Music

If you haven’t heard Kelly then you’re in for a treat!!

Kelly is the latest up and coming female vocal artist in Britain. She has a new album out which is available to download on iTunes. It has reviews in the Music Unions magazine is featured artist on the PRS podcast and has regular plays on thejazz (DAB digital radio).

I first met Kelly in a Big Band that I play lead in a couple of years ago where she sang a few charts like Black Coffee and Orange Coloured Sky. She said she did it for a bit of a laugh as it was a change from her normal stuff but she made a good job of it.

When I got to know her a little more I found out that her album had just hit the No.1 download at Indie Records and things where starting to happen for her. All her charts are her own original works and completely unique despite having a distinct folk/blues influence.

Check out Kelly’s Webpage to hear samples of her music, see a live video and to find more about her and where you can see her next gig.

If you are just starting out as a blogger, not getting an audience for what you have to say or just stuck in a posting rut then this is a great site for you.

Upstartblogger.com has some great advice on how to become a successful blogger and the upstart community is so big that you’ll be able to interact with like-minded people on subjects you are all interested in.

It has recently changed hands to my good friend and fellow professional musician Ashley Morgan. So this site should be especially interesting to musicians as well as bloggers. Let me know what you think.

I’m currently in Liverpool and attemptin to restart an old project with a few musicians here.

It’s refrehing to get some time to play and more importantyly not to play. Since I left college Im on the up. I think this is due to the fact that I’m well rested and not destroying my chops on a weekly basis. For example; in my second year I had a day where I would play for the Jazz course Big Band in the Morning (2hrs), Wind Band in the afternoon (2:00 hrs) and then play lead in the BMus Big Band (2hrs. After which I would jump on a train to a Big Band outside of college (2hrs).

I would be destroyed at the end of it. And because I was an idiot I’d be in the practice room at the next day at 8 o’clock getting frustrated about bad chops!

Being able to rest is helping a massive amount. I was quite happily popping out F’s and F sharps at a big band rehearsal the other night and I had a nice string of well controlled double G’s. So I’m well on track to get my double A’s back.

Good Times.

Continuing…

6) When the guys eventually turned up we headed back to the gig venue – their reason for leaving us was that they had bumped into someone from Eastenders and gone with them for an autograph?!?  Weird!

7) So we finally did the gig. Neil and I went back to the car ready to leave. We waited for 40 mins for the 2 losers to get back to the car when they turned up with bin bags full of vodka and whisky that they said the groom had given them.

8 ) Obviously later it turned out that they had stolen them.

9) On the way back to Brum there was more “DJ Storm” but this time it was accompanied by speeding down the motorway at 100mph.

10) Here it is!! The best moment of the day! Obviously idiots are like magnets – a car pulled up by the side of ours with a guy who had a beer in his hand AT THE WHEEL.

Our driver then decided to race. Great!! Neil and I where yelling at this fool to slow down (with no response) and when your overtaking and undertaking at 109 mph there is a definite fear of death!!

It didn’t last long but felt like an age!!

Needless to say Neil and I lived through it – just.

But it was a big learning experience and something neither of us will forget.

Continuing…

3) Once we got to London these clowns would actually stop halfway across zebra crossings to stop girls walking across and heckle them – most likely because they were sleazy creeps!

4) When we did get to where we were going we had time to kill. So these guys said they wanted to go grab some food. Neil and I followed them to a restaurant by the docks (we weren’t eating). Here they proceeded to tell the waiter that they needed more time to chose what they wanted – they did this for 40 minutes and it was very embarrassing. Especially when they got up and left after ordering nothing at the end of it!!

5) So we got up and left. Neil and I walked ahead of the other 2 around the docks and talked about how bad this gig was. But when we turned round the 2 lads had gone!!

We doubled back to find them, asking strangers around the docks if they’d seen them. Then we went back to where the car was parked. WAS being the important word here.

The car had gone!!

Luckily I always take my trumpet with me and had my wallet and mobile phone (as did Neil). So we called the guy who booked us to sort this out and while we waited we sat by the docks and laughed – that’s the only thing you can really do!!

Driven hundreds of miles by a maniac who has abandoned us in the middle of London.

See tomorrows post for the 3^rd and final instalment for my no.1 worst gig in my career (so far).

The worst gig that I’ve had so far in my career!!!

I was on this one off gig with my friend Neil when I was 19.

