2008-05-21T14:31:00.000-07:00

Hi. welcome to the blog. I'm 36 and this is the log of my 2008. The name of the blog comes from my deep and abiding fascination with music. Whether playing it ( as a fairly average guitarist), watching it being played, recording or listening, it's been one of the cornerstones of my life. At the moment clan Beachcomber have moved into a house which we have had building work on. The clan consists of me, Senior Management, Boy Wonder and Super Girl.

As well as learning the esoteric art of DIY (come back modal scales, all is forgiven) I've decided to see if I can fulfill a dream of playing cheesy rock covers in a band. My live playing and recording up until now had been self penned folk stuff with Folky Chick in a band called Curio (and before that Graduation Party -it's a long story) and recording that sort of stuff and a bit of chilled beat stuff in my copious pre-clan time.

I had a band called Tarpaulin (covering a load of old rubbish) with Mighty J playing bass and vocals, rock chick on guitar, BH on guitars, DP on drums and me playing lead. All the others had pretty much picked up the instruments for the first time and were getting that whole learning and excitement thing without any of the pretencious stuff. We're now back to Mighty J on vocals, rock chick and bass and me on guitars. As you can see above I'm rubbish at band names, Rock chick and Mighty J have gone away toi consider whilst I'm thinking about songs. Early indications are that Plectrum Electrum, Sarcastic Yak, Drastic Cargo and Flashing Melon may be in the running (Flashing Melon?! Could give all the wrong impressions methinks). I'm keeping my distance until the debris clears. Chordie
Chordie.net
is fab to get you going and the chord automated key change saves a lot of hassle. How do you get good inspiration for band names? Ah well I wait to see what they come back with. In the meantime, the last weeks have been dominated firstly by my attendance in helper capacity at the Norwich Jazz Party
where a good time was had by all I think. I saw my first ever small man with trumpet who tries to blow the other members of the band off the stage and a man playing a sax that bore an uncanny resemblence to a toy one Boy Wonder had at home. Apart from the almost inevitable failure by me to tear off raffle tickets quickly enough, it was a sweet well run weekend. After all its jazz man, what could have gone wrong?

Had a brief appearance on a local news programme yesterday as one of the outraged middle classes protesting against the proposed closure of the local post office. had my ten seconds of glory and I hope we persuade the powers that be to keep it open. EDP 24 site link
Finally and on a lighter note, to remember Tarpaulin fondly and with some excitement for the next jam session with Mighty J and Rock Chick tomorrow night, here's what we got up to in all it's rough unedited and fun format.
Here comes the rain again

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2008-05-04T06:22:00.000-07:00

Sweet Child of Mine

Beachcomber Records

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