Bye bye, Ivor

ivor
Originally uploaded by jovike.

Comic genius Ivor Cutler died on Friday. John Junkin died today. Oh no, and Linda Smith has gone too.

Ivor's sessions on the John Peel show were a joy. His honesty and economy of language remain refreshing, as does his careful pronunciation. I would always be there with my cassette recorder, possibly missing a night in the pub to catch his latest radio session in the 1970s. I knew where he lived in Camden Town but I never visited.

On my desk is a plastic bird on a spring, labelled with dymo: 'Fremsley' named after one of his poems.

Ivor's entry on Wikipedia is a bit thin. That will probably change in a few days. (Update: it did.)

Ivor on Flickr: the beautiful kindnesses.

Hawkwind Christmas Party

Hawkwind Christmas Party ticket
Originally uploaded by jovike.

You'll never guess where I was last night! Hawkwind's Christmas party was a special gig at the Astoria in Charing Cross Road. Support was Spacehead, whom I missed by spending too long chatting in Borders over the road, and Man, the "Welsh Wizards". Man and Hawkwind did a US tour together in 1974. Yes, a long time ago, and now Martin Ace's son Josh is in the band on rhythm guitar with his father on bass, and someone called Richards on lead: very good. Richards also sounds a bit like Deke Leonard singing, it's the Welsh accent you see. They stomped through faithful high-energy versions of C'mon, Romain and Spunk Rock.

Hawkwind did a lot of crowd-pleasers as it was a party with only a couple of tracks from the new album, maybe because Lene Lovich and Arthur Brown were not present. Following a poll on hawkwind.com, the set included 7 by 7 and Upside Down (which I have never heard live before) with vocals from Mr. Dibs, also Brainbox Pollution and Psychedelic Warlords. Amazing! Robotic dancers in neon paint came on for Angela Android and reappeared, gambolling or capering as appropriate throughout. Hawkwind's lightshow has at last gone half digital, remaining an analogue hybrid. I've long thought they should use something like G-Force as a backdrop: well now they are, but still combined with glimpses of the the space art, film and graphics accumulated over the decades. Magic.

Really great music with Dave Brock playing a lot of guitar instead of noodling with the synthesiser. Alan Davey energetic as ever, Richard Chadwick on good form. (Who the saxophonist or keyboard player were I know not.) When the double live CD comes out, buy it.

Clayson and the Argonauts

Alan Clayson is performing on Saturday and Monday evening in the capital, and reforming the Argonauts after twenty years for a concert on the 3rd of December.

Update: great gig! Dark suited, the group played all the complex numbers with gusto. At 51, the bassist was the youngest. Alan Clayson himself, with a shock of white hair, has lost little of the brio and fine enunciation that I saw him display thirty years ago in a gig at the Torrington, North Finchley. I got the CD: recommended, especially if you like Robert Calvert with whom he shares a WWII nostalgia.

I'm feeling old myself now, having to take off my glasses to read the tiny print in the extensive liner notes in the CD. He's written lots of rock books too.

(Who was the support band? they were good, like to get some of their stuff.)

Scientist Schtick: Lullaby to a Lab Coat

Hawkwind at the Astoria.

There was a riot on the previous night in the Astoria when Baby Shambles did not turn up and the audience smashed up the venue, so it must have been a bit fraught today for Hawkwind, setting up for tonight's gig. In the end it was a big success and I bet most people would not have known. 

Hawkwind fans are an anarchic bunch of malcontents now spanning three generations and I had no trouble picking them out from the ordinary public in Totty Court tube and along Charing Cross Road, even though very few of the fans dressed as aliens, clones or scientists which we were supposed to for tonight. 

