The saxophone is a cheater’s trumpet, since you don’t need to purse your lips to get a sound from it. It is the chav scum of the clarinet world. It is an instrument more of torture than of music. In jazz, it complements the piano and double bass in much the same way as scraping an angry cat down a blackboard. It is generally played by people who do not realize this. To the sax player, loud is good and bad notes and bad noises are called “innovation” and “expression”.
Please, in the name of all that is beautiful in music, ban the saxophone!
If you don’t believe me, listen to http://search.reviews.ebay.co.uk/The-Legend-Of-Cuban-Percussion_EAN_0657036102729_W0QQfvcsZ1277QQsoprZ3985478 especially track 11 /edit: oops, track 12 I mean.
Chatting to a female friend one lunchtime, I mentioned how different the world looks when you’re not “getting any” to when you are. She said there was no shortage of “it” out there so there was no need to ever not be getting any.
It reminded me of the following joke.
Mick: “I’m off to dat dere London Town on business, and I’m not happy about it, I hear dey’re really rude, don’t give yer de toime of day in de street, won’t even talk to yer in de pubs”
Paddy: “Oh, sure it’s not true, why dere’s a pub down dere where dey’re real friendly. From de moment you go in dey’ll not let you buy your own drink, they’ll chat to yer all evenin and just keep gettin de rounds in. Den at closing toime, dey let yer go upstairs and have de toime of your life, with multiple partners, all noight! Fer free!”
Mick: “Sure, I’ll look up dat place, where is it exactly?”
Paddy: “I don’t know it exactly, it was not me who went, it was me sister”
Print out this blog entry and blu-tak it to your telly. Use it to translate adverts.
Clinically = not; Clinically proven to reduce wrinkles
Up to = less than; Up to 50% off!
Serve chilled = tastes like crap
Serving Suggestion = Much soggier than this when actually cooked.
Other XYZ are available = we are being really naughty and putting adverts on the BBC, which you aready pay for.
Saturday was the confluence of a juggling convention (with some friends crashing at mine complete with wee babby in tow), lunch with other friends and a freecycler supposedly turning up at my place to pick up some stuff. I cycled since that’s by far the most sensible way to get from my (current) house into town, and having waited in for the freecycler (a no-show, grr) I was in a bit of a hurry to get to Bobo Lobo where a wonderful leisurely lunch was had from about 13:15 to about 15:45.
I could get into leisurely lunches, though it’s going to be interesting when I move to a few miles further out as the getting there and away part will become a lot less leisurely.
With this in mind, I decided I would cycle to the juggling convention at Joseph Rowntree school to demonstrate to myself that it was in fact a simple matter to cycle that kind of distance.
Well, it bloody wasn’t. Getting to the school was fine, but once there, it rained on the bike. Most people went to pizza hut by car for dinner, but my lift dissolved so I went instead to the local chippy. I had no cash and no means of getting to a cash machine, and after the show, we all went to a pub miles and miles away in the freezing wet dark. Needless to say I blagged a lift and went to pick up my bike the next day in the CAR.
The verdict: cycling is fine as long as wherever you’re going it’s OK to arrive dishevelled, sweaty and wet through, with a bag full of lights, pump and dayglo waterproofs.
The reason we have cars is that they are BETTER.
I almost completely failed to capitalise on my day off yesterday, though a 2.5 hour lunch with Kate, Suzanne and Stephen is a luxury not available on workdays. I failed to:
- do any groceries
- finish all the laundry
- iron any shirts
- buy blank CDs
- do any paperwork
- wash up
- plan salsa lesson for today
- contact Kim and practise lesson plan
- pack just about anything for moving house
But succeeded in:
- ordering a decent front bike light with the hope of a reasonable battery-life
- ebaying my piano tuning kit
- building a custom bracket (out of junk) and fixing the rear light to my bike where it can be seen when something is on the carrier
- trashing a bunch of out-of-date disks and manuals in preparation for moving
- getting an idea for where things are going to go in the new house
- freecycling an exercise bike that I bought for a hare-brained scheme that never came to fruition
The following items were also achieved, thoughmay not have been priority items, had I thought about it:
- recorded two interesting snare-drum patterns on my camera
- accompanied an entire salsa album on the timbales, with very few cockups.
Back from the BritSalsaFest. I was very naughty and didn’t hang out with all the top dancers and try to hone my technique but instead went to Cha-cha-cha, Salsa-swing, Cuban Casino style, rhythm and timing…
There were 5 hours of workshops during the day and an indoor market selling music, clothes, shoes, smoothies and foot massage, then in the evening there were shows from 9:30 to about 11:30 then social dancing till 5am. I didn’t stay to the end.
If you get a chance to see a show featuring the Swing Guys from Milan, DO IT. Also Tropical Gem, from Milan too. In fact, if you like dance, just move to Milan.
Ten of us shared a house and there was no “big brother” effect that I was aware of. Communal home-cooked pasta meals were very welcome and amazingly we managed to get all ten people through the single shower in the morning and evening with very little difficulty.
Glad I took two days off after the fest cos I’ve certainly not yet recovered!
Last night was the “salsa jam night” at the Sela Bar, Leeds, featuring Los Feos, the locally-grown organic salsa band we’ve been to twice at the bsaement bar in York. I emailed them to ask whether “salsa jam night” meant bring your instruments, and it did, so I did.
Before I went I thought I’d better quickly get the timbales out and check that I could still play.
I couldn’t!
Catastrophe!
That’ll learn me for being sensible and not playing them in the house. I nearly chickened out of going at all, but I know that I’ve regretted more things I haven’t done than things that I have so I went, taking the instruments, and with the sort of nerves inside that Kate must have nearly all the time, a background tingling of the gut wondering what the hell I’m getting into now!
Found the venue and parked up without any trouble and left the instruments in the car to go and scope things out. The band were going to do a short set, then have a break and then invite people up to have a go. I watched with nerves mounting and experienced the strange sensation of sitting and listening to live salsa without dancing with anyone!
In the break I got chatting to the band and they were very friendly and reassuring. Without so much of an audience I might have got up and had a go but I wasn’t ready. I can tell I have a lot to learn yet before I can hang out with “real” latin musicians! The band leader said he’d call me up there when they did a cha-cha-cha so I watched some of the jam session then
RAN AWAY as fast as would let me be undetected!
What a coward!
But then, it’s a bit like when I did my driving test. I was nervous about my driving test because I’d had to find the venue, didn’t know what was involved etc, and I got right up to the bit before they check you can read the number plate on that car over there before discovering that my examiner had been in a crash and my test was postponed. The second time I went without all the extra stress because I knew where everything was, and passed just fine. Not convinced I would have the first time.
So unless that was the last salsa jam night ever ever, I did the right thing.
Perhaps freecycle ought to be better named “reclutter”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m really enjoying it. So far I have “composted” my computer collection - turning 8 unused computers into 2 respectable pentiumII-class linux boxen for someone to play with during their MSc and 6 useless hulks in a skip at the tip. I don’t have to feel too bad about those computers, I didn’t buy most of them, I didn’t fund their manufacture, and I went a lot further than most to get the last bits of life out of them. They were lower-spec than the stuff in the giveaway bin at the York computer recycling project.
Actually, this is a bugbear of mine: this is NOT recycling, it is re-use. For it to be re-cycling, it has to be cyclic. Turning paper into soil to grow trees is recycling. Turning a computer into another computer is re-use. It doesn’t provide any route to turning that motherboard back into rocks and oil.
So there I was, congratulating myself on having made an extra 2 cubic metres of space in my house, when I realised I have also acquired a grubby armchair and a non-working washing machine.