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NEWSLETTER 13 NOVEMBER, 2007
Sorry for the delay in getting newsletters out. There's a fair bit happening at the moment so I thought I'd bring you up to date.
Coming Gigs:
Saturday 17 November, 2007 Darling Harbour
This Saturday I will be performing 2 sets at Darling Harbour as part of the Songwriting Society of Australia's OzMusicDay Celebration.
The first set will be an 'electric' set. It will take place at the Palm Grove, a 'centrally located grassed 'oasis'' close to Cockle Bay, on the southern promenade opposite the LG IMAX Theatre. I will be performing from 11:40am to 12:10. At this stage I expect my set to be:
Scratching At Scars
Hardie's Men
Mid Life Crisis
A Paris Tale (new)
What's the Attraction (relatively new) and
Self Sufficient (new).
At 3:09pm (sorry I couldn't be more specific) I will be doing an acoustic set at the Harbourside Amphitheatre, on the western promenade in front of the Harbourside Shopping Centre. At this stage the proposed set will be:
Tonight
What Can I Say
Ordinary Rendition
Six O'Clock Swill
Bush Whore
Once Is Enough
although I might have to trim a song, as the set is due to finish at 3:29.
The event starts at 11am and both stages will be in operation until 5pm, so come along, bring a blanket and a picnic lunch and have a listen to some live original music.
Saturday 1 December, 2007 - Riverview Hotel, Birchgrove
I believe that I am booked to play this hotel on Saturday 1 December. It's an evening gig, and will be acoustic. At the present time I am not aware of who, or how many artists will be performing or my likely starting time.
I'm told it's a great venue to listen to live music and it would be great to have a reasonable support base for a new venue.
I'll get back with more specific details as soon as I receive them.
Friday 6 December, 2007 - Mortdale Hotel
This will be my last Mortdale gig for the year, so it would be great to see as many subscribers there as possible. The pub is going through some renovations and the new glass front has given it a facelift. And of course it's 'smoke free'.
I've been putting in a lot of practice on the original material for live performance and will be playing a lot of original stuff on the night (don't tell the publican, though)
NEW MUSIC WEBSITE
One of the reasons for the lack of newsletters has been the demise of mixposure.com. Unfortunately the site was 'hacked' in March. It came back briefly and then had other problems and crashed again about 6 weeks ago. It had been hoped that it would be back by now but I have the feeling that it may not be resuscitated.
While it was down I had been unable to find a suitable replacement. Accordingly, I didn't really have a place that I could use as a home for my music. This site, still, only allows uploads of 1meg which is useless for music.
I'm pleased to say that I've now found a new site www.imusicscene.com which looks like replacing mixposure. It's great from my perspective because a lot of my mixposure friends have also gone over there. At the moment I only have the one track there (What's the Attraction) but will be uploading more in the coming weeks.
The site has a good feel to it and there are some great artists there with a wide range of music.
NEW SONGS
I had a fairly fertile period in March/April and wrote 'Bush Whore', 'Ordinary Rendition' and 'What's the Attraction' in a short space of time. Unfortunately, the collapse of mixposure, and the absence of a suitable place to post the music led to a bit of 'writers' block'.
I'm pleased to say I'm over that and have been back in the Sound Dog Studios over recent months and have further bookings up to Christmas.
Two of my recent recordings 'What's the Attraction' and 'Self Sufficient' were mastered by my mixposure buddy, Di Carlo and these versions are up on my myspace page - www.myspace.com/self-tort2
I've also finished a somewhat epic track 'A Paris Tale', which was based on a 1 paragraph story I saw in the 'snippets' section of the Telegraph back in about 1978. I got another mixposure mate, Rapster, to add some rap to the track. But don't worry, I'm not going eminem on you. It was just a convenient way to progress the storyline of the song without it having to go for about 10 minutes. I'm going to get DiCarlo to master it as well.
For those that haven't heard Bush Whore and Ordinary Rendition, both tracks are posted at soundclick. But as both are also posted on Neil Young's Living With War Today site, I'd prefer you use the following links (just click on the underlined song title below):
Bush Whore (video recorded live by Mat Doust at the Mortdale Hotel)
Bush Whore (audio - garage demo)
Ordinary Rendtion (audio - garage demo)
There's also a track on the Neil Young site that I recorded with Shyonen (Japan) and RedEyeC (USA) called No More
The Neil Young site acts as a chart so your clicking on the tracks as often as you can will assist the track to get up the chart. The video is presently at 52 and for a couple of weeks was outcharting Bruce Springsteen, but he's shot up into the 20s now. The Bush Whore audio charted at 75 just before mixposure (where I originally had the music posted) crashed.
So get clicking.
I also recorded an instrumental that I started to write in the 1970s, but finally got round to finishing earlier this year. At the moment it's only up at Song Planet. There's no direct link to the track but clicking on the link I've provided will take you to my page at the site. The track is called 'The Jig Is Up'. It's the 7th song down on my track list on that site.
I've also done a couple of new collaborations. Just before mixposure crashed I became friends with a great keyboard player who goes under the name Doc C, and a tremendous guitarist from Finland called Cary Carciello. Gary had written a funk instrumental and thought it could be turned into a song. He asked me to write the lyrics and do the vocals. He then added some extra guitar licks and got Doc to add some Hammond and some moog. I'm ecastatic about the way it's turned out. The lyrics are meaningless but that's okay because they're delivered so quickly that you probably won't be able to work them out. James Reyne eat your heart out. I tried to get a rhythmic, rather than a meaningful, feel to them.
Gary's posted the track at his imusicscene page. The track is called Dr Funkenstein. It's at the bottom of Gary's page.
Also did some vocals on a track written by UK songwriter Carol Douglas. The track is called Every Footstep and was written by Carol for her daughter's wedding. It was originally sung by a great female vocalist, and Carol asked me to make it into a duet. It's a very different style for me but a very pretty song. Jenny actually got a bit misty when she heard it.
If you get the chance to make it to any of the gigs I've listed above I'd love to catch up with you.
If you wish to be removed from the list of recipients of this newsletter just let me know and it will be done.
Cheer for now.
Brian Ralston
aka Self Tort
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