There are sometimes issues that I just don�t want to get into � Tamla is one of these. I don�t really want to delve around inside the history of the label. I have been happy to park outside the house-studio in Detroit (just down the road from the old GM artdeco headquarters) and pay my respects but actually going inside and beginning to immerse myself in the details was a step too far.

So yesterday, I crossed a threshold by ordering a couple of books from Amazon � including one about James Sanderson � the heroic bassist on a great number of the classic hits. Apparently this one has a lot of his basslines to study. The thought came up that their has to be an algorithmic piece along the lines of �Take any of the classic basslines of James Sanderson and play it as if it were written by Mozart or Beethoven�.

I also dipped into the strange Sheffield scene. I had read in Eddie Prevost�s article in the Wire a reference to Mick Beck�s club which he runs in the basement of his house. I went looking for some details and stumbled into a fair amount of material about the elctronic/free jazz . There�s a MB page at http://www.shef.ac.uk/misc/rec/ps/efi/mbeck.html

I had played his CD �Playing with Tunes� the other day � which he was kind enough to give me � I used to think it sounded like rather old fashioned free-jazz � but it sounded just straight ahead on the latest listening. There�s a lot more from the group of musicians he is linked into at

http://www.discus-music.co.uk/disjuke.htm

Anyway you have to listen to some of it to see why its caught my attention. Julie Tippets appears on some of this stuff which provoke some people�s curiosity..

I put a piece up on www.kwase-kwaza.org today about some political stirrings in the Labour Party. They seem to have realised that they have have utterly run out of ideas to such an extent that they really need to do something about it. John Kay who was (I think) professor of economics at the London Business School has hitched his about to published book on the scope and limits of markets to this project. Well its about bloody time that someone pulled their finger out in that neck of the woods � that�s all I can say.

I started work on a piece which is coming out of the Trane changes � it uses a bossa rhythm and open strings ringing alongside fretted notes. It uses a kind of sidestepping trick. In the classic Trane changes you go up from the tonic to the dominant seventh on the sharp supertonic � IIIb 7 � but a tritone substitute for that is the mediant seventh � with a ninth and thirteenth and no root it�s a kind of free floating dominant which can sidestep down to the next tonal centre. Using the same trick again it is possible to link the Trane changes around some classic guitar possibilities.

At the moment I am using the Crafter with a rotary effect on a classic valve simulation � not a classic amp � just a straightahead valve colouration. The rotary gives the slightest hint of Jaco P (Hejira) on the lower strings. I put the sequence down into a WAV and started jamming some flute lines round it. The Crafter is tuned a semitone down which really made for some interesting mental alterations. In fact it takes the sequence mentally towards Night and Day which I do as a solo flute piece � esp the opening Bmaj 7 Fm7 Bb7 Ebmaj7 Cm7 which can take a great deal of abuse, I have been wondering anyway to play that partly as a Coltrane substitution.

There seems to be a new guitar instrumental version of Poor Boy developing.

Great News � Paul Wheeler�s Lullabye (A&P IC) has appeared on the front page of www.kwase-kwaza.org along with a link to Ciaran�s Race Against Tim