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Mitch's Podcast:
This is unusual
Thursday 7th August 2008
Suddenly at a loose end for ten minutesSo I was up until nearly 7am finishing my Now Show songs, I had a couple of things to do which had to be done early this afternoon so I got myself up at about 1pm, the songs needed a final tinker, I've done that, and there's still an hour or so before I have to go to the show recording. Clara and the kids are off at some playgroup or other so I'm on my own in the flat with - specifically at least - nothing to do. I genuinely don't know how to react. I honestly can't remember the last time this was the case.
Of course there are things I COULD be doing; I've just realised that when Clara reads this there will be recriminations along the lines of "You could have cleaned the kitchen" but just at the moment I'm going to let the tedium sink in for a minute.
Hmmm.
Okay, that's enough of that.
As I mentioned, I was in Liverpool over the weekend.
Going back to Liverpool has been a strange experience for the last few years; they're re-building so much of the city that there are whole expanses of it I don't recognise at all. And by and large this is a good thing. There is a completely different atmosphere in the city from what there was "in my day". I'm sure the whole Capital Of Culture thing is helping enormously but I've noticed the change occurring gradually over the last few years. There is an optimism which simply wasn't around back then.
I've never felt in any way guilty for having left Liverpool back when I was eighteen; I went away to university which is a good thing to do and a good time to do it. Moreover, since I've never played the Professional Scouser card in my work, I don't think anyone would accuse me of the sort of hypocrisy Liverpool's more obviously Scouse exiled sons get tarred with. But the truth is, back in the 1980s, Liverpool was a place you left. By whatever means necessary. The population was plummeting year on year.
Perhaps the most encouraging thing I heard while in Liverpool this time was non-Scouse accents. I don't have a problem with Scouse accents (I know some people do) it's just that it struck me that back in the day, you just didn't hear accents from elsewhere in the country as you walked around Liverpool, because why would you? Nobody moved TO Liverpool. This time I heard RP, Mockney, Brummie, Northern accents of all shades and varieties. Difficult to explain how incongruous and pleasing this was.
Weight news, maybe
Monday 4th August 2008
... I thinkSo I was on the Manchester Comedy Store all weekend (with Toby Hadoke as MC; rarely have Doctor Who nerd conversations been that hardcore outwith a convention setting) and as such the family and I have been staying at my parents' house in Liverpool (had a hell of a trip getting here, about which I may go into lengthy detail another time; suffice it to say if you've never had a tyre explode while in the fast lane of a motorway, I don't recommend it). And we're still here, and since my folks have a PC (and broadband these days, hooray - you know it really is the 21st Century when your mum and dad have broadband. AND a SatNav), I thought I'd at least try and do my Monday weigh-in from here.
Mum and Dad have two sets of scales; a traditional mechanical one which only goes up to 19 stone, so no good for me, and an electronic one which reckons it can do up to 24 stone, which is - NOW - high enough. So onto the electronic scales, and it's reading 22st 3lb, which the attentive among you will recall is (according to my own wobbly mechanical scales) exactly what I weighed a week ago. Not to worry though, as Clara hopped on and noticed that these scales read HER as being 2lb heavier than our own scales, so I may still have lost a bit. In any case I don't seem to have gained any, and when we get back to London tomorrow I'll see what the wobbly scales say and post that as well.
Maybe it is time to step things up a bit, anyway. I've got a rowing machine that's been in storage for the past nine months - first there was the whole business with my knee and after that we were trying to sell the flat; if our flat has a shortcoming it's that there isn't a lot of storage space, and nothing highlights this quite so vividly as a bloody great rowing machine taking up half the living room. Now we're under offer I guess it can come out of mothballs.
oh, I don't know, stuff
Friday 1st August 2008
...and thingsNot much of a coherent theme this time, I'm afraid, just a few updates and acknowledgements; first of all, thanks to all those of you who offered suggestions on the whole retrieving-MIDI-files-from-Garage-Band thing; not really had time to try any of them out yet. I may just suck it up and get Logic. Conflicted as to whether to go with Express or Pro. Any thoughts, anyone? Is Pro so much better as to be worth three times as much money? And can you in fact open GB projects with Logic, as I'm assured you can but as no spec I can find online for Logic actually specifies? Can any of you follow the syntax in that last sentence?
Anyhow, I might put off any software purchases for a bit as money's going to be rather tight for the immediate future; it looks like the sale of the flat is going ahead (hooray) but such is the state of the market that selling it is acutally going to cost us money. We're getting off the property ladder for a while as it's not a ladder anymore; it's a property snake.
