release the music

Copyright's a subject I've long had mixed feelings about, and indeed it was partly thoughts about it that prompted me to start this blog. The pieces I post here are intended to be free for anyone to use as they will for any non-profit making purpose, in the spirit of the creative commons principle, and I've long thought that current copyright law is not only inadequate to cope with a world in which sampling exists and the presence of the internet is making national differences in the laws governing creative activity unsustainable, but actively harms composers' (and any creative artist's) ability and freedom to create. Think of J.S. Bach's arrangements of Vivaldi or Mozart's rewriting of J.C. Bach, and you'll have an idea of the kind of thing I'm thinking of as work which is vital to a composer's development, but which is rendered illegal by current law.

Now the recording industry seeks further to limit artists' ability to react with the culture around them by campaigning to have the duration of copyright on recordings from 50 to 70 years. They claim this is in the interests of the artists, but the truth is that all they are really interested is maintaining their grip on a cash cow. I believe that to change the law in the way they propose would be not just capitulating to corporate greed, but an act that would actively damage the cultural life of this country.

I won't bore you with facts and figures, you can find all the information you need here. What I will do is implore you to go to the Release the Music website and add your name to their petition.

Of course it's important to protect artists' livelihoods, and record companies are entitled to profit from their business like any other. But it's also important that creative work be allowed to pass into the public domain, where it can become the seed for new work. because if we can't do that, what on earth's the point?

Fast N Bulbous

I love Captain Beefheart. Let me make this clear. I need to convey how much I love Beefheart before I talk about this gig, so please bear with me.

When I was about 15, I liked to think of myself as someone who could get all the weird shit no-one else got. I listened to the Mary Chain, I listened to 8 Songs for a Mad King... I took pride in finding sense and truth in sounds others dismissed as noise.

And then, in the space of a few weeks, I did 2 things: I borrowed Bitches Brew from Birmingham Central Library and bought Trout Mask Replica.

These two albums were like nothing I could conceive of. There was nothing I could hang anything on, they were both just so far out. But I could hear, somewhere in this confusing noise, SOMETHING. Something very important that I knew I had to grasp, no matter how long it took.

In the event, it took me the best part of 10 years to understand those records. And it was worth every second when I reached that point when suddenly everything clicked and they became as clear as the simplest nursery rhyme to me. Since then I've always harboured a suspicion that any really great music takes a decade to understand, and if it doesn't, it's not really worth it.

Anyway, the point is that I love this music beyond reason. So when I heard that ex-Magic Band guitarist Gary Lucas was coming to these shores with a new band dedicated to performing the Captain's music, I was intrigued, but also wary. I've seen Lucas perform before, both in his own right and with various collaborators, including the reconstituted Magic Band, so I knew that at least the evening would be a well presented, respectful display of Beefheart's music.

What I wasn't really prepared for was that the band would do something I'd have doubted possible: they didn't just play the tunes, they worked them to create something new. Everything they played was familiar, yet also sounded as if it were being recreated right in front of me. This show was presented under the aegis of the London Jazz Festival, and it succeeded purely in the terms you might expect from that: it presented Beefheart's music as a living, breathing thing, no museum exhibit.

I went expecting some good musicianship and some rekindling of memories. I got that - Gary Lucas played Evening Bell and Flavor Bud Living about 2 feet away from me, for chrissakes! - but I ended up buying the album, and more importantly, I went home dizzy in the joy of having been reminded in the best possible way why I love this music.

Do I sound lime a raving fanboy? I don't care. This was one of those rare evenings when I really felt the full force of what music is capable of. Did I mention that I LOVE Captain Beefheart?

Bowmans update: They're nearly there, but they still need your votes, and all your friends, people! Get on over to the Deli and do that voting thang! And then make your friends do it. And their friends. (&c.)

Seems a while since I did one of these... there's always a slump when you've finished a piece, when suddenly something that's been in your mind for weeks or months (or longer) is no longer there, so this is the time when it's important just to write stuff, without worrying about quality. Keep the brain working.

Hail! Herbie

Herbie Hancock took the stage at about 8.10, and looked about 20 years younger than he actually is. God, I hope I look that good if I reach that age. Seaton and I had me up in the aptly named World's End pub down the road at 6-ish. He was early, I was late, a first for both of us, I think. When we got there they were playing Guns N Roses as if the '90s had never happened, and Strictly Come Dancing was on the big screen, which led to some touching male bonding as we admitted our mutual addiction to the programme. Things got beyond parody when they started playing Spinal Tap.

