Greg Holden's EP - Sing For The City

It is released across the world on iTunes, no longer just in the US and Canada...people of the world...go forth and purchase...it is beautiful, you need it and it is a tiny price to pay for music that you will love and enjoy for...well...ever!

I have no more to say at this time, the message is clear enough I think. Well, what the heck are you waiting for?

Be gone from my blog!

No, really, don't waste time now looking here, go away, come back once it's purchased.

Time to hit the streets again...

The last month, yes month has been quiet on the gig front. Pretty much all, if not all of my blogs in the past month have been about music I've found, music I own or musical experiences I've been part of...all without leaving the comfort of home. That doesn't sit all that well with me...I love live music but a combination of things has meant that it's been a month without, in fact the last live gig I saw was Summer In The City at the Luminaire.

That however, is about to change. I'll be out in force at some point on Tuesday or Wednesday night with camera in hand, hopefully finding something worth sharing with the world...then next week there's a potential back-to-back gigathon. Yesterday I booked tickets to see Joshua Radin play at Koko in Camden next Monday and then all being well I'll be seeing Thea Ford play at the Road Trip in Shoreditch on the Tuesday night. It'll then take me pretty much the rest of the week to upload videos, blog and tweet by which time I'll be shattered but there WILL be lots of new content and October and November look like they could be very very busy months.

The Faces re-unite...for one night only...Ooh La La!!!

I woke up this morning and on the news there was a short story about 70's rock band The Faces getting back together for a one-off gig later next month in London.

For those of you who don't know the band. it featured the following (and these names you'll recognise)...

Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood, Ronnie Lane, Kenney Jones and Ian McLagan.

Next month the band will be without Ronnie Lane who died some time ago and Rod Stewart...although there's no reason who he won't be playing.

Now I'll confess, I can't comment on much of their music as I've never had the chance to really sit down and listen to it, and one day I will, but to mark the occasion of their reformation...if for only one night, I wanted to share with you a cover of one of their songs, in fact their last ever studio track, a song called Ooh La La.

The song was written by Ronnie Lane and Ronnie Wood on the same titled album and lead vocals were sung by Ronnie Wood as story has it that Rod Stewart didn't think the song was up to much...despite then re-recording it years later on one of his solo albums. Now I really like the song, I've heard quite a few people cover it, it's appeared in movies, TV ads, but this version of it is my favourite...not just because it's by Counting Crows but because it's mindblowingly good and you can tell that much fun was had recording it.

So it's there in the sidebar for you to listen to and enjoy...I'll leave it up there for a while and you know, I've even been good enough to upload it so you can download it because i just know when you hear it if you haven't before, you'll absolutely love it.

Counting Crows - Ooh La La

Now I promise you it's a legitimate link and if you hit the download link underneath the music player on the page, it'll let you download the track for you to keep. Is it copyright infringement...truth is, I don't know...I think not as it's never been released on an album and it's readily available for free on many bootleg discs...so I guess not. Anyway, if someone objects or I'm asked to take it down then I will, but I don't think there's any issue to worry about.

Enjoy it!

I just changed my layout...

What a second post of the night? Just a real quick one. I kind of realised looking down my blog that the minimalist white approach was becoming quite hard to read so having now done this for a while I did a bit of exploring and I've added a new template which makes it a lot easier to read...least I think so....let me know what you think? I'll be happy to put it back the way it was if you prefer.

Oh and I've also expanded out the "some of my favourite musicians" section to 20 names (well it's 19 plus my youtube channel), so go check out who's been added, there's some real gems in there.

Nite all xx

A totally new and amazing recommendation and an incredible story...

I hadn't expected to blog tonight, I fancied a night off and then I decided to go hunting for new music again and so like always I find someone else, another incredible singer songwriter in William Fitzsimmons capable of blowing my mind...

I actually can't add anything of my own on top of the incredible and insightful bio I've just grabbed from his website:-

"William Fitzsimmons is one of the oddest people you will ever meet. Born the youngest child of two blind parents, William was raised in the outskirts of the steel city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Due to the family's inability to communicate through normal visual means, William's childhood home was filled with a myriad of sounds to replace what eyes could not see. The house was suffused with pianos, guitars, trombones, talking birds, classical records, family sing-a-longs, bedtime stories, and the bellowing of a pipe organ, which his father built into the house with his own hands. When his father's orchestral records were not resonating through the walls, his mother would educate him on the folk stylings of James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and Simon & Garfunkel. By the completion of his youth and schooling, Fitzsimmons had become well-versed at a variety of instruments, at the minor expense of social standing, interactional skills, and a knowledge of proper shaving technique.

