the lowstar lowdown 17 - monday 16th october

Hello hello, it’s good to be back, it’s good to be back! Welcome to the newest of the new editions of the lowdown. We can only apologise for the delays in updating you on the latest news from lowstarsville. We could give you reasons: illness, tiredness, the lowdown’s being eaten by the dog.. but you’d see through that and we wouldn’t want to pull the wool over your eyes. So you’ll just have to make do with a quick sorry. Now, I’ve heard rumours that the absence has been due to the surprising finding of form of lowstar’s notoriously slipshod guitarist. Speculation has it that so embittered is the lowdown editor that he (or she) absconded and failed to file the updates just so that he (or she) didn’t have to eat humble pie and give the woestar award to keith. Just to make it clear, and to stop such ridiculous theories from ever rising again. This is absolute nonsense. Of course keith didn’t find form.

So a quick recap. What have lowstar been up to. Well, quite a lot actually. Let’s start with an acoustic gig in tooting, south London a couple of weeks ago. Magic and keith, arrived with an acoustic guitar and a couple of picks and scrounged around for another guitar so they could play. The room was tiny, but packed, there were free snacks (bet you’re sorry you missed it now!) and the audience seemed to have a great time. The two boys launched into a 25 minute set of lowstar favourites and miraculously considering they only rehearsed 20 minutes before they got there, they pulled it off. This was mainly due to magic’s fine vocals and his extraordinary between song introductions, which one man present likened to the stuff of legend, it was, we have been told, as if hale and pace had been resurrected from the grave. Or if the comedy pairing dream team of little and cannon were united. Actually, this is not true, there was much laughter and rarely has magic said so much without referring to his pedals or his hair or being grumpy. Keith seemed to have been replaced for the night by barry white. He claims it was him, with a cold that had affected his voice, but as evidence I will point out that he didn’t make a mistake the whole night... exactly. Members of the audience say he looked shell-shocked throughout the gig. When questioned afterwards he said he never knew magic could talk so much and wasn’t sure he’d stop talking long enough to play the songs. Anyway, it was a lot of fun for everyone there, even if barry did slope of early. Or should that be especially because barry sloped off early.

Onwards then to the next lowstar event. This week lowstar produced the double whammy of playing the mother bar in hoxton and releasing their long-promised and much anticipated cd ‘alphabet blues’. Yes, now the release has been made official I can confirm the line up of songs. The ep is named alphabet blues and features alphabet blues, drone and connected. The cd was given away free at the gig and many were picked up. We’d love to hear what you think, so if you have one and fancy writing in to us, please do. The launch gig at the 333 club went brilliantly. Also on the bill were Kenny and the Eggplants, who had come all the way from New York, it was great to meet them before the soundcheck and we hope they had a good stay. The gig itself rocked. Ian was his usual helicopter of whirring limbs, rob produced a throb so loud he was asked to turn down for fear of inducing sonic side effects to human biology. Magic was in great voice and coped well with the lack of space for his rainbow of rock and keith did pretty well until he tried to show off with a mask. The boys unleashed a new song, Natural High, which went down very well. They’ve been working on it for weeks in rehearsals (see previous lowdowns) but played it almost perfectly on the night and it rocked!

We’d like to thank everyone who came out on Thursday night to see us, it was great to see you all there and we hope you all picked up a cd. If you did (or if you didn’t but the very nice man who puts all this meaningless rambling on the net for you all to read has managed to put a picture of the cd on the site somewhere) you will notice that the cover features someone in a mask. Well, we thought that for a while - ie before we get a bit bored of it - we’d introduce a new part of the lowstar experience and stick some pictures of people in the mask in various locations. If you recognise anyone of anywhere please write in a say something like ‘I know who that is in the mask and I know where it is too and if I catch you round my way doing weird stuff like that I’ll call the police, you nutters’. Hey, even better, find a mask of your own and send your own pictures in, we’d love it. They make us laugh.

Anyway, in case you were at the gig, that was the reason keith put the mask on and risked ridicule which no doubt did come his way when it started slipping down his face. Perhaps he should have practised with it before doing the gig.

