PA Hunting

If it wasn't for the fact that I get to feel a *little* bit like Monica from "Friends", I think packing would be a task of terrible woe! Especially *this particular* packing! When I left Ireland, it was exciting because I knew I was coming to London but this packing is just something that has to be done so I'm having to find other amusement within it.

Once I've got all the packing out of the way, I need to go window shopping for a PA system - if anyone knows anything about PA's, drop me a line!  I want to be be able to play my own gigs with a decent sound. I remember Lucy and I played a gig (when we were just starting Beyond Obsession) in a pub that didn't usually have bands on back in Sheffield in about 2002 and we got paid something for it but we were putting both the guitars and vocals through an amplifier so the sound quality was pretty dire... So I want to get playing some of my own gigs soon - with excellent sound! And hopefully excellent music :-p

websheldon.com

I bought the domain websheldon.com a while ago but couldn't work out how to link it to this blog but I managed to do it today! Woot!

So now you can just type in this address (  www.websheldon.com  )  and it will automatically redirect you to this blog!

Plus I had some spare time to make the blog look prettier yesterday so it's had a lil face lift too... :-D

Last Night @ le Earl

It was only the second time I've played since I moved to London... the first night was with my mate Beth Swain at Camden Eye just before Christmas and I played You're So Vain (Carly Simon), You Know I'm No Good (Amy Winehouse) and an unusual choice of my own song which was called "Broken".

I did go to the Earl Of Camden open mic night in my first month here but I got there quite late and didn't get to play...apart from playing to another local artist outside the venue later on after he'd been rapping for me in the street...lol  So I thoroughly enjoyed last night... it feels GOOD to be playing live again.

I decided to go with some older classics last night:
Waitin' Around To Die (Townes Van Zandt)
Without Pure Heart (my own song)
Where Do You Go To My Lovely (Peter Stadt)

There might be a video on its way for With Pure Heart that a friend recorded for me... will update this when it comes through...

Open Mic @ Earl of Camden

Heading down to the Earl Of Camden tonight for this :)

Scrawlings of Monday Morning...

Hmmm Monday morning... my last full week of work at PwC... I had a good weekend though, a musical weekend is always a good weekend.

I have stacks of unused lyrics - probably 2 or 3 carrier bags stuffed to the brim with sheets of paper with scribblings on, anything from a few lines to whole sets of verses... Many of them of are quite dark and are a result of break ups or just general bad times.  Although I think it's important as an artist to embrace and explore these times, it can also be a strain on your state of mind if you get too involved with them... I think I have distanced myself from a lot of those times now and like to think I have learnt something from having  passed through each experience... However it means that I don't often feel like using the lyrics from back then to write music to now... although every now and then I will dig something useful up :)

Last year, not longer after he died, I received a gift of Gil Scott-Heron poems.  On Saturday night, I had the house to myself and started reciting his poems as melodies with accompanying chords - I know for definite that some of them are already part of a song so I chose the ones I didn't know the songs to. I remember Gil talking during a song on his final studio album in 2010 about how lyrics should fit with the feel of the chords so it almost felt like I was treading on delicate ground if I want to remain respectful of Gil and his work. There was one in particular I liked, so I'll continue to work on that this week and will post it if I like the results :)

On a slightly separate note, I was thinking how I could continue to update my YouTube Channel if I don't have access to a computer, my Mac will probably go into storage soon until I find new job and somewhere new to live but I realised my iPhone is excellent at recording video and might even sound better than my Mac (I have a problem with my Mac atm where it will only record in one speaker...gah...technology!!!).  So anyway I can still record videos on my iPhone, wherever I am, which is excellent news as I want to go full speed ahead with my musical resolutions... :)  I'm working on a fairly recent Tori song at the moment, a 60's pop tune and a cover of a song by The Beautiful South...even amongst the imminent threat of being homeless and jobless, I'm sure I will have a new video to post on YouTube soon!

What else matters; other than music and love?

You're So Vain (Carly Simon cover)

Amongst the craziness of London life so far, I've managed to record a new cover:

Carly Simon's "You're So Vain"

Arrived in London

So I'm in London now... I arrived on 10th October with 2 car loads full of stuff (not exactly the guitar & suitcase scenario!) and got myself settled into a room in a house at the bottom of Camden Square. I had a few days to settle in before starting work and so I got to explore Camden Town a little more than my brief visits as a tourist before.

It's been a rough a few months though as the job was much more demanding than I expected. At the worst, I was leaving the house at 7am and not getting home until 9pm and feeling exhausted most the time. I didn't even have time to pick up my guitar, let alone actually learn new covers or write new songs.  I also wasn't enjoying the job at all and in the end, I decided to quit... It's thrown things into turmoil a little now as I need to find another job in order to stay in London although I've already decided I should leave my room to either live in a hostel for a bit or stay at friends' places.

Soooo, once I am back on track, the plans for this year include starting gigging again now that I'm in London and I want to cover a lot more songs and putting my own twist on them (and record for my YouTube channel) and I'd like to start working with other musicians again...

So Happy New Year to all!  Let's see what this year will bring! :-D