Bitten by an ape

Can you read Italian?

Alex — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 07:55:05 +0000

It is now official.
Next month Bitten by an ape will play at the 11th Rock & Blues Festival in Pontinia, near our hometown in Italy.
Guess how exciting it will be to play alongside people like Sonny Landreth and Jay Farrar & Co…

Stay tuned for more details.

Worldwide fame?

Alex — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 08:08:43 +0000

Strolling down the streets of Tokyo (Shibuya, for those who know the city), I was quite surprized in finding this very warm encouragement coming from the ape’s Japanese fans.
…Japanese fans?!

I have to say, my gorilla shoes fit the scene very well…

A nice morning ride #2

Alex — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 14:58:46 +0000

Seventeen degrees this morning in Dublin, mainly sunny with passing clouds, with virtually no wind: to me that spells b-i-k-e-r-i-d-e!
I take out of the closet my faithful and as of late underutilized Gertude, dig out my mid-season gear and I’m gone for an hour.
Wednesday around noon on countryside roads, almost no traffic, only the whirr of my wheels on the tarmac. The pace is good, the legs spin with vigour. I look around at the side road flowers and the occasional lawn mowing man. An invisible dog barks at me, a crow flies dangerously near then swerves and lands on a fence, drops of sweat leave trails of salt down my cheeks, I chase my shadow down the Ratoath Road. A gentle downhill slope, a soft bend, for a few seconds I am flying. At the end of the slope, I turn Gertrude back and head home, my shadow now chasing me in turn.

The sound of a panting man.

——————————————————————————————————————

For the geeks like me among my readers, that’s the GPS route and data: calories seem a bit overstated, my bike comp reads 1035Kcal and average heart rate of 161. I think I deserve chocolate :)

This is not an ape

Alex — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:59:17 +0000

This billboard was photographed in Milan.
There might be others scattered around the city.

Doesn’t it remind you of something?

Below the waterline

Alex — Mon, 03 May 2010 15:21:05 +0000

Studying music theory, fighting to get those sixteenth notes right on the bass, preparing for my trip to Japan, organising my summer schedule, looking for musicians to play with, cursing against music, making peace with music, struggling with my own passive/aggressive fits, reading, eating mint chocolate.

*munch munch*

Words of wisdom

Alex — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 15:06:21 +0000

This is what my very dear friend Toni has said to me earlier today:

You…with my intelligence, my beauty, my creativity, my sensitivity, my charisma, my acumen, my ability to analyse problems, my open-mindedness and your ego, would already have reached the top of every chart!

We giggled quite a lot at it.
Oh, by the way, he’s asked me to specify on this post that he was joking.
Except for the part about my ego, I guess…

Back in Ireland

Alex — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 12:08:05 +0000

Back home, I’ve taken some days off from posting and tried to think of the best way forward.
Target: play as much as possible. So let’s start from scratch on the live front and see how things turn out!
This is an ad I’ve posted yesterday on Gumtree.

After releasing the debut album and briefly traveling to the US, «Bitten by an ape» are now launching their Irish operations.

Looking for a guitar player who is:
- experienced
- interested in joining an “all originals” band
- able to switch seamlessly from acoustic to electric and back
- willing to invest time and energy in the project

You can visit the website to listen to the songs and get more info:
www.bittenbyanape.com

Don’t let the catchy choruses mislead you: the structure of the songs is not always straightforward and you must be comfortable playing in not too usual time signatures (5/4, 9/8, 13/4 etc…).
Oh, it’s fun!

Current plans are to start gigging ASAP, in Ireland and abroad.
Thanks for your interest.

Reading it back today, I guess it could scare people off rather than attracting them! :-p

Edited 8th April: Following a few friends’ advice, I have re-posted the ad without the mid part – let’s see if that’s more digestible!

