Guitars and Life

In the past years I've done reviews of the year so here to keep with tradition in 2011 Furtheron's reflections. Jan - I got interviewed for a job having spent 7 months in the back end of 2010 out of work.  I was listening to Heaven & Hell a lot, recording rockier stuff and putting up pictures of guitars... Feb - Started my new job, where I used to work it was announced that a full UK pull out of R&D was happening and all my old colleagues were losing their jobs.  Gary Moore sadly passed away. I played a gig at the Lamb and Flag in London. Mar - I was working away from home and my post count dramatically dropped off.  I was really struggling with the job - not the work (although it was a stupendously big workload) but more the living away from home all week or a really bonkers commute - up at 5am back at about 8pm. Apr - One lousy post!  I was really lost in the madness at that time.  I ended up leaving the assignment away from home, the company l...

I got three new CDs :-) Peter Gabriel - Shaking the Tree.  Well not strictly new, I used to have this on cassette (any one under 20 now will need to go to wiki to look them up!) which bit the dust as cassette players reduced towards zero in the house.  It is a collection of his hits up to about 2000 ish - great stuff, Red Rain, Sledgehammer, Solsbury Hill, Don't Give Up etc.  Steve Earl - I Won't Get Out of This World Alive.  Just under 38 mins - just like an old vinyl record!  12 tracks of utter brilliance frankly... super lyrics (e.g. Melancholy Malady) super playing throughout and Steve's voice just gets better with age.  Written in the time after his fathers death a very poigniant tribute.  Super duper! The Civil Wars - Barton Hollow.  Fantastic debut from this Nashville duet.  They have voices that angels would have and together are just devine.  This is probably the debut CD of the year for me without a doubt.  If you'v...

... to you all.   Given I'm not a Christian it is a bit odd that I find myself repeatedly wishing people a Happy Christmas... my son heard the Yuletide thing and said about it... I'll try to adopt it from now on. Our Yuletide is underway, the turkey is roasting, the veg is for the large part prepared and ready for cooking, all the presents are wrapped and cluttering up my music room before Mrs F and I play Santa and his little helper later tonight and put them under the tree.  My daughter has been baking mince pies, we've watched Muppet Christmas Carol and have Carol's from King's on as I type this. I'm lucky I have my family around me, warmth, more than enough food etc.  Others will spend this Christmas on the street, cold and alone.  I should be forever grateful of what I have not what I have not. I hope all you have a great holiday and celebrate whatever you want in the manner you wish to.  May the blessings of Yuletide from any deity that you may,...

Just about to start typing and thought "Shit last time I did a review the flipping author popped up and made a comment. Therefore conscious of the litigious world we live in I ought to mind my p's and q's!" I bought this book on a bit of a whim.  Piley and Mondo have a Tuesday night radio show these days (they no longer comment on here or talk to me now they are famous you know :-() and Syd was a guest on there a few episodes back.  Anyway due to that I looked out this book, which I believe is her first novel.  It was only 99p for the Kindle edition so given that was a third of what I pay for The Big Issue now and half the price of a skinny latte in Pret a Manger I thought what have you got to lose and in seconds it was on my kindle in my Tor Be Read collection. The Drowning Pool is a modern ghost story set in the Essex seaside town of Leigh-on-Sea.  Sorry did I just say a ghost story in Leigh?  Yep that is what I thought too, surely ghost stories need to be...

I got an lovely email from some lady called Liz who works for some website somewhere... apparantly they have a fantastic new product, I wouldn't know it is something that has absolutely no interest for me and not an area I can recall ever having blogged about at all on here.  Anyway she "ran into my blog" (sic) ran ? into it... what it was on the screen and you headbutted your laptop from a 10 yard run up?  She says she "absolultely love(s) it"... really?   So given your product has nothing to do with guitars, sobriety, recovery, or pretty much any other subject ever referred to on here I get the feeling that isn't quiet the truth...  Now for anyone else - here is something I've stated on here before - or on the blog that went before this that I stupidly deleted once in a fit of some weirdness - I don't do endorsements, not for money or anything.  I don't review stuff sent to me, my reviews are of stuff that I've actually bought myself.  I ...