Fun Now Show recording today; Brigstocke is off again (probably skiing or being on the telly or skiing on the telly or something) so we've got Robin Ince in, giving one of his breathless stream of consciousness rants which you can never quite believe will cut down into decent radio but somehow always do. This one is on the subject of why he isn't doing the Edinburgh Fringe this year; this is quite an unusual situation for Robin, he's far more dilligent in his Edinburghering than I am. He seems to be adjusting but it's always hard to tell with Robin.
After the show I repaired to what I now discover was a completely different pub to the one the rest of the cast were meeting in (thanks, guys) but that's okay as Rob the webgenius & his better half Nat were with me and it was them I really wanted to talk to.
Rob is just finishing work on a major addition to this very site... can I be arsed being enigmatic? Oh sod it, I may as well tell you. I'll do a proper announcement on the news page when I know what date it's going online, but at some point in the next couple of weeks I'm opening up my own download store. All the commercially available stuff will be up there (the albums, the singles etc.) PLUS a whole load of tracks which thus far haven't been (Now Show stuff, demos, rarities, whatever). I'm quite excited about it and I hope you are too now.
There you go then, an actually quite major scoop in the middle of a rather vague blog entry. Here's where we find out who's REALLY been paying attention.
cap in hand again
Monday 28th July 2008
... but just for informationI sometimes wonder if I'm not abusing this blog, given that its prime function seems to be me, the blogger, tapping you, the blogees, for favours all the time. You came through on my quest for possible locations for the Happy Birthday War video, you came through when I requested help on the day of the shoot, you've been very supportive of the whole weight loss effort, and you've never once let me down when I've come looking for advice. So I'm a bit self-conscious about asking for help and tips yet AGAIN, but here I go anyway...
It's occured to Ian and me that it might speed things up making-this-album-wise if we could use the demos I've already recorded for most of the putative tracks as the basis or template for these new recordings, and to that end I've been trying to figure out how to retrieve MIDI files from Garage Band projects (PC users go make yourselves a cup of tea or something).
Now I know (now) that GB doesn't officially do this, but there's usually a way round these things and I've got halfway so far. I've found and downloaded the "midiO" plug-in which enables GB to work as a MIDI driver for external apps or MIDI instruments, and I've tried using this to "record" the MIDI file of a drum part into Finale Notepad (a shareware music notation app I've been using to produce the scores for the Complaints Choir), from which I can THEN save the track as a MIDI pattern and export away. Trouble is, what's coming out is rubbish. It's all just thumping crotchets (non-musicians; that sounds rude but isn't).
Does anybody have any idea where or indeed if I'm going wrong?
Answers on a e-postcard to the usual address.
It's monday
Monday 28th July 2008
... so it's weight dayThe bouncy scales are particularly bouncy this morning but I think I'm about 22st 3lb, which would be 2lb down from last week, so that's okay. Thanks again for your support.
thoughts on the future
Saturday 26th July 2008
... professionally and otherwiseSorry you haven't heard much from me this week; It's been a bit hectic and stressful one way or another. Apart from the usual Now Show malarkey there's finally been a bit of movement on the flat sale; we dropped the price quite drastically a month or so ago as it occurred to us that with the way prices are falling - and given that most people who are wont to make predictions about this sort of thing are saying that they're going to keep falling for at least another year or so - if we didn't sell it now we wouldn't be able to AFFORD to sell it, and we'd be stuck here for possibly another five or six years.
So this week we finally got an offer, we managed to haggle them up to the point at which we could just about do the deal without bankrupting ourselves, and then lo and bloody behold a PREVIOUS buyer who'd been umming and ahhing about the flat for weeks suddenly re-appeared with a (marginally) better offer. Typical; absolutely f__k all interest for nine months and suddenly we've got a bidding war on. Not even sure who was winning the last time we asked, and it's the weekend now so we probably won't be able to resolve anything for a few days.
I was round at Ian's office this afternoon (technically yesterday now) to discuss the track listing for the new album, and also quite where we're headed with this whole thing. We have high hopes for the album and the tour, but he agreed with me that perhaps it's time to put a few more irons in the fire.
For a start I'm down from having four radio shows two years ago to just the one now; Bad Week has bitten the dust, I don't think BBC7 want any more Music Shows (feel free to send protesting emails) and I haven't been able to think of a show of my own to succeed Crimes Against Music. Radio 4 might even re-commission Crimes if I asked them to; I haven't because I'm not sure what else I could do with that format. We tried re-tooling it for series 3 (introducing the sitcom elements) but I don't think many people really got what we were doing. I reckon I need to come up with something new, and I'm not sure what. Never mind, these ideas have a way of presenting themselves out of the blue.
