Guitars and Life

Mrs F, Daughter-of-Furtheron and your truly went to see City and Colour down at the seaside last week.  This was mostly a Daughter-of-Furtheron driven gig as she's been a big Dallas Green fan since he set out on his solo material.  I remember sticking my head into her room some years back and said "Who is this?  I like it."  She explained who Dallas was, I knew of Alexisonfire and therefore I wasn't expecting this acoustic alt country/folk singer/songwriter stuff.  Since then we've both been fans.  Interestingly my daughter prefers his earlier stuff and I've been the one buying the last three recent albums.  As he has grown the City and Colour thing has become more a band setting live and in the studio and he has grown from the alt.country/folk roots to more alt.indy soft rock. So the band kicked off with Woman the opener from the latest album If I Should Go Before You.  Now there is a stunning opener - it builds and roars and soars and Dallas v...

The latest instalment on the journey of Sir Alan Dale.  Angus has throughout this series clever woven the legend and myth that is Robin Hood and his merry men into the true events during the late 12th and early 13th century. In this latest instalment we find Sir Alan returned from the siege at Château Gaillard even more despondent with King John than ever.  He has good reason given what he witnessed in the previous instalment and of course with Sir Alan having been a one-time great friend and co-composer of legendary songs with King Richard the Lionheart King John will never meet up to his expectations.  But he returns to find his lands taxed beyond what he can afford and the latest Sheriff of Nottingham determined to extract as much from the area as possible. Against this background whilst supporting the King's latest attempts to reclaim lost territory in France which comes to eventual failure at the Battle of Bouvines Alan foolishly agrees to help some of the angry ...

I spent an evening or two looking over the various videos on Youtube from NAMM 2016 to see what new stuff had been launched.  Sadly to say that it was a lot of "same old, same old".  Fender have new Elite versions - which are a revamped deluxe... yes nice but... still a Strat still a Tele...  Gibson seem keen to go on about their heritage and all that... hmm whilst the new nut and tuners are about you'll see most models have two versions one with the new gizmos and one without and traditional nut and tuners etc.  Also the huge discounts I've seen on 2015 models online recently makes you think good old Orville and Co realised that they'd pushed the envelope a bit too far for many of their buyers. Yamaha - some new acoustics that are based on the old... etc. etc.  You get the picture. However here was the shining light frankly.  Vox have come and go in the guitar market since their pioneering 60s models.  I remember some in the 70s/80s with Dimarzio ...