Guitars and Life

I can’t let the passing of John Martyn going without some form of tribute to this great musician. John Martyn had his spiritual roots in Glasgow although he was born in England. He emerged onto the British folk scene in the late 1960s and was signed to the great Island record label by Chris Blackwell. Almost as soon as his career was launched though his eclectic influences and diverse style began to move from folk to include elements of Jazz and Rock. In the early 70s he developed a unique style of guitar playing using an old Martin acoustic fitted with a pickup that he fed through various effects including an echoplex echo unit to create a looping chaotic sound. Solid Air was released in 1973 and is one of the defining albums of the 70s. By now Martyn was working with the great bass player Danny Thompson and also his vocal style was developing into the utterly unique Martyn drawl that so defined much of his work. To me he used the voice not simply to convey the story of the song ...

We will always love you. Sad news the great great John Martyn passed away this morning. May You Never - possibly his most famous song and just brilliant. Sweet Little Mistery - That one gets me, I've had the odd knowing of losing love in my life - this song gets to that emotion in a millisecond. Hurt in your Heart - Just emotion in a tune, plus a great little insight into Martyn himself in this little extract from a BBC documentary.

At 6am this morning as I'm eating my corn flakes downstairs I can hear Mrs F stomping about upstairs and thought - what's up with her. She comes downstairs with an upturned cup - "Huge spider in our bed"! We then had an inappropriate conversation for anytime of day regarding where the spider might have been during the night.

I have a bulge where I don’t think I need one. 12 string guitars – Guitarists, why do we do this to ourselves? I have a 12 string acoustic. An old Yamaha one. The action is a bit of a nightmare – so I whipped off the strings and had a go at trying to lower it, took out the saddle and filed it down. Re-assemble and restring and the action is a bit better but still not brilliant. I think the problem is that the darn thing is bulging on the table pushing the bridge up and tilting it forward. Any ideas now? There is precious little of the saddle to file away… :-) Some little digging on the net etc. points to humidity issues, but my other acoustics, held in the same room appear fine, my LL6 could do with a slight lowering of the action but it’s not bad and the old old Fender classical frankly plays as well as it ever has and I’d have thought a light fragile acoustic more susceptible to these things than a solidly nailed together Yamaha box. Also the bulge details on the web seem to ...

The company I work at has announced another wave of redundancies, it’s been like this on and off for about 6 years now. We are one of those companies that have grown by gobbling up some of our competition. When I joined here in the early 90s that wasn’t the plan, the plan was “organic growth”. We did pretty well on that jumping up in the league tables in our industry through the 90s on the back of a lot of good work. Then consolidation started in our industry with other competitors of ours merging to grow themselves and it was obvious we were never going to be the top dog if we didn’t join in. Also an important product that we had a partnership marketing deal on looked under threat from a merger, so our bosses changed the rules and we went aggressive and bought that company. Over night we were no 1 in the world. We merged with another company and after that the reorganisations and rationalisations started. In 2003 I thought I was out of a job as I was “deselected” but another g...

I had bought Will Adams first novel (The Alexandria Cipher) from our local 2nd hand book shop. I liked it a lot. Very Indiana Jones, archaeologist in rush to get to the great find before the badies etc. it made a good page turner. So Mr Adams returns with this sophomore effort. Well, basically the same thing, i.e. some same characters – Daniel Knox the now famous archaeologist again wrapped up in a race against time. This time with more than one plot going on, one he needs to prove his innocence in a murder and save his friend (it’s made clear not girlfriend) from a kidnap plot. Badies include a religious zealot who will kill if he believes God tells him to and a very nasty soldier/policeman who is stealing artefacts from a tomb he has found. Woven through this is a somewhat unbelievable plot about the truth behind the Exodus story as portrayed in the Bible. Still is was a page turner – out author weaves the stories inside each chapter with small snippets of what is happening in ...

Today I had the privilege of talking to a load of school kids - well they were 15/16 so young adults they'd no doubt prefer. We showed a DVD about AA and talked about our alcoholism and tried to answer their questions. No doubt these students are used to "experts" coming and explaining stuff that they are paid to explain about and which they have studied not experienced. No disrespect to them but Prof Max Glatt once said "I am an authority on alcoholism not an expert. If you want an expert go talk to AA". I think we always get a reaction as we are unpaid and doing it as a service and also we no doubt don't talk like the professionals. "How much do you have to drink to be an alcoholic?" "As much as you like" laughs "well for us here today enough to drive us into hospital to the point of suicide etc. etc." Lurid tales of prisons, hospital stays after alcoholic fits in which hearts were restarted (only to discharge and go on anothe...

