LaTina Rokz return, with a new spelling

 

My wife Sarah is excited - or at least relieved - that after all these years I'm finally playing in a band that plays songs. Songs you’ll actually know. Songs along with which you might actually be able to sing. Fronted by the amazing singer-songwriter-guitarist Tina Oberman, and featuring guitarist (and my teacher!) Gregg Isaacson and my undercurrent buddy Steve Morgan, LaTina Rokz* is like weirdest wedding band you’ll ever come across. Or something.

 

We had our first outing a month or two back and it was a resounding success; who knew that Scissor Sisters, Glen Campbell, The Doors, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pet Clark made such great bedfellows? Well, they do, it seems. 

 

And now we're back. On November 2nd we're going to be playing a very special cabaret event at The Better Half in Hove. Tickets are a snip at £30 for the show and a two-course dinner (details in the attached flyer). 

 

Places are limited to just 40 and going quick, so please let me know if you'd like to come along and I'll reserve you a place.

 

 

* Yes, we've changed our spelling - the previous one turned up some rather unsavoury Google results. Ahem.

Undercurrent back at the Dover Castle, Brighton, 19th September

Undercurrent - Steve Morgan (piano/keyboards) & myself (guitar) - continue our residency in Hanover this month. As we said last time, this is unlike most pub jazz evenings you're likely to stumble upon. Seriously, where else are you likely to hear The Beach Boys and Link Wray alongside Pat Metheny, Henry Mancini and Miles Davis? (You can see our previous set list here to get a sense of what we do.) Once again, we'll be performing two live sets and digging out a bunch of interesting records to play between. We may well have some friends sitting in with us too! Hope you can make it along.

Free admission. 8pm, September 19th, Dover Castle, Southover Street, Brighton, BN2 9UE.

Introducing the Brighton Classical Guitar Quartet

I'm absolutely psyched (if a little daunted) to be playing with the Brighton Classical Guitar Quartet alongside three other of my my teacher Gregg Isaacson's students: Tina Oberman, Olivier Thereaux and James Hartt. Our debut recital is at the Regency Townhouse in Brunswick Square on the afternoon of October 20th. Expect music by Ravel, Mussorgsky, Boccherini and more! Tickets available here.

LaTina Roxxx - our debut gig: set list etc

I previewed this a few weeks ago... LaTina Roxxx is a new group featuring singer/guitarist Tina Oberman, classical guitarist Gregg Isaacson, my Undercurrent partner Steve Morgan on piano and me on guitar and bass. We played our debut gig at the Purple Playhouse Theatre in Hove in August, and I have to say it went down pretty damn well - we got offered another gig the very next morning. Seriously, how often does that happen?!

To give you an idea of just how eclectic (and slightly mad) it all was, here's the set list:

 

Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)

Sweet Child o’ Mine

Downtown

Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay (Steve's Solo)

Man I Feel Like a Woman

Under The Bridge

Material Girl

Tango en Skai & Leyander (Gregg's solos)

The Boots are Made for Walkin’

Sunday Afternoon Blues & Top Score (Tina's originals)

McArthur Park 

Wichita Lineman & Moon River (the Undercurrent interlude!)

Roxanne

I Got the Music in Me

Riders on the Storm

Nine to Five

Take Your Mama

 

Looks like our next gig is going to be in November - details soon! Oh and we might well be changing the band name spelling, thanks to Google and Porn Hub (don't ask - and certainly don't Google us).

Hiatus and return (2): twitter

Some months ago I published a post about my return to (very occasional) posting on this blog. I said at the time that I'd go on to discuss my parallel return to twitter. It says quite a lot about my reluctance in the area generally that it's taken me until August to type up and publish something I scribbled in my notebook in March, if memory serves. Make of that what you will.

I first joined twitter as "myself" - simonphopkins - well over a decade ago. I was never an especially avid poster, but it's surprising how easy it is to build up thousands of tweets over that length of time. I didn't go much for the running commentary approach; rather I used the platform to point to things that generally interested me, mostly in the world of art and music.

