Eoin's Blog

St Patrick's Day In Pictures

2011-03-17T20:23:00.000Z

The tooth that no longer resides in my mouth

moving me one step closer to Shane MacGowan:

My name is Paddy:

England beat the West Indies today to (probably) scrape through to the quarter finals of the Cricket World Cup...

... no thanks to their earlier defeat at the hands of the mighty Irish team and Kevin Cuchulain O'Brien. The most Irish looking man this side of Shane MacGowan:

At the Dentist's With Maggie Thatcher

2011-03-09T19:32:00.002Z

This Tuesday I spent some unhappy hours in the dentist's chair undergoing some root canal treatment. I spent an hour or so of high-pitched drilling and poking me with this:

After that, my dentist (who has the fortune to be lovely, extremely capable and a cricket-lover) called to her assistant to say that she required immediate help from the head of the dental practice.

This was not what I was hoping to hear.

The head of the practice came and did some similar poking. And he did some blood-staunching. After 30 minutes he also gave up and said some technical things which I think I accurately translated as:

'Holy mother of God - this guy's tooth is messed up and there is nothing we can do here which isn't basically going to leave him deformed and paralysed. Pump the gap where his tooth used to be full of paraformaldehyde and polyfilla and book him in with the specialist.'

So, this Friday, I am booked in for an appointment for the same treatment with a specialist. I am looking forward to the end of this appointment because hopefully I will be fixed and the pain and dental torture will go away.

On the other hand, it is going to be ridiculously expensive because this specialist doesn't work for the NHS but, as I always say, you can't put a price on not being in constant pain.

It does make me wonder, though. What would I do if I couldn't afford this specialist treatment? Presumably I would have to go for the paralysis/deformity option. I don't know very much about the politics of the 1980s because I was too young to care but I'm pretty sure we have Thatcher to blame for this kind of thing.

On the other hand, this problem originally arises from when I was 17 and missed 3 dentist's appointments in a row because:

Appointment #1: I forgot

Appointment #2: I went on holiday

Appointment #3: I was doing a soundcheck for a gig.

So maybe Thatcher had a point about lazy, arty types who resolutely fail to contribute to the economy.

#3 was a really good gig, though. I got off with 2 girls, crashed my parents' car and the Tories got voted out by a landslide in favour of Tony Blair. Take that Thatcher!

This Is Halloween

2011-01-05T08:38:00.001Z

As the Christmas season draws to an end, it is time to take down the decorations and put my alternative Christmas playlist to bed - and with it the only Marilyn Manson performance to grace my music collection.

At this stage I will put my hands up and say that I don't know much about Marilyn Manson. The little that I do know has led me to believe that I probably wouldn't particularly like his music.

I also often find Danny Elfman (composer of the music from The Simpsons, Edward Scissorhands, Kick Ass, Men In Black, Spiderman, Batman, Mission: Impossible, Mars Attacks, Terminator 3, Hellboy 2, etc. etc.) overly fiddly and knowingly quirky.

But I do suggest that the world would be a significantly better place if Elfman and Manson formed a band together.

The basis for this slightly left-field assertion is the song 'This Is Halloween' which Danny Elfman composed for the animated film-musical 'The Nightmare Before Christmas'. The original song is great:

But, throughout the Christmas season, Marilyn Manson's version has topped my Spotify playlist. In fact, it has shot straight into my top 5 tunes of all time (currently number 2 behind permanently-fixed-number-one-position 'Fairytale of New York').

Here is the same film footage with the Marilyn Manson cover version replacing the original soundtrack.

Does anyone agree with me? This may be one of those situations where I'm out on a distant limb.

Ausgedachtes Syndrome

2010-11-28T19:38:00.003Z

At any given time I usually have approximately 3 obsessions. This is because I suffer from Ausgedachtes Syndrome which renders me incapable of having a normal hobby. Instead, after a period in which an interest lurks menacingly in my subconscious, it emerges fully-fledged as an all-consuming passion.

These obsessions jostle for position and, as one or two become stronger, others are knocked back into my unconscious and await their next chance to shine.

To a certain extent, this blog is the product of my syndrome - charting the rise and fall of my interests and obsessions and as I recently took a fairly hefty break from blogging, I thought it might be a good idea to let you know how things are going with my hierarchy.

Obviously, the best way to do this is in the style of a celebrity magazine telling you what is 'Hot' and 'Not' this week.

Eoin Reveals What's Hot and What's Not: Jul-Dec 2010

Hot: Wing Chun (Kung Fu), training on my kick bag which is called Blowzabella and getting my wife to try and punch me repeatedly in the face.

Not: Kickboxing. I tried 2 different training centres (including a properly scary MMA fight club) and was frustrated by the total absence of teaching. If I want to spend 2 hours randomly punching and kneeing pads with no technique whatsoever, I can do that in the privacy of my own home with a nice cup of hot chocolate on standby.

HOT! HOT! HOT! Cricket. My vague interest in this has ballooned into a full Wisden-buying obsession. I find Andy Zaltzman's cricket blog hilarious. I record cricketing jingles for Test Match Sofa (Test Match Special for the wannabe vitriolic Youtube generation) and I am considering modelling my facial hair stylings on WG Grace.

I am enjoying our cricketing resistance in the Ashes and can't wait to see England's hopes dashed as ruthlessly as their footballing ones were in the Summer.

Not: Swimming. I got to the obsessional point of swimming 2 miles every day but I can't hold my obsessions like I used to and in the end I couldn't be bothered any more.

Hot: Spartacus Blood and Sand. I have never before encountered a TV series that starts so incredibly badly and ends so very well. Initially I kept watching out of horrified fascination that something so bad was allowed to exist - but I watched the last 8 episodes back-to-back because of the awesomeness.

(Warning - may contain constant violence, swearing and nudey sex.)

Not: Internet Poker - always sitting just below the level of conscious obsession, this one regularly breaks through for a couple of days but isn't featuring large at the moment. The main problem is that, contrary to popular belief, winning poker is incredibly boring to play. Monte-Carlo-playboy-stylee poker loses you money hand over fist.

Hot: 'Fireworks' - the first Hamfatter album released on Pink Hedgehog Records. I was just at a 2nd Birthday party and this came on on the ipod. Not only did I really enjoy listening to it after a gap of some years but also, if 2-year-olds are listening to it, then clearly Hamfatter are big with the kids.

