Back on the Blog

Yeah, OK, so the title’s a bit of a cheesey take on a Quincy Jones album title – I was about 18 when I heard it, and it broadened my musical mind greatly.

Anyway, I haven’t blogged for a while because I’ve been busy. I’ve been that stupid kind of busy where you just get your head down and keep going until you die. Lots of “working class”* people do it. They do it from the age of about 16 to the age of about 65 and then they just drop dead. I’m not being flippant. My Grandfather did it (seriously must find an atheist equivalent of “god rest his soul”). I’m just not going to do it myself, which is why I’ve stopped doing it for a few minutes (actually, I’ve officially got a few days off!) in order to write this stuff.

The other reason I’ve started writing this stuff again is because of what’s happened to a mate of mine. His name is Pete Faint, he’s a lovely man, a fantastic productive musician who has provided work for countless other musicians, he is lovely to his wife, his family, and his many friends, and he writes a blog which entertains me on a daily basis. You can find it here. It’s a bloody good read, and says a lot of what I think about life, apart from “why can’t people walk on escalators and travelators”, and “who buys all this shit”. I might do a “who buys all this shit” blog one day, but I have to spend more time in Dubai to work that one out. They buy a lot of shit here

Anyway, Pete got attacked: He’s a self employed musician who also works as a lecturer in a university. He didn’t strike on Nov 30th with all the other people who struck (or striked or were stricken, who knows?), as he has no pension, and like many other musos in education isn’t really part of “the system”.

As an aside, there is a parallel to this in Dubai (which is a very British place – the electrical plugs are a big mix of UK 3-pins, various 2-pins, and even those strange American things with the funny angled pins – I bought a multi power adapter thing today from which I could run a UN conference, no problem, but this parenthesis is finished) in that music teachers over here, while being entitled to a visa and health insurance (compulsory under government rules) have no other rights to anything else, holiday pay, etc.  As it happens, we don’t complain.  We do some gigs to make some more money, and we get on with life.  If we were to become thoroughly unemployed we would have to leave the country.  Most of us would find a way of being employed (if we could) because we like it here. I’m not stupid, I’m hedging my bets and paying my stamp, as the core of the UK system is (as it stands) a good one in my opinion.

It’s a very brutal system here, but it reflects the reality of the world, as it is in late 2011. On a daily basis I talk to good people from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, The Philippines etc., who earn a lot less than I do (and I earn a lot less than most of the parents whose kids I teach and the people who I play music for), but we’re mostly cool with each other: because this is a good enough life and we want to be here and we’re all trying to make life better for ourselves and our loved ones and we understand how life is in 2011.  I dearly hope that places like Dubai can be part of a global movement that gets us all talking so the human race can sort out some of its difficulties, but I’m slightly too old and ill-educated to take that one on.

Which brings me back to a couple of paragraphs ago. Remember? My mate Pete was called a “Scab”, and hunted down (in a stupid internetty kind of way), and basically slagged off a lot for going to work when some other people didn’t. They didn’t go to work because their pensions were being messed about with. Pete had no pension to be messed about with, no union membership, so no gripe. Fair enough.

You can read Pete’s eloquent thoughts about it (and a thought of mine) here. The reason I mention it is that Pete’s blog is very entertaining, brings a lot of joy to a lot of people, of all political persuasions, including left-wing people such as myself.  So leave him alone. Come and have a go at me.  I live in Dubai, in the UAE, built on oil wealth, a muslim country where men and women have very different rights; actually, in practice, women are generally treated incredibly well, but it depends where you come from, oh shit, that means it’s racist, which it bloody well is, I hate that, but then I hate that when I’m back at home buying clothes and electrical goods and pretty much everything from the same people that Dubai treats like crap. Oh, and a lot of our (UK) entertainment/advertising is run by Saudi Arabia (not to mention the real stuff like money and oil) and you know what they’re like!

That last bit was deliberately a bit confused and inarticulate to try and demonstrate how complex the world’s problems are. To quote from Pete’s blog (quoting Mhairi on her blog and me on facebook – complicated but academically accurate):

[Mhairi Blog] “The majority of those on strike were low paid female workers”.

[Me on FB] Well, I would imagine that the majority of those on strike were white Caucasians, but if she’d have mentioned that then lots of people would have (quite rightly) jumped on her for having a racist chip on her shoulder. So Mhairi clearly has gender prejudice issues and, given that she’s not in any position of power, should be ignored like all the other idiots.

