Easy Music for Difficult Ears

Just a few announcements to be made;

Fantastic,
Leigh

This has been a very quite weekend thanks to my close friend, Fosters (see right). I did the whole college ball thing at last – suits, ties and all – something that I’ve avoided like the plague in the past, but I figure I’ll not have the opportunity to do it ever again.
It was an interesting experience, but the point of getting hopelessly smashed was once again lost on me – however I decided to indulge myself and by 2 O’Clock Sunday morning, I was somewhat… inebriated. There was the usual bout of group hugging and proclamations of how much we’ll one another (etc…) which for the most part is bullshit. While all very nice people, I have a distinctly poor record when it comes to keeping in contact with people as it is just not something that I can bring myself to do. I do enjoy my clean breaks immensely and I sense another one coming up rather soon.

After a night like Saturday, there’s nothing quite like a throbbing hangover mixed in with oppressive heat and wheezing engines. Yes, the only time in the last 15 years that I’ve missed a Grand Prix was when I was in hospital unconscious (Spanish Grand Prix, May 1997 – I still haven’t seen it) and no way in hell was I going to let some shitty little hangover get in the way of this one. Ohhh, but the engines… the engines…….
Come lap 30 I was face down in couch groaning, but still paying attention to what was going down and I must say it was quite enjoyable.

Following on from that, I cooked the perfect Sunday hangover cure – there’s nowt like a perfectly cooked roast to settle the belly and calm the ails topped off by a river of tea – fantastic!! Oh and before I forget – yes, it is true that Georgina Moffat is incredibly sexy, but I really hope she doesn’t get a Doctor Who spin-off. She’s a good little actress, but “chirpy” up for it characters are boring fuckers.

Current listening:
Violent Femmes “Violent Femmes”

Grand,
Leigh

(cheers to Ian Thrill Pier for this)
If ever genius exists, it only exists here… by the way, this also marks 100 posts!!

Sweet,
Leigh

So, what do people do when they get writer’s block? Musically that is… I’ve had about 23 half written pieces for about four months now, but abandoned everything due to a massive college workload, but now that I’m free again I’m struggling to get my head together.
An lot of time in the last few weeks has been struggling to take things further than slightly structured ideas, but some are close to being partially finished. Anyway, some of the stuff is of the “new direction” variety, but what next..?

Anyway, here’s a newbie
Untitled Number One
As you can tell, it ran out of ideas very, very quickly. I’ve a couple with vocals coming up soon and I’ll probably stick one or two others up in a while if I’m arsed.

Grand job,
Leigh

The beard is gone… after six weeks of continuous and fluffy growth – this author has been de-haired!! It took approximately one hour and fifteen minutes, but at least my face feels well smooth… There was no electricity at the time (localised power cut), so it was done with freezing cold water and two blades. Anyhoo, a before and after…

Sunday morning

Wednesday evening

Sweet,
Leigh

On Tuesday May 6th, Aguri Suzuki finally had enough – he finally gave up the ghost of a Formula 1 team. After two-and-a-half being propped up by Honda, Super Aguri have decided to opt out of the formula.
Following a main sponsor defaulting late in 2007, 2008 was always going to be a struggle and when they announced that they couldn’t test during winter, everyone knew that their demise would be soon. During the early part of this year, the team were in talks with Magma Group for a possible buy out, but when Magma suddenly pulled out in April the writing was on the wall. There was talk of a rushed deal being put in place by a German corporation, but in their heart of hearts, Honda knew they would end up bailing them out too.