Fitzsimmons' path into music was likewise unusual, forsaking the hobby for many years to work with the mentally ill and pursue an education in the field of mental health. It was during his last semester of graduate school that William pooled monies from past birthday's, holidays, and snow shoveling outings, and bought cheap home recording equipment to begin creating songs again (the first collection of which eventually became his debut album). After finally achieving his goal of becoming a practicing therapist, William left, and returned again to his love of crafting and playing songs. He felt that is where he most belonged. Somewhere between a singing therapist, and a counselor who writes songs, is where Fitzsimmons endeavors to be. Using songs to address matters that he believes need to be addressed. "

He'll be over in Europe in November on tour and I will definitely be heading out with the camera...the guy is immense in so many ways, what a talent. Go check him out, his outlook on life, his music, his story, it will all wow you beyond your wildest imagination. I'm almost speechless...almost!

A new and impressive experience...internet radio...

Another day, another set of thoughts for you, this time about a new experience I had last night which was surprisingly awesome and really enjoyable.

So I was sitting at home last night and checked out Twitter and saw that the amazing Jay Nash was appearing on a radio show on NEWMUSICINFERNO, courtesy of a link. I wasn't sure what it was but it turns out it was an internet based radio channel at blogtalkradio.com.

I was curious as to what it was and how it worked so I signed up, promptly forgot my username and password within seconds and when I finally got in, was still none the wiser as to what I needed to do. So I sat and waited and then on the stroke of midnight (UK time), the browser refreshed and the show started, a chatroom loaded and in my ears was the voice of John Rankin, I guess you'd describe him as an amateur radio host (meant in the nicest sense) hailing out of the USA. After a few technical issues he was under way and the two hours flew by, it was quite surreal. Within 10 minutes I found myself emailing John a couple of Jay Nash tracks as he'd had problems getting hold of the ones he'd been sent previously and putting out a recommendation for the listeners to check out Greg Holden just because I'm cheeky like that and like sharing the love of good music.

Halfway through the show, Jay, Tony Lucca, Matt Duke and Roy Jay appeared and chatted for an hour or so. It was very light hearted and extremely funny and the guys seemed to be very at ease just chatting away and having fun and well, you can hear the whole show and decide for yourself by clicking here.

Afterwards I chatted briefly to John before I crashed (it was 2am) and he confirmed he had over 27,000 listeners tuning in regularly. I was absolutely stunned, I genuinely had no idea how popular something like this could be it was quite mindblowing really. John appears to have a love of music and is I guess evangelising about music in the same way as I hopefully am...only in a very different media.

It got me thinking about expanding my means of talking about music...then I had a reality check and thought...."hmmm not sure I could do that regularly for 2 hours, nor have I necessarily got a voice for radio"...so I'll opt to blogging, twittering and youtubing for the time being. I'll also be checking in again to listen to John's show despite the early morning finishes in the hope and expectation of finding some more music I can enjoy.

By the way, the above was not planned for tonight's blog, I had something else in mind but this took priority just because I was that impressed last night with the whole thing.

Bye for now xx

A note to music fans in the US...

Yes, that means you! Tomorrow is a landmark day and well, I want you all, regardless of how tough times are, to try and find enough money to hit the iTunes store and go and buy my friend Greg Holden's new EP Sing For The City. There's no excuse actually, so if you've seen him touring recently with Ingrid Michaelson or you're a fan or you don't know who he is but you're just a music fan, go do it.

Not only will you have more enjoyment than I can possibly explain but you'll help a brilliantly talented artist continue to live his dreams and show him how loved he and his music are.

Due to some oddness again from the iTunes store (that's twice now - 1 more time and I will have words), those of you (like me) in Europe will have to wait just that bit longer for it to hit our shores and stores but Greg's on the case and he'll sort it as soon as he can...

That's it USA, make sure you put it in your diaries, September 22nd....ie tomorrow...if you do one thing, make that purchase on the iTunes store.

Action Stations...a new recommendation!!!!

Blog readers, friends, people....WHAT.....IS.....UP?!?!?

It seems like an eternity ago I sat down and wrote something so let me say sorry and explain that it's been a mixture of feeling a bit unwell and very tired and run down that's prevented me sitting down and putting something together. In fact last night was the first proper night's sleep in ages, I slept like a baby for the first time in so long, well...I woke up at 12, 3 and 5 and wet the bed... :-)

Ok so that's the excuses out the way and there will be much blogging over the next week, more potentially than at any time so far so keep up to date!