There are more things I could mention but I need to go and paint the kitchen so I'll leave them for another time.

'Save It For Later'...

2010-11-06T18:38:00.002Z

'Save It For Later' by The Beat is a masterpiece.

I have spent much time crafting a Spotify playlist of my favourite songs. Every single tune is genius as far as I'm concerned but 'Save It For Later' stands head and shoulders above most of the rest.

Unfortunately I have been unable to find a single other song by The Beat which I like - so all hail the age of the mp3 playlist.

This is the tune:

The music video is below but the sound quality is lame and disappointing. If you want the full experience, turn the sound down on the video clip and watch it whilst listening to the proper sound.

The Life and Death of Alphabet

2010-11-01T15:14:00.010Z

The cat arrived in September 2008 while I was on tour. Anna let him into the house because he was sheltering from torrential rain under a car. She didn't feed him but he refused to leave and spent days on our doorstep.

Eventually she gave in, started feeding him and he became our cat. He had no collar, no microchip and we didn't find any lost cat notices matching his description so we have no idea where he came from.

He loved me and I loved him. My wife named him Alphabet because he was black and white, like printed words. Also, before we found out whether he was male or female, we left our options open in shortening his name to either Alphie or Bettie.

At Christmas we tried to take him with us to visit my family but he panicked in the car and lapsed into drooling catatonia.

So we brought him back to the house, revived him and phoned everyone we knew who was staying in town over Christmas. We arranged for someone to come and feed him most days but I had to drive 4 hours back home on Christmas Eve. I left again at 2am on Christmas Day. For the duration of my stay, he sat on my stomach with his nose touching mine.

He was grumpy, smelly, old and set in his ways and he didn't like children. When our son grew old enough to chase him, he got even grumpier. He refused to run away from the uncoordinated toddler's attempts to stroke him. Instead he sat deadpan until the pressure built up to the point where he would start biting Paddy. Fortunately, Alphie had no teeth left to speak of so no-one ever ended up in hospital.

And eventually he got annoyed to the point where he left us and moved in with a couple of stoners down the road. I asked them not to feed him but they ignored me. We tried feeding Alphie amazing special food but it wasn't enough to get him to stay and I felt there was nothing else I could do. We gave him up with misgivings that the two stoners weren't up to the task of looking after Alphie properly.

A few weeks ago he started coming to us again. We didn't feed him but we let him in and out and he spent some nights here. He seemed to be getting on better with Paddy who is now old enough to be more coordinated in his stroking.

And last week, while we were away from home, two loose dogs cornered him and did enough damage that he died the next day - the stoners didn't take him to the vet to be put down. Apparently he was waiting near our door when the dogs got to him.

There is no point to this story except that I thought he deserved a better death than that and I wanted to give him a decent memorial.

Jiggy 2

2010-10-25T00:11:00.004+01:00

An e-mail arrives and reminds me that we are supposed to be touring the west coast of the

USA

this month playing only venues that had a connection with Tom Waits before he was famous (see my previous blog post on Jiggy). We postponed the tour but will get round to it next year.

The email is from Jiggy – erstwhile Hamfatter double-bass player extraordinaire – now oceanographer in San Diego. He has been on tour in

Germany

with a different band.

The tour is called Roktoberfest and the e-mail contains the following short tour diary:

On the first day:

I pass out cold in the attic of a Bavarian brewhouse sparking a two hour manhunt across the city of Munich.

On the second day:

we play a gig in a bar with a miniature train set that runs around the periphery of the room such that the barman can place shots on a train and send it to the band on stage. When we finish we're drunk. The crowd is drunk. Everybody is drunk.

On the third day:

we drive into the Bavarian countryside and in a tiny backwater village we play in a large medieval barn to a crowd of hairy German farmers who smoke a lot of chronic and do a lot of funky old-man dancing.

On the fourth day:

we play in a replica 1950's American diner in the shadow of a nuclear power plant. I think I am finally learning the songs. Bavaria it seems is something like the Texas of Germany. A region fiercely proud of its local culture and quite vocal in the belief that the rest of the country is populated by a bunch of pussies. When people think of

Germany

as a land of large men and buxom ladies wearing funny clothes and drinking vast quantities of beer…. that's Bavaria. And we're in the heart of it.

On the fifth day:

we take a break from gigging and make our way to the Oktoberfest where we drink 8 liters (2 gallons) of beer each and I wind up going home with a 7ft tall Bavarian fraulein. As I left the festival the drummer shouts,

"It'll be awesome! Your kids will be 7ft tall and can play in the NBA!".

We awake the next morning in her (very large) bed and go out for coffee and awkward conversation. Beer is served at the coffee shop and I joke that maybe we should get a beer. She buys a beer and at 10am in the morning starts showing me Bavarian beer drinking tricks.

We are both pretty drunk again when I re-join the band and the last I see she is still drinking beer on the sidewalk as the van takes off to drive 3 hours to a tiny village near the French border with a few old quaint churches, some horse ranches and one fucking awesome blues club that had been built into an old water-wheel powered grain mill.

A few songs into the set the (by now pretty tight) band start making some uncharacteristic fuck-ups. I look toward my band and see them all staring wide-eyed at stage-right where a 7ft tall Bavarian fraulein is dancing at the front of the stage. During the set break I go to say hi (or "what the hell are you doing here?", one or the other) and realize that she has kept on drinking since we left Munich and, while completely blackout drunk, she has bought a plane ticket, made her way to Munich airport, flown for an hour to Freiburg (still drinking) and then showed up at our gig shit-faced.

We squeeze her into our taxi (myself on her lap) back to our hotel during which the band chanted "N-B-A! N-B-A!" for the entire ride. In the morning she returns to the airport with the demeanor of someone who has just drunkenly spent $500 on a last minute plane ticket to sleep with a guy she barely knows and now has to spend the same just to get home and make the hangover go away. I love Bavaria.

On the sixth day:

our gig is prefaced by a short lecture and power point presentation on "real American blues" to get the crowd into the mood.

On the seventh day, eighth and ninth days:

we drive 9hrs to Amsterdam. We go onstage at midnight and play 5 hours of music to a 500-strong crowd fueled by beer, pot and hallucinogenics. It is beautiful.