While many talk about how sad it is that a team with plenty of heart has disappeared, little has been said of its two main drivers. Takuma Sato (who I simply do not rate at all) will probably get himself a cushy test-role and possibly a race seat with Honda next year (the advantages of being a Japanese driver in a Japanese team), but Anthony Davison (who is a little better) will most like find himself out in the cold – I can’t see him getting another seat in Formula 1.
The Super Aguri team leave Formula 1 owing Honda a reported $50 million following low price engines, free technical help and the occasional (cash orientated) helping hand over a 34 month period. And then were just ten teams left…

Gah,
Leigh

(cheers to Nialler9 for this)

I’ve just been confirmed to play this years Mantua Lives Festival in County Roscommon (Ireland). As far as I know, I will be playing on the Alphabet Set stage which a host of other acts (see below). Tickets for the festival are €80 and the line-up also includes;
…from the UK and Europe…

Meanwhile, the Irish contingent at the festival includes;

• Solen (Alphabet Set)
• Super Extra Bonus Party (Alphabet Set)
• Sarsparilla (Alphabet Set)
• The Wax Ensemble (BE)
• The Infomatics
• Cignol
• Colz & Grizzle
• Nouveaunoise (Alphabet Set)
• Fran Hartnett
• Ed Devane
• Prince Kong fet Jah Balance
• 16HZ & Joanny Oakley
• Vince McMahon
• Worries Outernational
• p77
• Blue Food (Alphabet Set)

This should be a hell of a lot of fun and will mark eight months since I last performed in the Republic, however I am also lining up further shows around the festival and should spring in a Dublin show and probably somewhere else before I fly back here. Although it hasn’t been fully updated yet, please check the Mantua website for more information.

Current listening:
Apple “An Apple a Day”

Sweet,
Leigh

There are currently 108 episodes of Doctor Who that are missing. They do not exist in the BBC archives – they video tape masters were burned nearly 30 to 40 years ago, with the initial culling of the archives taking place in 1967 – but Doctor Who is not alone in this loss as many shows are lost from the archives.
Entire seasons of Dad’s Army, Dixon of Dock Green, A for Andromeda and Z-Cars are all gone with no footage, audio or pictures to represent them and in the case of the mid-1960’s football drama United, absolutely nothing at all is present.

For those of you wondering how exactly this happened, let me explain. Basically Doctor Who was made on video tape, it had to be transferred to 16mm film so that it could accommodate many of the television stations around the world that were still utilising that format. Once the copies were made, the masters were stored away – later to be incinerated when the archives became overly full – and the copies floated to various destinations around the world.

Some of the 16mm copies were destroyed as per contract agreement, while some kept going to different countries. Others simply got lost, stored and forgotten or mislabeled and some ended up in the basement of a Morman Church (true story – episodes 5 and 10 of the Dalek Master Plan were discovered this way).
There are still active searches in a number of African territories, specifically Zambia, although there were a number sent to Zimbabwe, Iraq and a number of other countries that are simply inaccessible at the moment due to political tensions (that have been heavily publisized on other publications).

Hoaxes
Last year, an uproar in the science fiction community was created when a rumour reporting the discovery of the Patrick Troughton serial, “The Web of Fear”, was given free reign when it was published on Doctor Who online’s news page. This might all seem very silly – that is of course you learn about some of the money involved.
A hoax that took place about 8 or 9 years ago saw episode 4 of Marco Polo (“the Wall of Lies”) on eBay getting bids of more than ₤10,000 (about €13,500) within a week of its announcement and it is thought that its worth has skyrocketed since then, as every year the film is missing increases its chance of deteriorating beyond repair.

However, two weeks ago a new rumour surfaced from the BBC Restoration website. Apparently a gentleman has found several episodes in his father’s collection including The Tenth Planet; Episode 4 and an unspecified number of episodes from the Galaxy 4 serial. While fans will undoubtedly be delighted to see Galaxy 4 returned, it is not a serial that ever ranks that highly in annals of Doctor Who, however there are many that consider The Tenth Planet; Episode 4 the holy grail of missing episodes as it is the final episode starring William Hartnell – the end of the story sees the Doctor regenerate for the first time.
There are plenty of concerns and scepticism from fandom about revelations of Hartnell’s last episode being discovered and it often brings out cries of “hoax”. Only time will tell and apparently the world will know for sure by Tuesday evening, Wednesday morning.

