I’ve been playing for Indian Weddings for a few years now but this year the work has really picked up with these gigs. They’re not the toughest or the most typical gigs you’ll ever do but these days we have a great group of musicians and make a ace show.
I’ve had a number of interesting gigs doing these weddings but the other week turned out to be pretty funny.
Waiting to play outside the grooms house in the morning they asked us to play. We knew that its was going to be an intensive set and we’d made up out set list so not wanting to repeat anything we had to come Butch (our Dohl player) told us we should improvised something.
The Dohl’s began to play and the horn section (Consisting of Me and my mates Neil-Sax and Mark-Trombone) looked at one another trying to think of something appropriate to play. It as then that neil started playing the background rift from Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Mark came in with the stabs and I put the tune over the top.
I chipped in with Mercy Mercy Mercy next and the horns followed with bass line and harmonies and we finished with Mark who played the bass line from the Chicken (Neil and I putting in the tune).
It’s awesome playing with great musicians. I’m not entirely sureit was the most appropriate music but the groom told our manager how great he thought we were - Winner!!!
This is a picture of my buddy Neil in the gear we wear for the weddings plus a few Jackson-like additions : )
Traffic Wardens are notoriously despised and now I see why.
When I went to see Johnny in London last week I was given a gem of a parking ticket. Arriving 10 minutes before free parking began I was ticketed with a mere 3 minutes to go. That’s £60 for 3 minutes!! You can also see it as £20 a minute!! I could go on but it winds me up too much.
As if that wasn’t enough I parked at Kiddiminster yesterday, paid for the day and when leaving the car park I noticed a little green sign. It stated in a tiny font that green bordered bays were for 3 hours only, it’s a good job I moved it to a blue bay as when I returned there were 2 traffic wardens laughing with one another whilst ticketing a car in the space that mine began. Crazy!
But there’s more… Johnny texted me yesterday to tell me about his run in with more traffic wardens.
Parking his car outside his house (where mine was parked a few days before) he paid and displayed his ticket and then found a nice little yellow ticket on his wind screen. Infuriated he drove around the corner to the councils office to appeal his ticket. He went straight to the counter and explained the situation, they told him to come back tomorrow. This took no more than 2 minutes. When he left he came out to … can you guess?? A clamper trying to fix a clamp onto his car.
No one knows what happened to that clamper but I like to think that he went to a better place once had finished with him. Put it this way; He didn’t manage to get the clamp on his car : )
I was going to put in a short clip of Johnny and his reaction to my ticket. I had to sensor with a few beeps but I don’t think it’s entirely appropriate : P. It pretty much sums up my feelings and I’m sure you can sympathize.
My regular blog audience will know of my good pal Dave Livesey. If not, here he is in action:
I was sorting through some photos on my mac the other day when I came across some photos of us when we first met in college and I though they were worth posting. The black and white picture shows Dave and I in our early days at a house party and the colour photo shows us working with my Sound Ideas orchestra whilst we were undertaking the first rehearsal of The Green Hornet. That gesture I’m making with my right hand is my power conducting position. It’ll be in Matt’s Big Book Of Conducting
Dave and I will be recording our podcast in publishing it on our sites in the next couple of months but first I’d like him to get back on track with his regular blogs as I’ve been waiting too long since his last one!!! - I’ll be forwarding this post to you so you have a few days to get yourself sorted out : ).
So check out davelivesey.co.uk - where he better of placed a new post by now - and don’t forget if you’d like to see and hear some of his ace compositions go toDave’s Virb Page. (Soon to be featuring my performance of Spit Calm)
Oh and of course here’s a link to Matt’s Virb Page - incase you’d like to see my amazing videos’ music player and photo’s.
Well today I’ll be in London. This is a pre prepared blog just to make sure I don’t miss a day (I told you I was back on top of this blogging lark ).
I’ve come down to London for a few days to scope out areas that I can move to next year. My house mates to be are currently traveling round Hong Kong so if your reading this I’d like to say - You Guys Suck!! - and I’m not jealous at all. : )
This gave me the chance to visit my good pal, fellow trumpet player and native Londoner Jonny. Unfortunately Jonny has the annoying habit of being a first study pianist, but no ones perfect. I’ve accepted that and moved on. Now we get on fine : P. Actually Jonny is one of my only musicians mates that I’ve never heard play. I assume he’s pretty killer as he’s making his living as a pro and he’s not living in a box.
