It’s now known by most of Sydney’s music community that Jackie lost his fight with cancer on the third of February 2008. The timing of this shocked us all, Jackie was still gigging a week before then.

I remember walking to the Rose in Erskineville every Tuesday night, fighting the crowds to listen to Jackie’s band and trying to get a good position to watch him conducting the band with his picolo bass. He always attracted great players and got them playing the tightest grooves, he kept them on their toes by throwing new grooves, stops, fills and solos at them at a moments notice. To the untrained eye it would look very rehearsed, but there was always small signals going on, a nod of the head, a look, a point with the neck of the bass. It was always magic. A lot of Sydney musos got their name out there by sitting in with Jack at the Rose.

For a while before it closed, my band B’Dussy had a residency at the Harbourside Brasserie. Jackie used to do the first set and then take off to a late gig. We never liked any bands sharing the bill with us, but at the Harby we used to sit back and not want him to finish.

When the Newtown RSL club opened back up and lured Jackie away from the Rose on Tuesday nights he got a bigger room to fill and a larger stage. He also started to bring in some crazier arrangemens, I remember one night sitting there listening to an amazing song, only to realise it was Jackie’s take on the Beatles’ Strawberry Fields. Jackie would take all sorts of blues songs, obscure funk and even the occasional Zappa tune and make them his own.

With his passing we’ve lost an incredible talent, his playing, his singing and his arrangements were always amazing and always unique. I’m going to miss the gigs (not that I’d seen many lately, small children tend to slow down that part of your social life), his ability to change a song in ways you’d never imagine, the post gig raves about the state of the world we’d occasionally have at the Townie in Newtown and just being able to say gday while grabbing a coffee or walking down the street in Erko. I regret that I never took up the offer to sit in with the band, I always figured it would happen eventually and now it never will.

Jackie Orszaczky, you were a true original, you will be missed.

A few weeks back I posted a YouTube video from a show I played at The Basement. I had a few people say to me “Hey, why don’t you tell me when you are playing ?”.

So here it is, if you’d like to come see me play, the next Basement show will be a good one.

November 10th, with the Elana Stone band and Miss Donne.

If you’d like to book a table for dinner, call the Basement on 02 9251 2797. Otherwise, you can book at Moshtix.

See you there!

In May 2007 I did a gig at the Basement with Leanne Paris. We had it recorded and filmed and the results are about to be released. Here are a couple more teasers.

On Thursday night I went along to Jess McAvoy's album launch at the Hopetoun in Surry Hills. Jess is a Melbourne based singer / songwriter and performer of "melodic hook-laden indie/pop tunes".

The new album "Into The Dark" on the surface is an acoustic pop album, but has a real bluesy soulfulness in parts. I'm liking it a lot, particularly "New Amsterdam" which is probably the darkest track.

The gig itself was good, I usually don't enjoy gigs at the Hopetoun. I love an appreciate the fact that they are putting on live original music every night, but I find the venue itself cramped and the sound is almost always shit. Mainly because bands play and are mixed louder than the room can handle before the sound bounces everywhere and turns into aural mush.

Jess was playing with an acoustic three piece band (her with guitar, an double bass player and a drummer) so managed to sound great. The only problem with not being too loud is that at times she was in danger of being drowned out by a large number of, for want of a better word, asshats who seemed to go out to hear the sounds of their own voices rather than the music.

I did miss the extra instrumentation from the album at times. There are some nice textures provided by organ and electric guitar which would have been nice live, but the economic reality of touring as an indepenant artist don't make these things possible.

All in all though, I'm really enjoying the album and I hope Jess has some success with it. Definitely worth heading over to her site and checking everything out, including the video for "See how I go", which has been getting a few plays on Rage.

Finally, I have to finish up with some wanton gear porn! Jess was playing a really nice looking and sounding thin body acoustic guitar, a Martin X-Series.

Nice!

Over the Easter weekend I have a gig at the Great Escape Festival in Sydney with the Leanne Paris Band. The gig should be fun, however we're booked at the insane timeslot of 1AM on Saturday morning. I was a little disappointed about this, I figured we would have a good crowd but they won't really remember us. Then I found out that only those people with camping passes will be able to hear us anyway. Everyone else gets kicked out at midnight.

Not happy Jan!

Oh well, like They Might Be Giants say, "If it wasn't for disappointments, I wouldn't have any appointments".

One of the fun things is that I will have a fairly new bit of equipment with me, the new Blue Boy Deluxe pedal from MI Audio.

I spent some time one afternoon with Michael at MI Audio recording some sound samples for his website and he hooked me up with one of these magic boxes. I've done two gigs with it already and it sounds great, it will be fun to do a big production gig with it.

Michael has a fantastic ability to make overdrive boxes that sound like amps, not like little boxes. This one is no exception. I was pretty happy with how the sound samples turned out, I think they do it some justice.