Days Out In The Desert #1- White Sands
Every year, the last Thursday in November is Thanksgiving Day in the USA. This is the equivalent of a UK bank holiday and although it is widely claimed to be a celebration of the anniversary of the arrival of the pilgrim fathers onto the shores of America, it actually has its roots in various harvest […]
The Set List Scenario
Among the rest of the debris in my All The Rest Is Noise folder on my home computer, is a list of possible topics to write about and at the top is ‘Giving Away Setlists’. This addition was almost certainly prompted by being abused by someone from the audience at some point, behaviour which I […]
All Hands On Tech
Another article originally commissioned by Guitar & Bass Magazine. Reproduced here slightly updated, with the somewhat tongue-in-cheek ‘Day In The Life…’ sidebar included and with all of the text reinstated that had to be edited out of the original piece because of space restrictions. The tone of it is deliberately lightweight, due to the target […]
A Letter To A Friend Re: Hawkwind
A couple of years ago, a friend of mine got in touch to say that he was interested in finding out about Hawkwind and could I tell him more. So, I sent him a message in return which I hoped would be helpful. He replied a few days later saying it had made him laugh […]
You Scream, I Scream, We All Scream…
Recent digital innovations may very well have removed much of the fun from the messing-about-with-guitars-and-stuff business these days but luckily enough there are still enough traditionalists out there to support existing technologies, so the FX pedal market is still stuffed with manufacturers both large and small and despite some recent warnings from Analog Man’s Mike […]
The Stooges- A Mystery Solved
The below piece was written in August 2008. This was when YouTube had been in existence for less than three years and before the explosion of social media. Facebook wasn’t a thing yet and most people were still tinkering with their first MySpace pages at the time. Its impossible to conceive of the scenario described […]
Notes On Daydream Nation
During September 2018, I was invited to participate in Classic Album Sunday’s upcoming celebration of Sonic Youth’s ‘Daydream Nation’. This was to take place in the form of a full album playback and talk by myself and other guests at Portsmouth’s excellent Pie & Vinyl record shop. Having been given advance notice of the topics […]
Weapons Of Choice #1- 1968 SG Jr.
If you nip up to Foyles on the Charing Cross Road and have a peruse of their impressive music department you can find a whole load of coffee table books dedicated to photographs of rare and valuable guitars. These will feature high quality reproductions of images of classic guitars with accompanying reverential text and will […]
Up For The Downstroke
Note- This profile of Johnny Ramone was originally commissioned by Guitar & Bass magazine and was printed in the July 2010 issue. It is republished here in its entirety, without the unintentional cut made by the sub-editor that ruined the final paragraph. The story of the Ramones is the story of a band who were […]
‘deth Metal
An opinion piece from 2010. I think the reference to ‘emotional hardcore’ in the final paragraph was probably past its sell by date even back then. I wasn’t the target market for Emo, so how was I supposed to know? Cor…shredding became unfashionable for a long time didn’t it? Now I’m old and grumpy and […]