You are allowed to enjoy this…

So I have finally finished “The Luckiest Man in the World” and have done the sleeve design. All I have to do now is get the masters uploaded and produced. Anyway, for those of you who want to see the sleeve ahead of time, here it is:

Lookee – someone has used my music in a short animation piece (mine is from about the 45 second mark). Yes, my stuff does make for good atmospheric film music! The track snippet is from “Descent of the Fallen I” from the “Empty Spaces” CD.

Going through all the old data folders for my archival project, I sometimes come across some audio gold in there, tracks that have been forgotten. In this case, I have found a 10+ minutes ambient guitar piece that I must have recorded close to the 9/11 Twin Towers attack (because the file was title “Twin Towers” and upon listening to it does have a certain cinematic quality relating to the events of that day).
This was recorded back in the day when I was using a Roland GR-1 as my guitar synth and in terms of looping I think I was using a Line 6 DD-4 digital delay pedal. The great thing about the DD-4 was that with a little bit of cheating, you could coax 20-seconds of decaying sound-on-sound stereo delay.
Twin Towers was recorded in this fashion with the guitar going straight into the delay pedal and everything being played live with no overdubs later.
Enjoy!

Of course, we all know that Christmas is really just about the kids and this year Verity has shown more interest in the festive season and can ably articulate her thoughts. Because she’s only three-years-old and she likes any excuse to stay up a little later, we often have extended chats about this, that and the other. Tonight, we talked about Christmas and she was so on-target, I grabbed the video camera and captured her thought process.
It sounds mawkish and sentimental, but it is times like these that you understand why you have children. They transport you back to a more innocent time – heck, I’ve never look forward to Christmas so much since we’ve had the kids!

Someone has been raiding my dreams, for verily there is beach where all your favourite celebrities from TV, Film and music jig about lip-synching to “Let It Be” by the Beatles. This video is just brilliant on so many levels and features some of my faves too. I dare you not to sit through this without pointing at the screen at couple of times and saying “So that’s what xxx looks like now”.
Plus, it’s got John Nettles – the mighty Bergerac – in it… Sweet!

As a newsagents we deliver to an old people’s home and, obviously, from time-to-time customers in their twilight years pass on, leaving us with a bill to collect. Not a problem usually as we often get a relative come down and thank us for the service and the matter is settled.
One of our customers from the old folks’ home passed away a good few months back – not a problem, I think, it will be settled. The unusual thing about this customer was that I was forwarding the bills onto their relative in town who would come and settle the bill. Of course, being the nice guy I am, I didn’t even charge them for the stamp. Hey, I’m Mr Wonderful.
So after the passing I send out the bill to the relative expecting them to pay up and forget about it. Bills get sent out, reminders, etc but I think they might be busy dealing with the bereavement. No problem – it will settled, eventually. These things take time – be gentle – death is involved, etc.
Imagine my surprise when I get a letter from the company dealing with deceased customers probate and I am to apply as a creditor to them to get the bill settled. I was a little bit flabbergasted. Couldn’t the relative just settle the bill like they had been doing previously? It’s not a huge amount. But no – we have to apply to get our money back.
This place never ceases to amaze me…