'Mighty Instruments of Scrutiny'

Went to see New Yorkers INTERPOL tonight, for the first time - and very good they were as well, very intense, but short punky and very economic tunes. Razzmatazz was totally sold out, so it was v.hot and packed - managed to get a couple of nice shots though, no real detail but nice stage lighting.


Links:

• www.salarazzmatazz.com
• www.interpolny.com

The Feria de Abril in Barcelona is a week-long celebration of Andalusian culture, co-inciding with a similar event, happening further south in Sevilla. There are 51 casetas or 'little houses' in which flamenco dancing, drinking and eating take place - all representing different barrios, families or companies. Also there is a massive fun-fair, with all kind of sphincter-clenching rides, with eyeball-searing neon and pounding 'cheesy techno' soundtracks. All taking place this year in the grounds of Barcelonas' Forum. I visited last night with some friends and shot a roll of b&w film along with some stuff on the digital which is available to check out at:
www.rogercowell.net

Nearly missed one - Friday night went down to New York Club just off the bottom end of The Ramblas, to a band who are friends of AM called Misnoma which was pretty cool. I think they're mainly English but have been based in BCN for years, very varied variety of styles but generally they reminded me a lot of Moloko (what's happened to them?), but then sometimes more funky, then with a three-piece all girl string section, then a didgereedoo, then a sitar sounding all eastern and mystical. Definitely worth seeing - they describe themselves as 'electro-lounge', which is a s good as description as any, very charismatic singer Ayesha.
The club afterwards was kicking too - lots of vintage funk, jazz and bit of rhythm & blues. Nice venue as well although I was told that it did used to be a very seedy dive.

Misnoma
www.misnoma.com

Feeling the burn this morning after Big Birthday Night Out yesterday,
we had a fairly sizeable crew out for Gilles Peterson at Barcelona's finest 110 year old dance hall La Paloma. Very good fun it was as well - Gilles was kicking it up with a pretty mainstream dance type set (he even played the Chemical Brothers), but it worked for me - dropped a couple of nice latin tunes, including a very long batacuda monster, which I sometimes play in a set myself and had a pretty good MC in Earl Zinger who injected just the right amount of energy without over-egging the pudding. I think everybody had a good time - so it was pretty much like last year's birthday event, when we all came down to see Richard Dorfmeister, once you've found a good thing, then stick with it - that's going to be my new motto. So same time same place next year.
Cafe Paris at 6.00am though, waiting for the doors to open and joining the scrum at the bar to get bocadillos, patatas bravas and coffee - never seen anything like it - total mayhem. You'd have thought that the crowd were going to rip the doors of just to get at those jamon y queso sandwiches with the fried egg on top. Mmmm just fancy another one of those right now.


Gilles Peterson

www.lapaloma-bcn.com

Phew! I very nearly got shafted yesterday and just figured out what happened at the last moment. I've been having this ongoing correspondence with Paypal regarding switching my trading account from Australia to Spain, which was proving to be a little tricky. All this malarkey with closing one account and opening a new one, then all of a sudden in the middle of all this I get an email purporting to come from Paypal asking me to click through what looked like a legitimate link and verify my account details - so I click through and enter my Visa Card information, new bank details etc.

Then I send an email to the person at Paypal I had been dealing with explaining what I had done with my account, and he writes back to say that they had not sent that request for verification - it was a hoax, a con, a swindle some bastards had caught me with. So immediately I had to call up Visa and cancel my card and consequently have to wait another ten / twelve days for a new card and pin number.

Great, so now I'm stuffed and unable to access any cash for a days on end. Can't believe that I was dumb enough to fall for that one. Now when i read the email again, there is one glaringly obvious spelling mistake and clicking through to the bogus webpage I realise that you can click through without even entering your name & password. So I'm pretty angry with myself as you can imagine - had to vent my anger by sending another form through filled with "Motherfuckers, hope you all die of cancer" and other endearments.

