June 2006 Archives

Just when I thought the Internet had lost its appeal, I find a website that totally made me fall in love with the WWW all over again. The site in question is 419 Eater and it is dedicated to the ancient art of Scambaiting. The idea of scambaiting is simple: the next time you get one of those dodgy Nigerian emails promising you a share in millions, set up a fake email address and respond, stringing along your mark and generally disrupting their campaign of conning the hapless. There are some great stories on the site and some of them are so hilarious I was weeping, yes weeping, with laughter. There's Derek Trotter's Art Emporium who gets this stupid scammers to sent him artwork they've supposedly create in order to qualifiy for a fake arts grant - they end up spending their cash on expensive DHL shipping or Arse Bandits United where the scambaiter convinces the scammer that he's looking to invest in Nigerian football or The Great Penis Caper where a lusty scammer tries to marry his mark for money - there's a catch, he'll have to supply pictures of his penis first.

Yes, it is greatly juvenile. Yes, it is a phenomenal waste of time. But it keeps the scammers busy. And while they are busy, they aren't conning your Auntie Gladys out of her life's savings in a bogus lottery scam. It is your public duty to join the crusade. It's not particularly time-consuming - the idea being that you waste their time, not your own. Of course, scambaiting is an art and you should take great care with these criminals because lesser men have ended up robbed and dead with a bullet in their head on the dusty streets of Lagos. Even if you don't get involved, I think you'll agree that some of the stories are hilariously funny.

The baby mollies have almost tripled in size...

OK - if you are a regular visitor to this blog you might be interested to know that I've added an artist page to the Last.Fm website. What this means is that you can listen to my "Without Words" and "Textures" albums for nothing. Yup, that's right. Free music for your lovely lugholes. Just head over to: http://www.last.fm/music/Darren+Lock and get listening. You might need to start an account, but they don't hassle you. I'll be adding "Sow's Ears" soon. I also recommend downloading the Last.Fm player software because then you can listen to my albums uninterrupted using the power of the World Wide Web. Amazing!

Yesterday, finished some work. I was in the bath when the doorbell rang. Realising that it was The Missus back from the funeral and that she might have forgotten to take her key, I legged it downstairs, protecting my modesty with a towel. It was The Missus, but she also had the in-laws with her. I am really glad that I didn't fling the door open wide and thrust my soapy genitalia her way...now that would have been embarrassing.

Did a tiny bit of recording on Disc 2. I can feel that it is almost done. I only need a little bit more music to complete it, but whenever you want something, it dries up. So I am having real trouble nailing the ending. G'ah! It's annoying me. I just want to finish it. Then I can move onto the next disc.

The baby mollies are doing fine...

Today, The Missus is out attending a funeral. Her 18-year-old cousin died of a brain aneurysm a month or so ago and so the family are united in grief. While she wasn't close to that side of her family, because of the age and circumstances of the death, the least she could do was attend. Very sad, but it reminds you that we all walk a very narrow tightrope between here and the great hereafter.

I remember being aware of my own mortality at a very early age. I couldn't have been any older than 7 or 8 years old. We were on holiday as a family, my father still on the scene, and while in bed, struggling to get off to sleep, that thought struck me that one day I might not be here. For me, it is a real fight or flight reaction and the thought of death is a blind panic. This is one of the reasons I have trouble sleeping. There are few nights that go by that I don't think of my own demise and that I don't castigate myself for not being productive enough during the day. The fear makes me feel sick and I just want to wake The Missus for some reassurance, but she is always in a fitful sleep. The fear is primordial. It is bright flash of light, a sudden rush of adrenalin, heart beating in my mouth and the urge to run. However, you can never run away.

Bereavements are tough, funerals are for the living and not the dead. My grandparents died within two years of each other and they were like my mother and father to me. Their deaths were quick, all fluster and dialling of ambulances and then racing to the hospital to see the face of the nurse adopting that "it was inevitable and there was nothing we can do". When my grandmother died, we never had a phone in the house, so I had to sprint around to the local phone box to dial for help. This leaves you questioning yourself: if you had run faster, would the ambulance arrived quicker and the situation changed? With my grandfather, he was taken ill in bed. He was feverish and very sick. We called the doctor who came out, recommended bed rest and went away again. All the while, my grandfather was slowly bleeding to death through a ruptured artery. He could have been saved. When the doctor re-visited later, I had to be physically restrained. His laid-back, "there was nothing we can do" attitude made me want to tear him to shreds. Luckily, I've had nothing to do with doctors ever since. Because he died at home, the police had to come out and the police officer had to make notes. I had the job of identifying the body for the paperwork. My grandfather looked as if he was asleep, but his face bore a grimace, a slight evidence of his dying pain.

Life and death are all part of the same process. You can't have one without the other. Luckily, my bereavements have been quick. No lingering pain, no visits to the hospital with Lucozade and fruit to watch that person turn into a shadow and slip away. My other grandfather (on my father's side) went like that - I visited him once and it was awful. He was on ward C5 - the terminal ward. You can imagine my horror when a few years later I was moved onto the same ward myself while being treated for pneumonia at 13 years old. I thought my time was up.

Death should be quick and blissful. If and when I get diagnosed with something untreatable, I am taking my credit card, flying to somewhere warm and sunny and just drinking myself into oblivion waiting for the tide to wash me out to sea. In a way, we should be more humane, like the way we treat our pets, and able to have a little dignity. However, quick deaths don't give you the option to say goodbye, tell them all those things you wanted them to know, go out on an even keel.

I miss my grandparents an awful lot...

And while we are on the topic, yesterday I noticed that we have a shoal of baby mollies in the fish tank. Never had any baby fry before, so it is quite exciting. Yes, I know it is a complete change of tone, but life and death are all part of the same handshake. I'd take some pictures, but they are camera-shy and they only seem to come out to eat. They are hiding from the bigger fishes.

