Diana Stones Blog

This week has been a more of the same kind of week. One Band gig in Hitchin at a pub that has a regular blues night and a duo gig in a little Village called Flamstead at a very nice village pub which has quite a good restaurant.

Both gigs were pretty well received and a very modest amount of Ale was consumed. It still amaze’s me that I can chat to almost anyone when not so many years ago I was hopeless I talking to new people. Others tell me that I am very much more open and sociable these days. Well I do feel much more at ease but perhaps not quite as comfortable as others might think.

Particularly when we do the duo gigs you have to create a fairly intimate vibe to get the more subtle stuff across and we try and work a little humor but nothing too contrived I hope. Its seems to work and means folks tend to come back to see us again. A typical duo gig goes from old school Piano Boogie stuff to Rock & Roll country and bluegrass and a bit of swing and Jazz and maybe the odd torch song with a few diversions along the way. “My old Mans a dustman” often go’s rather well with almost any audience.

The band is a bit different as its not such a close connection with audience, but we do spend a lot of time chatting to folks in the break between sets. If only they knew what a miserable git I actually am LOL

I am still feeling the strain physically at the moment, but on gigs the endorphins tend to kick in so its the days after that tend to be the problem. We have bookings as far ahead as Christmas 2012 already.

My favorite gigs are the more intimate ones, even though you do end up staring in to the whites of peoples eyes! My back is still not up to attempting much accordion playing yet though, so that will have to remain on hold although there is a little bit on the new Elephant Shelf album.

I have also recorded a couple of Solo Piano works which are a bit obscure and about as far from Blues & Swing as possible and licensed some of my stuff for use on TV & film which might be useful in the longer term.

Suddenly from out of the corner of her eye Diana saw a rapidly approaching cluster of hemidemisemiquavers and a key change

Its nearly September and the year has flown by. My Ancient chariot needs to get an MOT (15 years old but only done just over 100k) and I think so do I as I have had a lot of aches and pains post gig recently. A trip to the docs is indicated me thinks. So far so good as we had a really good gig at the Cambridge Rock festival recently that should have upped our cred a bit. We also have a local london festival appearence tommorow at Abbey Fest at the Colour House Theatre on Bank Holiday Monday. We were up in Nottingham at the Trent Navigation as our duo which went well to a mixed crowd of the local blues club folks and rugby supporters so we will be back there in the not too distant future we hope. We also had recent gigs in Lincoln and a few other places. We have one more festival gig in September which is the Plumpton Beer and Blues Festival near Lewes in Sussex which could be good for us apart from the normal ongoing stuff. We are still waiting on the the rough mixes of the new Elephant Shelf Album to come through,as we we will be down in the studio again to do a bit of over dubbing as soon. We have also started recording a Delta Ladies Album and have a couple of rough tracks down for that which sound promising. I have also still got a rather iritating cough which has now eased of enough for me to get my full voice back on gigs but which nearly left me mute for the Cambridge Rock festival but I got me mojo working sufficiently for that thank goodness.

Well whats happening then. My Car has had a few bits wear out so its in the shop as the USA folks say, but hopefully it will back with me soon We have had a couple of really good gigs with the Delta Ladies & Elephant Shelf recently and we have finaly got around to sorting out our recording dates for the new ES album down in Burnham-on-Crouch and we also managed to catch Ian Segal doing an acoustic live broadcast for St FM which I have to say was rather good and a bonus though Burnham-on -Crouch is always worth a visit  but it was very cold and damp looking on our last visit. I quite fancy living down that way, so who knows it could happen

I had a go at a bit of photo shoping  so here is an idealised version of me. Well why not or perhaps the Black and white version available soon. I am also having a bit of a fight with video editing software too, which works but is not quite what I need to match up sound tracks as it has no way to nudge the sound tracks which I can do fine in adobe do da but it is not able to handle HDVC in its native format. I also need a faster computer but I want to make the right choice. As in not too expensive!

Diana Stone idealised 1

Delta Ladies with Linda Gale Lewis at the Jook House Photo by Roger Morton

Our first gig at the Jook House in Worthing backing Linda Gale Lewis.

Photo by Roger Morton

You can see more of his pictures here >> www.fantasticphotos.org

Diana on lead vocals with Elephant Shelf at the 100 Club

Makes me look almost like a professional  :-)

The Moon Rises in Battersea. I am hoping to start video blogging occasionally from now just to give it   more variety.
Theres a brilliant full moon tonight. I shot it from my lounge….

 

 Online Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Ok its another picture of me with a piano….

