Projects 12 and 13

I'm going through the awkward learning process of wiring up guitar innards, creating looms and earths, discovering the coil tap options and the hot chips and resistors  that solve treble bleed problems; currently I'm at about Primary 4 level in this. There are many guys and geeks out there on the forums and help-sites who seem to know a lot more, or at least pretend to, so Im brain picking.  Now if I'd just invested in a decent set of screwdrivers and a soldering iron 40 years ago but I just didn't care what was lurking under the plastic and the foil. Now that I know what's there it is a bit baffling but not impossible, theses guitars will play eventually. Next it's the geometry and the set up.

Garden Centric

They are seen by some as the gateway to a chilly version of Hell, few under 50 venture there, the grey shadows pass across the sky and a cold wind blows between pale trees and dead stones, vampire purchases suck life in and spit the spirit, dried up and shrivelled back out; yes I'm in a garden centre. Actual the soup and scone were rather nice and we picked some apparently shade loving plants, bird food and compost, all useful in the grand plan. It's not us or the place it's everybody else - perhaps that's the simple  trouble with the world, everybody else is also in it and (in this case) they are dodging coffins like they were HGVs on the M6. So I say God bless the brittle and shuffling along oldies, I guess I'm just about one now and maybe I should accept my fate with good grace and just shoogle along the rocky road to...yet another garden centre.

Some other dimension

Another crack has appeared in that boring old chestnut the space time continuum has occurred, happens all the time you just don't see it often. Today an innocent cat was caught, wandering or browsing or maybe distracted on an impromptu  rodent hunt. We'll never know really, mystery is shrouded in mist and mirrors and smoke and that sort of thing. It's the way it works and it's what the general public expect and what the public want the public gets. As for me I suspect things are slowly churning in some other direction, deep and deeper down, out of frame, caught at the corner of your eye or in the hushed tone of a whispering, inner voice that just knows...

A (future) world of plastic corks

 

I'm not sure that a plastic cork or a synthetic cork is a cork at all, other than it functions as a cork but it's clearly not made of the natural substance known around the world as cork which is a type of wood from the cork tree. Now all wine between £5 and £10 comes either in an unsatisfying screw top (as Whitbread's Pale Ale used to come in - a festival favourite now doomed to drinking mythology) or the dreaded and frankly disappointing plastic cork. In other news that's season one (1) of Breaking Bad completed, only three or so more to go.

Turkish barber experience

Innocent enough looking shop front?

The walled garden opens on Wednesday, here's the gate.

When you're a little ragged and jaded, down on your luck, what better a pick me up than an encounter with a friendly Turkish barber? Yesterday's took place in Scotland's ancient capital and one time home of dark matter ale brewing, Alloa. Here for a mere £20 I was shorn, hot shaved, assaulted with a burning towel, had Orbis oil poured up my nose, my ears set on fire, bled from some minor facial cuts, was partly strangled and had my face rubbed in industrial and very nippy alcohol. After 45 minutes I left looking and feeling youthful and invigorated, I kid you not. I'll be back next month for another treatment once my face and head grow more nuisance hair and itchy, scratchy beards and so on.

Universe of lost objects

It just opens up, a tiny rip or tear, you cant see it, you cant detect it, it just happens. Then things simply slip through, out from this world and into that other world. A universe of lost things and objects; a place where thoughts and memories are floating away into an unreachable and uncharted place. Scarves and cameras, keys, phones and money, wallets and pencils all float on in a mad mayhem of lost and invisible indulgence. Over them soars a wide layer of plans and dreams and relationships, things forgotten now melting into the past or blending into the unwritten future. Far above them in the dark stratosphere of the lost it may be that even belief, faith and love spin endlessly on in ever increasing circles...now where's my cash line card and favourite T-shirt?

More structural decay

None of the expansion joints are the same, this is, for me a worrying defect on an otherwise beautiful building. Who did the snagging for the client? 

Roof, sky, palms. 

Roof, sky. 

The pleasant remains of afternoon drinks.

The basic truth is that there are very few things in life that are completely enjoyable in their own right. Many things are of course pretty good, occasionally exceptional or fantastic beyond simple description and so that leaves the rest of life's numerous tastes and experiences as mostly tolerable, passable, acceptable or OK time fillers and diversions for the time being etc. Or is that just how you get to be and see when of a certain grey bearded age? I'm not moaning here, I'm just taking stock. That's a thing that happens when I have some time on my hands and I am free to look out of a window.

