The Gonzo Daily - Wednesday
I love this time of the year. The fresh green
leaves on the beech trees in the garden, the holly blues flying over the ivy on
the side of the house, and the goldfish spawning in the pond. However,
yesterday, we had only just got the axolotls settled into their outside
accommodation, and bought some bedding plants for the new raised bed that Danny
has built next to the main pond, than we were told there was a frost warning, so
we had to rapidly rethink our plans.
As I write I am listening to 'Postcards from
paradise', the eighteenth solo album from Ringo Starr, one time drummer with you
know who. It would be so easy to slate this album as being irrelevant and not
breaking new ground. But the man is 75 for goodness sakes, and - you know what?
He has turned in a perfectly respectable and solid album, which I have to say is
at least as good as the vast majority of solo albums by ex-Beatles, and
considerably better than some. OK, John got his kit off for peace and George
chanted for Krishna, but that was a long time ago.
The album was produced completely by Starr himself,
and engineered by longtime collaborator Bruce Sugar. Starr worked with many of
his regular songwriting and recording colleagues on "Postcards from Paradise",
including Van Dyke Parks, Dave Stewart, and Gary Burr. As with his previous
albums, Starr maintains a philosophy of "If you show up at my house and you can
play, you're on the record".
This is a much more enjoyable listen than a great
deal of the stuff that I am sent. And anyone who can add the name of his
favourite pudding into a lascivious song about a Creole girl in the Big Easy is
OK by me. This is fine, very well played and crafted, and consistently
entertaining music. People should give up waiting for the big statement and bear
that in mind. Peace and Love (Peace and Love).
Roy Weard, Dogwatch, That Legendary Wooden Lion,
Circuline, Astronomusic, Blur, Blackbird Raum, Hawkwind, Jon Anderson, and Yes
fans had better look out!
The latest issue of Gonzo Weekly (#127) is
available to read at www.gonzoweekly.com, and to download at http://www.gonzoweekly.com/pdf/. It
has the legendary Roy Weard on the cover, and inside yours truly interviews him
about his autobiography, memories of Watchfield and Windsor free festivals and
lots more. Doug writes about Circuline, Jon interviews Astronomusic, Jon
eulogises over Blackbird Raum, and is pensive about Blur's new album. Jon
critiques a book about Doc Shiels. Neil Nixon reports on an even stranger album
than usual, Wyrd plays live with exclusive pics, Xtul gets even more peculiar,
and there are radio shows from Strange Fruit and from M Destiny at Friday Night
Progressive, and the titular submarine dwellers are still lost at sea, although
I have been assured that they will hit land again soon. There is also a
collection of more news, reviews, views, interviews and pademelons trying to
choose (OK, nothing to do with small marsupials having difficulty in making
choices, 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!!!
This issue features:
John Lennon, Noel &
Liam Gallagher, Tool, Black Sabbath, Nile Rodgers, Chic, Strange Fruit, Friday
Night Progressive, Bernard Stollman, John Shuttleworth, Hugh Hopper, Rocket
Scientists, Tommy James, Birmingham Sunday, Inner City Unit, Mick Abrahams,
OneRepublic, Ellie Goulding, Florence and the Machine, Brantley Gilbert,Roy
Weard, Circuline, Astronomusic, Hawkwind, Jessica Taylor, Yes,
Reflektions,
Tracy Nicholson, Stargrace, Jim Watts, Dogleg, Doc Shiels, Xtul, Yes, Steve
Howe, Geoff Downes, Rick Wakeman, Blackbird Raum, Blur, Damon Albarn, A.C.,Spice
Girls, Elvis, The Osbournes, Michael Jackson, The Partridge Family, Claude
Serre, Jonne
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/…/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit…
* 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?
The hunt for British Big Cats attracts far more newspaper-column inches than any other cryptozoological subject. 