Well I redubbed the drums on "Thing-Ummi-Jig" again just to tighten them up. And yesterday I finally managed to get the first CD of my boxset finished. "A Pocketful of Stars" - the first CD - is done and it is 68 minutes of hard slog over three years with eighteen tracks in total. You've heard some of the stuff already and some of the songs have appeared in my audio podcasts too.

What a little beauty!

For the first time ever, I am actually using some mastering software to give the tracks an extra bit of audio sparkle. I read about using such software in "Guitarist" magazine and it really does lift the track, giving extra life and pizazz (never thought I'd ever use that word) to the proceedings. Anyway, the first CD is done. I wash my hands of it. No more editing or juggling tracklists. It is over.

However, I still have discs 2, 3 and 4 to complete. Disc 2, which is coming together rather nicely, is 38 minutes in length, but it is going to be around 40-45 minutes. It's a different environment to the first disc in that I want the listener to sit down and listen to the whole lot in one sitting, whereas disc 1 is more a cherry-picking exercise with people saying: "Oooh, I like that one" or whatever. So I am not that far off of completing the second, as untitled, disc.

The third disc is the sticker because it is intended to be a CD of vocal tracks. Now I have about 30 minutes of songs that I recorded/re-recorded/revived from the dead, but I am not sure how I am going to finish it. I don't know. I've got lots of words scribbled down, but I am not a very good song writer in the classic sense of the words. And I hate my voice. And I am never satisified with my vocal songs. Ahhhh...but the point of this set is to make the ultimate artistic statement. And then I can sell my music equipment and stop all this silly mullarkey.

The fourth disc is my experimental playground. Mainly soundscaping and looping stuff, I have another 30 minutes in the bag. I am not worried about finishing this because I find it a lot easier to create this kind of dull ambient drone that crafting clever songs.

So I reckon that it'll be complete in another six months maybe. Who knows? And then there's the packaging. I would actually like to get this put into a litlte box with each CD having a little LP cardboard sleeve. That'll cost money, but I have this dream, you see. And dreams often cost money...

Well, I contacted my ISP and because they love so much, they cut me a deal. So I upgraded to unlimited hosting, which includes unlimited site traffic, for a whopping $10 for the next six months. Well at least that saves the problem of being shutdown for maxing out my traffic. The upside of this is now I have something like 20Gb of storage space. My goodness, I'm going to have to find something to fill that up. I got thinking about starting a depository for all the various cuttings I've collected over the years about certain rock bands I support. I got this new scanner last month (don't worry, it only cost £30, I am on a reduced budget) and it could be something to do. I dunno.

Not much else to report at the moment. No exciting stuff happening because The Missus went back to work from her break last week and so I have to pretend to do some proper work. Ho hum. My hayfever is up at the moment and I feel a bit sniffy and bulbous-eyed (more bulbous-eyed that usual). It'll pass.

Very exciting about the forthcoming MIchael Brook album, RockPaperScissor, which is due out 18 July. Brook is a very interesting artist for me and I love his production skills as well as his interesting use of the old electric geetaw. You can read about it at his website: www.michaelbrookmusic.com or you can go to Video Google and watch a great "making of" video clip. I like what I am hearing and I look forward to getting that particular disc in my grubby little mitts. Just love that guitar tone.

A while ago, I recorded a track called "Thing-Ummi-Jig" and it was based on a drum loop supplied by a guy called Penston. I really like the track, but I never got any feedback from Mr P, so it got put back in the drawer. As I said, I really like the jollity of the track and wanted it in my boxset. The only problem is that the drum loop wasn't my own, so I couldn't seel it, so I'd have to re-record the drums. Shudder. I can hold a rudimentary beat, if the wind is blowing in the right direction. So I sat down at my Handsonic and got the arms and legs working. I re-recorded the drums almost live - I had to go back and re-dub the toms because I fluffed them up and the cymbols seperately, but it's almost a live track! :-)

Direct download: CLICK HERE

Like I said, it is a spirited, jolly little track and I hope it cheers you up if you are in a bad mood, because that's it's aim. Nothing else other than a sunny little song.

Looking at my traffic stats, I reckon I've got 24 hours before my hosts close down this website until the end of the month. This is because I have exceeded my 20Gb traffic limit for June. It turns out that something downloaded a rather large file on my server (my video podcast) a whopping 460 times in one day. I get the feeling that this was a bot of some description because large volume traffic tends to happen over a longer period of time rather than concentrated on one day and one file.

And so this website will disappear for a while, which is a shame because I'd gotten a heck of a lot of traffic thanks to a link to my recent Robert Fripp reviews courtesy of Sid Smith at DGM Live. My traffic almost doubled thanks to Sid and considering that I get three times the traffic compared to a certain cult rock band site that I supposedly run, this is ain't bad going at all. However, I have emailed my webhost asking if there's a cheap way to upgrade my service without the site going down. I await their reply. If the site isn't here the next time you visit, it's not my fault and will return on 1 July 2006 (fingers crossed).

Seeing as I have been in a loopy kind of mood, here is a gentle piece for your consideration. It's working title is Digital Sunset 1, but this could change. It's nothing radical just soothing washes of sound. It ain't gonna change the world but it made me feel relaxed as I recorded it live. With this track, I have been experimenting with my pedals and all though this starts with me dubbing up on the RC-20XL at the beginning, I kick in a 23-second panned stereo delay midway through courtesy of my DD-20 and so you get this spacy kind of loopy thing going. OK - it's not a twin Eventide, but I think it sounds good. Still wishing I had the cash for an RC-50...sob...

