The Singer/Songwriter, Folk and Rock Music Review from mrrichmuk...

Special of the Day

2011-07-22T20:32:00.002+01:00

One of the most fun things about going out to a gig is finding new music that you didn't know existed that you really like. Today's recommendation comes from one of the last gigs I went to back at the end of May where I discovered James McKenzie and The Aquascene (see my previous blog entry for more detail).

Anyhow, James and the band have recently released a new 4-track EP which I was rather lucky to get my hands on. So what can I tell you? I'm a sucker for strings and guitars together, a real sucker - there's something deeply entrancing about the two sounds together and on this little collection, there's plenty of that mix.

The EP shows a band still very young in its development with much progress to make but with a clearly defined musical statement of intent. The concept of the band definitely works, not just because I say so, but because the music is in its own right pretty interesting. Align with that some very well written lyrics and you get a potentially winning formula.

Each of the songs on the EP stands up to the next very well and for me the band hit the absolute head of the nail with Boat Song, the last track on the EP. Occasionally something musical leaves me silenced by it's brilliance and this track is one of those. I think it's the strings that make the song really leap out but it messed my thought processes around so much that I had to listen to it a couple more times when I first heard it.

The EP is well worth a punt. Accept it for what it is and you'll be pleasantly amazed. Bear in mind this is a band still clearly quite green, in need of a bit of fine tuning (both in terms of instrumentation and vocals) and a good producer and you won't be let down. Look at the EP more as a concept for the future, I suspect the next instalment might be quite brilliant.

I'd strongly recommend you check it out! Oh and I almost forgot, it comes in CD format in a paper bag CD case. I can't describe it any better than that, buy one and you'll probably think it's cool like I do!

By the way I can't find a link to buy the EP but once I post this, I'm sure James will either give me a URL or post a reply with a link!

Double entry...Part 2!

2011-06-17T21:53:00.003+01:00

We're just sliding in two tonight...

Ok that's starting to sound sexual! Moving on...

Personal musical hero Jay Nash has FINALLY launched his 4-track ditty with the brilliant Caitlin Crosby under their quite clever Crosby, Skills and Nash ident. The EP which is available on iTunes now is simply incredible.

Their voices pair up perfectly, contrasting yet perfectly suited, on 4 reasonably simplistic songs. But that's the brilliance of it, no gimmicks or over-complications, just great arrangements and harmonies forming four totally incredible songs.

I need say no more, I think I've sold it enough. Go on, go buy it. You know you want to and I know you should!

Double entry...Part 1!

2011-06-17T21:25:00.007+01:00

Ok no this hasn't become some strange sex blog (although it'd probably get more views). Tonight you're going to get two blog posts...why, because I can!

First up, lets wind the clock back to the end of May and Greg Holden's launch gig at The Bedford in South London. Admittedly I was there to see Greg but actually (and it pains me to say it and he'll probably not thank me for saying it) it turned out that even his rounded performance was upstaged by the two acts that preceeded him.

First up was James MacKenzie and the Aquascene. Usually a Scottish 6 piece band, James travelled down with just a violinist but the two of them put on an incredible set. You all know I've got a thing for strings, there's something uniquely brilliant about a violin or cello accompanying a guitar.

There's some tracks here and if I were you I'd take a listen. They're still quite green as a band in many senses but you get the feeling there's a bag of talent which will only mature and get a lot better over the next year or so.

Next up and the real show stealer was Brighton-based Fellow Stranger a Folky/Rock band comprising former singer/songwriter Luke Sital Singh. These guys were a real showstopper. Incredibly emotive vocals (some of the best I've heard in years), brilliantly crafted songs, amazing 3-part harmonies and an array of instruments and sounds that combine to form a brilliant sound. There's nothing original about the band but yet they stand out...because they're that bloody good.

Even the girlfriend enjoyed the set so much that she bought a copy of the CD for herself...and one for me for my birthday. The CD is a 5-track live EP and it shows the band at their very best. I don't know if you can buy the CD or the EP online and quite frankly I'm not going to do all the work for you.

But...what I will do is give you the videos from the gig that night, I'd suggest you invest your time and watch the whole thing...you'll see where I'm coming from on both those recommendations. Make sure you watch both parts!

Watch live video from The Bedford Live on Justin.tv

I Don't Believe You....need to read this to buy it!

2011-05-31T18:01:00.005+01:00

Greg Holden....new album....immense....go buy it online NOW!

No really, I don't even need to say much here!

OK still not convinced?!? well then you're just being a bit slow on the uptake so here's a brief summary about the album.

It's an album part funded by a kickstarter campaign Greg ran last year which raised him $30,001 (some $10,001 more than he hoped to get). In total over 300 fans, friends and family members (including me) pledged money to help make this album a reality and to enable Greg to work with the team he wanted including the incredible Tony Berg (who produced the album).

This 10 song affair is one of utter brilliance mixing well crafted songs with sensationally catchy music and innovative mixes. It's the fact that it sounds so much bigger, bolder and experimental than any previous Greg Holden that makes it almost unrecognisable...apart from the fact that it is Greg's unmistakable voice booming out across the record.

There's some truly remarkable tracks. From a song writing perspective, The American Dream (which makes me think Johnny Cash a little for some reason) and Following Footsteps stand out a mile and from a musical perspective, Coney Island is just incredible (with the most mindblowing solo from Jessica Hoop).

I'm quite sure this album will prove a massive success for Greg and if he chooses to release To Hell and Back as a single, then it might just send him stellar such is the brilliance of the song and its suitability for radio play.

The one thing I hope this album isn't remember as is "that one with Bar On A on it". This album is so much more than that one song which truth be told, even I'm sick to the back teeth of hearing and playing (on my guitar)...and I mean it in the nicest possible way.

In my opinion, it's undoubtedly one of THE albums of the year and I'd strongly suggest you go and buy it rather than do something naughty because remember folks, supporting independent musicians is vital and them records you love...well the money for them it don't grow on trees!

Go buy it!

Stardom beckons

2011-03-01T18:35:00.011Z

When you have friends, you want to see them do well. When you love music, you want everyone else to love it too, so tonight's blog post is nothing but an absolute pleasure to take the time to sit down and write since it merges the two streams together beautifully.

Back in the days when I used to blog regularly and got out to lots of live gigs, I stumbled across two bands in one called at that time, Strange Folks and Roy Rieck and The Medley Band. It was the same brilliant seven musicians but playing two different sets of tracks and splitting setlists.

After two years of trials, setbacks (thanks to a certain UK Border Agent) and hard work, these seven brilliantly talented men have finally released their debut album under the now final adopted name of joined band...Acollective.

As a huge fan and friend, I've seen and heard the guys in every formation playing music from the very beginning of their evolution (Idan Rabinovici's Bedroom Folk, through to Roy Rieck's Never Trust The Holy Gracious Medley Band, the Strange Folks - EP plus much more) right through to this latest offering which I cannot evangelise about enough.

Onwards, the 13 track beauty was recorded late last year in their native Israel and produced by the quite brilliant Chris Shaw (yes, he of Leonard Cohen, Super Furry Animals, Guillemots, Bob Dylan and Weezer amongst many others fame). What's magnificent about the album and what's been produced is that whilst being true to the roots of the band's humble musical beginnings, this is a totally different sound to anything they've produced before. If you listen closely you can still hear the screaming harmonica solos of Rieck, the mesmeric keys from Rabinovici, the brilliant Sax bursts from Roy Rabinovici, the guitar and bass solos from Shoham, E-Shine and Slonim and the downright intense drumming from Luzia but this somehow feels bigger, bolder, rockier, edgier, louder and prouder. For the first time in a recording, as a group and with Chris's help, they've managed to almost capture that breathtaking "wow factor" that you get from seeing them live.

The arrangements throughout just work in every way. A lot of people don't understand how complex that is but when you've got so many different sounds to contend with there's often a fine line between nailing a song and totally destroying it. In the up-tempo songs like Whisky Eyes and the very commercially pleasing Better Man everything jumps out so vibrantly not over-powering any other part of it's make-up, just working perfectly in tandem. In the more laid-back songs such as Lewknor Arch and Working Title the sounds blend to form a hazy warm fuzzy glow rather than a clash and even in Home Office, a song I was initially skeptical about when I first heard it live a year ago the arrangement makes sense and lifts a good song to greatness.

On top of brilliant arrangements there's also really nice pull-backs to the music that drew me in to the guys nearly two years ago. Turn To Cry is a wonderful Middle-Eastern sounding track which would've sat as a headline track on a second Medley album had it happened and there's even a complete and quite astonishing re-mix of Stolen Goods, the lead track from the Strange Folks EP.

I just cannot recommend this album to you highly enough. I know I like to hype the music I like up a bit but quite honestly, I believe this album will project the boys to massive stardom. They've managed to craft an album which is so uniquely and distinctively them into a commercial footing which will serve them well, not just in Israel but to the wider world.

This is a band about to enter a whole different orbit. On March 10th, you'll be able to get your hands on physical or electronic copies. You'd be mad not to get hold of it and spread the word.

Here's the full album for you to listen... http://acollective.bandcamp.com/

Best musical find in over a year!!!

2011-02-21T23:00:00.009Z

NOTE: THIS BLOG HAS BEEN WRITTEN IN 2 PARTS, THE FIRST HALF FEBRUARY 21ST, THE SECOND HALF MARCH 7TH.

Wasn't I only supposed to blog once a month? Actually no, I was supposed to be giving you more free music. Instead though you'll have to excuse this most welcome of distractions. I might be bore you with the back story but I like to set the scene.

Last night I was having a little nosey at a number of upcoming gigs I might go to just to find out who was playing with the artist. I started by looking at who the lovely Ragz was playing with when she next hits London on 7th March. I found a guy called Jack Omer who really impressed me with his Ryan Adams-esque vocals. I went to search for his music, drew a blank so thought I'd check out what other gigs he was playing. His MySpace gave few clues and a Google search came up with I think an old gig but which showed who Jack was playing with. So what did I do, went and did another search to see who these musicians were.

The first I came across was a guy called Antonio Lulić musically as close to perfection for me as it gets. A quick scan of his Myspace page identified he had a new album just out. So I hit the Soundcloud player on his page and was initially impressed enough to keep listening. I flipped back to the original page I found and down the page and found a biog which I think sums it up perfectly...especially the influences.

"Antonio Jorge Lulic has been singing and playing guitar at the same time for about a decade, having cut his teeth in blues and folk jam sessions in the back rooms of bars all over the North. More recently, though, he has been sighted further afield; regularly gigging across London (or busking underneath it), and on stages as far as Europe and the US. Drawing on influences like Bruce Springsteen, Ani DiFranco and Counting Crows, Antonio delivers a torrent of soulful and energetic electroacoustic anthems."

Note Springsteen and Counting Crows - it doesn't get much better does it?

SECOND HALF OF BLOG...

So I headed off on a rapid fire search and ended up spending an iTunes voucher I was given for Christmas on Antonio's debut EP Becomes Unstoppable and his recently released album Never or Tonight. It was quite late at night but I sat up listening to both. When they both finished, I listened all the way through again and then over the course of a week I must've listened to them both once a day at least.

Becomes Unstoppable is a majestic EP. Sometimes with EP's you get two good tracks and two bum tracks, not with this little gem, all 4 tracks are just brilliant. The songwriting and storytelling in each song is absolutely top notch, well thought through and mixed with some truly brilliantly constructed music blending together acoustic guitar, the occasional electric guitar, drums and harp. It's a simple sound yet brilliantly effective and really allows Antonio's gravelly non-British sounding voice to shine over the top of the music. The Girl Next Door and Pretty Soon Now are truly brilliant songs.

Never or Tonight is a gem of an album too, even though most of it deals with relationship break-ups. It's more a continuation of a theme than a new direction by a musician who's clearly developed a lot musically in an 18 month period since Becomes Unstoppable was released. The lyrics throughout are just absolutely brilliant and I find segments in every song relating to feelings I've experienced.

Never or Tonight is a great bridging track between the two releases and is swiftly followed by Now It's Cold, which is a real favourite. I could imagine so many more famous singer/songwriters writing and playing this song - Newton Faulkner springs most prominently to mind and that's a credit to how highly I regard Antonio. A Lost Dog and Made of Stone are really good songs too laced with more great sounds and lyrics.

Track 5 is a beautifully constructed vocal-less folky intermission. The folky theme follows on into What I Need which I just adore. It's a ridiculously good sound, mixing harmonica's, strings together, in fact the first time I heard it I thought it was an early Acollective track. Halfway through the song it changes pace and style in a way that musicians like Jason Mraz manage to do so to great effect, before finishing with that rousing bluesy/folk sound.

Tip Toe is a pretty deep song that leads into Hey It's Okay, an apology song that resonated with me deeply when I heard it, so much so I picked up my guitar and figured out the chords in about 20 minutes and sat playing along with it. The album concludes with When I Can't, another slightly sombre and deep track. It leaves you wanting more or a brighter note to finish on which is actually a really good way to leave an album, it's a musical cliffhanger.

I cannot recommend both releases enough to you, seriously, you'd be mad not to buy them and as they're on iTunes you really have no excuse!

www.antoniolulic.com
www.myspace.com/antoniolulic
www.twitter.com/antoniojl

Free Music?!?!

2011-02-17T00:12:00.003Z

OK tonight's musical voyage is the first of a double header of FREE music? Holy eff...FREE music Rich, wow that's a revelation, it's called torrents, filesharing and ripping...get with the programme man!

No, no, no this genuinely is FREE music, legally free, not stealing it free, not doing it to make a statement to big record labels free, not denying a musician the right to earn a living free...just plain old FREE music from musicians wanting to share their art with the world.

So the first offering is from the incredible Joey Ryan. Joey recently announced his semi-retirement from music...well as a soloist and has decided to play exclusively with the equally brilliant Kenneth Pattengale. They sound incredible together see below for proof.

Anyways, Joey has decided that to celebrate his retirement, he's made all his music from the past two years FREE...yes FREE. You can download his last EP and full album from www.joeyryan.net There's the option to donate some money should you choose to...I think you should personally, put a value on your appreciation of what you're listening to, even in these difficult times! If you don't want to do that, at least add your email address to the mailing list.

You'll also see a link to buy/donate towards the live album with Joey and Kenneth, so just to whet your appetite for that one...

What about the preacher, did he download it for free? No kids, not only did I buy both the albums but they were hand-signed by Joey in London last June.

Go forth, do the right thing and in the process get some bloody amazing music!

Attracting Attention

2011-02-07T21:13:00.007Z

Hello and welcome to my rapidly declining non-updated blog updates.

No excuses, no idle chit-chat on with what we're all here for...it's music review time...cue the band!

Ok so about a year ago I unearthed a little known Irish Singer/Songwriter kicking around the London music scene by absolute chance. Over the course of the year I've seen this man perform a few times and now he's all systems go, go, go or so it seems and has a brand new EP out too called Attracting Attention, I am of course talking about Patrick Plunkett.

The new EP is a collection of 4 tracks kicking off with Hooked On Desire, a track you'd have got for free if you signed up to his mailing list (yes FREE!). It's a really nice start although I have to say I still kind of prefer the original recorded version of it.

Then however we hit the ground running with the very cool title track, Attracting Attention. It's just supremely produced; ever so, ever so slightly quicker in terms of playing speed than I recalled it being and possesses a mindblowingly good guitar solo in the middle of the song from Patrick's lead guitarist Ronan McCullough. It's seriously, seriously good!

Next up we hit Millionaire, a track which until I heard it recorded I was really impartial to but it really does work and the arrangement works well. The final track "Come Home Tonight" is a slow, very laid back rock ballad which again works amazingly well with Patrick's rounded and well polished vocals.

All in all it's a very strong release, not as daring as he might have been tempted to take it, not mindblowingly incredible but a really big stride forward from New Beginnings and another mighty fine and strong release.

The bonus for all you music lovers out there though is that unlike New Beginnings, this new EP is available seemingly everywhere. I got mine through iTunes but I've found it on CDBaby and Amazon as well.

I'd strongly suggest you grab a copy, you'll not be disappointed...trust me!

Be good peoples x

Sometimes you can over-egg a pudding!

2011-01-02T22:04:00.004Z

Happy New Year! Happy 2011!

There's so much exciting stuff and this year actually promises to be a really exciting one on the music front. 2010 truth be told was a bit of a let down after 2009 but this year, this promises to be pretty darn good.

So since I promised to unleash a whole raft of posts, we'll start the new year with a strange one of sorts. A few months back I was ask to review an album, which at first I'll be honest made me think something was amiss but alas not. I'm always dubious about doing things like that because there's always the fear of not liking what you're listening to and then feeling obligated to either write something that's not truthful or writing something negative which perhaps wasn't the expectation of the person asking you to review it in the first place.

So this one's been a bit of a tricky one because I've really struggled to connect with it and like it but then I'd struggled to figure out why until a 5am journey home on New Years Day in a slightly tired state so until I got my head into the right place, didn't want to review it.

So the album is question is "Trust" by LA-based Singer/Songwriter/Guitarist Gary Melvin. The interesting thing about Gary is unlike most singer/songwriters, he appears to be a guitarist first and foremost with years of experience rather than a songwriter. In fact amongst his credits lies a stint working with Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (that's the type of pedigree we're talking about here with the guitar).

