My second technorati article - Google Adsense

I was a little frustrated at losing my Google Adsense account for these blogs. After a litle investigation, I discovered that it's not so easy to make money from Google Ads. I wrote a short article about it for Technorati:

http://technorati.com/business/advertising/article/does-anyone-actually-make-money-from/

I'm hoping to put together a bigger article about how to make a little money on the side for music activities from blogs and advertising on your site, but it would appear that it's not as simple as I first thought.

Neil McKenzie - Solo - Cafe Del Mondo, 26.02.2011

Last night was a special occasion. It was my first ever solo gig. I've had lots of opportunities to prove to myself that I can do it, but this was the first time that it was only my name on the bill and I had no one to hide behind.

I swithered as to whether to take the gig or not, but I knew I had enough material, so I went for it in an attempt to take new steps and grow a little.

Cafe Del Mondo is a great little bar on the Nieuwmarkt in Amsterdam which itself is full of terraced bars. By day these are full of coffee-ing tourists having a well earned rest on one of the most picturesque squares in Amsterdam. By night the place opens up to a nightlife that is a little more respectable or older than that on Leidseplein or Rembrandtplein. The Proximity to the red light district means there is also a steady traffic of tourists wandering around.

I'd been in the bar before for coffee on a saturday to recharge the batteries during a morning market session, but I'd never been in at night. The bar is quite small as a music venue, but let's call it "intimate". This is good news - I'm not expecting a big crowd.

Karolina and I introduce ourselves to the owner and set up a makeshift stage on the mezzanine level at the back. It creates a lovely homely atmosphere:

I play my first set(see below). The audience are unresponsive but seem pretty happy, The odd person sings along and people slowly trickle in which at least tells me that I'm not scaring punters off. A few times, big groups of English tourists in track suits pass the door and I pray that they don't come in. Luckily they don't.

Before I know it the first set is over, which lets me know that everythings gone fine, the owner is happy and all the equipment works. I am able to relax over a beer and talk to karolina about how it went. By now it's about 10:30 and the night is in full swing for most people. Everyone has had a few more drinks. The rain has started which means we're unlikly to get many new audience members but it also makes the ones we do have less likely to leave.

I kick off the second set, and the crowd are clearly far more responsive. The singing is geting louder and I think they are enjoying the laid back but well known songs that I'm playing. Before I know it the set is over and it's time to go home... All in all - another mountain climbed!!

Here's what I played:

youtube infamy awaits.

I was clearing out some hard drives at work when I found these:





I'm not a big youtuber, but I thought I'd stick them up. They are far from perfect, but I wouldn;t have any up at the moment if I waited for perfect. If anyone really enjoys them I can do more video and see if I can get the output fomr the desk into the camera for super good(then compressed) sound.

First Jam of the year

Last night was the first Jam of the year at CC Muziek Café. Devin has been holding down the fort while I was in Scotland for Christmas. From now on I expect every Thursday to be filled with the trials, tribulations and joys of hosting a Jam Session.

Devin, Deen and I had a practice the previous day before opening to run through a few things. I’m hoping these Wednesday sessions give us a chance to build a semblance of a house band, but I was a bit disappointed that it was just the three of us running through my Open Mike chords, maybe I tried to do too much on my first week back at work. The mood lifted when Marcel Gorski came in and I ran through a few old classics with him. Sadly he couldn’t be there last night.

Anyway… I was there nice and early to get things set up, and was glad when Fergus came in. I met him through Fraser at a drinking session few months back and remembered that he said he played the bass. It was good to see a new face. My on-going fear of the Jam Sessions is that it’s just me stumbling through songs, and I don’t yet have a core group of people who’s talents I know; I miss Javier, Fraser and Sandra.

Before we even had things set up, we had a band of Devin, Deen, Höskuldur, Fergus and Me. It was enough to run through a few songs and blow off the cob webs. Fergus made a great difference to our Bass-less practicing the previous night. I think we probably did Angie and Dancing in the moonlight. Pretty soon a quiet guy named James joined in with some wonderfully improvised acoustic guitar over the top of everything. We continued like this through another several songs, before I eventually was able to take a break and leave the band to a few jams.

It was sounding pretty good from off the stage. The bar was still pretty quiet but it was good to hear a jam still continuing while I wasn’t playing. Ted and Mathew were there to talk to René about making a promotional video(watch this space).

After a while I returned to the stage and we ran through some more Jammy songs now that I had a feeling for our Ad-Hoc band of the night. If memory serves me correctly we ran through Knockin on Heaven’s door, All along the watch tower and Battle of Evermore with Marco now adding some acoustic guitar. By the time I finished that lot, we also had Dave Harmonica Hulks, Geert and Robert waiting to play. The combination suggested blues was the order of the Jam, and I left them to shuffle away for a good 20 minutes.

