The Gonzo Daily - Monday
It was a long and rather peculiar weekend. We
finished the magazine on time, at about 2:00am on Saturday morning and went to
bed. But when we arose, bright and shiny to greet the new day we found that the
FTP server for all the external websites that we use (CFZ, Gonzo Weekly etc) was
down, and so there was no way that we could publish it. It eventually saw the
light of day on Sunday lunchtime. However, the rest of the weekend was spent
recording with Mike, and we have finally nailed my favourite of his songs. I
first tried recording Woman I know, about twenty five years ago, but I think we
have the definitive version now. And yes that IS me on guitar. Peculiarly,
although my galloping Carpal Tunnel Syndrome means I can no longer play bass, I
can still pluck at the odd solo like this one.
Yesterday I heard Dave Bainbridge's new album,
which cuts a magnificent swathe through the worlds of folk rock, prog and all
sorts of other things. I was expecting it to be good - after all, Dave is a
peerless musician, and one of the founders of Christian folk rock outfit Iona,
but I wasn't expecting it to be THIS good. It was far more rocky than I was
expecting, and also far more stylistically diverse. I was expecting more of a
folk rock influence and nowhere so much voyaging into the areas first explored
by The Mahavishnu Orchestra, for example. But this is a good thing. I enjoyed it
immensely. Bainbridge is obviously a producer like me who values different sound
textures, and the music presented traverses a wide range of musical emotions,
from the frankly sexy to the frankly scary. Celestial Fire is a lovely album
which covers far more musical territory than I had been expecting, and bodes
well for future outings from this fascinating artist.
Pink Fairies, Rocket Scientists, Blodwyn Pig, Mick Abrahams, Pink Floyd,
Jon Anderson, Yes, Nick Redfern, John Lennon, Hawkwind, and Daevid Allen fans
had better look out! The latest issue of Gonzo Weekly (#104) will soon be
available to read at
www.gonzoweekly.com, and to download at
http://www.gonzoweekly.com/pdf/.
It has The Pink Fairies on the cover, and features an interview with Andy
Colquhoun about the current and future plans of the band including the long
hoped for studio material. Rob Ayling visits legendary blues guitarist Mick
Abrahams in his studio and find out about his exciting new album made with some
very A-List sparring partners. Erik Norlander is very cagey about the new album
from Rocket Scientists. But there's more! There is news about Daevid Allen, Doug
Harr goes to see America and also gets hitched, Jon waxes lyrical about the new
Pink Floyd album and then gets all existential. Xtul are still in the deep
woods, and Corinna finds some real Beatles tat. Jon looks at a peculiar book
about Jon Lennon and we send the mighty John Ellis (ex Vibrators and Stranglers
and sidesman to Peter Gabriel and Peter Hammill to a desert island. There are
also new shows from the multi-talented Neil Nixon at Strange Fruit and from M
Destiny at Friday Night Progressive, and the massively talented Jaki and Tim are
back with their submarine and Maisie the cow. There is also a collection of more
news, reviews, views, interviews and turtles having a snooze (OK, no soporific
chelonians, but I got carried away with things that rhymed with OOOOS) than you
can shake a stick at. And the best part is IT's ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!
Read the previous few issues of Gonzo Weekly:
All issues from #70 can be downloaded at
www.gonzoweekly.com if you prefer. If you
have problems downloading, just email me and I will add you to the Gonzo Weekly
dropbox. The first 69 issues are archived there as well. Information is power
chaps, we have to share it!
* The Gonzo Daily is a two way process. If you have any news or want
to write for us, please contact me at
jon@eclipse.co.uk. If you are an artist and
want to showcase your work, or even just say hello please write to me at
gonzo@cfz.org.uk. Please copy, paste and
spread the word about this magazine as widely as possible. We need people to
read us in order to grow, and as soon as it is viable we shall be invading more
traditional magaziney areas. Join in the fun, spread the word, and maybe if we
all chant loud enough we CAN stop it raining. See you tomorrow...
* The
Gonzo Daily is - as the name implies - a daily online magazine (mostly) about
artists connected to the Gonzo Multimedia group of companies. But it also has
other stuff as and when the editor feels like it. The same team also do a weekly
newsletter called - imaginatively - The Gonzo Weekly. Find out about it at this
link:
www.gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/11/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit-to-print.html
* We should probably mention here, that some of our posts are links to
things we have found on the internet that we think are of interest. We are not
responsible for spelling or factual errors in other people's websites. Honest
guv!
* Jon Downes, the Editor of all these ventures (and several
others) is an old hippy of 55 who - together with an infantile orange cat named
after a song by Frank Zappa puts it all together from a converted potato shed in
a tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon which he shares with various fish, and
sometimes a small Indian frog. He is ably assisted by his lovely wife Corinna,
his bulldog/boxer Prudence, his elderly mother-in-law, and a motley collection
of social malcontents. Plus.. did we mention the infantile orange
cat?
