Guitars and Life

Time for some album reviews. Fear - Marillion I've been putting off writing this review since I have to say.... for me this isn't a classic brilliant album.  It is very good but for me this isn't Marillion at their best.  Odd isn't it first time in thirty years they get back into the top 5 with a release and get rave reviews and I'm left a bit like... hmmm... it's really good but... but what? It is an epic work, there in lies some of it's problem, also reading how it was put together with the band working with long time collaborator Mike Hunter in the producers chair.  From my reading of the interviews it goes something like this.... the band jam on stuff for hours - Hunter captures is all then starts to construct the pieces with the band from that and then they add in the details etc.   For me it then means that these long pieces constructed in this way don't always for me as an entire "song" hang together.  Now Marillion have always ha...

Mrs F had bought us tickets to see Milos Karadaglic performing the opening night of his Back to Beatles concert with the English Chamber Orchestra a the Canterbury Festival last Friday. Sadly at the last minute - well with a week to go - Milos pulled out of the concert since he has suffered a recurring hand injury and the advice of all the medical professionals was to stop playing and get it sorted out finally. So in steps Craig Ogden. Remarkably he altered only two pieces from the original programme, one being that he inserted Asturias which as a core repertoire piece was simply replacing something with something he knew backwards. He dropped Whilst My Guitar Gently Weeps from the second half where most of the pieces were from Milos' latest album Blackbird . However this still meant him learning in a week 9 pieces and their unique arrangements and given three were with jazz bass accompaniment and others with the ECO as well. To say I was impressed is an understatement. I...

I got a new Boss BR-600 (Digital recorder) to replace my one that's stopped working.  I got it second hand on eBay.  Under £80 which was a bargain. To try it out I recorded a couple of covers. Firstly this is my interpretation of Show of Hands song I Will Haunt You. This next one is one of the tunes that inspired me to be the guitarist I am now.  My first one to one guitar teacher was teaching me classically but knew my interests lay more broadly so introduced me to steel string fingestyle via this song.  This is my version of the Davy Graham classic Anji

Another year has passed and yesterday was my birthday. So what booty did I receive? Both my kids bought me a couple of Blu-Ray films.  Spotlight, Jurassic World, Our Kind of Traitor and Eye In the Sky.  All films I never went to see at the cinema, frankly it is so expensive these days to go I partly would rather wait for the Blu-Ray to come out. Mrs F got me a Miloš Karadaglić CD - Aranjuez which has the Rodrigo Concierto de Aranjuez on it - my (and many others I suspect) favourite guitar concerto.  Also a ticket to see him live this month at the Canterbury festival in an intimate venue with an orchestra.  Really looking forward to that! Oh and the most guitar related gift?  Big Bends Nut sauce.  Yes you read that right.  It is a lubricant for your nuts sir.  Guitar nuts.  Often considered for only vibrato guitars I suspect I'll actually like it more for some acoustic guitars where dropping in and out of altered tunings and ...

Last year I commented on Fan Fret acoustic guitars approaching the masses with some in the £1,200 range available in the UK. Well Ibanez have gone and smashed that with a new model retailing at under £500!

It has been ages since I posted anything new.  I've just not been avidly writing and not recording much.  My tinnitus/Ménière’s disease hasn't been helping, for long periods even contemplating playing the guitar isn't on my mind as it is likely to be too painful.  But in the last week my ear has been a lot better. I have few songs in development - this one was actually started a long while ago.  It was inspired when I got my mandolin.  After some noodling learning chords etc. this pattern emerged which I liked.  As ever it sat about without lyrics for a while then some inspiration struck.  Largely since this is dedicated from me to a dear friend who passed away last year.  One of the last times I remember being with him out somewhere we were watching a band play with a great mandolin player and he joking asked how my mandolin playing was coming along.  So it was fitting my first song inspired by mandolin playing should have lyrics inspired ...

With this instalment we reach the end of Angus Donald's clever retelling of the Robin Hood story.  I've really enjoyed this series over the years I've been reading them.  It all started out with Alan Dale a young lad in Nottingham just to learn how to survive.  He was taken under the wing of a bunch of notorious outlaws around the Sherwood Forest and he has forever been one of Robin Hood's men.  We long ago learnt that Robin Hood is in fact a noble man and a Lord himself but he roguish nature always looking to profit for himself make him the outlaw we know.  The books have always been written from Alan's point of view as an old man recounting his youthful, and now not so youthful, adventures with his Lord. Obviously the main plot feature is given away in the title but the suspense of exactly how Robin dies if left to the very end of the book and is an emotionally engaging story in itself.  We join the action soon after the signing of the Magna Carta. ...