So I'm watching from this hotel room window as anxious city smokers pad up and down outside a BT building's glass doorways, fumbling with cigarette packs covered in warnings I can read even at this distance, fumbling more to light the white poison and then eventually smoking some of the precious tobacco vapour as they (inevitably) play along with the various mechanical diktats of their gleaming smart phones. This is known as “taking a break” in certain circles. It is also a manifestation of a rich and diverse device based anarchy and slavery which exists hidden in plain sight all around. It can be exhausting and there is no break.

To try to understand this I'm constructing mental Venn diagrams of things, seeing the circles cross, filling in the text, scoring the points and tallying things up. Eventually it becomes a scribbled mental jumble, like all thoughts. I realise that I don't really know what despair is about or anything even like it, I'm too marooned in my own semi-smug and detached observations. I'm vanilla through and through but able to see the sense in points of view I don't hold and wont ever hold but still can empathise with. Everybody is just everybody else caught up in those petty wars and habits that we share and deny and everything outside this window remains busy as ever but brick by brick going nowhere.

Tate Modern

On a plane to London today, the girl in the seat in front of me is earnestly reading 1st Corinthians from the New Testament on a Kindle and slowly sipping a tepid mineral water. I'm sitting behind drinking gin and tonic and reading Finnegan's Wake also via a fully charged Kindle. I've no idea what if anything it means but at the time it meant something. Later in the day we visited the Tate Modern (brief impressions above), it's a bit like Spain, it'll be fine when they finish it all.

I'm up all night to drink Buckie

Tepee Village

Typical audience

Angry old man

Nile:the source.

Wickerman 2013: Here's my very rough chord-centric reviews of the acts and bands I bothered to see, because many were missed and fewer were chosen.

Admiral Fallow - heard them from a distance, tuneful and honest enough in a Celtic way. They seem to be familiar with a few more fingerings than just the basic chords.

KT Tunstall - she works her chords, her harmonies and her loop station settings and timings perfectly. Impressive but still looking for that elusive killer song and a clear way back home. Not on the horizon at the moment unfortunately.

Nile Rodgers and Chic - this guy knows all the chords and plays them all around the 5th fret. A joyful masterclass in funk guitar playing and 30 years of pop history. It's pity he comes across edgy and insecure but he has the tightest band on the planet and a million dollar back catalogue you could dance all night to. Looked a bit confused when the audience sang "I'm up all night to drink Buckie", welcome to Scotland Nile.

Primal Scream - they have about three chords to their name, none of them sevenths either. Noisy, exciting and debauched, dated samples and nothing new to say and their depth of material and musical skill as a band is woefully MIA.

Cherub - nice young guys from Nashville who use a voice box/Telecaster in a high energy combination. They didn't really play any chords but had more samples than an Avon lady on a Friday night in Corstorphine. Likely to sink without trace I'm afraid.

Roddy Hart - knows all the clever shifting songwriter's chords but has a dull persona and band that looked like bored bearded Glasgow lawyers on their day off. If this is Scottish songwriting at it's best then god help us. N.B. I fell asleep and got sun burned through most of his set so I'm hardly in a position to say much more.

Bellowhead - appreciated from a distance. Better than the awful Mumfords (?) but still folky with a capital F. Imaginative chord use was there but hard to distinguish amongst the Tepees, strings and accordions.

Dexys - they have everything, songs, sex, genius and tragedy; so naturally they blow it and succumb to long periods of shaky and abrupt "Kevinwaffle". Yes there are some  clever chords in the mock-Irish mix  but they are all badly translated. Bit of a disappointment really but a sinking legend none the less.

The Enemy - guitar power trio (another Telecaster!) with masses of distortion and aplomb. Not much played on the higher register though and not strong on harmony. Chunkiest  riffs of the weekend however.

Amy MacDonald - the odd choice headliner was once again appreciated from afar because the rain had started and we were all too tired to stay milling about and just wanted to get back to the Tepee for the great wicker burn off. I suppose that says it all really. Chords? There were some I'm sure.

Anyway I had a really good time, as for the music? It's all a bunch of random notes and chords really.

Some bands playing in a sheep field

Got to love these guys, a 2 hour wait for a shower and then...no water, then some overnight rain.

Wickerman 2013 was a sunny, mostly dry, drunk and good humoured music event with no major traffic problems. I seemed to eat a lot and form on the hoof opinions about music and life and the great outdoors. I'll write more and possibly more sensibly once I've had some sleep.

Photo

Probably the final cat / laptop photo of the day.

Abstractly pragmatic

George Osborne says we need to do more, Ed Balls says we need to do more. They seem to agree on that but finely detailed instructions don't follow on from their glib statements however. It's all vague, high minded and strategic rather than practical. All across the country I imagine the puzzled, squinting, drinking masses are thinking “What does that mean?” or more likely "WTF?" Doing more is tough when you're not sure what it is you're actually doing most of the time, living a normal unscripted life as we do. Today for example everything was warm, thundery and wet with those reluctant summer rains. Leaves and grass damp and dewy branches drip and a heavy stillness wraps everything in it's sticky suggestiveness and natural oozing calm. Insects and birds compete, hiding and feeding, avoiding the trembling human threat. All the imagined detail in nature shouts out “Look at me!” as it stretches and grows in the humid breeding ground of the great UK outdoors. Then as the sun breaks through and the earth warms with some lazy appreciation of who knows what that dawns on me and I reflect on doing more to build up this conflicted country in some abstractly pragmatic way...but nothing comes. Maybe it's because politicians think that if they just say so it'll be believed and happen because they really know what they're talking about. Like God does.

Rain

there are holes in the sky where the rain comes in

but they're ever so small that's why the rain is thin

SM

Matrix glitch

Modern apples disappoint: You bite into that pink and juicy looking lunchtime apple and it's brown inside. What is going on? Just like that moment in E M Forster's "The Machine Stops" when the foodstuff's fail as the conveyor belt slows, so maybe the process is stopping. That big grey apple growing machine is gearing down like a hazy Matrix glitch and from now on all our fresh lunches will be ruined and we'll mistrust fruit and avoid it by moving onto what we know are more processed but reliable, highly packaged and salted, poisonous snacks that come in green packages with pictures of leaves on them. Our scaly grey fingers and pale tongues will hardly tell the difference. It's only a theory.

HBC on the BBC: Helena was in good raving loony, mad bitch form last night on BBC4 as unlikable, addicted superstar Liz Taylor. I think it's all in the eyes and some basic drama school moves. This starry vehicle was hyped up to highlight the funding cuts that BBC drama must suffer and all the critics and papers dutifully bought the line  and allowed some serious point scoring and "what might have been" type rhetoric. There will be no more of this high quality, high production value stuff now the cash has all dried up Mr Cameron. All you'll get will be cheap clip shows, so-called comedy slots and "classic" re-runs from the classic archives i.e. any old classic rubbish. Anyway I liked the ever dotty HBC and I approve of the veiled if clumsy protest, the BBC needs to get back up/in there somehow if it's going to touch Sky Atlantic.

Pixar rule the universe: Want to read about a crazy conspiracy theory that suggests that all of Pixar's movies are part of a long running sequence that tells the history of the universe, past to present and into the future? Try this then.

Socks and sandals and sin

The sentinel CCTV lion on the look out for passing sock offences/offenders. Many walk the Fife Coastal Path in ignorance and odd socks.

I'm sure it was either our Lord Jesus, Mohammed, Charles Darwin or Groucho Marx who first committed the fashion crime of the black sock and open sandal combination, could've been any one the way they are portrayed in popular culture and paranoid religion. I lazily fell into that trap tonight and in so doing felt a strange burning sensation deep in my soul, it must be a sin or the realisation of it I suppose or just a guilty heat spot. The socks were odd ones too, I'm sure that didn't help and they were 12 hours into a sweaty day's worth of wear. My excuse is that I was applying copious amounts of teak oil to anything within brushing distance; partscaster guitars, garden furniture and myself, it's been that kind of of blue cheese, clammy in every sticky department evening so far. I even teak oiled a cat as she hopped across the boards. Then there was the bike fixing, the sorting  and the laundry, those eternal chores that soak into your being and normalise till they are as comfortable as dishwashing with Radio 6 on or even drifting into the occasional light weight and allowable sin.

Shutter Island

Actually it's Preston Island but it's spooky like that other place, a man made non-island that sticks out into the Forth and then sticks back in again. It has barbed wire, ruins, sparrows by the million and a crude landscape that could be best described as complete brownfield or a possible Dr Who or Mad Max film location. As it was out came the good weather and out came the cross over bike and I cycled for hours - there and back again and some random circuits around the island. I came home with a sore bottom and tired legs and then for the next few hours proceeded to get drunk, happy and talkative. I think that was all sometime on Friday and numerous other things have taken place since. I'm quite enjoying the summer of 2013.

