Some very tasty pictures of me and The Filthy Spectacula tearing it up on Saturday at the witching hour, I mean, sometime mid-afternoon … by RoseNoir Photography, please go and check her out!
with The Filthy Spectacula at Renaissance Alternative Music Festival 2015
with The Filthy Spectacula at Renaissance Alternative Music Festival 2015
The Filthy Spectacula at Renaissance Alternative Music Festival 2015
One of the things about the fluid, eclectic genre identity of The Filthy Spectacula is we can literally find ourselves playing a steampunk convention (lots of tea, dressing up and sitting down) one gig and an ‘alternative music festival’ the next (basically a solid day of metal, goth and punk: lots of black, piercings, leather, black, exorbitant facial and head hair on both sexes, black, silver and did I mention black?).
While I’m never going to feel quite on home turf at other (or arguably anywhere else – but this is a topic for my next psychiatrist (the last one gave up in despair)), the latter does feel particularly unsafe; when so much of the lyrical, musical, visual and cultural style is highly aggressive and ‘dark’, I can’t help wondering subconsciously whether it will spill over into interpersonal style and reaction to unintended faux pas. And I’m certainly going to stick out in cohesively subcultural contexts, as indeed are the band as a whole.
Actually, they were lovely. Occasionally in unwanted ways (it’s 2pm, I’ll pass on neat cheap Scotch straight out of the bottle thanks!), but both friendly and welcoming when not too busy being a subculture community, and genuinely and warmly appreciative of our set, both as an audience (they danced more than the steampunks, despite our lack of power chord riffs and metal gallop beats) and in person afterwards before I darted off to play a charity concert of orchestral Mozart (which is another story).
They even had a good collective performers’ / crew rider – beer, crisps, doughnuts in generous quantities as well as the whisky and some vodka. Though they might not have had any actual cookies come to think of it.
Yesterday saw me push some other boundaries a little, in the shape of doing a paid singing job.
My choral experience is moderately substantial, and I could argue that its being hitherto unpaid is only due to the different musical traditions and general fiscal situations of the Anglican and Non-conformist churches. Nonetheless it’s a step into another world to start putting myself forward as deserving of a fee, even for an octet doing a memorial service in a parish church.
In that sense then, even a fairly poorly paid job of little musical challenge becomes deeply satisfying to me simply in terms of pulling it off, the immediate client being grateful and one of my colleagues being surprised at my describing myself as not mainly or really a ‘professional singer’.
Here’s to the next singing job, and may they contribute some consolidation to my finances …
Last night the String Project convoyed over to Bristol for some live performance video shooting with the rather wonderful Harboured Sounds project.
As a video shoot / live recording session, probably the only thing I want to say about it is that I cannot imagine that band laying down such good results as we did in three and two takes respectively even months ago. I’m really looking forward to the results coming out!
Also though, just setting up and playing music in a public place without promotion, context or any apparent purpose is always an interesting experiment. Particularly in a city centre on a Saturday night, and when it’s Bristol with its vibrant grassroots music and busking scene. Video shoots aren’t much fun to watch, even live performance ones – there’s an awful lot of standing around, fiddling with electrical gear, playing short snatches for level / setup / reference, and relatively very little actually just playing entire songs. Nonetheless as people came and went we gathered a surprising number of passing audience (more than the couple of buskers I’d seen while it was still daylight anyway), and even got a couple of rounds of applause at the ends of takes. And one particularly enterprising or desperate flyer distributor for Walkabout (!).
Turns out trip-hop minimalist classical folk funk fusion with live strings and beatbox has mass appeal after all!
The one of my upcoming pro gigs that is currently occupying the most of my practising time and effort is not violin at Lincoln Cathedral on Christmas morning, nor gigs, album sessions and a video shoot with my two bands. It’s not even demo showreel shoots, though those are occupying the majority of my admin attention.
It’s a dep job with a blues and party band, and I’m playing bass (electroacoustic bass guitar as it happens, being the variant I own and genuinely my preference, partly for having more attack and rhythm than conventional electric bass but being a heck of a lot cheaper, easier to store and more portable than upright, much as I would love to play that!).
Not new of course that I play the instrument, in public, indeed off and on to paying audiences and in paid band gigs (earlier lineups of the String Project for instance). Until recently I’d been fairly coy about pushing my professional career as such beyond violin, viola and activities allied more or less to arranging.
But it can only be a strength to have extra skills on the market. I’m confident of nailing the gig, and gigging (and practising for the gig!) can only help my bass skills. If I start to expand into bass playing a bit more, it will put me in a much bigger pool of work, though of course with a lot more competition for it and myself a little further down the experience ladder.
So, here’s to diversifying and a little risk-taking.
Tuesday night saw the String Project gig (at fairly short notice, filling a gap produced by a band pulling out) at Oxford’s Jericho Tavern, in support of Joaquim & the Smoke Machine, with the gig being filmed by ChalkStar.
Being last minute (so mostly not advertised by us), being someone else’s event and being stylistically a bit off our beaten track if we have one (we were between a covers acoustic guitarist/vocalist and a blues-rock originals band!), we were mostly playing to people completely unfamiliar with our style. That doesn’t happen all that often, as we have a lot of musical friends within Oxford and are still very much in the process of building up gigging activity further afield.
