Today's part of the extended Bank Holiday involved a trip to the seaside. We picked a particular location over leisurely breakfast as a casual, last minute change of plan.
Arriving, the sun had forgotten to shine and the place was rather more 'atmospheric' as a result. We wandered about looking at the sea and the deserted beaches before seeking a point for refreshment.
Cutting through an alley back to the small high street, we were greeted by voices from behind us and without any prior discussion, there was Ray the Sax and Val, who'd made completely independent plans to visit the same place.
I think I'd only ever been to the small town maybe once or twice before, never talked about it and only selected it on a whim this morning. Ray and Val had planned to visit another place which had a power outage thus moving along the coast, creating this tiny frame of co-incidence.
We are still away at a country retreat, last night listening to midnight owls and today watching more rain sweep across the Bank Holiday countryside.
The chillout time has also given me a chance to make lazy but satisfying progress on one of my sundry non-work projects, of which there will be more later, as they say.
Aside from that project, I've also said I'll help with some sound mixing but that also requires a block of time and my next few weekends already seem to be getting rather busy. So I'm interested in the sparse information about the new Music 2.0 format just announced which uses a new format called MT9, where the individual instruments in an mp3 like stream can be volume adjusted. Like knocking out the vocals or the lead guitar. Karaoke City.
The specifications are in Chinese at the moment, so I've struggled a bit to follow it, but it seems to include mastering, distribution and licencing models.
I can't imagine most people will want to fiddle with the individual track levels, so I guess it has a specialised audience, and if its driven from an mp3 like format then I wonder if it would be good enough for anyone 'serious' about mixing?
Away for this rainy weekend, which has created some changes of plan.
I can watch the rain hitting the table outside and take solace that the weather is no better for the Grand Prix in Monaco where they keep changing tyres and (less understandably) nose-cones.
Quite a contrast from yesterday's Pimms outdoors whilst watching the swans guarding their cygnets.
Made the most of the Saturday sunshine, because, true to form, I'm told that the rest of the weekend will be damp. So here's some water, in the right place, in a scenic hole in the ground, seen during today's wanderings.
Earning one's bread in the City has its share of occupational hazards, like the occasional lunch, business related drink or inevitable meeting in a coffee shop somewhere. Each of these little events can generate new ideas and things to do, so that by the end of a week like this one, I've still got a stack of 'to dos' to get 'done' before I can settle into the weekend.
Sometimes, like now when I'm sitting in Paternoster Square quietly eating a sandwich from M&S, I can clear my head for a few minutes before the next item appears in the hopper. It may seem slightly anti-social, sitting here alone, but its curiously refreshing.
Some real feel good factor entertainment yesterday evening. We all met in Covent Garden, Julie opened the carrier bag with the black glasses frames and then we rushed around the corner to the Duchess to see Buddy Holly, the musical. What can I say? It was great evening. None of us were really Buddy Holly 'fans' or even knew an awful lot, but as we watched the joyful musical, we realized that we each knew already about a dozen Buddy Holly songs - and they were all good. The cast were full of energy and as it was a Wednesday, they'd probably all been in a matinee earlier in the day. Simple story, Buddy starts as a Country and Western singer. Rebels. Various contracts get torn up. Goes to Decca record label. They want C&W too. Rebels. More contracts get torn up. Finds a small producer. Makes multiple number 1 singles. Meets wife-to-be. And so the story goes on. We all know the sad ending.
Its a small theatre, we were in the stalls near the front. Amongst those in the full theatre there were another 100 with Buddy glasses and the intent to have a whoop, cheer, whistle and generally be a good crowd for the people on stage. And it seemed to work. Those on stage played and sang with great energy and seemed to get a genuine delight from the audience response. If I had to take random London visitors to a show, I think this would be high on any short list. And the good news, its also touring as I discovered by the clever advertising handed out when we were expected to be the audience in a snow bound theatre in Clear Lake, Iowa. So non-Londoners, keep a lookout. Oops, I need to tone down the gushing praise. But why? we all really enjoyed it!
I've had a chance to listen to the Scarlett Johansson album of Tom Waits covers now, via iPod. It's a sort of sincere but tragic report.
I'll believe the story from Scarlett that she really likes Tom Waits and thats why she chose his songs for her album of covers. No-one would do that lightly when there's so much pap to choose from. As an enthusiastic listener to Tom Waits tracks (an acquired taste, I'm sure), I'd really wanted to like this and to get some different interpretations.