So we’ll be strolling round London and checking out the terrain for my pals in Hong Kong. I think I might even take the old video camera for a laugh and make a short pointless film for them. I’ll see what time allows.
I’ve been a fan of Enormous Since I was thirteen. When I first heard ‘My Type’ I found myself having to sit down and learnt the trumpet solo. It’s safe to say that Enormous weren’t just a hit with me but a massive hit with my mates too. I brought their CD on our Music Tours and the guys loved them. There’s something very cool about having 30 music kids singing “She’s my Type, She’s not very bright!!” whilst floating on a boat down the River Rhine : ) with German’s looking on in confusion.
These kids weren’t musical idiots either - quite a few make their living from the music industry. From working as pro musicians (like me) to teaching music and composition to my good friend who is now taking his music doctorate. In fact I know that this soon to be Dr of music still has the old crackly bootleg* tape of Enormous stuff I gave him when we were at school.
* Sorry guys. I was a kid and I’ll make sure they all buy your upcoming album to make up for it : P. We got a lot of fun out of listening to your music though - So I Regret Nothing!!!
You can now imagine how happy I was to hear that Enormous are making a return to the music scene - and I say it’s about time!!
I rediscovered the guys through a podcast I heard at Big Arena Recordswhere Davey Lawrence aka Napoleon Fantastic (singer/songwriter for Enormous) chats and sings some pretty incredible songs from the forthcoming album; Electric Baby Grand.
I was going to put a link to the podcast itself but to be honest I’d rather you check them out for yourself at Big Arena Records. If you like what you hear you can check out Napoleon Fantastic’s Blog.
I hope you enjoy!!
(Don’t forget that my own Podcast is in production and until that’s finished there are plenty of videos and music you can listen to around my site as well as the Master Musician Animation coming to mattrobertsmusic.com within the week.)
I’ve now finished Master Musician (going up next week) and I’ve added a new page which will be up tomorrow.
Not to forget a New Track that I’ve added to my Virb Player called Trumpet Soloist Samples. So you can check that out as well. It’s a few sample clips fomr the solo recordings I made last year that I’ve finally get round to mixing down.
My next aim is to carry on and mix down the other recordings that I made from that session. These include music from the Quarter Tones, Ben Kennedy, Sarah Broder and The Fanfare Lads. The problem is it’s such a time consuming process I can either do the Eurobusk footage first or the mixing. I haven’t decided which yet. I’ll let you know.
I’ve just set in motion my new animated video series which will be featured on the site. I’ll only go as far as disclosing the name as; Master Musician. You’ll have to wait for more.
But you won’t have to wait too long for the Second Eurobusk Trailer which will be released sometime over the next 10 days (if you haven’t seen the First follow this Eurobusk Link).
So you have lots to look forward to and don’t forget that there’s lots of pictures videos and post to look back on through the archives of this site. Feel free to comment on anything that takes your fancy - I always reply - and feel free to email me with anything that you are interested in or would like to discuss.
Andy Crowley got in touch with me through my post on Danny Elfman and he even showed me his fantastic dissertation on Danny Elfman’s film scores. Unfortunately for Andy his work was so good I wasn’t able to give him a great deal of constructive criticism :). I hope you do well with it Andy.
And finally:
I’m still waiting for my recording equipment in the post but when it eventually arrives I can sort out a studio date with Mr Dave Livesey for our Podcast. Feel free to email myself or Dave with any topics you’d like to hear discussed on our podcast!!
If you’ve not been following my blog you may not be aware that The Quarter Tones are going to release a documentary about the trip we took last christmas. The Trip was called Eurobusk and all details can be found on The Quarter Tones Page.
Because the task of editing down over 100 hours of footage from 2 cameras has taken longer than we first expected I’ve created two trailers to wet your appetite for the full episodes to come.
After a lot of thought I’ve made plans to move to London with one of my best mates. Chris Birch (aka Birchy from Eurobusk 07) is going there to study for his doctorate in Music and I’m going to try and expand my playing prospects.
London’s never truly appealed to me until recently but more and more of my friends and peers are migrating there so I thought; What The Hell
It’s going to be an exciting change moving to the capital and it will be a useful experience to see if it’s the place for me and I’ll have lots of stuff to write about on the London scene. The move is currently set for Sept 08.
I’ll have the Eurobusk Trailer up over the weekend so keep watching this space.
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