Stormy Weather

I have recently being listening to the podcasts of aeolus kephas which inspired to me write up this blog, i have been meaning to chronicle these ideas for while. Aside from my love of rain storms and lightening developed as a child , when my parents used to take my brothers and I caravaning on a regular basis.
Years later I paid little attention when some of the first commercial raves I attended were Perception and Raindance , prior to that I been attending the free raves of Spiral Tribe ,Tribal Energy ,Circus Warp ...and its only now I remember that wonderful track by the little known Bristol based psch/rock band The Seers entitled "Lightning Strikes" or the Lightning seeds classic albumn
I first began to consider weather condition more seriously when i was going through a period of interest in Techno Shamanisn and I had read "Thee Grey Book" by "Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth" and it prompted me to observe weather conditions, along with my dreams, what I want to eat, how to keep fit , who and how I wanted to love... around this time I was also very into DJ'ing and two key records in my collection were white labels by an outfit know as Satin Storm. In these days of spin doctors the expression "whipping up a media storm" is well understood ,but on a number of occasion this has taken on an alternative meaning. Perhaps the first was when my flat mate Krissy G invited invited the Pirate radio station "Rush FM" to broadcast from a studio in his bedroom, at first my other flatmate Johnny Jedi and I found this pretty Kool but ,the novelty soon began to wear off as a succesion of dj's entered the house at all hours of the day and night leaving their rubbish in the hall and stairs and failing to close the door properly .Polite requests and notices to be considerate falling on deaf ears . While "Rush FM" were were churning out the drum and bass/jungle to the airwaves, J.J. and I retreated to the more underground tekno sounds of plink plonk records downstairs. While J.J. considered the occult significance of the lightning bolts on the plink plonk logo, I had recently recieved some plink plonk stickers so put one on the front door (which the pirates kept failing to close), imagine our suprise when shortly after i'd done this the radio station antennae was taken out by lightning solving the issue.
Johnny Jedi and myself Steve Skywalker began to go with the flow. i purchased a series of drum and bass records on Moving Shadow enitle "Storms from the East" our DJ names incidentally were inspired in part by another dynamic duo of Storm trooping Dj's "The Jedi Knights" producing records on clear recording and then global communications.at the time. I had been fortunate enought two hears the Jedi DJ's down at "monk on fire" and began to ponder a new meaning to Whipping up a Storm
Not long after, Johnny Jedi and I threw a moving house party which despite carefully planning took an unexpected turn when at the last minute I decided to make a slighte change to the dj line up, shifting a certain female dj friend "peelee" to an earlier slot and my friend Horton Jupiter to later slot,Horton didn't take this well and decided to abandon the melodic tekno set he been planning and instead play a hard industrial set (to annoy me ?), but what even he hadn't forseen, was the voilent thunder storm that erupted as he took to the decks which shook clays lane to its very foundations .
I moved on from Clays Lane to Old Steet put dj'ing on the back burner as I studied Kung Fu and TAi Chi while living for a year at the Buddhist Temple of Supreme Hidden Thunder. My Kung Fu teacher was mixing eastern mantras with electronic sounds and got Friends Lovers and Family producer Phil Earl from Law & Auder to help produce the tracks ,we threw some launch parties for the records including a memorable one where my friend Alex Shaolin (deep frequency.com) played a mellow hip hop set on what was a warm summers evening in faringdon, Phil who was next on the roster brought a box of jungle tekno and as he stepped up to the wheels of steel the clouds gathered and within minutes the heaven sopened as thunder and lightening rained down to sound of a master at work. As the last of the razor sharp beats played out and Phil moved on ,as quickly as it had begun the skys cleared and and sun shone.
I love little synchronicity ,to me its the esence of taoism and as I moved from Kung fu to Capoeira , I beganing listening and playing more and more live music , i even began to learn a little berimbau "the original single string instrument" and ( lightening conductor ) I will never forget the first public roda I attended in covent garden led by Master Ousado the roda went on for hours with many different London schools present the Capoeria was played in a variety of different styles but built to an acrobatic and competitive climax and the music led /followed the game as the light failed and the bodies tired the rythmns reached a final peak and as all good rodas do it ended in unision and the call of the berimbau. the crowd felt silent for and for a split second everyone held their breath ,then their was almighty clap of thunder and the crowds were scattered to the four corners as the lightning struck rain lashed down.