It started off in Birmingham where we were picked up by 2 guys we were to play the gig with (and who we’d never met before). This is where it started to go wrong and in order to help show how bad this gig was I’ve numbered the painful moments:

1) We were driven to Peterborough with terrible music played at a ridiculous level brought to us courtesy of “DJ Storm”. (To get a full picture of this imagine the inside of a pounding boy racers car – this was where we were).

Luckily for Neil, he had earplugs in his case. Unluckily for me I didn’t. So I had to wrap a jumper around my head!!

And yes we did ask this idiot to turn it down repeatedly but as well as him being on his mobile phone, driving with one hand (on a sort of  knob that bus’s and large vehicles use on his wheel) and his music we didn’t want to give him any more distractions!!

- Let me make this point now, I would never be in this situation ever again but that’s because of the experience I have now and didn’t have then. So if you read this and are then put in a similar situation; get out the car! -

2) We went to Peterborough and played a half an hour set. Then we were told that the next set was in London! More driving with the maniac. Brilliant!!

Tomorrows post continues with Part 2 – It gets worse, much worse

I used to play with a fantastic big band that I will not name. It was lead by a brilliant trumpet player and lovely bloke (when not standing in front of the band).

I was playing second trumpet for this big band at the time. Everything was going in the gig until 8 bars before the lead trumpet solo in String Of Pearls the lead player says; “Quick can you play this solo (as he pointed at my part.)”

I nodded and went for this solo (which was written and I knew as it’s a standard thing you pick up as you grow up). However it didn’t sounding anything like how I knew it and to my horror I realised that the line that the lead player had pointed to was the optional harmony and the tune was on his part (that for some reason he’d decided not to play on the spur of the moment).

There was nothing I could really do.

But the band leader decided to shout and scream at me whilst I was playing in front of the audience and when we got to the end he continued to rant a scream.

Surprise, surprise the lead trumpet player kept quiet (until he apologised in a whisper to me).

I‘ve never walked out on a gig before and I’ve never taken so much crap before. In front of peers and the audience I look back and can’t believe that I managed to suck it up and stay to the end of the gig.

To his partial credit the leader called me up later after the gig had finished and I’d gone home, to say how sorry he was. But he didn’t do it in front of the band or face to face with me so I feel sorry for him.

I stayed with the band another month as to leave straight after that would have tarnished my reputation and that’s what I would have been remembered for. But that was a really terrible gig!!

This wasn’t too long ago actually.

It was a gig I deped for Ash with his mate Paul (See Previous Blog Better to Say Nothing Than to Lie). At a showcase for a soul band that hired us as a horn section.

Now in theory the gig seemed great. Play for 9 min for a good fee be home for 8ish.

Paul picked me up at 3:30 and we had a play through the three charts we were playing. That was fine. Then we went to Nottingham for this gig.

It turns out that we were the last band to play of the night and we didn’t play until about 1am!!!

That’s bad enough.

However because the venue was in the middle of no where we were stuck at this showcase. After 15 acts of magicians, vocal tributes like “Malt Loaf” and World War 2 duets we were up to play.(You can imagine the type of acts - Just picture X Factor scraping the barrel and you’ll get the most talented act of the evening!!)

I got back ironically at 3:30 in the morning making it a nice round 11 hours and 51 minutes of driving and waiting with 9 minutes of actual playing.

And the final slap in the face was the only food I could get was a sandwich (not a magical sandwich, just a normal 2 slices of bread job) that cost £7.00.

Fun!!

This was an on going bad experience. I saw a poster looking for a trumpet player to go on a show tour so I applied, auditioned and got the job.

It turned out that it was for a Carpenters Show - Beggars can’t be choosers though.

So I ended up doing 2 tours with these guys. The MD was an absolute joke and incredibly weird. His little sister (who was the talent and sang as Karen Carpenter) was continually bullied by him at rehearsals in front of the rest of the band and she was only 16 (but looked about 20 with a strong voice to match).

It was a truly terrible experience and I suffered through it with some really cool musicians. I’ve got to say that the audience was just as weird. And average age of 100+ and when I did see a young couple in the first row they were sobbing with happiness. - Did I mention it was an on stage band, multiplying the pain, I could sob looking back at it .

The most weird thing was that people would hang around the stage door at the end and want our autographs?! The show wasn’t even that good. Having said that though it was a surprising market with every venue sold out.

A truly weird experience.