From Amsterdam we drive back to

Germany

and play our final gig in Braunshweig's premier blues club. The place is run by a crazy man with two loves - live music and drugs. Initially this seems very amusing (he does tell a few interesting stories [1] ). But after 8 hours trapped in a labyrinthine, medieval Grimm's brothers farmhouse full of stuffed animals in the middle of nowhere with the only man who knows how to direct a taxi to the house babbling and hallucinating and responding to all questions about how we are going to catch our flight home by shouting 'Cocaine!'…. it gets a little old.

It takes us 28 hours to escape the vortex of crazy-old-man-on-a-bender that we fell into. 24 hours after that and we we are back in San Diego older, wiser and (a lot) more hungover than when we left.

Epilogue:

Since my return, I have been detoxing, catching up on a few weeks of missed sleep and trying to remember what my PhD is all about. I've figured out that my boss expects me to sit in front of my computer for most of the day and surround myself with pieces of paper covered in mathematical symbols. Providing I do that he seems happy but I haven't quite remembered what the symbols are supposed to represent nor what I should actually be doing on the computer. Until I figure that one out, Youtube will just have to suffice.

[1] The monkey story: When this guy was doing cocaine in

Colombia

for 8 years he had a pet monkey that doubled as a guard dog - the monkey would bite and wrap his tail around peoples' necks. One day the monkey escaped and ran off across the roofs of the neighboring apartment buildings. Our man got on the roof and started chasing him and they jumped from building to building until they landed in big puddle on one roof with a loose wire and both got electrocuted. They were both frozen in place looking at each other with teeth rattling in their skulls. The monkey never ran away after that.

For my part, all I can say is:

The 'Double Boethius'

2010-10-18T21:42:00.006+01:00

It has been a while since my last blog post for which I apologise. My excuse is this:

As I am now the sole breadwinner in the household and have a son who is not yet old enough to farm gold on World of Warcraft (the modern-day equivalent of going up a chimney or down a mine), I now have to take the whole money-earning thing more seriously.

Unfortunately, it turns out that earning money makes you considerably more tired than messing around and I have been trapped in a system of two rotating balls. The first ball is free time and the second ball is enthusiasm. They rotate in opposite directions:

When combined, the rotating balls define a complicated curve on which, mostly, you are in the middle:

But sometimes you get very high...

and sometimes you get very low:

I call this system the 'Double Boethius' after the Roman philosopher who invented the wheel of fortune - at least according to Christopher Eccleston in the film 24 Hour Party People.

My balls have been relatively low but I feel that I am now entering a period of high Free Time and Enthusiasm so I hope to be more active on the blog front over the next few weeks.

If you who are signed up to my blogging mailing list, remember this: though you may be spammed as many as 2 times a week for a short while, soon my balls will be low and there will be a blog drought once again.

My son also feels the benefit. This morning I made him a robot costume which he loved...

but by this evening he was scared of it. The wheels turn.

Acoustic Accordion Version of 'Karma'

2010-08-13T20:48:00.000+01:00

This is an acoustic version (featuring my slightly hit-and-miss accordion skills) of 'Karma' from the album 'What Part Of Hamfatter Do You Not Understand?'.

We are practising up an alternatively acoustic set for our planned Tom-Waits-themed tour of the USA.

England Cricket Team Steal Hamfatter Look

2010-08-13T20:42:00.000+01:00

Last week I went to the first day of the cricket match between England and Pakistan. During the morning England were on awesome form and bowled Pakistan out for a record-breakingly low 72 runs. Which was very exciting.

The afternoon session was also exciting because I've never been to see England bat before but things quietened down a bit in the evening and I had time to reflect on something that's been bothering me for a while. Are the England selectors choosing their team on the basis of resemblance to Hamfatter-connected people?

Steven Finn...

chosen for his resemblance to Hamfatter trombonist, Joe Scott.

England captain, Andrew Strauss...

chosen for his resemblance to Hamfatter record-label (Pink Hedgehog) captain, Simon Felton.

Eoin Morgan (whose name, by the way, is Eoin - just like mine is)...

chosen for his resemblance to Hamfatter trumpeter, Jack Coward.

Coincidence? I think not.

New Song 'Going On The Road'

2010-07-06T09:35:00.004+01:00

So I finally got round to doing a demo recording of this tune 'Going On The Road'. which has been on my to-do list for at least 6 weeks.

To save faffing around with microphones, I just used the built-in microphone on the camera - forgetting that built-in microphones can't really deal with something as loud and sonorous as a piano.

This is why the sound quality is not awesome - which is why I have printed the lyrics below - and is also why I have turned the film sepia and a bit grainy to make it look more olde.

I hope you like it. I skipped my Kung Fu class tonight to finish it.

Lyrics to 'Going On The Road'

2010-07-06T09:35:00.001+01:00

Two lovers' love is lost.

We sit in silence face to face,

Loving our disgrace.

The hot, hot Summer's sun.

The Winter's evenings in are done.

She says 'We should go on the run'.

So we're going on the road,

To see if we can find a way to put us back together again.

The journey takes them 20 years.

It does more harm than it does good,

As they always knew it would.

The cold, cold Winter sun.

The Summer's evenings out are done,

And she says 'Once more on the run'.

So we're going on the road,

To see if we can find a way to put us back together again.

And we have come too far to turn back,

We'll carry on our happy song and,

And we have come too far to turn back,

We'll carry on our happy song.

Sing 'Laa. La la la la Laa,

La la la laa,

La la la la laa laa laa.

Laa. La la la la Laa,

La la la laa,

La la la la laa laa laa.'

New Song 'Blackjack Davy'

2010-06-28T15:41:00.003+01:00

I know I promised that I would get my new song posted soon. Well, this is not it. This is in fact a demo recorded in my campervan with Jen Rouse last Summer. But I offer it as a placeholder and promise to get the new tune recorded in demo form by the end of the coming weekend.

This tune is called 'Blackjack Davy' and is my idea of what the folk anti-hero who crops up in various traditional folk songs might be up to in the modern age.

There are 3 more tunes from the Campervan Session available here:

Swannanoa Tunnel

Swallows and Amazons

Ventnor

England's Glorious Sporting Victory Yesterday

2010-06-28T12:46:00.000+01:00

I am not, of course, referring to England's disappointing performance in the 2010 World Cup of Football but, instead, to the cricket.

