I’ll be playing at a benefit concert for my sons school at the Dakota Tavern on Ossington Street in Toronto on the evening of the 24th of this month at 6 o’clock till 10. The line up includes Ambrose, Alisdair, myself and Monique Barry, Dave Wall, Jim Creggan, Marc Nadjiwan, Paul Comeau and many other musicians who have kids at the school. Jim and Alisdair will share the bass duties. There will be two sets. The first set will be a combination of originals and covers by side groups of the players then we’ll all come together for a second set of roaring covers - ranging from Elvis and Radiohead to Paul Simon and Van Morrison. Monique and Dave will swap lead vocals for this set. I’m looking forward to a great night. If you’re in town come down and hear some good music and support our local school. It’ll be a nice break from the G20 down the road as well. Maybe we should have done a night of Woody Guthrie songs!

I recently did a some consultations with James Meurer in London. One was an amp consultation as James was in the process of trying and buying some new equipment. I also did a couple of skype-based playing consultations with him. He was kind enough to post his remarks about both processes on Lloyd Cole’s forum. Here are the links if anyone is interested in gaining a bit of insight into how these services I offer actually work.

http://www.lloydcole.com/cgi-bin/mwf/topic_show.pl?tid=124 - for the amp service

http://www.lloydcole.com/cgi-bin/mwf/topic_show.pl?tid=232 - a Q&A regarding the skype based lessons/consultations

I laid out all the pieces for basic mastering last week and all sounds good. So good in fact that I decided to ask the two guys I play regularly with to add some of their expertise to a few tracks ;-) Consequently both Ambrose and Alisdair added their parts and I think we’re almost good to go. Ambrose Pottie is the drummer and Alisdair Jones the bass player. Both are really great players. Ambrose has has recorded and/or performed with quite a number of people, including: Fred Frith, Andrew Cyrille, Eugene Chadbourne, Crash Vegas, The Polka Dogs, Bill Grove, Blue Rodeo, Flaming Dono Drum and Dance Ensemble, Pete Dako, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Tom Walsh, and poet Bill Bissett. Alisdair has played with a number of people including Ani Di Franco and Andy Stochansky. I’ve been jamming with these guys on and off for a couple of years and the next project I work on may well be a collaboration with these guys. That would be exciting! However not getting too far ahead myself I can say the this album now has a title and Second Story Sunlight is what it will be. The last bit of the process will now involve doing the final mastering, credits and artwork then getting it up onto iTunes. Yay, looks like it’s finally there.

Do yourself a favour...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/audio/2010/mar/18/john-surman-paul-morley

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/video/2010/mar/26/polar-bear-interview

http://browse.guardian.co.uk/search?search=Paul+Morley&sitesearch-radio=guardian&go-guardian=Search

'Can a song change the world? A Generation ago we believed it might, but music's revolutionary spirit went quiet way before time was called on the 20th century. Another decade on, Paul Morley still laments the passing of the protest song.'......

A brilliant and provocative article that reminds me why Paul Morley was essential reading for us new-wavers in the UK (and elsewhere) who waited expectantly for the NME every week. He says it better than me but I've touched on this topic recently. Time for us all to wake up from our sleep walking.

The article is here. It's in the PRS members magazine. This link is to the digital edition. Just type in page 26 at the bottom.

I just finished Bill Bryson's 'Neither Here Nor There'. A hilarious travelog account of Bryson's retracing of an earlier journey he and a friend made across Europe in 1972. This second journey he took alone in 1991. Towards the end he's trying to get from Split to Sofia in 4 days (preferably by train) in order to make use of his Bulgarian visa which is about to expire. This part of the journey involves going through Sarajevo and for one page he describes how lovely the city of Sarajevo is. I had to double check the date at this point because I was immediately reminded of another wonderful book I read recently called, 'The Cellist of Sarajevo' by Steven Galloway. This story is set in Sarajevo during the seige which began a few months after Bryson's passing through. It's an ingenious and harrowing story told from a number of perspectives that illustrates what happened when the defeat of all reason produced a monstrously real version of hell for half a million people who only 8 years previously had hosted the winter Olympics.

Topically the New York Times online today has a good article on the reopening of the Sarajevo - Belgrade rail link now running the first trains between the cities in 18 years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/world/europe/11train.html?ref=world

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sarajevo

Here is the book in Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Cellist-Sarajevo-Steven-Galloway/dp/0307397033

View from a floor mattress at dawn on the second of January.