Standing below the Brandenburg Gate, quickly stepping aside out of the path of the advancing quadriga, I wondered if the copper horses, chariot and the goddess of victory might trample me to death. Suppressed by the humidity, elbowed by the marauding tourists, shoved by the screaming girls and the groaning groups of men and keeping a good distance from the very scary naked man on the other side of the square, I realize that summer is really here and I have reached Berlin. This is also the site of the […]
A slight pause before Berlin
After a busy few weeks rehearsing and playing shows in Italy and Norway with Anekdoten I am finally reunited with my amazing wife Olivia in Cologne. I have been meaning to write about all these recent adventures (especially the incredible city of Rome) but alas I am going to Berlin tomorrow, seeing Jeff Beck at the Tempodrom next Tuesday and then off to Hamburg for 3 days before returning to the Cologne/Bonn area where I can hopefully settle down to some writing regarding recent events, adding the latest news from […]
The Past To The Future – Stockholm To Milan
Leaving Stockholm today for Milan, Rome and finally Bergen, Norway, where I’ll be playing with Anekdoten. I won’t be in England again till next year, it feels like a new phase with the Anekdoten shows, the latest Noctorum album and other happenings in the coming months that I will get into as they approach. But all this and with the death of a musician you have played with despite not being in touch recently, the future seems to be blurring out the past at a tremendous rate. The past rather […]
Sixty Years On The Planet Earth – The September Of My Years – Frank Sinatra – 1965
On May 7th 2018 I will be sixty years old. It seems that each decade is some kind of landmark achievement and the more decades that go by the larger the gap is supposed to grow between you and your or anyone else’s youth. In my case obviously, married to a girl much younger than me, this simply isn’t true and the idea that people need to be approximately the same age to converse, to share a happy life together seems rather misguided. But that is another issue, reaching sixty […]
Walpurgis Night, The Wicker Man, Willow’s Song And The Fair Isles
It seems appropriate to post this rather odd collaboration on Walpurgis night – (in German folklore) the night of April 30 (May Day’s eve) and into Mayday, “when witches meet on the Brocken mountain and hold revels with the Devil”. Saint Walpurga was an English missionary from Devon cannonized by Pope Adrian II in 870. This aristocratic and saintly lass was the daughter of Saint Richard The Pilgrim (saintlihood ran in the family). She became an abbess and healer in the Frankish empire that occupied a large part of Europe including […]