In my capacity as committee member for the Queensferry Arts Festival, which flings open the doors of showbiz, had lunch with accordianist and composer Phil Cunningham, who kindly offered support and advice for the Festival. Some great stories too, and a thoroughly nice guy.
Back to work, Javascript and CSS, then into town for a rehearsal with the Still Unnamed. Sean’s bass had a dodgy input, so it was either a call for Sean to sing the bass parts (baa baa babaaa) into a mic or a dash to Nelson’s to borrow his bass. We opted for the latter and spent an hour working out and practising a strange little bit of 7/4 that crept into one of the songs. That left a little time to start working on OK’s Not Enough (a prototype of which you can hear on In Progress). Thanks, Nelson for rescuing us.
New Jukebox tracks bottom right:
Tony Levin – Mingled Roots: an improvised duet between Tony on double bass and Levon Minassian on doudouk, an Armenian double reed instrument made of wood from the Apricot Tree. From Tony Levin’s World Diary
Slapp Happy – Powerful Stuff: from one of my favourite albums Ca Va, this one features Peter Blegvad as the main singer.
The Temptations – Papa Was a Rolling Stone: One of the best arrangements ever – not a wasted note.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Spell: one of the more pensive moments from his most recent album.
Malicorne – La Conduite: I’ve raved occasionally about Gabriel Yacoub. This is from his 70’s-80s band, and a great a cappella arrangement, with dissonance used to great effect, and the marching effect created by the band plunging their fists into bowls of lentils (?).
King Crimson – One Time: just to show they can be sweet too.
Paul Simon – How the Heart Approaches What it Yearns: from the little-loved One Trick Pony soundtrack. Anyone who’s tried to write a song just has to appreciate the effortless plaintive melody of the middle-eight.
French-Frith-Kaiser-Thompson – A Bird in God’s Garden: Mainly Richard Thompson here, on a dark but somehow warm visit to a Sufi poem, from the Watching the Dark compilation.