11th April 2003

Sorry for the huge gap in the wise words but things have been a little
hectic recently. So where shall we begin with this months story?? Let's go
from Saturday and go backwards. My wife threw a party for a work colleague
at our house on Saturday night and we did not get to bed until the birds
were singing at six on the Sunday morning. I managed to escape without a
hangover because I didn't start drinking until about 11. The reason I was
missing was because I dodged the first few hours of the party with a visit
to London Welsh in Kings Cross to see Mal Pope and The Jacks. Mal Pope is
a Welsh singer songwriter from Swansea and his backing band, The Jacks,
consist of all my Welsh buddies (Wal, Tim, Nigey-Nige and Ryan) so I
thought it would be a good opportunity to catch up with them for half an
hour. It wasn't any longer because I had to pop back home as my prescence
was being missed at the party. So Saturday ended very well but begun very
badly because Liverpool lost 4-0 to Man United at Old Trafford. It is
never very nice to lose to our fiercest rivals but I guess in light of our
recent good results against them I guess we were due a beating. The
scoreline suggests a beating of major proportions but the game was against
us after five minutes when our captain was sent off after conceding a
penalty after four minutes. Once this happened it was only going to be a
matter of how many they were going to beat us by. On the subject of The
Reds we were also unceremoniously dumped out of the UEFA cup by Celtic.
Again I don't have any complaints as the best team won and Liverpool paid
for the cautious approach in the first leg when they should have gone for
the jugular and killed them off up at Parkhead.
I have been doing a lot of recording up at Big Top in the last month.
First up was Wal and Tone for a couple of days recording some new tunes.
We recorded the backing tracks for two songs, "Answerphone" and "Es La
Vida, Lar". I may have mentioned that I wanted to record an e.p of mini
album before the end of the year and these new songs are the first
installment on that album. "Answerphone" is a song that should have been
included on LGF but I felt that the arrangement of the song we had
recorded was not the best it could be so the new version is more to my
taste and has a more epic finale which is more fitting for the type of
song it is. The other tune is a song about Mad Spanish hence the Spanish
title which is a mixture of Spanish and Scouse. "Es La Vida" means "That's
Life" and "Lar" is Scouse for mate as in "Orright Lar, 'owzit goin??".
Both of the tunes are quite minimal in terms of their production as this
is going to be the theme for the mini album which is provisionally titled
"A Lo Minimo" which again is Spanish for "the minimum".
As well as the old guys in the studio we have also had the news guys (and
one gal) up at the studio. The guys who I am playing with live also have
their own band called "Evo Diablo" but they have Ms Portelly on vocals
rather than me. They were recording a couple of new tunes that I will be
mixing tomorrow. You may have heard these boys jamming with me at Big Top
on the version of Power Of Love. That song has a similair opening chord
structure to "Broke" and I thought it may be nice to slip into it at the
end of "Broke" but we will have to see how it ends up sounding when it is
chopped down to three minutes as opposed to the fifteen minute jam that I
sent to Irv at the Frankie website.
I went over to Fulham to see Mad Mark Blackburn, or as he is usually
referred "The Captain". Unfortunately we didn't do any recording at his
house because he has put all his recording toys away so we drank beer
instead. He was in fine fettle and has already fled these shores to head
back to Thailand.
The interview with Spence Leigh was broadcast just after the last edition
of wise words and he has since sent me a mini-disc of it and as soon as I
have finished typing this then I will record it into the pc and chop it up
for you and post it somewhere if not on this site. There is an interview
with a couple of tunes on the acoustic. One of the tunes is called "4th of
July Everyday" and I played this because Spencer was talking about old
protest songs and I mentioned that I had written this tune but I didn't
bargain on him asking me to play it so I was put on the spot and had to do
it. Whether I was successful in pulling it off I will leave up to you.
On the business front I went to have a meeting with an old friend of mine
last week who has her own distribution netwrok sorted out so I can try and
get LGF into the shops. Liz and Wan used to run a rehearsal room / record
company in North London but have since fled to the wilds of Lincolnshire
so I toodled up there in the car and had a chat about how she can help me
earn a decent living. I have realised that if I am to give the music the
platform it deserves then I am going to need some help and Liz has offered
her help and I think I would be mad to turn it down. Apart from probably
being a lot better dealing with these industry types she is much better
looking than me which can be a help when meeting these record company bods
so hopefuly by the time we have then next installment in the wise words I
should have something more to tell you.
Last but by no means least is the three amigos at the top of the page. I
took this picture during rehearsals after making them listen to the
recorded version of "The Power Of Love". We were rocking last night and
finished with a Maximum Joy Jam which Noels dad filmed so I will try and
capture the bastrd and sent it off so you can all see it but I reckon
George Bush has more chance of capturing Hussain than I have of capturing
us rocking!!!!