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Music

Rockin’ and a’ Rollin’

Jul 31st, 2010
by Dan.
24 comments

As many of you know, and a few may even have the misfortune to witness, myself and my mighty ukulele made our world debut last a couple of weeks ago at the Hadrian’s Walk wrap up party.

Here’s a photo of me looking dynamic and rock star like:

I’m incredibly grateful to Rich, Rich, Paul and Roger for letting me play alongside them. And Rich Bassinder in particular for badgering me to go through with it when I tried to make feeble nervous excuses as to why I shouldn’t. For the record I joined in on “Girls in their Summer Clothes”, “With a Little Help From My Friends”, and a fair old chunk of “500 Miles” until I stopped because I was paranoid I was playing out of tune (I wasn’t apparently, although I’m yet to be convinced).

I must point out that by no means was I any good. In fact I was rather bad. But the room was full of friends with forgiving natures and so it didn’t really matter.

That’s not to say that there wasn’t some pretty impressive talent on display. Not only are the guys themselves pretty damn skilled, but there was a very cool star turn from Craig on the harmonica for a couple of numbers. It’s true what they say you know, we bald men really can play the blues.

And you know what? I really enjoyed myself. Not particularly the playing in front of an audience bit (although that was fun), but the being part of a band.

As anyone who’s known me for more than a couple of years will tell you, I am a man of fleeting passions. I pick up hobbies like a veritable Mr Toad. Flitting from one to another like a butterfly with ADHD. And amongst my various interests over the years I’ve toyed with playing a number of instruments: guitar, piano, accordion, and now of course the ukulele.

But I’ve never actually played alongside anyone else. Which is a real shame because it’s fantastic. The feeling of being a cog in a machine that’s pumping out music that actually worth listening to is amazing. And I really got into it. Kerry said she even noticed me jigging about a little bit on a couple of the numbers. Not much mind, I am severely tethered by my self consciousness when doing anything even approaching the suburbs of dancing. But from me a slight shift of weight from one leg to another is equivalent to a full on break dance routine from someone else, so relatively speaking I was basically stage diving.

So I had a great time. Although judging by the photos that I’ve seen of the evening it didn’t actually look like it. Oli even caught my eye at one point and told me to smile so as not to wreck a photo he was trying to take. But what can I say, I’m the Morrissey of the uke world, it’s just the way I roll.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever play with the band again. They perform extremely infrequently, and anyway I think muscling in on a paying gig would be stretching the boundaries of friendship a little too far. But it was a hell of a lot of fun and has certainly inspired me to practice a lot more recently. I’ve even managed to master the previously elusive “E” chord now so the world is my oyster.

Amy and I are even developing a mighty fine version of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” which, providing you close your eyes, block your ears, and go and stand three villages away almost sounds like the Glee version. Almost.

I can hear music

Dec 18th, 2009
by Dan.
25 comments

Tara from Sticky Fingers recently blogged about her induction to music as a child. Which set me thinking:

I don’t really remember a great deal of music being played in our house. Certainly for a long time I believed that I didn’t like music (until I discovered that it was actually just that I didn’t like 80′s music).

This musical absence is strange considering that my dad was a member of a band and was also friends with some fairly successful folk musicians. Some of whom had even been on Top of the Pops (as a member of the Dubliners).

My dads band was called Black Cauldron and basically played ceilidh music. His accordion was an ever present brooding menace in the house, with cats, dogs, and children diving for cover every time picked it up. The accordion is a noble ensemble instrument, but solo it can be a little grating. Especially when it’s playing the same jig over and over again.

Twenty five years form now Amy and Evan may well be writing on their holo-blogs about me torturing them with the ukulele – but to be honest the amount I practice I’ll be surprised if they even remember I own one.

I think I was about 15 before I really started to appreciate music, and back then it was a friend who got me into it rather than my parents. Deacon Blue were a big favourite, as was Meatloaf and Richard Marx (oh the shame). These days I’m pretty well entrenched in my Geek Rock (Barenaked Ladies, they Might Be Giants, Ben Folds), although my dad must have had some influence on me because I like a bit of folk too (although more singer/songwriter folk than finger-in-your-ear folk).

Music plays a bigger part in my kids lives than I think it did mine. Possibly because they have somehow wrestled control of every form of media from our grasp. Amy is pretty heavily into High School Musical and Hannah Montana, but I’ve also indoctrinated her with They Might Be Giants and Barenaked Ladies’ kids stuff too. As the younger brother Evan is pretty much forced to like whatever Amy likes, at least for the time being.

At the moment however the entire family are particularly enjoying a bunch of Eric Herman CD’s I recently won in a contest over at A Family Runs Through It. We’ve been aware of Eric for a while due to his excellent Elephant song video on youtube which is one of our Kids all time favorites, have a look – I guarantee that any pre-school kid will love it: