OCCUPIED COUNTRY

Music is my first love....

I've recently discovered a fabulous place called www.artistcollaboration.com which, on account of the marvellousness of t'internet, allows musicians from all round the world to collaborate on each other's musical ideas. You can add a bass part here, drums there or guitar over yon. Fabulous. Some of it is a little amateurish as can be expected with most things on the 'net, but some of it is of a quality not far removed from the stuff you hear on your wireless.

Ahh God, would that such arenas had been available back when I was a thrusting, guitar-weilding, testosterone-filled fledgling bluesman - who couldn't play the blues, but would have sold his soul to the Devil in order to do so. No argument. "Me? Play the Blues like Clapton? Johnson? Rory Gallagher? Brownie McGhee? Errrr....where do I sign?"

I'd have killed to be able to play the blues like Joe Brown never mind Eric Clapton. Actually that's unfair to Joe, in retrospect I think he's a lot better than I thought he was in the arrogance of my youth when I still knew everything.

As the years have sped by at the speed of fucking light passed, technology has enabled the bedroom musician to produce stuff worthy of Top of the Pops, Later with Jools Holland and the late, lamented OGWT. And now we are able to emulate the superstars of 10 years or so ago by laying down bass on a track recorded in Caracas 24 hours ago. This time no young men or women risked their lives couriering the tape from airport to recording studio though. All you lucky young uns have got the rest of your lives to dive into this technology - a technology no longer tied to the restrictive unexpressive boundaries of MIDI Get on with it. Learn, grow and overthrow the Corporate shacklers once and for all.

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Via Artist Collaboration, I came across this guy. Steve Unruh is a part time musician who writes and plays all his own stuff. Drums, bass, guitars, violin, and the rest. Progressive Folk Rock he calls it and I guess if you wanted to put a label on music, that's probably as near as damn as it is to describing it. You can download a free sampler CD of his output over the past eight years or so. G'Wan. It's worth a shot - you might love it. So burn it to a CDR. You might hate it. So delete it. But bear in mind that no one but the artist benefits. No oleaginous be-suited lickspittles, no CEOs, no meeja types.

I've got a feeling that Kaptain Kobold might just be interested. (tip: Listen to the longer tracks - though all of it is good, but especially "Breaking Free Part Three" - quality. Nothin' more to be said. Let me know what you think.). T'internet. I love it.

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Well I see four times winners of the European Cup (these days called the Champions League for some reason, don't know why, the year United won it they qualified by virtue of being runners-up to Arsenal. Odd that), have got a chance of making it five.

I wasn't that bothered who got there really. If it had been Chelsea, all the Reds round here would have been bitter and discontented anyway, but now we know it's Liverpool, there's gonna be some extremely angry United fans that I know wittering on about 'flukes', 'goals that should've been disallowed' and how Man U's lifting of the Cup back in '99 was somehow better than all the times Liverpool have won the self same trophy during the years when it was a proper knock out tournament for champions.

C'mon Liverpool.