In a nail biting finish that went to the last few minutes of play, the England cricket team went 3-games-to-nil up against Australia in a 5-match series. Australia, currently ranked as world champions, have therefore already lost and are facing a possible 5-0 defeat.

Added to this is the fact that England won the T20 World Cup last month (see my post 'Engerland, Engerland, Engerland...') and have an extremely good chance of winning the ICC World Cup in India in 2011.

I think (just my opinion) that if they beat Australia in the Ashes series this Winter, it would pretty much cement England's position as the best cricket team in the world.

So, don't be too quick to take the England flags off your car. Consider, instead, giving cricket a go. Right now, it's like being a Brazilian football fan.

You Can Be In The Next Hamfatter Video

2010-05-19T21:19:00.000+01:00

My band are filming a video for our next single Money. It's a kind of psychedelic concept involving a dodgy nightclub, clubbers turning into giant pigs and the band being beaten up by bouncers in over-sized pig costumes.

We are filming it at the outrageously fancy Embassy Club in Mayfair. I haven't been there yet but in my imagination it's an old-school gentleman's club with cigars and brandy and spies

We need a bunch of people to be extras (mostly clubbers) - so,if you fancy being in the next Hamfatter video dressed in your most inappropriate club gear, get in touch via the Hamfatter website www.hamfatter.net. Filming will be probably be on the afternoon of Tuesday 6th July.

Engerland, Engerland, Engerland...

2010-05-16T19:40:00.000+01:00

Engerland, Engerland, Engerlaa-aaand.

Because I am now quite drunk I will keep this blog post short:

Suffice to say that England have just won the world cup - not the forthcoming football one which I'm not really into - rather the cricket one (world T20, in fact).

Even in England , where there has recently been a huge cricket renaissance, most people aren't very interested in cricket. Therefore, there are currently no people in my street having a big party and hugging each other like they would be with football.

I aim to do my part to re-balance the situation by painting myself with a cross of St George on the left side of my body, a Welsh dragon on the upper half of the right side of my body (because the English cricket team is actually the England and Wales cricket team) and an Irish tricolor on the lower half of the right side (because of my namesake Eoin Morgan). I will then run naked through the streets of Cambridge chanting 'Engerland, Engerland, Engerlaaaand' and laughing at people's confused faces.

My next post will be a new song, I promise. I've written one and it's a corker - I just need to get around to recording the demo.

My Son is 1 today...

2010-05-10T23:44:00.003+01:00

...and this is a sketch my wife did of him on his first Birthday:

Kung Fu vs Kickboxing (Part 2)

2010-05-10T23:34:00.002+01:00

As it turns out I ended my blog entry Kung Fu vs Kickboxing somewhat presciently with the words:

I'm still going to give Muay Thai a go. It can't hurt. (Obviously I mean this in a metaphorical sense. In practical terms it can hurt a lot.)

So it is very appropriate that, having started kickboxing (Muay Thai) lessons a couple of months ago, I have missed a couple of classes because I got extremely painfully injured.

I was trying to get a massive guy in a headlock using no skill or technique whatsoever and ended up being lifted up to shoulder height and then slipping off him and landing on what turned out to be a fairly important hamstring muscle. I finished the class and then found that I wasn't able to walk home. It took me an hour to limp a 10 minute walk.

Three weeks on I've recovered to the point where I can start practising roundhouse kicks on our freezer again (gently for now). In fact, I've just come back from a class which was fairly kick-intensive and I can still walk - which is a nice feeling.

These are my researches so far on Kung Fu (Wing Chun) versus Kickboxing (Muay Thai):

Muay Thai guys (and gals) look like scary meatheads - Wing Chunners look like polite young university graduates. This is most easily demonstrated by comparing average hair length:

Wing Chun classes work my brain pretty hard. At any given moment I am probably thinking:

' ... arm goes here, elbow goes here, step like this and move this to here, shoulder moves like this, elbow comes in to here, wrist rotates like this, elbow goes out to here...'

whereas Muay Thai works my muscles pretty hard. At any given moment I am probably thinking:

'... arrrrrrghhhhhhh aaaaaaaarrrrrrggggggggggg haarrrrrrrggggghhhhhh. Must smash. Must smash enemy. Arrrrghhhhhhhh...'

My personal opinion (just my opinion) so far is that Muay Thai teaches you to kick ass fairly quickly but can only take you so far. Wing Chun techniques may take a while before you can use them effectively in a proper fight. But once you can, you will be awesome.

I have plotted a graph of Time against Kick Ass to show you my projections:

My final point is that I am very surprised at how much the two martial arts have in common. Some of the techniques of becoming kick-ass must be universal no matter what culture they come from.

I think this is probably some kind of metaphor for how we should all try and be nice to each other.

Eoin Learns Accordion (Part 2)

2010-04-28T17:33:00.000+01:00

This is a recording I made with my brother Ruaidhri. We are playing an accordion duet of the Cantina Theme from Star Wars.

For some reason I decided to use a sepia filter and mess with the frame rate to make it look like a silent film. Anyway, I like it.

Here is someone good playing the same tune on the amazing Chapman stick (an instrument like a guitar and a bass combined):

... and here is the original scene from Starwars...

Part 1 of me learning accordion is available here

Jiggy

2010-04-14T00:16:00.003+01:00

Yesterday the weather was amazing and I went for a walk with my son. We walked to PC World which doesn't sound like quality father/son time but 11-month olds have a very different sense of what is interesting. Lured in by an automatic door, he took a 20-minute detour into a furniture shop where we repeatedly climbed and descended the stairs.

When we finally made it out again, the smell of sun-baked, retail-park concrete took me back to one year ago when I went to visit Jiggy - the occasional Hamfatter double-bass player - in San Diego.

I feel bad that I didn't really make the most of my time in San Diego. I was due to do some solo recording in Los Angeles which I really wasn't looking forward to and my wife was 8 months pregnant. I felt like I was on the wrong side of the world. But I have high hopes for a Hamfatter west-coast tour happening this side of 2011 so hopefully we can reclaim North America as the continent of Rock and Roll..

