Hopefully it will be a great conference, and also give a little time for site-seeing

Firstly, on Thursday night I saw the wonderful Mike Keneally play his entire “UK Tour 2008″… a single gig at Riff’s Bar near Swindon, near the end of a few weeks’ vacation in the UK. The gig was set up by XTC guitarist and longtime Keneally friend Dave Gregory, who lent Mike his gear (including a beautiful Matchless amp, an SG and a Martin acoustic) and also joined in on a few numbers. There were probably only 100 or so people in the place, but the venue is so “intimate” that for much of the gig I couldn’t see very much through the throng of people. But the music… Mike played for around 2 and a half hours without a break, starting on acoustic, then some keyboard, and rounding off with a goodly chunk of electric. Plenty of the material was planned, but he also took requests, including a stunning cover of Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” and the requisite encore of “Inca Roads”. Quite apart from his superb musicianship, what struck me was his ability to sing his emotive songs while playing complex rhythm parts and throwing in lead fills. He also threw out some intricate lines with uncanny precision, given the speed, abandon and evident with which he was playing. Memories of the setlist are being collated over on Usenet (link here) and a few videos are being uploaded to YouTube, including my very shaking clip of Rosemary Girl as the final encore (link here). A stunning night, which will keep me going until Mike’s European Tour of 2009, which hope will bring a full band to the UK…

All of which meant that the other guitar highlight of the week has paled into relative insignificance: an hour of Jeff Beck filmed at Ronnie Scott’s over the summer that was broadcast on BBC4 on Friday night!

From the ridiculous (ridiculously talented, I mean) to the sublime…

The other musical highlight of my week was the first rehearsal for a Christmas tableaux concert, organised by our friend Pippa Eden. We had the first rehearsal yesterday afternoon, with 12-voice choir (I think we were missing a few…) running through some beautiful sacred music (including Rutter, and some others that I really should have known!) at St Mary’s Church, White Waltham. Jess sang soprano (of course) and I sang bass (strangely, we had a full complement of tenors!) and the boys ran around, being looked after by the assorted helpers, coordinators, tableau performers and older children. Everyone had a marvellous time, and we made some beautiful music… that will be even more beautiful when some of us (ie, me!) get beyond sight-reading… More in a future post (now there’s a committment…)

Rest assured, though, that there will be plenty of neat stuff going on here… just not about work!

But my best performances have always enabled me to magnify an aspect of my own character, and this is one of those; but I felt amazingly comfortable putting on a Harris tweed jacket, and loved buying fresh carnations for my buttonhole. I mean! I’m a child of the 70s, so how much of a post-Edwardian throwback can I reasonably be?

I suppose I just need to get some distance after the show, listen to some electronica and get with the times… that is, until my next trip back to the 50s for West Side Story!

The process of “finding” the character has been a bit illuminating… from “saying the lines” to “moving as directed” was fine, but it’s only been in the past few days that I’ve been able to trace a line through the character and do things even when I’m a) not speaking and b) not really the focus of any attention. I hope that someone notices (even if it’s only the other people on the stage…)

But back to this production… I’m playing guitar, alongside some excellent musicians (I’m particularly impressed with the bass player, who I haven’t played with previously). I know the show inside-out, but was totally unprepared for the ridiculous key signatures that turned up in the score: everything from 5 sharps to 6 flats. There are also plenty of “stretchy” jazz voicings (most of which seem to have a major 2nd in the middle… which is fine on a piano, but VERY tough on a guitar) which seemed virtually impossible at first, but are now only impractical! This is exacerbated by the problems of monitoring, timing and coordination between cast and band that are standard to any amateur production. My performance last night was the first one that I really felt deserved to be seen by paying customers, and we’ve got two more shows today, to polish off the remaining rough edges.

In case any guitarists end up reading this, I’m playing my Variax 300, with J-200 (jumbo acoustic), Super 400 (jazz box), Les Paul Custom, Strat and Tele models saved to a custom bank, and switching to a Guild F212 (12-string acoustic) for one song. That goes into my Digitech GNX3, with a DI into the sound desk and headphones for personal monitoring (I want to hear more guitar than anyone else does!). I also used a slide for a couple of sections in the Cat’s songs, which made the Music Director smile…

After this, my next booking is a complete change of direction: playing clarinet and tenor sax for West Side Story in Henley in April. Quite how they’re going to fit a 14-piece band (including tuned percussion) into the Kenton Theatre’s tiny pit is something I can’t even guess…

I think that my clarinet needs a service before this, so I need to pop it over to Dawkes for some TLC…

• Put powdery stuff in a plastic sandwich bag. I used semolina (really!), sesame seeds and garam masala… mostly because I mis-remembered Nigella’s stuff!
• Little squid. From the supermarket (got mine frozen in Waitrose).
• Push out the little tentacle-y bit (ie, the squid itself). Thomas enjoyed helping with this! (You can use these bits as well, but Jess didn’t fancy it)
• Slide the outside bit into strips (ie, to make rings). Drop them in the bag and shake (Thomas and I called it “tickling the bag”)
• Deep-fry the individual coated rings in very hot oil (we used sunflower) until they’re golden (no more than a couple of minutes.  Squid is only NOT tough if its cooked very quickly or very slowly - that’s the science bit!)
• Serve over a mixed salad (we like the beetroot ones) with a balsamic/lemon/olive oil dressing.

All done inside half an hour, utterly delicious and good for you, to boot!

When we started doing this, we usually went to the same place (one of the two local playgrounds) but recently I’ve started taking him off on different routes around our neighbourhood. We always start off in a particular direction, playing a game of Pooh-sticks at the bridge over the stream that runs alongside the cycle-track, but I try to go in a circle rather than reach a point where we have to turn round and retrace our steps. At first this was just for some variety for me, but I realised how important it will become for him, over the next few years, as he starts going out around the local streets on his own and playing unsupervised with his friends. He can be the boy who knows all the short-cuts, and feel the confidence of knowing how familiar the area is to him.

Of course, it’s also hugely important to me; particularly since his baby brother George came along, I’ve tried to make special times to spend time just with Thomas. We’ve gone to the beach, to the zoo, camping and, our favourite, to the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. Thomas particularly likes to see the dinosaurs (of course) but I’m trying to introduce him to the assorted mammals, birds, insects, minerals and comprise the rest of the museum; we’ve even gone round the corner to the Science Museum on one occasion, although he could do with being a year or two older to really appreciate that.

So, “Daddy, can we go for a bike ride?” have become eight of my favourite words. If anyone asks you the same question, make sure you answer “Yes”.

While I did it for speed, I hoped to be wowed by the purity of the sound compared to my extensively modelled selection of sounds out of my Digitech GNX3 all-singing all-dancing pedal board. In fact, it was… good enough. I realised that I could get away with most of the songs in our set (mostly “lounge jazz” sometimes veering into MOR) without changing guitars (I normally use my Variax to do some songs on a “strat” or a “335″).

We’ve got a gig this afternoon, and I don’t think I’ve got the guts to follow through and do the gig direct. The main reason is the much tighter, clearer bass response I seem to be able to get from a modelled 15″ cab going straight into the Marshall’s power stage. Maybe I just need to spend some more time on tweaking the EQ on the amp… but not before this afternoon…