Matthew Walton’s Blog

First I have to mention the excellent Cross O’th Hands, who played for a ceilidh from 8pm until 10pm. There was a great deal of dancing and some great tunes.

However, the main act was Bellowhead, and it was clear that most people were there for them. The hall got busier and busier as the time for Bellowhead to appear drew closer, with the dance floor full of people standing, and many seats occupied as well.

Now Bellowhead are an unusual band. Spiers and Boden are a long-established duo with a reputation for a certain level of eccentricity. In Bellowhead, they take that tendency to extremes with nine other talented musicians playing a variety of instruments: trumpet, saxophones, bass clarinet, trombone, ‘cello, fiddles, oboe, bagpipes, whistles, accordions, concertina and a wide variety of percussion (including a frying pan).

The cheer as Bellowhead came on stage was extremely loud, and the band launched immediately into Jordan, a song from their first full album. Things got much louder after that.

This is something to criticise – after a while it became apparent that the band were too loud, to the point where the speakers or something in the chain couldn’t quite cope and so there were hints of distortion around the edges, and the soprano saxophone came over way too strongly a few times. The overall quality was good, but if it was just a little bit quieter it would’ve been far more enjoyable.

I’m not going to go through everything they played, although there were quite a few things that aren’t on either of their albums. Some I suppose could be from their original EP which I don’t have, but I suspect some of them just aren’t on any recordings which bodes well for future album repertoire. I do feel though that Bellowhead’s strength is in live performance. While listening to one of their albums is a pleasure, seeing them live is a completely different experience where the energy and enthusiasm really gets you.

And of course, nobody sings quite like John Boden.

Yes, Jonathan Coulton in London! His first time performing ‘over here’ and yes, he did sing Over There — he sang it first, after saying he thought he should get it out of the way and then not being able to start because he was trying not to laugh.

The atmosphere prior to the start of the concert was absolutely incredible. I’m going to keep comparing it to Loreena McKennitt at the Barbican, because there was the same sense of being part of a group of really dedicated fans, and of extreme anticipation. In her case it was because she’d not toured at all for nine years. In JoCo’s case, it’s because he’s never been here at all.

With a group of people from JoCo’s forum, I was right near the front of the queue. The doors didn’t even open until the advertised start time, which is not how I usually understand these things to work — the time on the ticket is usually the show’s intended start time. Therefore the concert started later than expected, and the whole transport situation became rather more stressful than it should have been.

However, the show itself was worth waiting for. After Over There — complete with derisory boos during the ’saved their asses in World War Two’ line — we were treated to a good cross-section of JoCo’s music, although unfortunately not including the new Lady Aberlin’s Muumuu. Particular highlights included Skullcrusher Mountain with virtually everyone singing every single word and the last chorus as an audience solo; Re: Your Brains as a concert-ender with audience participation (as if we hadn’t been participating already, as he acknowledged) where we had to learn to sing it like a mob of zombies, not like a Viennese children’s choir which has been turned into zombies. ‘Perhaps your mouths don’t work properly since you became zombies’.

I can’t recount all the wonderful moments as I’ll be here all day and I need to go shopping and do some cooking, but we did get the world premiere of Code Monkey sung with the accompaniment of JoCo’s new Tenori-On.

What do you mean, you don’t know what a Tenori-On is? Get thee to Google! Away, away!

In my last post I lamented that not much was happening on the music front.

That’s changed.

I’m now playing in two recorder groups, the SRP, a viol group, the University early music group (who’re short on members) and the office band. Yes, the office band – there is a band, and they seem to think a recorder player is a useful asset. I’ve been figuring out some parts for the office party at the end of November, and I’m gradually getting there. A completely different style of music, so it’s extremely interesting. The most important thing is that everybody seems to be having a lot of fun with it.

Work itself is generally going well, but I’m not going to write about it because it’s not going to win any awards for interestingness.

National Novel Writing Month is approaching once again. This year Hannah and I are the only MLs for our region, so we’ve got a bit more work to do. We need to sort out what’s going in the survival kits this year. The rest will probably organise itself – people have got into the habit of coming to meets now. We realised yesterday that we may be a fairly unique region in that we’ve been having monthly meets for two years now without missing a single one. What’s more, we have an extra meet at the end of October, weekly meets through November, and also weekly meets through June for Script Frenzy (not that Script Frenzy was at all popular with our Wrimos) and other June-time events like NaNoManGo and our own mini-Nano. Our Wrimos really are a fantastic group of people, and I’m honoured to be involved.