Direct download: CLICK HERE

Today, I got an email from CDJAPAN saying that the payment for the recent Exposure CD that I bought from them has been denied by my credit card company. This all goes back to my card being cloned. This whole incident has turned into a rather expensive nightmare. I also got a nice email from Scott Stephen from Norfolk who also attended the recent Norwich Cathedral appearance by Robert Fripp. He found the concert by accident on the day of the event and enjoyed himself immensely. He also owns a Boss RC-20XL and likes noodling with loops. You see, all this looping stuff is catching...

At the weekend, I went through a pile of old CDs looking for more songs to retreive for my 4-CD boxset. Again, I am trying to put together a CD of vocal songs and to save time writing new material, I am revisiting old stuff and attempting to breathe new life into it.

One song I wanted to use is called "Save Me" and so I went back to my master CD-R, but alas, laser rot or something caused the disc to be unreadable. I then spent most of Sunday afternoon looking for a solution to retrieve the seemingly lost data, before coming across BadCopyPro, a data retrieval suite. A few minutes with this and I successfully brought back the lost masters with the click of a mouse. What a relief. With the masters back from the dead, I listened to the track and decided to just remix the backing track and re-record the vocals. It works a bit better than the old version and I even did some slight editing on the end of the track to make things fit together better. A second song from the same sessions in 1999 called "You're Going Down" was also saved, but I don't think I'll be re-using this. It wasn't very good then and it sounds even worse now, even if I did decide to intervene and re-record some parts. Anyway, here is a rough mix of the new "Save Me" track:

Direct download: CLICK HERE

Back in 1999, I did a little CD called "Save Me". Those were the good old days of www.mp3.com - a website where you could quickly and easily upload your songs and create purchasable CDs with the minimum of effort. We had great fun creating the artwork for that CD as it featured myself in the Missus's old Vauxhall Nova, running myself over. Some clever trickery in PhotoShop made it all work, but I had to suffer for my art and lay on the cold road for 10 minutes while The Missus took the photographs. Those were the days! Unfortunately, a lot of the original artwork got lost when the backup CD-R went a bit manky and all that's left is this front cover picture:

Who are those hairy fellows?

In the post: Robert Fripp - Exposure 30th Anniversary Edition. I know, I know. I already have the Japanese edition, but there is a story involved in all this. I had ordered the Japanese edition ages ago - I think it was January/February time and subsequently my credit card was cloned and I thought that my Internet order would not get processed as the card I had used was no longer valid. So in the meantime, I ordered the cheaper EU version from HMV using a voucher I had collected. The Japanese version turned up (my new credit card had been charged) and it was too late to cancel my HMV order as it had been on Special Order. So now I have two copies. Well that's my story and I am sticking to it. I am sure Sid is having a good chuckle and waggling his finger at the screen at this record collecting shenanigans. Anyways, if you are planning to buy the CD, buy the Japanese version because the packaging is far superior. The EU version is nice, but they just know how to pull the stops out in Japan.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING ENTRY HAS AN IMPOTENT RAGE RATING OF 9 OUT OF 10

This morning, my mother had very kindly dropped off a copy of The Observer's Music Monthly magazine through our door. While I had been fairly laid-back about getting a copy, she said that she would slip a spare issue out if they had any left over in the shop. So while I scoffed me cornflakes, I read the main interview with Thom Yorke from Radiohead. As I worked my way through the piece, I realised why I have become so disinfranchised with the whole music "scene." In the past, I was the kind of guy who you couldn't take into HMV because I spend a good hour in there pouring over the racks before coming out with cash spent and a little blue plastic bag full of goodies. Last week, I went into HMV and Virgin in Norwich and couldn't even face looking at the shelves. It all leaves me cold.

So anyway, back to the wonkey-eyed whinger...in the interview, Thom Yorke dribbles on about global warming, Iraq, the government, capitalism and free-trade and the self-same student bollocks he's been wittering on for years. All the time, we know that he is part of the system already. He is the one who spends vast amounts of money on world tours, using phenomenal amounts of carbon-based fuel to propel him and his band from continent to continent, causing irreversible damage to the environment and climate, to the nuclear power stations that power their events, to the corporates who sponsor the events and sell Coca-ColaTM at £5 a carton. The biggest irony, when it comes to the eco-friendly musicians, is that their product itself is incredibly toxic. You have a CD or LP, which is made from oil, with a silver substrate which won't degrade, which is housed in either a paper sleeve (with paper made from trees and often bleached, more environmental damaged) or a plastic jewel case, which is made from more oil. The only good thing about digital downloads is that they are the greenest form of music other than live perfomance with an acoustic instrument.

At least, Thom Yorke admits he's a hypocrite, but he's still part of the system. He is still part of the capitalistic machine that sells the product. He is the product. You've already sold yourself, son, so shut up and take the dollar bill. So you sit there and you read this guy venting, a musician who hasn't made a decent record since 1997, despite what the fawning critics might say, throwing their hands to heaven and praising skittering dross like "Hail to the Chief" and "Amnesiac" in fits of masturbatory joy, and you think to yourself: "Is it me. Or has the whole fucking world gone mad?" This guy isn't a genius - his band is just a three chord rock band who managed to find oblique time signatures and Krautrock to pilfer. Why is this guy still here? Why are the music press still writing about them?And why is he still wittering on about problems of which he is part? More importantly, what the fuck am I doing wasting my time reading this?

Moan about the environment = stop travelling and burning valuable fuel to promote your folly.
Moan about slave labour = stop buying imports (even the Fair Trade crap which is just as exploitative) and buy local produce.
Moan about capitalism = withdraw your financial support and basically go live up a tree.
Moan about the government = become active at a local level because that's how change occurs.
Moan about Iraq = strap explosives to yourself, book that meeting with Blair and press the red button at the appropriate moment. It won't change anything but at least we'll have got rid of two knobs at the same time.

