Questions of historical accuracy aside……I’ve always rather enjoyed the film Enemy at the Gates. For those of you not familiar with the film, it’s set during the siege of Stalingrad and tells the story of a duel between real-life Russian sniper, Vasily Grigoryevich Zaitsev, and the possibly not-quite-so-real-life German sniper, Major Erwin König. There’s a great scene early on, where Nikita Khrushchev (wonderfully played by the late Bob Hoskins) confronts the hapless general

Over the past couple of months I’ve been thinking a lot about disappointment - especially as it pertains to music and being a musician. To be clear, this is not because I am disappointed in some general or specific sense. I’ve simply been thinking about it. A musician friend of mine recently conveyed the following sentiment to me: “People will readily shell out $500 and spend the night in a cold, wet stadium with crappy sound, just so that they can see some washed-up

Our lives are beset by all manner of uncomfortable truths. One of the more uncomfortable truths that I have had to learn - and it probably took longer than it should have for me to learn it - was that my love and enthusiasm for the things that interest me……will almost never be matched by other people. At times, this has been a pretty bitter pill to swallow. I imagine that most of us have from time to time found ourselves being really excited about something - perhaps an a

This week I have purchased two books. I read voraciously as a child and continued to do so well into my twenties - I was young and had time. Nowadays I have less youth and less time. I also have a day job that involves a lot of reading……so by the time I get home, the last thing I want to do is pick up a book. Matters are further complicated by the fact that the books I’m usually drawn to tend to focus on the creatively hideous ways in which human beings have historically

Being the voluntarily isolated, elitist snob that I am......it’s took a while for me to get on-board with the whole ‘open mic night’ thing. I think I must have had some bad OMN experiences when I was young. And while I wouldn’t know......I imagine that a bad OMN experience is probably a bit like a bad LSD trip. Once bitten, twice shy. But over the past couple of years I’ve come to really enjoy and value OMNs - even if I don’t always enjoy every musical occurrence that manifes

If you are the kind of person who reflects upon your life from time to time......then you have probably identified various episodes/happenings which were pivotal - or at least appear to have have been pivotal - in molding you into the particular version of yourself that you are today. Someone gave you your first book, or took you fishing for the first time. You met someone with whom you found you shared a common interest. Someone used or abused you. But some aspects of...

This is Lil’ Red . The guitar - not the bottle cap......which is also red. I bought Lil’ Red some time in the later part of 2007 and for a long time it was my only acoustic guitar. This meant that it sort of had to do everything: standard tuning, Drop D, Double Drop D and DADGAD. And it performed admirably. Lil’ Red comes from a series of acoustic guitars that Ibanez ran for a while, called the Exotic Wood Series. At the time I purchased Lil Red , it was one of only thre

Well. We’re almost a quarter of the way into 2026. And what a year it’s been thus far. Bombs are falling down in some place far away. Commodity prices are going up in some place close by. Politicians are telling lies, safe in the knowledge that they will never really have to answer for having done so. The useful idiots who still dare to call themselves ‘journalists’ are propping up their favourite politicians, confident in the knowledge that they are on the ‘right side of

This, as the name tends to suggest......is my Blog. Which makes this my first 'Blog Post'. It's late, so I'm going to keep things pretty brief. But in the coming weeks and months etc, my plan is to 'blog' on a semi-regular basis - primarily about the music that I have made and am making. J.