chris moore
chris moore
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Not a good day in Bordeaux


By chrismoore, 2011-08-03
Not a good day in Bordeaux

August 2nd 2011, not a good day in Bordeaux.  You don't want to look out the front door and see this when your studio is in the basement...

The morning started fine, hot and sunny, the clouds arrived in the afternoon, temperature in the nineties, suddenly it got very dark, and then about 3 inches of rain hit the city in half an hour.  The water started rising in the street and had just about crept up to the bottom of the basement window, then the rain died off and I breathed a huge sigh of relief... but a little too early.

Suddenly, across the road, a man-hole cover decided it had had enough and jumped into the air, followed by an enormous fountain of "used water" as the French like to call it, and the level started to rise again, but this time not with clean fresh rainwater but a grey looking sludge that didn't smell too great. Luckily it stopped 2 inches below the top step at the front door, (some of my neighbours weren't so lucky) but that is about 6 inches above the basement window, and a little above the level of the extractor fan outlet from my studio.

Panic ensues, me running up and down the basement stairs carrying guitar, synths, amps, computers, speakers, mics, anything I could get my hands on as the stinking grey water started its inexorable rise around my feet.

In the end it only got to about six inches (my defences are better than the last time it happened) and the electricity stayed on, so I was able to pump it out within a few hours, but not much music is likely to be made in there for a little while, I think.

Ah well. There are good days and bad days that go to make up a fulfilling life, I guessUndecided

Decisions, Decisions...


By chrismoore, 2011-07-19

The difficulty, when you've been away for a while and you have got a few songs waiting to see the light of day, is knowing which one to put up next.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to listen to Walking on Water, the first solo song I've floated out there into the wide world for over a year.  Thanks also for the reviews, you guys!  I've been a bit slack in that department myself, but I'm now home for three whole lovely weeks and I'm going to hunt out some of the great tracks hiding on here so's I can pinch some of your ideas (only joking Sealed ).

In the end I decided to put out a new song called "Skies of blue" next.  Back to my secret eco-warrior stance for this one, something with a similar story line to my old song "Contranature" but written from an after-the-event perspective.  One day I might even write a happy song, who knows Wink

Here's the link to the new one - thanks for listening if you got this far.

Skies of blue

All the best

Chris

Chance encounter


By chrismoore, 2011-07-21

As many of you guys know, I commute each week from Bordeaux in France to London to go earn my daily bread, and from time to time you meet some interesting people on the plane, apart from the twelve or so of us who make the journey every Monday and Friday.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at the boarding gate at Gatwick, waiting for it to open, and one of the ground crew went past me escorting a guy carrying an acoustic guitar case covered in tour labels.  He want down the ramp to the plane before everyone else was let through - Aha, I figured, he wants to find a safe spot for his guitar before all the tourists fill up the luggage space.

So I didn't think about it again until we were all getting off the plane in the evening sunshine at Bordeaux, and I took another look, and recognised the guy, just as the stewardess pulled his guitar case out of the back of the business class coat locker.  It was Chris Difford of Squeeze, who were one of my favourite bands back in the eighties and ever since.  Had a quick chat with him before I lost him in the customs queue.  The guy is the most incredible lyric writer and musician, made his name writing down to earth pop songs with a serious lyrical hook (if you can remember, think of "Up the junction", "Pulling mussels from a shell", "Tempted", Black coffee in bed" and many more that I can think of which were real classic songs back in those days - almost all the Squeeze songs were written by Chris Difford and Glen Tilbrook, both of whom are still gigging today.  Jools Holland, who was with them for a while, has gone a lot further though, it seems.

Anyway, must have inspired me somehow, because the song I put together over the past three days is very much in the Squeeze mould, happy song with some cute lyrics, which you may like if you're a long-time Squeeze fan like me.

Here's the song for your delectation my friends: Breaking into you

Cheers,

Chris

Trying to get on a compilation CD...


By chrismoore, 2009-03-19

Hi friends

I'm in a competition to be a part of a compilation CD on a new UK website called Band Engine.  The ten artists who get the most net votes will go forward for it - if you fancy coming over and listening to some new music (and maybe even voting for me, under the name "chameleon") then just click here:



Thanks!

Chris

Contranature!


By chrismoore, 2009-01-31
Contranature!

