Umm, I’m still here, just working out a way to live my life and write about it at the same time. I guess I don’t multi-task too well. So you see, if I’m making a record how can I write about it. I mean when? I’m busy making it, right? Just a thought …
Anyway, just wanted to say that I’m moving this weblog to it’s shiny new home at www.robinguthrie.com …
And y’all thought I was on holiday, huh …
I read that cheech and chong are back.
kill these people
My parents generation didn’t find them funny.
My generation didn’t find them funny.
My brothers generation found them funny but, well, it’s not fair that brothers get a whole generation to themselves.
They’re just not very fucking funny, really … no, really
There’s nothing funny about being stoned, with the exception of having trees talk to you in Amsterdam.
Which isn’t funny.
Well not the way they talked to me anyway.
Anyway, my point.
Kill Them now.
Just a thought
*This message brought to you by the people encouraging me to write my weblog more often….
…. is like where I live in summer, with the exception that no-one smokes and everyone has a blackberry…Oh, and there are no sheep wandering around the street.
Here I am doing the things that I dread, as mentioned in my last post, namely talking to people in the music industry. Now, given that I’m sitting typing this in someones office while millions of dollars and huge superstars are being discussed in front of me, I should be a little more respectful, but I can’t help thinking ‘what the fuck am I doing here?’..
Well, actually what I am doing is sitting typing this, pretending it’s my office and that I’m doing something big and important. But you know what? I have the best job in the world and wouldn’t trade places for anything.
This life really confuses me sometimes. Still, people here seem to be enjoying, making money, in a way that I could not imagine. Well, I guess they may feel just as useless and out of place as I do now if they had to sit and watch me while recording in my studio. Truth is, they would not even register on my radar, which is rather heartwarming to know.
I’ve been a little productive, this trip, and have managed to record some new music, three new pieces to be exact, in San Francisco, working once more with Tony Espinoza and Count at SF Soundworks. I also managed to play some guitar for Halou, which was fun, but has shaken me a bit, to see the twinkle of Count’s eye as he told me he would ‘fuck around with it a little‘. Ah, well, it’s another leap of faith for me, as it always is when I let someone else fuck with my shit… However, as I have a great faith in the aforementioned gentlemen, I shall let it go and trust that it will end up better than I ever imagined.
What else? They have avacados here and I’ve decided to sign a deal with whichever label makes the best guacamole. It may make the decision easier for me than deciding on other more tedious things like marketing plans and promises of imagined success and world domination. Giving the artists snacks, in my case at least, will usually swing the deal…
many apologies for a little slack with my weblog. There are multiple reasons (…excuses), the most important being that I am once again being fucked around by France Telecom and have only had intermittent access to the internet. Other lame excuses are, I’ve been a little too busy and I have a stinking cold and have been going to bed early.
s l a c k e r
what ever…
So here is the good stuff.. My next album Continental is, to all intents and purposes, finished… OK, I may dick around with it a little, I know myself too well to say otherwise, but it seems pretty complete to me right at this moment. Now my next hurdle comes… having the chance to play it to someone. That’s usually a moment where all becomes clear and I can finally cut the umbilical. However, unfortunately for me, living here in total fucking isolation from the world, the real world, that is, and not the rural french world of men wearing john deere baseball caps, I have no-one to play it to. And there’s no way I’ll send any CDs out until I’ve seen the look in someones eyes when they hear it…. lordy, it’s a tall order for someone to listen to my music with me for the first time. Anyway, after I cross that bridge, I’ll let go. Meantime, it’s hunting season here and I’m sorely tempted to invite a few of the good old boys in, the ones who have plastic ducks strapped to their heads, for a listen…
All things seem to twist themselves together, within my creativity. I had decided to call the new album, Continental, when I was travelling across the USA earlier this year, en route to play my 19 Crescent show in Los Angeles. Then during the summer I managed to rack up about 9000kms around this continent, the one I live on now (because I’m from a country which is an island, it never ceases to amaze me that I can just jump in my car and drive anywhere in Europe now, except ironically, the UK, without having to cross water – Oh, and while I’m on the subject, how come the fish in Britain, which is, after all, an island, sucks, but I can eat spider crab legs the size of a baseball bat in the desert of southern Utah?)…Anyway back to the creative thought… Lumiere, which is what I’ll be playing for some up and coming shows, contains source material, shot in about 15 countries..over 4 continents… I counted them.. Of course, you would never be able to tell that, because it’s all fucked up visually speaking, but I can and it makes me feel good. Anyway that wasn’t really much of a thought but, that’s what was bouncing around my head like a li’l mosquito, and now, hopefully it will stop.
Anyone who knows me will tell you (and most people that know me love to point out my character defects) that I’m like a big girl when I get sick.. Well I’m sick just now, and extremely paranoid as I just got sick halfway through reading La Peste by Albert Camus where everyone gets sick and then dies….