Support groups often have a hard time with the Hawkwind audience so all credit to The Vs, an all-girl band who held the crowd with some solid guitar work, followed by Dumpy's Spacenutz which was him doing an extended solo to a driving backing. Hawkwind did an apocalyptic version of Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear in Smoke) and the usual old favourites like Brainbox Pollution, Spirit of the Age and - speaking of sex - new numbers Angela Android and Loving the Machine interpreted very well by the dancers: he gives her a flower and she responds, confused, with various programmed actions, eventually letting him fix the flower in her hair. Alan Davey presented a treatment of a newly-discovered Calvert tape with live music over Bob intoning his poem Ode to a Time Flower. Someone came on and did a very good reading of Bob's Ten Seconds of Forever. Hammering versions of Brainstorm, Angels of Death... all good stuff. Mini mosh pits opened at intervals. Dave Brock was enjoying himself, mostly playing guitar at the front of the stage and not hidden behind banks of synthesisers like he was in the 90s. Richard Chadwick on drums. Someone else on synthesisers. 35 years on, still great. I hope this gig was recorded! (flyer)

iPod photo

The iPod is now mainstream, but as Insanely Great reminds us, it's nothing compared to blue jeans, now there's a product. And Mac360 posits that the new iPod photo may be Apple's first iPod mistake? Who cares, it's 60 gig, I could get most of my music on there. The U2 iPod is a mistake for me because I don't care for U2. Perhaps the iPod is too popular for these Mac sites to endorse now it is no longer Mac-only.

I'll tell you what's so great about the iPod: the design, which allows you to hold it in one hand and scroll or scrub and select all the lists and playlists and contacts and the calendar and notes and play the games and pause and power off and change the volume by moving only your thumb on that hand. Brilliant design. A world-beater. The notes are really useful: there are already databases available to tell you where the nearest wi-fi or toilet is. Well, fairly useful.

I'll also tell you this: the iPod is only the hardware component of iTunes. The iTunes Music Store is but a single window in iTunes. The photo functions of the iPod photo need iTunes to sync. And the iPod is nothing compared to Apple's revolutionary product before last: Airport Express and AirTunes - which needs iTunes.

Now some random iPod stories:

I beg to inform you that Podcasting killed the HTML star. It's a big phenomenon and I've just noticed it. Even the BBC has the podcasting bug. It's an RSS feed with audio that you can download to your mp3 player, or listen to on your computer. Brilliant idea, to supplement the thousands of radiostreams, now anyone can be a DJ or pundit on demand without having to worry about supplying a 24 hour feed. As Les Posen says: 'podcasting is less about the method of delivery and more about freedom of choice and democratisation of the spoken word'.

Update: now NetNewsWire supports podcasts, so you can download new stuff automatically to your iPod and listen to it while travelling.

And for those of you who are instant musicians using Apple's amazing GarageBand, or something more exotic, there's a new site MacIdol that gives you 3 GB free to store your music and let others hear it - and stick it on their iPods.

Empty iPod? For those of you with no record collection or musical knowledge: an iPod PlayList book. Links to iMixes on the iTunes Music Store. I haven't seen the playlists so I can't recommend this. By the way, this is my first iMix (iTunes link).

Are you as above, plus wealthy? Maybe the sort of person who buys books by the yard, before Hello magazine visits? Then you need MusicGuru. I found this site hilarious.

Or you could get someone else to rip all your CDs for you at a dollar a disc: the FillPod chappie teaches his customers how to do backups as well, and he doesn't keep copies, he says, which must mean he will be decoding the same CDs over and over, which must mean he has the volume turned right down.

Ballmer's iPod [via Pogue's Posts - always worth a look.]

The iBend is a one-off art piece - this must be one of the few eBay pages with a sound sample - for which bidding has ended.

Now, you can bring the Heavy Metal experience everywhere, the only thing better is being on the stage with your favorite metal band.

The iBend comes with four rocking guitar solos, that you control. Jam out with the radical whammy CENSTRON bend wheel, or rock the extreme pitch knob, you won't be disappointed. You may even get that elusive guitar god gig you have been looking for. Begin your new life, with the iBend.

iPod Socks are real, not something I made up. I think I want some!

We all know we can plug an iPod into a Smart car or a not-so-smart BMW, but how about a portable block party?

This paragraph contains an unmixed metaphor. The iTunes plugin for Audioscrobbler is called iScrobbler and its latest incarnation manages to copy data from my iPod to my Audioscrobbler page if I do things in the right order. As a guide, there is a text file with the plugin called iPod Submission Limitations, something the UK press does not have now. Stay with me. In tonight's Evening Standard (8/12/04) there is a big article on the iPod flash, a rumoured new device. For an old Apple fan like me, this is like seeing Hawkwind's new album win the Mercury prize. But don't they realize that if they spill the beans on Steve Jobs' latest project, he may just can it?