Riadsala’s Blog

Collegiate shag is knackering! Step kick step kick step step…. and it’s danced in three, over swing music in four! Very confusing for the bassist in me! Reminds me of the days of playing silly music in Warwick with Moz! (a drummer friend of mine).

Anyway, shag was fun. A bit of a silly, yet very bouncy and tiring, dance. I guess that’s what you’d expect from from a dance called shag! See youtube here for an example.

Tired legs now…

I’ve decided that I’ve had enough of sitting on warm buses now it’s sunny outside and have bought myself a new bike to cycle to uni and back (maybe not every day, as it’s 7 miles, but at least a couple).Unfortuantly , as soon as i got the bike the weather turned overcast and it started to rain 😦 And today, when I bused it in form Louisa’s flat, it’s nice and sunny again!Grrr. Scottish weather eh.

I’ve not done anything exciting musically recently. Slowly working on a few recordings when I get the chance is about it – I’ve recorded a lovely new intro for Amy (on of Al K’s songs), first bass recording that I’ve done and been 100% happy with. Also had fun recording Louisa’s new egg shaker!

I imagine that I’ll be back to gigging a bit next month. And there should be a new track from Bard soon featuring me on bass.

And now back to work … the exciting world of textural defect detection using gabor filters today. Looking forward to tonight though, off swing dancing! Beginners’ Shag! Oh er…. And just when I was getting the hang of Lindy Hop.

24 Hour Lab.

Shame we were never more organised, I reckon we could have done a couple of really good tunes if we’d all had more time and whatnot. I quite liked the way this one turned out in the end, even if there are a few sections with nothing happening.

Lucy de Butts – vocals

Naeem  Datardina – guitar

Me – bass

Emile Figueiras – drums

Righteo, back to work…

Last Friday saw the final curtain call for the short lived, but fun, outfit known as E/T/C. Luckily, the ending was captured and can be heard here (The Hoochie Coochie Man – live at Henry’s). Some of the tracks off the album can be found at Roger’s site.

So what does the future hold? Well, for Nick, he’s off exploring in India and then taking a crack at London (bet now on there being an E/T/C reunion gig in London one day next year!). Roger and I are taking a little break, while thinking about forming another band. Blue Wednesday will continue, although possibly without me until the new band is formed/Al K returns to sunny Edinburgh.

In the mean time, I now have more time to practise my warr, along with looking forward to the Afro Scot band gearing up for the gig in May. I might even work on some solo material again (oh, I bet you can’t wait 🙂 )

Well, tonight is what should definitely be the last E?T/C gig. Nick had to skip the Wednesday gig in Newcastle and I figured it would be best to let Roger do a solo slot as I doubt that my bass parts would work to well in a more acoustic setting (looking forward to reworking them though). Anyway, to cut a long story short, we managed to get a last minute gig at Henry’s Cellar Bar 🙂 And Nick is still just about in town and can make it! Should be a good evening, Henry’s is a good place to pay, a nice sound guy too. Fingers crossed we ca get a nice live recording of the gig to go with the cd.

Talking of the cd, it’s done. And I’m the only one not to have heard it yet. Roger and Nick have entitled it “This Is The Modern Blues” which is fine by me.  Hopefully there’ll be a track or two up on the web at some point.

Still talking of cds, I bought a best of Talking Heads recently. Given that I’m a fan of Adrien Belew and Brian Eno, it seemed to make sense. I only really knew “Once In A Lifetime” so it’s a chance to see what else they did. I also gave in and bought the recent Pentangle boxset. I guess that means I can give the old cd I borrowed of my dad a year or so ago back to him! The boxset is great, with  sleeve notes so heavy that they detached themselves from the case.

The band that uses to be known as Pretty Sound also had their first (and final???) gig of the year at Henry’s. Which went really well. A bit rough and ready in places, but there was a pretty good turn out and judging by the recordings we played pretty well for the most part 🙂 I don’t know what else, if anything, will be happening as Naeem, Lucy and Emile have finals coming up, but it’s been fun playing with them 🙂 And we ended up with a handful of decent songs 🙂