And more sickness : so here I am, up to my neck in snot and tissues, vitamin C and big socks. I’d rather be in bed, you know, but I’m preparing for the show in the flyer below…. And what is sick? One of my pieces of equipment, my Eventide H3000, my new Eventide H3000, the one I bought because the old one kept fucking up, cutting out intermittently, during concerts has started cutting out intermittently… wtf?
what ever…
well, the next morning ran into the next day, the next day ran into the next day..et cetera… the mixes are very cool. There’s not a lot else to say. I’ve missed a heatwave in france and a hurricane in Louisiana. Well, I’ve experienced the opposite before, so all is well. I have mixed a fourth track but am unsure, as yet, of its title……
I hate to come come across as a bitch, and I seem to always complain, in this weblog but… I’m suffering from a technical problem, that I can’t seem to debug, in my music making system. For the life of me I can’t seem to isolate it (and therfore do something about it). The symptom is, quite simlply, random clicks, really high frequency, random clicks. Now any of you fine people, who may be, more than just a little, more clever than me, may be able to point me in the right direction but for the moment, I seem to be mixing for 2 hours and declicking for 4…….. I’m pretty sure, I’ve elimiated processor overload and wordclock, the two main contenders for my problem, but any help from any of you geeks/geekettes will be most humbly recieved.,…
but… well you know sometimes when 24 hours of your life can seen like, well 24 weeks…. The story starts like this. So, I’m on my way to paris which is already a three and a half hour drive from chez moi, well not exactly paris, but beauvais, a two hour more distant airport that the lo-cost airline that flies to budapest flies from. And after around about 125 km a sudden thought enters my head, sudden like the lightning in he storm that I’m driving through. “Why did you leave the DVD of the lumiere film in the ’studio’ computer when you were rehearsing”? So, with a great deal of acceptance and 12 step work (the steps that is, that my personality allow me to use……) I turn my vehicle around, face the humiliation almost certainly proffered by my loving family members, and get the fuck back on the road. Ho-Hum.. (oh, and I picked up my pasport as well which I’m sure was useful….)
So cut to six or so hours later, I arrive at beauvais, totaly freaked by the DVD incedent and decide it would be wise to make a safety copy of the dvd which was, all in all, probably a good thing to do. So I sat im my hotel room until the wee small hours copying DVD’s. .
The next morning I had my guitar strings taken away from me by airport security, as I obviously appeared like someone who may have garroted a flight attendant. I had a few other things in mind for the, very beautiful, flight attendants but, I don’t think garroting ever crossed my mind. (well if it did, it was just a passing thought).
I was met at the airport by the promoter, Imre and his delightful wife. The fed me with some Hungarian food which would have had Dr Atkins turning in his grave and then we went to soundcheck. Well soundcheck is a bit of a professional word, which doesn’t seem to exist in the hungarian language but, we’ll we all went to the venue and… waited around. Amber Smith, who were also playing turned up and I met Imre (they have a scarcity of prenoms in hungary) who is a lovely, ariculate soul and he pointed out to to me all the faults in the mixes I had done for them recently… No, he was really lovely and, even though he entrusted me to mix his band and I missed out a guitar and made his voice out of sync, he didn’t try to hurt me, something I feel sure I would have done if I were in his shoes..
So after being in the venue for several hours and, the soundcheck, after the soundman had turned up, I did start to ask about the film projection. A beautifully large screen was these but of course the guy who was operating the projector was on some hi-carb dumpling cookery course or something equally as hungarian, so when I was asked for the DVD of lumiere to test on the system it was just as the doors were opening. I swaggered over to my computer case ………. That was the last swaggering I’ll be doing for a while…. One can’t swagger with one’s head either a : up one’s own ass, or b : hung low in shame. Somehow I managed to fill all the criteria last night as I had, at this point, quite obviously left both the DVD and the safety copy in the hotel the night before….
oops
FACT : Did you know that you can buy blank DVDR’s in gas stations in budapest at 10pm?
I didn’t, I mean I can’t buy GAS in gas stations here at 10 pm…..
Amber Smith finish their set, while I’m still burning a lumiere DVD in the bar, signing autographs at the same time with the sure knowledge that maybe no one will want them signed later…..
From what I saw and heard Amber Smith’s set was lovely, the band playing acoustically and being augmented my a string quartet
OK, the next part is less detailed… I walked on stage and started to play.. A very poorly projected verion of lumiere was behind me (I wasn’t cross at all, I was happy something was there).. But still, the visuals sucked, after all that stress………. I, well I’m not exactly the most impartial observer, even athough I do often feel like an observer when I play, I was happy to play and I think I was OK. People semed to like it and I sold out of my CD’s for sale… So….I leave it like that…. hmmmm, I need a tour manager
Yesterday I finished the remix of Smile for Mitsuo Tate and Miki Berenyi. I’ve used the original vocal and bass and pretty much done everything else afresh. It sounds pretty vibrant and powerful and I hope that people will get a chance to hear it…I’m not sure of the release date but when I know I will post it here. I’d just like to point out that while I’ve been sweating over his mix Mitsuo has been relaxing in a hot spa near Tokyo for the weekend with his girlfriend. Jealous, me? never… lol.
Next.. I started to write a piece for an up and coming exhibit in The Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, I think, called Audio Interference. I had been asked by the organiser of the event, the very delightful Liz Copeland from WDET in Detroit, last November when she invited me to perform on her show. I’m quite excited to contribute something as I have a blank canvas, well blank with the exception that it’s an audio only exhibit. So that’s what I’ll be geting up to today….
I went to the coachella valley music festival to see where I would have played with cocteau twins, had we done it. mmm, well I preferred the 19 crescent vibe, I must say. I was bummed at missing M83 and then was too shy to introduce myself to them afterwards (you can’t really say…’nice show’, now can you?). Did enjoy overhearing them speaking french bitching about some americans though.. 
.. As for the festival, well, I was expecting desert, but it was really a very sanitised suburban location.. So.. did the only obvious thing for someone like me, left, then drove to arizona to spend a few days enjoying the real desert. For those of you who know me you will understand the affinity I have for that part of the world, as it has given me so, so much…
my thanks to jack @ orangephotography for setting this thing up for me..now all I have to do is learn how to work it…
robin g is my only friend that knows more computer geek than me. that’s why i love him.
