the band leader for both groups. He’s looking a bit like we messed up a break in this pic, or he might just be concentrating.

Pants to Poverty!

We had dancing girls on the Monday who were wearing splendid ‘pants to poverty’ pants and .. not much else.

Splendid!

Audience reaction was great, and we frequently had moments were people would come from the crowd to show us their moves – one group were a breakdance troupe who had all the moves. Windmilling on tarmac can’t be very comfortable, but those guys achieved it!

Other

Supermalt were giving away free drinks. A convenient surface  nearby provides a barometer of popularity of the drink:

ie, not especially popular.

Here’s a cool drum and bass DJ in a church doorway.

 A good time was had by all and the atmosphere seemed really good for both days, which was great.

After 5 hours of drumming on both the Sunday and Monday, we were all pretty knackered….

See ya there next year, eh?!