About 150 years ago when I was a callow and dissolute youth I used to sit in the front row of pub folk-clubs – on the floor most of the time, Newcastle Brown in one hand and Gauloises in the other – trying to figure out how this fellow does what he does with a guitar. I’m still trying.
Here’s another one from the time when he had hair:
My rendition of an old John Renbourn tune.
A song I wrote a few years ago; well, the other David wrote the lyrics.
Monkeys have musical tastes apparently:
Monkeys are not fans of classical music, but find heavy metal songs by Metallica and Tool soothing, according to new research.
So a human that prefers heavy metal to classical music has something in common with a monkey. Perhaps Dawkins is right after all; for fans of heavy metal, that is.
My version of a tune by Doc Watson. From my hillbilly period:
Vera Lynn is in the top 20, pushing out U2
More than 60 years after she was labelled the Forces Sweetheart and kept the nation’s spirits up with her timeless records during World War Two, Dame Vera Lynn has returned to the top 20.
Beating off competition from rockers U2, the Stone Roses and Eminem, the 92-year-old has stormed into the charts with her album We’ll Meet Again – The Very Best of Vera Lynn.
A tune from my misspent youth:
Music can dredge up long – and perhaps best – forgotten feelings in the oddest way.
By chance I came across an old song that I haven’t heard for – well, a long time. I was 13 when Helen Shapiro sang “You don’t know”. She was 14 and, as soon as I heard it, I knew I was in love. It didn’t work out between us, but it did teach me something: the embarrassingly large succession of young ladies that my hormones made me fall in love with were all singers – yes, my wife is a singer.
So when I heard this song, an ancient feeling stirred within; fortunately, I’m not as keen on the hairstyle as I used to be.
Glenn Gould was obsessed with Petula Clark, something I used not to understood; he tried to rationalise it with typical Gouldian cerebral over-indulgence. Now I know the real reason.
I wandered into a music shop this afternoon to pick up some guitar strings and heard a Martin OM-21 Special call my name. After trying it for some time I decided it needed a new home, so I bought it; the shop did give me a couple of sets of free strings though.
It is a fingerpicker’s delight: widely spaced strings, small body and clear, open, harp-like, balanced tone. With its Indian rosewood, Sitka Spruce and ebony, it even smells wonderful – that could just be to me, though.
This is what it sounds like.
As Chopin said, “There is only one thing more beautiful than one guitar: two guitars”.