So with that pedigree in mind it's no wonder Trust is filled with catchy guitar riffs, great electric solos and clever arrangements. It's an interesting album of Pop/Rock tunes and some of it by definition I should really love but and here's the big but, for me personally it's a bit forgettable. That sounds harsh and it's not meant to be and it was only driving home at 5am on New Years Day I finally figured out why, I had the "lightbulb" moment.

See Gary has a very "sweet" (not in that sense!) rounded voice (parts of Gary's voice remind me of Dan Wilson of Semisonic and Trip Shakespeare fame), it's soft and a little understated. Here's the thing though, being a great guitarist, he knows how to craft a great song, play some downright incredible solos and fire out a catchy tune BUT it's all just a bit too much for such a delicate voice. I found that my ear spent more time turned towards the guitars instead of the vocals which means the songs themselves or rather the lyrics pretty much get lost so it's really hard to connect that link to them.

Where you really get to see Gary's talent laid very bare is in two or three songs where the heavy guitars are throttled back a bit and the ear focuses on the vocals and the lyrics a bit more easily. "Bring Love Alive" and "Angel Moon" work really well and the final track on the album "Who's Gonna Save You" just about hits the mark perfectly between that polar mix I've been writing about between guitars and vocals.

All in all it's an interesting album by a musician clearly developing his talent and refining what he wants to do with his immense talent. It's not one of those I could definitely say go and buy it, it's not one of those I'd say don't buy...it's one of those to take a listen to and make your own opinion on.

In fact having checked Gary's website you can actually download both his albums for any price (even free) at his Bandcamp page. But if you like what you hear you'd surely pay something towards it wouldn't you? Seriously, I know times are still a bit tough but don't be an a-hole ok?!?!

Regardless of anything though that is one amazing guitarist and I am slightly (no, no, more more than slightly) envious of such a talent!

Peace xxx

If the best way to find good music...

2010-12-20T19:42:00.004Z

...is to go out and see it first hand, then that's probably the single most important lesson I've learnt from this year.

It's odd how 12 months has rolled on by and in truth it's been a pretty ordinary year. Let's put it into perspective, particularly in terms of music...2009 was an immense year, probably the best of my life and in terms of my life as a whole it was right up there as a vintage year. I lost count how many gigs I went to, how many musical friends I made, how much great music I bought. This year was always going to fail to live up to the expectation. But then having said that I didn't help myself a lot. This year I went to a fraction of the gigs I did last year, partly because some of my favourite venues died a sad death (Monkey Chews in Camden and pretty soon The Luminaire in Kilburn), partly because the time just didn't seem to be there and partly because most of the acts I'd been so excited about in 2009 were all overseas "doing there thing" and making their dream come true.

That being said there have been some real highlights and where the quantity has been low, the quality has remained for the most part tip-top high. So to make up for a lack of activity for most of the year I've written (well am about to, a series of blogs which I'll release over the next week covering some of the music I've been introduced to this year).

Starting off tonight is a guy I saw about 6 weeks ago at The Old Queens Head in Islington who was so mindblowingly good, so incredibly talented that it took me such a long time to share it with the word...because I'm lazy, no other reason!

I'd actually been at the venue that night to see and support Patrick Plunkett and once Pat had finished his set and another act had played, on stage walked a man who had a strange aura, a real stage presence without appearing 100% comfortable about being there. The rest as they say is history, within a few seconds of bursting into life there stood before a decent sized crowd one of the finest raw Folk/Blues/Rock singer-songwriters I've ever seen in Samuel Brookes. Note the word EVER in that sentence, I'm setting the bar very high here. Now to set a benchmark here when I say how good he is, because my word doesn't count for much really, he recently supported Ray Davies (lead singer of the Kinks) around the UK on tour. That's a pretty darn good sign of talent?

Samuel's at times mesmeric guitar playing added the most rich depth to a set of songs which drew you in so close to the music you wanted to sit in silence yet all the while still wanting to tap your feet and pass "wow's" with fellow listeners. To top it off lies a seriously big, powerful, rounded yet controlled voice.

After the set, I popped over and in my usual manner parted with a bit of money for a CD, an EP (Helium) if you will of just two songs which in the space of 8 minutes defines just how good a talent he is. "Breathe Me In" is a pretty rounded rock song with some very catchy riffs without being too heavy, it just works. "In Weeks" the second song tells a really great story about a friend who disappears out of your life from time to time popping up and then vanishing again without any reason. I totally relate to it and I'm sure we all have a friend who does that, right?

The only real disappointment with the EP is the lack of songs, I got to the end and wanted more but as a first pass and a tempter, it certainly did that!

Samuel's signed to the reasonably small independent label Helium and I believe his debut album is being worked on in the studio at the moment so hopefully it won't be too long before we get more great music from him.

Right then, I now need to go and think of some other blogs to write.

Peace xx

Au revoir Limewire!

2010-10-31T08:50:00.003Z

So this week, a court in the US ruled in favour of a number of large record labels and ordered Limewire to cease providing their software and take down the Gnutella server which has for over a decade been one of the most popular methods for people wishing to illegally file share music.

Now I'm not going to ever pretend that at some point somewhere in the past, many years ago I didn't use Limewire, because I hold my hands up, I did. But the dawn of iTunes along with things like Pandora, last.fm and Spotify gsve the consumer a legal means of listening to music and then purchasing it...if they liked what they heard. It's the route I took.

Only in the past couple of years have I become so acutely aware of how badly illegal file sharing hurts independent artists in fact I have a number of friends who are musicians and the thought of people stealing from them and preventing them earning a living from their talent really sickens me.

Let's also be very clear, just because an artist is signed to a major record label, it doesn't mean they earn a huge amount of money from each record...if you don't believe me, go and have a search online for recording contracts and the percentages artists receive for Recording Royalties and Mechanical Royalties and the Deductions records labels make.

So in my view, Limewire's demise is a truly great day for music but I'm not naive enough to believe that people won't find another way to share music, I just hope it gets the same injunction slapped upon it, the future of music and talented artists depends upon it.

Right place, right time...

2010-10-17T14:58:00.007+01:00

So recently I've been out to quite a few smallish gigs after a little break from the musical adventures. The first of which was an invite only industry-showcase event at the Regal Rooms in Hammersmith about 10 days ago. The premis of the event was 4 or 5 acts all playing just 3 songs. I went along to see the brilliant Alex Berger play and to do a "little bit of business" and I arrived too late to see the first act.

But I did walk in right in the middle of the second act who quite literally slammed me face first to the floor. See some of these showcase events can at times be pretty shabby if they're not organised very well and the quality can be sometimes somewhat lacking, not in this case.

If you scroll through to about 42 minutes, you'll see what I walked in on. The guy on stage in question is Rich Thomas of Brother & Bones a band who I can't actually tell you much about because there just isn't a lot available...except they're based in the South West of England (Cornwall area) and the eponomous debut album was released back in June this year.

Watch live video from The Regal Room Live on Justin.tv

If you've watched the video then right now I'm hoping you're going...WOW, what an incredible voice, if you're not then there's something majorly wrong with you.

Anyways, after the set I had to go and buy a CD so made a beeline for Rich. We chatted for a brief moment, I bought the CD and on the way home in the car I put it on. I had just enough time to listen to the whole thing and was a little confused, I guess it wasn't quite what I expected, although I don't know how I decided that based on having listened to an acoustic set of 3 songs, still...I popped it straight on my iPod the next morning and gave it a few more blasts and from a cautiously confused start, I eventually got it.

What the album is, is a big, huge, bold, loud and beautifully crafted and produced mix of mainstream anthemic rock songs with influences and styling from a number of other genres all centred around strong, soulful, soaring and intensely brilliant vocals. From No Soul right through to Stand Alone, you can't find a bad song amongst them and I defy you to not be drawn into even the smallest amount of foot-tapping or head-shaking. The album finishes with the beautifully laid back The Sun Must Always Go Down which I guess was the best connection between the three live songs I saw Rich perform and the rest of the album.

At the moment, you can't buy the album online, I'm sure it won't be too long before you can and I'll also be brave enough to stick my neck out a bit and say that Rich and the band could potentially be big...very, very big such is the quality. You heard it here, maybe not first, but you heard it here.

Shake it, shake it, shake it like a....Snow Globe?

2010-09-06T22:23:00.005+01:00

Two blogs in a few days? Immense effort...not! If I'm being totally honest coming up with an intelligently witty title is pretty difficult when really tired so I promise not to quote the Black Eyed Peas in any way again...ever!

Anyways, tonight is really a blog two and a half months in the making. Remember the other night I touched on a lot of good music I was listening to? Well, back in June (the 23rd to be precise) I was fortunate enough to finally see one of my favourite musicians, Jay Nash play in London. That night he played with the equally brilliant Joey Ryan, who I wrote a blog all about back in June but they were accompanied by another musician, a man who I must confess I knew little about (apart from his friendship with Greg Holden and that he's based between London and New York), Alex Berger.

Now then imagine the scenario if you can. It was very hot and humid in London, I'd had a whole day of alcoholic refreshment (not drunk, just socially enjoying the cool offerings), my mind had been split wide open by Joey Ryan and then blown into little pieces by Jay Nash that by the time Alex hit the stage at about 10:30pm I was pretty much in mental meltdown. Anyways, Alex played a set which, if I'm honest I paid attention to at a slightly more than peripheral level not really capable of comprehending much more around me. I did grab a couple of videos, did a bit of research over the next month and fell totally in love with his song Your Last Night in Queens (which I will openly admit is one of the most beautifully constructed songs my ears have heard in years).

So fast forward to the start of August, the 6th to be precise. Greg Holden's back in London for the first time in 11 months, tickets are purchased, Alex is on the bill and I resolve to pay the utmost of attention and absorb what's going on around me. The room is hotter than the sun and I'm sweating like a geordie in a maths test (sorry, only the Brits are going to get that reference). Nonetheless sat on the floor like an old assembly at school with well over 100 people around me, I listened and was totally swept away by Alex's brilliance.

A sublime pianist, competent guitarist, outstanding songwriter, great storyteller, Alex ripped into a set consisting of Pop/Folk (Polk...as in...Poke!) songs pretty much all from his debut album, Snow Globe and a couple of new songs he'd written since the album. In fact I was so utterly blown away that as soon as the gig finished I made a rapid beeline to go and buy a copy of the album and we chatted for seemingly ages.

The next day mooching around in the car spending some time with someone extremely special to me (you know who you are!), we agreed to put Alex's CD Snow Globe on. The album, produced by the incredible Alex Wong (of numerous projects including The Paper Raincoat with the the equally outstanding AmbeR Rubarth) left us both sat pretty much mesmerised throughout only breaking silence to raise a smile at some of the more light-hearted lyrics in some of his songs including the French lyrics in Portia (a girl who Alex once dated) or to discuss the brilliance of what we were listening to. I instantly fell in love even further with Your Last Night in Queens (a song which has subsequently been listened so much it might even be in the 3 figures by now), Snow Globe, Where I Left You Last and Magic.

Alex recently played a gig at the brilliant Bedford in South London which sadly I couldn't make it to but watched it online. The show is still available, (just scroll it through till about 36:30).

Watch live video from The Bedford Live on Justin.tv

Go check him out, the album is still getting serious play time on my iPod and he's around on the London music circuit for a few more months yet, you won't be disappointed trust me!

A call to arms...give a great musician a kick start!

2010-09-01T23:16:00.005+01:00

Ok I've given up promising to write blogs and then not delivering so I'm just going to say I'm really slack, I'm listening to a lot of good music at the moment which I will soon review, I am busy with music-related activities and I am totally useless at writing most of it down.

But tonight I wanted to write an impromptu blog to really hammer home or at least hopefully open your eyes to the world of the independent musician.

So then, why tonight of all nights? Well my friend and superb musician Greg Holden today launched an audacious fan-led initiative to fund his next record. It seems that these fan-led sponsorship deals seem to be the way forward for independent artists, but why?.

The truth is the record industry as it was, is in tatters for obvious reasons. The big labels are now finding it harder and harder to post profits, less and less large record deals are being handed to musicians and more and more are being dropped by record labels who are now more than ever 100% focused upon making each release as commercially viable and profitable as possible. Last year EMI posted an annual pre-tax loss $1.75 billion yes ok there was a huge chunk of that in write-offs but the label was forced to drop a lot of artists and I seem to recall somewhere that the company made job losses in the thousands.

On the flip side, the music industry has and is becoming more and more accessible for independent musicians. It's actually pretty easy now to record and album in your own bedroom with a few bits of decent software and some cheapish equipment, chuck it all over the internet, promote it everywhere and hopefully make a decent return, spend a little make a bit more. Not that I am for one instance suggesting you even think about doing it unless you genuinely believe you have the talent because you could always crash and burn and make a loss.

But what happens when an independent musician like Greg wants to record a proper album? There are so many costs that have to be considered, costs that in the old days, a record label would cover. I'm talking about the cost of studio time, session musicians, engineers, producers, artwork designers, CD replication and production, PR and promotion, distribution, lawyers, royalty collection services, etc, etc...all things that don't come cheap and all things that the independent musician now has to pay up front just to put a proper album out to the world...and with no guarantee of success or even a single sale. And just to put it into perspective, it probably takes somewhere in the region of $10,000 to $30,000 to produce a top notch album, you can then pretty much double the cost to add on the production, distribution, legal and promotional costs. How daunting and terrifying must that be as a musician to take that gamble? I don't think I'd sleep at night if someone asked me to lay out that kind of money of a whim. The problem is that the only tangible goods a musician has to sell is their music so they are by definition compelled to create music for sale (or give up on music and get a 9-5 job) so it's a risk that has to be taken.

So then, with a record deal either not on the table or turned down by a musician who wants to retain artistic control over their works how else do they get funding? Turn to the banks for a loan...well with the world economy in the mess it is, imagine trying to justify a bank loan of say $20,000 just for a album. Most banks...even the worst ones would probably laugh you off the premises, in fact most banks are ever reluctant at the moment to loan money to anything based in the music industry because of the transitional phase it's going through and if they do, it's small amounts, with high interest rates and ultra short terms and the banks are even demanding collateral be put up against these loans to secure them...it's madness!

Ok, so the bank is out of the question and I'm not even thinking about loan sharks or other sordid money lending services. What about parents/family? Hey Mum and Dad, I know you've supported me all my life but...can I borrow $20,000 to make a record? Unless you come from a rich family or have the most incredible parents...I think that's always going to be a struggle particularly when the majority of people around the world who earn a living are still rather tentative about their job security.

You might fancy selling stuff to fund it...but then who actually has $20,000 worth of "stuff" they can sell on ebay? Chances are if you have that much stuff, somewhere you probably have the capacity to fund a record from your own bank account.

So where else is left to turn. The most logical place is to the wider circle of people who care enough about your music who can hopefully all help in a small way...the fans.

These fan-led initatives seem to be springing up all over the place and each time I find myself feeling obligated (in the best possible way) to put my hand in my pocket and donate as generously as I can. Recently one of my other favourite singer/songwriters Jay Nash did exactly the same thing to fund his next album (which I of course felt totally compelled to support) and only last week another musician Kevin Montgomery did the same. Each of these (including Greg's) offers the fan the chance to, I guess, advance purchase the album (which offsets some of the financial risk of producing the album provided enough people advance purchase) and then going further if the finances permit to make a heartfelt donation to a great cause if they see fit in return for rewards which might include a name added to the album sleeve, hand written lyrics, phone calls, private gigs, even guitars etc, etc. It is in effect a unique offering, something you couldn't or wouldn't ordinarily get from a record label and certainly not a major one. It gives you, the fan the chance to own a piece of the record, to support a cause you believe in. I just read a comment by someone describing it as a social investment...i like that term, it sums it up beautifully, because you see, without the commitment from the fans the musician can ill-afford to take the gamble of producing a high quality album these days, so now more than ever before the musicians you know, respect and love need you!

Of course many of you might not have the cash to be able to chuck huge amounts behind an artist's project...but even the smallest amount goes a long way to helping. As much as anything it shows your commitment to that musician and you know if you can't commit financially at that time, spread the word and when the album comes out buy it, don't illegally download it.

These fan-led initiatives offer I believe a beautiful opportunity for music lovers to engage with their favourite musicians on a totally new level, to shape the music they'll listen to in the future, the music they'll hopefully tell their family and friends about, the music they'll pass on to their kids and future generations all in the knowledge that the musician has produced the album he/she/they wanted to without the creative and commercial constraints of a record label. Don't you think that's actually a really incredible thing to say you were a part of?

Times are tough I grant you, money isn't quite as free flowing as it was a few years back, the world is changing rapidly, people's attitude towards music has changed for the worse but when I look at Greg's kickstarter page and I see that in 10 hours since launching his initiative he has nearly $5,500 pledged from his family, friends and fans, it restores my faith that there are genuine music lovers still in the world who care enough to want to help and to make that difference - and if it makes me happy imagine what it does for the musician?!?!

Please go and support Greg - click here, if you haven't pledged yet.

Night all xxx

Summer's moving on...

2010-07-31T15:45:00.004+01:00

Bizarrely I find this time of year a pretty reflective one. Over half a year gone, summer over half way done and yet so much time to still make an impact. It'd be fair to say thus far this year I've been down on gigs (number) and definitely down on good new music which means 2010 looks at the moment not to be a vintage like 2009 was but there's still plenty of time and that's got to be the source of optimism.

So on a bright note, last night I went to see Patrick Plunkett play at the Troubadour in West London with his new band. It was a tricky setting with a difficult Friday night loud drinking crowd rather than a music crowd but nonetheless Patrick and the guys put on a good show. The set was as usual highly accomplished and there was already a really good chemistry with the band so all bodes very well there although he has loads of exciting challenges now writing songs for a band rather than just a singer/songwriter and adapting his current songs for a bigger sound. Still I know it's a challenge he'll easily master, I don't for one second doubt it.

