I’m not a new year resolutions person, but I do find myself looking to make changes as a new year dawns. Don’t we all? Nothing drastic, but hopefully for the better. A re-tweet on twitter summed up new year resolutions for me…

My New Years resolution for this year is 1024 x 768!

Music wise the holiday has been great. Lot’s of new CDs and DVDs, too many to take in in the holiday.  Which CD didn’t Santa bring me? Less Is More by Marillion. After posting about it and looking forward to it so much I forgot about it. And the VAT has gone up by 2.5% today too!

One CD/DVD 5.1 mix that Santa did bring me was A Curious Feeling by Tony Banks of Genesis fame. The new 5.1 mix is stunning. His orchestration of the keyboards really benefit from the extra channels. I’ve always liked Kim Beacons voice too and was sorry to read in the sleeve notes that he’s no longer with us.

We watched the Joe Bonamassa Live from the Royal Albert Hall DVD. It’s a fine mix of his own material and some blues standards. Guitar playing at it’s best, from smooth blues to raging solos. Just listen to the guitar sound on the opening track, Django, nothing out of the ordinary, just spot on. Eric Clapton makes an appearance that clearly is the icing on the cake for Joe himself. Oh and there are two drummers, which is an unexpected bonus for me. Anton Fig has stepped in to boost the drum sound. The two kits are separated left and right which works very well especially during the drum duet throughout High Water Everywhere. The duet greatly enhances the live version of the song Joe originally covered on his You & Me CD. So click the link and buy it, you won’t regret it… honest.

After a lot of work by all the family we’ve finally finished the renovation of our living room. We’re pleased with it, just the small detail of paying for it now.

Dave helped with the nasty work of removing all the old plaster, rendering and the ceiling. Apparently we looked like a couple of miners after removing the ceiling.

Before and after photos…

Getting back to those bricks was hard labour

The newly plastered walls are sealed

The first coats of colour

In my 'Fantastic Place'

He’s applied for his room in Halls and his student loan. Today he’s sorting out which computer to take. It looks like we may loose the Eee Box.

Mike from their band is clearly and understandably in two minds. First and foremost  he is genuinely pleased for Steven, but with lots of bookings looming he’s also wondering how to keep the band going. Anyone know a good Bass player available for the odd gig?

The lack of notice forced upon us is not good, but such is life. Looks like I’ll be driving the 280 miles round trip a few times in the future.

Quoting from their website…

This Album will be made up of new acoustic arrangements of songs from our vast back-catalogue of music All five members of the band are looking forward to this chance to showcase the essence of our songs in this alternative, intimate and exciting format.

Tumble Down The Years is featured in one of the TV episodes. That’s a song that’s passed me by. Lyrically it strikes a cord with me. Kaz and I are certainly tumbling down the years and damn the river.

Now, where are they playing this Less is More tour? We have to be there.

Anyway, let me set the scene… there were two big sports stories in the news yesterday. Firstly England were actually doing very well in the second Test in the current Ashes series. Amazing. Secondly Tiger Woods didn’t make the cut in the British Open tournament at Turnberry in Scotland.

Late in the evening Alan Davies Tweeted the following…

Now that's what I call comedy.

Brilliant!

Their version of Fifth of Fifth is great, and yes they do perform the full version, wonderful piano intro et al. Have a listen. Sorry about the shoddy camera work, but the videos aren’t that bad considering they’re from my Canon IXUS 960 IS digital camera and handheld. Not easy when the songs are 9 minutes long.

Hollow Earth, Railway Tavern, Coltishall

Here are the links to the videos that I’ve uploaded to YouTube at the request of Merv, their marketing guy.

Hollow Earth – Comfortably Numb

Hollow Earth – Locomotive Breath

Hollow Earth – Fifth of Fifth

During the session somehow a symbol stand was knocked over, it fell in front of Dave’s amp and sliced into the mains cable. The result was a bang and flash as the symbol cut into the cable and shorted live to earth.

The up shot is Dave’s amp now makes a lot of horrible noise and very little guitar sound. We fear the short circuit has damaged a valve.

• Disc 1 – the album (only 6 tracks)
• Disc 2 – 6 covers

1. Stargazer
2. Tenement Funster/Flick Of The Wrist/Lily Of The Valley
3. Odyssey
4. Take Your Fingers From My Hair
5. Larks Tongues In Aspic (Part 2)
6. To Tame A Land

• Disc 3 – the album’s instrumental mixes

F1 qualifying is on the Beeb in a couple of hours too, we’ll never make it.

Nero worked perfectly, it detected the Lightscribe drive and enabled the options in the Cover Designer. To be fair, I did download and install the Lightscribe Control Panel before running Nero, so perhaps that gave Nero the information it required.

Below is a scan of the final disk. It features the Cuttin’ Edge logo that was drawn by Jon Haward, which is perfect for CDs. To ‘print’ the label side of the Lightscribe CD, takes about 15 minutes, by the way.

Cuttin' Edge demo CD Lightscribed

We’re very pleased how the disk has turned out and is an improvement over the first drafts of paper labels. Now Mike has to distribute them to local pubs, which hopefully lead to some more gigs appearing at the Cuttin’ Edge website.

Oh and thanks Ant, I’d forgotten all about Lightscribe.

The main thing I noticed on first listen is that electric guitars pop up all over the place… a good addition. Secondly, no fade outs on any track. It feels like the tracks are written and performed by the band so natural endings are the norm. And those drums… Carter is really high in the mix and sounding great.

And best of all, this CD is not a victim of the Loudness War.. look at the extract of the Audacity sample picture… peaks and troughs, dynamic range. At last these bands are waking up to the fact that less is more and we all have a volume control.

Mmmm, dynamic range!

Listening through again as I write this confirms my initial thoughts. It’s going to be a fine CD. Like most of my favourite CDs, the songs are coming through over time. Lying In the Hands Of God (with a burst of one of my favourite sounds, acoustic slide guitar), Why I Am, Squirm and You & Me have leapt forward so far. I’m sure others will follow.

Oh and Steven informs me Seven is actually in 7/4 time. I’ll take his word for that, my technical music knowledge is limited to say the least.

Isn’t it typical, new CDs are turning up like number nine buses now, Chickenfoot arrived this morning. It’s going to have to wait a bit.