So there's a lesson to be learned for us all - don't be a dumbass! Luckily I managed to shut down my credit card before they had done any shopping with it.

Went to see Q-Bert at the Apolo in Barcelona last night, absolutely awesome... just him, one deck - the space age looking thing in the picture below, called the QFO (a deck with built in faders) and an i-Pod. Never seen scratching like it, almost like he ws making the vinyl physically talk, or playing a jazz drum solo for an hour, very impressive and really really fast. Not surprised he had to retire from DMC competitions because nobody else could come close to him.

My one complaint - not against Q-Bert but all the people at the show in front of me, with an ocean of technology waving in the air. Now I've been know to take one or two photos during a gig BUT to stand there for the whole show with a video camera, digital or a Blackberry stuck up in the air - just recording the entire 60 minutes, is there really a point to it? How many times would you want to watch that? How about DANCING instead?



Links:

• 4x4hiphop.ritmic.com
  
• www.djqbert.com
  
• www.sala-apolo.com
  

Hola!
Next week is my birthday, and it would be great if you could come along and join the official celebration, in what is turning out to be an almost exact replication of last year, hurrah!

Saturday, 16th April 2005

PRE-MATCH WARM UP; 11:00pm
BAR ADMIRAL
Calle de Joaquin Costa
El Raval, Barcelona
An hour or so in this beautiful old Barcelona tavern, to get rid of pre-match jitters, then when everybody is finely tuned it's off to:

LA PALOMA
Calle el Tigre
El Raval, Barcelona
Admission: 10 euros
Not only is La Paloma the finest dance hall in Barcelona, but tonight from around 2.30am it features the awesome talents of the UK's GILLES PETERSON on the decks. So without a doubt it should be an rocking night out...

LINKS:
http://www.trustthedj.com/GillesPeterson

www.djgillespeterson.com

www.lapaloma-bcn.com

www.easyjet.com (if you can make it from the UK)

So here's hoping that you can make it along, any problem email or call me on +34.6371.02596

Regards

Roger C

Friends of Carlotta was a collaboration between Ned Douglas and myself, which resulted in a handful of songs, most of which remain unfinished. However this track "Out Of Touch" was recorded back in 1996/7, and released on a compilation album entitled "Broken Beats and Dirty Promises" for the North South label, which also featured the likes of Pentatonik and Lo-Fidelity All Stars. The track itself is a bit of a downbeat epic, clocking in at a little over seven minutes - it's built around a loop sampled from Sandy Shaw's "Keep In Touch", spiced with a few bits of jazz poetry and revolves around a cool keyboard solo. Click the link below to download the MP3 (6.8mb)

www.rogercowell.net/music/friends_of_carlotta.mp3

Friends Of Carlotta

I always think that having a PO Box is a kind of mark of permanency so that's why I went and got one yesterday, I don't know maybe it's that sense of commitment, that having paid for it then you might as well use it for the whole year. More likely it's a case of having gone through all that waiting around in the Post Office and trying to explain in my terrible pigeon Spanish what I was after - I don't wan't to go through all that again. Anyhow I now have a box, and very nice it is as well, all shiny and silver unlike those dull dirty black ones that you get in Australia. Joy! It's the simple things. So hopefully soon it will be full of stuff - letters, postcards, foreign correspondence, bank statements, the temptation of frequent flyer offers - or maybe it just may be empty with tumbleweeds blowing through. It's the unpredictability that keeps life interesting :-)

One of the many, many good things about being back in Barcelona is the fact that my housemate Howard has the whole flat set up with a wireless broadband connection, so no more having to wait around for Ozemail's bloody dial-up to kick in before i can even check my email. Now it's online 24/7 and really fast as well, which means that I can start using my AOL Messenger again - so if you want to give me a knock, the name is rogercowellski. Now if they only made Skipe for old Mac OS 9 operating systems, everthing would be gravy.