Unfortunately with NaNoWriMo looming I’m thinking up plots but also wondering when I’m going to find the time to write anything. Three performances in November and one in December mean a lot of rehearsal time, as well as the usual recorder and viol lessons and groups. I’m going to have to stop reading and just write write write write write I think.

So I’ve not blogged for ages. Nothing new there, I hear the masses cry – at least, I would, if the total audience of this blog was large enough to be described by the term ‘the masses’.

Why the silence? Well, it’s largely because things of great interest have been happening. I know that’s not the traditional reason not to blog, but when searching for a job one doesn’t really wish to shout about it too much on the Internet in a form which will be easy for one’s prospective employers to find – not that I have a moment’s doubt that there’s already a whole pile of incriminating information out there about me. Evidently none of it was really serious, because I got a job and have been working full time for three weeks now. It’s not my dream job, I shall be honest, but it’s a job and it’s a pretty good one really. The pay’s entirely reasonable, the office environment is fantastic, and the people are also nice. The commute could only be better if it was a short walk down the road (rather than a short walk, a reasonable tram ride and another short walk after that).

The major problem is that, as with all software development which takes place against a background of established code, there’s established code. A lot of it. Ten years and more of it. Much of it is poorly documented (by which I mean not documented in any way whatsoever). Quite a bit of it is poorly written, having suffered from the many demons associated with haste, neglect and modification by other people (hint: documentation helps with that). It seems intentions are changing. My team have generally agreed that code should be documented and so forth. Unfortunately we’re now arguing about how it should be documented, but at least it’s a start.

Music things have been on a bit of a hiatus. As it’s the summer, many groups and lessons have been disrupted. I’ve not had any viol or recorder lessons for ages, and my only outlet is playing Telemann sonatas all afternoon at the weekend (I’m sure my neighbours are simply delighted…) and going to SRP once a month, which is an absolute lifesaver. I can’t wait for the start of the school year to return groups and lessons to normality, although I will miss playing with the University early music group.

Still, you can’t have everything.

I played in this one. Each year my recorder teacher Wendy Hancock puts on a concert in Chilwell which is on the outskirts of Nottingham’s metropolitan area. The concert is always free with a retiring collection for a chosen charity (Marie Curie Cancer Care this year), and the performers are described as ‘Students and Friends of Wendy Hancock’. Another tradition is to finish the concert with at least one very loud piece of music in which everybody plays. In order to accommodate that many musicians, the music is usually a polychoral piece, which leads to some interesting consequences in terms of sound, especially since the church isn’t really big enough for everybody to stand up and play at once!

Nonetheless, it’s all good fun. Last year I played with the university early music group and a solo which was taken from the pieces I was at the time preparing for grade 4 descant. I was terrified, played moderately poorly and vacated the stage as soon as was humanly possible.

What a difference a year’s extra lessons makes. Having passed grade 4 and grade 5 (the latter on treble recorder) since then, and played in a few more lunchtime concerts, I’ve become rather more confident and capable. Again the university group played – one piece by our viol players, and one piece combined strings and recorders, repeating the Telemann sonata for six melody instruments in A minor from our last lunchtime concert, which was a resounding success then and almost a resounding success last night. The audience liked it, but we know how it was supposed to go…

I also played with the Mundy Consort, which was much much easier music that we played better than we’ve ever played it before. Terribly pleased with that, because Rachel at least isn’t at all used to group playing or performance, being only ten. She played very well though, and so did Nadia and Patsy who completed that group for the evening (oh and thanks to Christine Ransom for filling in the fifth part in All In A Garden Green for us in the absence of a fifth member of the consort actually being able to attend).

And so there was my solo. This time it was an unnamed movement from Jacques Paisible’s Sonata 8 in C minor. A nice piece, not too challenging except to actually play well, accompanied by Phillip Weller on harpsichord, and Sarah Cook on baroque ‘cello. They’re both wonderful musicians, and it was a joy to play with them even through the performance nerves.

I actually got what I think might have been some genuine applause, and people told me afterwards I played very well, although they could have just been being polite I suppose. Still, definitely much better than last year. I could get to like this sort of thing.

Then the final pieces were stupendous amounts of fun. We were joined by Sinfonia Chorale, who provided the vocals, and Phillip on the pipe organ, one choir of twenty-ish recorder players and everyone who had a stringed instrument playing that in the other choir. We belted out some South American baroque music, and it’s still going through my head now.

Well, alternating with the UK’s Eurovision entry from last night anyway.