Category Archives: Music

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.

This is just to produce a link to my new instrumental album, which you can hear and download here.