Sloppy Joe - Ballroom recording, finally

Last night I finally got 'round to sorting out the recordings from a most enjoyable evening in Iola, Wisconsin. It's a real shame that the recording came out a bit distorted (mostly affecting the vocals). But my favourite tracks, fortunately, were generally the least badly affected by this. A bit of EQ, compression, etc. has improved the sound to within a range of listenability I can live with. It's a bit like looking at blurry photos of beloved friends. I'm reminded of stupidly hissy, distorted bootleg cassettes of Barrett-era Floyd and Cocteau Twins concerts I used to buy from Camden Market back in the late 80's (a phenomenon long gone , with the era of digital filesharing). As much as I'd love a clean recording of this, I feel that people get far too hung up on sound quality. No doubt many a semi-religious experience was induced among 'the faithful' by a barely-listenable Grateful Dead concert tape in the 1980's. Or someone listening to opera on a wax cylinder in the 1920's.

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Dub Magnitude at The Globe

I was part of a very enjoyable Dub Magnitude gig last night at The Globe Inn here in Exeter. We had a small but appreciative audience (20 at most), perfect low-key opportunity to test this thing out in public. We improvised on 12 dub basslines Mick had worked out (including a couple inspired by The Clash's "Charlie Don't Surf" and "Bank Robber" - although those were among the weaker tracks not included in the recording below), with the key of each one a semitone higher than the previous. Ivan was brought in as Henry's away in Austria (I'm housesitting for him right now, we - minus Ali - 'rehearsed' the set here the night before). Ali used to be in the acclaimed folk band The Barely Works in the 90's - now Mick's playing bass with her and her partner Chris in "Spin 2". We've been hoping to get her to come along to a Children of the Drone session, so perhaps she will now.

Mick - electric bass guitar
Ivan - drums
Simon - laptop
John - acoustic guitar, mandola, whistles, vocals
Keith - electric guitar
Ali - electric violin
me - saz, percussion


Ivan, Mick and my elbow; Simon's head, John, Keith, Ali, me
Someone came up to Simon afterwards to ask if we had CDs for sale, which is encouraging, as we were pretty much making it up as we went along.

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back from Dhamma Dippa

I just spent almost two weeks up in Herefordshire at a meditation centre with no music (apart from the beautiful birdsong, the rather unmusical chanting of S.M. Goenka and the songs rattling around in my head - mostly Radiohead this time, for some reason).

In the meantime, my saz had been left with Dave Oddy, a local luthier, as it had developed a nasty crack on my way back from the States recently. I picked it up this morning and he's done a fantastic job. The sound is now closer to the original sound when I first bought it, although I think I preferred the 'cracked' sound - I'm sure I'll get used to the way it now is, though. I intend to spend the rest of today playing, to loosen up my fingers and generally get back into it, as there's a Dub Magnitude gig at The Globe Inn this Wednesday.

Yesterday evening round at Vicky's she mentioned having listened to the very last episode of Radio 3's Mixing It (I remember hearing it in a tent near Canterbury, back in 1993...AND they played Children of the Drone last year, our only UK airplay to date). One track that really stood out for her and Thomas was by San Francisco-based Deerhoof. My friend John Pearson had mentioned them when I was over in Wisconsin, as the guitarist turns out to be John Dietrich, the younger brother of my old schoolfriend Dan (formerly bass player with Ted, Abu Temple, Clip the Daisies, Mad Trucker Gone Mad and currently playing with Brainerd down in Madison). Vicky's subscribed to The Wire and seems to be getting deeper and deeper into experimental music. We were listening to some rather wonder Four Tet stuff last night.

And I just found another couple of positive Ail Fionn/A Tiny Window reviews here, this time from someone in Glastonbury (who I somehow have managed to not meet yet):

The Spring [soundsfromthespring.blogspot.com]
"Some brilliant psychedelic/acid and normal folk-type jams and pieces by saz player 'A Tiny Window' in the form of a blog. Some really beautiful stuff."

Ail Fionn homepage ] [www.secretsofcreation.com/COTD/network/ailfionn/ailfionn.htm]
"Excellent low-key folk music; accomplished mandolin and saz playing - and free, free, free! (Lots or possibly all of their music is released on the Open Source Internet Archive)."