With the new addition to the fold Mrs F asked for a count of all the guitars in the house. I thought it was about 10 – it was 13 – and one is on extended leave of absence with Son-of-Furtheron at university. Time for rationalisation I think. My good friend DeeJay has been learning guitar for a year or so and moaning a bit about the starter guitar he bought himself with a few annoying buzzes and rattles etc. So being the generous chap I am I offered him the chance to buy my Les Paul Special which he duly has, and seems very happy with it given his beaming smile when I saw him this morning. Maybe I should set up GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) Anonymous… no maybe not :-)

My daughter can simply go to school without fear.

I've just got an email from the RSPB to take part in their annual survey this weekend which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. You simply spend an hour counting the birds that come into your garden. Now in very recent past, since we installed the new bird table, we have had large numbers of pigeons and ring-collared doves, some starlings, blackbirds, sparrows, a couple of chaffinches, a pair of blue tits, magpies, a pair of jays, a tiny little wren and even a woodpecker. What's the betting the hour I sit to do my count I'll just get 12 pigeons and that is it... :-) Go here if you are interested in taking part by the way.

I’ve already blogged that I’m not keen on 2009 so far, too many people passing away. Sadly a cousin of mine – well she was my Dad’s cousin passed away yesterday. She’d been in hospital since just before Christmas and it was clear that she’d not be able to return to her little flat again so a search for a suitable nursing home had just begun. Sadly a chest infection went the way that they do for the elderly and she passed away peacefully. In the end a blessing, she’d had a long life and always enjoyed her independence and the prospect of the nursing home wasn’t ideal for her.

Had to happen... Only £650, some little dents, replaced tuners and strap buttons (which I've again replaced already) but look at this!!! PRS CE22 - in Whale Blue - I think a 2001 from the serial number. The Les Paul Special will have to go to make room and provide some funds but this is much more me than the P90 loaded boy.

I used that phrase in my gratitude list, guide your eyes to the right and you’ll see it there. I try to update it at least daily. I was starkly reminded of it yesterday at a very powerful AA meeting. I clearly cannot share who was there or what was said other than from myself. Bottom-line though was the underlying need to keep working your recovery, don’t be complacent and think you are cured as the drink is never far away from an alcoholic and especially so if they don’t remind themselves of what is was like (at the end utter despair) and what it is like now (hopeful). Too often I can think. “But I’m okay I don’t drink anymore I can back off the meetings and the design for living that the programme is”. That might be true if I could live in glorious isolation from the world and it’s tribulations. But I can’t as most people can’t. Also if I isolate away from the world that frankly can be worse – I’ll just end up over thinking and analysing any problems or issues I have, I’ll sta...

The UK Passport office should get a bloody big slap on the back. In this day and age where everyone seems to be moaning about the slowness and generally poor service many organisation and govt. depts. seem to deal up I'd like to applaud the passort office. Mrs F needed a new passport as it expired last week and we're planning to be off to the USA for our summer hols. So she got the form ages ago but finally filled it in and got Son-of-Furtheron with his photo skills to take the required mug shot last week. She took it to the post office to send it recorded delivery last Friday. The brand spanking new one was on our doorstep when I arrived home last night about 6pm. How is that for service. That is about 128 hours! Given I presume they don't work weekends you can actually take 48 hours off that and presumably it was at our house probably 6 hours earlier than I got home that is, including delivery time, 74 hours!! Well done. That is service!

I got home just in time to see a bubbling and happy daughter head off to drama class. She has been picked to swim for the school team and also has recieved a letter saying she has won an award from the local district swimming association. That's my girl. :-)

I’ve pinched this from Aunt Jackie who was inspired by someone else… There is some stat that only 10% of people who read blogs comment – so come on out and let me know you are here and reading this. Absolutely no agenda other than I’d love to know who is out there reading this. I have enabled anonymous comments and have moderation on, so if you want to say hi but don’t want it published just say “Hi I’m x from y I read your blog. Please reject this comment” and I’ll obey your wishes.

See love it is a recognised psychological condition... well it's got a wikipedia entry. P.S. I spotted this orginally on this blog .

One of my nicknames in the family is Victor – after Richard Wilson’s legendary character Victor Meldrew from the BBC series “One Foot In The Grave”. I don’t intentionally set off to moan about stuff, honestly I don’t, but I seem to be presented with situations that would make the pope moan. Here are three examples from this weekend. We were on the way to Wales to drop my son back at university. It was flipping cold, another minus 7 morning. The washers for the windscreen on the car were not surprisingly frozen up. So when we pulled into one of the service stations on the M1 I saw “Free water” and headed over thinking I’ll at least give the screen a quick wash over. Well you needed a token – “available from the counter when you buy fuel”. How’s that free? The sign should say “water free with any fuel purchase”. On the way back on Sunday we got to the very end of the M1 and one of those huge info signs said “M25 J30-31 closed”. Hell I thought that is a total bugger. So we pulled...

