I find it hard to believe that in my early twenties I managed to blog around three times per week. These days, due to time-restrictions, I barely manage once a month. What did I do back then? The trouble with blogging this sporadically is that when I write a blog post, I feel that I really ought to be writing about something of monumental importance, rather than just, well, a blog post.
Anyway. I’m going to write about something that isn’t monumentally important, in order to take the pressure off.
Yesterday evening I played at a ceilidh. Prior to the gig, there were a couple of setbacks. Firstly, the accordion player’s knee was badly damaged in an incident which apparently involved the concertina player and a towel. Then the guitarist, who’d organised it (the ceilidh, not the knee-damaging incident), phoned the rest of the band at about 5pm to say that it was a 7pm start rather than 8pm. Minor panic ensued. However, despite both of these things, we got to the venue almost on time, set up and played the first half, as usual.
Then there was a break for the buffet. [At this point a slightly scary man admired my new spats (yes, those are the actual ones, and I am possibly more pleased about them than any other item of legwear ever), spent the rest of the evening making comments about them and possibly may have winked once. But this is a digression.]
On the buffet table, [insert fanfare here] there were two little bottles of hand sanitiser! Somebody had clearly thought this through. At ceilidhs, the formula is usually dance, eat a buffet, dance. (Generally overlaid throughout with drinking.) During the dances there is a great deal of hand-contact, often with quite a lot of people (especially if there’s a grand chain involved, or if it’s a progressive dance in which dancers change partner every time through). That’s potentially a lot of free transport for germs, immediately followed by the potential-transporters eating a bunch of food.
Quite a few of ceilidhs that I’ve played at serve a hog-roast in the middle, eaten in sandwiches. That means eaten with your fingers, which have just been holding lots of other fingers – and I don’t see lots of people queuing up to wash their hands before the buffet: they go straight from the dance floor to the food. And there isn’t usually any hand sanitiser. Yikes.
So: hand sanitiser is definitely a good thing for ceilidhs, especially if, like me, one has buggered up one’s immune system by having ten serial colds over winter. I urge all ceilidh bands and also normal people to suggest it to anyone they know who might be organising one: if it becomes standard practice we could collectively save the NHS what will probably turn out to be a really small amount of money, but, you know, it’s still something…
(Also. While you’re there. Tell them that Standard Ceilidh Organising Practise is to provide the band with some nice Australian Shiraz, a good quality cheesecake, interesting salads with decent vinaigrette, assorted delicious proteins and carbohydrates, heated seats, disco lights, and a party bag to take home. But mainly this is about the hand sanitiser.)
I spend a lot of time thinking I really ought to improve in all three of these areas, but not knowing how to go about it efficiently. However, I have come up with one idea which will cover all three: Only Drink Alcohol When It’s Free. Thus, whenever a drink is required, I must attend some sort of event such as a gallery or exhibition opening, or aftershow party (which will lead to networking), or else be playing music at a function which provides free booze (which will lead to financial gain, in addition to the money saved by not buying any alcohol).
The problem with this theory, of course, is that wine at gallery openings, functions etc. is often horrible. Therefore, in order to obtain good wine, only the opening parties of very high-end galleries and exhibitions must be attended (leads to networking with more influential people, although after a while they may notice that I’m only there when there is free wine, which might be bad), and only functions at which the wine is good must be played at (which either means that the people will have so much money that they can afford nice wine and also to pay the musicians more, or that they will have spent the entire budget on the wine and won’t pay the musicians anything. Hmm.)
The details need work, I think, but maybe this could solve three of my problems at once…
Today saw the release of a new recording from Pillowfish – a completely new version of the song ‘The Ice Sculptor’, which was originally released on our acoustic album Common Knowledge in 2006. I decided to rework the lyric a bit, and we’ve also done an expanded arrangement.
We made the recording as a preliminary project before starting serious work on our next album, to test out some new equipment and techniques. We’re releasing it as a free download in a variety of formats, which you can get simply by giving us your email address. You can grab your download and read more about the song on the Ice Sculptor download page.
