BBC in 'excellent TV program' shock

In a cash-saving exercise I decided to stay in last night. I fired up IRC and stuck on the TV, expecting to see the usual programmes that aren't worth putting on during the rest of the week.

And then I had a real surprise.

If you missed the opening episode of 'Fur TV' you missed a real treat. It is the funniest thing I have seen in years. To sum it up, try to imagine Sesame Street set in the real world in the UK with loads of adult themes chucked in. I can't put a link here to a website with further information, because I've Googled like crazy and there doesn't seem to be one. The best I can do is reproduce the description of the first episode from the BBC's TV listings:

"New adult puppet comedy set in the fictional world of Furry Avenue, where puppets and humans live side by side.

Scrawny Mervin is desperate to find a girlfriend. Despite intensive coaching from the charming and successful Lapeno, Mervin's efforts at seducing women end in disaster. Never more so than when Mervin finds himself in the clutches of an insane female puppophile, who straps him to a rack and attempts to de-thread him.

Jim and Frank, the world's first openly gay puppets, also put in an appearance. Jim is an open minded, easy going Californian, Frank an uptight Englishman - a combination that leads to constant conflict.

Strong language and sexual scenes."

Anyway, set your video for this programme next week - you won't regret it.

Just had a quick Google for my own name, and it seems that I'm the number one Paul Simpson according to Google again - excellent!

"...But filmmakers standing up for their failures exude a certain perverse nobility, and command a lingering fascination: Will they shoulder the blame, or point fingers? Will they inadvertently reveal something dense or pretentious about themselves, clarifying how a bad movie came to be? Do they even recognize that something's wrong?"

The DVD Commentary Tracks Of The Damned.

More next-generation DVD stuff: DVD Forum 'approves' rewriteable HD-DVD spec.

LOL!

One more thing about video editing and DVD:

If you ever have need of video editing software on your PC avoid Pinnacle software like the plague - in my experience it is buggy, unreliable and crashes more often than a blind 15-year-old crack-addled joyrider.

For hassle-free DVD production I recommend Ulead products. Quick, easy to use, well-designed and stable.

Legal Note - all the above is purely my own personal opinion and should not be taken as indisputable fact. I'm just a guy who spends more time than he really should fiddling with video editing software and am unaffiliated with any of the companies mentioned above. Also, Pinnacle can kiss my hairy arse.

DVD Killed The Video Star

Amongst my dazzling array of skills is that of video editing. It's a field I only got into fairly recently when I started producing video mementos of uk.music.guitar events - at first on CD-ROM, latterly on the wonderful medium of DVD.

One current major problem with blank DVD media for home use is that it can only store half as much data as commercially produced DVDs - a blank DVD can hold 4.3 GB while a dual-layered commercial DVD can hold about 9 Gb. This is, of course, intended as an anti-piracy measure to try and prevent people making copies of bought DVDs at home.

Another major problem is that of standards. The manufacturers of blank DVDs and related hardware are split into two main camps of DVD-R and DVD+R. The reasons for this are, as usual, mainly financial - the big players involved wanting their standard to be the one taken up by the majority in an exercise reminiscent of the VHS/Betamax farce of the early 80s.

With digital video, as with all digital media, the more 'stuff' you can cram onto a single disc, the better. Which is why I was interested in this article. It seems that the battle for the next DVD format for home use is already underway before the winner for the current one has been decided (though to be fair, DVD-R/+R compatibilty is becoming less of an issue as hardware manufacturers are now making more and more machines that will just play any damn disc you put in them).

The prospect of a disc that can hold 30 Gb or more is an exciting one, for gadget-loving geeks like me at least. But please - Sony, Philips, Toshiba et al- this time around can you just agree on a standard and stick to it?

Didn't get the job I went for at work, but then I didn't think I would. So that tallies.

Pastures new, I think.

Went to see Wide Open at the Talbot in Wrexham last Saturday. I took my new Sony mic and MiniDisc recorder along and recorded the gig - here are a few songs from the set:

Rockin' In The Free World

Sweet Home Alabama

Into The Great Wide Open

"Gather a large amount of sympathetic malcontents together and declare February 14 as a Day of Hate. Ridicule those who are less fortunate than you, refuel old ethnic hatred while encouraging the hate that already exists, explode an advertising binge of misanthropy. Be sure to be extremely vocal so as to get the attention of the media. Break lots of things with reckless abandon."

Valentine's Day my arse.

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to pop a water balloon in space?

Like-minded souls found out in the void

(Yes, I am playing Blog catch-up from my last couple of days of feeling rough - feel the linky goodness, damnit).

People often ask me what kind of music I like to play on my guitar, and I often have to tell them I can't because it hasn't really been give a name yet. Although I'm perfectly comfortable playing rock/pop/disco etc., my own personal musical tastes - the stuff that really gets the creative juices going when I hear/play it - is, well... very different. 'Avant-garde' is the term most often used, and I hate it because:

1 - it implies doing something arty and wanky and weird on purpose, when all I'm actually doing is making noises that I enjoy hearing.

