Category: life

Dancing to the Dublin Gospel Choir at Electric Picnic

This was the highlight of my summer. The Sunday morning of Electric Picnic, myself and three of the guys I was performing with as part of Werk at thisispopbaby headed off to get coffee and food. The Dublin Gospel Choir were on stage in the main arena, singing wonderful music. We sat and finished our food and coffee and enjoyed the music. Then they started a Stevie Wonder medley, which got us up to dance. During the course of the medley, myself and Tom started doing bits of one of the routines we were doing later that night, and the other two guys joined in.

Some girls came over to us after those songs and asked if they could dance along with us, as we “looked like a lot of craic”, and we’re never ones to refuse to dance. So we all started dancing together calling out simples moves to each other. Over the course of the next few songs, more and more people behind and beside us started to follow along too, and people came up from the crowd ahead of us to dance behind us too. People took photos, smiled, and watched. Some people we dragged up to join us too and at some point we looked around to see a crowd of people all following our moves behind us.

When the set finished, we held Tom (who was doing most of the leading dance-wise) up on our shoulders as the dancers behind us applauded us and the Gospel choir both. So many people came over to say thank you, and saying it was the best moment of the festival for them, but we were just happy to dance along to the fantastic music and thrilled when other people saw fit to follow what we were doing and dance along with us.

It was a beautiful afternoon. I’ve only discovered two youtube videos of it so far, but you’d never know, more might surface.

Firstly, a short one, where you can see myself, Chris and Tom in front, and Stephen in the red vest behind us.

Secondly, a video shot from the side, showing more of the people who were dancing along behind us.

edit: here’s a 3rd video, this time from the front, and you can clearly see myself and the other three guys who started it all:

edit again: here’s a 4th video, also from the front and a bit short too.

The Dublin Gospel Choir mentioned it on their facebook page:

Thanks to everyone who came out and supported us at Electric Picnic yesterday. Great day and LOVED the flash mob! If you have any pix or videos send them on, we’d love to see them!!!

Flash Mob…. it’s not often that you get to watch a show from the stage but this made our day!! Think poor Kerry-Anne nearly forgot the words when she saw them!! It’s what the Picnic is all about!!! Thanks guys!

The whole weekend was fantastic, and the rain on Sunday/Monday didn’t marr it at all, just made things a little more challenging. I had another random beautiful moment where I was having some chips between catching UNKLE and Fever Ray, and sat down at one of the upright pianos in the wood sculpture areas near the electric arena. Of course it was delightfully out of tune and honky tonk, so I started playing some Ray Charles and Tom Waits covers on it, and ended up playing in the rain to a few people who were crossing the area to catch The National or Foals. But it was wet, and when my chips were gone, I headed off to catch Fever Ray instead, but it was rather lovely too. I’m sure those pianos suffered through a lot of “Chopsticks” and the like, so a bit of jazzier stuff was a nice respite I imagine.

Electric Picnic

Today I set up a tent for the first time ever. My parents were Scouts & Cubs leaders when they were younger, but we didn’t go camping as kids. I guess there were just too many of us that it would have been a bit of a nightmare for my folks. The tent is for Electric Picnic this weekend, which is also the first proper outdoor festival I’ll have been to in my life. I’m performing at it, but not musically, unfortunately. I always promised myself that the first festival I’d go to would be one I was performing at, and indeed this is the case. I’ll be dancing with the Opus Gei crew in the thisispopbaby tent, though. Perhaps I should have been more specific in my promise to myself.

Then again, I did spent most of my 20’s playing music for other people, as opposed to working on my own, and who knows, maybe a year will change a lot in my life. I’m looking forward to this weekend though, though the fact that my car has been out of action for over 2 weeks now is adding a bit of awkwardness to the arrangements. Living where I do it’s difficult to get anywhere without a car. I’ve been walking the 3 miles to town a lot, which added to the dancing rehearsals has made up for the fact that I’ve not been able to get to the pool much lately.

Free Download: Donut Song (Tori Amos cover demo)

tori amos

I remember the first time I listened to a Tori Amos album – it changed my idea of what a piano could do. It was Under The Pink, which I listened to all the way through a few times alone in my room. Before listening to Tori, my notions of piano music were limited to classical piano or vamped-chords and simple piano riffs of some of the pop music I knew. I’d finished all the classical piano grades with the RIAM, and was feeling a bit frustrated with the limited scope of the piano material I knew. Hearing Tori by chance on the radio, and checking out the piano books in a shop made me decide to get the albums. – yeah, I honestly looked through the piano books for Under The Pink and Little Earthquakes before ever hearing them.

