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This week we have a new idea for a regular spot on my website, SONG OF THE WEEK! You will find it at the end of the front page, click here.

I seem to have a lot of back catalogue between solo albums, Noctorum, MOAT, collaborations and even bands I have been in. So it seemed like a good idea to slowly let the songs out one by one, some of which you will know, some of which you won’t. Ironically, old songs will be your new songs and as I have a new Noctorum album coming out in November, a new MOAT album on the cards for next year, plus hopefully some Anekdoten recording, as well as potential Record Store Day releases it might be a good time to catch up.

On a slight tangent, it’s fascinating for musicians that are constantly (hopefully) evolving to have the audience craving the old songs and not the new ones as they coincided with some alleged important part of their life. In fact all parts of your life are important in different stages, despite your age and circumstances and I feel like it’s more about keeping the passion for music rather than a taste for nostalgia – after all, the old songs were also once the new songs.

The first song in this series coincides with our good friend Derek’s YouTube release of an All About Eve gig from 2001. For those of you (mostly in America) who don’t know who All About Eve are – I joined them after two albums and made two more studio albums, two acoustic live albums and one electric live album before we parted ways. In fact Ultraviolet, the last All About Eve studio album, is pretty much the album that got me the gig with Anekdoten. AAE were pretty big in England, playing the Royal Albert Hall in London and had something like 9 songs enter the Top 40 or thereabouts. Martha’s Harbour was the biggest hit, reaching the Top 10. This week is also the 30th anniversary of the release of Martha’s Harbour.

Here we have another celebration of the song that appeared on the White Rose Transmission album Bewitched And Bewildered in 2006, originally a collaboration between The Sound’s Adrian Borland and The Convent’s Carlo Van Putten. Adrian sadly passed in 1999.

Carlo originally had the idea to do a covers album of songs sung by women. Carlo asked me to play guitar on a couple of tracks that he wanted to sing and I of course knew that tricky guitar part for Martha’s Harbour from my time in All About Eve and that song was one of his choices.

So I hope you like the idea of SONG OF THE WEEK and let me know if you would like to find a physical copy of the song and I can try and direct you to where they might be available beyond digital.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose_Transmission

I’ll be returning to the cosy grip of Anekdoten, performing as the headlining act at the Chateau Villersexel in France on August 5th. This two day progressive festival under the eaves of the home of a real Baron and Baroness (Potet) has a history of famous visitors including Winston Churchill and Charles De Gaulle who were there to see early Progressive Rock bands from the forties. À bientôt!

rockauchateau.fr