July 07, 2004
It's the Pits
F1 came to London yesterday and I Got The [Free] T-Shirt off this girl. There was no chance of seeing the cars in action though so I gave that up and moved on to...
...see The Pits who you can hear here (to coin a phrase). They named themselves after doing a charity gig for Jacques Villeneuve apparently.
March 25, 2004
Groover
I went to a wine tasting last night for no better reason than I was invited. The guy pictured was the live entertainment which was more than I was expecting. In fact it was possibly more than he was expecting because he did a couple of numbers and walked out. Apparently nobody was listening to him. Still he left us all a nice photcopy about him. Here are the first few lines:
Peter Molinari
Singer Songwriter
Born in Chatham, Kent
...and the relevance of that last bit is? No idea. There follows a one sentence bio of him but then we get to the real selling points. "Peter loves his work..." oh that's good then "...and has been in many bands..." "...In October 2003 Peter decided to leave his band and go it alone". Presumably for someone who holds the Chatham, Kent record for being kicked out of bands "go it alone" means playing to himself in the shower and not in front of an audience.
"Tonight you will hear a mixture of..." nothing. Silent Night? Can you play Long Ago and Far Away [please] Peter?
"We feel that you may find Peters music melodic filled with optimism and the titles and words of the tracks interesting." Hopeless punctuation and grammar. Anyway whoever wrote that should "feel" again as it was more like Songs Without Words. Or Songs.
If you want to book Peter, probably for a quite a short gig, you can contact his manager bruce.henman@btopenworld.com.
March 17, 2004
Unchained Rhapsody
I've been trying to learn Bohemian Rhapsody on the piano. It is truly a great piece of music. The first ever concert I went to was Queen at Wembley Stadium supported by an up-and-coming band called INXS. I sneaked my oversize camera in and got a couple of half decent pictures.
I realised that most of my Queen music is on vinyl and my record player is in (unplugged) the loft (natch). So I have bought the Queen Platinum Collection and have been playing all to loudly on my computer this morning. Takes the edge off the hangover. Marvellous stuff. Amazon is pretty cool - I ordered £50 of essential stuff at 5pm Monday and it arrived 20 minutes ago. And now I am writing about it.
Oh and what have Unchained Melody and Bohemian Rhapsody got in common? They form part of that small set of tunes that have lyrics but the title of the piece do not appear in the lyrics.
March 08, 2004
Can You Tell What it is Yet?
Those famous words from Rolf Harris. Painter, singer and buzzy little stylus/keyboard player (the stylophone - fab!). He also plays the diggery doo. Malcolm, pictured here, has one too and I think every home should have one. You generate the sound by blowing rasperberries down it which really does work. I wonder if the Two Ronnies' Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town had one.
The sound was quite funny...
Apparently diggery doos are made by termites chewing out the inside of eucalyptus tree branches. If you look down the tube you can see the fibres still criss-crossing where they haven't all been eaten. Termites are destructiuve buggers. As you can imgaine, this eating the innards of branches business cause them to weaken and they are liable to drop off without notice. Hence the nickname for the eucalyptus tree is the widow-maker - don't stand underneath!
February 25, 2004
Dead Grass
My thanks to John for this guest entry. Whilst on the train the other day he showed me an article about a forthcoming concert by Motorhead at Covent Garden. The article quoted Lemmy, if I recall correctly, saying that if Motorhead moved in next door to you, they're so loud that your grass would die.
This is interesting, not in the least because I don't think they moved in to number 6 last year but my neighbour's grass certainly looked dead for most of the summer.
The review of their concert has another great quote "The wonderful thing about Motorhead is how quiet it is when they stop.". Apparently they gave free earplugs out at the concert. And some people want to ban boxing as it's dangerous. Pah!
December 21, 2003
On the street where you live
Irving Berlin wrote "I have often walked, down this street before. But the pavement never stayed beneath my feet before. All at once am I, several stories high, knowing I'm on the street where you live". He must have been on something.
