If you head over to the Acuphuncture Myspace page now, you’ll find a couple of tunes that we recorded during our gig at St John’s Ball (including one original: Brazilian Song.  We spent ages thinking that song title up, honest).  The recording was made from the desk to my minidisc player, which chose that evening to start having battery issues, so sadly we lost the first two thirds of the set.  Still, it’s enough to give you some idea of how it went; I’ll probably use other bits from the recording on the main site’s listenables page, once I get around to updating it.

Damn it, now I just want to get more gigs!  Though definitely ones at more sensible hours.

Not a Londoner?  Experience the joy of commuting in the capital via one chap’s video of his commute.  And if you want to simulate the journey in the summer, close all the windows on your house and turn the heating on full blast for a couple of hours before you watch it.  Not that I’d know: I’ve never lived in London.  I do fancy a train or bus commute though, I’d get through so many more books if I was in more situations where playing guitar or faffing about on the web was highly inconvenient.

My last gig of May Week! Casa del Funk at Catz: scheduled for 03:00 until 04:00, and in a shocking break from tradition those were the actual times we played.  We were preceded by a solo pianist doing noodly jazz, and hence began the set with a dancefloor covered in sleepy looking couples.  However, the sound engineer had the measure of the problem and applied sufficient volume to stop people sitting on their arses and start shaking them instead.  Rapper’s Delight is now sitting happily in the set, and this time garnered a big response from the audience on the “Ho-tel!  Mo-tel!” section.  Taking a leaf out of Tiago’s book I realised that a lot can be achieved by altering the amount of attack applied to each note, ranging from an almost slap-like sound at maximum pressure to… well, just being quieter at the other end of the range.  And with that, I declare my May Week complete.

… and relax!

OK, now I’m really feeling like I’m too old for this shit. Acuphuncture at Christ’s College: booked for 23.15 - 00.15. Actually played: 23.55 - 00:20. Yes folks, twenty-five minutes. This sets a new record for the Most Pointless Carting Of Musical Equipment Across A College. Thinking about it, we spent more time getting ourselves to the stage than we did on it. We were preceeded by The Beards, who recently lost the Cambridge Band Competition to Alex Harris (ah ha). They played a really good set, mostly compsed of covers, it seemed for the time I was listening, banging out tunes from Jimi Hendrix to James Brown. Their audience was reduced by persistant rain which quickly had most of the ball-goers kitted out with plastic ponchos and umbrellas, and Tom taping binbags together in an effort to fabricate some shield against the weather for his Rhodes. We dispatched our truncated set with ruthless funkery, then decamped to John’s. We were scheduled to have about forty minutes to enjoy ourselves before having to hit the stage for ninety minutes. Of course, you’ll realise by now that things rarely go to plan at balls.
Acuphuncture at St. John’s College: booked for 02:00 - 03:30, actually played 02:20 - 04:10. Oh yes, that’s one hour and fifty minutes of sustained stupid-AM funking right there. We are partly to blame ourselves though: the audience kept asking for more, and lacking contrary instructions from our stage manager, we gave it to ‘em. As it turned out, the band that were supposed to be on at 03:30 had been stood at the side of the stage since 3AM, but hadn’t actually told anyone except the soundguy about their arrival. Oops. Still, we were having a good time, both of Tom’s original pieces went down well, the samba influenced one in particular had people dancing. By the end of the set we had quite an audience, including some chap gurning away at us whilst miming playing various instruments. There’s one at every gig.

This is where I start to feel a bit too old for this shit.  Casa del Funk at Clare Ball: booked for 02:45 to 03:45, scheduled for 02:30 to 03:30, actual playing time due to a drunken comedian who probably would have maintained his steady-state drunken ranting until July had he not been coaxed from the stage: 02:55 to 03:30.  Yes, a ridiculously broken night’s sleep for a thirty-five minute gig.  In addition, we hadn’t been told that the stage came with its own drum kit plus guitar and bass amps, so had spent no little effort lugging all our gear from one side of Clare to another only to find it wasn’t needed.  Insult, meet injury.

