Skip to main content



Here are my preparations for the gig on the 11th. Lots of guests to keep track of, lots of time to play. Very little money. That's life. It's my birthday. It's an investment for more gigs. Wish I could do a whole gig with a story teller who had a great story though... Would be brilliant. Just did a duet at a Buddhist course. I'm a member of SGI-UK. Playing improvised guitar as a live score to a sketch. Felt really good to get to play experimental improvised guitar and have people actually enjoy it - loads of people said afterwards that the guitar playing fit so well with Aletta's movements and was "timed perfectly"! - Aletta did the animal effects for Dr Doolittle and it was loads of fun to play to her story about an evil nun, eating soap and pretending to be a tree...



Anyway, on this gig there's the talented writer and songwriter David Green - I really like his email address name more - should be a stage name - Daid. I want to play tabla to two of his songs, maybe get him to learn one of mine that fits with what he does. Also there's Mel who I play with in the mini impro collective Meleliale - so we'll be two halves of that doing a structured improvisation about getting emotional at Clifton Down train station. Maybe Eli will also make it...



I want to play some chilean stuff - so there's some covers from 3 Chilean musicians - Joe Vasconcellos, Victor Jara and Angel Parra. I really should contact Claudio from his little studio on Gloucester Rd to do the percussion for them... Can't find his number. He's a good percussionist, I'm not sure if relaxed enough to play live though. But I think he'd enjoy at least playing to the Chilean 6/8 beats here and there, that no-one else really gets.



Would be great to get the Refugee band Sanctuary together again to play our title song - which we played with great success at the refugee week gig this summer. They are the two Zimbabweans, mbira player Fidelis, Cecilia, who toured the world then left it all to come here as a refugee. Finally she's starting to get into music again though. And Juan Gabriel from Colombia who seems to be playing the most interesting gigs in Bristol. But that would be sooo many busy people to chase after....



Hugh and Tim I know mostly from the Cube Orchestra and various unrehearsed jams at the Greenbank where we grew to know each other's tunes. We're going to meet and try out some structured improvisations.


Then there's Marco Anderson - I hope - he's another buddhist and has a study exam the next day followed by a gig somewhere very far like Poole. If he does come, he might be a bit scared by the song listing below... But each song with a name next to it is optional. Even to me. I just know I'd rather start with a big list, and they will be fine if they want to either because we've played those songs/improvs together in the past or because it wouldn't take much to explain them in one rehearsal. Might even sneak in a completely new improv. Would be great to see team brick, marco and mel playing off each other - the most technically gifted people I know and all very capable of the maddest and most creative improvisations I've ever seen.



Actually this is me a couple of days later. Team Brick will be in France, so the madness will have to wait.


Last but most important is my partner Krishinda(who trained classically as an opera singer once upon a time) - who is singing on a couple of songs. One we wrote together - a bit of a bed time song from when my daughter Quimsa was small.


Todo List:
call tim/hugh for rehearsal arrangement (doesn't have to be today)
call david for rehearsal
Trace Claudio
flyers!


#Song list
#name (possibles) [rehearsals to go|not even touched yet]


Elegia (Marco?) 1
David 2 Songs 1
Andana 3 (chema?) 1
Birthchant (tim/hugh)
Shit! (Marco Cajon)
Cancion de Jaime
Beheading of the french aristocracy (marco or mel)
Head football
Marco 1 song (his),
1 tabla/cajon duet (please?)
Glasgow Gill (Marco Cajon)
Do Sunsets Cry? (Mel/Eli?)
Requiem (hugh, mel)
West end scavenger (mel/team brick/tim)
Edoardo Benitez (hugh, t brick, tim, marco)
Surrounded (marco, mel)
The Closet (t brick, hugh, tim, mel?)
Artecnio the Millipede (marco cajon)1
Dietro Via Zanon (marco) 1(end)
InteracciĂłn (marco cajon) 1
Sandrocchia
Baby's Day Out 2
Eskimo Cabaret/Paris 2
El Hijo Arrepentido (marco) 2
Angelita huenuman (marco) 1
Ciudad Traicionera (Chema?) 2
Let go (Marco? Krish? Martin?!) 1
Careful 1
That's the way 1


31 songs so far - 5 * 31 = 155 mins - 3 hrs music! Better to start with more...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

My Interpretation so far of the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings

This Sutra, handed down by Ananda, the Buddha's companion, then found and translated to Chinese by Kumarijiva, is part 1 of a trilogy consisting of the Lotus Sutra, The Innumerable Meanings Sutra and the Meditation Sutra. It is studied and known among others, by Nichiren Schools of Buddhism, and it's his interpretation that I probably share most with: http://nichiren.info/OngiKuden/text/Muryogi.htm First of all, it is meant to be read by Bodhisattvas. Boddhisatvas are people who use what they learn to teach others about how to be Buddhas. When I think of Boddhisatvas, I think of people like Gandhi or Martin Luther King etc, people who fought beyond their own lives for the greater good or peace, perhaps even without knowing what the right way or right practice is. The Innumerable Meanings Sutra says these people will attain the supreme enlightenment that the Buddha attained, eventually, although the short term effect will be that everyone is a lot better off. Laws, people and so...

Big Cafe on Transport Sustainability

About a month ago, I went to the "Big Cafe for Transport" event that was happening just around the corner from my house at the brilliant new "Co-Exist" sustainability business centre . Coexist run as a CIC and are just about to launch with a plan to open up green community and event spaces, funded in turn by work and business spaces. I really hope that means a market in stokes croft! After I attended, I'd promised everyone I'd write up about it, and promptly left it as a nagging thing in the background as life took over. But now the official write up of the event has been published so I thought I should finish the abortive blog post I made that same night. A disclaimer : I'm allowed to make mistakes here, so if I've written anything wrong or stupid, please correct me! A big cafe costs 20 pounds to attend. It started really early on a Saturday morning (thus excluding the entire population of Stokes Croft), but it included a lunch (from Kukuva Cafe ac...

Eduserv Symposium 2008

I came to attend this symposium out of the blue, having seen an email late one Wednesday afternoon, saying our assistant director was too ill to go, and after a quick look at the programme, I realised it was a follow-up to an event I'd seen on video a while back where an entire conference on Second Life had been trashed by a talk which had argued it was all pretty much useless hype. So if this year's presentations were going to be in that vein, it sounded like like a fun time. This being a web 2 conference, lots of it was used, including a live chat backchannel ( http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/symposium/2008/livechat powered by cover it live streaming software: http://www.coveritlive.com/ ), a ning based conference centred social networking site (which as expected didn't achieve critical mass but was a nice feature all the same), and of course lots lots more. Eduserv's Andy Powell started the day talking about these "Disruptive technologies" we know so...