MAN AND HIS DOG DISPUTE HIGGS DISCOVERY CLAIM

A man from Lewisham claims his dog, a basset by the name of Ruffles, were the first to discover the Higgs boson lying at the bottom of a skip at the back of Lewisham University Hospital last Tuesday. The alleged discovery has thrown the scientific world into complete disarray, with questions now being asked about why so many resources were devoted to tracking down this elusive and shy particle. 

Sources say that the boson may have already been discovered by the dog in the autumn of last year, only for it to be buried again for retrieval after the summer.

“There is no doubt about it, its definitely the Higgs boson…I took it down to the lab in the hospital and they confirm that it fits the description perfectly” said Bob Scroggs proudly holding his dog to the press cameras.

As scientists were gathering in Geneva, the sense of confusion and disbelief was palpable, with scientists scurrying around to fashion a response to this unexpected trumping. Sources close to the senior management at  CERN said that the Lewisham discovery did appear to have been confirmed at the “Sigma 5” level, approximately equivalent to the chances that Adele would start talking in a posh accent after getting 8 successive number ones.    

For years two teams at CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research in Geneva, were competing with a US team for the discovery of something which until now only existed in the human imagination. Dr. Carl Forstwith, lead researcher at the facility stated “The discovery of the Higgs will surely open up our understanding of almost everything in the universe, such as why we exist, what it’s all about, and why you can never buy an egg boiler to produce a softie with exactly the right consistency”. 

The trumping by Bob and his dog Ruffles, however, has clearly disrupted the euphoric mood that was expected when many of the worlds leading scientists were summoned to Geneva this morning.

Years of careful planning as to how this discovery should be released to the world have now come to nothing, with world leaders now bracing themselves for the serious social unrest which will surely now follow.

It also calls into question what the CERN discovery actually is, since the original Higgs boson is currently doing very well getting chewed upon in Ruffles’s outdoor kennel.

One forlorn scientist stated “It could of course be in two, many, or even an infinite number of places at once……which makes you wonder why it took so long to find the bloody thing in the first place…”     

  

Albums possibly unavailable on iTunes

Some of you may be having problems getting my albums off iTunes, I am working on a solution to this. I am also planning to distribute hard copies via Amazon, also of the DVD we produced from our gig in late 2011 in Sounds. In the meantime you can try buying the albums from my website. Digital versions are available there for under 10 US dollars. If anyone has any problems with using that let me know as it is currently untested.

This and that before I go to Germany again

Well its been sometime since i've really been that active musically, having spent most of the past few months in England, partly due to financial constraints on my part, and partly due to my mothers catalogue of health issues. It hasn't been so easy for her and she needed an extra pair of hands around the house.

Recently my ambition was to write a number of songs in German, and I have had limited success in writing about half an album full, although I am yet to get the text of all of them corrected. Many of those songs are about an old theme, but I decided that I really had to get them out. I also wrote a number of newer english language pieces which I recently recorded on a basic sequencer system which I set up in England. All I really have here is a Yamaha keyboard (which doesnt even have jack or midi outs), an SM58 microphone, my Takamine guitar and an open source sequencer on my computer. I dont have any monitoring to speak of, just a couple of crappy computer speakers, so the mixes are certainly rough and unrefined. People can get an idea of  these works on Soundcloud which I recently joined up to. The direction is very acoustic and mellow, like a lot of my stuff. And please forgive the corny keyboard drums on "Throwing Away What She Loves".


The truth is that while in England I have engaged myself only a little with music. I am trying to concentrate on bringing my translation business back up to par. I have done a hell of a lot of work updating all my websites, and wasted a lot of time making them look nice for Google, a very frustrating task indeed. Interestingly, however, I found a new way to monetise my websites courtesy of Amazon. I've put shops on all my websites where their entire catalogue of goods is available. I made my first commissions yeterday, courtesy of a replacement vacuum cleaner my mum ordered.


Affiliate marketing seems to be an interesting way of promoting yourself and your digitised goods, however, I cant seem to find a service where I can do this for my music. There were a few startups on facebook that offered these services but these were promptly closed down by the look of it. Whoever did that I have no idea. For those who don't know the idea behind affiliate marketing, its getting your friends to promote your music by offering them a commission on the sales they make. Nice idea, but the problem is setting up a reliable tracking and remuneration system, and that is what is hard to find.

Anyway for now I'll stick to selling musical instruments on my website, and textbooks and language aids on my translations website. I might sell everything on my networking website.

While I have been in England, I spent most of my time at home. I only really ventured out for Open Mike nights in Bromley (Thursdays in the The Railway Hotel and  The Barrel and Horn), Ladywell (Sundays in the Ladywell Tavern), and Fridays in a basic Polish restaurant at the Elephant and Castle (Mamuska's). I wasn't so impressed with the food there, but the atmosphere is very much like a working class cafe in the middle of Gdansk, and its like being culturally teleported when you take a walk into the place.  

As far as taking in culture I had an excellent night out with my brother and sister-in-law at the Betsey Trotwood in Farringdon.  Their future daughter-in-law (and I suppose my niece-in-law if there is such a thing) was playing violin alongside Michele Stodart, former frontwoman for the Magic Numbers. The gig was held in a tiny upstairs room where about thirty people at most were crammed in. It was a very laid back acoustic set and I was very impressed with Maddy's contribution, she played excellent hooklines on the violin and applied balanced vibrato. Hopefully one day I can have her play on a recording of my own....who knows.




On Tuesday as it happens I am returning to Germany, I have a few gigs lined up, notably with Hopsing in Sounds for the session night.


I am pretty glad for him that the whole sessions experiment has worked out so well. Although his nightclub always fills out on a Saturday, getting people in on Friday for bands can be a pain. It is very difficult to get people away from their trusted locations in Lübeck, as all my years of living there have shown.