I apologise for the “idiots” bit, but in the context of the title and essence of Pete’s blog, it makes sense. Actually, I don’t apologise for it at all. Anyway, Mhairi Googleablename and @COMBATSCABS on twitter, I’ve mentioned you now, you can Google me, find me, and hunt me down. I really don’t care: I, like Pete, write a peace-loving blog (albeit with a couple of vexations about trivial annoyances) and, unlike Pete, nobody reads it. So slag me off, get my stats up, and keep your bigoted hatred away from Pete’s very entertaining blog.  Also, unlike Pete, I’m three and a half thousand miles away from you, so I care about what you say less than Rupert Murdoch or the boss of Clearchannel does. I hope that’s increased your sense of New-World-Order-Paranoia, by the way

While that was all a bit sarcastic (but I enjoyed it), to move things on, I strongly suggest that Pete’s attackers read Susan Strongitharm’s post on Pete’s blog here.  There are bigger fish to fry than Pete (or me now!).

On a more trivial and pleasant note, for anyone who’s interested in what I’ve been doing: I’ve been teaching a lot, learned a load of new songs, done some gigs in some interesting places with shiny stuff and big fish tanks and posh toilets (“bathrooms”, always “bathrooms”), and memorised all 28 stations on the metro red line (sad), and am cooking christmas dinner for good friends.  Julia is very well and very busy, I’m very proud of everything she has achieved here, including getting me out of a stupid rut

I wish all good people lots of love, and a happy fruitful peaceful life. (Mmmm fruit…!)

Simon

*I put the term “working class” in inverted commas, not to be disrespectful, as you will have seen from this blog. You know what I mean. And if you don’t, I don’t care: I’m three and a half thousand miles away from you

At last! – to the point!

As promised, I’m actually writing something about being an English musician in Dubai. I carefully chose the blog name (it’s not inspired, I know), and it’s about time I addressed some of the issues pertaining to the subject in question. However, in my usual way, I shall digress.

I was always a big fan of Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy.  I was a particular fan of the books: I felt the author gained more artistic freedom as he went on, and the particularly short but sumptuous chapter from Life The Universe and Everything that ended “A magician wandered along the beach but no one needed him” filled me with imaginative (and hormonally charged) images I have never quite experienced since. Look it up, it’s on that t’internet as they say in Lancashire, West Yorkshire, The People’s Republic Of South Yorkshire, and anywhere else where times were hard, winters cold, and life short (and apparently in the Appalachians according to a well known and oft-abused internet encyclopedia).

The reason for mentioning this brilliant work of science-fiction/philosophy is that I was always struck by the story of Rob McKenna, described as a “Miserable bastard”, a truck driver who always encountered rain, every day, to the point of cataloguing different types of rain by number, similar to me cataloguing the different routes from Hull to Scarborough (14B via Thwing was my favourite), but let’s not dwell on such a boring point in my life eh? This is the important bit:

“And as he drove on, the rainclouds dragged down the sky after him, for, though he did not know it, Rob McKenna was a Rain God. All he knew was that his working days were miserable and he had a succession of lousy holidays. All the clouds knew was that they loved him and wanted to be near him, to cherish him, and to water him.”

Now, If baggage restrictions weren’t so tight on Qatar airlines, I’d still have Derren Brown’s book “Tricks Of the Mind”, and I’d be able to give you another lovely quote about this. But I can’t, we even had to chuck a couple of non-valuable bits in the bin at the airport; never liked those black shoes anyway, but at least I’d had the foresight to give the Derren Brown book to someone who might appreciate it. But it’s about superstition, about our perceived ability to affect bigger things in the world around us: We press the button at the pedestrian crossing more than once (even though pressing it once is often pointless, and you may as well wait for the lights, certainly in Dubai); we wear lucky clothes to an exam or gig (musos, ever worked with someone with OCD?); we touch wood, when we see a broken mirror at a car boot sale, we say “oh, some poor bastard’s going to have 7 years bad luck”, thespians refuse to mention the name of the Scottish play (MACBETH MACBETH MACBETH!). Interestingly, an Australian friend of mine told me that, when she was young,  if cutlery was dropped in her house, that it signalled the arrival of visitors: an easy superstition to subscribe to I suppose, if all the houses in your country are an average of 135,000 miles apart.