That said, it went quite well, the crowd got into us (or at least as into it as a drunken, half-asleep crowd can get), and we were reasonably tight.  In addition I’m starting to find new ideas for fills, but they’re still at the stage where I know kind of what I want to do, but don’t give it a go for fear of fucking up badly.  I’ll have to try and dredge them from my memory next time I practice.  It was also a good gig for making sure you were listening to the rest of the band for cues: the person in control of the smoke machine was rather enthusiastic, to the point where I was losing sight of the headstock of my bass a few times.  I’ve no idea how it all sounded to the punters, though, and I suspect there was another decibel limitation in place because the band after us kicked off with Jamiroquai’s Deeper Underground and their mix was sorely lacking bass and guitar.  Ah well.

Kyla and I like ginger beer a lot, and it was really good to find an alcoholic variety whilst down in New Zealand (called Ginger Tom, served in the Dux Delux in Christchurch and Queenstown). There was also a similar brew at the Cambridge beer fest this year called Ginger Nut, which I (over-)indulged in with great relish, but sadly alcoholic ginger beer doesn’t seem to be generally available in the UK. On this site it talks of some lost age of home ginger beer production:

All over the British Isles people used to relish a frothy, fizzy, gingery, alcoholic beer which was made at home. All you needed was a bit of sugar, ginger, water and a ginger beer ‘plant’. But it wasn’t a typical green, leafy kind of plant. It was a sloppy, white mass that lived in a jam jar.

… The popularity of the ginger beer plant died out.

Not so! I recently (via the Cambridge Freecycle group) acquired a ginger plant, and have been feeding it regularly ever since. Here are the instructions I was given (handed down to me in mystical fashion by a ginger beer guru… well, ok, it was emailed to me).

You will need:
One or two clean jars large enough for over 1 pint liquid
Preferably muslin cloth but at least a very fine sieve
A saucepan to hold at least 8 pints
A funnel
Some clean plastic pop bottles (or if using glass bottles use corks)
sugar
ground ginger
2 lemons

If you have a plant already started:
Keep the plant in a loosely covered jar at 18-21C (room temperature), not in direct sunlight. Every day ‘feed’ the ‘plant’ with 1 tsp ground ginger, 1 tsp sugar and stir. After one week you are ready to make a batch of ginger beer.
On the day you are making the beer, do not feed the plant. Strain the contents of the jar through sieve and/or muslin into another clean jar or bowl. Boil 3 pints of water in a saucepan and leave to cool slightly. Put aside 1 pint to cool to 21C. To the 2 pints of hot water in the saucepan add 1.5lb sugar and the juice of 2 lemons. Stir until all the sugar has dissolved. Add the strained liquid from the plant. When the mixture has cooled to 21C add a further 5 pints of cold water. Mix thoroughly and transfer into clean bottles. Leave 1/8 of the bottle empty to allow for the production of carbon dioxide. The residue that is left in the sieve/cloth should be divided in half. Put one half in a clean jar with the 1 pint of cooled boiled water and continue feeding daily as before. Give the other half to a friend to start their own plant. Leave the bottled ginger beer to mature for 1 week before drinking. Even if you do not want to make another 8 pints of ginger beer every week, the plant should be halved otherwise it will die.

I split my plant the weekend before last, so for the past week I’ve been cosseting 4 litres of ginger beer, and yesterday I cracked into a bottle. The beer is mainly clear, though there are a few floating things in it.  However, with careful pouring, I managed to avoid them and the majority of the sedimenty bits at the bottom.  The taste is good, quite light with a good amount of ginger, though not really as fiery as canned ginger beer.  Overall, I’d say it’s a winner!  And if anyone wants half the plant, just shout…

It’s May Week for the Cambridge Uni colleges, which means plenty gigs at stupid times. Last night/this morning was Casa at Hughes Hall, playing from 01:00 to 03:30.  The ball was a bit poor: there was no food other than crappy little pizza slices and deep-fried doughnut goo (hmmmm, deep-fried goo).  Still, the stage was large, with really attentive sound guys from Anagram Production Services.  Well, the sound was good for us: there was a 75dB limit outside, and chatting with the punters in-between sets we were told that we were “a bit quiet,” which is a shame because on stage it sounded awesome.  As usual there was some comedy crowd action, this time provided by a woman in a short dress who stood on the stage and danced in a half-limbo stance: I can only assume this treated the crowd to a view of her knickers.  Warning: alcohol may make you dance like a twat.  Or show your twat when you dance.