Speaking of Rock and Roll, I should tell you more about Jiggy the bass player. He is a scientist of some kind. He studies the ocean which means he has to live in stunning places with great surfing. He gets funding from environmental organisations and the US military.

I take comfort from Jiggy. He is living proof of the fact the great musicians are a combination of the coolest and geekiest elements of mankind. It makes me feel better about my World of Warcraft obsession. Every so often he sends me an email about his life. Here is one he sent last week:

I walked 26 miles in the desert, I managed, via an extravagant set of half-truths, to escape my lab without my bosses permission for a few days skiing and upon returning with ten stitches in my face I still managed to pull off the ruse (proving once again that immature shenanigans do not end with the acquisition of a masters degree), I broke into the display case at a prominent jazz-club and inserted one of my bands CDs into the racks of famous artists who had played there in previous years (proving once again…), I got belligerently drunk live on San Diego radio (proving once again….), I accidentally ate a hash-cookie that my roommate left unattended with no warning that it had psychedelic properties and subsequently spent 28 hours wandering the streets of San Diego looking for a chicken-fried steak (proving again….). I mentioned these powerful cookies to a girl I went on a few dates with (we met at a gig. She said she was a life-coach.) and she said she was curious to try them. I gave her a quarter of a cookie and we went to see Avatar 3D. Just after eating the cookie she mentioned to me that she was really a professional dominatrix (apparently life-coach is a code word for said career) which is how I came to have a professional dominatrix vomiting out the passenger window of my car (proving once and for all….).

But the most notable occurrence in recent weeks was a stop at a run down greasy pizza joint that served pizza as dubious looking as the places exterior. It was called Napoleone's Pizza and it is the only cheap eatery I have ever come across that has a juke-box containing a song written about said establishment. That song being "The Ghosts Of Saturday Night (After Hours At Napoleone's Pizza House)" by Tom Waits who worked in there as a teenager. Since that momentous event I have given a closer listen to many of his older albums and noticed for the first time that many of them contain references to San Diego landmarks that I frequent. It seems he grew up not far South from where I now live. I hereby retract all the scathing criticism I have directed at the San Diego music scene and redouble all scathing criticism at San Diego so called 'music fans' who didn't tell me this sooner.

When you tour the West Coast I reckon a quick gig in a dive bar in Mr. Waits' old neighborhood could be a bit of a laugh.

We are already planning our 'Tom Waits' tour of America. We will play only places where Tom Waits has played or worked. Watch this space.

Nostalgia For The Years 1995-2000

2010-04-10T00:03:00.006+01:00

I haven't posted for a while partly as a result of laziness and binge drinking but mainly because I have been trying to complete Centurion: Defender Of Rome on the hardest level.

'Centurion' is a game I first played on Sega Megadrive and, combined with binge drinking, it evokes nostalgia for the year 1995 when I was supposed to be revising for my GCSE exams. Back then people kept telling me GCSEs were important but I didn't believe them and it turned out I was right.

At weekends I would go to parties and, while the musically moribund listened to mid-90s jungle, James Babb and I would jam bluegrass tunes on banjo and mandolin. Babb's dad was a session mandolin player in the 1960s and did too much acid.

Babbs threw all the parties because he lived in an old massive house far out in the middle of a wood. His parents did more drugs than we could ever hope to. Each party was called 'Babbstock' and people would put up posters for miles around.

Aged 17, I left home to study with an awesome piano teacher in the hope that I would learn to play like a demon. The teacher's name was Mark Ray and we (his students) hated him because he was harsh.

But we loved him really and were very sad when he drowned aged 44. Sally Sparrow and I played a duet at his memorial. We drank too much beforehand, got a bit over-enthusiastic and improvised Star-Wars themes in the classical piece we had been asked to play. Had he been there, Mark would have pretended to be angry at us.

I did get pretty good at piano - not least because my landlady was a manic-depressive, prescription drug-addict. Within weeks of me moving in, her son also came to stay. He was a career criminal (aggravated burglary) and was hiding from the police. Then her daughter and grand-daughter came to stay, on the run from an abusive husband.

The daughter was really nice but the others weren't and 6 people living in a 3-bedroom flat was too much. So I left the flat at 5:30am each morning before anyone else woke up. I got back at 11pm and went straight to bed. All of this spare time I spent practising piano at college.

From 1997-2000 I went to university. I learned how to binge drink like I was 16 again and did lots of other crazy fun things which I'm not going to put in writing. I made some awesome friends and we had an awesome time until, inexplicably, one of them punched me repeatedly in the face for beating him at a computer game. After that I hung around with them less.

I also met my future wife at a gig audition and within a few months I knew we would get married. I made her life more fun and she made me less of a pleb. I stopped liking Pizza Hut and started liking Pizza Express. I drank wine that cost more than £2.50 a bottle. Eventually I even started liking the taste of olives. We became the university Puzzle Bobble champions - able to complete the entire arcade game with only two 50p credits.

In the year 2000 I sat my final exams stoned and got a 2:1 (upper second-class) which I think is a pretty fair assessment of my achievements.

Some of these nostalgic things are mentioned in the song '21st Century Sex' from the Hamfatter album 'What Part Of Hamfatter Do You Not Understand?'.

New Song: 'Swallows and Amazons' & folk-duo name suggestions needed

2010-03-27T20:57:00.008Z

This is the third of four demos from the Camper Van Session of Summer 2009.

My post earlier this month New Song: 'Swannanoa Tunnel' has the first two songs and some background info. There is one more song to come whenever I get time to edit it.

Jen Rouse wrote this one and it is amazingly beautiful. I think we sort of lost sight of that fact by playing it too much and getting too perfectionist. Coming back to it after a break of a few months was awesome.

We tried pretty hard to come up with a name for our alt-folk duo but never managed it. Any suggestions are welcome. We also intended to set up a website but we can't do that until we have a name.

Here are some photos that my brother Ruaidhri took that weekend. They might help give you a feel for a good alt-folk duo name.

Why I think BBC6 should not be axed

2010-03-16T00:57:00.003Z

As you may or may not know, 6Music - the BBC's alternative music radio station - is being axed at the end of the year and an internet campaign has sprung up to save it.