Of course, I am just being an extreme reaction to his views because it makes fun reading - this is dark humour, you know. While I totally understand the necessity to be passionate about the things you care about, people like Thom Yorke are in the best position to organise, mobilise and change things. Yet they never seem to be able to deliver. It's Bob Geldof-syndrome all over again, I guess. While well-meaning, their actions never actually achieve the aim. While Live8 was a great idea, it was poorly executed (no black artists - crap, get Gabriel on the blower and get him to call his coloured chums for a knees-up down his way). What did it actually achieve? Greater awareness? Did the politicians listen? In that instance, the decisions had already been made - so Geldof was really just having a big party.

You cannot achieve global change. No one can - only Mother Nature herself - or a random accidental asteroid in collision course with Earth - or a tiny virus with the capability of killing all human life - or a crazed man with the button and the nuclear warheads ready to go. But you can change the little things, make small incremental changes at a local level and if you are successful, these will move out to other areas, like ripples on a still pond after you've just thrown that pebble. I just wish these self-aware, almost saintly, musicians would just get on with what they are paid to do - make music. The Geldofs, Yorkes and (spit) Bonos of this world could change things if they really wanted. They have the money to do it. They could, if they so wished, raise a guerilla army and liberate the oppressed masses in West Africa. But they won't, because that would actually mean doing something instead of bleating to the newspapers and having a platform to sell more product.

Of course, the reason I get riled when these rock stars open their gob and expect me to stop buying South African bananas goes back to that bloody St Bono and the time when appearing at a charity gala with Pavarotti, he paid something like £1200 to have his favourite trilby hat flown from Ireland to Italy. That must have been a pretty special hat. Think of all the African children the money could have saved?

Another strand of the interview portrayed Thom Yorke as a tortured soul, forever worried about the state of the world. For fuck's sake, grow up man! Why worry about things you have no control of? Maybe I've got it wrong - I tend to worry about whether or not I locked the back door when I take the dog out for a walk - but I think that the environment will take care of itself. Mother Nature will wipe us out and start again when we've outlived our usefulness, much like what happened to the dinosaurs. You can't change the fundamental nature of mankind - modern man is greedy, stupid and selfish with power and wealth being a corrupting influence. While being poor doesn't automatically make you a saint, it does give you some humility which is greatly lacking in this world.

Anyway, I am not sure exactly what that rant was about. I know it started off about Thom Yorke, but I let my fingers run away from me. Anyway, I'm glad I sold my Radiohead records bar the good one.

The recent visits to see Robert Fripp perform have been very inspirational. Hearing the music in the proper context had a profound impact on me and I still stick to my judgement that performing Soundscapes in a rock context (i.e. in front of a boozed up, jaded and cynical audience expecting balls-out rock and roll) is like throwing your pearls to the swine.

Anyway, I've been noodling about with looped music for a quite a while - since about 1994 when I got my first guitar synthesizer, the Roland GR-1. Again, hearing Fripp made me realise just how much one can miss a piece of equipment. In those days, I didn't have any delay or loop devices to help me get the sound I wanted. A delay pedal is a piece of equipment that basically acts as an electronic echo and duplicates the sound played into it, gradually decaying over time - The Edge from U2 is the biggest exponent of the delay pedal I can think of. A loop pedal is a bit more complicated and just plays back whatever you put into it and you can overdub sounds on top of that.

But I had neither, so I came up with a novel way of achieving my own soundscapes. What I would do is create a sound on my Roland GR-1, usually based on a string pad, and make sure that the decay of the sound was really long, so that when you plucked the string, the sound would continue for ages before dying out. This way I could play long deep notes and try and solo/add melody with the higher pitched strings on my guitar. The earliest example of this was a track called "Angel's Tears" and actually it used a Yamaha MU-50 as the sound source, so it has a rather unique sound to it. Here it is:

Direct download: CLICK HERE

Over the years, I've purchased delay pedals such as the Line 6 DL-4 and the Boss DD-20 digital delay pedals, both of which allow you about 20 seconds of stereo looping time. With equipment like that, you can set down some synth pad noises and solo over the top. They are quite effective and work well despite not really being looping devices. Such examples of the DL-4 and DD-20 can be heard in this next piece, Shard of Indecision:

Direct download: CLICK HERE

Since then, true looping pedals have come to the fore and I've been using a Boss RC-20XL. Despite being only a mono device, you have an awful lot of delay time to play with (around 50 minutes, I think) and the sound quality is superb for such a compact device. I've been salivating over the new Boss RC-50, which is a stereo looper, but alas, I have neither the space nor the money to purchase one. But I'm not bitter, I am making the most of what I've got.

I think looped improvisation is a really interesting musical form and, for me anyway, it gives me the ability to tap into my subconscious creative mind. Once you set things off, you don't really know where you are going to head and it is both nerve-wracking and extremely liberating at the same time. Seeing Robert Fripp perform with his banks of equipment was a real inspiration and it gave me the metaphorical kick up the rump to go back to my pedals and get playing. This morning I came up with this live improvisation called Cloistered Spaces 1, inspired by my visit to Norwich Cathedral yesterday. It's not particularly good as I've not been 'scaping for a while, but it is a start:

Direct download: CLICK HERE

The Missus quite enjoys my ambient noodling and reckons I should try and play this kind of stuff live. I always reply that if RF has such a hard time of it whenever he fires up a soundscape, what chance have I got. You've got to admire her blind faith, haven't you?