Occasionally within my ponderings here, I refer to a place called The Lace Shop. This was my two-day-a-week workplace for a year or so, several years ago, until I was suddenly given the ‘I’m going to have to let you go’ phonecall because the boss’s daughter wanted my job. I wasn’t actually that upset. Clearing out the images folders on my computer has presented me with some long-forgotten pictorial reminders that it was not a healthy place to spend any time:
This is the view of the front shop area. In the centre is a selection of polyester embroidered tablecloths and table runners. [Before working here I was actually unaware of the existence of table runners, and I still don't really understand what they're for.] All around the edges are very alarming porcelain dolls, teddy bears whose purpose is to adorn wedding cakes, and other such abominations. Particularly horrible are embroidered cushions with slogans on such as ‘If friends were flowers, I’d pick you’ – which I personally think is rather ominous and passive-aggressive, but a lot of annoying women would come in, read them out loud and say, ‘Ooh-isn’t-that-lovely’. Always in the same tone of voice.
This is the ‘Rear Showroom’. It did not, as its name suggests, contain any rears on display, which I suppose is either disappointing or fortunate depending on one’s viewpoint and the quality of the available rears. However, it did have yet more, even nastier dolls, some embroidered cushions, damask tablecloths and some lace pictures, mostly religious scenes. The latter were certainly a contender for Worst Thing in the Shop – I’m still undecided.
Some more dolls, including Henry VIII and some of his wives. A woman once came in and asked whether the shop sold any dolls of Princess Diana. I said that it didn’t. She was very put out. She stomped back through the door muttering, ‘Well, you’ve got Henry the Eighth… it’s not that unreasonable.’ She may have been a bit offended because I didn’t do a very good job of Not Finding Her Request At All Amusing.
This is the handmade lace. I was supposed to somehow insinuate that this was made in Nottingham, England, on the orders of The Boss. When it arrived in its packets, it smelt distinctly of patchouli and spices, and had Indian writing on the labels. So, er, yes, definitely made in Nottingham. I do not think. In the mirror you can see me taking the photograph, wearing the obligatory hideous maroon tabard.
After working in this place for a while I gradually became aware that actually the vast majority of the stock in this shop – mainly sold to tourists as ‘English souvenirs’ arrived in boxes that stated quite firmly that although the souvenirs themselves might have the name of the town I live in printed on them, they were made in China. The Boss told me that if the customers asked where anything was made, I was to claim ignorance.
This made me feel rather disgusted, both with myself for going along with it, and for the shop’s owners for enforcing this fabrication. American tourists who said, ‘I hope it isn’t made in China’ left the shop with ‘local’ souvenirs that had been shipped halfway across the world to be sold here.
It seems ridiculous that a town which used to be a centre of creation – it used to make railway engines, chocolate and various other things – now mainly trades in tourism relating to its history, while manufacture declines and “local” souvenirs are made on another continent. Of course this isn’t solely the fault of this town itself, and I don’t feel qualified to go into the complex national and global causes and effects which surround the issue. However, during the quiet, customer-free and boss-free periods while I was working in the shop, I wrote a song inspired by this. After my job there was transferred to the daughter of The Boss I was very tempted to post a CD recording of it through the shop door, but since it would be difficult to have it performed and recorded by Abba – the only music ever played in the shop when I wasn’t around – I don’t think it would have been listened to. It’s called ‘Tourist Trail’ and hasn’t been recorded in the studio yet, but here’s a live video from a Pillowfish gig earlier this year:
The midi pedalboard arrived this morning! Here are the contents of the box in which it arrived, accompanied by my foot:
I was a little confused by the box of catfood that came with it (despite having become used to strange things arriving with what I order: I bought a necklace from Etsy recently which was sent in an envelope with some lavender, a teabag and a typewriter key) but it turned out to be surrounding a midi cable and power supply.
Having got it plugged into my (very reluctant) computer (I don’t think the soundcard likes mornings) and running on an organ plugin, I experimented with footwear. Bare feet was a bit uncomfortable, shoes or even tiny thin slippers made it hard to feel where the notes were (it felt a bit like playing the piano with gloves on) but socks, or in this case a pair of cotton/cashmere blend tights (described on the packet, for some reason, as ‘Nordic’) were just about right. I’m sure this isn’t correct, and that genuine organ players have special Organ Playing Shoes rather than Nordic Tights, but that seems to be what works for me.
I have spent a large portion of today playing tunes on the viola while attempting bass lines with my feet. It is really fun.
