Dream Gig

It seems that some rock 'n' roll dreams do come true... Alex KP, the remarkable singer-songwriter, mentioned on this blog in the summer, was not only persuaded to add her spine-tingling voice to tracks on our new Russ Payne and Unison Bends album, 'Liquor And Iron', but she has agreed to perform with the band at our 'live' album launch in Brighton on November 26.

It promises to be the most exciting gig that the band has done. I wouldn't want to miss it.

Softness In The Machine

Interesting reading the official Robert Wyatt biography to find that this one-time highly individual drummer and latterly remarkable singer has long been plagued by feelings of musical inadequacy and anxiety dreams of the onstage shit hitting the fan.

Maybe he's just particularly honest in owning up to it... Since there are many more musicians who experience such worries...

Wyatt was there from the beginning with The Soft Machine – named after the William Burroughs novel of the same name – and he probably appreciates as much as anyone that this reference to the human body as a soft machine is apt. The human machine can do amazing things, but its software is often vulnerable.

Even though 'Different Every Time' is an occasionally hagiographic 'authorised' book, it does not shy away from the vulnerabilities of this particular soft musical machine. And it's an excellent read.

At last...

I've been away... I'm back.

And what better way to write a new post than to hail Bob Dylan's being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - at long last!

The carping from those who don't get it has already started... but as the Poet Laureate of Rock 'N' Roll pointed out some time ago, something is happening and they don't know what it is.

Those who know and love Dylan and his work  - and know what it has meant to them on this long journey from the Sixties to here - will get it and will be overjoyed.