There is one episode that we are certain will never be found and that is episode 7 of the Dalek Master Plan – otherwise known as “the Feast of Steven”. The episode was broadcast on Christmas Day 1965 and was for the most part superfluous to the plot and even features the Doctor (played at the time by William Hartnell) toasting the viewers and wishing them a Happy Christmas. As a result of this, the episode was not copied (that we know of) and released to other territories.

Of course fans of the show do their best to fill the gap, with homemade recons (reconstructed episodes created by mixing the existing audio soundtrack with still photographs of the characters and scenes) with the main producers being a company called Loose Canon, that create recons for the price of a videotape and postage. Of course there was the animation of two episodes of the 1968 Patrick Troughton story, “The Invasion”, but unfortunately further animated episodes have currently been ruled out due to the hefty finances involved.
The reality is that there will always be missing episodes of Doctor Who and other shows and lots of clips that come back from here on in may be of too low quality to repair.

After some weeks of silence on the matter, it appears the latest find is not a find at all. Ahh well, maybe next time…

Current listening:
Mini People in Coney Island “Nara Dreamland”

Until later,
Leigh

Going through Thumped.com earlier on, I came across a post listing some live archive material transferred onto the net. Upon checking out Kino Digital Video Archive, I had a gander at some Clash footage from May 1977 that I haven’t seen in quite a long time.
Should one be interested in having a gander, there’s also material by;

• Buzzcocks,
• The Cure
• La Peste
• Mission of Burma

as well as a host of other artists.
The quality is very good considering the source material – it’s well worth a look and can be found at their Archive Portal. Fantastic stuff indeed!!

Currently watching:
1988 Formula 1 World Championship “Brazilian Grand Prix (Round 1)”

Yip,
Leigh

Every so often you have an album that you just listen to and listen to, but never really appreciate – an album that you always put on and somehow mysteriously fits into situations, no matter how different. For me the 1966 album, “El Chico” by the Chico Hamilton Quintet, slots right into this category and as a result is one of my favourite albums.
I bought this about two years ago and although it never tops my playlist on a weekly basis, however it is a body of work that always provides me lots of pleasure. But for some reason, it wasn’t until this afternoon that I realised quite how fantastic it actually is.

Often when the genre jazz gets a mention, a variation of two things happens;

• some will look upon you with an air of condescendence

or,

• others will rave about the genius of Miles Davis (or someone equally obvious) without actually knowing anything about his music or the person himself.

Personally I’ve never really been into a lot of Davis’ material, but more to do with the fact that I find trumpets and other brass instruments slightly grating, but like a majority of jazz that I do listen to, Chico Hamilton’s recorded works tend to be percussion orientated. It is mainly for this reason that I also find music by Gene Krupa, Lionel Hampton, Buddy Rich and Billy Drummond equally alluring.

Of course no composer like Hamilton can fully realise compositions without the ability of a multitude of session musicians and on “El Chico” there are several notable contributions. Of the players on this collection, Gabor Szabo and Albert Stinson are stand out as the guitar to bass shakedown that run throughout the album are sublime. His quintet series changed players and instrumentation regularly, but for the most part it revolved around a percussion, guitar, double bass, flute (or other woodwind instruments) and cello (occasionally swapped with muted trombone’s).
There’s no surprise then that while many jazz bands branched out into full blown big band material, much of Hamilton’s work maintained a very spacey air about them – almost trance like on occasion. It is only a shame that you can go into “well stocked” stores along the lines of HMV and Zavvi and amongst others and discover that their jazz selections are often limited to Miles Davis and Buddy Rich compilations or pop culture connotations of the genre (see Jamie Callum, etc…)

Hamilton is 86 and still performing and released the album “Hamiltonia” last year and has another album and EP out later on this year, but I’ll leave you with my two favourite songs from the album; Conquistadores and People as well as a live video called “Blue Sands” recorded at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.
Enjoy an absolute master at work!!

A frank interview with NBC’s “Talking Jazz” from 1997

Currently watching:
Doctor Who “The Poison Sky”

Grand job,
Leigh