performing for an unappreciative audience and a hopefully appreciative one

so, the inspection is over - thankfully.  at this point I've no idea how it went. It was an in-house inspection where I was assessed while guiding a beginners class on protest music.  The kids were doing presentations on songs of their choice explaining their background and providing an analysis of the lyrics to demonstrate why they thought they were appropriate choices.  I like this lesson.  I teach a lot about protest music and try to keep fairly relevant but obviously my choices are always going to be governed by my personal tastes and background so it's really good for both them and me if they take over occasionally and school me in some more up-to-date rants.  Anyway, the inspector (a lecturer from the car mechanics department - which I say only for information not to make any aspersions on his intelligence - i have two friends in that department) came in, didn't even acknowledge the students, sat with his back to them for an hour and then left without saying goodbye.  Personally I thought it was seriously fucking rude!  and let me just say the presentations and the associated discussions were fantastic.  Every student in the room produced their A-game and nailed it and the inspector didn't even deign to watch.  5 days on I'm still fucking furious!

from this point on I'm going to take a slight break from being all about work and give some focus over to prepping myself for my upcoming return to live performance.  the venue is booked and the date is locked in.  I'm hopeful that it's going to be a fairly low-key affair but at this point I'm not sure if that's even an option.

here's the poster...

The Parrot is a lovely little venue and record shop staffed by some lovely folk with great taste in music.  for the last few months they've been putting on these themed nights - Night with the Nurse, The Esoteric Underground, An Evening with Sun Ra.  They've been great fun and a nice way for lovers of odd music to get together in this fairly musically conservative little area of the world.
This one raises the bar (especially for me) and hopefully will be a shape of things to come.
Firstly though I have to get some practice in.  I'm a preparer by nature.  I don't like to go into things half cocked.  I want to know I've got everything I need in place and be raring to go.  As such I'm taking over the spare bedroom for the next month and am going t have my gear on permanent set-up so I can just walk in and make some noises whenever I have a spare couple of minutes.  It should be good fun.

With three new releases on the horizon but not necessarily very imminent I do have a little something to tide you all over in the meantime.  This is a mash up of three old unfinished pieces I found when going through some old discs.  I hope you dig it.

first review of the new album

Always super quick off the mark, the ever lovely Frans over at Vital Weekly has posted up the first review of the new(ish) album.

He's wrong about it being my first album of shorter tracks, there've been 6 others, but on the whole I think it's a pretty fair assessment.

IAN HOLLOWAY - HANDLE THIS WINO LIKE HE WAS AN ANGEL: BAUBLES & GEWGAWS 2002-2008 (CDR by Quiet World)
As far as I can remember, I think that all of the releases by Ian Holloway had just one track. Usually a drone based piece of around forty minutes. That's about the extend of his work, with minor differences here and there. Then this new release comes a major surprise. Apparently Holloway sometimes creates weird, little pieces on his computer, which he calls 'little diversions, games, distractions and brainstorms' which never fitted on any 'real' release. All of these little pieces were kept over a period of eight years and are now collected here. This is by far not the Holloway we know, no long form drones here, hardly any organ like sound, but something which is probably best defined as plunderphonics. Lifting his sounds from various types of media (CDs, TV, internet: who knows) he cuts and pastes them together in a highly vibrant manner. The CD opens with 'Why M', which seems to be more a click 'n cut piece, but quite soon after orchestral music comes in. Looped, transposed, shifted in true plunderphonic fashion. As said sometimes things are more abstract, in a clicks 'n cut manner, but these tracks are all pretty short. Its a pretty interesting release, but perhaps a bit long for the limited amount of ideas that these pieces have. I think Holloway could have been a bit more selective with these pieces, throw out those with the weakest ideas and over the top effects, like 'Monday's Time', and have with ten or so (instead of fifteen now) a much stronger album. Now its all a bit too sketch like and a bit crowded. I am pretty sure his dedicated fans will be shocked by this release, but I thought it was pretty good as well as funny. (FdW)

interestingly Darren Tate said something similar about it needing pruning but the whole point of releasing ths album was that it was a folder full of tracks that i'd grown to be inordinately fond of and so to leave any out would have felt odd.

It's always nice to get the first review back i'm not overly concerned with them but it is a good feeling when someone says something nice about your tunes.

.....................................

have spent most of today discussing the impact of punk music on subsequent genres with a bunch of music technology students. there are definitely worse ways to spend a day.