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About fifteen minutes ago, the phone rang. I picked it up and heard a male voice - "Hello, it's Colin Hodgkinson here, could I speak to David?" I nearly wet my pants!
I've been trying to get in touch with Colin for a while. Inspired by the Rana Ross feature on the TalkBass.com front page, I'm planning a similar interview/feature with Colin. (I'm still waiting for the green light from the admin team)
Of course, when Colin rang, I wasn't prepared to do an interview, and my mind went blank!
What I managed to find out was:
The Back Door album was expected to be released in December 1999, but it has been delayed while they negotiate with three major labels. Their original idea was to ressurrect the original Blakey label and put out the album themselves, but distribution would have been a problem, so they went to the majors.
The original Back Door album was recorded on a four-track tape deck, and wouldn't make a good transition to CD. The original Back Door lineup (Colin, Ron Aspery, Tony Hicks) went back into the studio last year and re-recorded six of the best tracks from the album and 12-13 new tracks! We can expect to hear this much later in the year, about November.
His transcriptions book is out in Germany now. It's called: 'Bass Masters: Colin Hodgkinson'. He's going to get me details of how to get a copy, and I'll make these available ASAP.
Recently, he's been playing Bach music, in a group consisting of two bassists and two guitarists (they played a concert in the church where Bach was baptised). Colin played "viola" bass, which I take to mean piccolo bass. His only recent live UK appearances have been opening for Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings.
He's on tour in Europe from next week, so I won't get to speak to him again until late August. If anyone has any questions that I could ask Colin in my interview, please let me know.
David
P.S. - I really wanted to ask him for some lessons, but didn't want to put him on the spot! (What's good enough for Stanley Clarke is good enough for me!) Perhaps next time.
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