Field Sessions

I've been out at work in the field. Guitar, check; smoke, check. Can't be arsed to write words. Done songs. Let me know what you think...

I'm trying to figure out how to stream, but meanwhile...



* * * THE JUMP * * *

There we go. I think I mended the internet.

It's Alright (I'm High) by Jam's Solo

Field tune 1 by Jam's Solo

Field2 by Jam's Solo

End Credits Theme by Jam's Solo

Me, three years ago

so friday morning i get up at 9. my pole dancing friend was to bring her pole around for the party. unfortunately she didn't show up (due to a trip to the hospital or something, i later found out), but it gave me time to get the house in order for the party. from about 10 til 2 i was busy covering the walls in bacofoil and generally tidying up. at about 2 I went busking, as i have no money for beer. after busking it was time for more organising. mags came round and helped us move furniture. anyway...

so the party started kicking off at about 10. these guys brought their turntables and we hired a massive sound system. but as soon as they set it up they disappeared. enter Tim the DJ. i got to start my party as the flipping DJ. i had no idea what records were what, but somehow managed to mix a decent half hour set. then it goes blurry.

i remember being stood on my kitchen roof out in the back garden, spinning a fire staff, very drunkly, but quite well, yet not well enough to stop me from burning myself. i have a nice red - black bruise down my left arm and a little less hair in patches, but i'm alive.

coming down off the roof, i found my house full of people i've never met before, some decent looking, some less so. oh yeah, my mobile phone showed up, how weird? i went and played guitar for a bit in the guitar room, and then went upstairs to speak to people upstairs (there was people in pretty much every room of my house). then one of the speakers blew. (and one of the windows in the living room got smashed in an unrelated incident).

this brought in the owner of the speakers (and quite a nasty character from my drunken observation). luckily it had nothing to do with me. some asshole djing fucked up and did it. this started the exodus of people from my house.

unfortunately, one of my mates gave me something just before this happened. which left me completely fucked, looking for more partying to be had, whilst trying to get everyone out of my house. i got everyone out and then decided to go for a walk to Pendennis Point, where i heard there was a rave on. not a smart idea with an easily enterable house full of guitars and electrical equipment.

i got to the rave as it was closing down at around dawn. i stuck around and had a smoke with a friend i found there and then passed out in the baking morning sunshine. i awoke a few hours later, dry mouthed to fuck and a little bit dazed. i made it to the leisure centre on the hill at snails' pace desperate for water. i had no money on me, and the fucking cunt behind the counter (who looked about 17 years old) wouldn't let me use the bathroom to get a glass of water, i think i was rude or something. with no energy whatsoever my only form of protest was to pass out on the grass in front of their business. a few more hours of baking in the sun passed before i finally stumbled to my mate Matt's house for about 20 glasses of water.

i finally got in at about 7pm. the place was trashed. window smashed, beer cans and bottles everywhere, cigarette butts, gas canisters... the carpet is totally fucked ... and where did I put my laptop? I was pretty sure I stashed it somewhere, but for the life of me it wasn't in any logical hiding places. Fuck. I had dinner and tidied up a bit before calling it a day. not wanting to be in a break-in-able house, I locked all the guitars in the only lockable room in the house and went to Mags'.

so yesterday i got to do more tidying up, the window still hasn't been sorted and i decided to kip at Mags' again. the day pretty much was a trek to piece together information.

and now today, i've come home for a shower (desperately needed!) and had another hunt around my house my laptop. I did hide it, thank fuck, under my bed. I don't know why i didn't look there before, i think my head hasn't been working properly til now. so i'm now sat in a cafe having a coffee and trying to piece together my last three days for you.

i've got to now go and pick up some glass and putty and stuff to do the window and find out how much it'll cost to hire an industrial carpet cleaner. but the thing is, I can do it so much easier now I've found my laptop, filled in some gaps from friday and know that in less than two weeks time i'll have you.

sorry for taking so fucking long to write to you

xxxxxx

Fuck You Orange Juice

Fuck you, orange juice. All I wanted to do was have a nice glass of your orangey juiciness. And you have to go and make me feel like a shit for consuming you.

It's not even like you're a packet of cigarettes (which, incidentally, I'm trying to quit) where your contents could do me any physical harm. If anything, I’m going for the complete opposite affect. I bought you for your not from concentrate goodness. What thanks do you repay me?

You show your gratitude by telling me that because this is not from concentrate juice; through production and transport, from the plant to my lips, I have caused a larger carbon footprint than if I were to have bought the concentrated version.

I’ve just paid more money to buy a superior and healthier product, from an ungrateful and smug company. Fuck you, orange juice. And fuck you, Tesco.

Evening Essex

I'm sat in the back garden, having a smoke, playing the guitar and enjoying a lovely cup of tea as the sun goes down. It's a different pace out here in the country.

Nah, I need to play some more guitar before it gets any colder and I decide to go in...

