I finally ponied up the necessary and bought myself a decent second hand Denon cassette deck off evilBay. This means I’m now in the position to start working on the slew of unreleased studio demos, 4-tracks, live stuff etc. etc. from the past. Don’t hold your breath though; while I have overcome the technical problem of not having a cassette player, I still have to overcome the less tangible one of not having very much time to dedicate to this site.

However, I have been going through some cassettes over the last few days and discovered a decent radio interview I did for a local radio station way back in the Sink days. It’s actually not too embarrassing. Will try and post it and other rarities (ahem!) as soon as I can.

From a 1992 interview in Guitar Player magazine…

NY: Satriani and Eddie Van Halen are genious guitar players. They’re unbelievable musicians of the highest caliber. But I can’t relate to it. One note is enough.

JO: ‘Cinnamon Girl.’ The one note solo.

NY: Oh yeah - two strings, though. The same note on two strings. The wang bar made every one sound different.

I was pointed at The Word Magazine Podcast by a BBC programme on podcasting that I listened to yesterday. I liked the sound of it so I went to their website and filled my boots. Only heard one episode so far, but it’s pretty cool and probably a ‘must get’ if you’re a music fan and like the whole podcast thing…which I do. Well worth subscribing to it.

Episode 4 of the monthly photography podcast that I run is now available to play/download.

This site’s been quiet for the last few months primarily because our son, Joe, was born in July and life’s been well hectic ever since. Lots of work to do round the house too (boo!) as well as my day job, snatching the odd moment to do some photography-related activity, helping to run Filmwasters.com etc. etc. At one point I didn’t pick up a guitar for 9 weeks; the longest in about 20 years. Grr. Not much time left over for this site…which is a shame because I love going through the archives and posting songs and background stories. Anyway, last week I came across a stash of mini-discs in the garden shed with loads of cool stuff on them. Some great Big Ray shows from the French tour in 1999, a decent Chocolate gig from the Harlow Square Club in about 1997 and loads of really interesting 4-track demos. I’ve copied them to the computer and just need to find the time to edit them and get them online. So, watch this space in 2008.

Finally, episode 3 of the monthly photography podcast that I run is available to play/download over at Filmwasters.com. A far cry from punk rock, but easier to achieve than finding a drummer and getting a new band together.

Happy New Year!