Guitars and Life

I got on the train to work this morning as normal.  I then fished into my backpack for the my Kindle to carry on reading my book and ... darn!  I'd left it at home.  However I have the Kindle reader on my phone so I fished it out and selected the book I'm reading.  Now the Kindle I have only has wi-fi not a phone service enabled one.  But I'd last used it at home with the wi-fi connected so not only did my phone download the book but open it at the right page for me to continue reading!   How flipping smart is that! I still prefer reading the Kindle itself just from size of screen etc. but it was just such a cool thing that got me out of a jam.   I had another one on Friday - I'd turned up to a meeting where I was chairman.  I had printed out previous minutes, agenda but there was a slot for "chairman's report" which I'd written earlier in the week and sent to the secretary.  I'd forgotten to bring it.  No problem, find the...

Last Friday I went with my son and his girlfriend to see System of a Down at Wembley Arena.  SOAD were my son's angry teenage band - he listened to Toxicity a lot at one point I remember.  Through him liking them and me liking tracks like Aerials and Chop Suey in particular I really got into them when they produced the Mezmerize and Hypnotize albums.  Those I really liked. Anyway so SOAD were on our "list of bands to see" when my son and I regularly trooped off to gigs and the odd festival day or two.  However I didn't want to do Download when they played there and then they'd broken up.  So when my son heard that they were coming to London on the Wake Up The Souls tour he was straight on the case to get tickets. They took to the stage about 7:45pm and left just before 11pm.  Yep - just over two hours, non-stop pretty much, no 20 min intermission for a cup of tea.  That is impressive by any standards but given the complex nature of their music and ...

You've seen people like Andy McKee and Gordon Giltrap using Fan Fret guitars but they've been one offs from boutique makers like Greenfield and Fylde.  Slowly though this idea is getting closer to the masses. Here are two guitars in the Avian line that are available in the UK at about £1,200 which whilst not cheap is closer to reality and about £300 uplift from the standard model... so really to my mind... bit of a deal. Here's a quick video demo from the UK supplier.