...and someone else seems to be enjoying the Dongas field recordings:

[from here]

"The already-blogged-about group Dongas Tribe has several albums worth of material available on the Internet Archive. The tunes themselves are, in my opinon, universally excellent: spirited, rockin' folkish fiddle tunes, for the most part. But these are field recordings, so the quality varies. The best set by far is Rainy Night in the Bell Tent. My top three tunes:

Welsh Pipe Tune
Man in the Brown Hat
Buttermilk Mary"


Druid Soccer screenshots - click on them for bigger versions
Google also has informed me that a 54-year old blogger called Susan in Asheville, North Carolina was listening to the Dongas on the 3rd of February (see here, and scroll down a bit if you're in any doubt), that someone called Uwe has included a track on one of his podcasts and, best of all, that our version of "Farewell to Erin" got used as the background music for a little computer game called "Druid Soccer" included on the blog Kloonigames belonging to someone called Petri in Helsinki! [I just spent half an hour playing, first computer game I've played in years - determined to win - it's very amusing, trying to push a megalith into the opponents trilithon. I wonder if Petri was aware that the Dongas were often found making music at megalithic monuments. He's chosen the perfect piece, it's a too-hectic version of the tune, I almost didn't include it in the collection as it sounded a bit rushed and sloppy - but in this context it provides the perfect cartoonish zaniness for a soundtrack.]

[added April 2009:] Someone's added this comment to Petri's Druid Soccer page:

"It's HILARIOUS to play. There's something just so inherently funny about two little guys running around like crazy, headbutting a giant boulder. I played a match with my sister (not a gamer), and after a couple of goals she was laughing so hard she could hardly breathe. Then towards the end, the infamous shooting boulder bug hit. At first it looked like one of the tiny druids had suddenly kicked the boulder so hard it went into orbit. We were nearly on the floor, from laughing so hard. Surrealist comedy, I suppose. :-)

One thing I realised about this is that the music REALLY contributes to the humour. The fast paced Irish jig feel of it really compliments the madcap antics of the druids dashing around. It's almost feels like a Celtic version of the Keystone Kops. If the music was slower-paced, it wouldn’t be nearly as funny. Similar to good (and juicy!) sound effects, it's amazing how much effect good or bad music can have on the game experience."

Imbolc Drone, Crediton

Rather a good Drone session at the Rainbow Studio in Crediton last night (which happened to be Imbolc). Vaughan brought along his recently acquired dan bau (Vietnamese one-stringed zither), which added a really interesting new texture. It looked like it could have all got a bit too vague and overly stringy, but everyone listened and left enough space, and afterwards seemed to think it had been a particularly good one. (I wasn't so sure, but may have been the mood I was in - will have to listen back to the MiniDiscs).

John - acoustic guitar, mandolin, melodica, low whistle, voice, percussion
Vaughan - dan bau, dan moi, acoustic guitar, voice, percussion
Richard - electric bass guitar
Henry - percussion
Mick - electric guitar
Keith - electric guitar, percussion, melodica
me - saz, balalaika, percussion


a dan bau - picture from http://kitesurfingschool.org
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back in Exeter, reviews

I've been back in Exeter for just over a week. I was rather alarmed to discover a HUGE crack in my saz when I got home. Still sounds as good as ever, though! I think this may have been the result of a seemingly-innocuous knock it took at Union Station in Chicago. Looks like it's going to have to go and see Mr. Oddy up on Beacon Heath soon (local instrument repair superhero who works out of a garden shed).
There have been a couple of encouraging rehearsals with Orbis Tertius? (me, Keith and Henry) and some really nice informal jams with Henry too. He practices his drumming most evenings, and as I'm staying in an upstairs room it's almost impossible to resist the temptation to come down and join in.

I've been meaning to edit that Sloppy Joe-related material, but thus far have been too caught up in other things. I've been mostly listening to Matt Valentine and Erika Elder, fairly endlessly, on a random playlist through and appropriately tiny mono speaker, seems to fit my mood perfectly.

There's a COTD session in Crediton tonight - I only missed one (at St Stephens 10/01/07) while i was away. And the second Dub Magnitude gig coming up fairly soon - I missed the first one, the quality of which apparently surprised everyone involved (and it resulted in this coming gig, at The Globe).

Oh, and there have recently appeared some pleasing responses to music I've put online (and sometimes wonder why I've bothered):

This just in (see down at the bottom) for a recent Ail Fionn compilation. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it, but we now appear to have a couple of fans on a psych-folk forum.

Bhikku, a blogger who's previously enthused about COTD, seems to really like a rough version of "Georgia Buck", and American old-time tune, which I recorded with members of Sloppy Joe during my previous visit to Wisconsin (this was New Year's Day 2006). The whole session in here, as he helpfully points out...

Bob and Diane, a couple from Kentucky got in touch to enthuse about the Dongas online archive, and Bob then wrote this review for the "Rainy Night in the Bell Tent" session:

"The world is a better place because of wonderful musicians like the Dongas Tribe, a group of young folks who make music anywhere, any time because it's in their hearts. The recordings in this file were made in a tent! And yet, the music gives you the feel of being there joyfully listening in to people who live to entertain you, in the fashion of Celtic bards. Their other files are equally fantastic, and I encourage you to give a listen. I can see one problem: I don't have enough hard disk space to hold all of the wonderful music from these talented and dedicated artists!"