After Patrick's set another singer/songwriter came on with his band, a South African guy called Roland Albertson. His set was a much more up tempo affair and commanded that little extra attention from the crowd. There were some pretty sparkling moments mainly from Roland's electric guitarist who had some brilliant mesmerising solo's, although the whole thing was a bit tricky to gauge because the sound system wasn't quite right and it was an extremely noisy crowd.

Still after the set I grabbed a CD and whacked it on in the car coming home. Roland's 6 track Legends Of The Sun EP is an interesting mix of songs blending a lot of different sounds it doesn't settle on a particular genre which makes it ever so slightly difficult to connect with it. Don't get me wrong the songs are good, very polished and produced really well but there's an element of "I've heard this before" about a few of the tracks for instance "Picking Up The Pieces" sounds like it's come off the back catalogue of Coldplay maybes. I'm also struggling to pick the emotive element of the songs which I guess probably accounts for my lack of connection to the music.

BUT where the CD actually comes in to it's own is in the very last track Broken which finally lays bare a bit of emotion and is a truly beautiful song which you'd expect from a singer/songwriter. Again it's a totally different sound, back to an acoustic route and it really does showcase a very crafted and talented voice which finally gets exposed to its fullest.

If I had to surmise the CD I'd probably say that as a commercially viable exercise it ticks all the boxes. The tracks feel aimed at appealing to a mainstream musical audience whilst showcasing a number of different styles so if that was the intention then it achieved it definitely. That sounds harsh, don't get me wrong, it's a nice collection of songs and I got to the end of the CD wanting more which is a good sign but nice isn't always memorable.

Still I'd check him out, when Roland refines where he's aiming his music, he could build a pretty good fan-base very quickly and sell a decent amount of records.

Maybe if I wasn't such a music ponce...I'd have picked up on Joey Ryan a while back!

2010-06-28T20:59:00.007+01:00

So then tonight from a hot and sweaty London comes the confession of a man who has been proven truly wrong. Let's be really clear, musically, I know what I like. I'm the first to admit it's pretty niche with a few exceptions but I know what I like. So when I find that I have somehow mistakenly made a big error or rather an oversight, I'll hold my hands up and go "you know what, I was wrong".

So tonight...you know what...I was horribly wrong.

Last week I had the absolute pleasure of seeing and meeting for the first time one of my absolutely favourite musicians in the world...the brilliant Jay Nash. It was an absolute delight having waited some 18 months for Jay to return (since I missed his last tour). But Jay didn't come to the UK alone...oh no, no, no!

Jay came with fellow US singer/songwriter Joey Ryan who is another member of what I call "The extended Californian music scene of brilliant artists".

So here's where the confession starts. Now I knew of Joey before he arrived here, I'd heard some of his tracks before on TV (in adverts and programmes), I'd even seen him in a video with my friend and brilliant musician Greg Holden but for some reason (and I genuinely couldn't tell you why), I had formed a rather, ill-founded and wholly incorrect view that Joey was a rather boring musician. I genuinely don't know why or how I'd formed that opinion having never really looked properly into his music so I guess the best thing I can tell you is that my opinion has been totally changed and I now see the error of my ways.

Joey (who physically really reminds me of a younger, taller and slimmer James May, of Top Gear fame...I think it's the hair) played the most brilliantly absorbing set which had the entire crowd gripped from start to finish (videos of the whole set on my youtube channel). Needless to say that alone changed my opinion and was further enhanced with the two CDs I purchased which have been pretty much played constantly for the past few days.

The first CD, Joey's latest offering of Kenter Canyon features 5 songs which are both wonderfully engaging and full of warmth and sincerity. It's a great example of an extremely intelligent, thoughtful and clever songwriter. From the absorbing Broken Headlights which deals with the weather and releasing pent up feelings for someone, through to Permanent a song which as Joey explains talks about the perils of retail therapy and also the trevails of being a musician, the EP is packed full of beautiful heart-felt lyrics and music.

The second CD, one of Joey's albums with the imaginatively and cleverly titled "With Its Roots Above and Its Branches Below" is jam packed full of brilliant tunes. From the opening We Shall Arrive which resonates with me immensely through to the incredibly intimate and personal Like A Cloak all the way through to the fondest of ode's to Joey's homestate of California the album is bristling full of maginificent songs which'll have you hooked and more than keep your attention.

So to the world, I made a mistake, to Joey you're far from mundane, you're outstanding and the lesson to learn is as follows...don't make an assumption, get off your backside and do the research...then make a call.

Right now Joey and Jay are headed round Europe on an all too brief whistlestop tour (if you ask me) before heading back to the US. Go check him out, he really is THAT good! Oh and whilst you're at it, if you're in any doubt, for goodness sake check Jay Nash out!

Peace reigns over a stifling, muggy and still London (and this blog I believe has taken 4 hours with distractions to write!)

Night all xxx

Shooting the moon...thanks Andy!

2010-05-29T21:56:00.007+01:00

So I was preparing the write a blog and then I noticed a comment pop up in my mailbox and it rather changed the subject area somewhat. I had intended to talk a bit about a great week or so I had accompanying Israeli Band (and friends) Acollective (who you must check out if you haven't before) around the UK on their recent tour which took in Sound City in Liverpool as well as other destinations including Oxford and London but that'll have to wait for another day.

See when someone sends me a link, I feel compelled to check it out and I've now been introduced to The Moonband, a German-based Alternative Folk band very much in the same mould as one of my other favourite bands of that genre, Blind Pilot.

Now the odd and slightly annoying thing is I can't tell you much if anything about them apart from I think I can safely say they are based in Germany, there are 5 of them and they play a nice array of instruments...but more than that...I'm just as much in the know now as I was about an hour ago. I can't give you a back story, musical history, previously toured with list...absolutely nothing, in a way its a bit frustrating but at the same time it's quite cool because it means that the music itself is the bit that takes centre stage.

So what can I base the music on...well...a few youtube videos AND the songs on their myspace player. And from what I see and hear I like very much. I'd say it's more of an acoustic laid-back style of folk which has a fuzzy, warm and intimate feel to it, by that I mean it feels like it could almost be being played in your front room.

So that's pretty much all I can give you on this one, I like it, I don't know much about them and you can buy their album here.

We only stay in orbit, for a moment of time...

2010-05-16T23:19:00.003+01:00

Oh so you thought I'd vanished off the face of the earth did you? Well I kind of did...only kind of. Truth is the last couple of months have been pretty hectic one way and another and well on top of that I've actually not found much new music to genuinely excite me enough to want to blog. I know I haven't reached a natural end of quality music I just haven't had time to search out much.

Rest assured folks now things are quietening down slightly I will be back to some sort of regular posting, I have much to jot down and over the next 2 or 3 months on various musical related subjects, many shows I intend to get to and one very exciting revelation which will come to fruition hopefully in the next 6 weeks or so.

So stay tuned folks...that's all I'm saying...stay...tuned :-)

I'm almost anonymous and it's a dangerous road...

2010-03-27T19:18:00.010Z

At the moment, days turn to nights turn to days turn to nights and my feet barely touch the floor. It's been a manic first few months of the year, some of it great, some of it distinctly average but all in all pretty cool. The problem is that I just seem not to have time to blog that often...which hopefully will change over the summer months.

So as a short, hello world, tonight's effort comes from only the second gig I've been to since the start of December and this one actually turns out to be a matter of co-incidence find.

Back in October last year I travelled to the Bedford in South London to see the Strange Folks boys play a set. Before they played, I was stunned into bewilderment by the beautiful Ragz Nordset, so when I found out Ragz was due down in London again I was rather happy. Except circumstances between the both of us meant that we were both ill over the two London dates, meaning it didn't in the end happen. That being said, one of the gigs Ragz was due to play had a publicised list of artists. Being nosey as I tend to be about these music related things, I searched against the artists and unearthed an absolute gem of a musician, truly a complete gem...in Patrick Plunkett.

A pretty unassuming and down to earth guy, Patrick originally hails from Dublin and has been chasing his musical dream in London for the past three years. His music evokes memories of all the great male singer/songwriters of the past 10 years, people like Damien Rice, Ray LaMontagne and some of the more mainstream successes like Paulo Nutini, Jason Mraz and Jack Johnson, only with a harder rock/americana edge. So having found him on myspace it was a true pleasure to see him play an acoustic set the other night at one of my favourite intimate venues in London, The Slaughtered Lamb.

Patrick's set covered a mix of tracks, some from his "New Beginnings", three track EP and a mix of tracks that will hopefully form part of a full blown album at some point in the not too distant future.

Here's a track that's not on the EP, called Come Home Tonight. It's a really great song and I cannot wait to hear what it sounds like with a full band behind it.

The EP has been on continual play on my iPod for three days...watch this space...this man is going places...FACT!!!!

Ok, it's not ok to forget about stuff...

2010-02-21T01:21:00.003Z

So it seems I haven't vanished off the face of the earth, I'm still very much alive and well despite various rumours circulating the media of alien abductions, kidnappings and sexual predators....ok I joke, it's just been a totally hectic month and I've been pretty in the clouds with my thoughts.

What's new? I went to see the brilliant David Ford and Low Anthem at the Shepherd's Bush Empire about 10 days ago which was awesome, a beautiful gig...which I stupidly forgot to take my camera too, so no videos....doh!

Someone else thankfully caught some of it, so here's someone elses video of David Ford. This is State of the Union which is a real performance of incredible musicianship - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT5qWsG21F4 - take a look, you'll see what I mean!

Low Anthem were a total unknown quantity to me, but I was seriously impressed with them. In particular something which I would say was the most industriously brilliant and creative use of day to day technology to create the most mesmeric sound. The song in question is This God Damn House and the premise was that the crowd were asked to call the person sitting next to them, turn each phone so that the speaker of one was next to the microphone of the other and the reverb effect was....mesmeric. Sadly there's no video of Shepherd's Bush but there are other videos. This was in Dublin a few days earlier (stick with it all the way through) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSHVkaN5FLo and this was just a short clip I found from their Manchester gig which actually picks up the sound even better. It's totally mindblowing... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfvCNpJDMfo

Ok so now you know I'm safe and still living just another tidbit of news...if you're wondering why I've gone quiet...well I'm in the throws of something pretty exciting right now which requires a lot of attention. Needless to say it won;t be long before it gets announced to the world...wahoo!

Anyways it's late in London...nearly 2am.

Night peoples xxx

Are You Calling Me...

2010-01-21T21:15:00.006Z

January's flying by isn't it? Whoosh what was that? That's another month gone, can I do it again? Err no!

Still every day brings more and more hope and this month, more great music. For the first time in months I feel I'm ready for an intake of new music. But of course being in that position has issues, my iPod is running low on space and there's only so much music that can be compressed down to 128/44. On Saturday I finally plucked up the courage to install the iPod Touch 3.0 O/S released last year which I rebelled against because I felt it would compromise what little space I had left on the little box of magic, after 30 minutes and several reboots it somehow cleared nearly 300mb leaving me ridiculously happy. So I went on an iTunes shopping spree to celebrate.

A few nights previously the fantastic Daniela Bove (who I met at a Strange Folks gig back in August last year) and a friend of mine posted up a video link on Facebook to a guy called Charlie Winston (the brother of musician Tom Baxter), I took a gamble (as I did with a certain Omer Leshem many months ago) and was totally blown away. It's a video of Charlie filmed by some random on a street in Paris at 5am singing the seriously haunting and beautiful Calling Me.

When it finished I went in search of more music and was a tad disappointed with a mix of songs on MySpace which whilst being clever felt a bit complicated and not really what I was hoping for. But still being curious I decided to push on a couple of nights later having decided to buy Calling Me if nothing else. So I had a look and listen on iTunes and found quite a few songs I really liked. So I downloaded a fair few songs and now I can't stop playing them...

So do yourself a favour, head over to the iTunes store, go check him out...you'll not be sorry :-)

Nite nite x

2010....another vintage for music?

2010-01-09T11:38:00.005Z

Hello and a seriously belated Happy New Year from a wintery swept, freezing, snow filled London, it's sure cold here and if there was any doubt that it was January, it's been dispelled the last week.

Still it's a new year and whilst it starts a cold one, it's a very promising one with so much cool stuff on the horizon so it's all good.

I'm back to a degree of form with a new musical recommendation to start the year off with. This is one of those odd finds that just happens to be a right place, right time thing. The other day I was checking out Joshua Radin's myspace page, mainly because he's currently recording his next studio album here in London and I wanted to see if he was playing any shows whilst he's over here. Turns out he's not which is a bit disappointing but in being a bit nosey and scrolling a touch too far down the page through the comments I found a guy promoting his new album....so I thought, what the heck have I got to lose?

As I discovered just a half hour later, I had gained...seriously gained! So to add to my plethora of unheard of unknown music which needs promoting...welcome Houston, Texas' very own Lee Alexander.

Lee's recent album Mayhaw Vaudeville (which is available as a free download through the insanely clever Noisetrade) is an 11 track collection of Folk, Rock, Country and Roots music of immense quality. The two things that struck me initially were the quality of songwriting and the outstandingly smooth and rich vocals. Interestingly Lee describes the album on his MySpace page as an experimental album, and I guess that accounts from the amazing variety in style of song, from the very country Okemah Moon through the mainstream Miles Between right through to the ridiculously beautiful Folk number Union Street (which I will hasten to add is one of the most beautiful songs I have heard in simply ages and has an amazing story which Lee has explained in a blog on his MySpace) and the equally beautiful Carol Ann (which is just too short at 2:20).

But like some of my favourite musicians, what impresses me the most about Lee (apart from the quality of the music) is the array of instruments Lee uses to create his music..."guitar, piano, violin, harmonica, mandolin, fife, & eaullian pipe." That I think you will agree is a seriously impressive list?!?

The album though is a absolute must have, yes there might be a couple of songs that don't quite do it for you, but that's the beauty of an experimental album. One thing's for certain, Lee Alexander will enrich your music collection, and all for either a financial donation or simply recommending 5 of your friends to download the album....and you know if you haven't got 5 friends who'd absolutely adore Lee's music, then you're either quite lonely or well...you just need to get some new friends :-)

This man is going places...mark my words!

Good start to the new year, from a chilly London...nite all xx

Rounding out the year...

2009-12-31T12:55:00.004Z

So I guess this is it, the final day of what has been a really good year.

Since November my blog posts have been sporadic and few and far between, each time me promising that I'm going to get back to sitting down and writing more regularly and each time me failing to deliver on it.

So let me explain publicly for the first time why I've been so quiet. There's 2 reasons really, the first being that my mind has simply been overloaded with amazing music this year that it could not cope with more being added in so hence there was not much to review and secondly and rather more importantly I've been working on a little side project. I can't yet say too much but what I will say is that next year I will be making my first foray into the music industry. The project has a tentative launch date in March 2010 and by this time next year it could be either a success or a dramatic failure but either way it will be a life enriching experience and one I'm pretty excited although cautiously optimistic about.

But before I close the year off I want to add some thank you's to some people whose music has dramatically enhanced my collection this year. So here goes:-

Kevin Montgomery
Ragz Nordset
Francesco Cinelli (Goodtimes Goodtimes)
Thomas J Speight
Paul Cook (...and the Chronicles)
Foy Vance

And an ultra special thanks to three musical acts who I truly believe are set for greatness next year (and who have provided me with the most amazing music, warmth and friendship)...

Greg Holden
Omer Leshem
Strange Folks / Roy Rieck and the Medley Band - Idan Rabinovici, Roy Rieck, Roy "Hamudi" Rabinovici, Emmanuel Slonim, Nadav Luzia, Daniel Shoham and Joseph E-Shine

I'd also like to thank each and every one of you who have stopped by and read my musings on music, those of you who have viewed my many videos on youtube, dropped me an email, followed me on twitter, etc.

Lastly to play us out (I've always wanted to say that)...here's some recommendations of people I'm monitoring closely with an eye to early 2010 purchases...

Daniel Kamas
City and Colour
Jon T
Matt Saxton
Luka Bloom
Massy Ferguson

Happy New Year, here's hoping 2010 is an amazing year for us all xxx

Is it safe to come out from behind the sofa yet?

2009-12-13T21:45:00.005Z

That's the question kids up and down the country, if not across the world used to ask, and probably still do when sci-fi institution Doctor Who graced/graces the TV screens. But in my case, the TV nasty in question is the UKs very own "musical talent contest" the X Factor which I believe has finally finished tonight.

So I guess in that short statement you know where I stand on Simon Cowell's circus. Is it really music, well I guess 12+ million people in the UK would say it is, and then many millions more would tell you it isn't, I guess it depends on your perspective. For me it's not music, it's not about anything but gross profiteering and the production of more facsimile tribute act popstars to flood an already crowded musical world. What it creates is another layer of "noise" (not in the musical sense) that just further surpresses talent that is trying to get itself heard through the conventional methods of hard work and genuine talent.

Let's be realistic, as a contest it takes people with no better than half-decent singing voices and average talent and transforms them in a matter of months from being a total nothing to a chart sensation and that's good for them, I think we'd all love to go from a zero to hero in a short space of time for doing something where we receive acclaim from the masses whilst earning a stack of money but what is the end musical product?

