Journal

Wed 7 Oct – Michael Manring and Steve Lawson

Review on my blog

My 30,000th track was by Terence Trent D'Arby. I'll also pass 100k miles for my car in about the same time (5+ years).

Not bought too much music lately apart from some bargain downloads from Steve Lawson. I rarely get to a record shop, but will scan the bargain bins when I do for various stuff on my wish list.

For a change I listened to some of my old LPs today. I have a turntable running through an old DJ mixer (for the pre-amp) into the second input of my PC speakers. This won't get the most from the vinyl, but still sounded good. I don't have a 'proper' hi-fi set-up, much as I'd like to.

These 3 feature some of my favourite guitarists

Finyl Vinyl, but not the Ronnie James Dio bits. Love Ritchie Blackmore. I feel the need to get Difficult To Cure

Eat 'em and Smile. Featuring Steve Vai

Houses of the Holy. Jimmy Page is probably still my number one.

Scrobbled my 25,000th track today listening to Hüsker Dü

Looking at my stats for the year I see that I have been listening to lots of Eels, Björk and Radiohead, as usual. My Glenn Gould Bach CD has had lots of plays.

On the album chart those artists don't make the top 10, but I obviously enjoyed Camille's latest and Jeff Schmidt's instrumental work has been passing the time at work.

Camille also does well on individual tracks, but Steve Lawson also makes a strong showing there. I'm surprised that I've not listened to anything more than 8 times. A few songs by Mansun and others are only there due to cropping up often on my neighbour radio.

Most of this listening has been at work. I choose based on my mood. Sometimes I need instrumental music to block out background noise without distracting too much. Other times a conversation or the radio will inspire me to listen to something in particular.

Next year I may be acquiring more music from less well known artists who I have heard about on-line and will try to by their music direct from them. Otherwise I may be making use of Amazon and other sites who have some good deals on MP3 downloads. So next year's stats may be quite different.

I don't know many professional musicians. I've met a few recently via various on-line communities such as Steve Lawson and Simon Little, but they are probably well below the general public radar.

I recently found out that Max Richter, who I knew when I was about 12, is a successful composer and performer. I remember him trying to build a synth from a kit with help from his dad, but didn't get to see it finished. I wonder if anyone else I knew has made it big.

If I included friends of friends then I could draw connections to some big names, but I don't think that means too much.

I just realised that I didn't link my review to this event Tue 29 Jul – Steve and Lobelia + Special guests

I play with a drum circle called Secret Bass. We recently recorded our first CD. It's mainly to give to those running events we might want to take part in and partly for beginners to have as a reference. It's not perfect, but not bad for a group of amateurs.

The music is unlikely to find its way onto this site, but I expect that some plays will get listed when I listen to my copy. I wonder if anyone else listening to it will be Scrobbling.

What's odd is that there are plays listed under that artist for a track called OHC Basketball. I have no idea what that might be.