Anyway, we moved on to have a very nice Vietnamese curry, then to the Roundhouse, the first time I've been there. If it had been a rock gig, I'd have said it was a small, intimate venue. But for a jazz gig, it was a cavernous barn, and this was a lot of the problem with this gig. The half-hour of African-influenced ambient stuff would have gone down very well in a venue like Ronnie Scott's, but in the roundhouse it was just a cue for many in the audience to have a very loud natter.

If I'm giving the impression that I didn't enjoy this gig, that's not right. I loved parts of it. There was a certain amount of Weather Report style noodling which tested the patience, but there were also moments of transcendence. Herbie is of course renowned for what he's done to make the synthesiser an acceptable instrument, and there was plenty of evidence to support this, but for me the best moments were those when he sat down at the piano and let rip. He's done an awful lot of groundbreaking things in his time, but at the heart of it is the fact that he's a phenomenal keyboard player, and it was in the moments that I heard that, unencumbered by sound effects or stylistic statements, that the force of the man was truly to be felt.

I took my camera along, but way at the back as I was, I couldn't get a decent shot. Them's the breaks.

p.s.: today's obligatory Bowmans plug: Please go to the Deli Magazine and vote for the twins in their Band of the Month poll. They're currently second, and they really should be first. Let's make it happen!

more gigology

Tonight I went to the Bedford in Balham, where a lot of fine people were playing, but I was mainly there to see the excellent Bowmans, whose album (which you can, and should, buy here) is one of my very favourite things at the moment. In fact, I rate them so highly I skived off my orchestra rehearsal to go. I was lucky enough to nab them for a quick chat, and I'm pleased to say they're as nice as they are talented. And their album's ace, did I mention that? Really, buy it.

sound and vision

Tonight I went to see the Photophonic Experiment at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. The basic idea of the show was the interplay between light and sound, using light sources to generate noises. If that all sounds rather esoteric, the result wasn't: There's a very simple delight in hearing sounds resulting from flashing or moving light, and the sheer playfulness of the project came across wonderfully. Well, I enjoyed it, anyway. Sometimes it's good just to revel in sound.

The Joy of Colds

One of the advantages of being ill, as I've been for the past few days, apart from the fact that it forces you to stay sober and go to bed early, is that your brain goes haywire and dredges up old things you'd forgotten about, which makes for much surfing fun. And oh joy! I see that finally, the excellent Police Squad is coming out on DVD. I first saw this at some ungodly hour on TV in the '80's and it remains one of the funniest shows of the past 25 years, absolutely stuffed full of gags that demand and repay repeated viewings.

While I'm on the subject of obscure things that are about to become available again, Vivian Stanshall's bizarre and insane Sir Henry At Rawlinson End finally resurfaces very soon. I can't really describe it in any way that would do it justice, really, suffice to say that Stanshall was a comic genius in the same league as Spike Milligan, and you really should watch this.

Oh, I've just updated Big Dog's Kennel, so go along and have a look at that. I was looking over sketch books and the like the past couple of days, and I didn't quite realise how many unfinished ideas I had sitting about, so with any luck I may get back into the habit of putting new stuff up a bit more regularly than I have done recently.

Finally, because - hell, I don't need a reason - here's a picture of my nephew:

"The complete consort dancing together"

Last night Kensington Symphony Orchestra celebrated its 50th anniversary with a concert at the Barbican.

We'd been worried about the risk of booking a hall like that - what if nobody came? We'd have been in a very deep financial hole, for one. Fortunately everyone worked incredibly hard to sell the gig, and over the past week or so, it became clear that far from struggling to minimise our losses, we were looking at the possibility of a sell-out. The last few days I lost a lot of time to regular visits to the Barbican website, willing those last remaining tickets to go. When I arrive at the hall yesterday lunchtime to set up, I was told there were only 25 seats left unsold.

It felt very strange, almost surreal, to stand on that stage as we hauled percussion instruments into place and look out at the empty hall, and to think that we'd be on this side of the performer/audience divide in a matter of hours. As the players arrived, and we began to rehearse, there was a palpable air of excitement, but more remarkably a kind of serenity. No sense of nervousness, just of expectation, that after all the work that has gone into preparing for this night, not just in rehearsing these particular pieces or haranguing anyone and everyone to buy tickets, but over many years to raise the orchestra's standards and ambition to the point where playing the Barbican seems appropriate rather than hubristic, this was a defining moment, the top of a mountain from where we could look back at where we'd come from, and out to the peaks that stand ahead.

