Friday 23 April 2010

Funky Bunch


So, on Wednesday, I played a gig, recording a track for an upcoming film. A film starring Mark Mark and Christian Bale . Which, at first, I thought was hilarious, but then I remembered 'I Heart Huckabees' and 'Swing Kids' and it was a little bit more cool and less hilarious.

Funky Bunch aside,

I've done soundtrack work before, both in terms of score and songs, but this was the first time I've done a song that's been specially commissioned by and for the film. I'm not going to get into this-case specifics too much; however, this is an interesting musical/cinematic phenomenon. Essentially, in this situation, the film-music-bosses contact a band and say, "write us exactly this kind of song." Whether or not that's the kind of song the band would normally write/sing/like. And they generally do, maybe losing a tiny bit of artistic integrity but gaining a tiny bit more fame/fortune. (And then they hire us to play awesome hard rock string riffs. And then play them again. And then again. And then again but up the octave. And then again. Until three little players sound like the London Phil... only much cheaper. And easier to fit in the studio.)

Another week, another quite fun/funny thing to do with one's viola.

Wednesday 14 April 2010

Home-made-making


Soon, a post about adventuresinPortugaland.

But first:

Reason #74 why Charlie is brilliant to live with:

Today, while I just played the same few bars of Beethoven again and again, he:

-pickled beets

-candied ginger

-candied lemon and orange peel

-used our expired milk to make cheese.

(Grandma Old (and Gloria, for that matter) would be proud.)