It was never a certainty that we’d attend this performance but the decision was finally made this morning at approximately 9.20am that morning, while walking Alex the Wonderdog, with a toss of the coin and the call of heads signifying that we’d make the 100-mile journey to Norwich. I quite like Norwich as a place, but it had been a while since we’d last paid a visit and because we hadn’t parked in our usual spot, my sense of direction was somewhat “out”.

I knew that Norwich Cathedral was around somewhere, but for the life of me couldn’t get us in the right area. From previous experience, I knew it was close to the old Anglia Television Studios, but my inner radar was so off-kilter, I had to admit I was beaten. Much looking at local visitor’s maps and head scratching ensued. After a brief spell of walking in the completely wrong direction and myself begging the Missus not to ask the locals for directions, I was back on the trail and could see the spire in the distance. The time was 1.25pm. Oh dear, this was going to be an unfortunate and wasted journey if we didn’t get a move on. With sparks literally coming from our heels, we were in the cathedral grounds.

“Just let yourself be drawn to the bleeping and droning,” I joked and as we got closer to one entrance, The Missus cried: “I can hear him.”

Norwich Cathedral: Just follow the bleeping and droning...

True enough, even outside the Cathedral the faint synthetic string sounds could be heard. It was now 1.35pm, we were unfortunately a little late. However, as we walked into Norwich Cathedral, we realised that we weren’t close to the performance at all and were behind the player. It was eerie to hear the sounds of the Churchscapes echo around the ancient stonework and not be able to see the performer or audience. We let ourselves be drawn to the sound and eventually we found the presbytery and I could see the back of Robert Fripp’s head loom into view.

As we were late and we didn’t want to disturb the performance, we took a seat at the edge of the presbytery and this would turn out to be fortuitous later on. From my vantage point, I could clearly see Robert Fripp playing his blonde Fernandes and manipulating the devices in his rack. I was sitting a lot closer to the player than the St Paul’s performance and I found myself being distracted by Fripp making adjustments to his equipment and then listening for a change in the sound.

I looked away. I concentrated on the ornate stonework and the stained glass window directly facing us. The sound was very different to the St Paul’s and the presence seemed a lot more claustrophobic. Whereas St Paul’s had a certain airy atmosphere, the nature of the architecture made this a more ancient experience. The soundscapes being played here were also different. Whereas St Paul’s the performance was almost a showpiece, with a beginning, a middle and a conclusion – this seemed more freeform, more about the music being affected by the environment. Where St Paul’s were blues and golds, this was dense crimsons and deep dark browns. There were lots of string pads and that sweet soloing tone that Fripp is using now. The difference in the acoustics of the two spaces was evident: again, St Paul’s had its own ambience with people moving around the periphery and there seeming to be more space for the sound to move, whereas Norwich Cathedral, despite it size, felt smaller and claustrophobic. The deeper string pads reverberated around the stonework and you could feel them in your chest.

The performance was split into two halves and at about 1.50pm, the man stopped playing and addressed the audience. This made The Missus’s face drop – I could tell that she thought that the performance was over, but I kept the knowledge of RF’s little talks to myself and let her discover that there would be a second half in time. Fripp spoke of his gratitude of being able to playing in churches like Norwich Cathedral, decommissioned churches and even a decommissioned brothel. He thanked Mark Graham personally for organising the performances and then continued.

The second half seemed very similar in tone to the first half, with the dull colours of tone being enhanced by a twinkling surround-sound bell pad. It’s hard to explain, but these soundscapes seemed to be more about the passage of time, rather than moving from point A to point B, like the St Paul’s concert. There was a lot more soloing and multi-tracked/looped soloing too. I was really pleased that it was so different as I had previously worried that it would be a re-run of the previous performance I had been witness to.

At the end of this Churchscape, he put his guitar down, got his bag and said a brief thank-you to his support staff and the audience. He then began to leave. Before I could move myself, he was heading straight towards The Missus and myself. I was already grinning inanely and didn’t want to avert my gaze, in case this would have been considered rude, so I just sat there and grinned at him. Fripp looked right into my face and gave a big smile himself. Then I realised, quite sadly, that I was a total and utter fan…Is there no hope for me?

The Missus commented that the old Frippster had a really nice, modest smile and that he should smile more often. I was too busy giggling like a schoolgirl, happy to have witnessed another great Churchscapes performance and a feeling too much like a fanboy for my own liking. For my sins, I donated a crisp £10 note into the collection box as we left and took in the beauty of the Cathedral and its grounds.

Yours truly, praying in the cloisters, hoping that I'm not a slavering fan-boy

Click here for my review of Robert Fripp at St Paul's Cathedral.

I’ll be honest with you. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to heading into London to see Robert Fripp perform at the most well-known cathedral in the UK. However, I made a promise a good few years back that I had to keep and it went something like this: “I really would love to hear RF’s guitar soundscapes in a church setting or somewhere suitably large like London’s IMAX cinema”. Well the IMAX cinema was out of the question, so when it was announced that Fripp was performing in churches around the UK, I just had to live up to my promise. In fact, The Missus was more looking forward to this day than I was, as she really wanted to see RF perform in this setting and had never visited St Paul’s before – despite walking past it many times on her way to work everyday.

On the tube journey into London, I was nervous. I always get nervous before a gig, but this time it seemed worse and I felt nervous nausea coming on me. It instantly reminded me of those long-forgotten holidays of years gone past, when I was a little boy and how I’d throw up in spectacular style on the way to the airport or on a car journey. Luckily, I kept myself in control.

We walked to the cathedral and did a little reconnaissance, as the last time I had visited was back in the days when I was seventeen. Then I had paid a visit with my student chums Ian and Fahim – in those days, a lad’s day out meant visiting cathedrals and museum. What an odd bunch we must have been. Realising that there were no big queues or anything amiss, we shared a sandwich and an orange juice on the steps of St Paul’s with the other lunch takers – some in their suits, some as tourists. A guy of certain standing walked past and The Missus felt her radar twitch.