Perhaps I'm being a bit over the top here, but what the hell - I'm damn proud of this band and what it's achieved, and of the fact that I get to play in it. As our conductor Russell Keable said in the article in the concert programme, an amateur orchestra can exist for the indulgence of its members or it can try and make a difference, and that's what makes KSO such a rewarding thing to be part of.

Strangely, the size of the audience doesn't really register, I think partly because of the steep banking of the seats in the auditorium. And anyway, the audience tends only to register peripherally when you go onstage - there are too many things to think about without getting nervous at the thought of all those people waiting to hear you. What did make a powerful impression, however, was the sound of the applause. In the places we normally play, the couple of hundred or so people sitting there certainly make a noise, but there are always hints of individual pairs of hands. Here, there was a kind of whooshing sound, like waves on a shingle beach. It was a noise that utterly transformed the evening, and suddenly brought into focus the specialness of the occasion.

Afterwards, we drank in the bar until midnight, and everyone shone with giddy joy at what had just happened. And the next day we got ready for the next 50 years.

Origins

I went back to Birmingham this weekend, for my parents' golden wedding anniversary. It turned out to be a good do, it was just the immediate family (although that's still 15 people, including my brother's newborn). It's always a source of mild anxiety when we all get together, as there's we're not a particularly close bunch, and there can be tension between us (especially the older ones), never explicit, but always hanging in the background. But there was relatively little of that, everyone behaved themselves, the food was great (courtesy of Syd the chef, who was absolutely lovely as well as being a wonderful cook). The bombshell came at lunch on Sunday, when my 2nd brother announced he was getting married. I'd had an inkling this was coming, but it was still a shock to hear this actually said. It's a complicated situation for all sorts of reasons, but I'm certainly not in a position to criticize anyone else's love life, so I can only wish them all the best.

In a parallel universe of awkward family ties, 2000 AD is currently running Origins, which will over the course of the next 6 months or so lay out definitively the tale of how Judge Dredd's world came to be. It's written and drawn by Dredd creators John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra, and is well worth anybody's time. It's only up to Episode 4, so there's still time to jump on board. What Wagner's done with Dredd over the past 30 years is little short of miraculous, it's still one of the finest pieces of social satire you'll read anywhere, and this story promises to be a landmark, so you really should take out a subscription to the comic.

On a sad note, one thing that's missing from this tale is the lettering of tom Frame, who died recently. Lettering is the Cinderella job in comics, often un-noticed, but essential, and tom's work was as much a part of Mega City One as Wagner's prose or the drawing of Ezquerra, MacMahon, Bolland, and all the artists who've contributed to the strip over the years - in fact, even Wagner himself takes second place to Frame as the most prolific talent to work on Dredd not to mention the many other stories he worked on in his career). Please remember him by contributing something to this excellent charity: www.mariecurie.org.uk/supportus/waystodonate/

Vworrrp! Vworrrp!

Today I felt more excited than I ever have about where I work when I found out what's lurking 3 floors below my office.

In case you're not a spod, I should explain that the title of this post is the rendering of the tardis's dematerialisation sound that they use in the comic strips published in Doctor Who magazine since the late '70s. Some of these strips are quite brilliant, and there's one in particular that's reprinted in this book featuring an old-school cyberman beautifully drawn by the great Mick McMahon.

The Mules

I've been listening to The Mules' album, and I think you should too.

Cycling is bad for your health

They don't tell you about this sort of thing... Yesterday I had an all-day rehearsal, the first for Kensington Symphony Orchestra's 50th birthday concert (tickets available here). And to my surprise, I had enormous difficulty with my bowing - my muscles have obviously all been strained in the wrong way riding my bike and not practising over the summer, and I can't get any force into the bow at all, in fact by the end of the day I was having trouble even holding it. I hope this will rectify itself over the next few days with plenty of practice. There's a lesson for you here, kids!

This afternoon I went to see Children of Men, an excellent, visceral yet thoughtful sci-fi thriller that I heartily recommend to you.

Saturday I cycled down to the Warehouse to see a couple of the BMIC's Finnissy weekend concerts celebrating Michael Finnissy's 60th birthday. It was a great pleasure to hear his music, and to catch up with Michael, who looks very chipper, and as ever is a delight and a gentleman.

While I'm in the business of telling you what to do, if you haven't yet discovered Bryan Talbot's masterful comic The Tale of One Bad Rat, you really should do everything in your power to track down a copy of this deeply moving story, I really can't praise it enough, it's one of the most moving things you'll ever read.