Anyway, back to the point (550ish words later!). Just like Rob McKenna was a rain god, I’m starting to feel like a “recession god”, or a “your-particular-line-of-work-is-going-down-the-pan god”. I can’t think of a really good and witty Clarksonesque description, but you get the idea.  The reason for the superstition bit is that I, as an atheist/rationalist, obviously don’t believe that I have the importance/ability to negatively influence a whole sub-industry. But I keep doing it:  I went to university just as student loans were coming in and students were getting poor (I got lucky to just ride out the wave on that one); I got into music-theatre just as bands were being drastically cut back (I remember a particularly interesting arrangement of Rodrigo’s guitar concerto becoming nicknamed “Rodrigo’s click-track concerto” a year or so after I wrote it, as they removed the guitar chair from the gig so that they could make more money for the overpaid underproductive producers); I went into the recording studio business just as recording studios were all going to the wall.

And now I’ve moved to Dubai: Just as the music thing here is going down the pan, according to what everyone’s telling me. Bugger!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all doom and gloom. I’ve got a nice teaching job starting soon (hopefully), and I’ve got a gig in December (hopefully). I say “hopefully” twice as this town is full of people who wouldn’t last 5 minutes in their jobs in the UK/Europe/Just about anywhere else. I’m not bothered about any of my Facebook musician-friends reading that last sentence, as I’ve had a thorough mental check, and *none* of them come into that category, and I’ve had some fabulous support from a lot of good people over here.  Which is why I’m staying. Just be aware that if you ever work with me, you’d better be looking for an alternative career, as your field of work is probably the next one to suffer “due to financial constraints”. Or I’m possibly succumbing to superstitious belief on that one

A musician wandered along the beach but no one needed him.

Lots of love to all x

Pardon? No more.

From about 1977 to 1983 I attended Brocks Hill County Primary School in Oadby near Leicester.  An unremarkable little school, save for the fact that it had a large “hearing-impaired” unit.  Obviously, this was the 70s/early 80s and “political correctness” was just two words shoved together that meant as much as the words “banana” and “hopeless” shoved together. As a result, the pupils of the hearing-impaired unit were known colloquially as “the deaf kids”.  As far as I could see (not hear of course) they had an OK time, partly because they could switch off from all the crap the teachers were telling us kids who had the hearing of an aurally astute cat. The teachers were equipped with large ungainly flesh-coloured microphones which amplified the nonsense they were forcing down our throats (mostly about poster paints and the Montgolfier brothers) into the deaf ears of “the deaf kids”; who were deaf, of course, and were as likely to hear the lesson as I am likely to feel inspired and uplifted by an episode of Eastenders if the words “ENJOY THIS IN A MISERABLE WAY YOU OVERTLY HAPPY BASTARD” were flashed across the screen every 2 seconds.  The reason for the teachers’ microphones being flesh-coloured* always escaped me, as they hung round their necks, and none of our teachers wore low-cut tops.

I’ve now returned from a little session of feeling quite nauseous about the thought of Mrs. Vera Holder wearing a low-cut top.

Anyway, I’ve thought about those “the deaf kids” a lot in the last few years (apart from the one who stole my “E.T.” pencil case) as they were a jolly lot who, despite all the late 70s left-wingedintegrationess (oh yes!) seemed to form their own (miniscule) community within a small primary school.  Now I know why: Because I’m a bit deaf myself.

About 7 years ago, I did a tour with a particularly abusive entertainment company, whom I won’t name** who decided that they’d get the cheapest sound company that they could and not worry about the aural safety of the audience or the musicians, who were doing 8 shows per week. As a result, I now have tinnitus, which sounds like someone blowing a high-pitched whistle in my head. Constantly. And my hearing drops off sharply below 1khz (about the pitch of the time signal on Radio 4). As a result, the two things I can hear the least are the letter “t” and, most importantly the letter “s”.  As a result, I now believe my own first name to be “Hymen”, so you can imagine how that creates problems.

I’m not moaning. Firstly, my hearing is not getting worse, I’ve had tests, and it is exactly the same as it was since I worked for the unnamed** entertainment company. I’ve learned to “zone-out” the tinnnitus, and I’ve never been good at hearing conversations in noisy venues since I was young, so no change there. Some people I know and love have got very good at slightly raising their voice or (more to the point) clarifying their diction a little, and some people haven’t. The former will remain my good friends with whom I can converse freely, and the latter, while still being good and wonderful people will drift out of my life into a sea of background noise.  Nothing personal, it’s just very lonely being a bit deaf sometimes.

Yesterday I made a decision. Unusual, but true: I’m fed up of saying “sorry” and “pardon” all the while, it’s as if I’m constantly sorry for being alive, which I’m not.  So, instead of saying “sorry” all the while, I’m going to say “you’ll have to speak up [or slower or clearer], otherwise I can’t hear you”.

If that loses me some friends, I don’t care any more.  I attended a deaf-people’s “do” once and it was one of the most happy vibrant (and visually-noisy!) occasions I have ever been to.  If that’s how it has to be, sod it, I’ll learn BSL and dance like a good-un!