Well, you lucky people. Are you in for a treat? I started writing this out of habit and wanting to write more. There wasn't a plot or anything. But now...

So, since I put the screen down I have: played a little more guitar (like one song), gone inside to get some matches, lit and smoked the doob, found that the rest of my weed is missing; the empty (like licked clean) cling film was lying on the floor, no whereabouts of a clue as to why this has just happened.

I looked around the floor, the table, the grass!

And then, because I'm a little high, spun out a bit. Where has my weed gone? Who and how the hell did they get it? I've just come inside to write that down. At the risk of a) getting cold, b) not finding anything or c) being stalked by a new nemesis; I have to act.

What happens next?

The life...

I constantly find myself amazed by the banality of life. Should any of these observations occur within my post, please do not take it is as a lack of gratitude, I just haven't had the chance to enjoy these due to: a) bigger problems (like trying to feed myself); b) other bigger problems (like battling/enjoying substance abuse); or c) thinking that people that are challenged by banal problems don't deserve to live for not having bigger problems.

The other side's fun.

I'm lying on a comfortable bed in a house in Essex. The bed doesn't have bed bugs. My housemates (if you can call them that) have gone to bed. The internet works. Fuck. If blowjobs were flying in through the window, I'd have to pinch myself that I wasn't dreaming if I saw this as my future nine months ago. To clarify, there are no blowjobs, but life's got a lot more peachy in the time it takes to gestate a human being.

My hard work, blood, sweat and tears paid off. And my, how it's paid off. I'm now the editorial assistant on not one, not two but... actually, I forget how many, but quite a few magazines. The times they are a changing and the budgets are getting smaller. But what do I care? I'm included in that budget now. And it's fucking ace!

And life outside of London. That helps the personal budget too. Hell, I just spent a night in the pub watching football and only broke a tenner by going for a portion of chips at half time. I can walk to work. How's that? It doesn't cost a penny. At this rate, I might get out of my student overdraft before I die.

Unlike the bar work, I should probably allow myself a decent night's sleep before I get up and start it all again (not that it was often a willing choice in my past life). But how can I sleep when I've got so much on my mind: What soap should I buy? How can I reduce my carbon footprint? Should we take on A.V.?

Who am I shitting? I don't care about that. (But I would go for A.V. if I could be bothered to register to vote.)

I need a day off

Sorry typewriter. For the need of practicalities this one's going to have to go straight from the laptop.

I woke up on the sofa at my friend James' house. The area seemed vaguely familiar. God knows what time we were up drinking until; I can imagine it was quite late. There was quite a walk back from the club. And I think the club shut at 3.00am.

Crap. Flashbacks: I don't think we stayed til the place closed. I also remember vomiting into a pint glass at the bar. The two might be related.

It's now Sunday and I'm working tonight. I can't remember the last day I had a day off. The old 15 hour day has cropped up to and my next day off is not due until Saturday. I could moan that I'm flagging, not that it would get me anywhere. Neither does the after work socializing. But as a bartender it's part of the job. If you're not offered a free pint after work, something's wrong. If you don't take it, you better have a good reason, otherwise you are wrong.

In the end, after the six hours' sleep every night and the lack of time off, it's all worth it.

It's my last day today.

I'm going to work at a magazine tomorrow.

I got a new toy

Apologies if you find it hard to read. But deal with it. The past is the future. I can be so profound sometimes. Enjoy...

Yeah. Fucking modern technology. A total asshole. It doesn't help that the computer I'm writing this on is giving me instructions/directions/warnings in Polish. My typewriter would never do that. It doesn't have the necessary keys. I'll see if I can do any better on my computer.

Update: Yeah, just click on the image for a more readable reading experience.

Yeah Thursday

Where was I? Ah yes, the battery has arrived. It hasn't taken me this long to fit it. I've been editing the track I'm putting up. But now I can write this from my bed, comfortably, without worrying about it crashing!



My God it's good to see the battery icon in the top right hand corner. Left side's not too bad either.

And here as previously promised, the tunes I came up with earlier:

Jam Solo by Jam's Solo


Thursday 2 by Jam's Solo

Bloody music. It always comes back to music. I almost forgot what I originally came on here to post. Last week's writing.

Last week was London Fashion Week. And quite handily Audio Couture was part of it, providing the sounds for Kristian Aadnevik's A/W 2011 show at The In & Out Club in the heart of Westminster. The free cocktails weren't all that amazing, despite the vodka being made from icebergs. (A shit mix makes a bad drink. End of story.) I'm pretty sure I saw a dude who was either a footballer or from Hollyoaks, but the dude with the disco ball head stole the show. It was out in the courtyard which was sweet because we could continue smoking. Here's the article I did for Audio Couture:

Yeah, you've got a shiny head. Well done.

Audio Couture was this week hard at work at Kristian Aadnevik’s Autumn / Winter show at London Fashion Week. Never one to turn down an invitation (read: free drink) or the opportunity to see the crew out of the office, I headed down to see what all this fashion week fuss was about.