As I’ve already mentioned over on the Pillowfish site, we have a new track available – a version of the song ‘Wider’ is released on the Fatea compilation download ‘Showcase Sessions’. It’s a free mp3 download album, but only available for three months from the Fatea site.
We’ll be recording a different version of Wider for our next album, and won’t be releasing this one anywhere else – so grab one while you can…
Here’s a question: given the choice, would you rather hear a singer with an excellent voice and technique singing an uninspiring or unoriginal song very well, or hear an excellently written, completely new and thought-provoking song performed by someone who doesn’t have such a good technique?
I know these are the two middlemost options in a spectrum which is broadly divided either side into the categories ‘excellent song performed by excellent singer’ and ‘awful song performed by dreadful singer’.
I’ll tell what I favour from the middle two: increasingly, these days, I’ll go for the good song performed by the less-good singer. This is because, so often, I’ve heard singers with amazing voices singing songs which sound as though they took a paper shredder containing the remains of all the songs in the world, put it into some sort of lyrical centrifuge which sorted song-lines into piles containing like material, and snatched a few handfuls out of the largest piles which they then stuck down on a piece of paper to create a song. Often they appear to have completed the process by grabbing three letters of magnetic fridge alphabet, and dropped them onto the completed lyric. Unfortunately they’re not usually the letters Q, Z and R, either. They’re generally G, D and A. What annoys me is the fact that they have probably undertaken a great deal of practise in order to be able to sing that well, put loads of work into it, and then they go out and sing something that isn’t actually worthy of the medium they’re delivering it in. But many people will warm to it, regardless, because it sounds pretty – and, due to the recycled nature of the lyrics, probably because it sounds comfortingly familiar.
On the other hand, many people may discount the opposite – the well constructed and original song performed by the less technically-perfect singer – if it isn’t immediately pleasing to their ears. It could be argued, of course, that in just the same way that developing a good vocal technique and singing an unoriginal song is a mismatch of quality, so is a well-composed song sung by an imperfect singer. What if the poor singing quality doesn’t get the song across – could people perceive it as a ‘bad’ song? But I’d still choose the latter mismatch, because at least it has content and says something. The content may not be delivered beautifully, but it’s still there.
Of the other options – good song performed by good singer and bad song performed by bad singer – it’s hard to determine which I’d prefer. It depends on individual definitions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’. I’d definitely rather listen to any song performed by Joanna Newsom than the same song by a generic ‘good’ pop voice; I think her voice is brilliant, but it appears to upset a lot of people for some reason. And as for ‘bad songs by bad singers’ – due to visiting folk clubs in the past I have heard occasional examples of these and actually, on balance, the experience makes me feel more alive than the good singer / content-free song combination. On several occasions I have considered eating my own face, which was quite interesting.
Oddly, though, in a folk club on one occasion I heard a man perform something which sounded like an extract from his teenage diary, possibly about living on a council estate which was subsequently knocked down [I don't remember the exact details], just written straight out, no attempt to turn it into any kind of poetry, and sung gruffly with an apparent absence of any consistent tune, or tuning. And it was somehow better than everything else I heard that night, even though it may have been objectively terrible. I think this was because the guy who performed it wasn’t trying even remotely to sound like anything else and didn’t seem to care – or even be aware of – whether he did or he didn’t. He was just doing his thing. And in a sea of performances which were all apparently trying to sound more and more like each other [although, I think, still calling themselves 'original'] it was kind of refreshing.
My friend Catherine Cello [not her real surname, but a bunch of people I know tend to be referred to by their instrument instead] told me a nice anecdote the other week.
She heard that a music teacher was rehearsing ‘Zadok the Priest’ with a school orchestra. During the rehearsal one week, one of the kids put their hand up with the question, ‘Is Zadok a name, or an instruction?’
Later, before a performance, someone else remarked, ‘Let’s get out there and give that priest a good Zadoking.’ An instruction then, evidently.
While discussing ludicrously priced tat available for sale in Debbie’s ex-workplace:
Me: ‘If I was to spend £200 on a cushion, it would have to be a really big cushion, so I could sleep on it, and it would also have to be able to stream mp3 and video -’
Debbie: ‘And possibly be made of wine.’
~
‘A bug landed on that C chord and made it look like a G, which was why I kept playing one there.’ – Tom, while we were playing from sheet music