If you haven't heard it yet, you might like to listen to "White Sky Dark Earth", a collab put together with real style by Gabriel Sabadi&nbsp;and featuring his music and production and some vocal and guitar additions from Kephas and me.&nbsp; You can find it here:<br /><br /><a href="http://www2.mixposure.com/Gabriel_Sabadi/song_focus_10530.php">http://www2.mixposure.com/Gabriel_Sabadi/song_focus_10530.php</a><br /><br />The lyrics I wrote to go with Gabe's music&nbsp;were a sort of metaphor for the financial crisis that is going on right now - mankind climbs the mountain (because it's there) and then once at the top, tries to get still higher by fabricating stuff to build on top of it -&nbsp;but then the storm&nbsp;hits and it all comes crashing down again.<br /><br />And having got into that frame of mind, I got to thinking:<br /><br />There are 6.5 billion people on this earth.<br />Soon, there will be 10 billion.<br />Until about 1600, the earth's population was pretty much under control&nbsp;because of&nbsp;disease, famine, wars.<br />Technology put that right.<br /><br />Right now, the world economy is having a bad day.<br />Everyone tells us we need growth, more of everything.&nbsp; <br />That will get us out of the pit the world is in right now.<br />Truth is, it all has to come from somewhere and there isn't that much of anything&nbsp;left.<br />We have enough oil for maybe 40 years.<br />What are you gonna do then?<br /><br />Oh, and&nbsp;of course there's greenhouse gases.<br />Global warming.<br />Climate change.<br /><br />I keep hearing the words "save the planet" like it's a mantra or something.&nbsp; I don't know why we worry so much about the planet, it's been here 4.5 billion years and it will still be here a very long time after we're all gone.&nbsp; It's shrugged off enough calamities in the past, asteroids, meteorites and the like - a couple of million years and everything's right as rain again.&nbsp; And for those of us who like playing with numbers, like me, in relative terms that's about the same amount of time that it takes a 45 year-old to recover from a cold, (i.e. a week) so what's all the fuss about?<br /><br />It only really hit me the other day that when people say "save the planet" what they really mean is "save us".<br />The planet will be fine, but we won't.<br /><br />Actually, I am one of life's major optimists, and I don't really believe in catastrophe.&nbsp; And I'm not turning into an eco-warrior, either.&nbsp; I'm just thinking here.<br /><br />When you put timeframes into the perspective of the age of the earth relative to that 45 year-old, it looks like this:<br /><br />Two years ago, there were dinosaurs walking the earth.&nbsp; Man's early forbears (Homo Erectus)&nbsp;appeared this time last week and men (as we know them) appeared for the first time late yesterday afternoon.&nbsp; The fossil fuels that we started to extract a couple of minutes ago and have now nearly exhausted had been there about two years.<br /><br />The human population started to grow uncontrollably two minutes ago - about as long as it might take you to notice a fly buzzing round the room, find the newspaper&nbsp;and despatch it...<br /><br />That's how fragile we all are.<br /><br />And that's what my song "Contranature" is about.<br /><a href="http://www2.mixposure.com/chris_moore/song_focus_10715.php">http://www2.mixposure.com/chris_moore/song_focus_10715.php</a>

Chris Plays Guitar Shock... Out with the neglected Mr Jackson

Oh **** I've got sore fingers!  How in hell am I going to make a roll-up with these?  It's alright for you real guitarists but my fingers prefer the touch of ivory.  Anyway suffice it to say that my old Mr Jackson was sitting there looking all blue and not too metallic under the coat of dust that had settled on him and making me feel guilty and how long is it since I did a real guitar song...?   so I blew off the dust and polished him up a bit, and then he made me play this song I've called Walk Away.  I'm not used to mixing guitar tunes.  All the controls WAY up high on the multiband to let it all come through, so I ended up with a lot of lower reverb... ah who cares anyway...

Hope you like it.  I did.  And don't ask me how many takes to get the (rather easy) solo just right...

Happy new year, all!

Chris

Russian Rhapsody - the second and concluding movement

Well, here I go, a bit more than three years after I wrote and recorded the first half of my Russian Rhapsody, finally got the second and concluding part to a point where I thought it was ready to share.  Just to make it easier, I've put the two parts first and second on my playlist in the right order, so if you don't remember the first part, you can listen to them both one after the other and get the whole thing in one go...

Thanks for listening!

Chris

That tuneflow thing


By chrismoore, 2008-11-28

<p>Got a song in the tuneflow tournament this month - as most months in fact.&nbsp; Sure we're all familiar with the format,&nbsp;they publish four song titles on the first of each month, and to take part you have to write, record and post a song on their site by the last day of the month, using one of the four titles, and the rules are that the title has to appear in the lyrics.&nbsp; Then you're in the tournament for the following month...<br /><br />Most of the time&nbsp;the lyrics people write are pretty bland, either through lack of imagination or because no-one wants to risk upsetting the people who are doing the voting.&nbsp;<br /><br />Thought I'd try something different for November with the title "too many tears" so I wrote a song which I also posted on here with some lyrics which challenge the idea of segregation of people / thought on the basis of religion, and I've had some - er - "interesting" reviews from a few people. Still, last song I entered in the contest was about friendship, and one reviewer who has obviously never had a friend of the same sex in his life invited me to stop "gaying it up" and gave me a 1/10 for being "fagalicious"..<br /><br />There's some strange people about...&nbsp; If you want to check out&nbsp; the songs this month, you can find&nbsp;the end game at&nbsp;www.tuneflow.com<br /></p>
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