I guess it depends what your musical taste is, but for me, good/great musicians need to be able to answer 2 of 3 questions with an affirmative answer to classify as having proper talent. Those questions are...can you sing well and with passion, can you play an instrument, are you able to write your own lyrics and music? See there's plenty of people out there who can answer yes to all three of those questions, let alone two of them but most on talent shows will struggle to answer yes to one of them and here's the thing about TV talent shows. Even if you as artist can answer yes to those questions, the likelihood is that your musical choices have already been decided for you and they're purely commercially driven decisions, it's profits over music all the way.

I guess that's probably the reason why you never seen singer/songwriters or proper bands on shows like the X Factor, it's a mix between genuine talent not necessarily being mainstream enough, the artists refusing to sell out their talent for money and from the likes of Mr Cowell's perspective the commercial risk of someone being allowed to release their own music without littering it with covers and fluffy meaningless songs.

The problem I guess I have with music TV talent shows though is the real potential damage that they're likely to have on the music industry in the longer term. First of all, kids now are growing up thinking that unless they get on TV they don't have talent, second that they'll see this as an accepted musical medium and if they want to create music think it more important to fit the mould rather than explore their own musical paths and finally they're growing up with the vision that the music industry is easy to crack and is simply a vehicle to making huge amounts of money....the bottom line is, it's not.

X Factor has a place...just not in my house or on my iPod...that's all I'm saying.

Nite all xxx

CDs versus Digital Downloads...

2009-12-10T19:17:00.008Z

Where on earth do the days go? I keep promising to get back to blogging regularly then I blink and 10 days go by and I realise I haven't blogged.

Tonight rather than reviewing music I wanted to be a bit discussive and ponder a few thoughts, perhaps even get your synapses going. One of the debates I'm constantly having is CDs or Digital Downloads. Now before I start, I think I'll clarify where I stand on it...I'm a CD freak, I'll always choose a CD over a DD. I'm a bit of a traditionalist in the sense that I like something physical to hold when I'm playing music. I like the physical nature of being able to flick through the booklet reading the lyrics as opposed to searching for them online.

But that's not to say I don't adore my iPod, I really do, in fact I actually classify the iPod as the greatest thing I have ever purchased...by some considerable distance.

So here's the thing, I'm not anti-digital download. In fact I'm really pro legal downloads, I have hundreds of them. Had it not been for the internet revolution and the technological advancement of the music industry, local and regional talent would have remained just that.

Nowadays, an artist has the ability to build a global fanbase (of any size) through the internet alone. How many artists have we all discovered through myspace, imeem, youtube, facebook, itunes, spotify, and dare I say it in the formative years of the internet, the likes of napster, limewire and torrent sites (not that I'm condoning music piracy)?

But the internet has undoubtedly had the most dramatic effect on the proliferation of music distribution in a way that I doubt anything has since the invention of the transistor radio in the 1950s. Before the transistor radio, only the well-off were able to afford big bulky valve radios. In fact so expensive were they that people bought kits and built their own.

But like all new technology, when the transistor radio finally made it to market, the cost was astronomical but within a few years as the components became mass produced and the cost of the raw materials dropped, the price began to drop and the market exploded and before long everyone had access to this musical vehicle...sounds familiar?

The transistor radio brought music from across a country into living rooms and bedrooms of houses but also gave music its first real portability. I guess it would be fair to say that the transistor radio was one of, if not the main vehicle behind the explosion of music that came in the late 50's and then into the 60's and beyond. It allowed youngsters to listen to the music they liked instead of what their parents listened to....and so a new generation of free-thinking expressive music lovers were born.

The same scenario to lesser extents applies to the cassette tape, the CD and the ill-fated minidisc. But all these things helped shape the music we have today and kept pushing the boundaries of music distribution and portability. And so you'd think that digital music, digital downloads could only be a further advancement and undoubtedly it has been and a very positive one certainly in terms of convenience but there are some perhaps unexplored and real downsides to it.

Let's suppose for a moment that we live in a Utopian musical society where everyone buys music and there's no such thing as piracy...every other rule applies however and society is otherwise unchanged. We still live in a world of convenience where we have to have everything now be it clothes, electronics, food or music, we consume it and then move on to the next item quickly forgetting our last purchase.

I'm as guilty as the next of finding new and exciting music, playing it to death until I find something else I really like and then moving on sometimes not revisiting that music I loved for some considerable time; and therein lies the first problem! Digital music is easily losable, you can store it away or maybe even more stupidly delete it and forget it ever existed, with an LP, cassette, CD you just couldn't do that, unless you put it up in the loft/attic/basement and even then you had to make that conscious decision to move it to a place of reasonable inaccessibility. So the digital age is making music too disposable and that actually risks today's generation not being able to pass anything musically on to the future in the way that the 60's passed on The Beatles, Elvis, Roy Orbison, The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan...in fact now I come to think of it, that list is endless. We simply won't hand down our ipods to future generations in the way physical music has been so today's amazing music will be lost forever in 30 years time...how sad is that?

What about artwork? Most will tell you they don't care about the jewel cases or the booklets. Some will even give you the spuriously weak answer of trying to be environmentally conscious. The truth is that a digital download is cheaper and immediately available and that governs the purchasing decision. But digital music pretty much alleviates the necessity for a creative to sit there, concept and design artwork. Let's not forget that what many now regard as a non-essential gave rise to true works of modern popular art such as The Beatles iconic Abbey Road cover. With digital music, record labels, music producers and artists can simply produce a 500 x 500 pixel image and that will suffice for an album. So where will these future classic and iconic works of art come from, it won't be music, that's for sure.

Finally there's one thing to consider about digital music. As I stated much earlier it has allowed musicians to build a truly global fanbase and it has allowed unsigned talented musicians to put music out into the world on mass distribution without the cost of producing thousands of CDs to send round the world (which is a frightfully expensive thing to do if you have no assurance of actually selling them), but there's a serious possibility that pretty soon record labels will go down the route of solely producing digital music in a bid to ramp up their falling profits (courtesy of music piracy) at the expense of the musician.

But ask enough musicians and they'll tell you that they prefer CDs, after all, they sit down to write songs, play music, go into a studio to record, edit and mix and then there's no actual final physical product, so some question rightly or wrongly what they're actually producing. I guess it must be quite disheartening to do all of that work to see nothing at the end of it apart from a link on various web sites. On top of that, the lack of physicality means that artists have nothing tangible to sell or even sign at gigs. How many people will actually go home after a gig and still have that impulsive attitude to go and buy music, very few I'd guess so in a way the net result of digital music is that it may actually damage the incremental income an artist gets from a gig which could be the difference between success or failure for even the most talented of musician.

So yes, digital music is brilliant, it's opened up music from across the globe to everyone and I have made countless discoveries because of it, but if the world continues to moves too far towards it, we risk losing so much more than just a piece of slightly bendy plastic, and I think that's really quite sad.

I'll leave you with one final thought, recently an album in Ireland got to number 1 in the album charts having only sold 400 CDs in its first week, but something like 15,000 digital downloads.

Maybe I'm old fashioned or a romantic but now hopefully you see why I'm so passionate about CDs and I hope that all record labels make a solemn commitment to their artists to keep putting music on CDs, the world needs it, our music legacy demands it, don't you think so?

Goodnight all xxx

The late, late, but promised review of a Norwegian Treasure...

2009-11-30T23:17:00.009Z

Ok so this last month was a pretty quiet one on the blog front for which I eternally apologise, I guess October was such a big, bold and fantastic month with some awesome gigs including Joshua Radin, Goodtimes Goodtimes, Strange Folks that November was always going to be a lull, in fact I haven't been out to any live gigs for weeks...that's becoming quite torturous now! I will put it right soon. Aligned with that I've been a bit self-absorbed with a project which I can't yet speak of but some of you know about so consequently I haven't been at my communicative best.

But in all of that excitement towards the end of October and the distractions of late I forgot to blog about someone's album who I promised publicly to review...on my own blog...so tonight's entry and the first of a new month goes to the stunningly beautiful and totally amazing Ragz Nordset who is still winning the award by a country mile for most breathtaking and mindblowing acoustic performance of the year 2009...in the made up awards that I have yet to define or get corporate sponsorship for...

So for those of you who caught my blogs at the end of October (when I was blogging lots) Ragz played a set at The Bedford before I saw the Strange Folks guys. She came on stage, I'll admit to being a bit distracted until this about 5 seconds into the set when she began to sing and I think the expression "jaws to the floor" pretty much summed it up completely.

I'm not a big one for female vocalists, call it sexist, call it boring, call it gay, call it what you like a lot of female vocals just don't connect with me....probably because I'm a guy...but Ragz just floored me. So at the end of the set and having felt like I'd witnessed something immeasurably brilliant I sought out Ragz, had a quick chat and purchased a copy of both EPs...god I love a CD....there's nothing better than a physical CD, beats a download any day (I've said that before I think)!

So the next day I popped both onto my iPod and wanted to see if the EPs cemented my bewilderment further and a month on and having forgotten to blog about it...the answer is....YES, they most certainly did.

Little Stings (which is available on iTunes) is quite an interesting EP, there's something quite dynamic about it in the sense that it feels somewhat supercharged with a singer trying many different style of songs and different applications of her amazing vocals in search for the perfect mix either that or just purely showing of the diversity and complexity of her vocals, songwriting and music playing ability.

To give you an example Where It's Gone and You in the Back are real singer/songwriter songs, More reminds me of a classical ballad a sort of Mariah track (although a lot more understated). When I hear Run it reminds me of something very theatrical and the music has this certain Russian/Polish/Eastern European/Jewish vibe about it. Feel Something is kind of hard to place, it's a nice song but I can't put it anywhere.

Finally we come to Breathe, the last track of the EP which is a live recording. Undoubtedly in my opinion the best track on the EP. It hit me the first time I listened through that this was amazing, it was Ragz the singer/songwriter who stole a piece of me, killed it sweetly and sent it to musical heaven back in October. It's just the most amazing song, amazing vocals, it's just utterly beautiful a true gem of a song.

So then we flip over to the second EP, Love You Still which feels like we've seen Ragz grow and move forward musically settling into a formula that perpetuates amazing music in abundance...wow I'm throwing big words out there tonight!!!!

The EP truly is Ragz the accomplished singer/songwriter at her very, very best. Love You Still the title track is amazingly moving, it actually caught me a bit the first time I heard it properly, it just connected with me in a big way, the sentiments resonate with me. This theme of beautiful and mesmerising music flows right through Hold On and Oh Oh and then into No Fairytale which feels like an astonishingly personal piece of songwriting.

The all too short EP rounds off with Mitt....hold on I need to get my iPod for a bit of Norwegian...Mitt Hjerte Alltid Vanker...which translates to My Heart Always Wanders...no don't be daft I don't speak Norwegian, I did a bit of research and came up with this as a resource :-) Anyways Ragz here takes a psalm/hymn and uses it beautifully to show off her voice Acapella on what's actually quite a challenging track, and again pulls it off amazingly.

And you know what really truly baffles me most about Ragz, is why someone hasn't signed her on a major record deal. It's surely only a matter of time...it just has to be.

Ok that's me done for tonight, I feel I've finally fulfilled a promise I made and hopefully one day soon I'll be able to share some big an exciting news with the world...not quite yet...but soon I hope...there's an oncoming storm people...be prepared!

Nite all xxx

TFDI...

2009-11-25T20:05:00.005Z

"Totally ****ing doing it....urgh urgh...totally ****ing doing..."

The immortal and now famous words of one great Jay Nash on the commencement of the Evening of the Feeling Song tour (see video below) featuring Matt Duke and Tony Lucca back in late August. The expression became shortened to TFDI and the tour spanning some 20 days as good as got renamed.

Whilst on the road, these 3 amazingly talented singer/songwriters were invited into studio in Illinois to spend the day recording a number of tracks...fast forward 2 months and released just 2 days ago in iTunes across the world...TFDI - The EP.

So it's an EP of 4 tracks, one by each artist (Slow It Down - Jay Nash, Sex and Reruns - Matt Duke and Pretty Things - Tony Lucca) and a cover of The Weight originally by late 60's - 70's (and then 80's to 90's) The Band.

Each song uniquely showcases the vocal talents of Matt, Tony and Jay but more than that it shows that when you place together three outstanding artists, their musical qualities are taken to a completely new level and the cover of The Weight is simply beautiful.

The EP debuted at #1 on the Singer/Songwriter chart on iTunes and currently sits at #3 which is a testimony both to the quality of the music but also that these three artists have managed to fuse together their talents and fanbases to form something of sizeable note and acclaim.

At $4, €4 or £3, you just can't afford to miss out on this. Go buy it now, you need to TFDI!

75 minutes of pure brilliance!

2009-11-22T22:17:00.009Z

So this month has been quiet, in fact having just sat down to think about it for long enough I realised I haven't seen any live music AND that's maybe the reason why I've felt musically quite empty lately...well up until a whole host of music I received recently and then the discovery of 24 songs by the brilliant Paul Cook and the Chronicles which are available NOW for you to download for FREE!!!

So have you downloaded them yet? No? Why the hell not...it's FREE?!?!

And let me tell you, you'll not be in the least bit disappointed. Each and every one of the 24 songs available to download are outstanding and it's not often you can say that about any album or collection of music.

A mix of British pop, pop/rock, folk and rock focused mainly around the theme of love, relationships and heartbreak, Home Recordings show off both the talent of Paul as a musician but more importantly the depth of songwriting ability. I don't know why and maybe I'll be proving wrong but I have this feeling Paul is the type of singer/songwriter for whom words come easily. He's an uncomplicated songwriter, never trying to be overly clever, drawing on personal experiences, the messages in each song are clear and I'm a firm believer that there's no need to over complicate something...particularly if the concept is good.

There's a number of songs that really grab me but the one which is probably my absolute favourite and potentially one of the best songs I've heard this year is The Trees Cling To You (which I've posted in the sidebar in case some of you are being retarded and refusing to heed my advice and go and download the tracks).

It's a great little song which is I think is so quintessentially British and really portrays that feeling for longing for a totally amazing girl who just seems the centre of everyone elses world apart from yours (ooh that's quite deep...I think I should shut up there!). All I'll add to that is girls, at some point in your life at least one guy has felt like that about you and guys, you'll understand what I mean when you hear it.

Other tracks that really jump out for sheer quality and diversity are A Real Thunderbolt which deals with the absolute longing for the perfect life partner, Latest Squeeze which seems to nicely portray the feeling of being played by a woman (and also has a 70's feel to it) and Six Places, a song about making time and again falling in love and it going continually wrong. Oh and if none of those grab you, Monday Morning will resonate with the entire working world!

I actually can't recommend this collection of songs highly enough...if I were behind a record label I know what I'd do right now...oh, err... :-)

Night all xxx

The Free Chronicles

2009-11-19T22:01:00.005Z

Some months ago, in fact the night I first became happily embroiled in the mystical musical world of The Collective (Stange Folks & Roy Rieck and The Medley Band) one other act at Monkey Chews caught my attention who I've been desperate to blog about again and to see in it's full glorious form...Paul Cook and The Chronicles.

Paul told me some months ago that "The Chronicles" part of the band wasn't quite formed and as such the gigs, albums, etc were a short while away. So as a nice little memory jogger, someone subscribed to my youtube channel yesterday and added the videos of Paul to their favourites on youtube.

That sparked me tonight to go and see what Paul's up to and there's quite some update. It appears "The Chronicles" part of the band is now formed, there's an upcoming gig at The Lexington in Islington on 7th December and Paul has recently released 24 tracks called "Home Recordings" for FREE on Last.FM. It actually equates to just under 76 minutes of music...for absolutely nothing.

There's some great tracks in there, although I can't tell you much more than that because at 24 tracks and having only ever heard 6 there is a stack of great new music for me to listen to and pass judgement on.

Go check Paul out, tell him how great he is and if you're in London, go see him on December 7th.

See ya soon folks xx

Driving is underrated...

2009-11-12T20:17:00.007Z

Today I had the great pleasure of spending 3 hours in the car for work. Usually that'd be a real drag but for 3 uniquely brilliant things. First of all (and this is really something some of you particularly closer to the equator won't get) late autumn is amazing, I love the colours and there is something quite fascinating about piles of decaying leaves forming colourful patterns against usually mundane surfaces. Secondly, I realised how lucky I am to live in London. I drove past the Olympic site today and saw the rapid pace by which it's coming on and you know what, it made me proud to be British...even just for a moment. And to top it all off the sun was out and there was a lovely hazy foggy glow over the city which looked pretty cool.

So spending so much time in the car gave me a chance to have a really good musical session and to catch a second, third and maybe even fourth site of some music that I bought, played a bit then got distracted and moved on.

In fact I listened to 4 whole albums which I'd had for differing amounts of time. But for the purpose of tonight I'm going to focus on the artists that stunned me the most as was in fact first on...Cary Brothers.

I've had his EPs and his album "Who You Are" for a while and I really like his stuff but it never hit me how impressive it is. I fell in love with the album all over again. It's one of those albums that has an amazing array of sounds to it, there's some rich and complex ballads as well as a few upbeat rock tracks. There's a massive raft of musical sounds on show mixed in with at times some amazingly descriptive and painful (in the sense of hurting as opposed to bad) songwriting but what really hit me was the heavy piano ballads in particular The Glass Parade which almost knocked me off the road I was that engrossed in it. In fact it's one of those albums that has such a rich blend that I actually couldn't find one song I didn't like a lot and the overriding factor I was left with by the end of the album was "oh, is that it? i wanted more!".