Something I genuinely want to do is write musicals. Good ones. The trouble with this is that even a modest musical costs a bloody fortune to stage, and those West End monstrosities have budgets like the national debts of third world countries. Hell of a financial risk to take; that's why it's usually played as safe as possible. Lloyd Webber is pretty much the only guy with the clout to get a new musical on these days; apart from that all anyone's producing are those wretched "jukebox" musicals where they cram a band's back catalogue into some sort of plot (Mamma Mia, We Will Rock You and their evil spawn).
I really don't get the appeal of these things. Oh sure, from the producers' point of view I do; it's a show which consists of songs which are already classics... it's what the punters see in them I don't understand. I mean, presumably in order to want to go and see We Will Rock You, you'd have to be a fan of Queen's music, but if you love these songs so much why would you want to spend an evening hearing them being butchered by a load of Italia Conti graduates? Just stay home, play the CD and hear them done properly.
Anyway, I may have a plan to circumvent all that. It'll be ages before it comes to fruition if indeed it does at all, but fingers crossed, eh?
weight blah
Monday 21st July 2008
About 22st 5lb, I reckon, so another 3lb lost. This is going better than I'd hoped so far; the weight loss is bound to slow down to one or two pounds a week soon, but thanks again for all your support.Weight watch
Saturday 19th July 2008
See what I did there?I've got a new watch. Out of necessity, mainly; the one I'd been wearing for the last year or so had disintegrated and was being held on with a bit of gafffer tape. Not a good look. In fairness it did cost a fiver from a stall on Tottenham Court Road so I think I got my money's worth out of it.
However, rather than simply pick up another cheapo one to tide me over, Clara suggested I get a good one as a sort of self-reward for losing two stone. Apparently a lot of people run these little incentive schemes for themselves to help them sustain a weight-loss programme. While I'm sure it helps, if "incentive" were all I needed to lose weight I'd have done it decades ago: "So, if I do this, I'll be able to wear what I like, I'll feel better than I've ever felt before, I'll be less self-conscious, more self-confident, I won't be permanently saddled with feelings of guilt and inadequacy, I'll smell better and I'll live for twenty years longer, but what's in it for ME?"
So I'm not treating this as "incentive", rather every time I look at my watch I'll see what I've achieved and why, and why I should keep it up. And that I'm late again, probably.
Oh, and needless to say if I put that two stone back on, I have to take the watch off.
This is the watch here; it's from the leisurewear company Fat Face (appropriately enough); I like it because it's big and chunky without being bling, and also because, amusingly, from a distance and to the untrained eye it looks a bit like this, which has been the most desired watch in the world for the last decade or so since it became James Bond's official watch (and don't we bloody know it? During Pierce Brosnan's tenure it was so prominent in every publicity still of him that I began to suspect they'd made an extra-large model for this purpose, and it was given enough special spy functions to ensure it got two or three loving close-ups per movie. Daniel Craig's Bond still has one but since the new gadget-lite approach the 007 films are taking has deprived the watch of screen time, in Casino Royale it actually got a name check, for crying out loud).
Not that I'm going to start trying to pass this watch off as anything it isn't, mind you. This blog entry's rather blown that prospect anyway. Besides, I liked the fact that when my watch arrived in the mail this morning it came not in a box, but in a tin builder's mug with a tupperware lid, which I'm fairly sure the Omega doesn't. Ha ha, a free tin mug. Where's YOUR free tin mug, Mr. Bond?
Very funny
Thursday 17th July 2008
(if you get it)Clara, on her way to bed, has pointed out that I haven't done a blog entry since Monday, and she's right. I wouldn't want this place's sole purpose to become me showing off about how much weight I've lost, but on the other hand I'm rather under the gun at the moment; it's 1.30am and I HAVE to get my Now Show stuff finished WITHOUT doing my usual staying-up-till-9am thing, as tomorrow's recording - for reasons which rather escape me - is happening at the Latitude rock festival in Southwold, which will require me getting into the centre of town by 1pm in order to get on The Now Show Minibus. Gaah.
So I thought I'd just post this, which I stumbled across at cracked.com while trawling for lyrical ideas. It's pretty funny and nicely done, and it combines a great bit of old AOR (which pleases me) with Brendan Fraser (which pleases Clara).
wibbly wobbly scaley-waley
Monday 14th July 2008
Okay, as far as I can tell from my bouncy mechanical scales, today I weigh either 22st 8lb or 22st 9lb. Think I'll go with 22 8 as a. I'm feeling sympathetic towards myself as for some reason I couldn't sleep last night, and b. because it sets a bigger challenge for next week.
In any event I've now lost over two stone.