OK - so I thought twice about the name of that song and reverted it back tot he original thought - Trance In A Milion is the track referenced in my last post.

A new track has been posted on my Songs section. This one is a fast electronic groove/trance track I programmed in Reason.

The original idea came while I was messing around with the sequencer over a year ago. I never did work out what to do with the track until a week ago when I had some time to go through some new Reason libraries.

So after a few hours in the studio it finally evolved into a couple of themes that morph into each other.

The title? That comes from Ian Dury live at Hammersmith just before they launch into Rhythm Stick. It seemed to capture the energetic start to my new song.

Hope you enjoy.

Today I got an email from my friend Andy with a most welcome and suprising attachment; a mp3 file from a jam session 15 years ago.

This particular jam session has a story behind it. I had been playing a lot of swing/jazz at home and was branching out of the blues idiom for something more challenging and less predictable. At the time I was playing in various bands and knew a talented bass player (with perfect pitch, the bugger) and some wonderful singers. The problem was finding a good swing drummer.

Luckily I managed to track down a long time friend from school. Nick was four years older than me but a friend of the family. I met up with him after a year or two in the first ever band I played with when I had just got my first guitar. I could play about five chords and sounded awful on the lead runs, but Nick was welcoming. I liked Nick a lot.

So I managed to track him down via his sister. He was living up North and had stopped being a professional swing jazz drummer as it had made him poor to the verge of poverty; so it goes.

He agreed to come and jam together with my friend on bass and the singer I was to bring. We rented a dingy studio in Watford, which was mid-way between his house in Peterborough and us in Billericay. We all turned up but the singer didn't.

So we jammed best we could. Andy recorded some of our time on his 8 track machine. At the time we were pretty down because the singer didn't show, but we made the best of it. I was playing on the Les Paul I had made, through a Fender Twin amp drenched with reverb.

Andy took the recording home and laid down some Hammond over the top. The next time I went to his house he played me what he had done and I was astounded. It sounded way better than I remembered us playing. Andy and I lost touch for a while and I never heard the track again. When we met back up a few years later I reminded him but it was buried in some dark corner, probably never to be found again.

Until today, when it turned up as an mp3 in my inbox. And here it is now. It isn't bad at all and it makes me smile when I hear it. I remember us all playing in the grubby and dimly lit, musky and damp hole of a studio we had rented. We had not played together before. We had no idea what we were going to play and it was Andy and Nick's first meeting.

So check out Something Old, Something Blue if you wish, and think of us just letting it happen.

I never need an excuse to go a music shop, and last Friday saw me in the Guitar Center with a friend that was looking for a nice acoustic guitar.

We sat in the shop for two hours and in that time we must have played about $30,000 worth of equipment. We tried out Martins, Taylors, Gibsons, Takamine, Ibanez and back round again. Some Fender resonator guitars went quickly through our hands too.

The result? The Gibson guitars were joyous to play, with Taylor coming a resounding second.

Then onto the electric section where I tried out a Schecter I had my eye on. The guitar played poorly, which was unfortunate as it had a wonderful flame top.

Over to the bass section and we tried out Ernie Balls, Fender, Wal and anything we could get hour hands on.

After that we ended up in the vintage section and both agred the 1963 Fender Stratocaster at a cool $28,000 was the guitar we'd  most like to have given the choice.

I walked out with nothing more than a few data points (a reminder about the CBS takeover of Fender in 1973) and how much I like Gretsch guitars.

Now I just need to work on my next excuse to go again.

Now the holidays are over I'm finding it tough to get any time for new music. I did get some time to put together a quick funky track using BFD and Ampeg SVX but there are no lyrics and it was more of a way of getting used to Ampeg than anything else.

I think for this year my goal will be to put out some soundtrack music and maybe some ambient. If I can find some vox to put on two unfinished tracks I'll have enough to group together for an album or EP.

Alternatively I may do some more guitar tracks. Options options options . . All I need is time.