“He’s one of the party,” she said cryptically. And lo and behold, he shouted into his mobile phone, “Toyah, I am outside of St Paul’s. I’ll see you in ten minutes.”

I was dismissive of this, thinking he was talking to someone called “Tom”, but the Missus was adamant. There’s not that many people called Toyah around here, she argued. At least, we knew (quite obviously) that we were in the right place.

It was about 1 o’clock when we ventured inside. The man in the smart suit in front of us asked for a ticket to Robert Fripp and paid his cash. He thought it was expensive, but the lady at the counter said he could explore the rest of the cathedral. We paid our money and went through the barrier, stopping to take in the sheer magnificence of the building.

As we walked towards the dome, we noticed that a service was going on. We stood to the side and listened to the Reverend (or whatever rank he held) giving mass. I am not too hot on my denominational religion, so please forgive my ignorance in these matters. We listened and although my eyes were drawn to Robert Fripp’s guitar rig in the far corner, something caused me to turn my head and I saw the man himself stand up at the beginning of the final prayer. Never to disappoint, he was dressed head to toe in black and wearing a leather coat – on a hot June day! I made a quip about him changing into a Hawaiian T-Shirt and some Bermuda shorts.

St Paul's Cathedral at Night, November 2005

After the lunchtime mass was said, the congregation dispersed and we went to the front of the seats to claim our position. There were only a few of us about so it wasn’t like going to a rock gig where it is all elbows and tussling for position. I took my place in the centre of the semi-circle of chairs, so that I had direct view of the pulpit and Robert Fripp’s gear located under it. I made another quip to the Missus saying he should be playing from the pulpit. Oh what a wag I am!

Suddenly, a female verger appeared and began marking reserved seating in our row for Robert Fripp’s guests. I was worried I was going to have to change seats, but luckily she stopped right next to me and we didn’t have to move. A few minutes later, Robert Fripp’s guests turned up and Mrs Fripp (Toyah Willcox) was part of the party. Indeed, loud mobile phone man who we had heard earlier was in the group. Oh embarrassment, I was sitting right next to the guest party and who should I spy across the room, but old Sid Smith? Luckily, my chameleon-like features served me well and I just merged into the background.

Right on time, Robert Fripp appeared next to his gear and put on his blonde Fernandes and began to play. The low sound of arpeggiated bells filled the air and the performance began. He swapped back to his black Fernandes and took to his stool. Now I am not someone who will sit down and log every song that’s played and I am not particularly familiar with the recent soundscapes that have been performed by Fripp (apart from the Hot Tickles), so don’t expect any titles. Instead, I will describe what I felt.

When I go to any concert, I sit and I become a part of the performance. Today was no different and I found it very easy to disappear into the music. While many were at the cathedral to see the sites or to worship, I realised that I was also there in worship. To worship the music. For there was something deeply soulful to what I was hearing. As the music unfolded, I raised my eyes upwards and took in the architecture and the iconography of the saints above my head. The music felt old, reverential, in places primordial. During the middle section, a section that was very dense with lots of string samples, I felt my chest tighten and emotion pass through me.

All the while Fripp played, people milled around the performance area and there was a real sense of life happening outside the music. The ambient sound from behind of feet shuffling, of people talking, of the sound of the street, of a baby crying, all became part of the performance.

The DGM flyer handed out during the performance

It was interesting to hear Fripp solo over the soundscapes and I really enjoyed the tone of the solos. They too were very soulful, almost like a white man’s blues and they also were very transporting and reminiscent of the tones used on “The Equatorial Stars” CD. And then, as the performance drew to a close, the familiar bell motif appeared again. What I thought was fascinating was the pace of the performance. It wasn’t just a series of drones and bleeps – there was a real sense of a beginning, middle and an end – and you could sense when the end was upon you.

When the music had stopped, there was a nervous pause. Do we applaud or not? One plucky chap broke the silence and we all began to clap our praise. Fripp came forward, bowed to the right, bowed to the front, turned to the high altar and bowed and then bowed towards us. It was over.

I sat there literally drained by the performance. I had concentrated so hard during the last 30 minutes, I had forgotten the time – it felt like forever and I was so pleased to have made the effort to be at the performance. The Missus was also thrilled. She thought it was brilliant and agreed heartily that the best place to hear music of this kind is in a space such as a cathedral. It really does add a sense of time and space to the music. In comparison, soundscapes in a rock venue are utterly pointless and, in Fripp’s terminology, merely a love letter. If you want the bona fide, deep and soulful, change your life, kind of experience: check out the churchscapes.

After the performance, we did a circular of the cathedral and noted that Jakko Jockstrap was also there, chatting to Sid Smith. We looked at the gear close up: though I am no guitar tech-head anymore and I couldn’t identify any of the knobs and dials in front of me. Though I did look on in fondness at the Roland GR-1 on the floor, which reminded me of my own GR-1 that I had sold previously to upgrade. A nice bit of kit, I sighed.

We then did the proper tour of the cathedral and checked out the crypt and made the lung-busting climb up 530 stairs to the top of St Paul’s dome. I mistakenly took a photo of the ornate ceiling and got told off by the security man. I apologised profusely, as I had been so taken with the moment and beauty of the intricate dome. Up and up we climbed until we were outside, staring out over London. To the south, The Tate Modern and the South Bank, to the North the Post Office Tower, to the East Tower Bridge. I did my best to snap some shots but the weather had begun to change and storm clouds were moving in.

