Anyone for Tea?

Just so you know...

This weekend will mostly be spent on a
,
with , , , ,
and other fantastic people!

I will be taking my new and my old and we shall have lots of fun playing until all hours when it's too dark to sail.

It shall be great. Now time for

posted by RichB @ Friday, November 25, 2005 1 comments

Check out the Dregs!

Yes, you know what that mottled teabag means, it's Dregs time again!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with what this means, the implication of those few words are that I and my fellow conspiritors at Teapot Records have been busy - this time during a weekend out at James' parent's beautiful house in Withcall, Lincolnshire - with our multitrackers, mics and friends to produce a whole load more covers of famous - and not so famous - songs. Plus a couple of our own melodic concoctions...

More importantly - perhaps - it's the first album I've played either Saxaphone or Drums on and some bits have come out quite nicely. It's also a fantastic effort by all involved to increase the amount of multimedia, detail and co-production that we're doing at Teapot to previously unmatched levels. I also did most of the artwork on it, which is another string I'm starting to add to my 'bow'.

But yeah, Wes has just got a licence from the MCPS to distribute up to 250 copies of it - and we're hoping to get some cash in for supporting our Church kid's work, so if you want a quick preview of some tracks, we'll pop something up over at the Teapot site sometime next week - or just mail me and I'll flog you a copy for - err... - a fiver or something like that ;-)

Complete track list:
God only knows (Beach Boys)
Parklife (Blur)
Build me up Buttercup (The Foundations)
Sunny afternoon (The Kinks)
Feeling good (Nina Simone)
Little help from my friends (The Beatles)
Mr. Bassman (Johnny Cymbal)
Something stupid (Frank & Nancy Sinatra)
Johnny boy (Traditional, replacement lyrics by us)
Don't wanna miss a thing - aka. Armageddon Hoarse! (Aerosmith)
Cookies (original song by Wes & James)
Don't worry be happy (Bobby McFerrin)
Pies (original choral composition by Wes)

posted by RichB @ Thursday, November 10, 2005 1 comments

Linky Linky

Thought I finally better get around to adding some other links to my Blogger template, so added in some of the guys who've visted here and commented in the past, and to some of my "real" friends who have decided to write some musings on the web...

I'm always caught unawares by the sheer scale of the personal interconnections that go on using the web - even thinking back to when I started out on the web in my first year at uni (it's scary that's about eight or nine years ago!). In those days I spent a good few hours a day on IRC channels discussing different view of the Christian Life with people from all over the world.

But today, with the advent of blogs, myspace, the all-pervasive power of google and other such "Web 2.0" applications being embraced on a much larger scale and often modelling then extending existing friendship circles it goes wider, much wider The point is that you can happily spend a good couple of hours just reading about other people's lives. People who you've never met, and in some cases are very unlikely ever to meet. People who are candidly sharing their hopes and fears with you, but are really just the friend of a friend of a friend of someone you know from a chatroom.... but all people... and all precious.

Night night, Night night,
Hope you dream, until the light
Dawns over your obsessions and your pain
Night night, Night night,
Today was all that might
Have taken you to the life beyond the grave

You're not that far away,
You're not that far away,
All of your heart is cradled as you sleep,
I'm not that far away,
I'm not that far away,
I am closer than your pillow
Night night, my love.
Night night

posted by RichB @ Friday, November 04, 2005 3 comments

Take your time...

Sorry all, for the long time between updates about what I'm up to in life - truth is, whilst I've been very busy for the past few weeks I've not actually had much utterly fascinating stuff to blog about!

But anyway, what I'm currently up to can be split into several things that are now competing for my time:

1. Finishing the interminability long process of getting Wes's album mixed - this is a challenging effort as it involves first trying to get them back to the same standard as the ones Wes had sounding pretty good on his multitracker, and doing just that seems like very hard work, let alone tightening everything up for release...

2. Work, work, work at work. Big project on, and just little-ol me to get it done, and it's currently getting horribly complicated...

3. AV Crew at church, I'm handling the purchase of lots of new kit - as well as my normal efforts in trying to run a Sunday team and support the other guys - and that's also taking up a fair amount of time to try and ensure that we get the right bits of kit, and don't overspend in the process.

Last Saturday was a pretty good example, I set out for central London (after our church Men's meeting) with Katy (small, chinese, former housemate and my #2 on the 'A Team') in tow with the express purpose of deciding on what speakers we were going to get for the new PA, getting some decent headphones (as I needed mine back from the desk, in order to mix Wes's album!), finding a speaker for the foyer and sorting out which guitar FX unit I wanted to get...

From that list, I achieved the getting of a pair of headphones. And I also bought £300 worth of band-monitors from Virgin Megastore (ok, so the basement is actually a 'soundcontrol' shop, but it's still inside Virgin!) which wasn't really on the menu to start with... yeah... so still no closer to deciding on a system, especially when you mention your current plans to the guy in the shop and he gives you the old 'sucking air through my teeth' reaction! On the other-hand, maybe he just wanted a cut ;-)


And on top of all this, I'm also trying to get to bed earlier - and midnight is my 'OK Rich, sleepytime...' time now, or at least my 'OK Rich, turn off the computer' time. So for now - that is all!

posted by RichB @ Wednesday, November 02, 2005 1 comments