So let's start off tonight with a recommendation shall we? This is not a new one to me but it is an artist I've never mentioned before so unless you've been thieving my iPod or reading my mind, there's a fair old chance you won't know who Sean N Smith is!

As with all my recommendations, I'll give you a low down on how I found him. His recent EP Action City (released under the name of Sean Smith and the Setting Suns) was produced by the breathtakingly talented David Immergluck (Counting Crows) and features backing vocals and guitars by awesome Low Stars front man Chris Seefried. I was checking out Immy's website and that's how I found Sean as he's listed as an album produced by Immy. I did my usual iTunes, MySpace scan and the rest is history.

I have both of his musical offerings and they're a bit different. "Underachiever" (which was released under the name of Sean Smith) features 5 tracks which are a blend of acoustic and bigger band chilled out rock maybe even Americana songs. It's actually one of those rare gems that you can listen to at any time even late at night. I'm quite fond of it and it has some great musical touches which you can see Immergluck has put his brilliant hands over.

Here's a video of his song Satellite, it's worth a watch...click here.

Action City is another little gem. It has a different sound, a much bigger band sound and reminds me a touch of some of Elvis Costello's music. The underlying good visual song writing remains throughout and again there's smatterings of Immergluck right the way through it which actually cements the belief I had from listening to Underachiever that two brilliant artists in Smith and Immergluck produce awesome music in tandem.

Now Sean is a rarity and when I give you the next bit of direction, be nice and don't do the unfair and unjust thing. On his personal website, he has a player and in there are all the songs on both his EPs in full and in great quality. So you can listen and judge both for youself but don't rip them, go and buy them if you like them, they're both on iTunes.

There we go, so I'm back with hopefully a bang tonight...you've got a full frontal recommendation.

And there'll be some more to come over the coming days...

Stay tuned...oh and it's nice to be back xx

What's the blogging version of a re-tweet?

Is it a re-blog or is there another term for it?

Well whatever it is, this is one of sorts...

The night I first came across Idan Rabinovici/Strange Folks/Roy Rieck and The Medley Band, there was one other act that caught my eye, or rather my ear in a big way so having just viewed his Myspace page and noticed that he's got some new songs up there which looks on the face of it like he's closer to releasing an album, I wanted to devote a little recommendation for you to check out the brilliant Paul Cook or as he's also known Paul Cook and the Chronicles. (That is one heck of a long sentence by the way).

If you like what you hear, drop him a line and tell him and demand he plays some more gigs, but be nice in your requests, ok?

By the way, don't be mistaken into thinking that because I'm re-visiting old ground tonight that I've run out of things to talk about because you'd be wrong...there's some more exciting things coming real soon...

Bye for now xx

P.S. - If anyone know's what the term for a re-blog is, let me know please!!

TFDI on the recommendations...

As I hadn't blogged for a couple of days I thought I'd pop on over and post a musical and visual recommendation...both of which are brilliantly interlinked and then to finish off a really nice little story.

One of my favourite musicians Jay Nash is currently touring the US with Tony Lucca and Matt Duke as part of the "Evening of the Feeling" tour...which Jay has renamed the TFDI tour...the acronym TFDI will catch on in a big, big way.

They're posting video diaries which are extremely funny and you can see the first one here (which will explain what TFDI stands for), I think they've posted 5 or 6 as of now, you'll be greatly amused even if you don't know the artists that well or at all.

I'd not heard of the two guys Jay is touring with but Tony Lucca and Matt Duke are both incredible talents and I'm very much liking both of their sounds. I have a feeling iTunes might soon get another beat down. You should go and check out their myspace pages.

Now for that nice little story...

When I started blogging, I had this intention of spreading the word of good music round the world, recording my random thoughts in the hope someone might find it, read it and hopefully it would serve as a medium for helping some amazing artists get a bit of free publicity, selling some more albums and helping them fulfil their dreams.

Yesterday I received a really nice email out of the blue from an artist I saw play about a month ago who'd been sent a link to my review of the gig by a friend that'd come across it by searching Google...on reflection that's perhaps poor English but you get the jist...

I must confess I was quite taken aback. I never factored in "the artist" into this whole blogging vision per se but, it just goes to show that the internet has made the world an ever shrinking place and that's really truly amazing.