The journey back down was a lot easier that on the way up. The heat and lack of air made it hard going, but it wasn’t too bad a journey. We refreshed ourselves in St Paul’s gardens with a bottle of spring water and then headed home, hoping to beat the storm clouds. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t going to let us win and the moment the train stopped at Debden station, the clouds deposited their cold cargo upon us. We were already wet as we left the station, so we walked briskly home, dodging the rain spots and the lightning bolts and thunderclaps, thoroughly getting soaked for our sins. It reminded us of all the times we had got caught in the rain before: when we saw Brian Eno talk at the Sadlers Wells theatre in 1991 and when we were celebrating my 30th birthday in Los Angeles and found ourselves in the Downtown area, a good 20 minute walk from the Marriott Hotel at which we were staying. Boy, those were big raindrops that particular day.

But home and dry, and despite the rain, it was a very good day. Norwich awaits!

PIX OF THE DAY

View upwards from the Whispering Gallery

Yours truly having a well-earned rest atop St Paul's

Don't look down

View North - Post Office Tower in the Distance

View South - The Tate Modern and Millennium Footbridge

View East - Tower Bridge and GLA Building (Hiding)

View West - Old Father Thames & Millennium Eye & LWT Building & Palace of Westminster (Hiding)

Click here for my review of Robert Fripp performing at Norwich Cathedral.

Awww crap. Being a self-confessed stat slut, I noticed that someone or something had downloaded my video podcast directly from this site. Of course, it is a very popular item - people like to see my pasty Uncle Fester face looming into view and plonking away unconvincingly on that rubber bass doo-hickey. But on 11 June, there were over 460 downloads of that particular file - this means that already I have used 13Gb of my monthly traffic quota and if traffic continues as projected, I am going to shift 37Gb of data this month and have to pay for it. Pay in blood, my friends. Pay in blood and sweat and tears and other bodily fluids. It's not going to be pleasant. Oh what to do? I've already removed a load of unnecessary files from here - but I don't want to take down the stuff I do - that's the whole point of this place. I am in a right ol' quandry and no mistake.

The weekend consisted of more sitting in the garden quaffing vodka. It's an interesting drink. It's not the slow descent I get with whiskey or pints of cider or pissy lager - one minute I am fine and the next, when I am least expecting it and usually three or four drinks down the line...whammmo...I can begin to feel worse for wear. Of course, it could be that I am just a big ol' pansy. Who knows?

I also discovered that trying to squeeze into an old pair of shorts discarded many years previously is not conducive to one's reproductive health. As I sat on the grass, strumming me geetar and terrifying the neighbours with looped improvisations (heck, it was a free concert and they should be grateful), the strain on my undercarriage was too much. Eventually I exclaimed "ooooh me ballbags" and ran inside to slip into something a little more comfortable. Damn the Missus for washing my favourite and only pair of shorts that actually fit me. The swine!

Today, I am back in the garden trying to get work done in time for the Missus who is having a break from her work over the next few days. We intend to do exciting stuff. Stuff that is so amazing that your brain would crawl out of your nose in sheer apoplectic exultation to escape your cranium and dance around in front of you singing songs of wonderment and joy. Tomorrow we are heading into town for some fun - shudder - and then we'll be casting our net further afield later in the week. Don't worry, I'll take lots of pictures so you won't feel left out. Of course, I know that's there is only three regular readers left. I blame that sunshine...making people want to go outside.

Rant and rave, rant and rave. Just going on to make it look as if something is actually happening here. It isn't. Back to the vodka, the work and the sunshine. ;-)

A dream last night:

So me and The Missus were eating out - it might have been a restaurant, it was a dream and so hard to be specific. During the meal, I get up to use the bathroom and on the way back, I notice a fellow diner polishing bullets with his napkin. After the meal, we are outside and I discover a large hold-all containing more bullets and guns - it belongs to the guy inside. I use a mobile to call the police, but as the armed response team arrives, our gunman makes his break for it. He shoots his way out and I am left to dodge bullets alone. The police are outgunned and ineffective and so the gunman escapes the narrow London street. I follow him to a bathroom supplies shop, where he makes his base.

I want to get inside, but can't go through the front door because he will kill me. It is now dark, but the light from the shop illuminates every in front of it, making it an ideal hide-out for the gunman. I go around the back of the premises and look for a door. I am in luck - in the darkness is an unlocked door. I quietly open it and descend into the gloom.

Immediately, I can hear the splashing sound of a large volume of water and the empty acoustic reverb of liquid on tile. As I walk down the stairs into the darkness, the sound of women's voices become clearer and more apparent. I turn the corner and there is a large swimming pool. In it, are three young women swimming. They do not notice me as I hide in the shadows and walk past them. One of them sees me and asks me into the pool, but I decline saying that I have no swimming trunks with me. They giggle at me and their laughter continues as I find another staircase leading out of the swimming pool area.

I ascend and as I head upwards, I can see light. At the top of the stairs, I am stopped in my tracks by Peter Sellers in full Dr Strangelove regalia, except he isn't moving. His head is slumpt forward and he appears lifeless. All of a sudden, he sparks to live reciting lines from the movie and waving his arm around in a sub-Nazi salute. I talk to "Dr Strangelove" but he doesn't respond. He appears to be some kind of automaton. As I work my way past this obstacle, I see Peter Sellars again as Inspector Clouseau. He asks me if I have a licence for my minkey. Again, he is an automaton. I see Christopher Reeve as Superman and many other Hollywood stars. They pace around the well decorated apartment, reciting their lines, then moving on. Their performance repeating ad infinitum.

Suddenly, I come across an old man. He is the creator of these beings and explains that he loves movies and that they are his only companions. He is very lonely and has spent his life building up his bathroom fittings business - the shop space below us, containing the gunman. I tell him my predicament and he takes me to one side.

"Take this," he says, handing me a very small fruit knife, "You will need to be armed."