One of my major musical ambitions now is to set up a band in Sounds with Hopsing and Lukas on guitar, Rudi or Christian on Bass, and an as yet undefined drummer. Material such as Metallica would be perfect, as well as many of my own tunes. I've always wanted to rock as well as soothe, and Hopsing is well set up for recording rehearsals there (he has a mixer that can record every track separately....quite a thing).           

Gig Report - Werners - Alten Zolln 24/02/2011

Another year went by, with the instruments all having been safely stored in Werners bunker. Come yesterday, and the cobwebs had all been dusted off for this now tradional annual outing. It had taken some persuasion to get this motley crew back on the road. With 16 years of history and a combined age greater than the US of A from whence much of their music originates, the Werners were back. Hardy was "gnadenlos" as they say in these parts. His efforts were instrumental in getting this gig together, and in truth, nobody regretted that in the slightest after the gig.

After demolishing the back end of the bar to make room for their truckload full of equipment, the band set about building up their backline. Werner brought out his neatly wound cables (all brought in triplicate) and installed various self-built constructions whose function god would never guess unless he saw them. Skinny as usual was hard at work rigging all the stuff together. Bewildered guests scattered as flight cases and amps the size of your grandmothers cupboards were wheeled in. After Kay completed his almost religious ritual of setting his drum kit up, with the kind of acribic attention you'd only expect when preparing a mirror for a space telecope, the stage was set for Heiko to turn up and take his corner with all the aplomb of a bottle of ketchup being squirted over an omelette. Jules as usual was last up, looking at the cables below him with trepidation, wondering if there was any protruberance that could at least partially function as a guitar stand, and how he ever managed to get out of one of these gigs with a full set of teeth.

The sound check proceeded with some confusion. Was the song in G or A? As it happens the leader of the band decided to play it in Gsharp without telling anybody. There followed a good few minutes of embarrassed guitar tuning. Well it was only the sound check, and the first time these guys had set eyes on eachother in a year.

The gig proper kicked off with Not Fade Away, and rarely had the band delivered it with such a thump. Five Knuckle Shuffle, a song about teenage self-relief, followed, with all the scary bits having been navigated perfectly. But by now there was a feeling in the air that this just might be one of those good days for the band, where even the first set was celebrated by the audience with wild enthusiasm. And so it turned out to be. Many of their songs have a southern feel, and there was even a Texan in the audience who made time to come out and watch the band. The band closed the set with a finger picking masterclass from Heiko on Folsom Prison Blues.      

Set two included most of the band's originals, which were received with even more enthusiasm than some of the covers the band were playing. The opener, however,  was the Elmore James inspired Highway 49. Werner was roaring away on the slide guitar as if he was on a Honda at Hildesheim, and Jules was giving the most raucous renditions he could. The audience definitely loved it, and the stage was set for an equally successful set 2. The boys were definitely helped on by some pretty faces in the audience, and were playing to impress (or so it seemed). Jules was warbling at his best, and Heiko was searing up and down the fingerboard with scant regard for modesty. Tom Petty's Wont Back Down  was followed by the poor mens Elvis Chris Isaak  (Blue Hotel, Wicked Game was in set 1). The girls in the audience were shifting mischievously on their seats, if they were lucky enough to find one. The originals then started, with the broad and catchy crescendoed ballad Boulevard East being received rapturously. The funky Dont Stop, about a fictitious frolic in a funbar gone wrong, was followed by the more straightforward country styled, but harmonically ingenious Sugar and Gasoline. The band closed iwth Brown Eyed Girl, much to the pleasure of the brown-eyed girls in the audience.    

Set 3 was high powered, and the adrenaline was flowing. For some reason Heiko was playing even more virtuously and extrovertly than he was in the second set. Their self-styled version of Hey Joe was followed by rasping versions of Things Going On and Nadine. Save Tonight was sung along to by everybody, almost true to the original, after which a lively version of  Sympathy for the Devil  was played with somewhat funky and jazzy accents. The southern ballad Willin was followed by the bands only real clanger of the evening. These boys had not practiced in a year, and it was about to show in the next song. What Its Like was in fact  Definitely Not What It Was Supposed To Be Like. Kay thought he was playing another song, Heiko and Jules were completely out of sync with Werner and Skinny, and Skinny was providing a good impression of a monkey on a tea chest bass. Most of the band were looking around, not knowing where to go, and scanning the room to see if there was a hole they could all crawl into.  It was much to the bands credit however, that the audience excused this slip up, and this paved the way for the band to play its final planned song for the evening. The traditional rendition of Gloria was delivered with almost unprecendented enthusiasm by Jules, with only his mike in his hand, and the audience were rocking. It was the last song, but the band could not end there.

The encore was started off with a rocking version of Honky Tonk Woman, and You Cant Always Get What You Want provided the backdrop for what should have been the final song. Jules was full of himself ( as was everybody in the band) and the band even managed to go into a reggae passage with Jules providing fake echoes and Kingston accents through the microphone. It should have been the end, but the audience wouldn't have it, and the band closed with an emotional rendition of the country tear jerker Lonesome Roads.

And so another year had passed, and it was clear that this was one of the band's better gigs. They played with true enthusiasm, and there was no routine about this performance. The Werners are not precision mechanics, they do the carpentry and the heavy duty work. What counts is the atmosphere they create. Call it Horse Jazz, Industrial Bluegrass, or whatever you want, the band is definitely a unique mixture of characters, directions and abilities, and that is one reason behind its longevity, even if the heady days of Helgoland are long gone and gigs have become harder to come by. And who needs to throw TVs out the window anyway, when you can get to ritually demolish the back end of one of Germany's oldest pubs on a yearly basis.