Then last year I deactivated the account, for a number of reasons. Jaron Lanier's diatribe against the BUMMER industries had made a big impact on me. Meanwhile, the increasingly shrill, bilious exchanges in the culture wars were simply depressing (and of course has only become more so). Mostly though, I just didn't feel I really had anything I particularly wanted to say in public.

Of course, for professional reasons, I've had to keep up (broadly) with developments in social media over the last decade and a half. I've dabbled in most of the major platforms: MySpace (hehe), flickr (food photos - the shame of it), Friends Reunited, Facebook (< 1 year - always hated it), last.fm, tumblr, Pinterest (< 1 week) and most recently Medium. But as of this year, there's bugger all of me online; I've been very happy to restrict social media and blogging activity to Angel Academe's twitter feed and Medium page.

However, I find myself in the position of having (my my standards at any rate) a lot of upcoming live music commitments. My jazz(ish) duo with pianist Steve Morgan, Undercurrent, is back with a regular slot at the Dover Castle in Brighton. Then there's LaTina Roxxx, whom I described here recently as a wedding band on quaaludes; our fist gig is at the Purple Playhouse Theatre in Hove on August 31st. I'm also paying first guitar in the Brighton Guitar Quartet, a classical guitar quartet, whose debut gig will be in Hove in October - I'll keep you posted.

Beyond that, after years down the classical guitar rabbit hole I'm looking at finally putting some time back into Boom Logistics, not least as I have over two albums' worth of material to finish off. I'm also beginning to record and post the classical guitar repertoire I've been working on over these last few years (I started with this attempt at Piazzolla).

But, but... how do I let anyone know about any of this activity? Sure, newsletters are having a real moment. I'm a big consumer personally, and I have to say from experience that Angel Academe's newsletter is probably our best way of communicating with our wider network. But twitter is undoubtedly an important part of the comms arsenal, and it's difficult to see how an active musician trying to build an audience can avoid it. (This is probably true of Facebook also, but really, I just couldn't face that.)

Anyway, returning to the fray has been an eye-opener. I toyed with resurrecting @simonphopkins but was both impressed and simultaneously a bit dejected to see that the account had been completely deleted 30 days after I left last year. So I'm starting from scratch (sigh) as @DGMfS1. I'm going to stick to what I know and love: mostly music and the arts more widely. I'm going to attempt to steer clear of the culture wars, not least as my views are increasingly liable to get me "cancelled", I suspect.

So that's it. For the second time this year I'm saying "I'm back". Let's see where it goes from here...

Undercurrent at the Dover Castle, Brighton, 8/8/19; set list and pics

Pianist/keyboardist Steve Morgan and I returned to The Dover Castle in Hanover, Brighton last night for a couple of eclectic live sets and DJing. We were joined on a couple of songs by Steve's brother Paul who added some lovely modular synth textures to a couple of pieces, including a very weird take on a Police classic. Yes, really. (You can see Paul's kit below).

Here's the setlist:

Set 1

Lonesome (Bill Frisell)

All Blues (Miles Davis)

Midnight in Rio (Vincent Lindsay-Clark)

Bibo no Aozora (Ryuichi Sakamoto) 

Black Orpheus (Luiz Bonfá‎)

Au Lait (Pat Metheny/Lyle Mays)

Sleepwalk (Santo Farina/Johnny Farina/Ann Farina)

Coffee Cold (Galt MacDermat)

Charade (Henry Mancini)

Harvest Moon (Neil Young)

How Insensitive (Antonio Carlos Jobim)

Set 2

Walking on the Moon (Sting)

Rumble (Link Wray/Milt Grant)

Midwestern Night’s Dream (Pat Metheny)

Lettre mi-longue (Roland Dyens)

Sunny (Bobby Hebb)

Surfer Girl (Brian Wilson)

the Days of Wine and Roses (Henry Mancini)

‎(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay (Steve Cropper/Otis Redding)

Wichita Lineman (Jimmy Webb)

Moon River (Henry Mancini)

Thanks to everyone who came and supported us, to Louise and Adam at The Dover Castle for hosting and to Paul for the synth weirdness (and for the pics). We hope to be back next month.

