Category Archives: Messaged from the Outhouse

It’s been so long.

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Wonderful video, cracking tune, but I’ll never forgive Greg Johnson for cancelling his gig at the Penguin Club.

*shakes fist

Three Colts Lane

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Three Colts Lane in Bethnal Green is not the most beautiful of streets in London. Dilapidated pubs like the Duke of Wellington above and grey victorian houses scatter one side of the street. The other side is a steam punk’s dream, though. One black cab repair shop next to the other (I counted eight) occupies the railway arches and there are literally hundreds of these steampunk vehicles scattered around.

picture courtesy of Taxi Nerd on Flickr

…and after you make it past the cabs, you can stroll through Weavers Field, a large open space in the middle of Bethnal Green. And in it’s middle, you can marvel at a statue that certainly must be the finest proponent of what I would call ‘Orwellian Art’:

They should call it 'Synergy: Exercise and CCTV'

The Muir Woods Suite

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I first stumbled over George Duke when I bought Back on the Block. On one of the tracks, ‘One man woman’, there was this amazing keyboard solo I couldn’t get enough of. You could tell this was an artist comfortable on a synth, a confident user of his slide control wheel and who would use his 30 seconds of glory on a track like this to the max. The fact that Siedah Garret did some outstanding vocal work and Herbie Hancock was there as well certainly helped, but it was Duke’s solo I really liked. So I did some research and was astounded that he was not only Zappa’s keyboarder and was playing with Jean Luc Ponty in Zappa’s houseband back in the early seventies, but that he was influenced by Cal Tjader, played with Cannonball Adderley and pretty much everybody in the American Soul and Jazz industry I  got curious. So I bought the Muir Woods Suite, Duke’s only orchestral work to date, performed live at Montreux Jazz Festival in 1996 (and, as far as I can tell, this is the only recording). Scored for orchestra and band, this features Duke on piano, Stanley Clarke on bass,  Chester Thompson on Drums and Paulinho Dacosta on percussion. Stirling musicians for an extremely interesting piece of music. Somewhere between Gershwin and the German romantics of the late 19th century and hard bop, the 7 movements (or phases) are a well arranged interplay between the orchestra and Duke’s jazz fellows, with some sterling piano work and outstanding melodies.

Much more than mood music or ‘smooth jazz’, this is an outstanding composition that begs to be performed again.

Boat Lift Henrichenburg

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Boat Lift Henrichenburg

The best ever girlfriend and myself had some time during the primary gifting season to visit one of the most glorious industrial monuments in West Germany, the Boat Lift (Schiffshebewerk) in Waltrop. There are actually 2 of them, one next to each other. The glorious one on the picture was built in 1899 and opened officially by that old war horse Wihelm II.

Beautiful, innit?

Icons of the decade

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Yesterday G2 -The Guardian’s magazine – featured their ‘Icons of the decade’. It was a rather ecclectic (‘weird’ would probably be more accurate) mix: David Beckham, Osama bin Laden,The Obamas, Madeleine McCann, Carrie Bradshaw (the one with the long nose from ‘Sex and the City’ for my male readers), Google, Tony Blair, Jamie Oliver, Harry Potter and, er, Britney Spears. I think the Guardian and I differ on the the definition of an icon. G2 must have literally meant the optic aspect of the word. They obviously chose the most depicted people of the last ten years. Whether they have ‘iconic status’ is a different matter. For me an icon represents an ‘important and enduring symbol’. Whether most of G2’s choices fit into that category I have no idea. But hey, this is ‘citizen journalism’,

so let’s try that again:

Fordiebianco’s 10 icons of the decade.

  • Hu Jintao: for turning China into the most powerful nation in the world by skilfully mixing a free economy with an oppressive one party state.
  • Helen Clark: for instilling some sorely needed reforms in this ultra-capitalist country and turning it into a diplomatic powerhouse.
  • Dick Cheney: for turning Washington D.C. into the ultimate evil empire and getting away with it.
  • George W. Bush: for being the moronic posterchild of Dick Cheney’s antics
  • Tony Blair: for squandering the good will of an entire nation and not having anything to show for it in the end
  • Angela Merkel: for proving that female geeks are better world leaders
  • Brian Cox: for proving that you can be cool, sexy and a good communicator with a PhD and a professorship in Physics
  • The Williams Sisters: for dominating a white elitist sport for a decade.
  • The Obamas: for instilling hope into a frazzled humanity
  • Terry Pratchett: for attempting to dissiminate a positive view of humanity and tackling Alzheimer’s in public

A pretty mixed (and depressing) bunch, but then the noughties weren’t a particular ‘good news’ decade. It’s two decisive moments, 9/11 and Copenhagen, will be remembered as the moments when things started to go pear-shaped. It’s hard to be optimistic about the next ten years, but what’s left to do then hope for the better.

So, in the spirit of the season:

Merry bloody Christmas