For those of you who haven't read the warnings, for the duration of the Mill Hill Music Festival, this blog becomes my festival diary. I'm one of the organising committee. I won't be blogging about Barnet Politics again for eight days, unless aliens land at the Town Hall or Nick Walkley abidcates and I get his job
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So it's 10 am. Had a nice breakfast in bed. As it's Clares Birthday, so as a treat, gave her one of my special recipe bagela - Smoked Salmon, Gherkins, Tomatoes, red onion, watercress, pepper, having collected Maddie from swimming practice at 8am. She wasn't too impressed with her present. A ticket to see the False Dots at the Mill Hill Sports Centre, where we play tonight.
Last night we went to see "Million Dollar Quartet" at the Noel Coward Theatre in St Martins Lane. It features the story of a jam session at Sun Records recording studios with Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins & Jerry Lee Lewis. Great Tunes and a decent show. As I watched it, I was reminded of the many hours I spent in recording studios in my career. My mind was cast back to a session in 1984 in Reading. The studio had no chill out area, so after we laid our tracks down, we went to the pub. When the pub shut, we had nowhere to go, so we all sat in a cupboard for four hours. Our lead guitarist Bill Pithers was a very clean living individual, a non smoker. At the end of this he resembled a kipper and had to have a couple of days off work, recovering from the ordeal. In the early days of the band, recording sessions were always stressful and involved rushing everything and using tracks that weren't right. As a result we'd rehearse the songs to death, so we knew the parts inside out and backwards. At that session, this came in useful because we actually recorded Bill's guitar solo backwards on a track called Africa Morning. Our singer at the time was the extremely marvellous half Nigerian singer Vanessa Sagoe (her sister Sally was Kelvin's mum in early episodes of Eastenders). The song is a very dark song about sexual tourism & exploitation of Africa. I wrote it after seeing a documentary about how Westerners visit the third world to shag children. The basic message of the song was that because we are rich, we are a bunch of exploitative piss taking bastards. Sadly the lyrics got watered down and it just sounds like a nice song about going on holiday. The chorus is observes the fact that although we still have slavery, now it is economic.
Africa Morning,
don't know if I should,
have another,
or buy the freedom - You know I wish I could
Of course, music is about conveying emotions. The best songs are ones that you connect with and the best singers are ones that you feel an empathy with. I think the reason most performers have tragic lives is because to be a truly great performer, you have to be deeply vulnerable in some measure.
As my thoughts turn to the festival week ahead, I contemplate what awaits us. The unforeseen emergencies, the laughs, the temper tantrums, the 3am Kebabs. Organising a festival is a massive commitment and we've been planning it for nearly a year. In the current economic climate, we were worried that ticket sales would be slow. Fortunately they've been more than respectable with at least two of the biggest shows all but sold out.
As ever, there is a mixed program. Our biggest name this year is Jacqui Dankworth on Friday at The RAF museum. This is sold out. Tonight, my band, the False Dots play. We feature Sudanese singer Connie A, who has interrupted a tour of Africa with rapper Emmanuel Jal to appear with us. Connie is awesome. Also on the bill are "The Ron Lewis Partnership" who are an in your face rythm and blues band in the Feelgood mode, with Nick Greenberg on harmonica. The show is opened by local rock band, Angels with Enemies. We believe in giving up and coming artists a showcase as well as the established acts.
If you are in Mill Hill or nearby, please support the festival. The organisers give our time for free, we pay the artists because we believe that musicians should be supported. When I was a teenager in a band, there was virtually no music in Mill Hill and it was a worse place for it. If you support the festival and the events, it sends out a strong message that people believe in the community and they want to see a local music scene. It is a real treat to see artists of the calibre of Jacqui Dankworth locally. Please help us ensure the success of the festival, so we can carry on staging it for years to come.
************************************************************************11111**
So it's 10 am. Had a nice breakfast in bed. As it's Clares Birthday, so as a treat, gave her one of my special recipe bagela - Smoked Salmon, Gherkins, Tomatoes, red onion, watercress, pepper, having collected Maddie from swimming practice at 8am. She wasn't too impressed with her present. A ticket to see the False Dots at the Mill Hill Sports Centre, where we play tonight.
Last night we went to see "Million Dollar Quartet" at the Noel Coward Theatre in St Martins Lane. It features the story of a jam session at Sun Records recording studios with Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins & Jerry Lee Lewis. Great Tunes and a decent show. As I watched it, I was reminded of the many hours I spent in recording studios in my career. My mind was cast back to a session in 1984 in Reading. The studio had no chill out area, so after we laid our tracks down, we went to the pub. When the pub shut, we had nowhere to go, so we all sat in a cupboard for four hours. Our lead guitarist Bill Pithers was a very clean living individual, a non smoker. At the end of this he resembled a kipper and had to have a couple of days off work, recovering from the ordeal. In the early days of the band, recording sessions were always stressful and involved rushing everything and using tracks that weren't right. As a result we'd rehearse the songs to death, so we knew the parts inside out and backwards. At that session, this came in useful because we actually recorded Bill's guitar solo backwards on a track called Africa Morning. Our singer at the time was the extremely marvellous half Nigerian singer Vanessa Sagoe (her sister Sally was Kelvin's mum in early episodes of Eastenders). The song is a very dark song about sexual tourism & exploitation of Africa. I wrote it after seeing a documentary about how Westerners visit the third world to shag children. The basic message of the song was that because we are rich, we are a bunch of exploitative piss taking bastards. Sadly the lyrics got watered down and it just sounds like a nice song about going on holiday. The chorus is observes the fact that although we still have slavery, now it is economic.
Africa Morning,
don't know if I should,
have another,
or buy the freedom - You know I wish I could
Of course, music is about conveying emotions. The best songs are ones that you connect with and the best singers are ones that you feel an empathy with. I think the reason most performers have tragic lives is because to be a truly great performer, you have to be deeply vulnerable in some measure.
As my thoughts turn to the festival week ahead, I contemplate what awaits us. The unforeseen emergencies, the laughs, the temper tantrums, the 3am Kebabs. Organising a festival is a massive commitment and we've been planning it for nearly a year. In the current economic climate, we were worried that ticket sales would be slow. Fortunately they've been more than respectable with at least two of the biggest shows all but sold out.
As ever, there is a mixed program. Our biggest name this year is Jacqui Dankworth on Friday at The RAF museum. This is sold out. Tonight, my band, the False Dots play. We feature Sudanese singer Connie A, who has interrupted a tour of Africa with rapper Emmanuel Jal to appear with us. Connie is awesome. Also on the bill are "The Ron Lewis Partnership" who are an in your face rythm and blues band in the Feelgood mode, with Nick Greenberg on harmonica. The show is opened by local rock band, Angels with Enemies. We believe in giving up and coming artists a showcase as well as the established acts.
If you are in Mill Hill or nearby, please support the festival. The organisers give our time for free, we pay the artists because we believe that musicians should be supported. When I was a teenager in a band, there was virtually no music in Mill Hill and it was a worse place for it. If you support the festival and the events, it sends out a strong message that people believe in the community and they want to see a local music scene. It is a real treat to see artists of the calibre of Jacqui Dankworth locally. Please help us ensure the success of the festival, so we can carry on staging it for years to come.
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