Now I'll confess apart from having the music I didn't really know much about Cary until I did a bit of research for the blog and I discovered that he's actually quite well known and if you're of a certain age, you've almost probably heard of him as his songs have found their way into TV shows like Grey's Anatomy, ER, One Tree Hill, Smallville, Scrubs and a load of others...and that's why it probably took me so long to find his music...because I guess I just don't watch much TV let alone those shows.

Nonetheless, the album is awesome and if you don't know who he is, you need to go and find out more...right now!

Have a fun evening folks x

Breaking the silence...

2009-11-07T19:43:00.006Z

So having gone quiet and having to apologise for going AWOL I find myself having to do the same again having been MIA for the past week. Truth be told I've been busy but also feeling musically rather "constipated". I haven't had a lot of time to go search for new music and I haven't found anything that's made me go wow, apart from the stacks of amazing music on my iPod.

But I found something worth sharing at last!

On a random myspace scan I came across the interesting Speechwriters LLC. Stupidly I didn't write down the path by which I got there and now I don't remember even using the back buttons in the browser doesn't help. Anyways here's a brief background ripped right from their myspace page...

Speechwriters LLC was initially conceived as a cautious alliance between West Coast songwriters Dave Lowensohn and Misha Chellam, who quickly became inseparable and have spent most of the 21st century touring the country in borrowed minivans. They've won countless, meaningless awards, and once loaned Jay Farrar their amp.

Musically they remind me of a cross between Blind Pilot and Semisonic, and a quick search has just shown that they've got 4 albums including a recently uploaded 6 track demo from their album Indifferent Cities.

You can, like me, download Regional Variations here and you can find out some more about the guys and their music here.

I'm heading off to go and do some more research right about now!

See ya x

A triumph in the face of adversity...

2009-10-30T12:31:00.004Z

You know, sometimes in life we make mistakes, sometimes we suffer bad luck and sometimes we're just in the wrong place at the wrong time and we get treated badly. But when the chips are down and everything seems to be going against us, it's how we respond and the level of resolve we show that defines our character; and over the past 2 weeks the 4 guys of Strange Folks / Roy Rieck and The Medley Band who were let into the country have shown the most amazing fortitude to overcome an almost fatal blow.

Losing two guitarists (Emmanuel and Joseph), a lead vocalist and harmonica (Roy Rieck) would be pretty much impossible to contend with but four hard working and outrageously talented musicians stuck their heads above the parapet, walked the line (I just realised I might rename this blog post - "The cliche post") and produced a string of amazing performances culminating in a rousing, brilliant and spell-binding show last night at The Slaughtered Lamb.

I'm never short of a superlative for the guys anyway but to so quickly adapt enough songs to make a set and make them sound great let alone the bravery to add in two new brilliant songs in "Running Away and "Girls" with such important parts of the band missing, shows the most incredible depth of musical talent.

And if bravery hadn't been shown enough, when challenged by a small but raucous awe-struck crowd to an encore (twice) and after a quick discussion where the words uttered included "what should we play?" and "we haven't practiced any more songs" two more exceptional efforts were delivered which included a rare live outing of Jungle Man (a track from Idan Rabinovici's solo album, a song which I adore).

So with this mini-tour over all too quickly for my liking, the guys are heading back to Israel before playing a few shows in Paris next month and then hopefully (immigration permitting) they'll be back in full force come January.

I've now seen the guys in different guises play seven shows since July and you know what, I am not in the slightest bit bored of my favourite musical discovery of this year and I truly doubt I ever will be!

Have a great day people xx

A week of silence...ended with a jaw dropper!

2009-10-28T00:50:00.008Z

Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry...I actually can't believe I've been so quiet for nearly a week, you'd have thought I could have found something amazing to talk about in a week - there is stuff, I promise you but stuff that's bubbling away just nicely at the moment and it's all pretty damn exciting and that's really why I've been so amazingly quiet, it's that immense that trying to comprehend it all is almost ripping my mind wide open. That big research project for that big and insightful blog post...oh yeah, it's still not done, but rest assured I now need to do that research urgently so it will be done.

So anyways with the apology out of the way and now we've made up and you realise I still love you all, I want to quickly before I head to bed tonight pop together an ultra quick recommendation.

Last night I headed over to The Bedford in Balham, South London (to see the London homecoming of my brilliant Israeli friends Strange Folks - yep folks...they're back - hooray!!!). The Bedford is awesome, one of the two best small live venues I've been to in London (along with the Slaughtered Lamb)...just totally amazing. The vibe is brilliant, the quality of the acoustics and the sound technicians is second to none and the attitude to music is so ridiculously commendable that I wanted to marry the place, it's a shining example of what ALL music venues should be like (big or small).

Anyways I digress and I wanted to keep it short so on with the music. First up last night and my sole focus of tonight was a girl (I never know if I should say woman or lady and if girl is disrespectful, sorry if it is) who absolutely mesmerised the entire room for about 40 minutes the astonishing, Ragz Nordset.

Originally from Norway but now living in Liverpool, Ragz is a singer/songwriter of unbelievable quality. Throughout her set you could hear not a pin drop in the room, in fact the only sound I heard was within about 15 seconds of the first song when the entire audience's jaws hit the floor in amazement all at the same time - audience captivation was taken to a completely new level last night.

I just cannot quickly in words sum up how utterly brilliant Ragz is, as I said to her afterwards "wow...just wow". Judge for yourself from the videos I shot. Oh and I have two Ragz EP's which I'll cover in due course but for tonight my work here is done. Be wowed, be totally and utterly wowed! Oh and pop a cushion on the floor first before you hit the play button, your jaw will thank you for it!

Nite all xxx

Marking the first landmark....50th blog post!

2009-10-21T22:30:00.006+01:00

Does anyone celebrate such a thing? I think we should, why not and I intend to right here, right now and I want to do it with a bit of a personal insight into this whole mission of mine, so please bear with what might be a bit of a personal indulgent blog tonight.

I started this whole thing off back in late June as a way of writing down my muscial thoughts and recommendations with the world in the hope that it might spread the love of the music I enjoy not just with my native UK but to every corner of our amazing little planet. I wanted to help promote unsigned or unheard of artists a little so that they become more well known or at least build up enough of a following to provide them with the income and inspiration to keep them doing what they do best...producing amazing music.

The past 4 and a half months have been totally amazing. In that time I have seen more live music than the rest of my life put together, met an abundance of people I am proud and honoured to now call friends, been blessed with unspeakable acts of human kindness and hopefully inspired a few people along the way to go and check out some amazingly talented people.

I think in this short space of time I've already achieved a lot of what I set out to do and I will keep doing it today, tomorrow, next week, next year, forever...because I passionately believe in good music and I hope that by doing what I am doing I am making a difference to someone's life somewhere in the world, be they a music lover or a musician.

So tonight, in my 50th blog post I want to thank the artists who have inspired me enough to sit down and write about them, post videos, tweet, recommend and to talk about them. You are all truly amazing talents and I hope you are reminded of this every day! If you ever for one second doubt it, pick up your music, listen to it and know that people out there love and respect what you do and are inspired and moved by it! What you do for a living matters so never give up or get dis-enchanted.

I also want to thank my great friend Dave who it is a privelege to share my musical experiences with first hand, all of you who have taken the time so far to stop by to read my blog, view the youtube videos, add me on twitter, send me emails, send me recommendations...it just makes me even more certain that what I'm doing is worthwhile and that hopefully you're finding music you can enjoy as much as I do.

Finally I'm going to leave you all with a final thanks to someone who is totally awesome, truly amazing and who doesn't believe it despite me constantly telling her. So to that end and in recognition of my 50th blog I'm making a special recommendation tonight here is a first original song from the wonderful and totally beautiful Kamila who I am honoured and blessed to have in my life...

thank you all so much, in your own ways you all inspire me xx

The milk of human kindness...

2009-10-18T20:23:00.011+01:00

So I said I was going into hiding for a few days to do a research project and here I am reporting back some 5 days later with absolutely no research done, because I got ligitimately distracted and haven't been able to focus since.

My favourite musical finds are the ones that just fall out of the sky and hit you and this week, I had one smack me so hard it almost knocked me out. Wednesday night with all good intentions, I sat down to research this big blog post I've been talking about for a while but before I did that a signed in to Facebook. Just as I was about to sign out, I noticed something in the highlights sidebar on the home page which caught my eye.

I thought I'd be...I guess, a bit nosey...and check it out, because my friend and Strange Folks front man Idan Rabinovici had been tagged in it. The video in question is this one:-

Within 23 seconds the idle curiousity turned into absolute fascination and I sat in complete silence throughout listening to the most amazingly beautiful song. At first I was so utterly bemused by the quality of what I had seen I actually had to watch it a second time, and after that I quickly stopped everything, abandoned all research and went off in search of some more information on another Israeli talent in Omer Leshem.

This search started with MySpace where further time was spent listening to tracks on the player and then a fruitless and frustrating trip over to the iTunes and CDBaby stores. So with bedtime fast approaching I dispatched a message via MySpace in the hope of finding somewhere to buy his album "Send Yourself Away".

The next morning, whilst I was sitting at work, I had a reply from Omer directing me to 2 sites however in the end did something quite unbelievable, totally amazing and something which I will always be eternally grateful for, he uploaded the album for me to download. I was and still am totally astonished by this act of generosity and human kindness shown by Omer towards a complete stranger...it's mindblowing!

So I immediately stopped everything, booted my laptop up and downloaded the album and within an hour I was listening to a raft of beautiful songs. That night I lay in bed drifting off to sleep listening again to the album. And I guess it was then it really hit me, how good this collection of Folk/Country songs sung by a man with a rich voice is. As an album, Send Yourself Away is so warm, fuzzy and beautiful that it just seems to suit every mood you could ever possibly be in. This is your stressful drive home made better, it's your lazy summer day spent basking under hot blue skies, your red-eye flight, your candle lit bathtime chill out, your late night under the covers, your early morning wake up, your reflective gaze on life, your momentary inspiration in a mentally challenging moment, it's all those and so much more.

You just can't help but be swept away by the rich vocals and melodies throughout the album. Musically there's definite undertones of the great Neil Young along with vocals that remind me a touch of Johnny Cash meets Ray LaMontagne without quite the huskiness.

It's a truly great album and you all need to go and check Omer out, it's music that'll lift you, move you and leave you feeling better and warmer than you were before you hit the play button. Just make sure you tell Omer how amazing it is and music industry folks...give this man a record deal for goodness sake and whilst you're at it, go and take a closer look at Israel, it's clearly got some amazing talent that needs exporting to the world.

I'll leave you with the thoughts of my great friend Dave who described the video above with this brilliant analogy so beautifully...

"I've been taken back to when I was a kid and my mum gave me 10p for the lucky dip. My hand dived deep in to the bucket of sawdust and i pulled out a gem of a prize.

Rich, thanks for the 10p....and thanks for being mum!

Nite all xxx

Blogged out...

2009-10-13T21:04:00.008+01:00

A few weeks ago, I sat down to do a bit of a research project and write a blog based on my findings. Since then I've been so pre-occupied with new music that I just haven't got round to doing that research or to even thinking about how to write that post.

So unless something outrageously amazing hits me in the next few days, I'm going "under the radar" and I'm likely to be very quiet. But hopefully by the time I come back, I'll have something fascinating for you to read and hopefully it'll provide you with some insight into something that, at the moment I know very little about.

But before I go AWOL, actually MIA is a better term...here's a cheeky little Tuesday recommendation...and it comes in the form of two videos...oh yeah I've now worked out how to embed youtube in here!!!

Today, my friend and all round musical hero the mighty Greg Holden posted Part 23 of the Not My Living Room series and it's a brand new song written and performed with the great Joey Ryan. The song doesn't have a name yet but I've suggested "Don't Come Looking" and in the absence of a name, I'm using that...

It's awesome, it's a new side to Greg's music and one I truly love. Send him comments, let him know how good it is!

Right then, second recommendation tonight comes courtesy of a beautiful little ray of sunshine in Sweden (yes Kamila...I mean you). When I was a LOT younger, I grew up being swept away by British band The Verve. Back in the mid 90's these guys got huge overnight and some of their songs still rip the hairs off the back of my neck. It was a shame they never stayed together longer and now they're back together they just aren't quite as good as they once were...harsh maybe but it's just an opinion.

Anyways, this song, arguably their most famous "The Drugs Don't Work" is being sung by Terra Naomi. I have no idea YET as to who she is...but a stunningly beautiful woman and an amazingly emotive version of this song. I defy you to not sit silent in amazement for 5 minutes and to not be moved, if you're not, you're emotionally stunted...end of!

Right then, this is me potentially for a few days, signing off, so unless any of you can tempt me to listen to something mindblowing I'm going off to do some research and will report back from the field in due course.

Stay safe people xx

The UK's answer to Ryan Adams...?

2009-10-12T19:26:00.007+01:00

Well what do you know people? Today is the sixth, yes sixth successive day I've found something exciting to sit down and write about. You'd have thought by now that I' have run out of ideas but oh no no no, we're carrying on a pace, because I haven't quite finished reviewing things from a week ago.

So tonight I'm going to begin with a quote of my own from some months ago...

"So how many of us are guilty of doing this? We book tickets to see a band or a musician we really like, we find out what time they're on and then what do we do, either turn up late or sit outside drinking beer...all the time not knowing or hearing what's going down on stage," (July 16th - "The Power of Support Acts").

Never a truer word spoken and to be fair I may have partially fulfilled this myself last week. On turning up to Koko to see Joshua Radin, we spent ages messing around waiting to put our jackets into the cloakroom and then getting the beers that we missed most of the first support act. What I did hear of this act sounded ok, but again, how much can you tell from a distance, not paying attention and trying to struggle through a noisy crowd.

So as the night ended and on the way out of Koko, I pitched up at the merch booth and decided to buy a CD from the first support act, partially as a guilty apology and also to share the wealth and make a musicians dream more of a reality. Wow that sounds so "up myself" but those of you who know me will understand I do things like that.

So Tuesday and Wednesday came and went and then on Thursday I finally added the CD in question to my iPod and since then have been swept away.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Guys and Girls, Kids, Music Lovers...I want to introduce you tonight to the incredible unsigned amd unbelievable BRITISH talent that is...THOMAS J SPEIGHT.

By now you must know I am a massive fan of good singer/songwriters, but the bar is set so high by the likes of Jay Nash, Josh Ritter, Ryan Adams, Chris Seefried and the UK's very own super talent Greg Holden that most singer/songwriters just get filtered out, that's harsh I know but the reality is that greatness stands out a mile off, so when you come across someone befitting of that illustrious company it needs sharing and Thomas is on the evidence thus far befitting of that company.

I can't comment really on his set at Koko as I only heard it from a distance (shame on me!) but what I can do is comment on his EP, This House. The 3 songs are just...amazing, nothing short of amazing and I think even that word doesn't quite do it justice. Sitting somewhere musically between Ryan Adams, Josh Ritter and Jay Nash with a hint of Eagles, CSNY and Low Stars chucked in for good measure, its scarcely believable that Thomas Speight heralds from the UK. In fact if you knew no better having listened to the EP and to Thomas' vocals, you'd assume he heralded from the US. I have no idea where the musical influence comes from and maybe in time I'll find out when I get to see Thomas play again but it certainly I doubt originates from these shores.

What strikes me even just as much is the level of intricacy and level of craftsmanship in each of the songs, from the lyrics right through to the music and it's most evident in the opening track This House. There's a hidden depth that means after 20 plays I'm still finding things that I haven't noticed before. It's the work of an incredibly talented artist and one who's taken meticulous care to produce songs he clearly wanted to. The other 2 tracks on the EP, Tears Of Mine and Start As We Mean To Go On, are of a rare and exceptional quality and feel like they should sit alongside any of Ryan Adams best stuff in my opinion.

I just cannot evangelise enough about how blown away by Thomas' music I am. You all will be and you all must, must, must go and check him out. How someone seemingly so young can produce such amazing music is totally beyond me. You know the only crying shame, the EP isn't on iTunes but you can buy it through Thomas' myspace page.

And that folks, finally after 6 days concludes the music action of the last week in reverse. It has been the most incredible week, I feel this musical journey I am on becomes more worthwhile by the day AND most importantly that my view some months ago when I wrote my original profile is ever more correct...Live Music is unbeatable.

From an autumnal UK...night all x

Bring on the Goodtimes...

2009-10-11T15:27:00.005+01:00

Are you ready for a live review and 2 album reviews? Well it's Sunday so pull up a chair, pour yourself a drink and bring on the Goodtimes Goodtimes.

So there's a history behind this story. I don't want to re-type it all paragraph and verse so in short...

Went out in early August, didn't expect to see music so had no camera, came across a couple of acts (Thea Ford and a band called Goodtimes Goodtimes) who sounded quite good in a venue that wasn't acoustically very good (Bar Music Hall), came away with no videos just a couple of promo cards...and that is that...I wrote a blog about it, moved on that was that.

So now fast forward in time to October and more specifically October 5th. On arriving at Koko to see Joshua Radin I ended up by the merch stall. I don't quite know why I was drawn in that direction so early or what made me take a closer look but something out the corner of my eye caught my attention, there was something familiar about it. On closer inspection it appeared to be a promo card I already had, for Goodtimes Goodtimes. I turned around excitedly to show my mate Dave having realised they were the support act, then turned the other way to see the lead singer Francesco Cinelli looking at me like I'd gone slightly mad. He seemed taken aback that I remembered them from August and that I'd remembered that like me, he's a left-handed guitarist (although one of us is amazingly good and deserves to be on a big stage - and the other shall keep writing this blog). He explained he was playing a solo set which made me completely curious.