I am incredibly thankful for every bit of hearing I have. Some of the people whose albums I have mixed recently seemed thankful for it as well, so perhaps I’m not one of “the deaf kids” yet, which I am again very grateful for.

One of the reasons I love being in a pub (without loud music) is that pissed people tend to shout a lot. So, cheers!

Lots of love to Penny, John***, Spencer, and all the other “deaf kids” and to all good people x

(Ooh, I might do some stuff about Dubai soon!)

Footnotes:

* I wish my lovely MacBook wouldn’t try and correct me on that word: I’m British, and “coloured”  has a completely pointless and beautiful “u” in it. It gives our language extra color. Oh shit…

**Yes I will, of course, it was Qdos Entertainment.

*** Yeah, he was the bastard who stole the pencil case, but I hope he’s well x

Thank you!

I’ve taken a break from my usual blog style to thank everyone. I can’t thank everyone personally: life is busy, and facebook is huge, and I feel wonderfully privileged to have any birthday wishes I have been sent.  I honestly don’t deserve it, as I have had my head down, working too hard for so long and not kept in touch with everyone as perhaps I should.

I’ve had the most lovely day: lovely facebook  messages, good company, video chat with my mum and dad, fantastic presents and night-out-treats from Julia, Tim and Carmen and other good friends in Dubai.

So, thanks so much for all the kind messages and for making this day in the desert very lovely, and making me feel very connected to humanity. I feel very happy and very lucky.

Humbly, lots of love to all x x x

Don’t Worry, Be Happy.

Quite a few years ago, before I was suitably sceptical* and internet-savvy, someone told me Bobby McFerrin had killed himself, the irony being that he had penned the delightfully cheerful song after which this blog is named. I found out months later that this was what we now know to be an internet rumour.  Up until this point, I believed that the most common internet evil was that you could type something boring and technical like, for example, “alesis qs7 keyboard patches” into altavista (oh yes, this was B.G., or ‘Before Google’ for you non-internet-theists) and you would get results that looked like this:

**** **** **** fun **** ***** with dogs **** ***** etc.

I’ve expurgated the worst parts, as it is not my intention to offend. But that using asterisks thing never works anyway, as we all know what it implies. Sorry, I’m talking s***, so I’ll get to the point. (Even the most devout and innocent of you got what I meant by s***, see what I mean?)

As an aside, I’ve been observing censorship in Dubai: The TV is heavily censored, a good idea (bear with me), but badly implemented, since comparatively harmless words like **** and **** are banned, but really unpleasant violence and poor American “comedy” are not.  Imagine how censorship could work for the greater good on British TV. I’ll use BBC early evening as an example:
1. The Eastenders drums are played backwards, so that with every hit, one’s shoulders raise, such that by the end you are sitting upright and happy; the opposite of what happens every time I hear those bloody drums.
2. Watchdog is played out in reverse so that we enjoy half an hour of con-men and large companies giving money back to unsuspecting nice people.
3. Trebor Notsep’s BBC Financial report is played backwards and shows elaborate graphics representing the banks giving billions of pounds back to the British taxpayer.
4. After that, I’d just stick endless episodes of QI on, give us all a ruddy good laugh, and teach us something at the same time. But that’s just me I suppose.

To reflect a bit more: In 1999 I had a brief spell in a couple of psychiatric hospitals with depression.  Along with other experiences (like an unfortunate disturbed woman who used to wander up and down the corridors chanting “come and get your 59-year-old **** and t***) It taught me 6 things: [that last one was "turd", by the way]

1. People are generally good
2. Apart from psychiatrists
3. The drugs don’t work
4. They just make you worse
5. Don’t worry
6. Be happy

Now, you may say that points 1 and 2 are a bitter dig at psychiatrists, and that points 3-6 are merely puerile song lyrics, and you’d be right. But musicians have thoughts and feelings too, we represent some of what the UK is good at (apart from theft of billions** of pounds from taxpayers). And we know how to start a sentence with words you’re not supposed to start a sentence with, like “and” and “but”. But I digress (see?).

I was never good at conclusions, and in this case nothing has changed. All I know is that I had a good old schlep round some “interesting” areas of Dubai yesterday and can only conclude that the happy people are the happy people, regardless of wealth, career or iPhone vs. Blackberry vs. cheapo Nokia (I was trying in vain to get my phone unlocked by the way).  Bit obvious, but we don’t always see it in the UK; we export our poverty by buying cheap stuff from abroad.  Obviously we all feel a bit guilty about this, so we give all our profits to the banks.  So, us UK citizens should be the happiest people on earth.

