September 26, 2003
Blast from the past
Many years ago, I joined a band called The Midwich Cuckoos. I recall seeing an advert pinned up somewhere (can’t remember where - probably Music Village) “Imaginitive Keyboard Required”. A few days later, I was in a pokey little studio in Ely, talking to Martin Randle (the band’s guitarist). And a couple of days after that, I was meeting a long haired blonde at Cambridge train station. His name was Phil Gaze, and he played the drums. Within minutes, I was meeting Richard Nind (voice) and Bondy (bass). We rehearsed in what appeared to be an old cow shed, where you had to keep sticking 50p pieces in the meter, otherwise the power went out. We played a few gigs. We weren’t, in truth, very good. We split up later the same year.
None of this has stopped Phil Gaze (not the world’s most avid archivist, it has to be said) hanging on to the original advert that I saw back in March 1990, scanning it and sending it to me.
And in case you are wondering what we looked like…
On a separate note, I’ve been asked to put Submarine up on the site - so here it is!
September 24, 2003
Funky Bawu
Do you Bawu? Rohan Leach does, and he should know (check out his site at http://www.rohanleach.com/)
I first met Rohan around 10 years ago - he was an ex Metalhead with a love of Jazz. Over the past few years he’s been concentrating on classical compositions, and has had many of his works performed by all sorts of prestigious people at all sorts of prestigious events. Of course, none of this compares with a recent collaborative project (a collection of Bawu and piano pieces), that we’ve been talking about for a few months.
Imagine my surprise when a CD arrived the other day containing the framework for a piece of music. I’ve just finished adding Piano, Drums, and Banjo, and the resultant rough mix sounds pretty good.
(A Bawu is a sort of chinese flute-like instrument by the way. And a piano is a large wooden box containing strings and hammers, which is - oh, you probably know this stuff already.)