Guitars and Life

Firstly the new Transatlanic single - this is just a beautiful song off the forthcoming Transatlantic album which I'm clearly going to have to pre-order now! Secondly - the genius that is Jon Gomm and the fantastic song Wukan Motorcycle Kid - which has a great back story as to the influence that led to him writing it. Enjoy!

Another brilliant book! Never read any of C J Sansom's before, most I believe have been set back in medieval times and are detective novels with a twist - well that's what I've assumed they are.  Anyway I've not read them as they looked large and I was so far back in the series I didn't think I'd catch up, who knows they might make it onto my reading list some time. Anyway - I saw Dominion whilst browsing in a book store and then again on the Kindle store (I read almost everything on my Kindle these days) and thought the premise for the book really clever.  So imagine that in May 1940 as Neville Chamberlain is forced to resign after the defeat of the UK forces in Norway that instead of Winston Churchill leading the coalition war cabinet into the Battle Of Britain and onwards but that Viscount Halifax had in fact won the upper hand and followed a policy of appeasement.  The start of the book is slightly off beat from what I believe is the actual facts of the ...

I’ve just finished watching the two part series shown on the BBC;  Blues America . An interesting view of blues and how it moved from black sub-culture through to mainstream white/inter-racial acceptance. Some points I found interesting – like probably many European white boys I always saw the Blues as this folk music of the Southern USA black culture.  However it was interesting to note that even in the early 20 th century people like W C Handy were actually taking the raw plantation blues and turning it into a successful commercial genre just that was still for the black audiences in the southern USA states.  Some of what I’ve previously thought was authentic roots music was still produced with a commercial bias. Interesting. The re-explosion of the blues into the mainstream following the cross over of Elvis singing blues inspired rock n roll whilst Chuck Berry was singing white country inspired rock n roll was interesting.  By then of course the bl...