You’ll be glad to know Bobby McFerrin is still alive and well and giving it large.

Lots of love to all x

* Apparently, Americans spell it “skeptical”, never knew that.
** In case you’d never thought about it, as James Lanchester points out in his book “Oops!”, when we’re trying to get our head round these huge numbers that the banks take take from us: A million seconds is about 11 days; a billion seconds is about 33 years.

Unusually reflective: It’ll get sillier!

While trying to beat insomnia (and failing badly) I learned something fascinating reading “Stephen Fry’s Incomplete & Utter History of Classical Music”.  The thing I learned, which may be of no interest to anyone else, is that the Aulos was one of the earliest woodwind instruments.  Fry says it was Egyptian, Wikipedia says it was Greek. Personally I don’t care which, but am surprised, having a music degree from a nearly-posh university, that I never knew this.  I suppose I was too busy putting pianos through delay units, drinking cognac with a contact-mic on my neck (on stage in front of an audience in the name of art), and drinking too much Merrydown cider (not on stage, and in the name of getting quite drunk for not too much money).

The reason for mentioning this bit of ancient music trivia is that the brand name of my first plastic recorder, 32 years ago, was “Aulos”.  You either had an Aulos or a Dolmetsch.  You could tell the Dolmetsch players: their faces were always red from blowing down an instrument with the force of someone trying to play “blow-football” by blowing at a golf ball through a Tip-Top drinking straw.  The Aulos was an altogether more refined piece of, well, plastic recorder.

A couple of months with the Aulos and I was hooked on music: This led to a brief dalliance with the oboe (painful to play and sounded like a marine bird being abused in some unthinkable way), the flute (a waste of air in my case), and then I went to my Uncle Dave’s house and my young mind was transfixed by an unbelievably beautiful piece of technology: A Farfisa organ.  It made a sort of wobbly whining sound, but you could play more than one wobbly whining note at once.  With both hands!  And with your feet!  And it had a “drum machine”, which made 2 noises: “kss” and “te” (see footnote for some example rhythms).

To cut an incredibly long story very short, I became addicted to music.  My mind was filled with it.  Even though I don’t believe in “God-given” talent (or God, for that matter) it was discovered I had “perfect-pitch” (which is not a banjo lobbed into a lavatory at 20 yards), and despite being pretty good at physics, mathematics and a few other things, music ruled above all else.  The powers-that-be at school told me I could have been a computer programmer, or a nuclear physicist, but those lovely noises obliterated any such notions.  Plus, being in a band when I was 15 was much more lucrative than stacking shelves in Asda, and made me more popular with members of the opposite sex than being able to quote pi to 50 decimal places, or explain simultaneous equations in terms of elephants and mars bars.  As for integral calculus: I think that’s what really got me drinking.

Some kind of music career followed which has ranged from bingo halls to the Albert Hall, pantomimes (my how we laughed), endless hours in front of computer screens (oh, the irony), owning a recording studio, and all sorts of other nonsense.  And broke: many many times.

So here I am, sat in Dubai.  Waiting to be a musician.  Again.  I’ve got a job interview for some piano/voice teaching in about 3 hours (I’m one of those musicians who actually enjoys a bit of teaching), got a few “nibbles” on the gig-front, so I’m hopeful. I’m also nearly cold.  Despite the fact that it’s over 30ºC outside (at 7.30 am!) the (free) a/c has to be on quite heavily to cool the bedrooms.

I don’t really expect anyone who doesn’t know me to read this, so no point explaining how I got here (with my lovely fiancée Julia), but if I’d never picked up that Aulos things would have been very different.  On balance, I’m glad I did pick up the Aulos. People who know me know that I’m a bit clumsy when it comes to anything other than music.  If I’d taken up computer programming, I’d probably have managed to break the internet by now, so no Facebook, Twitter, this blog, or endless videos of cats falling off sofas and attacking printers.

If I’d been a nuclear physicist, you’re probably looking at a scenario which would have made Chernobyl look like those indoor fireworks from the 1970s. If you don’t remember them, or never had the pleasure, I can reliably inform you that they were crap.

Lots of love to all x

Footnote about Farfisa drum rhythms:

SWING: kss-te-te kss-te-te
WALTZ: kss-te-te kss-te-te (with different timing from swing)
MARCH: kss-te kss-te kss-te-te-te-te
BOSSA: kss-te-te-kss-te-te-kss-te-te-te-kss-te-te-kss-te-te