Steve’s Internet Stuffs

Ruby And The Emeralds is a band name I've known about for YEARS. Paddy, their sax player, used to post on the forum on my old website under that name, and has talked about them since then. He was also Captain Baz when he first appeared on Twitter. Still hadn't heard them til tonight! 

So here's their album, uploaded to bandcamp - it's 2 years old (which, may even mean it was recorded when they were all music students... Paddy?), and is a really fun, punky, ska and reggae influenced collection, shambolic and energetic in all the right ways - kinda like a more ska-fied version of The Minutemen - recorded pretty much live (it sounds) but probably benefiting from the lively 80s American punk feel that gives it. And features some fab sax playing from Paddy. 

Enjoy! 

Emma-Lee is a singer-songwriter from Toronto, who produced the record and edited this video herself. [edit: I've just seen from the notes on the youtube vid that this was recorded on a Zoom H4 and edited in Garageband! Wikkid!] 

Lobelia once shared the bill with her in Montreal, and knows her online from way back, and showed me this video last night..  

Enjoy: 

Playing with Orphy Robinson is, as I've said in the past, like playing with a supremely talented 8 year old. His sense of freedom, fun, mischief and abandonment in experimentation are really infectious and inspiring. He's also a great composer and arranger, but most of our playing together has been in improvised music formats. 

Corey Mwamba is someone I've played with only a few times, but who has the distinction of writing the hardest music I've ever played (at the London Jazz Festival a couple of years back, in a amazing band with Corey and I, Robert Mitchell, Deborah Jordan and Shaney Forbes) - he's a unique musician, writing beautifully complex and twisted music without much of an academic framework for him - it's both insanely complex and involved while also being utterly visceral, compelling music. 

The Derby gig was all improv, some of it insanely dissonant, viscous stuff and some funky and melodic. It went all over the place. I also remember doing a really cool solo improv in the middle of it, that I'd LOVE to hear again. I'll have to track down whoever made the film... 

Here it is, some great thoughts on music making from Orphy and Corey and some fun snippets of the three of us playing... 

All those stories of mad stuff that don't usually get told til people get back to work in January, and are often forgotten, get told as they happen, in glorious detail, with photos. People spending the day with family members they don't get on with are able to vent online, share in other's joy and generally diffuse their own frustration by laughing about it with friends who understand. 

But of course, it's also a way to find out that sadness and tragedy takes no time off for festive holidays. 

Such is was with the news, via @kristinhersh, that Vic Chesnutt is in a coma, very seriously ill. All kinds of conflicting info about how and why are circulating, and it would do no-one any favours for me to repeat hearsay here, but from Kristin's last tweet, it sounds like it's awful but there's a glimmer of hope somewhere in the distance:

"you people are so full of love-thank you for sending it vic and tina's way-the situation is complex and sad, but there's still a little hope" is what Kristin wrote. 

Short answer - an amazing singer/songwriter, who happens to be paraplegic. His first couple of albums were produced by Michael Stipe, he's collaborated with a host of great people, including Kristin Hersh, and is very prolific. 

here's one of his Youtube vids: 

His music is all over the place. If you want to help, go and buy some. Seriously. 

The US still has freaky medical laws that mean if he gets better, he's going to be massively in debt. Even if he just has to pay a deductible, it could be huge. 

Here are some weblinks:

buy from iTunes.

Vic's stuff on youtube.

So, you know I wrote a novel, right? You can read all about it and download it by clicking on this link to my blog.

There's no hard copy of the book yet (there will be eventually). But there are t-shirts for the band in the book! 

I ordered one, and got it this morning - they're awesome! Here's mine -  

 

My duo with Theo started out at a Looping festival thing in Norwich. We were both playing, he joined in on one of my tunes, sounded amazing, and we got together to play. 

The track 'Lovely' from this album is one of those I still can't quite believe we played. All the tracks on this album are improvised - nothing written, no prearranged info at all. We just started playing. For 'Lovely', I said 'OK, let's try something without any looping'. We did, and that was it. 

I hope you enjoy it - have a listen, and if you want to download it's pay what you want - just put in what you think it's worth... or as much as you can afford, if what you think it's worth is more than the money you've got in your band account ;) 

Here's the latest one - on Audioboo - it sounds fantastic. It's a cliche to say 'people don't make records that sound like that any more' but it really sounds to me like everything that was good about 'real' indie music in the early 90s without any of the crapness that's been piled on it since by the excesses of Britpop and the quest for radio-friendliness. 

Yup, Nizlopi's JCB Song was 'real' grass-roots. And, perversely, it's success may have ended up killing the band... I don't know. 

here's the gorgeous video for it: 

 

:)