As always on the internet, people are expressing their opinions left, right and centre. Many of the opinions are ill thought-out and don't really address the practical issue of why 6Music is being axed. This is my own ill thought-out and impassioned contribution to that argument:

When I was 13 years old I bought the album 'Thunder and Consolation' by the New Model Army. Because I was a teenager and I love that band, the raw emotional power of songs like 'Vagabonds' and 'Green and Grey' made me cry. I wanted everyone in the world to know how that music made me feel. It was the most important thing in the world.

I started to listen to Radio 1 - especially John Peel's show. It was a great way of discovering new bands. Radio 1 was really exciting and the daytime playlist was great.

Ten years later, I gave up on Radio 1 forever and made the unconventional direct switch to Radio 4. I don't think Radio 1 got worse, but I was 23 and I needed more than raw passion. I needed something I could get my teeth into, something that could surprise me and make me think.

For several years I listened only to Radio 4 and the BBC World Service. I couldn't stomach any music stations. They made me sad. I discovered new music by paying £4 to see local bands play local gigs. (It's amazing how many music fans don't do this). Most of the bands were rubbish but the occasional one would be unbelieveably awesome. (See: Stars of Aviation.)

Then digital radio came along and I added two stations to my listening list: 6Music and BBC7. 6 plays music and 7 plays comedy and drama. They are perfect for me. They broadcast the good stuff that no-one else wants. But, really importantly, they don't just broadcast the old, the weird and the unfashionable; They broadcast anything good. Anything where someone in the music industry who has managed to maintain some level of enthusiasm weighs it up and says 'this makes the world a better place'.

On Sunday I took my 10-month-old son to the park in the hope that he would finally get round to learning how to walk unaided. We shared an earphone each and listened to disco on 6Music. The DJ said 'I always say, you can't beat disco on a Sunday' as a throw away comment. And I thought about that for the rest of the day before deciding that I agree with her.

This is a song that Hamfatter recorded a couple of years ago. It features on the album Cassiopeia which has been released to fans but not yet to the general public.

New Song: 'Swannanoa Tunnel'

2010-03-11T20:07:00.001Z

Below is a recording that my friend Jen Rouse and I did in my campervan last summer. The song is called ‘Swannanoa Tunnel’ and was originally collected by Cecil Sharp in the Appalachian Mountains.

Unfortunately the battery on the camper doesn’t last long so we had to go to a campsite to get a mains hook-up. We could, of course, have recorded it indoors but we decided that wasn't folk enough.

Old Sarum is just off camera to the right so the surroundings were a bit more interesting than it looks from the pristine 'caravan club campsite' uniformity you see in the video.

We did a photoshoot while we were there. Below are some of the photos taken by my brother Ruaidhri - who is talented like me but also got the modesty gene.

We did a few folky gigs but could never find an audience cool enough for us so we pretty much decided to keep it as a recording project. We haven't got round to doing much recording yet.

You can watch the other demo we did - a song by Jen called 'Ventnor' by clicking here.

One Reason Why I Love the BBC:

2010-03-07T23:19:00.003Z

I listen to a combination of Radio 4, BBC6 Music, Radio7 and the World Service for around 5 waking hours and 8 sleeping ones each day. I am a big BBC fan.

You may be aware that BBC6 Music is very likely to get axed before the end of the year. But I'm not posting my views on that yet because of the genius which is Newswipe. It takes precedence because it is awesome. This is my tribute:

Newswipe is a TV series shown on BBC4 - a fact which depresses me greatly as it should be on the National Curriculum. Some of it is filmed in the presenter’s living room. Charlie Brooker and his co-writer have perfected a snarky and superficially light-hearted style which fools you into thinking the show is a comedy. You often come away from it feeling inexplicably good about the world.

But there is very little light-hearted about Newswipe. It is a horribly insightful look into the supremely dodgy way that the news is presented to us. Writing about this show is like dancing about architecture. The only way you can find out for yourselves is to watch the entire two series on Youtube. But, in case you don’t have time, I have put together some clips.

I have mostly chosen clips which aren't funny thereby giving an entirely false picture of Newswipe because it is genuinely hilarious. But comedy is easy to come by - whereas intelligent analysis of the news media is virtually non-existent. Please don't watch these clips unless you are willing to give them your full attention. You will make me sad.

1) Newswipe reports on news reports:

2) After a ‘high-school shooting', a forensic psychiatrist explains how media coverage directly encourages future murders. I would love to discuss this with any news journalist. I will buy the drinks.

3) … about the media reporting on the media reporting on John Terry.

4) … on some of the more disgusting coverage of the earthquake in Haiti.

5) … about the coverage of the protest surrounding the G20 summit in March 2009.

6) … on the shameful press coverage of the link between autism and the MMR vaccine.

7) The final credits of the final episode - a special effect explosion with which they blew what I imagine remained of their series budget.

New Song:'The Moon After Ivor Cutler'

2010-03-01T02:24:00.005Z

A while ago I was painting our kitchen and listening to BBC Radio 7. For those of you who don't know it, Radio 7 plays mainly old comedy shows and old science fiction programmes - which suits me fine.

There was a very short segment on Ivor Cutler who is often described as a comedian but I think this is entirely incorrect. He pretended to be a comedian so he could sneak his surrealist poetry and theatre into prime-time radio in the 1960s.

For some reason, I find the song he played ('Jump In The Clyde') completely profound. I was very sorry I hadn't written it myself, so I wrote a tribute which is partly me and partly rip-off. It is called 'The Moon After Ivor Cutler'.

His original version is at the end of this video.

Lyrics to 'The Moon After Ivor Cutler'

2010-03-01T02:21:00.002Z

The Moon After Ivor Cutler

Moon, moon sing to the moon - sing to the moon your trumpet tune.

Oh, oh. I know what you mean when you sing:
Moon, moon sing to the moon - take your trumpet and play your tune.

Oh, oh. I know what you know.

Get in the car and drive away - my heart is heavy and worn,
Kick at the grass 'til the clean shines out - the clean that I call home.
The road is sodium red tonight - the surface pitted and worn.
Though i was born in London it's where I feel my most alone.

Moon, moon sing to the moon - sing to the moon your trumpet tune x2

Find a cave and light a fire, dance like a madman and give up drinking,
Jump in the sea and swim like a white whale - I'll meet you at the end.
The road is sodium red tonight - the surface pitted and worn.
Though I was born in london it's where I feel my most alone.