Diana Stone and a Baby Grand

 

Playing Rogers Piano:

Baby Grand Diana

A very old picture from The Hornsey Tavern

In the Days when Elephant Shelf roamed the plains of deepest Hornsey freely

Hornsey Tavern Diana with Guitar

Elliott School is a struggling comprehensive in south London. But it has an astonishing record in nurturing a diverse range of avant-garde pop stars. Jonathan Brown and Lucy Kinnear report

They have of course forgotten Peter Green amongst many others..

For a long time, it seemed the most famous musician likely to emerge from the Elliott School in the unromantic London suburb of Putney Heath was the late Matt Monro, the quintessential British crooner.

He enjoyed fleeting fame in the 1950s as “The Singing Bus Driver”, a nickname bestowed on him because of his pre-celebrity stewardship of the No 27 from Highgate to Teddington. He was undoubtedly talented, but he died in 1985, and was hardly regarded as a role model for today’s wannabe musical stars.

Yet in recent years, Elliott has been busy churning out a dizzying array of musical talent at the street-credible end of the music industry, despite its being a large, urban, multi-ethnic comprehensive in Wandsworth with more than its fair share of challenges.

Thus far, the school has largely escaped the media’s attention, unlike the scrutiny received by the Brit School for Performing Arts and Technology, a few miles down the A23 in Croydon, which has Amy Winehouse, Kate Nash, Leona Lewis and Adele among its old girls.

Chief among the music stars to have passed through Elliott are Hot Chip, the Mercury Prize-shortlisted electropop combo which was formed by the former Elliott pupils Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard in 2000. They have since gone on to produce three albums to enthusiastic critical acclaim. Now signed to EMI, they are being tipped to be one of the hottest acts of 2008.

Another former student is William Bevan, aka Burial, a dubstar artist who enjoys a cult dancefloor following and who likes to retain a Banksy-like anonymity. Then there is the Folktronica pioneer Kieran Hebden, who records as Four Tet and has worked with artists including Radiohead and Bloc Party, the respected nu-folk singer Adem Ihan and the Mercury Prize-nominated jazz and classical musician Emma Smith.

Throw in a smattering of former members of the So Solid Crew, two musicians from the indie band The Maccabees, and Herman Li, guitarist with the million-selling power metal outfit DragonForce, and you have an emerging stable of stars that can trace much of its inspiration back to the days of the old south London schoolyard.

Yet, if the critics are to be believed, it is something of a minor miracle that schools are able to generate any level of talent at all. Despite a series of much vaunted Government initiatives and high-profile support for the creative industries, some 26,000 children are on waiting lists to learn a musical instrument with their local authority. ]

Recent research suggested some councils are spending as little as £1.15 per child on music, putting yet more pressure on already hard-pressed schools to keep up the nation’s musical education. And to those not in the know, Elliott School might appear an unpromising place to start a musical career. The school’s recent Ofsted report judged the school to be “performing significantly less well than in all the circumstances it could reasonably be expected to perform,” before issuing a notice to improve. It is running a budget deficit and the music department is suffering a severe shortage of instruments.

Frank Marshall, the school’s head of music, is engaged in rounds of fundraising and efforts to encourage artists to come into the classroom to work alongside his talented teachers. And yet the irrepressible desire to make music continues to pulse through the school.

According to Mr Marshall, who is a classically trained church organist who taught himself guitar and drums to survive the rigours of teaching in a tough urban comprehensive, it is the positive peer pressure all around coupled with officially sanctioned use of school space to simply make a noise that provides the recipe for success.

“At the time that Hot Chip were here, there were a number of highly talented musicians who already had their own bands in school. They played in local clubs from an early age,” he recalls. “There was a drive from my perspective towards originality – towards doing something different, towards creativity. I would say, ‘Don’t use that old chord pattern which has been hacked out a thousand times before – try throwing in a seventh chord or something unexpected’.”

It is a piece of advice which he happily observes in “Ready For The Floor”, Hot Chip’s latest single, with its multiple key changes and compelling chord progressions. Like all schools, music is compulsory only until year nine, but there remain vibrant GCSE and A-level groups. A significant number of pupils also go on to study music at university. Mr Marshall says he teaches traditional techniques in lessons, but also sees himself as a facilitator.

“When you get enough people making music, they start feeding off each other. It just snowballs. We put on a lot of concerts both in and out of school, with other schools. We played festivals bringing together other musicians from other schools with different characters. Here you could get a lot of ideas swapped between musicians,” he says.

Adem Ihan, whose new album, Takes, is released in the summer, recalls being surrounded by “truly inspirational teachers and students” during his time at Elliott. And because there were so many students into the same kind of music, they didn’t get singled out for their “skinny jeans and weird taste in music”.

“There was a sense that you weren’t alone if you were different. It just so happened that there was a whole bunch of us. We’d push the tables aside and make a racket, until the neighbours came and complained,” he remembers.

