Exemplary Visions

I’ve been helping a poet start a blog, and the default behaviour of the WordPress Visual WYSIWYG editor makes this a little tricky, unless you know the <Shift>-<Return> hard break key combination  (i.e. type the<Shift> key and the <Return> key together). I’m going to type this now
which is why a hard line break was inserted after “this now”. So if you are typing in poetry, use <Shift>-<Return> to start a new line within a stanza, and hit <Return> on its own to start a new stanza.

What if you are posting poems already written using Mircrosoft Word? The first method I’ve found is to select text from Word and paste it into “Code” mode using the system clipboard. This preserves line breaks and one space of indentation. You can then go to Visual mode to tidy up spacing and change fonts if necessary.

Another way involves using the “advanced” menu - which is activated by typing <Alt>-v. Having first selected and copied the title and stanza you want in a Word document, use the “Paste as Plain Text” button. If you use the “Paste from Word” button you may find that the Word document used singly spaced paragraphs with no “after” space to achieve line breaks rather than using multiple hard line breaks within a paragraph corresponding to a stanza.

“Paste as Plain Text” is also useful for scraping poems from webpages as the visual editor often gives unexpected results with arbitrary HTML markup. I grabbed the following from http://www.bartleby.com/101/489.html:

The Tiger

TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

If you use normal system paste you get this almost but not quite faithful rendering of the original HTML table:

Not really what I wanted. Keep it simple and remember <Alt>-v and <Shift>-<Return>.

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it has been a splendid last couple of weeks for going to gigs here in Edinburgh:

27th July: Georgie Fame

 I was a bit dubious about this but my brother-in-law Ally tempted me with the “Hammond B3″ lure, and indeed it featured. I was just a wee boy in the 60s, so my memories of Georgie are of the tunes that got further playing as I got older, such as “Bonny and Clyde” and “Yeh Yeh”. Turns out the gig was much better than I expected, maybe because I haven’t listened to his happy banter between songs before, or experienced him belting out the songs with a very impressive voice, and that his encore on solo piano was stormingly good, as he quipped “eat your heart out Mr. Jules Holland”.

28th July: Jafala

Jafala stands for “Jazz and Funk and Latin and Other” and they are a local band featuring my drum teacher, Terry Sloan, so I was very keen to go to this gig, and they were great. Which is more than can be said for the pub audience, some of whom had their backs to the band while talking. I have a friend of a friend who would pour his pint over such people. Anyway, I very much enjoyed their set, especially when Terry let rip on the kit.

Whatever Jazz cred I may have had I blew by identifying their opening number as “Freddie Freeloader” rather than “All Blues”. So rather than dwelling on my failing brain, may I just say that their very fine sax and horn players know their stuff even if I don’t.

1st August: Dr John and the Lower 911

The band rocked and Dr John delivers magic. I hate to mention it, but our local newspaper gave this gig a hostile review which was oblivious to the sheer musicality and theatre of the event, so I cheerfully borrow the above photo from them and ask them to employ reviewers who love music. My only prior knowledge of the Dr. is the wonderful Marianne Faithfull album Strange Weather where he has a brilliant solo spot on piano. Based on that I was prepared to be entertained by the live experience, and indeed, I was, and then some. Splendid!

So I’m hoping this set with the Lower 911 is a great introduction to the music I shall hear when I go gigging (in the giving a seminar and software expo sense) with Perspector in New Orleans at the end of October at PPT Live!

5th August: Spencer Davis Group

Spencer Davis had hitherto never meant much to me other than being the bloke that had the band with the young Steve Winwood belting out “Gimme Some Lovin”. This great clip on YouTube demonstrates that he was also the coolest dude saying “Hey” at the time. Wind forward 40 years and we find a stormingly tight and expert group who delight at every turn. So since I didn’t know much about SDG, the major revelations were

• Miller Anderson, who has an amazing voice as well as a guitar technique honed by 40 years of professional playing. Miller was a member of the Keef Hartley Band who played at Woodstock, but they didn’t appear in the movie. His fascinating career involving many bands over the years is documented on his website.
• Eddie Hardin,  who had the task of taking over from Steve, and has being doing so for 40 years. I didn’t know that, and again I found his website very interesting too. He knows his way around the Hammond.
• Colin Hodgkinson, killer solo spot and solid rythmn. Again, an amazing CV.
• Steff Porcell, tough also to fill Pete York’s shoes, but Steff does so with aplomb.

They played a great set, but the evening was not complete since they are touring with:

5th August:The Yardbirds

A very good value double bill, since the The Yardbirds did not drop the torch from SDG but kept on rockin. The original members Jim McCarty (drums) and Chris Dreja (rythmn guitar) have recruited great younger blood who you can read about here. They work together and make stirring loud music (what more do you want?).

13th August: Tony Montana Organ Trio

Who I blogged about here. And if you missed that post, may I just say that you should go and hear Tony’s trio if you can.

—

A very inspirational couple of weeks and proof that old rockers still have a lot to offer. I already knew that having gone to see The Who at Hyde Park last year, but it doesn’t hurt to broadcast the thought. Keep on rockin!

And Jeff Beck, and your mate Jan Hammer - please come back to Scotland!

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A few weeks back I posted a YouTube clip called Mambo Inn. It was not obvious to me who the drummer was, so I emailed the band leader George Gee, who splendidly replied to me copying the drummer himself, Dave Gibson. This week I got an email from Dave thanking me for my interest in his music.

It’s great to know that there are wonderful people using the Internet in a positive way; so forget about all that spam and phishing - let’s put signal ahead of noise. I’ll be sure to try and catch one of Dave’s gigs next time I am in NY, here’s a clip from his site:

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On Monday I went to The Jazz Bar to see the Tony Monaco Organ Trio; it was a fantastic gig, and if you are in Edinburgh this week, they are playing every night at 11.00pm until Sunday 19th August. 

Tony has an amazing command of the Hammond B3; he provides the bass line on pedals and lower manual, while working melodic magic on the top manual. I love the dynamic range of effects, voices and volume the Hammond has to offer, and Tony knows how to show them off.

Just as important to the task at hand, Tony and the rest of the trio groove really well together, and Ross Milligan (guitar) and Adam Sorenson (drums) get to show off their chops too.

Here is a great clip posted on YouTube from a Jazz Bar gig from last year for the same lineup:

For a very interesting interview with Tony where he talks about a phonecall from Jimmy Smith on his 16th birthday, go to here.

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