"I'm with the band"

It is sometime after 11pm. After much research and investigation I have
finally been able to locate the mandatory Bar, cafe, restaurant, Internet
aware, book exchange, and Laundromat that every university town requires.
I was here under the pretext of looking for a comfortable couch and a
decent espresso, but it was probably just my desire to get bandwidth that
kept me here.

Fortunately the sound of deep thumping from somewhere below me pulled me
out of my self absorbed obsession with email and made me go for a wander
into the basement.

What I found was surprising not only because there was an entire
subterranean level to this place that I hadn't discovered, but it also
explained why people kept disappearing downstairs. I thought that they
were just going to the toilet, but my subconscious head count wasn't
adding up. Luckily I was right :

There was a band playing in the basement.

And this really was a basement. A standard household basement that could
barely hold 20 people and was thus causing a certain amount of discomfort
for the 30 or so people who were in there.

Not being one to shy away from adventure I paid my dues at the bar ( yes
there was a bar down there ), decided against squeezing myself between two
broken chairs and a patch of carpet and instead stood in the corner with
my head at an uncomfortable angle so I could see what was actually going
on.

Well, yes there was a band, but this wasn't exactly a stadium gig we were
dealing with here. It was definitely the ad-hoc hand built set up that we
have all grown to know and respect from our struggling student days. The
guys had a second hand missing desk, some borrowed music stands, the
keyboard player also had to do the mix and they had one acoustic pickup to
share between them.

"We need to take a break now while Darren rebuilds his guitar"

I'm also sure that one of the two speakers wasn't working, but no one
cared. They were all friends anyway, this was just a chance to play some
music without the neighbours sending around the constabulary to 'turn
that music down!' at one minute before midnight.

After the second set, the writer of the music then settled in to talk, in
an apologetic way about his home produced EP and how it had taken him a
year to produce, he still felt that it needed some changes, but, '...If
you don't mind the few mistakes, you may want to listen to it more than
once'

Inside my head I found the daemons screaming the harsh reality to this
poor fellow : 'Your music is just fine, the only reason it you don't like
it is because you, like every other consumptive artist out there, are a
chronic perfectionist and can't leave well enough alone !!'

If he's just laid down the tracks, done a rough mix and then handed it off
to some friends to clean it up, he could have had the whole thing done in
less than a day.

Thats the problem with all these 'desktop publishing tools' they give you
too much time and not enough feedback. If he'd been paying an hourly rate
for the studio and had a Sound engineer shaking his head and reaching for
the Jack Daniels every time he said 'Can I just do that bit again' he
would have nailed it by the second take.

Never publish your own stuff. Everyone needs an editor, even me.

As I settled back and pondered this, I watched them play with their
no-frills setup and noticed how the guitarist kept tripping over his cord
that was obviously too short. It made me wonder at what point in your in
your success path do you finally go to your agent and say

"I'm not doing this again without a wireless amp."

It also made me wonder, that in this day and age when people are bent out
of shape about the health aspects of wireless equipment, why has this
never been a problem for the rock and roll industry.

And why, and this is food for thought, is it that, of all the wireless
equipment that exists in the world, mobile phones never interfere with
musical instruments ?

Then again, perhaps here are some things that aren't worth worrying about.


Tags travel,london,hotel,restaurant,music

Where am I going, and who am I meeting ?

Sunny London, England, United Kingdom, Great Britain, or whatever the
name of this crazy island is.

Either way, this is where I'm to make my home for the next week or so.
For some reason all my friends are jealous of the exercise but I keep
trying to explain to them that I'm not actually whooping it up in the posh
part of Kensington, I'm not spending my time at the Tate Gallery, nor am I
rubbing shoulders movie stars or billionaires.

Instead I'm stuck in a town on the edge of the city that bears the scars
of the soulless town planning of the 1960's and unless I want to spend the
evening in the local bowling alley, or hang out in the pub, there is sod
all else here to do. A friend of mine pinged me, and when I told them I
was at dinner the response was,

"How's the food ?"

There was really only one possible reply :

"English"

Pub Grub: You can have anything you like as long as it comes with mash and
a beer. Breakfast of Champions. And don't get me started about the
coffee. Frankly when it comes to the fine art of a well balanced
combination of freshly ground beans and just the right amount of water,
the English make a very good cup of Tea.

Still, I have noticed that I tend to write better when I'm all bitter and
twisted, my sarcasm has more room to maneuver. So I'm certainly getting
creative value out of the exercise. I have no hesitation in saying that
I'm in the kind of place that you only see in movies, where someone gets
murdered in the first reel and the rest of the cast are working class
dropouts living in housing developments.

My bitchiness is also because I've really had no idea what I was doing on
a day to day basis and have had to play it by ear. I found I kept asking
the local sales team if "...I'll be close to London, so I can find a hotel
that doesn't smell and get rid of this expensive rental car."