“Sometimes there weren’t even enough cables or the drums would be shabby, but we were never denied the use of anything. They just let us get on with it and encouraged us to be creative.

“There were enough teachers there who were really fantastic at making students feel that they could be independent and do things for themselves. They picked up on the excitement of us all.”

Herman Li recalls being allowed to just get on with his passion, free from any interference from teachers or pupils.

“At lunchtime I used to just grab my guitar and play. I never bothered with football or anything like that. Elliott School was the beginning of an endless journey for me. You learn something new everyday. I’m still learning now.”

Joe Goddard describes the same culture of tolerance. “There was a spirit: if you want to do something just go and do it. You didn’t need permission.”

For Mr Marshall, the suggestion that music should remain somehow a middle-class preserve is absurdly prejudiced, though he did admit to watching with a certain empathy the heroic efforts of the TV choirmaster Gareth Malone as he sought to overcome the powerful reluctance of teenage lads to break into song in his BBC 2 series, The Choir: Boys Don’t Sing. “If you have a good student and a good teacher, it doesn’t matter where you are from,” he says. “If you have someone who wants to learn and someone who wants to teach, you will be successful. I don’t think that because a student goes to a London comprehensive, rather than a private school, they cannot make really good music. It doesn’t have to have a negative effect on their education.”

Not that teaching music is always easy. The key to successful music teaching is “patience and having the right personality – how much you insist on certain things, how much you can enthuse kids.

“It can be very difficult when you have students sitting in front of 30 books so it is certainly going to be challenge when they are sitting in front of 30 xylophones,” he says. The school is now in the middle of rehearsals for the annual production. This year it is the classic 1970s orphan tear jerker Annie – hardly the kind of thing you might expect to inspire a new generation of electro-poppers, metalheads or nu-ravers.

But Mr Marshall is unapologetic. “If you are a musician, you should be able to play anything – especially if it is how you are going to make your living,” he says. As a result, the musical culture of the school will this term range from the ragtime composer Scott Joplin, to Sting, to a GCSE class that is engaged in the process of sampling how to play the recorder, that humble music-lesson staple.

It seems to be a winning formula. Adem Ihan looks back on his school days as the passport to his current status as a professional musician.

“When I first arrived at the school, I remember seeing people in the years above who were still only 13 years old but who were already in bands. It got me thinking, ‘God I can so do that. I’m just like that’.”

Like many of his peers he was. And he did.

Leaves, the Moon and Fireworks…

In full flow at the Mermaid in St Albans

At last a good Rock & Roll picture… 

Taken by Roger Morton.
He takes great Photos which you
can see here.

http://www.fantasticphotos.org/elephantshelf/charlottest/index.htm 

Elephant Shelf accompanying Glenn Patrik on his first UK Gig 
http://www.fantasticphotos.org/thebluesroom/glennpatrik/index.htm

It’s rain Jim but not as we know it. I quite like rain in the right place, and this is no doubt something genetic about being British and wet and proud of it. Drip Dry hair helps too of course.

House Boats from Battersea Bridge in the rain

Well maybe.That’s what Napoleon Hill said anyway. So why don’t I believe in the power of positive thinking.
OK my problem is I have done quite a bit of positive thinking over the years and I have manged to get by but I have never really been able to get comfortable, perhaps this is just the human condition.

Diana on the Charles Bridge in Prague

 From a holiday when things were changing quite a bit.

Really Really tired, like when everything is just too much effort? Yep me too. Its been a difficult time over the past few months and nothing seems to have worked out on a practical basis. Every idea I have had for scratching out a living has been a complete flop and I don’t know if its simply that I am not good enough at what I do or just a sign of the times. I do feel a little bit a drift now though.

I tried reducing my anti-depressant meds dose to see if I could get a little bit more motivation but that only makes me irritable and makes my concentration worse, and its looking more and more like I  am going to end up filing in and office somewhere or worse to survive and the thought is rather dispiriting after all the effort I have put in to everything else, particularly over the last 2 years or so.

The main thing is I can’t work the way I used to0,  my  mind wanders and after a a couple of hours I have just drifted away.
Deadlines get me stressed and my mind go’s completely blank plus there is the worry about money which is becoming more and more pressing all the time too.

I played at a garden party yesterday in my ‘Delta Ladies’ incarnation. We had a great time and everyone was enjoying it and we sold some albums too, only another 112 and we break even The house was in Lonesome lane.  For the first 40 minutes of the set my mind was just completly absent, I played OK but basically on auto-pilot, by the end I was feeling more normal thank goodness though. The thing is in previous work that I have done apart from powerpoint presentations you could not do it terribly well in an altered state of consciousness, though that did happen a few times I have to admit.

Here are some pictures taken by my good friend Ralph Stephenson.