We continue with the latest enstallment in Mr Donald's retelling of the Robin Hood saga... through the eyes of Alan o'Dale or Alan of Westbury as he is known in this fictional setting. The book is written as a memoire of Alan's written in his old age, this is like the others in the series, so the one thing you know whatever scrape Alan may be in he has to survive it or there is a major continuity blunder in store ;-) Anyway these are good rattling, knightly rampaging romps.  Robin and Alan are now back in England following their travels on the crusade with Richard the Lionheart of the previous book.  However Prince John covetously is eyeing the throne of England and Richard is captured by some enemies he made on the crusade on his way back to good old Blighty.  This is all historic fact but within the factual parts Angus weaves in the acts of Robin Odo, Lord of Locksley, the Robin Hood of the legends to come.  He turns Alan into Blondel who is a legendary troubad...

It is feeling more like Christmas - Son-of-Furtheron is home for the festivites, I picked him up over the weekend.  Compared to some Christmas time drives to deepest, darkest Wales this one wasn't too bad, a bit of slushy snow on the road above 900ft over the mountains but not too bad.  I took today off just in case we had issues getting back but in the end I went out with S-o-F and his mate to the cathedral of consumerism that is Bluewater.   Too many people but he got the books he wanted and we then went to see the new Sherlock Holmes film which was good entertainment.  The cinema there has the new digital 4K projectors - impressive frankly. So four days at work left, although a lot of folks are on leave and the campus will be very quiet now all the students will be gone.  So hoping it is reasonably quiet few days. That's it really... not much going on in the Furtheron household just awaiting the day...

Jamie performed at the Songwriter night at the Nags Head last night and blew us all off the stage - we all easily accepted that he was the only real flipping talent there - an amazing voice. Go here and have a listen to Cloudy Skies .  You can download it and play it to all your friends too! Then go and like him on Facebook to make his day.

You may not have noticed but I've spruced the blog up a little... well on the right hand side where all the boxes and stuff is... Firstly given it is pretty much the anniversary of my winning the Rock-Til-You-Drop 2010 Outstanding Achievement award I thought I ought to take that off the site.  Also I'm liking SoundCloud a lot so have replaced the Reverbnation player box with a couple of SoundCloud - I might think about actually paying for the premium service as I can then have a larger amount of "sets" to put works in which might make sense to then do and vary from time to time what is on here.  Finally I've added a Facebook button to my Facebook music page if you like my music and are on Facebook please click that and then "like" me as a few followers of this blog already have.  I only use that page to put up music related stuff so you'll not get all the family drivel about how my daughter hates my leather jacket etc. That is about it for this...

Ok I had originally "kept back" these three as they were intended for a band project idea I never got off the ground.  I decided I might as well stick them up on SoundCloud... they are a certainly a bit different from the stuff I've recently been posting :-) Demons by Graham Hunt - Medway Looking for a lover by Graham Hunt - Medway Might just be the one by Graham Hunt - Medway

I'm very humbled as Nic Evennett has listened to some of my stuff up on Soundcloud and decided to do a "cover" of Golden Moment... well frankly her cover is way better than my original!  Click on the linky to listen Golden Moment - Graham Hunt cover Here is my original for comparison - I think you'll agree Nic's piano and much better vocal and lowering the tempo to a beat I'd never be able to sustain (I'd speed up I know I would) really captures the original essence of the underlying meaning of the lyrics, a moment of total peace, calm and serenity. Thank you so much Nic I am very humbled. Golden Moment by Graham Hunt - Medway This shows just one annoying thing I've just discovered with Soundcloud - I thought I was being a numpty but the embedded thing I figured out the other day appears to only be available for your tracks when you click on the Share button in SoundClous.  I suppose I can see the reasoning, anyone could embed...

