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

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

Bring on the Goodtimes...

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 :-)

Being there at the very beginning...

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!

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

Time to hit the streets again...

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

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

TFDI on the recommendations...

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

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

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

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

Now for that nice little story...

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy :-)

Peace xx

Never leave home without...

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