It’s refreshing to play to Project novices though. Regular attendees get used to our sound, our approach, our mere lineup, and start to take more of an insider view – which is fine and good. But chatting to the odd ‘outsider’ gives the opportunity to remember how radical most casual punters find the use of beatbox as the rhythmic foundation with live acoustic strings as the core of the instrumental sound, and the mashup of elements of trip-hop, folk, chamber music, jazz and funk – and how much they often enjoy it. I don’t think this gig was anything special as a performance for us; but it clearly was for some of the audience that spoke to me afterwards.
However old your schtick may be getting to you, there’s always someone for whom it’s totally fresh and radical!
Saturday night was the Filthy Spectacula‘s most recent gig, up at A Splendid Day Out (so splendid it now runs to two full days) in Morecambe.
The steampunk circuit is being very good to what my girlfriend calls the Filth; nonetheless we don’t really come from it and it doesn’t quite feel like home – we’re essentially just a rock band, albeit a very oddball one! Steampunk crowds therefore tend to be a bit of a switch of mode from our usual audiences. For one thing, they tend to sit down, and only a relatively small proportion can normally be cajoled / threatened / musically overpowered into dancing, even by our rhythm section. It takes a bit of an effort in that band to remember that they may be still enjoying themselves without bouncing up and down like poltergeist-owned pogo sticks – until the end of the song / set, as their applause and feedback are always very warm indeed.
However, it’s also a circuit that values its performers enough to pay them properly (hence how it was practical for us to go and play on the Lancashire coast given our home locations!), and is good at the classic festival / scene passing of acts along to each other (one of the other acts on Saturday had already performed with us once, in Brixton – the excellent Victor and the Bully. It’s good to build networks.).
So thanks Morecambe, and I think we’ll be back!
So, I’ll be living a footloose though far from guaranteed fancy-free life for the next little while.
This weekend sees the bowsprite headed north for the Filthy crew as we descend on Morecambe’s Splendid Day Out, our second steampunk convention of this year’s circuit.
On Tuesday, the String Project have a short-notice gig at the Jericho Tavern supporting Joaquim and the Smoke Machine. I personally feel, however perfect your performance is on your own terms and with masses of preparation, it says a lot more for the durability of your musicianship and for your stagecraft if you can fit into someone else’s show, and perform successfully at short notice – especially for an out-of-the-ordinary, fusion / crossover band!
Next weekend String Project head to Bristol to do some live open-air acoustic filming for Harboured Sounds. Bristol seems to be becoming some kind of a musical vacuum cleaner – the Filthy Spectacula’s bassist is in the process of moving and the String Project’s beatboxer may be soon to follow. Good job I travel well.
Looking further ahead, the Spectacula return to Islington Electrowerkz crazyness. The Project headline a showcase for our new(ish) record label. I’m very pleased to have two concerts booked in with new clients the Welsh Musical Theatre Orchestra in November and December. And the ducks are starting to form into a row for filming and recording a new video showreel before the year is out. Exciting times!
The materials for this morning’s main musical task: Bostik Extra Strong Soft Plastics glue, meths, nail polish remover and a J-cloth.
The job was repairing my Headway Band viola pickup – removing remnants of glue securing velcro fastening to the artifical rubber tube that contains the actual piezo pickup, some of which had softened and given way from heat / humidity / stress, then regluing, so that the device can be firmly and snugly fitted round an instrument without vibrating against the body (which produces a possibly interesting but certainly heavily distorting and completely uncontrollable set of noises for which I have yet to find a use).
I could have sent the device back to the makers for repair. But they were good enough to tell me how to set about repairing it, and they would have had to charge me for postage (even though they’re based in the north of the same county), materials and labour, whereas at least this way I only pay for the materials and can list those as business expenses to be offset against income tax (especially the nail polish remover, for tidying up excess glue on the tube nozzle so the lid will come off again and it be possible to use the glue another time).
All part of a day’s freelance music-making …
Was spent, on this occasion, over a computer screen, a pair of headphones and occasional quick noodles on instruments, transcribing virtuoso violin covers for my serial colleague Sabrina Virtosu. The most psychoactive substance involved was green tea. Work stopped about 10pm when I was worried I might disturb the neighbours continuing to play what I thought was on the recording when I wasn’t sure.
But, when paying work crops up and it’s urgent, this is what the self-employed do! After all no one would be surprised if I was off gigging a hundred miles away until the small hours; as it is desk work, an early night and so a fairly early start in the morning are the work that has come my way, and if nothing else practice at transcribing precisely from recordings is a good bit of discipline for me (most of the time if I learn something from record I never write it down or think too closely about what it would like; almost as if I’ve thoroughly separated the reading and unwritten parts of my musical skill-set. Not this time).
Besides, the arranging / transcription / music editing area of my skill-set is generally underused (though has attracted some of my most positive client feedback), something I rather enjoy as long as it doesn’t predominate over playing too much, and in general even if not this time has the advantage of being relatively time-flexible.
Here’s to more copying out what I haven’t been able to get hold of written down …