So we headed for a quick beer and settled in for what turned out to be a bit of a surprise. When I heard Goodtimes Goodtimes back in August I was a bit impartial because the acoustics were so bad. You couldn't tell what was good and what wasn't only that in principal it sounded good. It turns out Francesco is amazing and the music is too. Francesco played a set for I guess 30 - 40 minutes playing songs from their recently released EP Let It Begin including Let It Begin, Love and a couple of tracks from their next album which is set to be released next February.

So there's videos on my youtube channel which you can now access more easily using my new super-fantastic video player in the sidebar.

That's it review over...nothing more to see...oh no no no, don't be so silly. We're only just beginning, take a pit stop if you want, get a drink, have a smoke, hit the toilet if you need to but for goodness sake hurry up and come back you don't want to miss what's below!

So after he'd played Francesco floor walked the venue selling CDs of the album Glue (which is also available on iTunes). I naturally bought a signed copy for myself but again didn't really know what to expect given that I'd seen them as a band in a poor venue and as a solo artist in a great venue. So on Monday night when I got back to the car, I put the CD on and was blown and I mean BLOWN away, in fact elated by what I heard. It was Goodtimes Goodtimes in a third different form a slightly laid back, relaxed and acoustic.

The album begins with the beautiful Summer which reminds me more than a touch of Josh Ritter then heads on into Kids which for some reason I can envisage Paul McCartney playing. We then head a touch more back towards the modern day with three or four brilliant tracks in Sea Shantry, Temporary Freeze and Desire which feel heavily musically influenced by the 70's and maybe a bit Eagles, maybe a bit Dylan-esque (although I hate name dropping Bob Dylan because it's an easy name drop).

Then out of the blue comes Sunshine Sunshine which was what I recalled the band being all about when I saw them back in August so it was re-assuring to know that I hadn't lost my senses that night. The album finishes with three utterly brilliant songs in The Red Sky & The Spanish Coast, You Know Why and the wonderfully laid back lazy and warm fuzzy Every Song. All in all its around 39 minutes of pure bliss, music heralding from a time when music meant people who could play and sing songs of genuine quality full of stories, humour and emotion. There's something "lazy Sunday summer late-afternoon" about the whole album, it's the sort of thing you want to listen to whilst laying under the scorching sun.

It's an album you absolutely MUST own, I'm currently viewing it as one of my top three albums of the year and I have bought a lot of new music this year.

Now usually at this point we're done but not so today. The good people of Goodtimes Goodtimes recently released a FREE EP - Let It Begin...Yes it's FREE, so you can download it without having to spend anything. It's 4 tracks with a slightly different but still utterly brilliant vibe, perhaps slightly more modern than Glue and a bit more electric. For all you Coldplay fans out there (and I'm not one, I detest them with a passion) you'll love the final track on the EP "Love", there's something very Coldplay about it. There's no official artwork for the EP and because I'm so anal about having music on my iPod without an album artwork, I knocked this together, which you're more than welcome to use. It's not endorsed by the band but it's my ident for the EP.

So I think I'm pretty much done for today's effort, if you do nothing else and you don't go any buy the album, just do me one tiny little favour, go and download the FREE EP. Oh and for those of you in the USA, they'll be playing 3 gigs shortly.

15th October - Living Room, New York, NY
26th October - Third and Lindsley, Nashville, TN
27th October - New Faces Night @ The Basement, Nashville, TN

No excuses people...go check em out.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, whatever you do and wherever you are.

Rich x

P.S. - I ain't done yet, there'll be another musical offering tomorrow :-)

Rewinding the time with Joshua Radin

2009-10-10T19:16:00.009+01:00

Ok last reference to the week in reverse...promise. So we're now back at Monday night, I'd say 9:30 - 11pm and Joshua Radin's gig at Koko in London.

Firstly I'll tell you a bit about the venue. I'd never been there before but its an absolutely amazing place. Koko was opened in 1900 as a theatre and over the years played host to many extremely famous names including the legendary Charlie Chaplin. Over the years it underwent subsequent name changes and many guises before closing in 2004 as Camden Palace. It re-opened in late 2004 following a multi-million pound refurbishment as Koko but has kept a lot of the original charm and decor you'd expect from a venue with a history spanning nearly 110 years with nice twists of the modern world throughout. The place itself feels vast with loads of levels to stand and watch and even chill out spaces with sofas and TV screens showing the live show for people who just want to relax.

The acoustics at Koko are second to none though, honestly some of the best acoustics I've heard anywhere to the point that no matter where you stood, you could hear the music at a great level and completely clearly at all times. It's THE place to see music with a biggish crowd.

So now onto Joshua's set. I'm thinking he played for about 90 minutes playing I'd reckon 15 songs. There were a mix of old songs, song from his most recent album Simple Times including Brand New Day, I'd Rather Be With You and One Of Those Days and a couple of songs from his next album...which has no name or completion date.

Not being anything more than a passively new Joshua Radin fan and having heard no more than 4 or 5 of his songs before the gig I was mightily impressed. Not only does this amazingly talented singer/songwriter command a stage but has the ability to capture an audience with his story telling, chatting, humour, warmth and of course music. He seems an artist truly at ease with himself and his music. For every time Joshua sang the crowd went silent - you could have at times heard a pin drop at times and you really pick that up on the videos I shot (which are on my youtube channel).

This I guess was highlighted brilliantly twice by Joshua and the band turning the gig into a 40's-style radio shack show with all five of them crowded round one microphone with the amps off. I sadly only caught Sky as the camera died but you'll see what I mean.

So Joshua's headed round Europe at the moment before heading over to Australia and then back to the US. He's certainly made one new fan here in the UK and I'm sure quite a few more.

Next time on the backwards review of the week I'm going to cover one of the two support acts from Monday who I'd seen once before and who have subsequently found a place in my heart and iPod this week.

Have a great weekend all x

Being there at the very beginning...

2009-10-09T20:51:00.004+01:00

So I'm still in my backwards review of the week and the next on my target list is the band that preceded Thea Ford on Tuesday night, a band I now know go by the name of Empire State. That sounds like I didn't pay much attention, far from it, these guys are so new that they hadn't even settled on a name. The working title on Tuesday night, as I found out from lead singer Paul Claxton was "The Latters" which is also in my opinion a great name.

But sometimes a name isn't important, it's what lies beneath it that matters. So these three guys had all fallen out of other bands and come together just a few weeks ago but played like they'd been together for years. Their 5 song shortish set was eye-catching not only because of the quality of the music but the absolutely brilliant vocals of Paul Claxton. What I really enjoyed more than anything was the rawness. There's something special about the early days of a singer/songwriter or band when everything is new and not so polished because the songs are still fresh and the artist is still learning how to play them. I was totally taken with the songs and there's a few on my youtube channel just waiting for you to see.

They're playing the Ground Floor Bar in Notting Hill (London) on the 15th October and will hopefully get their myspace, etc up and running soon after that, but in the meantime go check out Paul's myspace page and keep an eye out, these guys could be headed places in my opinion and I am so happy I was there right at the start to see it...I'll be keeping a close eye on them!

Back to the youtubing, still lots more videos to come and next under the spotlight...Joshua Radin and there are at least 2 more individual and new music reviews to follow that.

Catch you all again soon, but don't go too far away! x

This week in reverse...so Thea Ford first!

2009-10-08T19:33:00.005+01:00

Now I've come down a little bit of the excitable high of yesterday, I'm ready to blog once more and hopefully put some more calm thoughts down, but as I sit here I don't know where to start, at the beginning seems logical but I'm not always a logical guy so I'm going to start by blogging the week's music in reverse.

So here we go...

Tuesday night I went to the Road Trip to see Thea Ford. About six or seven weeks ago I saw Thea play a gig just round the corner from the Road Trip (at Bar Music Hall) having not expected to see music, so I had no camera. Bar Music Hall was a good place to drink but not to listen to music. So without camera I blogged about that night and moved on, forgot all about it, until out of the blue some weeks later Thea got in touch having found and read my blog. I was quite honoured and humbled really and promised I'd see Thea play again and bring the camera...and on Tuesday night, I followed through on that promise.

The gig was really good and Thea played a great acoustic set which personally I think showed off her voice brilliantly. In there were five of her own songs including You Got Me, 22, So Long and a cover of the Cranberries song Zombie which worked really well at both being identifiable yet fresh which is always the key to a good cover (in my opinion).

Thea also announced towards the end of the set that she'll hopefully be releasing the song Cat & Mouse as a free digital download single next week, which will mean you can all enjoy a bit of Thea's music for free although that shouldn't discourage you from going out to see her and buy her album (Monkey To The West).

I've added videos of the entire set onto YouTube so if you check out my channel you'll see what Thea's all about, go check out her MySpace page too, and show her some love!

Time to go and add some more videos on YouTube from Tuesday night...stay tuned folks, I'll be back with more pretty soon :-)

Bye for now x

The kid in the sweet shop....

2009-10-07T20:50:00.002+01:00

Today I am like that. I have seen some truly amazing music over the past 2 days and right now I have so many things I want to blog about and I just don't know where to begin.

I have so much to say right now and so much to write about that if I sat down and did nothing but blogs till tomorrow morning I'd probably have loads to write about, in fact I am utterly convinced I could write an entire months worth of blogs in one night.

But like the little tease I am and because I have about 30 videos to encode and put on youtube (which will take forever to do), I'm going to blog sporadically over the next few days spreading out all the things I want to talk about so you can take it all in, enjoy, research and hopefully have your mind blown in the way mine has been...

And just to whet the appetite a little...

http://mrrichmuk.blogspot.com/2009/08/never-leave-home-without.html

This incomplete circle has now been completed and let's just say, something was way way way better than I remembered or thought possible...

Back to bouncing off the walls....stay tuned folks...IT IS GOING TO BE MEGA!!!!

Reporting from the field...

2009-10-01T21:30:00.003+01:00

Ahhhhh the sweet smell (no wait that's impossible)...sound of live music. Man I've missed it so much. I actually didn't realise quite how much. The other night I popped over to the brilliant Monkey Chews for an open mic night and wasn't disappointed.

There were a few acts that were kind of indifferent, ok but not memorable and then there were three that stood out above the rest.

The first two were guys playing solo sets but part of bands "Bronze Medalists" and "Tourist". Now I think myself a good judge of music...to the point my senses are so refined I can tell the talent of a musician 85% of the time without hearing them play...I was proved right with both of these two although I wished I'd got a video of the first song sung by the guy from Bronze Medalists because it was just awesome. I followed instinct with Adam from Tourist and was proven right hence why I captured two videos.

Why only two you ask. Well that's all each act got, which I guess was the only disappointment of the night.

Finally there was a two-piece band, a guy with a keyboard and one with a bass guitar who played two songs when we weren't in view. I have not a clue what their name was BUT they too were absolutely awesome and I regret not being able to share who they are/were at this current time...but I will endeavour to find out and report back.

So in the meantime check out the new videos in the side bar and let me know if you like.

See ya! x

Greg Holden's EP - Sing For The City

2009-09-30T19:56:00.003+01:00

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...

2009-09-28T22:33:00.003+01:00

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!!!

2009-09-25T18:13:00.003+01:00

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...

2009-09-24T00:26:00.003+01:00

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...

2009-09-23T22:40:00.003+01:00

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...

2009-09-22T21:01:00.004+01:00

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...

2009-09-21T23:50:00.004+01:00

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!!!!

2009-09-18T22:23:00.005+01:00

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?

2009-09-13T22:54:00.002+01:00

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...

2009-09-10T22:45:00.003+01:00

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...

2009-09-07T21:48:00.005+01:00

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...

2009-09-05T23:45:00.006+01:00

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...

2009-09-03T20:39:00.004+01:00

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...

2009-09-02T19:09:00.002+01:00

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...

2009-09-01T22:13:00.004+01:00

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

So much to say, so little space / Bon Voyage Greg Holden...

2009-08-31T18:47:00.006+01:00

It seems ages since I last posted, in reality it's been what, a couple of days. I have so much to say in fact enough for about 3 or 4 blog posts so I'm going to eek it all out over the next 4 days, so stay tuned for some interesting subjects.

I guess I'll start with the most time critical and talk about Saturday night's gig at the Luminaire, Greg Holden's farewell show before travelling off to the US for a year in search of his dream, even more fame and fortune, which I might add...he'll get in abundance.

The gig itself was a youtube thing as part of the Summer In The City event that's been happening here in London over the weekend. So Greg was I think the second or third act of the evening which included another youtube success story Blue Skies. Greg's set whilst not containing surprises, was fun and somehow fresh and brilliant. The most mindblowing thing was seeing so many people singing along to Bar On A, Art of Falling - which wowed Greg and I guess those of us who have been at some of the shows over the summer, and it shows just how far he's come in such a short space of time and just how much attention he's starting to draw to himself and his music. It was a great gig filled with a tinge, just a tiny bit of sadness that it was Greg's last in the UK for a long time but filled with happiness that he was sent on his travels with such an awesome memory of the summer.

All the videos are up on my youtube channel, which you can also access from the side bar (----> thatta way).

So Greg's now off to tour with Ingrid Michaelson in the US for a month or two playing some amazing venues in front of big crowds each night and well, his musical journey is about to get all the richer (not just financially). He's got a new EP about to hit the shelves next month so it really is a great time for Greg. The UK is a poorer place musically without him but he'll return next year, if not sooner an even greater musician than he leaves.

Right then, that's part 1 done, more to follow either later tonight...or more likely tomorrow :-)

xx

something for the weekend...

2009-08-28T22:00:00.004+01:00

The last couple of days have been tiring to say the least and totally self-inflicted, but I wanted to drop a quick note down to say, if you're in London this weekend and you want to see something worthwhile, head on over to the Luminaire in Kilburn tomorrow night (Saturday 29th) to see the brilliant Greg Holden perform his last UK date before he heads back to the US for possibly a long, long time.

The gig is absolutely free so there's no excuse to not be there really. I can't remember what time he's on but 9pm seems to stick out in my mind.

Seriously people, you cannot afford to miss it!

That's pretty much all you're getting tonight, except to say I'm currently listening to Idan Rabinovici's album Bedroom Folk and will at some point over the next couple of days give you a review of his album.

doing something really cool...

2009-08-25T23:56:00.004+01:00

Ok this is a slightly self-induglent post tonight, so I'm aplogising in advance but I wanted to share this with the world. Right now and inspired and helped by someone probably fast asleep right now in Scandinavia, I am writing and singing my first song. Ok well it's sort of my song, well least it will be by the time I've finished.

Let me explain the lyrics, well least the originals actually belong to a global musician, a very famous one at that. They are lyrics to a song never published by the musician but yet I have them and they are hand written and can be authenticated by anyone anywhere in the world. So these lyrics, well they needed a bit of work, god alone knows why I felt qualified to do this but anyways I've started sketching out some re-drafts, working on a chorus, chopping down a verse and adding some chords to go with it and when I nail a chorus and a middle bridge well...it might just get played to that certain someone in Scandinavia who has already had a first sight of it.

It's so cool and well, I just don't want to share with the world who the artist is, because it's kinda special to me and well I'll probably get a billion questions and non-believers, but trust me folks...when you see and maybe hear the song...if I get the balls to ever youtube it, you might realise who the lyrics might belong to.

Oh and as an aside, today I started listening to Idan Rabinovici's solo album Bedroom Folk which on first pass I can recommend wholeheartedly. I want to have another scan or two at it but you'll get an in depth review shortly.

Back to the guitar...

Nite xx

Some exciting links, some updates.....

2009-08-24T20:52:00.002+01:00

Ok I confess I had nothing to blog about tonight, I wasn't feeling excited at all so I wasn't going to....until I logged onto Facebook and found a couple of exciting links which I felt needed sharing.

Firstly, ever wondered what being an independent musician is all about and what it takes and why it's important that you get out and support them, and buy their music...here's a podcast featuring an interview with the amazing singer/songwriter, Jay Nash. Click here to have a listen to it, it's well worth it, even though Jay sounds perhaps a bit disinterested, or maybe it's because the interviewer doesn't stop talking and let Jay speak. But listen to the 12 minute mark....VERY exciting news, although I still don't have the EP released months ago....damn iTunes.

Secondly, have a listen to this if you fancy having your mind blown...this is a sample from Greg Holden's forthcoming EP, it is amazing, absolutely amazing and a really nice sound. It's due out in September....go buy his album now, then when the EP comes out...buy, buy and buy more!!! Check out the sample right here.

Enjoy both xx

Worshipping the Sun...

2009-08-23T23:34:00.004+01:00

Well what do you know? Today has been the most beautiful day here in London. I actually can't put in to words just how amazing it's been. Not the hottest day of the year but honestly the most beautiful by some considerable distance. It's been really warm but with a nice breeze and not a cloud in the sky and there was a really great urban sunset too, you know sun disappearing behind buildings and that odd way that light bends itself round things and can make even the dullest objects just look totally amazing...just stunning, a day I will remember for a while.

So I was in the car driving home and wanted to put on musically something sun related, just cos I was in awe of what the big ole star can do for us. I had a quick scan through my iPod and had this idea that wouldn't it be cool if you could do a search based on lyrics in songs or song titles and build a playlist based on that??... someone somewhere will now steal my idea and become insanely rich, so it's my idea and you owe me big time!!! anyways I found more songs than I realised with the Sun in the title.