Moon, moon sing to the moon - sing to the moon your trumpet tune x2

Moon moon sing to the moon - take your trumpet and play your tune.

Oh oh. I know what you mean when you sing,
Moon, moon sing to the moon - sing to the moon your trumpet tune.

Oh oh. I know what you know .

New Song: 'Running Out Of Time'

2010-02-17T00:33:00.003Z

Below is a demo of my new tune 'Running Out Of Time'.

Prince's Trust Music asked me to write a song which might be suitable for a French-Canadian singer called Bahia Pierce. I've never written something for someone else to sing before and it was actually a lot of fun - I might try to do more in future.

Having said that, my songwriting is quirky and often very personal. I can see that it might be difficult for other people to stamp their own personality on my songs. But it doesn't really matter - anything that gets me writing interesting tunes is fine by me.

Cassiopeia Album Cover

2010-02-11T20:39:00.004Z

Here (above) is a draft of the front cover of the new Hamfatter album. The photo was taken by my brother-in-law from the British Telecom Tower in London.

Normal people aren't allowed access but he was working up there measuring air pollution. He also got to go to do the same job in Borneo for 4 months working on platforms 100 metres up in the rainforest. He nearly died of Weils Disease (the doctors gave him a 50/50 chance) so there was a hefty downside.

In the album artwork, I sort of see the shape of the constellation Cassiopeia amongst the city lights. I like the idea that the Greek legend lives on. (My blog post on Cassiopeia) but let me know what you think of it via the Hamfatter website.

Kung Fu vs Kickboxing

2010-02-07T20:52:00.006Z

This week I have mostly been ill in bed watching QI and playing The Curse of Monkey Island. The rest of the time, I’ve been thinking about Kung Fu versus Kickboxing.

I started Wing Chun (often called Kung Fu) last year. I really enjoy it but some internet research suggests that Thai Kickboxing (Muay Thai) is more effective - and I don’t want to spend fifteen years getting expert at something which turns out to be second best.

Muay Thai looks more impressive – with lots of high and roundhouse kicks. But Wing Chun isn’t supposed to look fancy. You are the skinny guy no-one thinks about until you step up to defend some poor Chinese villagers from their tyrannical overlord. Then you beat 10 guys at once using kick-ass moves and bad dubbing.

In this case, you are Sifu Yip Man who steps up to defend the entire Chinese nation from the tyrannical Japanese overlords:

… or, you are Bruce Lee against the evil O'Hara in ‘Enter The Dragon’.

Sadly, the fact remains that according to lots of internet advice, Wing Chun fairs badly in Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) tournaments. Muay Thai apparently does better.

I console myself with these thoughts:

1) Eye-gouging and throat punching are apparently outlawed in MMA tournaments. I think these moves are important in Wing Chun.

2) Wing Chunners are generally really chilled out and not at all macho. I doubt the really good guys are into MMA. So they don’t end up in a ring being filmed for Youtube.

3) 82% of Internet Advice is Wrong or Pointless.

I think I’ll have a few trial lessons of Muay Thai and let you know how I get on. But I strongly suspect I will enjoy Wing Chun more.

Also, I see that Sherlock Holmes has become a Kung Fu fighting Steampunk in his latest film. Awesome. More on Steampunk to follow at some point.

New Song:'Drinking and Gambling'

2010-02-02T21:42:00.003Z

Here is a song which I recently finished off. Mostly it is about my son, Paddy. Over the coming months I will put videos of my new tunes on this blog and at some point I will ask people which ones they want me to record properly for the next solo album.

Duelling Pirates

2010-01-31T00:18:00.004Z

So...

... somebody emailed me this link. Presumably it will disappear at some point soon so I will describe it:

On what is supposed to be a blogging page for a community of allotment gardening enthusiasts, cheap mp3 downloads are advertised. The page is bizarre. It features random pictures and semi-gibberish text which (like the Dutch language to English ears) sounds like it might make sense but actually doesn't.

What most interests me is near the bottom of the page: the dirt cheap download of 'What Part Of Hamfatter Do You Not Understand?' (the 2008 re-release).

At first I am annoyed. Who the hell is this guy pirating my album for 10p a track and why does he think I've written a song called 'Canibal'? How can he be selling a track which doesn't exist?

Then I reflect that 'Canibal' is a good song title and I decide to write that song for my next album. My attitude towards the pirate softens. He is a lovable old rogue. He chain smokes Old Holburn and looks exactly like Tinker from Lovejoy.

He specializes in pirating the works of cult indie bands to provide them with encouragement and subtle guidance. (Why not write a track called 'Canibal' for your next album?)

A little bit of research later, I find out that my pirate is not some lovable rascal sat in a corrugated-iron allotment shed. The site selling the album is in fact mp3skyline - one of those illegal download sites that have sprung up since the demise of allofmp3. Allofmp3 was a huge and very illegal Russian download site that shut down after a $1.65 trillion lawsuit was filed against it.

My rascally pirate is probably a violent Moscow gangster using mp3 money to supplement the income from his heroin export/import business. And now I feel sad.

Pacman Returns

2010-01-26T18:15:00.003Z

Last night I was going through a bunch of old files on my computer and getting rid of anything I don't use any more.

Hidden in a dusty corner of my hard drive, I found an old version of the Hamfatter website. It was designed by George and, looking back on it, he did a vast amount of amazing work for absolutely no pay whatsoever. (Thanks George :o)

Anyway, on the website was a version of pacman called Hamfatman. I remember it was very popular back in the day so I've put it up here for anyone who fancies having another go. The high-score table doesn't work but apart from that, it's fully functional. If you do get a monstrous high-score, send me a screenshot.

Play Hamfatman

We Sing, We Dance,We Know Our Greek Myths

2010-01-25T22:10:00.015Z

When we finished the ‘What Part’ album 3 years ago, there was a big drinking session and a solid suggestion came up for the name of the next Hamfatter album. We were going to call it ‘We Sing, We Dance’ after a piece of art by David Shrigley.

Unfortunately, in the meantime the musician Jason Mraz also came up with the idea and named his album ‘We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things’ so we had to ditch that plan and start from scratch. This is why I spent the last hour searching the internet for fonts which look a bit sci-fi but also a bit ancient Greek.

