Guitars and Life

My life is it five years already? John Martyn five year anniversary. Update 31st Jan...  Here are a couple of moments of John's brilliance...

Good Grief - I'm Number 1!!!

I've been writing this solo instrumental acoustic piece. Here it is... Now... same tune but with a couple of additional instruments including my recording début with the mandolin !

Becoming Johnny Vegas. What a book.  I saw an interview with Michael Pennington aka Johnny Vegas on the TV a while back talking about this book.  So Michael was born in St Helens to devout Catholic parents.  At 11 he left home to go off to a seminary to train to be a priest.  In less than 2 years he was back in St Helens trying to shake off the trauma of his experiences there.  He ended up studying ceramics down in London where Johnny first made his presence felt and Michael got a small reputation as a radical stand up comic.  On returning to St Helens he worked mostly as a barman in a pub where frankly his descriptions of the afternoon regulars was frighteningly close to myself and others I spent many years in drunken solace with.  Slowly Johnny took over more and a burgeoning stand up career was started. The book takes us up to the point where Michael loses out and Johnny takes over completely.  It is a fascinating read.  I'll not get i...

Yes the BBC answer to X-factor is back (oh sorry, no it is soooo different ;-). Anyway this year I have more interest than normally... I refer you all to this little post from Dec 2011 ...  Yes remember I spotted him long before Kylie etc.

Very sadly I heard last night of Ronny Jordan's passing. I met him once at a guitar show in London, in the 90s sometime.  It is a bit blurry, it was in the drinking days and a day in London at a show meant getting up to there as the doors open, finding the bar as soon as it opened and then doing a sequence something like, go to stand, back to bar for beer, go to demo, back to stand for beer, go to masterclass, leave early, go back to bar... ad infinitum.  Anyway somewhere late in the day when I'd vowed to not return to the bar I watched him demoing something on a stand.  He was just brilliant and we had a great chat. Here he is totally ripping up the old Miles Davis classic that was his theme tune. RIP Ronny

The darling Mrs F bought me this mandolin for Christmas - I'm slowly learning chords etc.  It is only a cheap beginner instrument but really happy with the sound it makes - much louder than I was expecting, it'll hold it's own easily with a guitar being strummed quiet hard. Expect to hear it on some recordings soon! Oh big thanks to those that helped on the Charity Single btw.  I've raised £170 so far.  It is still open for a few more days if you want to buy early for next year!