On the street where I live, however, they are obviously planning improvements to our lives by laying underlay beneath the pavement. I have looked for gripper rods but can't see any. It is comforting to note that my street gets abandoned detritus along with everybody else's.
"They", by the way, are TPTB - The Powers That Be.
November 24, 2003
Jamie Cullum
We went to see
last night at the Royal Festival Hall which is a great venue. He has had an amazing year - last year he was playing for no fee in the foyer and this year he's topping the bill. He's only 21 or so, extremely skilled and versatile on the piano and has a great voice. Naturally, I made some hopeless recordings for your listening pleasure.
Incidentally he was supported by Richard Bona who is a bit like Youssor n Dor (spelling??) and quite electric.
November 22, 2003
The way to get on Pop Idol
There is a way to get yourself into the last round of entries that not alot of people know about. It is quite cunning, quite legal and quite devious. I expect a lot of aspiring singers are keen to discover the answer and they should simply mail me at grahame at tptb.co.uk to find out.
November 21, 2003
Bad, really, really bad
He said it, well sung it, not me. I don't think his secret room with photos and posters of half naked young men makes him bad but the Amercian police may have other ideas. Anyway, he has taken one of the more powerful toys in his possession and he's on the run.
November 08, 2003
Knees up Mother Brown
There is nothing like a good sing-song round the piano and the Golden Eagle in Marlyebone Lane is a great place for it on a Thursday or Friday evening. Here is a happy woman, a pianist and a Mark.
Inevitably we went to Bar Italia afterwards:
October 27, 2003
Duddly Dell
There is a Radio 4 program called Quote Unquote and I sometimes catch the last few minutes of it when driving to my piano lesson. The theme tune is excellent (go to the above link and pay the latest recording of the show to hear a bit of it at the start) so I emailed the prgram to find our about it. Here are the details:
"Entitled DUDDLY DELL, written and performed by Dudley Moore, it was the B-side of his single STRICTLY FOR THE BIRDS (Parlophone 45R 4772) in 1961.
For years, when people asked me what it was, I had to tell them the record was no longer available. But in April 2002 it was re-released on an album entitled AUTHENTIC DUD, VOL. 2 by Harkit Records (HRKCD 8019). Alas, jubilation was short-lived as this record has now been withdrawn for legal reasons."
I'd love to get a copy of all or any of the original single, the album and the sheet music. Can you help? please contact me if you can!
Mellow Yellow Cello
We went to a wedding a few weeks ago and they a had a string quartet in a gallery. It must be all the rage because we went to another one on Saturday with the same idea. The last one was at W S Gilbert's old house which was interesting. This one was at the Law Society and was fairly extravagent (the bride wore a $10,000 Suzie Wong dress and I wore a 1962 suit with patches on the elbows). I recorded some of the music.
Here is the string quartet dressed as a shubbery.
They had a some beautiful instruments
and some old swingers
She's out of focus due to the speed of her dancing.
And here is Regina (that's pronounced Regeena) using The Finger which is always nice.
September 01, 2003
The Golden Eagle
The Golden Eagle is a pub in Marylebone Lane that has a sing-song on a Thursday evening. This is the Joanna being played by someone else. Naturally I recorded the event for posterity which bears the almost unique features of being audible and pleasant apart from me joining in on a bit of Strangers in the Night.
August 27, 2003
August 26, 2003
Stone Me
or them. We went to see the Stones at Twickenham on Sunday.
Apparently the Stadium isn't normally used for concerts because residents complain. Including a certain M. Jagger who lives a mile up the road, in Richmond, no doubt. He probably uses his bas pass to get to the gig. We met up with some other friends whilst there.
Couldn't get a decent picture but this is the flavour of the place. The light show and screens were pretty impressive.
I recorded some hopeless sounds Start Me Up and Satisfaction as usual.
The Piano Man
I went out for a few drinks with Mark. After a while he, for some reason, he insisted we go to the Savoy piano bar where we fitted in nicely:
Mark decided to play the piano - a real room clearer:
