Last Week:

Watched a lot of tennis, watched a bit of football, enjoyed the pleasant weather, oh and wrote a few songs for what will be my 4th solo album, I'm really happy with how they've come together.

This week:

Time for a gig again with the Abbey Inn Festival this weekend. My set is on Friday evening (July 2nd) between 6 and 7 pm. The Abbey Inn at Bramley has run this 3 day festival of beer and music for the past few years and each year it seems to grow in strength. I've been fortunate enough to play at the past 3 events and am looking forward to this one. Let's hope it's decent weather!

A-Z of Music:

I mentioned last week that I'd begun to listen to 'Cloud 9' by George Harrison. The album has really grown on me in the past week with 'When We Was Fab' becoming a real favourite of mine. I'm already sold on the Jeff Lynne production, for obvious reasons being a big fan of all his producer-writer collaborations.

I think the zenith of my new-found love for this album was on Friday when I watched the video of the above song on YouTube. You must check it out sometime!!

I'm also now listening to an early Paul Carrack solo album called 'Groove Approved'. It's a pre-hat and pre-baldness album from about 1986. It sounds a bit dated but still quite exciting. I'm yet to see if 'Don't Shed A Tear' is on this CD as that was a favourite of his from that era.


Rant Of The Week:

I could mention dis-allowed goals, I could even mention inept Bradford Bulls performances, but I'd like to have a go at FACEBOOK.

Up until mid-way through last year, there were still more people worldwide on Myspace than Facebook. This has since changed and so with myspace feeling distinctly less busy I decided to have a presence on both pages. More people on FB, meaning more potential fans for my music...or so I thought.

It now seems that the last thing Facebook wants you to do is add friends, heaven forbid someone you don't already know.

I've recently been blocked from adding friends on Facebook. The best thing is, I only added 3 people before I got an anti-spam warning, followed by a ban lasting 'anything between a few hours to a few days'....well that's very precise!

The trouble is that instead of letting the site police itself, always the best way, they have set in place a draconian system. Myspace has addressed all these problems, and whilst it has plenty of spammers, you can easily delete them, block them or report them. They also have a daily limit on the number of friends you can add. This is much fairer than Facebook's policy which it says is based on how quickly you add them rather than an exact number. Exactly how quick is too quick?? It doesn't say.

So I may well not bother much with this site. After all, there's still a good few million on myspace, more than enough to be going on with for the time being. And at least it was set up by musicians with musicians in mind.

Back home, we'll be thinking about you...

Last Week (and the week or two before!!)

Yes, things are back to as near normal as possible this week. I've been away in Ireland having a much-needed break. I thought Eire was a beautiful place, both the city of Dublin and the West coast. It was a good trip, and it didn't even rain once!

The week before I left, I was out with Katie at the Yorkshire Rose Open Mic in Guiseley. This is certainly one of the friendliest open mics around, and we had a good night. It's nice to see the night is still continuing succesfully, as it's quite a long while since I was last there. After our set, I duetted with the host, Scouse Andy, on a few songs including 'Oliver's Army' which I used to know but now only partially know (!), and a couple of Beatles songs.

I then had my regular gig at the New Inn, Barwick-in-Elmet on Sunday June 6th. After recent PA problems, I'm happy to say my new amp worked like a dream, and the newish keyboard is now starting to sound the business. I got through lots of my own songs and covers as well. There were a couple present all the way from Queensland, Australia. No, they hadn't come specially to see me but they did take home a CD :)


This week

With the World Cup in full swing, it's time for live music to take a back seat until the finals are over. It's not because I'm obsessed with football, although I'll happily watch the games. It's just that, from past experience, it's a bad time to be sharing a pub with a football match and a load of drunkards. On one famous occasion I drove up to a pub the same day as an England match, got out of the car, saw a bloke come staggering out covered in blood, got back in the car, and went home!

A-Z of music

Roy Orbison: I could go on forever about my love for Roy's voice, but I'm still finding new tracks of his, particularly from the early days. This compilation covered the 60s hits in their original guises. I think I'm correct in saying that later he re-recorded most of them as he couldn't get his old Label to release them. Personally I prefer the newer versions such as the KD Lang version of 'Crying'. But the original version of 'It's Over', when it gets to that high note at the end....it is akin to seeing Christine Bleakley in the shower, honest.

George Harrison, Cloud 9: For all my years of love for the Wilburys/Jeff Lynne/Petty stable, I've never actually heard this album before. This is George's Jeff Lynne-produced album and sure enough it's got that sound of his I love. There's some great tracks and even those that aren't great still sound great if you see what I mean. I've been covering 'Got My Mind Set On You' for so long I can even remember the words, but the others were virtually all new to me. I must say it's good to be able to tick off another album I've kept saying 'I must listen to...'.


Moan Of The Week:

Who the bloody hell does John Terry think he is? How can anyone criticise their boss when they've just put in one of the most inept individual performances I've ever seen? I don't care what the formation was, it was tripe whichever way you look at it.

Last week....

Back on schedule this week, with 2 gigs done over the weekend. The first was with Atlanta Soul at the Bakers Vaults in Stockport on Friday night. My old band played here and had a really good night too, it's a great venue, better than the average pub gig. It has a PA system and a member of staff to do the soundcheck. Will other venues PLEASE take note of this, I'm not the only musician who loves venues with their own PAs!! It gets busy too, and the audience were soon dancing to the music, it's a great atmosphere on a Friday night.

Next up was my acoustic 3-piece at The Hole In T'Wall, which also has it's OWN PA downstairs!! This was our first 'full' 30 minute set and it was great to finally get to play some of the songs we've been rehearsing. It was busy enough but not over-crowded, and people listened. I was pleased with the response we got and can't wait to play the set again. We've got two local festival appearances over the summer to come.

Well, another weekend has now become available to me seeing as the Bulls are now out of the Challenge Cup. It's a case of 'what can go wrong will' at the moment, even though we gave it our best shot and could have beaten Warrington with a bit more luck. I couldn't fault the effort but it's going to be another hard season if various rumours actually occur. The main one concerns our main man wanting to go back to Australia. I mean, Manly Beach versus Bradford, the great Aussie Climate, our shit one. Why would he possibly want to leave??

This just left stock cars at Belle Vue yesterday (bank hol Monday). It's not rained much lately, although that's being rectified as we speak (!), so a very fine dry track caused lots of dust to find it's way into my ears. The last two races were terrific though, and I was back in the pub before the quiz finished.

This week...

I'm playing at the New Inn, Barwick-in-Elmet, with a new PA amp, which will hopefully work, on Sunday (June 6th), starting at 9pm, I'll be playing originals and covers to the usual intimate audience, I wish there was a venue like this in every village!