Enjoy culture: a self-indulgent post

Alex — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 07:55:57 +0000

When your host in Chapel Hill is a PhD student in Italian Literature, it should not come as a surprise if he invites you to attend one of the many lectures that the University of North Carolina has to offer. My chance came today: I had the pleasure of hearing Prof. Jeffrey Schnapp of Stanford talk about The Statistical Sublime: Futurism and Numbers¹.
Anybody who, like me, has grown up in a città di fondazione (fascist-era towns, built on land reclaimed from marshes in the ’30s), where architectural rationalism at every corner still recalls to mind the cultural atmosphere of the first half of last century, must know a little about Futurism. At least through passive exposure. In fact, only yesterday I was mentioning to Lorenzo how the futurist poet Marinetti had written a few words in 1932 in praise of the (hold your breath…) mosquito screens placed on the windows of our Post Office. In praise of mosquito screens?! You bet – it’s Futurism, baby: the crazier the merrier!²
Where were we anyway? Oh yes…and I know a little about numbers too – very little. So I was hoping I would enjoy the lecture. Which I did. The real surprise, though, was how much more I enjoyed the post-lecture chit-chat cum italian finger food and argentinian wine. There I am, putting up an intellectual brow (you know, that semi-bent brow that says “Of couuurse I know about the artist/movement/philosopher you’re talking about” but really only hides the shaky miscellany of scattered scraps of culture left in your head), talking with scholars and trying to catch any familiar name they utter, so that I can nod in approval while thinking “this wine goes soooo well with salami! mmm, I need more cheese…”.³
Anyway, around eight o’clock one of the organizers announces it’s time to leave and asks us whether we can help him getting rid of the wine. Puzzled glances exchanged. “I mean” says he “would you take some bottles home with you, please? I can’t leave them here”. Let me think abo…YES!
Ah, walking home in the fresh Carolina starry night, a free bottle of white and a free bottle of red in the bag (and a bottle of water in my hand, for good measure); stomach full; taste buds pleased; brain rearranging long-ago-buried notions of St. Augustine, Spinoza, Kant, XXth century poets; memory refreshing images of aperitivo in Milan and visits to museums; the smell of pines.

Can’t complain, really…

¹ If interested, you can read the presentation here
²Apparently they were both useful and aesthetically satisfying – if you can read Italian then check this article
³ Well, to be honest, I managed to express my opinion on the post-war editorial landscape in Italy and its negative influence on culture and even dared proposing my interpretation of a segment of the visual poem Parole in libertà by Marinetti… *self-congratulatory pat on the shoulder*

Pictures of North Carolina

Alex — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 05:22:23 +0000

Here’s a little, easy game: let’s see if you can relate some of the pictures to some of the latest posts.

All photos by Nàrcisz Fejes (tha-anks!)

Marathon

Alex — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:59:06 +0000

The two girls dance frantically in the space in front of the stage: they move around the floor, a few times almost hitting the waitresses passing by with plates and glasses. They laugh as they spin round and round, they lean against the loudspeakers – at one point they even lay their heads directly onto the loudspeakers, not a good idea for your ears, my friends! We all smile at them from the stage; they keep on dancing to our songs, as in a trance, with their bizarre and quite original choreography. Alas, halfway through the set their mothers tell them it’s time to go home: one holding her mother’s hand, the other in her mother’s arms, the girls leave the dance floor – their parents waving bye-bye to us. A growing fan base, literally.
BBAA’s live debut has been a long long day: we’ve played from eleven to seven o’clock, including breaks, I can’t recall how many times (four, five?) we’ve gone through the set. I couldn’t listen to my voice any longer and my rear end couldn’t sit on that stool for another minute! It’s gone well, though, and that’s the important bit: sure, the newest songs need polishing and fine tuning – but isn’t that a good reason to play them live before recording them?
Our local boys, Mark on bass and Tarik on drums, did an excellent job, especially considering I’ve only met them for the first time two weeks ago. Thanks guys!
After the show, Loz and I let ourselves go to the most classic of all rock-star post-gig self-destructive indulgence, i.e. we go home and eat a plate of spaghetti and some lettuce on the side. As Lorenzo pours me a glass of orange juice (!) we agree we could at least have bought some beer. But driving to the shop to buy a bottle seems too much of an effort now, when we can just sit on the couch and watch a DVD instead…

And so it’s fig rolls, herbal tea and nighty-night.