-7°C!!! Yes folks -7°C on the drive to work this morning. That is a minus sign. It had created this amazing winter wonderland scene of the Kent countryside with incredible frost patterns all over the fields, fences and plants. I’ve never seen in Kent tall trees with bright white frost adorning the very top of the branches. Whilst all very pretty I’ve just about had enough of the cold now can it please please warm up? Especially tomorrow we’ve got the long drive back to Wales to drop my son off at uni along with half a car of belongings. I’m hoping we’ll be driving toward warmer weather from the look of the forecast. I’ve also decided I don’t like 2009 already, as you know one friend has had one tragedy but almost daily this week it’s continued with an old school teacher at my old school and the one that Mrs F works at sadly passing away and then a very sad loss of a 17 year old girl my wife knew following an overdose. Very sad.

This is the third and final volume of Napiers trilogy about Attila which started in the first volume with Attila being held as a young child as a hostage at the Roman Imperial palace. This was common as part of the bargaining of treaties at that time although there is no documented evidence to suggest that Attila did actually spend time in Rome in this manner. He then escapes and makes the long journey home with a young Greek friend Orestes who is based on a real life character who did serve as secretary in Attila’s court and who was in reality the man in control of the final years of the Western Roman empire with his son being regarded by many as the final true emperor of that line of the Roman empire. Anyway this last particular volume describes the later portion of Attila’s life and his campaigns against firstly the Eastern Roman Empire and then subsequently the Western Roman Empire through his invasion of Gaul and then Italy itself and up until his and nemesis Aetius, the greates...

I heard that a friend had some tragic news over the holiday. A house fire at their sisters home has claimed the lives of the sister, who battled on in intensive care for a few days, and her husband, who died at the scene. Also their mother, who was staying there at the time, is now in hospital although shows some good signs of probably recovering. How terrible. Luckily the couples 12 year old daughter was staying away on that night so wasn’t hurt but the poor girl is now facing an uncertain future and trying to cope with losing both parents at a stroke and you do think “Why?”. The poor girl doesn’t deserve that. However really that is life isn’t it some of us get a good deck dealt, others a very poor one. If you are the praying kind please include her in your prayers today. It’s a large smack in the face for me with my ungrateful moods. Bloody hell what more to be grateful for each day than you wake up alive and well. I should smile more today and be grateful for just being h...

No doubt all of you were riveted to your armchairs Sunday afternoon to watch the biggest match of the FA Cup 3rd round… No? Well Gillingham lost 2-1 to Villa but put on an excellent display – already one Villa fan who is a friend has apologised for the penalty that cost us the game. However it probably wasn’t too an unfair result but the replay at Villa would have been just reward. Still we need to translate more of that quality into wins in the league but I think sometimes we’re a bit too clever for our own good in a largely physical division.

Last night BBC4 had two programmes about prog rock, a load of old clips of various BBC recorded performances, early Genesis, Yes, King Crimson etc. Then a documentary about prog rock. I'm an unashamed fan of Yes, Rush etc. given where I was born and brought up as well near Canterbury Soft Machine and Caravan had a lot of influence over local groups. Great programmes reminded of the skill in prog rock, yes it might have been disconnected lyrically with the youth of the 70s and we all sought solace in punk but it was still a great time for music I think. For me I wanted to be like Steve Howe or Robert Fripp when I was 14 but I had no idea how much you needed to learn to do that. So punk seemed a good idea and I loved the rebellion aspect to push back on the crap society we seemed to have coming out of the 60s. But then punk went all fashion and I didn't like it as much, I went back to metal with Maiden etc. and listened to prog under the cover of darkness... :-) Today prog is ali...

The two books Mrs F bought me for Christmas ( The Les Paul Manual and the Stratocaster Manual ) prompted me to spread the old rug over the dining table, dig out my shoe box containing my collection tools and polish etc. and have a go at some better set ups of the guitars. Firstly – my dear old strat is showing it’s age (I bought it brand new in 82 so that means its now heading for 27 years!). I cleaned up the fretboard which was pretty grimy I’m afraid. But in doing this I realised that there are some flat spots on the frets. I might buy a fret cleaning system like the Planet Waves one but I think it might need an expert at some point soon if not a complete refret. However I tweaked the action a little bit lower, cleaned up the bridge etc. and found again that this is still one hell of a bloody good Strat despite it not being from the right country. I could probably pay a lot of money for not a lot extra in terms of playability or quality you know. Right then on to the others. ...

I'm struggling however to be enthusiastic myself. I've often found this time a problem - the expectation of the new year all the things planned, all the things put off to do "next year" etc. and then the dawning realisation that if my life pattern to date can show me anything it'll be that this time next year I'll be reflecting on all the things not done, all the things still put off for another year etc. I'm terrible at the negative glasses view, for example, we have a holiday already planned this year to USA Boston and Connecticut again. But instantly my brain is saying - of all the years to book a USA holiday you do it when the pound is at it's lowest against the dollar. I ignore that when we went in 2006 it was the best it's ever been, I ignore that I managed to save up my airmiles and basically we're all flying there for free. My negative views do make me chuckle about myself - New Years Day 2002 my daughter woke us up jumping on the ...