News story of the week. The picture alone is worth a thousand words. That said, if the cat is this big, I reckon that the bear would think twice about taking it on. (That photo is part of a “cats with strats” meme that deserves internet stardom.)

After years of banging on about the possibilty of abandoning the car in favour of healthier, more environmentally-friendly modes of transport, I have finally started cycling to work.  Well, that makes it sound a little more serious in intent than it is; as it stands, I have cycled to work once.  Hopefully I shall keep this up.  It’s a fairly pleasant 6 miles along reasonably non-lorry-laden roads, so there’s only the weather and my own laziness to discourage me.  Heck, if I feel particularly keen I could even run in; when I was running regularly (many years ago) that distance would have taken around 40 minutes.  These days it would probably take the same, but only because I’d stop part-way and take the bus for the rest.

I am fairly certain I don’t do enough exercise: the majority of my life consists of getting out of bed, getting into my car, driving to work where I am seated for most of the day, then driving home and sitting on the sofa.  Then going back to bed.  Lather rinse repeat.  Thus the majority of my motivation to exercise comes from the knowledge that I will die an unecessarily early death if I don’t occasionally push my heart-rate above, say, 85, at least a couple of times a week.  Kyla and I do go to the gym… well, we’re members of a gym at any rate.  Going to the gym just isn’t interesting; I quite enjoying lifting weights, but all the cardio machines are frankly dull, you expend a lot of energy and don’t actually go anywhere.  (As a Bumps program once put it: “Ergs [rowing machines] are the most startlingly inefficient mode of transport known to man.”)  The running machines are a definite case in point: the weather is currently great, yet people are still spending half-an-hour pounding away on the indoor treadmill.  Go outside!  See the world!  Get chased by dogs!  Swallow flies!  Hmmm, ok, maybe there is a reason people stay indoors.

Between this and the old curry fights cancer story, by rights I should be immune to cancer.  Sadly it probably means that I’ll die of liver failure and dyspepsia instead, but you can’t have it both ways.

But don’t rush out to stock the refrigerator. Xanthohumol, is present in such small amounts that a person would have to drink more than 17 beers to consume the same amount found effective in the study

Damnit, there’s always a catch.

Kyla and I went to see Editors at the Brixton Academy last night.  It was a good night; we missed the first band, but caught most of Biffy Clyro’s set, who were ok in an oddball American (despite being from Glasgow) rock kind of way.  I was a bit worried about the sound of the auditorium during BC’s set, the instant they hit the distortion everything just melted into a wall of noise and thumping kick drum, with no bass or vocals.  It was when I heard this happen the first time that I realised I’d left my earplugs at home: a school-boy error.  However, in the Academy’s favour is the interior decor: the stage is designed to look like a Spanish villa.  Unusual.

Despite my initial foreboding about sound quality, Editors (I’m dying to put the definite article infront of their name but somehow resisting) sounded fantastic.  Fantastic, and fantastically loud.  The vocals were actually a lot better live than on the album, maybe there’s a lot of post-production on his voice that isn’t used in the live setting.  He also really ruled the stage, diving around like a maniac and clutching the air while pronouncing his foreboding lyrics.  I do like this kind of music; Editors are often compared to Interpol, another band that I’m a big fan of.  Both bands are apparently influenced by Joy Division, but I don’t know any of their tunes apart from Love Will Tear Us Apart; maybe I should sort myself out with a best-of (or most-miserable-of) sometime.  Anyway, the band worked their way through most of the album tunes, played a new one (which didn’t sound that good to me, but perhaps it’s a grower), and a few old numbers, which reminded me of early (War-era) U2.  Everything was going great, but we had to leave half-an-hour early thanks to the vagaries of the King’s Cross - Cambridge line.

Could someone answer my ears please?  They’re ringing, and it’s annoying me.