Category Archives: Music

We’re strangely irrational creatures, aren’t we? On Saturday I travelled about 80 miles to a gig with my function band, Eight to the Bar. It was in a British Legion hut somewhere near a cliff on the north Devon coast. The engagement was never going to be economic – the band has only recently got good enough to charge for gigs, and even more recently have most of them realised they should. So we only charged 200 quid (for our 8-piece) for 3 hours of solid work.

Yesterday afternoon I drove over to play some tenor sax in a newly-formed band. It was a 50 minute journey to the rehearsal, but I’d decided it was worthwhile because the keyboard player is a guy I grew up with and we’ve not met up for – we reckoned – 45 years. We went our separate ways across the wide world, and now find we’ve providentially ended up in the same neck of the woods in the west country.

I’ve posted another new song on the website front page. It’s a few innocuous soul-inspired thoughts on creation, evolution and alchemy and replaces the previous ditty (so if you want to hear that or any of its predecessors, tough). As I’ve said before I’ll put the whole album up at some stage, but maybe later than planned as some of the material may be diverted for another project.

Just to say I’ve replaced the song on my website front page with this new offering. This is You Ain’t Gonna Take My Home, which was another of those originally conceived for a film score. It’s about an  elderly, poor, man being visited by a bureaucrat telling him he’s going to be reallocated to some kind of new accommodation. But we don’t all lie down and submit… As before, this should stay up about a month , and I’ll aim to put the whole album online when it’s finished in the New Year.

I have to mark the passing of one of the greatest of British guitarists, Bert Jansch, who died today. Amazingly I only heard him play twice – the first time with Pentangle in 1970, and the second just a few years ago in Colchester. He did once make me a cup of coffee, though, when I bought a guitar from him in the days when he had a shop in Putney.

I’ve just put up another new song on my website, again for a limited period. In case anyone’s interested, that is. It’s about death and hope, I guess – set in a funeral parlour, but I lost the cheesy organ music, except for relics of a hymn in the song itself. Strings and cor anglais courtesy of my E-mu Proteus, but otherwise me.  Hope you like it. Once I’ve posted all the current songs it’ll be time to put the new album up.

Finally got my alto sax back from lending it to someone, so I added an alto part to the new song. I think it sounds better – certainly more like what I originally intended.

Just to say that if anyone’s interested in my dark side I’ve just posted a brand new song on the main page of my website. It started life as a saxophone riff for alto or sopranino, but has ended up with rather a lot of basses and vocals. It has the only set of lyrics I’ve done taken from Wikipedia…

For the last 41 years I’ve been going every so often to get my fix of the music of Gordon Giltrap, one of Britain’s greatest and undersung guitarists. It’s a bit harder to get to him now we’re living in the wilds of the west country, but I caught up with him on Sunday, and found all the old magic that made him my guitar hero back in 1969 is still there. So this is just a heads up to check him out on his website. There’s some good stuff on YouTube too, such as this tour de force.