It’s about my journey on dialysis and raising awareness about being donors and waiting for a kidney transplant

It will be on the BBC website too so I hope you will all have a look

Love Char

Some sessions just stick in your memory.

I do hundreds of recordings every year, and have produced hundreds of songs since The Cross and the Switchblade. My memory has blurred most of them, though; it’s conflated some; plain forgotten some, and mis-remembered others. When I think back to that recording session back in July 2004, though, I feel as if I’m back in the room.

I was excited about that session, and a little apprehensive. I’d booked Barry van Zyl to play drums, and Jamie Moses to play guitar. I was to play bass. I’d already recorded the vocals and keyboards, along with guide guitars and drums, so we had quite a lot to play with. Barry and Jamie are both world-renowned top players. Although they’d played on the same bill as each other on the Nelson Mandela 46664 concerts, they’d never met. They were both friends of mine, and I’d worked with both of them, but that afternoon I was banking that we would all gel musically. In order to get the specific feel that I was after, it was important that we would play together, live, on a song that they’d not heard before. To add to the work, our recording engineer at Berry Street Studio, Malcolm, was on holiday, so I was going to have to record the session and play the bass at the same time…

It’s not often that you get players like this in the room at the same time. Frankly, it’s not often you can afford it. Charlotte wasn’t going to be at the session. For me, it’s a bit of a gamble when the artist isn’t there when you’re recording material for them. When it’s successful it’s fantastic: you give them something which exceeds their expectations, and you’re bathed in glory. Just occasionally, though, you do a whole load of work on something, present it to the artist, you make a complete arse of yourself, and you’re bathed in something else. I was pretty confident that this session would go well, but there was always the possibility that it wouldn’t. Recording isn’t an exact science: there are too many variables to be able to predict an outcome.

When musicians meet, they go through a kind of peacock-dance. They talk over coffee about who they play with and who they know to try and establish common ground, and to rank one another – essentially to see how serious a player each one is. After we’d gone through this, I could tell that Jamie and Barry potentially had a lot of respect for each other: they were intrigued and their expectation levels for the session were heightened – and this was before anyone had picked up an instrument. Clearly, they were also going to get on, which is important. After I’d mic’d up the drum kit & guitar amps, we spent a good hour listening to the song, with me explaining exactly what I was after, and the guys charting out their parts.

At this point, it was finally time to start playing. It’s no coincidence that that we use the word “play” for what we do with music. As soon as we started, this was pure fun and excitement- with a little edge of competitiveness. Barry was playing in a separate room from Jamie and I (drums are very loud…). A few bars into the song Jamie looked at me and grinned. A few bars later he looked at Barry and said “he’s good, isn’t he…”.

Sometimes something fantastic happens when you play music with other people. You just lock in with each other. Barry established the perfect groove, and Jamie & I locked in totally. We were monitoring very loudly and the music took over. The three of us were an entity. Part of my brain was in a zone where I ceased to exist other than as part of that sound: another part was razor-sharp, seemed to be watching us from the outside, and was very aware that the two guys I was playing with were stepping up a notch, that this was because they were inspired by each other’s brilliance, and that my job was to keep this positive feedback loop going, and to make sure I was recording it properly.

We recorded three or four takes in a blur. Barry overdubbed some percussion, and Jamie overdubbed some excellent guitar (I spoke to Barry in Cape Town this morning about that session and he mentioned Jamie’s “outrageous” guitar playing, and that we were fuelled by many trips to the local Starbucks). It was a very hot, sweaty, summer day, and at the end of the session we all knew we had done something special. Of course, when I listen to the recording, all this plays out in my head. Every listener will hear something different, but I hope that everyone will hear the energy in the playing and somehow feel that something special happened in the recording process.

Recently Neil King of Fatea Records did a great review on The Brave Songs

Read the review…

Donors wishes are being negated and organs are not being used’ CGC continues her campaign for the NKF by encouraging donors to discuss their wishes with their families as doctors as loathe to operate without family consent and too often donors decisions are over-ridden. CGC also talks about her gratitude for a fellow Mother’s selfless decision to donate her kidney…

Click here to download the pdf and read the full article 

Recently CGC had an interview with Eleanor Bradford up in Scotland at the family estate. Her brother Sir Alastair Gordon Cumming, who was also poisoned by mushrooms and is waiting for a kidney donor, joined her for the interview.  With backing from the National Kidney Federation CGC discussed the waste of organs from deceased donors as until recently only organs from deaths in intensive care were used.

You can read the full BBC article and watch the interview here.

It’s turned out really well and Eleanor Bradford has done a great job. If you haven’t already signed up then do it today PLEASE! There are a lot of young people waiting for a kidney transplant and many will not survive longer than six years and that includes myself.

You can watch the report here

Hey Ho ……
On another topic I am definitely doing a concert at St Pauls covent garden in the new year after my own transplant this October ….bring it on!

It’s the most beautiful day here in Devon the sky is as blue as it can get and the shadows of the trees are strong and sharp…autumn has arrived and so too have the conkers and a second flourish of roses.

The winds are fierce a left over of some hurricane I believe but it’s all perfect for me

I have started to write a new song…..
X

Char

Today I’ve just been given some birthday cake with my cup of tea as it’s one of the patients birthday.

Someone always bakes a cake for birthdays and it’s a nice human touch here amongst all the endless lines of blue pumping machines and the smell of disinfectant. My three hours and fifteen minutes are spent reading writing eating what I want and sleeping.

It is only in the last four months that my brain allowed me to read.

For many months the poison and just the process of being on D stopped me reading; I had terrible migraine for months which made concentration very difficult. I used to read a huge amount of modern fiction but now I’m not in the least bit interested and all my mind seems to want is esoteric literature so at the moment I am reading a book called Infinite Potential the life and times of David Bohm one of the 21st century’s most original thinkers - A brilliant physicist explorer of consciousness friend of Einstein and enemy of the house committee on un American activities.

It’s a must for all of us on the spiritual path

Bye for now
Char

It’s an exciting concept to have music inspired by modern fiction and I hope publishers will see the great synergy it brings.

I think it is at all the airports around the country so if your going on holiday go check us out

These treats as i call them are probably every day possiblities for you but not for me..

I won’t go into my craving world today but it is sooo hard not to eat such healthy foods as nuts raisins,oranges,banana’s etc because of kidney failure.Any foods with high potassium and phosphate are no go zones.

It takes me 15 minutes to get to my unit on the outskirts of Torbay, the riviera of the south!!

There I say a few prayers in my car and then with food, computer and newspaper i find my cubicle and machine. Before you go on you are weighed to determine how much liquid the machine has to take off, ie how much you have over drunk in the last 48hrs,our quota is 2 litres and that includes all fluid like soup.That done you lie on hard plastic loungers and you are given blankets and pillows as on D you get cold and in the winter I would take a hot water bottle.

Enough now, I will continue again in a few days

Had a fascinating reading yesterday from a native American woman called Jo Todd. She lives in Texas. She works through her invisible mentor/teacher called Isaiah who she has worked with for 28 years.

I have been helping a young woman called sara nason finish a film on the Lakota indians and their cheif Crow Dog. Jo is one of the people sara works with while she is filming and has helped her in many ways to get this film made as permission for filming a sundance has never been given before.

I have a very strong commection to Indigineous philosophy and their look at the way we are so closely related and connected to nature in all its wonder and mystery and they are wise, they have ancient wisdom that we the west have tried to eradicate much to the detrement of ourselves and our spritual lives.Shame on us
cx