Sadly, it comes across a bit like a moderately musical friend's attempt rather than a professionally produced recording.
I suppose the agenda creates a combination of tricky vocals, the need for some slightly chaotic sounding accompaniment and ideally a sensible production that is sympathetic to the singer's range.
Regrettably not.
I can't fathom who mastered the production, but on several tracks the band drown the vocals and themselves seem a little muddied. In other places the accompaniment which is alleged to be from a swampy studio in Louisiana seems to be surviving on old Woolworths 1980's Casio organs. Waits might be able to get away with such tricks, but here it just sounds cheesy.
In fact I can't understand how they've managed to make a couple of the tracks sound like 10cc or Pet Shop Boys.
I think this is quite a pity. Tom Waits has a varied and interesting catalogue and there should be some songs in there which Johansson could sing in a way that was flattering to her vocal range and evocative of the the soundscapes which Waits creates. It comes close on "Green Grass" and maybe the David Bowie backing tracked "Fannin' Street", but overall I'm having to listen with too much sympathy rather than genuine enjoyment.
And I do come to this wanting it to be a good album. I'm not expecting a direct comparison with Waits and indeed was hoping for different ways to interpret the songs. My idle thought is to have a quick go at a remix of one of the tracks to see whether something could be rescued. This isn't the idea when one buys commercial CDs and I think the production team should be made to go back and have another go at mastering this properly instead of just putting all the tracks on +6dB with some 1980s compression. Perhaps its a peril of being a fan of Mr Waits. To Scarlett I say, "Thank you for trying".
T5 today seemed to be in pretty good working order, relatively calm and surprisingly few people around. I had the same experience a few days ago in Terminal 1, which now has some parts closed during its continued use whilst planes are progressively cut over to the new terminal.
I suppose we've got a period of semi calm with effectively twice the terminal space for the ex BA T1 passengers until T5 is fully on stream. My time hanging around inspired one of those 140 character novels for twitter.
Despite impressions, the short stay car park was pretty full and needed some driving around to find a space; what sort of a fool would film it?
I can usually throw in some good stories if I describe my 'plane leaking large amounts of water inside', 'cowering on the floor at Ben Gurion whilst soldiers with guns ran about' or 'one engine on fire landing in the desert' but today we were more at the 'what happened at Terminal 5' level of discussion.
Then back to the office for a continued discussions, finishing late so that I missed my next conference call and then had to spend a couple of hours catching up on preparations for tomorrow's meetings. At least I missed the rush hour on the way home.
Scarlett Johansson's kissing with Penelope Cruz and the manage a trois with Javier Bardem, seems to be getting more publicity than Scarlett's Tom Wait's music album. The amorous moments were for Woody Allen's screenplay of Vicki Christina Barcelona and I'm sure the red lit photography dark room shot of the two women together only escaped from the closed set by accident.
Johansson plays American backpacker Christina in Spain and gets involved with painter Bardem, and his jealous ex-girlfriend Cruz. Scarlett isn't new to the use of affectionate photographs as part of publicity, such as this one on the red carpet with good friend Natalie Portman for that Boleyn girl film back in February. But let's face it, we wanna know whether Scarlett can sing Tom Waits songs well? She claims to have listened since twelve and trekked away to a misty swampland recording studio in Louisiana to make it happen. I'll believe the publicity on this one. Tom Waits is not exactly the way to popular acclaim in music although regular rashbre central readers will know its high on the list of favourites around here.
The problem is that we have to wait for the album. The company have gone all private and secret and pulled any early tracks so that only the LA Times and similar can review it first. In the way of things, it presents rashbre central with a dilemma. Whether to post a couple of rather raw cuts without production. They give an impression (you can hear a click track on the second one), but are not like the proper production of the album.
Scarlett Johansson sings Tom Waits (live in studio)
yesterday falling
It'll have to be reviewed separately when the produced version escapes - get a sense from this video.
As solidarity for Mazzmatazz, rashbre central has developed the five minute instadalek(TM) which can be constructed from a single sheet of A4 paper. Those who missed the original story might not know that Doctor Who(TM), bastion of family viewing traditions prevents a fan Mazzmatazz from distributing (free) knitting patterns of a few of the friendly monsters(TM) on the internet.
The full instructions for the rashbre central instadalek are posted here in flickr and I think we can all agree that the final product looks particularly scary.