Tamira had been chilling in the smoking area down the stairs waiting for the band to go on. I was quite jealous of the coziness down in the smoking area, while I was upstairs being paranoid that everything wasn’t running smoothly. Eventually her Bass player(Lorenzo arrived) and we put together a band to do Tubthumping, Boots and MGMT… before we returned to some blues Jams  until the end of the Jam.

All in all it was a pretty good jam. It started slowly, but eventually there was lots of happy musicians playing away who seemed to be really enjoying themselves. We still don’t have enough audience members braving the tough January weather and Winter Depressie to come out and see us, but hopefully with the number of musicians we have that will slowly come.

Below is a list of some of the songs that cropped up during the night:

Neil, Tamira and Sandra - Live @ Mollys 10th Sept.

Wednesday night after a fruitful writing session, Fraser and I decided that a celebratory pint of the black stuff(no… not Bovril) was in order. We headed down to Mollys where Matty asked if I could put a “band” together due to a last minute cancellation. At such last minute notice it turned out that both Fraser AND Eric Clapton were busy, so I put a call in to Sandra and Tamira and we agreed that Tamira would handle the first set with a little back up from me and then Sandra and I would do the rest of the night to allow Tamira to get home for work the next morning.

Friday night means little pressure to invite people, which means no posters and not a lot of Facebook action. I focused on trying to scratch together enough songs to get through 3 45 minute sets. Sandra and Tamira are both match fit due to travels and holidays that involved lots of guitar playing, but with flu’s going round and the need to pull out some crowd pleasers, I felt enough pressure to keep the adrenalin flowing.

Tamira and I started with “These boots are made for walking” as a sure fire well known song that we wouldn’t mess up:

Audio here

We then continued with Blue Suede Shoes, Sex on Fire and Blitzkrieg Bop, before play Use Somebody herself and then We introduced Sandra for a duet on Last Kiss. By this point Tamira’s cold was starting to play havoc with her voice, so we finished her stint with Randy.

Barely 30 minutes in, and one player out due to injury… I could see I was going to have to sing a lot more than I’d planned to.  I got up and sang, All along the watchtower as my goto for easy songs that I can sing. We still hadn’t had much feedback from what had become a pretty packed bar, so I took the mood down a little and did Wonderful Tonight and Wind Cries Mary, and then closed the set with Fat Bottomed Girls.

audio here

Set 1 was now out the way, but the bar was now absolutely packed and things were getting very hot and sweaty on the stage. I was beginning to feel real pressure to fill a set with crowd pleasers and not have to resort to Pearl Jam B-sides.

I started set 2 by having Sandra let her hair down a little with Yer Blues, but other than a few glances at the wonder that is Sandra, the bar still didn’t show us much love. Big Yellow taxi followed this, and then the crowd finally started to sing along when Karolina came up to play Lola with me(I never thought of Lola as that popular.) Since Karolina was on stage, we ‘knocked out’ Knockin on heaven’s door and then Sandra came and sang a version of Little Wing.

Audio here

I then let Sandra finish the set – safe in the knowledge that we only had one set to go. She managed to rouse the crowd with some Bobby McGee.

For Set three I started again……..

……….then Sandra played a little more. By this time, the bar was getting quieter, and people could hear us a little better, so we got a little self-indulgent and played a version of Seasons by Chris Cornell , before finishing the show with Thank You and We are the Champions.

All in all it was a good night and I’m happy with how it went, but without other guests to rely on it was quite stressful hoping that we’d not run out of songs and that I’d not have to inflict my singing voice on the Friday night crowd too much. 

day 3 - Recording with Tamira.

we had a pretty good session - going over lots of the songs, and adding various extra bits and pieces.

I find it unbelievable, but a year ago today. Fraser and I had our first gig together in the Jet Lounge:

It was a pretty mediocre, but it marked my return to the stage after 8 years away from it. So I thought I’d bum myself up a little and look at what I’ve achieved in the past year.

• I’ve played 27 gigs in 8 venues across 2 countries(26 of them were in the Netherlands)
• I host 2 regular events; one weekly, one monthly
• I perform regularly as twiddley electric guitarist, an acoustic rhythm player, and a reluctant vocalist
• I’ve bothered my arse enough to get a website
• I have moved my repertoire beyond covers of 90’s grunge bands.
• I have written at least 2 songs with Sandra.
• I’ve engineered, recorded and mixed several songs to a pretty decent level.

This past year has given me the confidence to call myself a musician again, and not just play to my bedroom walls with little ambition or direction. The difference this makes to my life cannot be underestimated and I question why I’ve waited this long to get back into it.

So. What next?

I’ve got to the stage that my week is so filled with music things that I have to manage my time quite cleverly. The open mike nights and jam sessions keep me active, but they also give me a great excuse not to be creative. This and the lack of a consistent band means that songwriting continues to elude me. It is still the one thing that I want to do which I can’t seem to achieve.