Guitars and Life

Gordon Giltrap and Paul Ward - The Last of England The really good news about this release is that Gordon is well enough to be talking about it.  He's been through the ringer over the last 18 months or so with a cancer issue needing some big surgery.  That he is back at all is a real pleasure to say.   And this is a great Gordon Giltrap release.  He's teamed up with Paul Ward and with Paul's orchestral knowledge on the keyboards this takes Gordon's guitar skills to a new dimension.  There are parts where you try to just turn off the slightly obvious synthy strings and imagine this in an Albert Hall like setting with a large orchestra.  There are others too that are a real hark back to Gordon's band albums with some really terrific proggy like stuff.   Really terrific album which my wife also says is incredibly soothing when on a long drive around South London the other day.  Search out A Promise Fulfilled - terrific progressive folk rock track. ...

It's been ages since I've posted on here.  Apologies.  Life seems to be just flying by so fast. It is therefore with great sadness that I have to post first on here for ages about the passing of one of the finest guitarists of the last 40 years or so.  Allan Holdsworth passed away recently aged 70. Now for many Allan will not be a name that is known but some years back if asked that question as a guitarist myself of "Who is the best guitarist?"  well... Allan would be one of the first names off my tongue in a very short list... with Jeff Beck in there too. Allan was simply a genius.  I first heard of him through various guitar magazines and then in the briefly lived but incredible supergroup U.K. which was himself, Bill Bruford (Yes, King Crimson etc.) John Wetton (Uriah Heep, Wishbone Ash, Roxy Music and after U.K. of course massively successful in Asia) and Eddie Jobson (Yes, Curved Air, Roxy Music etc.).   They produced one incredible album wi...

Coffin Road - Peter May I've read some of Peter's previous novels .  In particular his Lewis Chessman trilogy.  This is again set in the Western Isles Peter's preferred setting.  We are presented with a classic amnesia story.  Man comes too on a shore in the middle of a storm, he has been shipwrecked it seems but he has no idea how, or who he is, or what is going on. A terrific page turning thriller as you want to know who our hero really is?   This is made more difficult for him and us since he can find nothing in his croft as to who he really is.  Just some odd clues.  His neighbours don't help much they tell him he is a writer researching a book.  But... he finds no notes, no writing on the laptop.  Actually... nothing at all again... Only that he is a beekeeper with some hives that are secreted somewhere he clearly didn't want them to be found in. The second thread is a teenager who is convinced her missing father isn't dead an...

2017 has started with a really good piece of news.  Back in the late 70s / early 80s Shergold guitars were one of the top British brands around growing in the Burns tradition of something unique and quirky not just based on USA designs.  A nascent band I was in that was a 5 piece that reformed itself a few months later as a 4 piece that had some success had a lead guitarist who had a Shergold Masquerader.  I remember it being a seriously good guitar - esp when compared to the Columbus Strat copy I possessed at the time.  This is the model I remember... Well Barnes and Mullins, a well known distributor in the UK, has bought the company name and set up with a 21st century make over and relaunch.  They've enlisted Patrick Eggle as the consultant to design the launch model.  Patrick has taken the Masquerader body shape, updated the headstock to avoid the friction inducing string guides and used Seymour Duncan pickups offering various pickup combinations a...

It is remiss of me but I've missed getting the annual Furtheron review of the year out before the end of the the year... oh well. Gig of the Year In days gone by this would have been hotly contested as I attended so many gigs but finances, commitments and my ears have meant less choice these days.  So from a very very small list the winners are Joe Bonamassa. CD of the year .  Rock -Going to give this to Wild by Joanne Shaw Taylor .  This has been a mainstay on my playlist since it's release.  Fantastic playing and singing - Joanne is as good as Joe Bonamassa and many many others in this genre on this outing. Folk - Has to be the superb On a Winter's Night by Cara Dillon which I bought as my Christmas listening this year.  It is a stunning album worth getting to keep for next year but frankly so good I can't believe I'll be digging out still in the summer!  Holly and the Ivy is just to die for - she has frankly one of the greatest voice...

Follow You Home - Mark Edwards I've read his two previous novels, both scary thrillers in the spooky sense.  Follow You Home is no different but is perhaps even darker than his previous books.  It starts a few years ago where we meet a couple on their grand backpacking tour of Europe and the fatal mistake of not paying extra for a sleeper compartment on a train travelling into Romania. Soon they meet an intriguing, if disturbing couple but then are kicked off the train by guards with no paperwork someone having stolen their passports.  What happens after they leave the train?  You don't know as both of them clearly have had to black out of their pasts what happened there.  Fastforward to the present day and they are struggling to get a normal life together.  Continually bad luck seems to dog them - or is it bad luck or is what happened to them after that train ride a curse that is following them around continually. I real page turner that you can't ge...

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...