The new Hamfatter album will be called Cassiopeia

This is also the name of track 3 on the album and, of course, it is a metaphor - but there's no way I'm going to explain away my own lyrics, so instead I’ll fill you in on Cassiopeia herself:

Cassiopeia the Woman…

… was a mythological queen of Ethiopia who decided that she and her daughter Andromeda were more beautiful than the daughters of the sea god Poseidon. This turned out to be a bad idea when Poseidon sent a huge sea monster

to come and eat Andromeda.

Fortunately, the hero Perseus

was passing by and agreed (in return for marrying her) to save Andromea’s life by killing the sea monster. This seems like a happy ending but actually things went sour at the wedding and Perseus ended up killing all of the wedding guests including Cassiopeia.

There is a scene in the 1981 film ‘Clash of the Titans’ where Perseus fights the sea monster but I couldn't find a short clip on youtube so instead here is the bit from ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ where they fight some skeletons:

Cassiopeia the Constellation

According to the myth, after being killed by the groom at her daughter’s wedding, Cassiopeia was turned into a constellation. She looks like this half of the time.

The rest of the time she is upside down as punishment for her vanity.

Contrary to the wikipedia entry on Cassiopeia, there is no evidence at all that the word ‘Cassiopeia’ means ‘she whose words excel’ – but that didn’t stop me using it as a refrain. It scans too well and fits in nicely with my metaphor.

Christmas presents

2010-01-19T22:14:00.005Z

For Christmas I got an accordion and a hat and many other cool things. This is me and my brother Ruaidhri jamming:

And this is me attempting to play the waltz from the film Amélie

(composed by the awesome Yann Tiersen).

Mellotron Erases The New Hamfatter Album

2010-01-17T16:16:00.006Z

Shortly before Christmas I finished the new Hamfatter album. I was (and still am) very pleased with it . Since I went to LA to record with Joe Chicarelli, the standard of my mixing has come on in huge leaps and bounds. I watched one of the best producers in the world at work and then I nicked as many of his ideas as I could remember.

At this point I decided to mix all of the tunes down to CD. This was to prevent me from making a million extra tiny changes that no-one else would ever notice (and could delay the album release by another 6 months). Then I decided to record another tune (provisionally entitled 'A Week In June') to put on as a hidden bonus track.

Three hours later it was the early hours of the morning and I had recorded some keyboard parts, a piano part and 2 vocal parts. I started mixing the tune and soon realised that it needed something extra. I downloaded a virtual Mellotron - possibly the coolest instrument in the world...

... and tried to record with it. At this point my computer crashed. When I rebooted it, the song file was corrupted and wouldn't open. I switched it over to my laptop to see if it would open on that. It wouldn't. Then I checked the other song files for the rest of the new album. None of them would open. Not one. They were all gone. I spent the rest of the early hours of the morning trying to fix it but couldn't.

If I hadn't burned that CD before trying to record the bonus track, the entire album (and a year of my life) would have disappeared into the ether. Phew.

You can preview the new album at www.hamfatter.net

England Loses Its Mojo...

2010-01-16T19:42:00.013Z

... and of course, by 'England' I mean the England Cricket Team and by 'Mojo' I mean Graham Onions - one of their bowlers.

The first match of the latest series against South Africa became something that is common in cricket - an intensely exciting draw. (In cricket, it really is possible to have an intensely exciting draw. ) In the end, it came down to the batting skills of Graham Onions to save the day.

Onions is a great bowler but, like many other bowlers, a terrible, terrible, terrible batsman. It was like the England football team - in the semi-final of the world cup - sending the captain of the Scottish curling team out to be goalkeeper.

England won the second match convincingly. In the third match, once again, Onions saved the day. He forced a draw when no-one thought it was possible. He nearly got out to the second-to-last ball but he didn't; he kept it together and I started to suspect that Onions was the England Mojo. With him, we couldn't lose.

In the fourth match (the one we are about to lose) he was dropped. He is tired and Sidebottom is possibly a better bowler for the more humid conditions of Johannesburg. (The ball swings more in the air when it is humid.) But now the England team is facing an extremely resounding thrashing so I rest my case. We need our mojo.

On a side note: The current test has been mired in controversy after a series of incorrect umpire decisions. The England Cricket Board has demanded that one of the England team's referrals be reinstated.

This is the cricketing equivalent of Global Thermonuclear War.

82% Of Internet Advice Is Wrong Or Pointless

2010-01-15T19:56:00.022Z

I came across this webpage (I can't remember how):

Link to potato advice page

The poster wants to know if you can oven-cook potatoes when the packaging says they are for microwaving.

Now, if my prior experience of internet forums is anything to go by, a lot people react to this by thinking (or even posting): 'you are a moron' - which is not my reaction. I think it is perfectly reasonable to ask a question if you don't know the answer. Why else would you bother?

My interest lies in the responses. The 'advice':

5 out of 11 posts (45%) are either wrong or totally uninformative.

9 out of 11 posts (82%) fail to convey any useful new information.

Only 2 posts (18%) were worth the effort of hitting the 'submit' button. (Posts 1 and 5.)

If I don't know about something...

(Today's example is, what php code I should use to get the Hamfatter website contact form to work)

... I wikipedia it. If that doesn't help, I google it and usually end up sifting through a forum for advice. How am I supposed to root out the 82% of complete bollocks?

This is probably the reason why I failed to get the Hamfatter contact form working and had to email Hamfatter tour manager James 'Arms' Strachan begging him for useful scraps of code. Cheers Arms.

First Ever Blog Post

2010-01-14T22:04:00.003Z

My first every blog post - and I feel a bit dirty. Blogging is exactly the kind of attention seeking I pretend I'm not into. My main reason for doing it is to keep Hamfatter fans updated as to what I'm up to.

If I post: 'I have spent the last 2 days not sleeping and mixing the new Hamfatter album', you know not to hassle me for not getting the videos page on the website up yet.

If I post: 'I am now up to Season 3 in my 'The Wire' marathon', you know you can email me abuse.

And, by the way, speaking of The Wire (which I got on DVD for Christmas, nice one Ben and Jen) check out this clip. Bear in mind that the American guy doing the terrible, terrible English accent is actually English. He must have spent lots of fun hours asking Americans to try to do an English accent so he could copy them. :o)