The other thing that has just started goin’ on is that one of the mighty Bouche’s lady singerists Beth Walthew has asked me to play guitar at her album launch party (just as a one-off – Beth’s usual axe-slinger, the incredibly talented Justin Dwyer, has double-booked himself).  This is going to be held at the B Bar on Sunday May 30th.  Having just had a little listen to the samples on her website and myspace page, I wonder if I might want to fit a pickup to my acoustic – I reckon that Slippin’ tune on her myspace needs some strummery to complete the Zero 7 feel.

There are some useful ideas in there; the b5 dominant lydian thing when changing the fourth is something I particularly liked.  At the moment whenever I try this it is the equivalent of a boxer telegraphing his next punch, it turns up as a disconnected scale run in the middle of whatever I’m playing.  Ah well, hopefully this will become more natural.

I don’t know if this will ever turn up on the tellybox, but with a bit of luck it will go viral online.

And thinking about rathergood.com, there was a recent “What’s the best cover version EVAR” discussion on Radio6 one weekend, and Elbow’s cover of Amerie’s One Thing (a song much in favour with this author) was gushed all over by a presenter.  This is rubbish, their cover of Independent Woman kicks a whole lot of arse.

I played a gig with Casa last night at the Vet’s graduation party.  We’ve done vet gigs before, and usually they are alcohol soaked and riotous.  In stark contrast to this last night was quite restrained, for the simple reason that their parents were present.  One girl came up to us before we started and said, “Do you see the lady in the white top and black hair-piece?  She’ll probably try and get on stage with you at some point; please don’t let her.  She’s my mother.”  As it turned out, Mrs Heinz is quite a step up from the usual band interloper, displaying some skill on the tambourine.  I imagine her daughter was hiding somewhere whilst her mum was up with us.

In preparation for this gig I cleaned and restrung a couple of my guitars, the strat and my Patrick Eggle Berlin.  Taking them both, I soundchecked with the strat but then had a change of mind and used the Berlin.  Tip from the top: don’t do this.  I had to fiddle about with the EQ and volume to adjust to the Berlin’s humbuckers.  At least the humbuckers have coil taps, so I could drop back to a single coil sound when I wanted, although this reminded me why I don’t like coil-taps: the volume and EQ is completely different.  You get everything set up on your amp for one pickup combo, then flick a switch on the guitar and now you need to change everything again.  I’m starting to think that versatility in guitars is a bad thing, one trick ponies are the way to go.

What were Dragonforce thinking of?  Surely this is deliberate.

In lieu of any guitar-related content, have a bit of booze news: there’s a pretty good porter currently available in Tesco called Midnight Sun.  It’s all roast caramel and chocolate notes (can’t belive I used the word “notes” there) and is just what the doctor ordered now the weather’s turning cold.  Recommended.  Between this and Old Hookey from the Hook Norton brewery I’m quite enjoying a bit of bottled ale at the moment (even if CAMRA would tell me it isn’t real ale in a bottle as neither are bottle conditioned).