A cat sneaks up on the new whirly thing.

Some vague illusion...

(Note non-Fender jack socket, scratch plate and configuration, let us do you a deal).

...of success.

I'm loving the warm weather. My brain and as a result my consciousness and functional competences are fried. Things are happening all around, people are getting excited about issues and life and death and that sort of thing. Somewhere a poor mouse is being chased and folks are working hard to ride their bicycles up very steep hills, it's all ok but meaningless. I'm just watering plants and strumming away.

Karma and buttons

Sometimes, quite rightly I suppose, I forget that we’re in the music business or at least that we have a toe in the shallow end of the music business’s guitar shaped and champagne filled swimming pool. It all came back to me today when I saw that Thom Yorke was pulling his music from Spotify (OK he's not perfect either). His reasons being that the financial returns are so small (about .01c a play) that new artists or new ventures can’t possibly make enough cash to keep producing music. It’s not a sustainable model when as Thom says “you get paid  fuck all" so I can’t fault his desire to protest.  I’ve always known we were being screwed to some extent and resented the paltry and meaningless payouts that streaming brings to us minions - but as has been said many times, what else can a poor boy do? Our own impossible songs’ music (over a hundred meaty tracks) languishes on numerous popular sites, many of which offer streaming but we know we stand to make something short of a fistful of peanuts. If all our recent streaming plays (currently over a hundred thousand in 3 years) were translated into downloads we’d have made roughly £70,000 or about £24,000 a year. That would’ve been nice. If sales were for actual CDs or full albums it’d be a lot more – there would be some low scoring tracks on each CD for padding to help the numbers, that’s how it goes. So that’s without bothering to play gigs, do promotions or anything remotely businesslike.

Other streaming deniers  ZZTop, Bob Fripp, Led Zep, Anstruther’s own Fence Collective and the erstwhile Thom are all  quite right, there’s no money to be made at our bargain basement end of the  iTunes, Spotify, Rhapsody, Xbox, Jamendo, Napster or whoever’s rainbow. The dilemma for the unprofessional or small time music maker centres around deciding what you want for your precious music. What might entice listeners to listen to an unmarketed, obscure, anonymous musical soup served up to bloated diners in a wanabee infected universe of millions of other floating soup bowls? Free stuff or a cheap subscription certainly does the job with the punters, I should know I still use entry level Spotify from time to time. We see the trends, they listen to a song maybe six or seven times, get the lyrical kick and move on, no final download and we are happy to have the .04c six months later. In another culture that might well be robbery.

So you’re virtually giving it away to the streamers but you at least have some nebulous audience with whom you’ve absently engaged – an audience that may like the music but don’t really want to pay for it and who don’t have to connect the hard economics of modern life with the blips and half listens on their chosen subscribed to streaming services. Now as writers and players and singers all we can have is a small sense of priceless satisfaction and a monthly reminder in piddling sales stats not to give up the day job and that somewhere on the planet, in a bedroom, café or street corner our music is providing a temporary backdrop to another private life moment or tiny human drama. Paradoxically despite what all the streaming avoiders may say (something’s always killing music etc.), new music keeps getting made, discovered, consumed, digested and trolled out as back catalogue material that will never go away as it pings and sizzles in hot server rooms before reluctantly venturing out across somebody’s cloud based data system and into their badly designed poundshop headphones. We won’t stop, that’s thanks to the OCD and junkie nature inherent in how you make a slab of sweet original music. So is it all about appreciating what it is you actually have, however abstract it may be, rather than thinking about what you don’t have?

Karma and buttons maybe; but then you look up and see what other people can gain just because they had a better idea and have adopted a key position in a cluttered up distribution chain that allows them to lord it over the low-life creatives who blindly  and regularly prime their money pump. The older you get the more there is to complain about. Modern life is rubbish.

Tales of the Wooden Fish #2

 Not a lot of movement from the Wooden Fish today. A casual observer may have thought that they were congregating or carrying out some other slo-mo fish manoeuvre. Not really much more I can say about this timber based, ocean themed, driftwood sourced, bleached and laid out stray art installation. It is what is, it does what is does. Celebrating the temporary world of the lonely Wooden Fish. Oops tea's ready.