Birthday gig at the North Bridge Inn

The day after our session out at Ide, Orbis Tertius? played nearly the same set (just a lot higher-energy) at my favourite Exeter pub, the North Bridge Inn.

The last few years I've had a COTD session on my birthday, but this gig got arranged a while ago, so it was more a chance to play my heart out in front of a small but appreciative audience, backed up by Henry and Keith in fine form. We all felt it was the best we've ever played. Pretty good sound, too (Keith and I just played through amps, no PA as such).


Keith, Henry, Matthew - all off in our own worlds, as usual (photo by Mick)
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Eddie, the landlord, was particularly appreciative, and wants us back. It’d be interesting to see how the OT? sound goes down with the NBI crowd on a slightly busier evening (it was mostly Droners, friends and family in the audience, as well as a very enthusiastic visitor from Valencia).

Keith turned up at the pub with a birthday present for me – a psychedelic guitar strap from the series designed by Jerry Garcia, so now I've got Jerry's spirit looking over my shoulder as I journey around on my saz fretboard.

Sunday orchard jam at organicARTS open day

organicARTS based at West Town Farm near Ide (just outside Exeter) were participating in 'Open Farm Sunday' and Henry had booked us in to play some music. We had a beautiful view out across the valley from the top of their orchard and it was the perfect way to prepare ourselves for the next evening's Orbis Tertius? gig at the North Bridge Inn (my birthday). Thomas took some photos:


Keith, Henry, me

our tiny but appreciative audience lazed around in the meadow grasses, shaded from the blazing sunshine
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Steve who I know from the Pixie Village camp (Snelsmore Common, Newbury road protest 1996) and Jenny who I know from travelling in West Cornwall with the Dongas are now both based at the farm, both stopped by to listen for a while. Steve is the resident signwriter and was responsible for this:

"Sounds of the Sarre Penn"

Having not yet found anyone to jam with in the Canterbury area, I decided to make use of the wonderfully musical sound of the nearby Sarre Penn brook. I've lived in a few different places along this valley, so it's quite deeply tied in with my personal 'psychogeography'. The birdsong in these woods (old hazel, chestnut and hornbeam coppice) is just wonderful - nightingales and nightjars as well as blackbirds, robins and many I'm not yet able to identify. So I started spending sunsets down at my favourite spot on the banks of the stream, recording a mixture of burbling watersounds, solo saz noodlings and birdsong.

I've edited about 80 minutes worth of this stuff and uploaded it:


a couple of miles upstream, to the west, in Church Wood - photo Medway RSPB website
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There's a spot about a mile west where nightingales sing every dusk. Recording something with them is definitely on the agenda.

Children of the Drone compilation no. 6

This has been in the pipeline for quite a while - gradually combing through the COTD MiniDisc archives via random playlists. It was thrown together a bit more haphazardly than the last couple, but I'm still quite happy with it.

Only after compiling it did I notice how little saz I'm playing on it - rather, my contributions feature a lot of my rather simplistic acoustic bass playing (the better examples of this, I hope), some percussion, The Purple Lunchbox (now deceased) and a bit of balalaika. There is one piece that's effectively a saz solo, balanced by the extraordinary closing (live) track "Fried in Hawaii" which I'm not even on.


elegant sunburst lichen (xanthoria elegans) - photo by Angie in MN
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Zippin' Up My Boots/Goin' Back to My Roots

OK, my boots are German army surplus and haven't got zips, but I'm now living a stonesthrow from my first home on returning to England in 1988 - in a beautiful arboretum on the edge of Canterbury. One of the factors that influenced my decision to come to university here back then was having read about the late 60's/early 70's 'Canterbury scene' (even though I didn't have access to any of the records then - had just heard Gong's "A Sprinkling of Clouds" on WWSP student radio). The idea that such a small place could have had such a prolific output made me think there might be something in the place conducive to such creativity. And I'm glad I made the decision - had a great time, made some excellent friends...although I still don't have any musical contacts down here (hopefully that's going to change).


The sound of modern Canterbury, about 44(!) years ago - The (legendary) Wilde Flowers
Brian Hopper, Richard Sinclair, Robert Wyatt, Hugh Hopper, Kevin Ayers.
I've been going down to a lovely wooded spot on the banks of the Sarre Penn stream the last few sunsets, recording saz duets with the evening birdsong and burbling brook. Some of this will no doubt get edited up and made available here, eventually.

A few days before I cycled here from the farm in Dorset (epic four-day journey with stupidly heavy bike and trailer) Joel and I recorded a couple more saz and hurdy-gurdy jams.


Joel rowing The Black Pig (a currach we helped build) on the Helford estuary, Cornwall, 1998
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