Set in the regal surroundings of The In and Out Club, a members-only townhouse in central London, the Georgian setting was perfect for the drama to come from Kristian’s sartorial and our own José Hita’s audio designs on show. After all, as a former protégé of Donatella Versace and a designer for Alexander McQueen and Roberto Cavalli, Kristian’s designs couldn’t be shown just anywhere.

Drawing on Kristian’s gothic inspiration for his clothes, José’s soundtrack mixed black metal from Kristian’s native Norway with classical music composed by Danny Elfman that created a suicidal sexuality reminiscent of the Camden scene.

With the catwalk placed outside in the townhouse’s terrace, a single giant lantern lit the garden. As the lantern dimmed to darkness, the focus was drawn to the first model by pounding evocative music and a single spotlight. The rest of the pack followed, svelte yet predatory and morbidly at ease prowling the catwalk to the deathly sounds.

Discordant, melancholic but moving tracks by Satyricon and Sombres Forêst were given an elegant twist, softened by the orchestrated tones. A mirror image to the leather bound bodices, velvet throws, buckles, studs and straps on show. This was not just goth. But goth couture.

Shit this post has taken ages. I need to get on with my day. Cheers.

Thursday eh?

It dawned on me the other day that I haven't had a chance to blog on here for a while. I've been writing stuff for Audio Couture (see previous post and the following), so it's about time I post something not entirely about music and more specifically something about me.

So me, eh? Let's see, this morning I had a rad Full English on Queen's Crescent, not right on it, it's freezing and it's market day. That wouldn't have been enjoyable. I've also spent the last half hour mucking around on my guitar. I'll link to that later. [I don't like the idea of someone with a short attention span jumping to that and not reading the rest of the post. It's rude.] But in the general, more than past five minutes of my life, I'm tending bar in West Hampstead at the quite lovely Alice House.

Back to the present and I've just received one. Well, it's from myself. My Mac battery has arrived. I've been without on for the past six months. Time to plug this bad boy in. I'll be back in a min.

Sharing music gets easier OR How I learnt to stop respecting people’s privacy and learnt to love playing my music everywhere

There is now a generation among us who were not alive during the CD’s lifetime. An entire generation exists that neither experienced the change over from vinyl nor MiniDisc’s failure to capture the imagination of the consumer market. You could say that this is about as important as the fact that there will soon be a generation who never witnessed Neighbours broadcast on BBC1. But one thing is for sure (for those of us feeling old now): it this makes us realize how lucky we’ve been to see so much happen in music technology in such a short period of time.

As technology becomes harder, better, faster, stronger, not a lot seems to change in terms of how we use it. From the humble beginnings of the gramophone, to the wireless radio and beyond, music has always been about sharing a passion. But at what point do things become a bit too much? The ghetto blaster may conduct images of street youth, yet it has provided manufactures with a new avenue to pursue in innovating new products. Anyone who has to ride a bus will be aware of how annoying those youth can be playing their (usually crap) music on their mobile phones. Now you can buy backpacks with built-in speakers. Where will the madness end?

And the emergence of speakers built-in to everyday objects can make us look back to the days of over hearing someone’s crap with rose tinted glasses. Pretty much as soon as Sony’s Walkman took off in the 1980s and spawned countless imitators, the great concerned (read: the media), were worried about the dangers it could do to listeners’ hearing. Although if the Daily Mail had their way music would probably be outlawed save for The Last Night of the Proms. Even now, 30 years after the birth of the Walkman, its recent death and successor in the iPod, the Daily Mail are finding things to get in a panic about like the rather amusing/scary (if somewhat unfeasible) phenomenon taking over the United States known as I-Dosing.

So where does music technology go from here? Cloned kittens that play your favourite Jedward track? A television that gets you high by playing Susan Boyle in time to Coronation Street? As long as everyone keeps their cool around sociopath music lovers on their morning commute, we should be all right.

The feature, finally

It's been a while in coming. But finally here's the Catch 22 feature...

Catch 22 Magazine Autumn Winter

2010

Or if you fancy picking up a real copy, it's available at:

Absolut Vintage
Adidas
A-Non Clothing
Bar Vinyl
Beyond Retro
Big Chill House
Boxfresh
Brook Sexual Health Clinic
Carhartt
Camberwell College of Art
Central St Martins Southampton Row
Clapham Picture House
Elbow Room
Fish Hairdressing
Goldsmiths University
Hoxton Pony
Junky Styling
Laban
London College of Fashion
London Graphics Centre
Onitsuka Tiger
Pineapple
Pure Groove Ltd
Rhythm Factory
Rich Mix
Size
Son of Stag
South London Gallery
Southbank University Student Union
Storm Watches
The Duke of Cambridge
The Generator
The Old Sweet Shop
The Westbury
Truman Brewery
Vibe Bar
Westbourne Studios
55DSL

Hope you enjoy.

Tim