So here's a few Sun titled songs you may not have heard of which you can have a look at/listen to and well they're not necessarily happy songs, in fact they're probably all right downers but hey the sun is why we're all here scientifically speaking, it's a huge source of inspiration...so let's give those constant raging gases, heat and light a bit of worship for making life possible and well, delivering us sweet, sweet crazy summers days that just take that little bit of breathe away from us all...

Brendan James - The Sun Will Rise
Cary Brothers - Bottled The Sun
Kid Lightning (Dave Gibbs) - Sunshine and Cinammon
Gin Blossoms - California Sun
Hafdis Huld - Who Loves The Sun
Howie Day - Standing In The Sun
REM - Around The Sun
Tonic - Sunflower
Toploader - Following The Sun
Vertical Horizon - Sunshine

I wonder how many songs on iTunes have the word Sun in it...hmmm too many I reckon and something I shouldn't worry my mind with at the time...

Nite all xxx

Walk away, come back and try again...

2009-08-21T23:52:00.006+01:00

Hello world :-)

I just typed a massive long blog, something happened and i got logged out, it didn't autosave past the first 3 lines and well now those words are gone forever and it's getting late and well by the time i remember it all, I'll be fast asleep. So in condensed form...I noticed a lot more of you are popping by to see what i'm on about on a daily basis...hi to you all. It's really cool that you're stopping by, it means we have musical tastes which at least partially match which is really cool and by proxy makes you cool too, at least in my eyes and i hope you're buying into my vision about sharing music and the brilliance of live music.

Now I love the idea you all pop by but I want you to communicate a bit more, give me your thoughts on what i'm talking about, give some recommendations, tell me when i'm wrong, tell me when I'm right. you can do it in the comments section at the end of each post but i guess some of you probably feel a bit uneasy doing this, or maybe don't realise you can, so I've decided to give you another medium to get in touch...via the power of email: mrrichmuk@googlemail.com - so now you have no issue...go on, come say hi, I won't bite :-)

I'm working on a cool idea at the moment which will need you all to get involved. I can't say what it is yet cos I don't know if it can be done and if I can commit to it but get ready for something a bit novel.

Right now onto the music which is what we're all here to discuss. Ever get an album where you think "bahhhhhhh that's ok, nothing special, not as good as i hoped, move on"? I had that with an album I've had for about 7 months which for some reason I recently forced myself to give another airing to. The album in question is Emerson Hart's debut solo album Cigarettes and Gasoline. For those of you who don't know, Emerson is also member of the US band Tonic (which also includes Jeff Russo of Low Stars fame). So I gave the album another airing and I found it was much better than I originally thought, a lot better in fact it was actually a very good album, to the point that the good songs seem great, in particular "Flyin" which is an awesome track. Check out the video and the studio track is on Emerson's myspace page.

What was the last album/artist that did that to you? Drop me a comment or an email, I'd love to know.

Right then, take 2 complete, shorter, less wordy and not as good but you get the idea and now I'll try and get this weary head and the pillows acquainted for the night.

happy weekending peoples xx

Maybe a bit of a flat Release from Sister Hazel???

2009-08-20T22:36:00.006+01:00

Ok I guess since I started blogging its all been really positive, apart from the French hip hop, electric guitarist idiot from a few weeks ago at the Road Trip that needs to be locked up for what he did. But tonight in this short blog, and I mean short, I'm going to break a bit with tradition and give something a cautious thumbs down and I feel really guilty for doing this because my depth of research shows that I am probably in no position to judge.

One of my favourite finds from last year was Florida Rock band Sister Hazel. I quickly acquired all their albums including their live acoustic set and fell in love with a lot of the tracks. They're a talented bunch of musicians with a nice sound and some great songs, a few "that cut just a little too deep" (that's a line from Mrs Potters Lullaby which is a Counting Crows song - as well as a line in my blog...awesome connection).

So for months they've been building up to their new album Release, I think I saw the first promos on Facebook and on their Myspace back in April, and well I got a bit excited as I guess my musical attention has been turned elsewhere over the past few months. So the album comes out this week and here's where the caveate lies...I heard 30 second samples of each track on the iTunes store and you know, I wasn't impressed. Before you judge my musical judgement, let me tell you why not. Each Sister Hazel album has been slightly different from their last (musically the sounds change so much between albums right the way through from their self-titled debut album through Fortress and Lift, etc). Every time there's been something that makes you think, wow that's a new direction, that's a bit different, that's fresh....sort of in the way that Counting Crows can produce an album like Recovering The Satellites which is quite heavy and electric musically and then throw out This Desert Life (musically in my opinion the best album they have ever produced) which has a very different sound to it.

Release just didn't give me that feeling and you can usually get that in a few seconds. It seems like a solid album and the songs could probably nicely fit into any of their other albums comfortably. That's not a bad thing but I guess I hoped they'd continue evolving and well maybe just maybe they've found their limit and I'm getting picky. As I said I heard 30 second clips and I will get hold of a copy but it's just a bit underwhelming. I wonder what other people think...

Shorter tonight as promised and after a marathon video uploading session last night, I am off to bed early....Ciao people xxxx

Final thoughts on the past 3 weeks...

2009-08-20T00:05:00.005+01:00

May and early June belonged to Counting Crows, June and early July belonged to Greg Holden and the last 4 weeks firmly to 7 of the most amazingly talented musicians from Israel. You know by now you're probably sick and tired of me blogging about Roy Rieck and The Medley Band or Strange Folks but just indulge me for one last time - for the moment, just because as a set of musicians, they deserve just one more shot of attention.

It's rare today that you find something musically that sounds so fresh. 90% maybe more of what you hear you kind of think "oh man, they're good, they sound a bit like.........". that's not a bad thing, not every musician or band can have his/her/their own sound and if the comparison is good all the better but it makes it so great when you find something that doesn't sound like anything else, that has its own sound - ladies and gents, these guys are that unique sound.

Last night's double-header Strange Folks / Roy Rieck and The Medley Band farewell gig at The Slaughtered Lamb was just brilliant. A great way for the guys to sign off what's been a brilliant UK stay - if the last 3 weeks of personal experience are anything to go by plus the volume of CD sales last night.

And what makes it even more amazing is that I keep finding new things musically about these guys that just wows me. They are technically as musicians nothing short of amazing...I know I've said that before and maybe it's getting boring, but it's valid so I'll say it again and again till you all believe it and buy their albums. What I found out last night much to my absolute amazement is the depth of how amazing a set of musicians they are, they just keep surprising over and over again.

For example, you can't help but be envious of anyone who sings, plays the guitar brilliantly, can play the lap steel whilst playing the xylophone and is a classically trained concert pianist - how Idan can do all that is way beyond me and now he's adding to that the pedal lap steel. For one person to have that much musical talent is just unfair. But it extends right the way through the band from Roy's Harmonica all the way down to Nadav on the drums and Hamudi on the Saxophone.

So for those of you in Israel who are heading to see Okkervil River next month, do yourselves a big favour and get to the venue early, get a beer and get inside and watch these guys, then buy the CDs and well you'll see where I've been coming from for the past 3 weeks.

"Guys - thank you for the CD, for the warmth and friendship and for the amazing music. See you in October and keep in touch!!!"

Right then, I promise not to mention anymore about the bands just for the moment. So I'm going to move on to something else. Playing after the guys last night was a band called Animal Kingdom who are signed to Warner Bros (who incidentally REM are signed to - that's not impressive as a fact in the slightest I know, but I thought I'd throw a bit of trivia out there). Anyways, they've recently been supporting Snow Patrol and they played a good set. They're still a bit raw and there's something quite newish about them but they have a nice slightly raw sound and a distinctive vocal which is really good. They have a single out now called Tin Man, which I bought last night and they have an album coming out in September. Well worth a listen to and if nothing else, have a look at the video header on their myspace for Tin Man which is seriously impressive.

Oh and one final exciting tidbit for tonight. I've decided with my videos to go a bit more upmarket with the production values...ok slight bend of the facts. You'll notice if you take a look on the latest videos I added to YouTube that I've started adding title sequences to the beginning and end of each video. I don't know why I decided to do that but it just seems to be quite cool and I guess helps give the musician a bit more publicity in case the casual viewer doesn't see or can't be bothered to view the info in the sidebar. It does throw up a bit of a problem though...I have to be extra careful now to make sure that the titles match the song and as I just found out, I made 1 mistake already...so a bit more attention to detail than normal is needed in Adobe Premiere Pro.

On that note, from a hot and humid London and from a man who's thighs are burning from an overheating laptop and who has rambled on long enough, I'm done for tonight.

Night night people, wherever you may be!

Rich xx

Wow...just wow!

2009-08-17T00:31:00.006+01:00

It's odd. A couple of months ago, I started blogging, I have no idea why, I guess I just wanted to put down somewhere my thoughts and feelings about music to go along with my videos on youtube.

I checked the hit counter today and it's gone over the 200 mark today and shot up in the past week which is really awesome. I haven't yet worked out if it's the same 1 person other than me viewing the blog over and over or if it's lots of you but a big thanks for stopping by and reading whatever you've found...rest assured, I have loads more to say. Also thanks to Roy Rieck who I know published a link to my blog on his MySpace site.

I think I started two months ago by moaning about the lack of synchronisation between Itunes stores around the world...two months on, I'm moaning still. I just want Jay Nash's EP, is it so hard for you people to stick it on the store? Just get this into some perspective Itunes people whoever you might be and the music industry as a whole, you don't want people to illegally download music, well make it available so people can pay for it when they want it. I want to pay for this EP, give me the means to do it will you please?!?!?!

Right onto the next bit of news, the last post I said that the Strange Folks / Roy Rieck and the Medley Band were heading back to Israel to support a band "something river", having forgotten what the "something" was....I can now confirm it's Okkervil River. I still haven't a clue who they are but I will add it to my homework list.

And finally...(for those of you in the UK, I feel very Trevor MacDonald like right now and for those of you who haven't a clue, this will explain - just the first 4 seconds!)

Well through the power of the internet, (which I believe we take for granted) I have found many things and through those things I have found people around the world who share in the things I enjoy and consequently made friends with these people. One is a very recent friend who I sort of met without ever saying hi to, but who shares some of the same musical tastes as me and is also a big fan of the mighty Greg Holden. Her name is Kamila and well, this evening I found a cover version of hers of Greg's song Bar On A. You have to see it, she has such a sweet and beautiful voice.

Right, it's getting very, very late, you've had a mixed post tonight...a moan, a recommendation and I've cleared up a few minor details and found myself some more homework to do.

Thanks again for stopping by and feel free to drop me a message on here, youtube or whatever.

Night all xx

"We like to see how many people we can fit on a stage at any one time..."

2009-08-14T23:14:00.006+01:00

...says Idan Rabinovici of Strange Folks...."the most we've ever managed is 16, tonight there's just 7."

And 7 works just fine for me, it's a good number, it sounds good on paper, it sounds awesome to the ear (although I'd love to see 16 of them play together). It was a fantastic show last night, its a simple as that.

Before I delve further, today I wrote out on a postit note all the things I wanted to put in the blog tonight, and I left it on my desk in the office...so I'm working off the memory banks, which is risky.

Back to business. The guys played a set of 7 songs last night including one of my top 3 songs of the moment "Jared's Blues". I absolutely adore this song, I can't tell you exactly why apart from musically it's just perfect and it resonates with me. It's been on in the car, on the iPod, just about everywhere, infact as I type this I have the video playing on youtube. It seems from the video that the place was dead in this video but when they broke out into Thinking Cap, the place seemed to completely change with people dancing all over the place. Videos of the entire set are on my youtube channel (which is in the sidebar - i love writing that, I sound like a pro).

The real shame of the evening was that the set went by so quickly. Half an hour just doesn't seem long enough, and the camera had plenty of room for more videos and the battery was up for the challenge too.

As my friend big Dave S said last night, "some raw bands beat the hell out of their instruments trying to outplay the rest of the band, these guys are just so comfortable playing as a band that it just works amazingly well...they have a great sound." - He knows what he's talking about and I know this because he turned to me at one point and said that it reminded him a bit of Cat Stevens or Yusuf as he's now known. Turns out the gig guide on this website agrees.

So I knew going last night, that it was going to be their last gig in London, but now I know why. They're heading back to Israel to act as support to an American band who are touring there next month (the name escapes me, I think it was something...river - I needed a postit note then too). What I didn't know was that the guys had to go back because of visas too. That's sad in a big way, but Idan and Roy tell me they'll be back in the late Autumn / early Winter and that is great news.

So from a humble fan to a great set of musicians...guys thank you so much for 3 brilliant nights of music and two brilliant CDs. Safe trip back to the holy land and see you in a few months.

Musically this last few weeks has really proved my point, if you don't go out and listen to live music and support it, well then there's a good chance you'll miss out on great music, just as I might have had I opted not to make it to Monkey Chews that night.

Night all xxx

PS. - I can now clarify something that people keep asking me about the whole Roy Rieck and the Medley Band and Strange Folks two bands in one thing. Here's the crack, its exactly the same set of guys, except the lead singers alternate between Roy Rieck (Medley Band) and Idan Rabinovici (Strange Folks) AND yes, they play two different sets of music and they actually sound somewhat different.

Never leave home without...

2009-08-13T08:13:00.003+01:00

I have a confession to make. Last night I made a bit of a fuck up, I let people down, I maybe even failed the world...I went out and left the camera at home. To be fair, I didn't go out with the intention of seeing any music, it was supposedly a drinking night and it just so happened that three of us ended up in the Bar Music Hall in Shoreditch and they had several live acts.

So what I'm trying to say is, there was music, I didn't video it so I can't accurately share with you through the power of youtube what I saw, so you'll have to do some more of the work this time...sorry!!

First up was a girly called Thea Ford who sort of reminded me a bit of Sheryl Crow meets Avril Lavigne meets Alanis Morrisette with perhaps even a bit of Shakira thrown in. She played with a largeish ensemble of guitars, keyboards, drums and two backing singers. A nice set if a little dampened by an over aggressive bass through the sound system. Anyways all of this comes to you from the memory banks and the little flyer sitting next to me. She has an album coming out very soon called "Monkey to the West" which she's launching at the Bush Hall in Shepherds Bush on 21st August. Check her out, she's not bad at all.

Then we saw a band called goodtimes goodtimes who had a nice sound and some outstanding guitars, 3 maybe 4 of them. I can't really say much about them apart from they put together a nice set, sort of reminded me in places musically of, dare I say, Coldplay (who I loathe) mixed with Toploader meets the influences of the Beatles, Bob Dylan, blah blah blah blah I'm name dropping bands now. So anyways, they were good too.

There were a couple more acts but couldnt tell you who or what as we moved on to another place shortly after, but damn am I sorry I didn't take the camera with.

Anyways excitingly tonight I'm off to see Strange Folks play the Hope and Anchor in Angel, now the camera will be in tow...fact!

Wherever you are, have a good day :-)

Peace x

Sublime to ridiculous...

2009-08-09T10:33:00.002+01:00

So Wednesday night I went to see Roy Rieck and The Medley Band play at the Road Trip. They were as it turned out last on / the headline act and absolutenly nailed what was a brilliant set. There's videos from their set on my youtube channel (which you can also access from the links panel on the right).

Before Roy and the guys came on, there were 3 other acts. Two were solo female musicians who put on nice sets but were seemingly easily forgettable I guess due to the noise in the place. That forgettable I didnt even get a name for either.

However what caught my eye for the wrong reason was something abhorent. This guy turned up on stage with what I can only describe as the worst act ever. To put this into perspective, Simon Cowell would have taken out a shot gun and plowed this buffoon down if he'd appeared on a talent show. This guy turned up with a loop recorder, electric guitar and a his own personal beat box and played a routine he described as "I improvise everything, I get up and I have no idea what I'm going to play". It was awful to say the least, I had no idea what he was playing either...some people really need to be told that music isn't for them and they need to go and get a proper job. I wish I had taken a video just to show people what music isn't except space was running short on the camera and I thought I'd save it for Roy and the boys.

So I learnt another valuable lesson on Wednesday night...not all unheard of musicians need to be heard!!

Two days, two gigs...

2009-08-04T23:03:00.004+01:00

Tomorrow I'm embarking on a first, two gigs back to back...(swigging on a drink I sound so pretentious) infact I almost sound like the rock star, yet all I'm doing is standing and watching, drinking and capturing some songs on camera...still it's hard work in my book ok?!?!

First up is a night with the newly found and much listened to Roy Rieck and the Medley Band playing at the Road Trip in Shoreditch (incorporating Strange Folks...I still can't get my head around that one, I will try and get that one nailed tomorrow night with a quick chat with Roy or Idan). So that will be very cool indeed.

Thursday night will be a trip back to the cool house that is Monkey Chews to go and see yet another eARMusic night...I really must buy one of their season tickets and save myself a fortune. All I know is that Kicaberry are playing. I briefly saw these guys (well guy and girl to be precise) once back in early July when they played a set after Greg Holden and Chloe Temtchine.

So the camera will be on double overtime this week and there's a few minor and major logistical problems trying to clear the camera down from Wednesday night for Thursday's onslaught. I haven't yet figured out how but I need to find 4 to 6 hours that don't exist to get the vids off and process them...challenges...but nice challenges.

Anyways that isn't even remotely close to a recommendation, a review or anything more than a random splurge so to balance it out nicely...