Bless me Father, for I have sinned...

I'm a very, very bad man. I hid a penis in someone's leaving card.

Let me explain. First, you need to know that at the office in which I work, we've developed a tradition of making cards for birthdays, leavings etc rather than buying some crappy shop one. It's a good tradition that more offices should adopt.

Secondly, you need to know that the person who left my office today is someone I dislike. I'm not often one to dismiss anyone totally, I like to try and see the good in people on the whole, but this particular individual is an arrogant, stupid, lazy little shit.

(In my humble opinion, of course.)

The card you see above was not conceived by me, but as I'm one of those at work with a moderate sense of design and drawing ability, I often get asked to realise others' concepts. In this case, the idea was a pair of wings (symbolising the leaver's taking flight into greater things), and, as a later addition, a figure like one of those you get in old maps with an old man representing the winds.

So I cut out some wings, and drew the old man. But my evil streak took over, and I drew the wing outline in a certain way. If you've studied art beyond a very basic level, you may be familiar with the concept of negative space, where the outline of the supposed object in the picture actually conceals another. Now, look between the wings at the shape produced by them. Can you tell what it is yet?

I'm slightly disappointed, but also relieved, that apparently no-one spotted this. But fuck it, that's what I think of that little tosser, and I'm immensely glad he's gone.

Of course, once you see the cock, it raises all sorts of questions about what the bearded chap's doing. But that's another story.

fragments of other people's lives, #1

Overheard at Liverpool Street Station:

Man on phone: "So she said, y'know, I don't pay her enough attention an' that... so I started, y'know, calling her sexy an' that..."

John Drummond

John Drummond died last week. He was the man who, as Director of the Proms, commissioned Harrison Birtwistle for the Last Night, which caused quite a kerfuffle at the time. They played a bit of the piece in question, "Panic" on the Today programme to introduce their article about him, and very exciting it sounds too, brash and entirely Birtwistlian, while also showing a surprising affinity with hard bop. It's hard to imagine anyone daring to put something like that in that smug, tired occasion these days.

There's a mention of the BBC Music Library in the Telegraph's obituary that was sent to me (you can read the whole thing here), which sums up a lot of what's wrong with the BBC for me:

"The appointment proved difficult from the start. He found "an air of palpable hostility'' from some of the producers and soon found himself in conflict with Ian MacIntyre, Controller of Radio 3. He also found that the BBC governors had little interest in music. One of them asked him why the BBC needed its music library: "I thought musicians played from memory."

Sadly, such ignorance is still prevalent, we are under the rule of idiots. Unfortunately there are fewer and fewer people like Sir John prepared to stand up and attack this kind of nonsense.

Welcome to the world

James Thomas Nagle, born 12.48 a.m. 8th September 2006, 8lbs. Pity the poor little sod, he's got me as an uncle.

Diary pieces are on hiatus, as I'm preoccupied with the viola piece I'm writing, however here are a couple of things I scribbled at lunch this week, one a distorted memory of Mendelssohn, the other a little play on my new nephew's name.

Movement

Well, things are looking up, there seems to be some sort of sanity returning to life, and while it'd be exaggerating to say that everything's peachy, there does seem to be a bit more light about than there was a few weeks ago. I guess sometimes you have to hit a wall before you can move on.

No recent diary pieces to post, but for once indolence has no part to play in this... I've been working on this piece for viola, and the ideas are flowing freely for once. I have a very good feeling about it.

I went on a 3-hour bike ride yesterday. Now, I'd expect to feel sore after that, what with not having ridden a bike regularly for about 20 years and being generally out of shape, but what I didn't expect was that the tendons in my hands would be so affected. I was barely able to turn the key in my front door when I got home, and had a lot of trouble wielding a knife when cooking my tea, and even today I'm having trouble with things like writing (and typing, come to that). It must be because I've been gripping the handlebars too tight for too long. It's bloody annoying.

singing

People sing to their babies. Why do they stop? Why don't people sing to each other as adults? It seems sad that they don't.

Accentuate the positive

Well hey hey! I've been asked to write a piece for viola! And there may even be some money in it! Which would be the first time I've been paid for writing anything.

And yay! My bike's finally arrived, and I'm picking it up tomorrow!

I'm holding onto these two things as hard as I possibly can, because quite frankly, every fucking other thing in my life right now looks as bad and bleak as it could possibly be.