These are times of austerity, we all need to tighten our belts, make sacrifies etc. - hence my pension and my wife's will cost us more, hence we're to get a massively below inflation payrise next year but will have to pay £9000 a year for my daughter to get a degree which is the only way she'll be qualified to get a job in a coffee shop soon no doubt. Right Mr Cameron and others I have one answer for you - Scrap the OFT.   I've read two bonkers decisions of theirs recently that defy all normal logic.  (OFT - Office of Fair Trading) Firstly the OFT have decided that there is no need to limit the interest rates charged by payday lenders.  As long as they abide by telling people the rate that is fine.  These parasites charge up to 4000% - no I didn't mistype that - 4000% for short term low value loans.   OK unfortunately, dear government, your numeracy education has failed repeatedly over the last few years I pretty much guarantee that most people don...

What would you think is the exclusive club in the world in terms of exploration?  Those that have best Mt Everest?  Sadly no longer you can virtually book that on a package deal these days. Easy then you think, the men who went to the Moon - there were 12 in total of them... interestingly there is the same number in the club of "men who flew to the Moon but didn't land".  (Source Wiki ). No the one that I think probably beats them all, and interestingly beat the first walk on the Moon by about 9 years is the Men Who Have Been To The Bottom Of The Ocean.   Truly only 2 men have done it, Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard in the research bathyscaphe Trieste in 1960. This story reported by the BBC is interesting as there has been a whole plethora of new survey's being done in the Pacific at the moment, the devastating tsunamis of recent past have allowed for an influx of research money. The estimate now is that the deepest point is actually about 10,944m give or tak...

So in keeping with the title of this blog something about guitars for a change... actually 3 things. Firstly - CH Guitars have some different from the run of the mill guitars for sale via eBay at the moment.  These include this take on the Fender Broadcaster (to be renamed Telecaster) prototype that Leo first made.  Given only one pickup it is more an Esquire-a-like I suppose. Secondly - how about this.  A 12 string Les Paul - ooohhh!  Seriously I'm mostly putting this up here in the hope one of you will buy this and stop my head going "buy it... buy it"... The good news is the prices - £249 for the Tele and £349 for the Les Paul!! Go check out there is also a nice looking sunburst Fender Tele Deluxe copy for only £299 as well. Now here is the coolest thing I've seen in technology in ages.  TC Electronic have a long established reputation for quality kit.  They have introduced a new range of compact effects pedals with the "Toneprint" feat...

embedded Soundcloud test Waterfall by Graham Hunt - Medway

This is the first Charles Cumming novel I've read and I bought it because it was one of those "if you liked that you'll like this" recommendations.  So I downloaded it onto my e-book reader - oh yes I'll say a little more on that in a moment... and gave it a go. Very good in general, very typical modern intrigue filled modern day spy thriller.  Of course the problem for modern spy thriller writers is that the old East (i.e. Russia) vs the West (i.e. UK and USA) antagonism of the cold war years has long since gone away.  So what does Mr Cumming do to address this?  Simple dig up old spies from the cold war and have them spilling the beans to a new generation with the hint of a big modern day scandal if any of this got out.  So why Trinity Six... remember Blunt, Burgess etc. well here is a claim of a 6th member of that group of spies recruited in the 30s but this one remains buried by both Russia and the UK to this day... imagine that Margaret Thatcher had never...

A couple of pieces originally completed as part of a commission for some royalty free soundtrack click on the link Solo Acoustic pieces

I couple of quick (and rubbish!) photos of Furtheron Studios in full flight! Firstly the chaos that is the music room! Later on downstairs copying over the recorded material onto the laptop and using Audacity to clear off all the coughing and sniffing before I get settled!

I have a great old friend who I worked with for a good number of years, he was briefly my boss for a while, a man I have a lot of respect for.  Very level headed a man who has seen a lot and done a lot and quite a humble chap.  He also edges more than a little towards the curmudgeon end of the scale.  Anyway one day we were reading an interview that had appeared somewhere from another old colleague of ours who was trying to climb the greasy pole of corporate success.  In this interview he was asked who out of his past and present colleagues would he say had been "inspirational".  I remember my friend just repeating with almost despairing incredulity the word "Inspirational?".   He couldn't quite grasp that anyone we worked with could be inspirational in any way.   It was very funny and over some years I've only had to say "Inspirational?" quietly under my breath to him for him to have a beaming smile at our private joke in whatever context th...