Seatbelts part 2

It seems my initial diagnosis of 'no real damage' after the taxi crash in Istanbul was a bit premature. Since then I've developed some serious pain in my left wrist which the doctor tells me is soft tissue damage (tendon, to be precise) and which could take up to 6 months to get better. If I completely rest it.

It's not the end of the world, although being left-handed it does mean I'm having to learn to do all sorts of things with my right hand which is kind of interesting, frustrating and frankly amusing at different times, but it is rather unfortunate to say the least. Particularly as I was planning to work on some new guitar-based music over the next few months.

This year is turning into a bit of a farce, actually. In January I started on 2 new projects, one a collaboration with some African musicians hopefully leading to touring and possibly an album, and the other a collaboration with a fantastic singer to record an album together. Both of these projects folded for one reason or another (to be precise the collaboration with the singer is only on hold until she can find the time to prioritise it) and plan C was the guitar-based stuff which has now gone down the pan, too. Add to that a tiny handful of live dates across the summer, some of which cancelled themselves before even getting up and running, and it all looks like a very empty year.

Funny how it goes, eh? Still, it does give me time to do other things (er, watch rather a lot of tennis for example) and I'm sure the enforced creative break will lead to bigger and better things in the end. But the in the meantime there may not be much new to report from planet Banco for a while so I hope you can all bear with me.

It all started with...

I'm off to a big family 'event' this weekend so not much time to write anything, not looking forward to it to be honest but I'll tell you about that after it's happened. But I thought I would just quickly stir up the waters of controversy by giving a list of 10 albums which have massively influenced my musical output.

Miles Davis - Bitches Brew
Jimi Hendrix - Electric Ladyland
Pink Floyd - any of them before The Wall
The Orb - The Orb's Adeventures Beyond The Ultraworld
Roy Harper - Stormcock
Erik B and Rakim - Paid In Full (Coldcut Remix) (Ok, it's not an album but it did change my life)
Philip Glass - Koyaanisqatsi soundtrack
John Mclaughlin, Zakir Hussain, Jan Garbarek and Hariprasad Chaurasia - Making Music
NWA - Straight Outta Compton
Massive Attack - Blue Lines

Obviously this is just a tiny sample of stuff that I've stolen ideas from, I mean been influenced by, and in the late 80s and early 90s we were mostly listening to 12"s and compilations so a lot of key tunes not mentioned here. (One which really must get a mention though is 'Everything Starts With An E' by E-Zee Posse, those were the days...). But anyway, there you go, nothing shocking I hope.

So, your homework this week is to work out which Banco tracks were obviously influenced by which artists (and no, you can't have 'Celestine' and Pink Floyd).

Would you join this club?

Here's an idea. I've been looking a lot recently at the evolving music industry and the internet and wondering where it is all going. It's not news that filesharing has had a big impact on the industry (although exactly what that impact has been and whether it's positive or negative does rather seem to depend on whether you're a major record company or not) and things will continue to change and develop in the future in ways we probably can't even predict yet.

Radiohead pulled a great stunt with their last album making it available to download for whatever price you wish to pay and as far as I know have done very nicely out of it, but it was a risky stategy financially and not all of us are necessarily in the position to take that kind of gamble. Personally, I also still like physical CDs and records and I believe a lot of other people do too (and Radiohead made a physical version of the album available too to satisfy that demand) but there's no getting away from the fact that many people prefer the simplicity and cheapness of grabbing files off the internet rather than acquiring a hard copy. So, how best to satisfy both worlds?

Well, here's the idea. How about an annual subscription, something like £10 ($20, €15) a year gives you a digital (download) copy of everything new we release, whether it's a brand new album, live recordings, remixes or whatever. Maybe you would get them a little before the CDs hit the stores, maybe some of it would be available to subscribers only, maybe you could get the physical CD for cost price too. I don't know, I'm making this up as I go along. But in principle is the idea of a subscription something people would go for?

Or to look at it another way, would you like to support the arts by patronising your favourite artist? You give us cash to keep us alive so we can make music to give back to you, it's pretty much how Mozart, Bach and most of those old composer chappies did things and it seemed to work ok then.

Or would you rather support us by buying the music after we've released it in the traditional way, thus ensuring you definitely get something worthwhile for your money? I suppose it's partly a matter of trust but also one of involvement. By subscribing you would be directly involved in making the music happen whereas by buying the finished CD you just get to consume it. Worth the risk?

Food for thought

I just received an email asking me to sign a petition about EU food production plans. Apparently, from 2009 all EU-produced food will be irradiated and may be treated with pesticides and chemicals but may still be called organic, along with a load of other changes including us losing the automatic right to grow our own food without needing to be licensed. As a strong supporter of organic farming I naturally find this rather worrying, and I hope this reality does come to pass, but it has also got me thinking.

I can see only two reasons why the powers that be would choose this path: either because they wish to have a chemically controlled, homogenised population akin to a herd of farm animals to feed the great capitalist beast, or because us humans face such an extreme food crisis that the only way to minimise starvation is to maximise food production by whatever means are available.

Let us assume for now that the first option is mere science fiction, or at least a rather extreme exaggeration of the truth, and that we are not that far down the road of totalitarianism yet. That leaves us with the reality where global population growth has outstripped our ability to feed ourselves and there simply ain't enough food to go round, leading to price rises, food demonstrations and emergency meetings of high level think tanks. Er, exactly what is in fact going on right now (I believe there is a UN food crisis summit taking place as I type this).

So, here's my question: if the only way to minimise the number of people dying from starvation is to maximise food production is it morally wrong to engage in organic farming? In the short term at least, the use of pesticides, chemical fertilisers, GM crops etc etc... increases the amount of food we can grow, so surely not using these methods must lead directly to avoidable deaths?

I'm really interested to hear people's thoughts on this so, please, comment away...

It's small and I don't much like it

Pollen, that is. Today seems to be the first day of my annual hayfever season, it's come on really strong and really sudden and I'm not happy about it at all. I thought I might be getting away with it this year as I'm sure it normally starts earlier than this, but oh no, it's back and I'm sneezing like, er, someone with really bad hayfever.

I never even got hayfever until about four years ago, apart from literally one day when I was a kid. I've no idea why I'm getting it now but I've had to resort to nasty chemicals from the chemist as I can't blow my nose much more today without damaging an internal organ or two. I'm also seeing a homoeopath and praying they have a miracle cure but of course homoeopathy doesn't really work like that.

Oh yes, it also turns out the car crash in Turkey did a bit more damage than I thought and I have knackered wrist which the doctor tells me may be sore for up to six months. Bloody great, I love days like this...

Still, gotta keep things in perspective. If I've got hayfever it must be the start of summer and that is definitely a good thing...