But the opening notes of Pretty Good Year, the first track on the album, still sticks with me as one of my favourite piano lines, probably because it was the first of her songs I really heard at home, but mostly because it showed me that piano accompaniment can be melodic, fluid, and have a life of its own under the vocal melody line of a song. Every piano part on that album is absolutely gorgeous, musically interesting, and completely makes the songs something else.

When I was doing a few rough takes in my home studio, I knocked out two quick cover versions: the Under The Ivy one I posted about before, and a cover of Tori’s Donut Song from the album “Boys For Pele“. I was mostly messing about with my Roland RD 120, exploring the other instrument sounds on it, and certainly it’s not well recorded, played or sung, but it’s there, so I may as well put it out. I actually used one of the bass instrument voices on the digital piano, and added some of the Rhodes voice from it too, to see how they matched. It was mostly an experiment. I’ve dicked about with the song a small bit too, I’m afraid. But still. Oh, and I think I mentioned that it’s a not-great recording with bad mixing, yeah? I’d fix it up a bit, but at the moment I’m in Dublin, dogsitting. No, really.

[audio:http://www.misterebby.com/previewtracks/doughnutsong.mp3]
Donut Song (Tori Amos cover – demo) (right click and download)

It’s not a patch on the original, which you should go and listen to (see the live video below), but it was an interesting experiment for me. It’s actually not one of the Tori songs that I’d usually play at all, but I think I was just in the mood for it that night. There are a few of her songs that I’ve loved and learned over the years, that always pop into sets or sessions every so often, but this is not really one of them. I guess it’s just a good song for a late night, home alone, dark bedroom with a piano.

A Week With No Phone

I lost my iPhone last Wednesday while walking the dog I’m looking after while some friends are away. I’m gutted and so angry with myself for losing the iPhone while in the park – I doubled back twice to try and find it, but with no luck. I dropped into O2 the next day, and got a replacement SIM card, but no replacement handset as I’ve honestly no idea what to do.

I should just get a cheap handset and use that for the summer until I’m able to get an upgrade, but honestly a crappy phone will only frustrate me at this stage, because I’ve gotten so used to a phone doing what I want it to do. There’s little things that smartphones like the iPhone do that just make my life easier, and I’m not sure I’d be able to deal with the lack of those features.

Thing is, I’m so very broke at the moment, and there’s no way I can afford to be thinking about getting a new iPhone to replace the one I lost. It’s frustrating.

It’s also the longest I’ve gone without a phone since I got my first mobile phone back in 1999. It’s made me realise just how much of my social and working life is organised through my phone, and just how unreachable I am without it. I’ve seen only a small handful of my friends in this past week: Anna I arranged to meet up with in town at a specific time and place, while chatting to her on Facebook; Adam got in touch through twitter and skype to arrange to go for a swim. Aside from that, I’ve been in touch with people through the ‘net in various ways, but I’ve not actually had the same ease of contact to arrange to meet with anyone. I guess I didn’t realise just how much my phone has become an integral part of my life, and how much of a hindrance a lack of a mobile is in modern life.

It’s just taken as a given that you can be reached at all times on your phone, or that a voicemail will get to you. I’m trying to talk myself into just getting whatever crappy handset I can afford, and just deal with it as the result of being an idiot and losing my phone. I think it’s the 2nd time I’ve ever lost my phone in over 10 years of owning a mobile phone, and I don’t even have the excuse of having been drunk.

Front page of The Times: ebby, Gaba & David Cameron.

I spent the last two weekends in London for various reasons, but the main reason for the trip last weekend was to see the lovely Gaba Kulka play her first London gig. The Tuesday afterwards, we got coffee and some food and chatted before walking down towards the tube to go our separate ways. I was heading off to meet @Somhairle before catching my flight back to Ireland.

Suddenly we realised that there was a gathering of photographers snapping away in front of us, which was a bit bewildering to be honest, and looking around, I spotted David Cameron walking along behind us. Snapping him walking into his first day as Prime Minister.

I even remember saying that the photographers probably zoomed right past us to get the shot of David Cameron, but apparently they didn’t and we’re splashed over the front page of The Times, as well as making the Daily Mail.

Very random.

Gaba’s gig was absolutely wonderful though. If you’ve not checked out her music before, do! I’ve posted about her in a small way on this blog already, where you can check out three different songs from her.

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