Everything Old Is New Again

So, I was sat in the Southwark Tavern on Saturday night, sipping a pint of merlot and mentally jamming along to the surprisingly groovy soundtrack they had blaring from the PA. Loads of song ideas were coming to me. I think it was a combo of the slight wine buzz and the fact that the music was blurred by the chatter from the inebriated punters.

I had all kind of stuff bouncing around inside my head. Dance tunes, angry rock 'fight' songs... all kind of off-the-wall ideas. At some point, though, I remembered an archive of old songs that I'd recorded back when I started playing guitar 'for real' again, some 4 years ago now.

The songs were really nothing more than random chord progressions over which I'd jammed a little. At most I might have written a basic lyric and recorded that, too. And they were all taped before I had anything even vaguely decent for laying down a drum track.

After The Tavern, we stopped by Shunt Lounge again, just to see what was going on. It was all very 'London Underground' themed, with lots of tube memorabilia hung up around the place. For the first time I noticed an old piano, abandoned in one of the corridors. Recalling my childhood I bashed out a version of "Chopsticks" that my mother had taught me. I then started screwing around with building some triads, 7th chords etc. Man, it was fun to play that thing, even though about a quarter of the keys were missing and not all of the remaining ones worked.

On Sunday I spent some time delving into our archived computer backups to see whether any of my early recordings still existed. To my surprise, quite a few of them were were still there, saved for posterity. I say 'surprise' as we've not had much luck with computers over the last few years. All the PCs we've bought have suffered hard disk failures. During one particularly bad crash we lost so many of our digital photos that it was a bit like having visual Alzheimer's.

Anyway, I digress. The point is that I dragged out a few of the old recordings and had a listen. What surprised me was that despite being really simple, some of them were really quite good. They actually sounded like songs. I'm going to stick my neck out and say that perhaps they were good because they were so simple. They had an openness to them. A naivety, even. I even found one cut on which I'd sung. The lyrics were terrible, but even so I didn't hate it. I think I'm going to work the old stuff back into my 'to be developed' pile.

Shake the tree, see what falls out...

Monday

Busy weekend. No progress on The Project, though. Visits with friends, riding the bikes all over London, mostly out east to Greenwich, the Thames Barrier, O2 Centre etc. Saw Batman: The Dark Knight, which was much better than I expected. Lots of twists and turns. I actually thought the movie was over a couple of times before the end, but The Joker just kept on getting the better of the Caped Crusader. Heath Ledger steals the show, much as Mr Jack did in Tim Burton's feature. Definitely a real shame that Heath's gone. I can only imagine the franchise would have gone from strength to strength if he were still around.

Saturday saw us out at Shunt Lounge again. Every week it's a different place! Saturday night was very focused on live music. First off we watched a weird 4 piece from California (I believe)... violin, bass, drums and a unicycling guitarist. Style? Kind of peasant folk-musicy... ish? Lots of fun. After that they had a band called Le Pico onstage, playing cranked up Spanish rock... ish! Their first couple of songs were really good. Not so into the remainder of the set, but they were definitely different and worth watching, especially as they were playing dressed in white suits and wrapped up in fairy lights! Too weird an effect!

Sunday came around pretty quick and I managed to knacker my right arm at the gym, throwing off plans to have another stab at recording (still-working-title) "Summer Strum". We'll see how it feels tonight. Might have a go at it then, or at least spend a few hours working on the lead guitar part... anything that doesn't require me to strum. That motion kinda hurts right now!

Grabbed a couple of cheap CDs at Greenwich market, too. Random stuff... did I mention they were cheap? Ray LaMontagne's second album "Till The Sun Turns Black", "The Best Of Little Feat" (replacing my old copy) aaaand... what else... Oh, Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals "Lifeline". We'll see how they work out. I actually thought I was buying Ray LaMontagne's first album, the one with "I've been saaaaaved... by a woman" on it. Oops. He really does have a great rootsy voice and the musical arrangement is deceptively simple. Very stripped back yet with atmosphere. He plays the silences, as it were. I've been meaning to check out Duffy's CD, "Rockferry". I keep hearing "Mercy" everywhere I go, which sounds really retro-cool. Didn't manage to find a bargain-bucket copy this weekend, though, so that'un will remain on the wish-list.

Update: As I munched on my lunchtime sandwich I realised that I'd never bothered to check on Amazon marketplace for discounted new/used copied of Duffy's album... ended up ordering a few more discs, as follows:

Duffy, "Rockferry"
Scrapomatic, "Sidewalk Caesars"
Rhett Miller, "The Instigator"
Old 97's, "Fight Songs"

A couple of random alt-country selections there at the bottom. We'll see how they pan out! I've been in the mood for some more more melodic stuff, so... Oh, and Scrapomatic is the side-project of the Derek Trucks Band singer, Mike Mattison. Their previous CD, Aligator Love Cry was a fantasic back-to-basics country blues/folk album, recorded from the gutter, looking up. You could feel the dirt between your toes as you listened to it. Haven't heard much about "Sidewalk Caesars" but it's got to be worth a go, eh?

Musical Stepping Stones

It's Monday. Uncharacteristically for me, I don't have the energy today to post anything too in-depth, so you get snippets. Here goes:

I'm still having difficulty finding people to play with. It doesn't look like the guys I was supposed to be meeting up with for a jam this week are going to come through, unfortunately. They postponed and postponed and the last thing I heard was that it might be today or tomorrow. I've been trying to get hold of them but have had no response. You ever get the feeling you're being ignored? Well, like I've said before, I'm not going to hold out too many hopes or put too much emphasis on any of these contacts until something actually happens.

Okay. The weekend? Erm... coffee at Starbucks (eugh!) Musak version of the theme from Hawaii-Five-O! Totally groovy in a Hank Marvin solo-guitar stylee. Realisation as to what it was crept up on me slowly, a bit like when my favourite cabaret act, Kiki & Herb, mixes "Smells Like Teen Spirit" with "Suicide Is Painless" (theme from M*A*S*H)

Speaking of Teen Spirit, we were at the Shunt Lounge under London Bridge station on Saturday night. Shunt is... well, Shunt. Erm... it's a bar/club/art space/avant garde performance arena. Oh, just go look at their website here. The things that were going on included some mic'ed up 'singing' pendulum sculptures that you could play with, a 3 DJ club room with some performance dance stuff in the background, a simulation where you got to 'escape' from a crashed jet via a massive rope slide... and the reference to Nirvana, there was a dance floor which was having a 70's to 90's night, spinning stuff like Nirvana back to back with Bowie and Guns 'n' Roses! I've never seen a mosh vibe take off so quickly as when the intro to "Welcome To The Jungle" kicked in. Very cool.

Oh, and for the dedicated drinkers amongst you. They free pour Absolut vodka. Whereas normally I can slam overpriced 'club' mixed drinks and feel virtually no effect all evening, two of those and I was well on the way to being smashed. Surely the larger, more well known clubs wouldn't water down their stock? Surely?

On Sunday we headed over to Regent's Park for a bit of an impromptu pic-nic. The sun was out, the sky was blue. All was good with the world. We picked a spot just off the inner circle, parked up our bikes and headed for the nearest grassy knoll. As we did, we were treated to the most surreal sonic experience. It sounded like some kind of native american chant. Very odd. Even more strangely, the chanting kept repeating, slowly building up the tempo and as it did the whispy white clouds turned grey then black. Damn it if it wasn't a freakin' rain dance they were doing AND it was working! Spooky.