This is only of interest if you want to keep track of my location; it’s kind of a World-Wide Where’s Wally? (Though in my case that should probably have a definite article in it.) Against all the odds my plane into Chicago arrived early, though the flight made me realise just how bad was the cold that I’d had on my flight to Montreal; I have no recollection of my ears popping during that flight, so I assume I was so bunged up that the pressure never equalised between inner ear and outer. It’s kind of like those diving suits from the film The Abyss, only with phlegm rather than super-oxygenated fluid.

Nice.

Nothing else to report because I was way too busy to see that much of Chicago. Still, as part of my work I got to play with a sweet quad-core Mac, which has stimulated an unhealthy amount of Mac lust in me.

I’m currently sat in the Benelux pub enjoying a pint of their rather good stout. And hey, free wifi! It’s snowing outside, and pointing that out every time it happens is something that the Canadians have been mocking me about. I wonder if it’s actually possible to get bored of playing with snow? If I lived up a mountain or in Canada I’m sure I’d still be throwing snowballs at all and sundry every time the opportunity arose.
There seem to be quite a few places that serve decent beer in the city, something that I also found on the North West coast of the US (Seattle, Portland, etc). Though similar to there, there is a tendency to serve it perhaps a touch too cold; there’s good brewing going on, but the warm British pint doesn’t seem to have quite been equalled
For the next stop on my world tour I’m off to what is apparently a rather fog-bound and water-logged Chicago. Apparently O’Hare at Chicago is even worse than the passport control log jam at Montreal airport; it took all of Brand New Second Hand to make it through the queue to get into Canada, so I’m wondering how many albums I’ll get through on my way into the USA.

Not for a holiday though; the company I work for has its HQ there.  I flew over with BA, and in business class, which is a first for me; getting my “Dr” put on my passport has so far failed to score me any free extra luxury at the check-in desk, this was actually paid for.  However, from reading this article it would seem that the only way the hoi polloi can make it into business class is to actually die, so maybe I shouldn’t be too disappointed.

The one downside to the Acuphuncture gig on the 2nd was that I was leaving (on a jet plane, no less) for France from Gatwick airport at 7AM the following morning. Made it to bed at 1AM, then up at 2.40 and off we went! Kyla and I were in La Plagne this time, with a big bunch of friends. (Never mention that you’re going skiing - even distant acquaintances will latch themselves onto your holiday, and suddenly you’re booking and organising 15 people… fortunately I managed to duck any responsibility for planning this time.) The holiday was with Skiworld, who were… ok. The flights were delayed both ways, and Lyon airport really isn’t suited to the arrival of several hundred people, so getting there and back was a drag.  The delay on the way back was alleviated by an impromptu game of “Passport Top Trumps,” followed by opening a book on how late we’d leave (winning answer: 1 hour 20 minutes). Still, the chalet was pleasant enough (apart from the comedically small hot water tank for our basement room, which ran out quicker than loo roll at a fig-eating contest.) The weather was good on the whole, and Kyla and I now finish our third skiing holiday with a skill level of Not Shit. (In Elite terms, I’d say we’re Average.) We even took time out to chuck ourselves off the mountain not attached to sticks: we went parapenting (paragliding) off the top of Grande Rochette, which was good, albeit slightly incompatible with the raging hangover from the pubcrawl the previous night.

If you’re really bored, you can check out our holiday snaps here.

I’ve been away, hence the slight hiatus in posts. Acuphuncture played at Jazz at John’s on March 2nd, which was a nice bit of repeat business, though with all the same presentational issues of the last time: why do they hire a big PA and sound guy set up, yet insist on keeping all the house lights up? Hire some lights, guys, it’s supposed to be a party! Regarding the sound, I’m starting to wonder about Mulletboy’s style; I remember Derek commenting on the recording from last year’s gig that his kit sounded like a huge rock monster, and the same effect was achieved with Seb’s kit this time (Seb kindly standing in for Derek whilst the latter was off doing a big band gig.)  Still, disregarding this stylistic difference, it’s difficult to fault the quality of the sound, so I shouldn’t split hairs.

Support was provided by a random student band that apparently was going to be the house band for a play later in the term… though they didn’t play anything from their show, instead doing a bunch of Commitments style covers.  It was passable enough, though a little difficult to explain what the hell they were doing at a jazz gig until the chap who organised the evening turned out to be in the band.  Ah ha.

Unusually everything ran pretty much according to schedule, so we played 10.30 ’til midnight, with a setlist that only included one new cover, Jamiroquai’s High Times.  (I’m particularly pleased to be covering this because it contains one of my favourite guitar solos - it’s not tricky, it’s just right.)  Because of the busy-ness that I’ve mentioned previously I hadn’t done much practice, so I opted to substitute volume for skill and took my big amp.  This actually turned out to be fortuitous, because our on-stage levels were up in the ear-buggering zone; generally I’ll run the amp in half power (20W), but I had to take it up to full power to maintain a reasonable clean tone.  However the foldback was able to cope nicely, so despite the volume we were all able to hear what was going on.  All told, not a bad gig; I’ll have to start doing my bit and see if I can land some others, because I think Tom’s sorted them all out so far…