So for the benefit of those of you who have only recently come across my ramblings and missed some of my older posts, I am going to give this particular artist another mention, right now, just because I can... Her name is Thea Ford and you should all go and check out her myspace page. Thea has some gigs coming up in London on the following dates, get out and support her:-

Tuesday 22nd September - The Road Trip, Shoreditch
Tuesday 6th October - The Road Trip, Shoreditch
Wednesday 21st October - Belushi's, Covent Garden

Enjoy :-)

Peace xx

Music and the flips sides to the internet...

I have little energy tonight so this will be slightly all over the place, sorry!

The internet is bad for music, there I've said it...no course it's not but it does have a few down sides. File sharing poses potentially the greatest threat to emerging musicians today depriving them of the money they deserve and need to live and produce music. Well the greatest threat apart from "made for TV" talent shows which elevate mediocrity way above its designated place in the musical food chain and snuff out real talent.

The other big downside and maybe this is just a personal thing. I love CDs. I love album work, I love the physical nature of a CD and the excitement of opening a CD, taking out the artwork and flicking through it, reading the lyrics whilst you listen to the music for the first time. It's such a nice thing to do...you just don't get that from iTunes, maybe that's just me and I'm getting old, am I alone in the world?

On the plus side, the internet has allowed unheard of and insanely talented musicians to find a voice outside of their own town/state/country and reach a much wider musical audience. One such musician is a guy called Kevin Montgomery who I discovered last night with a friend. This guy has produced some of and I don't use this term flippantly..."the most mindblowingly beautiful music I have heard in years!"

Some of his stuff is very Country and maybe a bit too Country for me but some of his other songs...wow, I actually can't describe the level of beauty in the music. Check out his myspace and in particular check out and listen to the songs Nothing, True, Angel Tonight and She Don't Wake Me Up.

And how did I find him...in short....fan of Counting Crows (who owns CDs - yes folks CDs of all their albums) years ago found a guy called Kid Lightning (Dave Gibbs - friend of Adam Duritz) promoting and talking about his solo album on countingcrows.com messageboard. Purchased said album, met and saw Dave Gibbs perform live. Dave Gibbs teamed up with Chris Seefried (who's solo album Denim Blue I also own and who produced Jay Nash's album The Things You Think You Need - which I also own along with other Jay Nash music), Jude Christobal and Jeff Russo to form Low Stars whose album I also bought. Kevin Montgomery is listed as a top friend on Jeff Russo's myspace page and that is the history behind it.

Confused? You shouldn't be. My love for one band years ago has spawned so much more music I adore and I keep finding more connected to it like a tangled and intertwined musical spiders web...and that people is why the internet, whilst being in some ways bad for music and potentially damaging is awesome in so many others and maybe just maybe we all need to stop taking it for granted and commit to stop filesharing music and give something back to these amazing artists before we lose them.

Happy listening world xx

Random and amusing...

It's a slightly off subject offering today but something of personal amusement so indulge me. You know how something often reminds you of something else, possibly not musically it could be a place, person, anything really? Well a piece of music has been bugging me for about a week and I couldn't place why, until today.

The piece of music I refer to is a short Sax solo from Roy "Hamudi" Rabinovici in Roy Rieck and the Medley Band's song Pick Up The Phone (04:52 to 05:48) and it had bugged me for ages why it reminded me of something. Then it struck me today whilst I was driving...The Pink Panther and I do mean the Peter Sellers films which I still absolutely adore!!

So I had to figure out how close my random thought was to being reality...so by the powers of Youtube, iTunes and Video Capture, I produced something to test my theory and you know...it works in a big big way.

Not only has it amused me greatly but I am officially starting the campaign for Roy Rieck and The Medley Band to be appointed as THE band for any further Pink Panther movies, although to be honest any films will be worthless because the brilliant Peter Sellers made them outrageously brilliant and no one will ever surpass that but that is a whole different subject.

Enjoy my sillyness!!!

By the way, if you want to see the real opening, click here to view it on YouTube.

Better late than never, a post from the Bedroom...

So the much awaited post and review of Idan Rabinovici's album got put on hold for 24 hours and after promising to deliver for about a week on said review, here we go.

So I've had this album for about a month now but decided not to listen to it for a couple of weeks. I guess I'd been so sucked in by the Strange Folks EP and the Roy Rieck and The Medley Band CD and the live performances here in London that I wanted to be able to listen to Idan's album objectively without comparing it to either other offering from my Israeli friends and listen to it as if it were unrelated. That idea I can assure you worked brilliantly...