2 - it just sounds plain shit. 'Oooh, it's so avant-garde, dahling!' - tossers.

(I hate the term 'experimental music' too - I do all the 'experimenting' with my music in the privacy of my own home, I only actually play anything in front of people when I feel I've got it right).

Anyway; I digress...

For yonks I thought I was the only one doing what I do on guitar, until Adrian Foden pointed out this here wonderful, wonderful website on #ukmg.

I AM NOT ALONE!

:-D

To copy an idea of Rick's, here's a round up of some Blogs that I read on a daily basis (the list of Blogs on the left of this page is far from comprehensive - it's just a selection of what I regularly read on teh intarweb).

Steve Cobham is a guitar teacher down in Milton Keynes who has a taste for the music of Frank Zappa, beer and a good curry.

Paul Creedy is a talented guitar builder/repairer to the rich and famous in Northampton.

Lidbert is a friend of Rick's who has a Blog which goes by the marvellous title of 'Flaps!'.

jwz is a club owner/promoter in San Francisco who digs up all sorts of techy stuff and all-round strangeness on the net.

James Screaton is a very talented musician in Sheffield whose idiom is 70s and 80s rawk. With beards.

Ned Evett is a favourite guitarist of mine, and he's put a new video clip up on his website of him doing his fretless-slidey-glassnecked guitar magic which can be seen here.

For some time I've had a minidisc recorder - a Sony MT200H. I bought it to record gigs, band rehearsals - just basically a handy portable sound recorder.

'Cept I haven't had a handy portable mic to go with it.

On my good friend Steve Cobham's advice I got a Sony ECM-MS907 stereo mic from Amazon- it's small, portable and Steve told me it had good sound quality for general 'ambient' recording (and he should know - he's had one for a while).

I got it through the post today, so I plugged it into my MD recorder, stuck it willy-nilly on my desk facing in the general direction of my guitar amp, picked up my trusty new Yamaha SGV, hit 'record' and noodled away.

And whaddya know! It doesn't sound half bad. Just the job for 'turn up and switch on' recordings. I've dumped the untweaked output from my MD recorder onto my PC in MP3 format and you can hear the result here.

Feeling better!

Back at work.

Completed a test of my admin skills at work as part of an evaluation for the job I had an interview for a couple of days ago.

Fingers crossed.

Ill.

Off.

Bleh.

Still ill. Headache, general feeling akin to that of a re-heated shit sandwich.

Full day off work.

Bleh.

Though, oddly, also had a job interview at my current place of work.

Ill.

Half day off work.

Bleh.

Guitar Acquisition Syndrome (GAS) Strikes Again!

For some time now I've really fancied owning a Yamaha SGV guitar. What made me want one was seeing one of Vinny Burns's excellent custom-made Yamahas at the 2001 UKMGPU. It looked great, played great and sounded fantastic. One small problem: you can't buy guitars like Vinny's in the shops, as they were custom-made for him by Yamaha.

So I was planning on doing what uk.music.guitar regular Ross Edwards had done: purchase a bog standard SGV and fit some better hardware to it. Another small problem - Yamaha discontinued the SGV model in Europe some time ago.

Bum.

Just as my hopes of owning such a beast were diminishing, it turned out that Vinny was selling one of his custom SGVs. At first I was a bit hesitant - would I be able to afford this dream object of desire? Would I be better off pursuing a standard second hand Yammy and getting guitar wizard Paul Creedy to work his magic on it for me?

After much cajoling from colleagues in both #ukmg and work, a phone call to Vinny and a trek across the Pennines and back in blizzard-like weather conditions I am the proud owner of a one-of-a-kind custom Yamaha SGV!

Here comes the science bit:

It has a bolt-on neck, Seymour Duncan pickups (a '59 in the neck and a Distortion in the bridge), Gibson-style gold-plated hardware and a pearloid scratchplate. The pickups are wired with two volume controls, one tone control and a 3-way toggle, which allows me to do my favourite 'turning the guitar on and off trick' by turning the neck pickup off and flicking the toggle back and forth.

More importantly, it plays superbly - of all the guitars I own, this one is definitely the easiest to play.

So - I'm one happy plucker! :-D

Some pics:

Pic1 Pic2 Pic3 Pic4

I currently, for my sins, work in a call centre.

Read this.

Just spotted a couple of quotations from a French bloke called Voltaire that I wasn't previously aware of which seem very apt in the current political climate:

"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

- Voltaire died in 1778. Nothing ever changes, it seems...

On a lighter note, he also once said:

"Anything too stupid to be said is sung."

- What a guy!

Carl Bowry is a gentleman, a scholar and the best guitarist I have ever seen play live. Anywhere. Ever.

And now he has his own website.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present:

www.carlbowry.com