So, onto the woestar award. We should probably make it cumulative for all the weeks we’ve missed because of the dog what ate the other lowdowns. So individually what have the boys been up to and who’s going to win. Well, magic and keith get points for the acoustic gig. Keith gets a bonus one for turning up ill. But loses it for coughing while playing. Magic gets bonus points for managing to make peter kay seem like those two new ‘jokers’ off popworld. And another one for singing so well. Magic also gets bonus points for all his hard work on the cd production. As does keith, but he loses one for all the delays. The whole band get points for a great performance at the mother club. The throb gains an extra point for his extra throbiness in connected. Ian gets one for the end of drone. Magic gets one for remembering all the tricky bits to the new song AND the words. And keith gets one for playing the verses of alphabet blues in a mask really well. He loses one though because he doesn’t actually play that much in the verse and got into difficulty in the choruses because he couldn’t see out of the eye holes. So currently, it’s looking like a simple job of giving it to magic. However, someone has been cheated out of a number of awards by the lack of lowdowns of late. Yes, that’s right, I said cheated. Someone has spent the last few weeks creating lines that would make kate moss proud, I mean bass lines of course, and putting that together with his single-handed efforts to ensure practises can start on time, you’ve just got to give it to the man, the legend, his royal throbiness, the law on the four, the guv of the sub, the ace of bass, the throbmeister himself, mr bassman, ranger rob!

Thoughts of the week...

- how long will it be till the next lowdown?
- What can be done about the dog that keeps eating it?
- Does ian EVER have a bad hair day?
- If keith got that hot and uncomfortable under that mask and found it that difficult to play choruses, how would he cope if he was a womble?
- Will the rest of lowstar EVER manage to match magic’s sartorial elegance on stage?
- What’s become of ike the ikea trolley?
- Will anyone ever notice rob’s fine vocal harmonising above the turbo distortioning of keith’s guitar?
- What’s been happening to imaginary alan?
- What goes on behind the mystery door with the keypad lock in the rehearsal studios?
- Has anyone seen anyone who looks a bit like someone but isn’t? keith saw someone who looked a bit like chris de burgh once but wasn’t and now he’s seen someone who looks a bit like david walliams, if he was 10 years younger, had a goatee and slightly ginger hair. Oh, and was shorter. And wore glasses.

And finally, what musical MySpace gems has magic got for us this week? Tricky choice this time (when there's so much more Scandanavian prog-rock out there), but he's decided to recommend singer-songwriter Joe Doyle, who we often played acoustic gigs with at the Alexandra in Clapham. Great tunes, lovely voice and from what we've heard, a favourite with the ladies. If he wasn't such a nice guy we'd hate the b'stard.

Right that’s it for another time. Please write to us about anything. We’re not actually desperate or anything, it would be just nice to hear from you. Anytime really, that’s the beauty of email. Although if you have our phone numbers, don’t call between late at night and early in the morning, especially not early in the morning. Thanks. Just before we go, just wanted to say a very special welcome back to the country to founding member, Rich. Hiya Rich! Great to have you back in blighty.

Lowstar lowstopping.

blog list
recording november 2008
gig email - 20 nov 2007
gig email - 24 jul 2007
happy new year - tuesday 16 jan 2007
lowstar lowdown 17 - monday 16 oct 2006
lowstar lowdown 16 - monday 18 sep 2006
lowstar lowdown 15 - monday 11 sep 2006
lowstar lowdown 14 - monday 28 aug 2006
lowstar lowdown 13 - monday 14 aug 2006
lowstar lowdown 12 - monday 31 jul 2006
lowstar lowdown 11 - monday 24 jul 2006
lowstar lowdown 10 - monday 17 jul 2006
lowstar lowdown 9 - monday 10 jul 2006
lowstar lowdown 8 - monday 26 jun 2006
lowstar lowdown 7 - monday 19 jun 2006
lowstar lowdown 6 - monday 05 jun 2006
lowstar lowdown 5 - lowstardate 27th may.6
lowstar lowdown 4 - monday 22 may 2006
lowstar lowdown III - return of the blog (15 may 2006)
lowstar lowdown 2 - wednesday 10 may 2006
lowstar lowdown 1 - friday 28 april 2006