I look at the knife and even though I know my quarry has many guns, I know that this is all I will need to defend myself. I thank The Creator and he leads me down another set of stairs to the shop floor. The area is huge and well lit - almost too well lit as the light hurts my eyes. There are bathroom sets and shower units and the way each section is laid out is like a maze. It is a small rat run between the various bathroom suites and there is nowhere to hide. It is like a labyrinth and I fear that I will soon become the hunted.

In the distance, I can hear the gunman. He is firing out into the night - shooting at the police who are stationed outside the premises. Suddenly, all hell breaks loose and the police storm the bathroom shop. I duck down as bullets fly from all directions. I worry that I am going to be mistaken for the gunman and that I am going to get shot. I keep down low and scurry through the network of pathways, listening out for the taunts of the gunman and using them to locate his position.

I turn a corner and there he is crouching down, reloading his weapon. I take the fruit knife in my hand and slide it into him, into his back, in the general kidney area. He turns around in shock, drops he weapon and falls to his knees.

"You can't do that!" he exclaims in complete surprise.

"But I just have," I reply.

With that the focus of the dream changes and my foe has already been taken away. The Missus return and the shop is suddenly filled with familiar faces, people that I have known, many of them existing work colleagues of The Missus. There are also celebrities in the throng as well as faces that I am not too certain of. I can hear the clink of glasses and smell alcohol. I feel thirsty. This appears to be a party and everyone wants to talk to me about my vanquishing of the gunman.

That was as much as I can remember of the dream. Good one, ain't it? I like it when they are cinematic.

So what's been happening lately? Not much, been sitting in the garden in the sun, just chilling and discovering the delights of vodka and soft drinks. Lime cordial is my mixer of the moment. Tasty. Don't worry, I have been working too - very slowly. Not felt like doing any recording at the moment - not inspired.

Not inspired at all.

On TV the other day, I saw an advert for the BBC's New Talent strand and this time around they are looking for budding musicians to write soundtracks for their nature programmes. Of course, I don't stand a chance with this because I lack the musical talent, but I popped along to the website to see what the deal was. The BBC gives you a short piece of video to download with the idea that you write specifically for it. As I wasn't taking this seriously, I looked for a suitable piece in my back catalogue that would fit and entered anyway. Nothing will come of this...but here's the video and my music to accompany it. Of course, the video is copyright of the BBC and I am probably breaking the law showing you this, but heck, let them take me away. The whole point of this is to see how a random piece of music can fit a piece of video footage. I think this track works as the cymbal splashes seemed to match the birds diving into the sea:

Direct download: CLICK HERE

Meanwhile, my Internet is still iffy. Despite numerous calls and exasperation at their incompetence and the fact that the engineers can't seem to do anything, I am stuck on getting by with 121kbps - remember folks, it's mean to be around 4500kbps. Now I am no speed willy waving type, but since this ferrago, I've got into the habit of checking my download speed to an almost obsessive level. The Missus thinks this whole incident is having a nasty effect on me. No - it's just if and when BT Bombay phone me up, I need to know the exact crappy download speed for them when they ask.

At the weekend, we took advantage of the good weather to sit around the pub, get slightly toasted in all senses of the word and generally chill. This is only the second time we've done that this year - due to the poor weather so far. Later in the day, I spoke to my mother about something that had been troubling me. "You've got to forget it," she said. And so, when the trouble seems complicated and all consuming and eating away at you, the simplest advice is the most obvious. Sometimes you just have to let go.

I am my father's son and there's nothing I can do about it. I cannot deny this or rewrite history. I have to be comfortable with who I am and embrace those parts of me I don't necessarily like. If I can embrace those parts of me, I can understand them and work on them. I have to like myself and that's the toughest part. I have to learn to ignore the past and continue on my own way. They owe me as much as I owe them: nothing. My father had his chance back in 1993 and he threw me away for the second time. I realise now that should have been the end of it. After a night's sleep, I am over it once and for all. If my mother can be over it, then so can I. I feel a lot better and 2006 has been an interesting year for making changes and putting things right.

So while eating a late breakfast, the phone rang and it turned out it was the BT engineer who wanted to check my faulty broadband connection earlier than expected. Of course, the house was a mess (as the Missus was away and me and Alex The Wonderdog had been having lots of male time on the sofa surrounded by empty pizza boxes - joke) and the engineer would be over in ten minutes. So again, my meal was spoilt. The cereal dumped, the tea down the sink, I set to work trying to move the bookshelf away from where the main phone line comes into the house.

So the engineer tests things. Phones colleagues. Looks clueless. Apparently, my line can accept speeds of up to 6.5 Mb - but I am getting 230kbps. To put this in lay terms, I should be getting 6500kbps but I am getting 230kbps download speed. He takes a look at my self-installed extension line and reckons this could be the problem. I am told to keep my router connected to the main (which I have been doing since Monday) and everything will be fine.

So after an hour of faffing about, the engineer leaves and my connection is still 230kbps. I am not sure if anything is fixed or not. I am perplexed. Confused, somewhat. Is it fixed or not? Well, the engineer confessed that the new Broadband MAX! system is confusing to them and that they are in the dark. My connection is still at a crawl and if I don't get any improvement in the next week, I shall consider going somewhere else for my broadband. During the whole experience, Alex The Wonderdog was shut in the kitchen and proceeded to bark and howl for the full duration of the engineer's visit. Now I am feeling a bit exhausted and have a headache. I feel knackered but I haven't done anything. I always get stressed when strangers come into the house and generally don't like the experience. I guess the adrenalin rush and the sonic attack from Alex has worn me out.

Now the rest of the day will be dedicated to cleaning Chez Lock for The Missus impending return from Frankfurt sometime this evening.