LaTina Roxx - our debut gig

Well, here's something I didn't see coming when I took up the classical guitar a few years back, but that's kinda how it's come about. LaTina Roxxx is a new group featuring singer/guitarist Tina Oberman, classical guitarist Gregg Isaacson, my Undercurrent partner Steve Morgan on piano and me on guitar and bass. (I play in a classical guitar duo and in the Brighton Guitar Quartet with Tina, and Gregg is my guitar teacher - see what I mean?) Billed as "an emotional and witty journey through 60s soul, 80s pop, 90s rock and millennium dance music", we're essentially a wedding band on quaaludes. Or something.

Our debut gig is at the Purple Playhouse Theatre in Hove on August 31st and you can buy tickets here. They're a snip at 11 quid.

Undercurrent back at the Dover Castle, Brighton, August 8th

Undercurrent - Steve Morgan (piano/keyboards) & myself (guitar) - continue our residency in Hanover next month. As we said last time, this is unlike most pub jazz evenings you're likely to stumble upon. Seriously, where else are you likely to hear The Beach Boys and Link Wray alongside Pat Metheny, Henry Mancini and Miles Davis? (You can see our previous set list here to get a sense of what we do.) Once again, we'll be performing two live sets and digging out a bunch of interesting records to play between. Hope you can make it along.

Free admission. 8pm, August 8th, Dover Castle, Southover Street, Brighton, BN2 9UE.

Undercurrent back at the Dover Castle, Brighton

So... pianist (and occasional but fantastic singer*) Steve Morgan and I returned to the Dover Castle in Southover, Brighton on June 27th for what looks like it's going to be something of a residency. Quite a few of you who came down were asking what we were playing, so here's the setlist in full.

Set 1

Lonesome (Bill Frisell)

All Blues (Miles Davis)

Estudios Sencillos VI (Leo Brower)

Bibo no Aozora (Ryuichi Sakamoto) 

Black Orpheus (Luiz Bonfá‎)

Surfer Girl (Brian Wilson)

Maurizius (Eberhard Weber)

Au Lait (Pat Metheny/Lyle Mays)

Train in the Distance* (Paul Simon)

How Insensitive (Antonio Carlos Jobim)

Set 2

Rumble (Link Wray/Milt Grant)

Midwestern Night’s Dream (Pat Metheny)

Lettre mi-longue (Roland Dyens)

Sunny (Bobby Hebb)

‎(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay (Steve Cropper/Otis Redding)

Sleepwalk (Santo Farina/Johnny Farina/Ann Farina)

The Days of Wine and Roses (Henry Mancini)

Wichita Lineman (Jimmy Webb)

Moon River (Henry Mancini)

We'll be back in later in July - stay tuned. Thanks to everyone who came down to support us. And thanks to Adam and Louise at the Dover Castle for hosting (and also to Louise for her lovely recreation of our poster in the medium of chalk!)

Here are some great photos taken on the night by my good friend Garry Felgate, who battled with mid-summer back lighting to really conjure up the night's atmosphere.

 

Undercurrent return to the Dover Castle, June 27th

Undercurrent - Steve Morgan (piano/keyboards) & myself (guitar) - continue our new residency in Hanover, Brighton's "Upper East Side", later this month. As anyone who came down last time can testify, this is unlike most pub jazz evenings you're likely to stumble upon. Seriously, where else are you likely to hear The Beach Boys and Link Wray alongside Pat Metheny, Henry Mancini and Miles Davis? Once again, we'll be performing two live sets and digging out a bunch of interesting records to play between. Hope you can make it along.

Free admission. 8pm, May 16th, Dover Castle, Southover Street, Brighton, BN2 9UE.