The first thing I will say is that the entire album smacks of what I call visual songwriting, in the sense that, you close your eyes, you listen to the songs and you get the vision behind the songs and there isn't one weak song on the album.

The first song Morning Song welcomes you in gently within about 5 seconds. There's no big band sound here, just Idan (who does remind me a little of Cat Stevens) and a guitar for the most part and it hooks you in straight away because it's that simple, there's nowhere to go but to be drawn in. I found myself listening attentively throughout the whole album because of this almost claustrophobic closeness and intimacy.

There then follows some real stand out tracks. Jared's Blues is one of my favourite songs of this year, quite possibly my favourite. Just to set a context against this claim, I would happily suggest I have listened to it comfortably well over 50 times since the start of July! When I received the album Roy Rieck explained that this version was quite different from that of the Strange Folks EP, he wasn't wrong. It's slightly longer in length with an extra verse and a bit different musically although in essence the same song. But what really stands out more than anything and makes the song so completely fresh and in many ways even more beautiful is the sound of Idan playing piano towards the end of the song with Roy's Harmonica...it just works in a big way, to the point that I think I like this version as much if not slightly more than the Strange Folks version.

Thinking Cap is a song I'd seen live and loved because as Strange Folks, it's played quite uptempo but I never quite got the lyrics because I got carried away with the music, so in this version you hear the words and it's actually quite an amazing bit of songwriting.

The same goes for Jungle Man, Your Last Letter, Pretty Hard To Tell and Brand New Coat of Armour which seem to be a deeply emotive and personal set of songs and it feels slightly uncomfortable like you're poking your nose deeply into a life that isn't yours, which makes you listen all the more attentively and that in a way comes back to my original point about it being very visual songwriting.

It truly is a great album, rich in stories, outlooks on life and experiences and musically it just works amazingly well. A brilliant combination of outstanding vocals and well arranged instruments that keep you coming back to it over and over again.

It's actually quite an important album come to think of it. It sets that very first musical marker, for Idan's (and that of the rest of the guys who make up Strange Folks/Roy Rieck and the Medley Band) musical progression. It's that album you look at in years to come and think "that's where it all started". It's amazing listening to Bedroom Folk and being wowed by its raw nature and then hearing and seeing how far they've all progressed as musicians in such a short space of time. It actually highlights even more now in my own mind just how much of an amazingly talented bunch of guys they are.

Go buy it, trust me, it's worth it and you'll be hooked.

Enjoy xx

Joining the twitter generation...

A quick non-music related, well sort of non-music related post before I deluged the world later with a review of Idan Rabinovici's album Bedroom Folk...

I just joined Twitter, I have no idea what I'm doing mind, but thought it would be an interesting way to keep up with some of the musicians I like and also share some very quick thoughts during the day when I haven't got time to blog. Don't ask me how to use it, I haven't got a clue and by the time I do we'd have moved to some other technology but if you want to get in touch, share your thoughts, musical recommendations you can now do so by visiting www.twitter.com/mrrichmuk

More to follow in blogs later...

Tuesday's Recommendation is...

Never doubt on the delivery of a statement. If any of you thought I might have slightly overstated the amount of stuff I had to share well here goes day 2 of the "lots to say" post.

I'll start by prefixing this with a note that this isn't quite the order I expected to blog in (sorry Idan, the review will be here shortly), but as I currently feel rather under the weather you're getting the quickest post I have tonight before I crawl to bed.

So the other night I was chatting to a very sweet friend of mine. We were chatting music and had been for about 2 hours when I introduced the name of Jonathan Clay who I wrote about some weeks ago. So I wanted to fire over his myspace page but checked the URL first in my browser. I then in my own researching/nosey way looked at his top friends and found a name that stuck out, the name of the band being "The Matt White Band" - (because I know someone with that name...and no it's not his band).

So being curious I clicked over to their myspace page and hit the play button on their music player and was suitably impressed. The first track on the player is a song called "Makes Me Happy" which I can only explain as Jay Nash meets Jason Mraz, least that was the first two names that come to mind. I listened to the other songs on the player and was still liking what I heard so next port of call was iTunes and the album is now added to my wishlist...which isn't an iTunes one, it's on a piece of paper.

So my recommendation is to go check them out asap. I think you'll like them. My second recommendation is to ALWAYS check out the friends of an artist you find and like as the majority of times you'll find someone else that you'll like and have never heard of amongst that list.

By my standards...an early nite nite to you all xx