These are Alan and Ian's new songs. They used to form part of the Cylinders (pictured above in 2003), Ian on guitar and Alan on vocals. Ian, way back in the 1980's, played with me in our teenage garage band and has been working with me on various half baked musical ideas ever since.
I'm not on these tracks, which is probably a good thing, as they are jolly good. Alan's sister is on the first track and is duetting on the second.
Ian said they took years to get these songs together, so nice to hear these finished.
You can click on the links below to play the tracks. I believe a right click, or control click on a decent computer, will show a menu item "save link as" and you can save the file locally.
Its funny the things you suddenly miss from the UK. Having had my evening meal, I was suddenly craving a Jacobs Club.
Having consulted this deeply wonderful website http://www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com, I have remembered that my love of the Jacobs Club is mainly nostalgia, they did indeed get a bit crap in more recent days.
This looks great too. http://www.wisechoiceuk.com - selling all things British to the American market, even Dolly Mixtures!
I've been having more fun with Youtube, but this time I've also been combining uploading the videos with editing them together with the latest iMovie on the Mac.
My little Sony Ericsson Cybershot mobile phone also takes video, as well as being a phone, 3 MP camera, radio and MP3 player. Previously these videos were normally pretty useless, as there was no easy way to edit them. So the new iMovie allows you you to import these little clips and edit them together.
The possibilities of this technology is pretty amazing. I always have a phone in my pocket, therefore I always have a video camera in my pocket too. Lots of potential to make little movies.
So the little film below was cut together from around 12 individual files, taken on Saturday night. This was Moe's 30th birthday party, he wanted people to come with wigs. I managed not to bother bringing a wig, but much to my regret, some people had spare ones and I ended up looking like a Scottish Jimi Hendrix! Some people went a lot further and came dressed up to match the wigs.
I decided not to spend a huge amount of time editing this movie together, as the resolution on the camera phone video is pretty low, so this will always be a bit of a throw away. But it's a funny little reminder of last Saturday night. My little Leica takes much better video, but Moe lives in a particularly rough part of Oakland, so I didn't fancy having $700 worth of camera in my pocket walking through that area.
You can see Craig taking the above pic of me in my film, as I had my camera phone phone pointed at him when he was taking it.
Who can spot Lara in her different wigs? They were borrowed too.
Coming next, Bay Area Friends of Europe - The Movie. Taken on the little Leica.
Technical note (for anyone who may be interested): the ".3gp) video format that the camera phone uses needs converted to something more regular, like a ".mp4" file format before you can import that to iMovie, but there are loads of good converters around that'll do that.
Well, the answer in our case was here! Steve Ellis's party July 13 1985 Ramsay Road Kirkcaldy.
This was my friend Steve Ellis's parents party. Of course, the true significance of Live Aid can only be judged with over 20 years hindsight - it was a big thing on the day, but I'm sure it's significance got bigger over the years.
I remember watching the afternoon stuff live, I loved Queen so much, I even made a donation! I remember catching live Bob Geldoff's classic - "fuck the address, there are people dying now, so get on the bloody phone" - funny how that didn't make the DVD! Some people I know taped the whole thing, it'd be fun to get a copy to see all the continuity etc. The DVDs miss a whole lot of the fun.
So whilst Madonna was gyrating around, we were at this party. Most of my friends from my year at school were there - Ian Grayson, Steve Ellis, Steve McIntosh and Steve Bruce.
I was fascinated with video cameras at the time, but owning one was a distant, far off dream. Steve Ellis's Dad always has so much cool stuff though, and he is behind the camera here.
A funny little snapshot of 22 years ago.
Later at the party, I remember having a few beers and trying to play the Genesis rarity (from around the time of their first album) "One Eyed Hound", and no one really understanding what it was meant to be. Glad that never made it onto video.
I've got one of my trademark black shirts on here and a "I've got it made in Hong Kong" T shirt, I think they were British Airways promotional T Shirts my Mum won.
We went to see the wonderful Santa Clara Players last night doing Steel Magnolias.
Our friend Daphne Nayar was outstanding as M'lynn, the Mother character. It was amazing to see someone I know well acting like they were someone else.
In the theatrical tradition, we bought Daphne some flowers. The lady on the far left was in the play too. she played Ouiser.
Daphne has has some wonderful reviews, here is one -
****1/2 "Poignant..." Review posted by: Marj Moehrke from San Jose CA, Oct 28, 2007 I attended the 2pm show on Saturday. The theatre was almost full. I was impressed by how the play was able to tell the story from one set. I had seen the movie and knew what to expect next. I couldn't imagine how they would tell the story from one set only but they did it to perfection. The timing between the actresses was flawless. I especially thought that the character who portrayed the mother was fantastic. The character who portayed Clairee had such an authentic southern accent, I almost thought she had been raised in the south! My 15 year old was laughing out loud so many times. And he also admitted to crying too. Thanks for putting on such a poignant show. We were still wiping away tears as we left the theatre.
"Excellent performances" Comment posted by: Wal Oliver from Watsonville, Oct 29, 2007 I enjoyed the play as much as I enjoyed the movie.
Theplayers website is here - http://www.scplayers.org
Tom's blog about life in America as a Scottish person, appreciating and making music, politics, travel, my own philosophy and other stuff not easy to categorise.