I've been sitting here listening via myspace to a band called The Wishing Well. Never heard of them and I actually don't know how I stumbled across them. But their music is quite nice, nothing standoutishly brilliant but nice and quite mellow I like it, maybe not enough to think "damn I need this record" but it's good. Actually in continuing to listen I can sort of see a distant, very distant similarity to Five for Fighting (not in the vocals) but just the music itself, I can imagine Jon's voice belting over the top...now there's a band I haven't heard anything from for years...time to dig the CDs out, although I see I've missed 2 or 3 albums....hmmm.

Apparently they're a bunch of Aussies, thus proving that there is something better than Kylie, Jason and Savage Garden on the other side of the world.

Anyways there's an offering of a review...and now I get to the end I remember how I found The Wishing Well...they're playing a gig on Saturday night with Roy Rieck and The Medley Band...

Night night you random visitors whoever and wherever you may be xx

PS - Oh shit, I almost forgot something exciting, Will Hoge has put up on his myspace player the title track from his new album which is called "The Wreckage"....the song and the album. Check it out!

Lots of Strange Folks and the Chronicles of Paul

2009-07-30T22:14:00.003+01:00

Last night I asked the fantastic Lucy Rose and Simba if eARMusic ever put on a bad show. 6 shows in and the answer I keep forming in my own mind is NO!

Last night just confirmed again what I always say...there is nothing better than live music. Turned up to what's fast becoming one of my favourite places, the very cosy, homely and relaxing Monkey Chews in Chalk Farm with not a clue of who was performing, apart from Lucy would be hosting the evening so in my mind sub-conciously I set my expectations low...Greg Holden, Chloe Temtchine, Lisa Mitchell, Lucy Rose that calibre isn't easy to beat or come close to...but it was equalled again.

There were five acts but two that really stood out. First up was a total unknown, least to me...Paul Cook (and the Chronicles). As I now know Paul played in 2 previous bands...Brinkman and The Vessels and is sort of in the throws of forming a new band (hence the chronicles bit). Paul has a really good strong yet subtle voice that sort of reminds me a bit of Elvis Costello...maybe more than a bit but its cool either way. Anyways he played a great solo set and I stupidly didn't get more than 2 videos...which was a huge mistake. Anyways...check these out...

Bye Bye Him and Guilt

He also has a youtube channel...where there's some more videos of Paul playing in the bathroom. Go check him out, he is very cool.

Now my other little discovery, a band well two bands in one. So let me set the scene. There's one band (of 7 members) but then there's another band featuring half the actual band (3....so technically a lie....42.8% to be precise), playing under a different name....confused.com???? yep!!!!

I'll call them firstly by the collective name and then for the purposes of not confusing myself...I'll call them by the form the sub 43% form they took last night for the rest of the post...

Full Name - Roy Rieck and The Medley Band
Small Band - Strange Folks

So these are 3 guys I believe from THE Holy Land of Israel who all moved over to the UK a few months back...for the better weather of course...obviously to try and make some good music. I'll start by simply saying that the guys last night were three of the most talented musicians I have seen in a long time. Two amazing guitarists, one of whom simply owns the Lap Steel guitar whilst playing the Xylophone...impressive. The other is a vastly talents Electric guitarist of the highest order. Backing this up is Roy Rieck who sings and plays a beautiful Harmonica.

As a three-piece band they played a mix of electric and part acoustic folk/rock songs and judging by the CD I listened to and added to my iPod today, as a seven-strong unit they play the same but a bit more jazzy. There's some great tracks in there and if you're in London they're playing a few gigs near you soon...check them out.

iLike, youLike, weLike...take a gamble!!!

2009-07-27T22:59:00.003+01:00

Quick post tonight as I feel decidedly under the weather and possibly about to share in an illness the rest of the world is dealing with right now (least I won't be alone).

Anyhoo - (I've got that into a blog twice now...and maybe that's starting to sound a bit retarded??) - there's a stack of wierd and wonderful tools out there designed to help you find decent music if you want it. Some of my favourites include Music-Map which is pretty damn smart, Pandora (which has been brutally taken away from the UK), Hypem and of course iLike.

Now alot of these are highly subjective so I tend to take them all with a pinch of salt. That being said Pandora is, in my opinion something extremely clever and the pursuit of good music is somewhat made more difficult without its very presence.

iLike is a bit of an odd one really. I have the iLike sidebar installed in iTunes and it throws up most of the time an odd array of unsigned artists or live versions of songs. Tendency on my part and I'm sure everyone elses is to ingore what you don't know or maybe to get a bit adventurous listen to a couple, get bit bored then move on.

Tonight I felt brave so I hit the play button against a couple of bands and to my surprise found a couple of real potential gems, one of which is a band called The Wilcot. Don't ask me to fill in the facts, I genuinely haven't got a clue about who they are, where they are, even how many of them there are....actually that's just displayed a total lack of effort on my part because a 3 second scan of their myspace page shows 4 guys from Joplin, Missouri. Anyways I've heard a couple of tracks and like an increasing number of emerging artists they have released 6 songs on a gratis basis. I've given them all a spin once and whilst they're not setting the world alight at this stage, they have some talent.

So the messages of tonight are, 1, don't judge a book by it's cover....I can post much longer blogs than I say...2, you have to work a bit harder with iLike than some other music finding services but it's worth it and...3, when blogging, spend that extra 2 seconds to research the subject so you don't look a total twat.

And with those thoughts I'll leave you with one final tidbit...My iPod is still stuck on Augustana. I have tried for a few days to resolve the problem but it just seems unable to move. In other words, I cannot put the music down, it is seriously good. I can't get enough of All the Stars and Boulevards, in particular Sunday Best, Boston, Mayfield and All the Stars and Boulevards. It's so fresh, so vibrant and so well produced and just damn amazing music.

Time to crash, let's hope the pigs don't come spread their germs near me!!!

Something exciting and new...

2009-07-23T21:15:00.005+01:00

I haven't blogged for about a week, mainly cos I just felt I had nothing exciting to want to say to the world and then well then that all changed about two days ago when I made no no that's not true, I researched something which appeared to be of potential interest.

So right across America this Summer there's a tour going down. Labelled at "The Saturday Night Rebel Rockers" playing the "Traveling (should be a second L in that word but that's Ameriglish for you) Circus and Medicine Show". Sounds like some sort of a freak show but features my absolute favourite band Counting Crows (have I mentioned that I like them before - haha) and an up until the other day unknown-t0-me band called Augustana.

So now I know who Augustana are in a very BIG way. My Ipod is for the first time in what seems an eternity playing something fresh and brilliant. I'm smitten at the moment with their album "All the Stars and Boulevards" and there are some beautiful, deep, angst ridden, heart wrenching tracks on there as well as a some great ballads and some fresh and challenging music and well that's all I want to say about the matter really. Apart from you absolutely must go and check them out at all costs, without fail and if you don't well you're just a complete mentalist or a bit of a retard really. I can't yet comment on their most recent album because my Ipod won't allow me to play anything else just yet apart from at peripheral scan level but it too sounds great.

The power of support acts

2009-07-16T23:42:00.003+01:00

So how many of us are guilty of doing this? We book tickets to see a band or a musician we really like, we find out what time they're on and then what do we do, either turn up late or sit outside drinking beer...all the time not knowing or hearing what's going down on stage.

Today I was in the car listening to 2 acts who supported Counting Crows on tour in the UK last month, one being Blind Pilot, the other being a solo artist, Saul Ashby. Whilst Blind Pilot played a set at Wembley I naively sat outside with a beer in my hand pondering the Crows choices for a setlist along with the majority of an 8,000 - 10,000 strong crowd...big mistake.

So then the Brixton gig got re-scheduled because Adam Duritz was ill and this time I made an effort to see the support act...Saul Ashby. The guy was amazing. For a solo artist, virtually, if not completely unknown to come on stage and play a solo acoustic set in front of I'd guess a crowd at that point in excess of 2,500, was simply awesome. Had I opted for the beer and chat outside I would have missed something quite special.

Why do we do it? I guess we have this in built notion that the act we have come to see, in this case Counting Crows is all we really want to see so whatever else is playing no matter how good it is, is just not worth seeing.

This got me thinking...the best way to get people in their seats early is for the "headline act" to open the show, play for a while, go off for an undisclosed amount of time, then come back and play a set. Then an arena/venue would be filled start to finish.

I thought I was being a pioneer and then, well turns out someone else had the same idea. Counting Crows are currently on a tour (with some odd name I am far too drunk right now to remember) with Augustana (who I know nothing of, yet!), and they're doing exactly that according to this update from Adam Duritz.

So it's a request/preach tonight. Next time you go to a gig, get in and see the support act(s). I learnt the hard way of what I was missing whilst having a beer outside...go support the lesser artists...more times than not they're awesome.

I am a bit drunk right now so I hope that all makes sense. Basically drink less. listen and drink more :-)

If you've got nothing to say...

2009-07-14T23:17:00.003+01:00

Find something. In fact I just stated I hadn't blogged for a few days and got ribbed for not having something to say. So I was challenged to come up with something and well I don't do contrived well so...this could be the world's worst blog entry ever, well I can think of one or two more worthy of that title but it could be a car crash.

The last few days I've had my Ipod on shuffle mode which actually means it just plays good music all the time without me thinking about what I want to listen to, which makes the choice somewhat easier. Randomly it brought up a bit of Tennessee's finest, Will Hoge.

I hadn't listened to any of Will's stuff for a while and had forgotten just how much I loved some of his music, particularly his albums Blackbird On a Lonely Wire and Draw The Curtains. Will plays what I call real old fashioned traditional at times big band rock and roll with a hint of bluesy.

Anyways about a year ago, Will was in the process of recording a new album when he had a road accident on the way back from the studio which left him in a bad way...broken ribs, sternum, leg, knee cap, shoulder blades. He's been slowly recovering and has been out on the road again and it reminded me that his new album can't be far off so it's time to get re-familiarised with Will.

Go check him out, he's a great live performer and his music is very cool.

There, a half drunk, late night, I've got nothing to say recommendation. That's all you're getting for now, hopefully it was succinct enough. Goodnight world xx

Let It Burn...

2009-07-10T20:45:00.004+01:00

Not an exercise video or diet tip. Last night we headed over to Monkey Chews in Chalk Farm (London) to yet another awesome live gig put on by the brilliant eAR Music. Sadly missed the first act Lisa Mitchell, catching just the last 2 minutes of her set from the corridor but by all accounts she was awesome, you couldn't get in the room there were that many people. Then came the brilliant Greg Holden who played an amazing set but what then followed was mind blowing.

Over from the US was Chloe Temtchine. I'd never heard of her before, most of the people there hadn't by the silent(ish) reaction. She sung for about 40 minutes what I could only describe as a sort of Acoustic, R&B meets Pop meets Soul. She was mindblowingly awesome, not only does she play the guitar, the piano (well keyboard) but managed to sing in 3 languages...don't that type of talent make you sick with envy??? She was nothing short of amazing. Take a look at my youtube channel, I put up a few videos, but check her out she might just blow your mind.

Major breakthrough's and minor miracles

2009-07-04T21:39:00.003+01:00

The title of my forthcoming album...I think not!!! You'll never see one of those from me... on the basis that some things are best left to those with real talent.

Anyhoo (I've always wanted to say that out loud and never done it)...I've owned a guitar for 8 months and been trying to teach myself how to play it. I go through frustrating parts where I feel like giving it up but then I have little breakthroughs which make me want to keep working at it.

The first was when I learnt properly how to play my first song, Walkaways (not the official video but I just found this and it's really cool) by Counting Crows from Recovering the Satellites, which is a short song with quite repetitive chords but something I've really struggled with is singing albeit badly with the guitar. I've found the concept of this totally alien to the point I actually almost gave up.

Early in June I was lucky to grab an hour or so with Greg Holden after his gig at Monkey Chews and over a few beers I said to him that I tried to sing and play and simply couldn't and I was so shocked to learn he couldn't either for the first 6 months. It made me feel a little less retarded, even if he was bending the truth to make me feel normal, which is possible.

So wind the clock forward a month and I've been trying to master his song Bar On A. I've got the chorus sorted and I play the bridge from the chorus into the verses brilliantly (IMHO) although I find the chords in the verses quite tricky at the moment. But there I was playing the chorus and all of a sudden bang, I started singing and it worked, to the point I did it again, and again and again....significant breakthrough, even if it's a tiny part of the song....it's still a result.

Anyways that's not a review of anything but my lack of talent, and perhaps a bit self-indulgent but I just felt it needed sharing with the world...oh and no I won't be youtubing or making a CD so please no requests...it would make you very very unwell.

There's something about Holly...

2009-07-02T21:43:00.003+01:00

At a couple of recent gigs in London where the brilliant Greg Holden and Julia Nunes were "headlining", I saw the really fun and very talented Lucy Rose (or Holly as she's also now known) play a couple of short sets. I found this video on youtube of a song of hers called Give Me A Sign which is really quite cool. Check out her myspace page too if you like what you see.

Fancy a late night guitar lesson?

2009-07-02T00:01:00.004+01:00

Ok so I'm getting a bit more in tune with this whole blogging concept now, so here's a short one tonight before I crash.

If you've found my youtube channel then by now you've realised that I am quite a big fan of the ridiculously talented and still unsigned British artist Greg Holden. If you haven't well go check it out right now...no really go and do it...NOW! Have you done it yet?

So assuming you've either done it or you've followed orders, you'll see exactly who Greg is and what he's all about...anyways...Greg is quite a frequent video poster on youtube and tonight has posted up his first tutorial showing you how to play one of his songs Bar On A .

I've had a go, will need a bit of practice but if you've got a guitar, give it a go. It's a great song by a great musician.

Have a look at this one too. It's Greg and Julia Nunes singing the same song together...works brilliantly.

That's it, simple as that...enjoy!

Late night listening...

2009-07-01T00:26:00.002+01:00

Ok so third blog in and now...now finally you get a review...of sorts. Picture if you will the scene (for those of you who stumble across my blog from outside the UK), today it's been about 32C (or 90F) - yes we do get weather that hot in the UK (rarely, but it does happen)!!!

So tonight is one of those warm summer evenings where it stays warm all night and it's just a bit difficult to sleep. I just went out for a quick drive on a bit of a scouting mission to look at somewhere that's nothing more than a pipe dream at this stage, BUT I got in the car, iPod in tow debating what to put on to accompany me on the 15 minute drive each way.

I find late at night (it's now midnight here) I need simple, relaxing, soothing acoustics, nothing complicated, heavy nor electric so I had a quick scout through and landed at Jonathan Clay's Acoustic Sessions album, which I got as a free download from his MySpace page a while back (not sure if it's still there now - check the blog history).

The premise behind the album is simple...a major denim clothes manufacturer (no shameless plugging of brands on my blog) gets plugged before each song by Jonathan, then you get acoustic versions of songs from Jonathan's albums Whole New Me and Back to Good. That's how the album becomes a free download...clever concept, bordering on genius if you ask me. The clothing manufacturer pays for the advertising...which in turn pays for the album production, which means that we the customer gets it for free, genius, anyways I digress.

The album is actually great, perfect for a night like this and I'd forgotten how much I liked some of the tracks until I put it on just now, in particular More Than A Picture, Hello Goodbye and After All.

So check him out, download the acoustic album, if it's still there or better still go buy his music, that is if you're impressed of course.

Let me know what you think too :-)

Oh and if you haven't checked out my youtube channel yet, please do...

Record labels, who needs them?

2009-06-30T19:49:00.003+01:00

Second blog and I haven't even reviewed any music or really talked about anything which perhaps means I need to change the wording on the header?

Recently a friend and I were discussing the importance of record labels today and how the internet and technology as a whole has allowed artists to explore new avenues in producing music and both the positive and negative effects of this.

My favourite band Counting Crows, recently announced that they were leaving their record label and going independent. Years ago that would have been considered career suicide, how things have changed?

So the internet has opened up a world of new music to us, but technological advances means today it's easier than ever before to produce music, which is a good thing granted but also means that trying to find the really really good stuff is that bit harder.

So do record labels have any place today? Perhaps their role if anything is no more than being a good promotional company? What do you think, particularly if you're in favour of record labels.

By the way don't forget to check out my Youtube Channel :-)

I wish the iTunes store would sync itself....worldwide!!!

2009-06-30T00:04:00.004+01:00

So here goes the very first blog and I'm starting with a bit of a rant...

iTunes or more precisely the iTunes store...Isn't it so annoying when there's a new album you want which has been released in another country yet your local iTunes store hasn't yet picked it up and added it to the store? Urghhh it's so frustrating. I have been waiting about 2 weeks for a new EP by LA-based singer/songwriter Jay Nash - www.myspace.com/jaynash (who you'll come to hear lots about, if you stick with me) which was released in the US but hasn't hit any UK music store which means that I and Jay's other non-US fans are without what appears to be a great EP.

This is one of those examples where the music industry really shoots itself in the foot. There are people wanting to pay for good music and they can't buy it even though it's released. We now live in an age where music is truly global, so sharing it and enabling those who want it to be able to buy it is surely imperative, particularly given the amount of illegal downloads of music out there.

I'd be interested to hear of anyone else having the same frustration be it musicians or those buying music.

Next time we'll tackle the bigger issues, like why does your iPod take so long to sync or rather backup and is there a way to stop backups? No no, we won't that's just another one of my rants, hey feel free to comment on that too :-)

By the way I am actually a HUGE fan of Apple, iTunes and my iPod.

Cheers,

Rich