Not only was I adverse to being stuck in another Village of the Damned,
but I was also trying to get myself over to Italy for the weekend or
anywhere else that would get me the hell out of dodge. I had even heard
of a 3 hour meeting in New York on Friday that I was supposed to attend.
I had not only considered going back across the pond for the weekend, but
had even booked the flights before my calendar was magically filled.

I got the phone call about an hour after speaking to my travel agent and
suddenly I was supposed to be in London on both Friday afternoon and
early Monday morning. This blew my trip to New York out of the water and
also screwed my plans for Italy, all the flights on Saturday were booked.

Meanwhile my friends were asking me when I was going to be back on town
so we could go out and, you know, have a social life. Well, my kind of
lifestyle not only doesn't offer that sort of luxury, but I also found
out that my company wanted to thank me for all the hard work by flying me
to the Bahamas for 2 days. Next Week. This was just what I needed,

"Thank you for all the hard work and travel, why don't you jump on a plane,
again, and fly on a Sunday, again, for 2 more days away from home"

They even said I could bring a guest, where was I going to find one at
such short notice. Thanks guys.

Still I was finally able to get rid of the car, ( Although, doing 70 miles
per hour on the motorway, on the wrong side of the road, in the rain and
fog, with a stick shift, is an interesting experience ). I also found a
really nice hotel in London by the river. It was actually a yacht, with
large rooms, a large bed, internet access and nothing outside my window
but the water and a few ducks. I even get to stay here for 5 days.

So, somewhat grounded, I'm now stuck on a train, with no leg room, nowhere
to comfortably put my laptop, my left leg going numb and a strange pain
developing my right elbow. I'll be here for 2-3 hours while I head to
the south-west of this island for, presumably, a 1 hour meeting. I will
then turn around and head back again.

C'est La Vie. I did sign on for this mission.

It looks like next month I'll be going to japan as well.


Tags travel,london,hotel,restaurant,trainairline

Virtual Postcards

Cambridge, UK. Home of Isaac newton and scores of other great thinkers.
This it the one place where one would, presumably, expect to find every
corner and alcove jam packed with bookish types madly scratching away at
their ideas.

Well, if they are doing this, they are doing it all in private.

I'm in a coffee shop for the afternoon, taking some personal time and
writing all this down, but I'm the only one here with a laptop. I'm
actually getting strange looks from people. It seems that I'm supposed to
be doing this back in my room, or in a cloister somewhere.

Which is, I realise, how the place was designed. I took some time this
morning to wander the gardens at the back of one of the colleges and they
are exceptionally peaceful and quiet. I just sat there, and relaxed, it
was very Zen. This is just the sort of place where someone could settle
down with a small note pad and solve one of the worlds great problems.

So I guess when people come out, they do it to be social, to participate,
not sit in a corner, like I am, and just spectate.

However, aside from the few times I've forcibly shipwrecked myself on a
tropical island where there is no mobile phone reception, I'm very much in
real time contact with the rest of the world. So I end up having this
strange virtual experience where I'm in many places at once.

So currently, although I'm sitting here periodically writing this down
and reading a book, I'm also managing parallel conversations with my
friends all over the world, all in different time zones.

The conversations always start out the same :

> What are you up to ?

< Well, I'm in the UK actually, Cambridge, Cafe

> Cool, what are you eating ?

And thus we enter into the world of the virtual experience. Years ago you
would just send someone a postcard with a photo of some breathtaking vista
and the usual 'wish you were here.' on the back. Now, aside from the fact
that it is less of a request and more of a way of showing off, ( we all
the know the card really says 'I'm here, and you're not!' ) nothing has
really changed. We're still writing and sending the postcards, but we're
doing them in realtime.

At one point the waitress saw the book I was reading and asked me,

"What's happening ?"

"Well," I replied "Our Young protagonist has just been declared king. But
You may also want to know that one of my friends is about to fly to a
funeral, another is having trouble deciding between the chicken or the
fish. The water is still warm in Sydney, but my friends email server is
broken. And I'm expected to be in Boston in two weeks"

So we are all here living life through our mobile devices. I suppose it
is just a matter of time before we have we can all send real-time video
to whomever we want. I can see it being the start of a whole new industry:

Travel Porn, Be There Now !. See live backpackers as they make their way
through Europe. Choose your destination, more than 50 cities online right
now! Laugh as you watch them order Tapas in broken spanglish ( "you
ordered the tripe and bulls testicles, Senior, no ?" ). Upgrade to the
'Five Star Experience' and see extreme closeups of your Mai Tais and personal
massage.

However, I digress.

Somewhere this afternoon there are to be boat races. The Lent Bumps.
Apparently the river is somewhat narrow and interesting things happen. So
I think I shall don a blazer and join the punters having a punt on the
punters.

After all, we are all just going to see who crashes.

P=mv