FIREGIVER - Robert Vasey's website - Archive Page 1

28th November 2006

So I've been writing songs but I've also been making short films, like the one I did for Rod's exhibition in June. I'm not a perfectionist and the idea of painstakingly doing take after take and spending hours fiddling with edits to produce sophisticated works fills me with dismay. I believe fervently in the power of spontaneity. Improvement must come from practice not from application. This is dedicated to Lindsay and the fact that she has qualified as a nurse over the last 3 years and now works at the Oncology Centre in Bristol, and the fact that she has put up with me for a number of years (I daren't say how many or she'd kill me when she reads this). Just before she started her job we went to Clovelly in North Devon for a couple of nights.

4th November 2006

For the last couple of years I've been writing a lot of songs again, and it seems to me that they're getting better. This is one of the early ones. It's called The Airman's Prayers and I reckon that with a £5000 budget I could make a really good video for it. This is the £0 budget video and it's good for the price. It helps that I was able to download a selection of BBC footage for Creative Archive Licence use. Thanks for that and credit where it's due etc. Also in the mix is some "runway" footage and also some "flightdeck" - oddities to say the least. And also my dog Zelda returns to this page for some frolics on Padstow sands.

11th July 2006

Another throwaway piece of something. Music dating from about 1996 with vocals added about an hour ago. The visuals are a mix of some stuff that I think I downloaded from a NASA site plus a shot of some Herb Robert from my garden which I think was taken in May. I've called the piece Herb Robert as a tribute to that spectacularly large weed which is now no more.

2nd June 2006

I think it's 30 years ago this year since I first met Rod Henderson. He's an artist among other things so when he had an exhibition in Lowestoft last month I was able to visit and spend some time with him and his wonderful family and friends. So this is my tribute to Rod. Upstairs in the Ferini Gallery in Pakefield was the perfect place to exhibit his incredible work.

3rd May 2006

4 months into 2006 and no additions. From here on it's got to be a simple case of them or me. I'll try to update once a month from now until the end of the year. Just to start with here's some words from an illustrious predecessor who was a born firegiver and this is his take on Prometheus.

Four legends tell of Prometheus:

According to the first he was clamped to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the secrets of the gods to men, and the gods sent eagles to feed on his liver, which perpetually renewed itself.
According to the second, Prometheus, to escape the tearing beaks, pressed himself in his agony deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.
According to the third, in the course of thousands of years his treachery was forgotten, the gods forgot, the eagles forgot, he himself forgot.
According to the fourth, everyone grew weary of what had become meaningless. The gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed wearily.

There remained the inexplicable mountain of rock. Legend tries to explain the inexplicable. Since it emerges from a ground of truth, it must end in the inexplicable once again.

Franz Kafka (translated by Malcolm Pasley)

13th December 2005

This song was recorded about 1980 at Paul Kendall's studio in Endell Street, Covent Garden. Paul did the engineering, I think, I played guitar and sang, Ray Kent played keyboards and Lindsay Vasey played bass (bit low in the mix). For the wonderful footage of owls thanks to Academia Sinica in Taiwan. I used to write a lot of songs featuring birds and animals - mice, bears, monkeys, parrots, weasels, voles, hornbills etc. Recently I wrote a song about some stones - must be getting more inanimate in my old age.

24th September 2005

In the mid 90s I bought a sampler and set myself up to make music on my computer. Since then I've been recording sporadically without ever creating a finished product. Lots of sketches. Now I feel the music needs to be taken out into a live context before it can become crystallised. Here is a recent sketch from last year. The film is a badly put together homage to my dog Zelda, composed of some computer game screenshots mixed with 4 stills. Some bits of it look ok. It always amazes me how much work it takes to create something as poor as this.

7th May 2005

Back to 1979 and the first and only release by up and coming band Dry Rib. Released on Clockwork Records - an Edward Ball project that saw a handful of singles released - the EP The Dry Season sold 1000 copies. The song is called Alaska. Andrew Goodwin played drums; Mike Mulholland played bass and I played guitar and sang. The track can be found on a compilation of music from that era produced by the incredible Chuck Warner of www.hyped2death.com - Messthetics 8. Actually this version of the song is from a demo that we recorded a few months before the EP version and it's of course a bit rough - not only the playing but the sound quality as it's been taken from an old cassette tape. It's a long track - about 7 minutes I think - I've taken some videos from the Internet again - anything related to Alaska, although the song has actually nothing to do with that state - it's about well... getting on with life? struggling to achieve? who knows? to quote the last 2 lines What do you get from vagueness except misunderstanding? / But what do you get from straightness except turds? Usual apologies for any infringement of copyright and for the crap visuals.

15th November 2004

It's taken a long time for me to finish this project. Partly because it was quite difficult and partly because I got fed up with it and vowed never to try anything as complicated again. In some ways it's a bit of a mess but I'm trying to get a raw feeling for this Firegiver material anyway. The song dates back to the 1st Gulf War back in 1991 and expresses certain pessimism about the state of the world - nothing very different from today. Radio recordings at the end of the song come from the first night of bombing in Baghdad. The track was recorded later that year sometime after the birth of my son Max round at my friend Andy's flat. I'm afraid there is no master that I know of and the quality of the sound is poor. All the footage has been taken from the internet - apologies for any infringement of rights.

20th May 2004

I'm working on a proper banner for this page. Well thinking about it at least. I need a film of fire first. While on the subject I'm looking for news archive footage on www for post after this one which features a song recorded during First USA/Iraq war. Video search option on Altavista is pretty useful. Ahead of Google it seems. There must be plenty of fire out there, but I'd rather record my own image. Anyway this is a tribute to the great guitarist John Rhodes, who I believe is still teaching guitar somewhere near Stockton. I first saw him at a Back Door gig at the Blakey Lion on the North Yorkshire Moors. The incredible Colin Hodgkinson (still one of the bass guitar's greatest secrets) couldn't make it that night. Dek Vasey (I remember the surname for obvious reasons but no relation) took over on bass for the Back Door numbers and they also did 2 or 3 numbers where John did one of his improvisations based around various odd tunings he used and the band joined in when appropriate. It was fantastic music especially as it was never going to be reproduced. Here's John on a moment like that - unfortunately instead of Back Door as a backing band there's me on bass guitar. Any mistakes I can only excuse by youth (19 I think) and inexperience. Anyway just enjoy John's guitar-playing. I was going to knock up some sort of collage using photographs from the time - it was recorded in Colin Bennett's flat with glorious views (ironic) over Redcar seafront in approximately 1973. Unfortunately I couldn't find any photos so I took a shot of buttercups from Ashton Court in Bristol that I took yesterday and fiddled with it rather arbritarily to produce some sort of visual accompaniment. Any errors of judgement I can only excuse by old age (not 91 yet) and inexperience.

30th April 2004

The first thing I'm posting goes way back. The image predates the voice by a year or two. Voice recorded on quarter inch tape. Words by Robert Louis Stevenson - for some reason the last stanza is missing.

29th April 2004

I'm going to be posting various things - texts,pictures,films and music principally - as and when I have time. 1st post should be tomorrow. The quality will vary, but I suppose the bad needs to be up there with the good. It's not going to be so much of a weblog, more of an ongoing multimedia autobiography jumping through time.