‘Every week now, a new jazz book arrives on my desk. Biography, autobiography, discography, miscellany, anthology and fiction – they come streaming off the presses… Now, such is the spate of commentary and research, there will soon be nothing left to write about.’ Humphrey Lyttelton, 1960 In 2014 my …
A quick update this time… My 2010 under-the-radar album Titanium Flag will be reissued nationally in expanded and remastered form by Market Square Records, run with exquisite taste and aplomb by bon viveur, renaissance man, public relations guru and all round good fellow Peter Muir. This new edition exists because …
November already? I really must update more often. The Peter Eden/British Jazz feature in Record Collector finally appeared, in RC458 (October 2016). In support of the tremendous Quintessence 2CD set on Hux, Spirits From Another Time, released earlier this year, I wrote a feature for Shindig! (can’t recall the …
And thus, almost everything mentioned in the June 2015 update came to pass… The one exception, at the time of writing, is the Record Collector feature on Peter Eden and British Jazz circa 1970. Maybe next month… My two books, The Wheels of the World: 300 Years of Irish Uilleann …
June marks the end of a particularly busy period, with a number of obligations needing delivered at more of less the same time. I’ll keep it brief: The Wheels Of The World: 300 Years Of Irish Uilleann Pipers is the final title of my book with John McSherry. It’s …
The Piping Book After an eight month process, a tranche of Arts Council funding – for which I applied in April with piper John McSherry and publishers Jawbone Press – was delivered last week. It will make The Wheels Of The World, our book on the history of uilleann piping, …
Bathed In Lightning: John McLaughlin, the 60s and the Emerald Beyond (Jawbone Press) is now available. Reviews so far have been very positive, bar one chap who found it ‘relentlessly detailed’. That’s the trouble with history: it comes with the blighters (details). But, joking aside, I’ve made the book as …
It’s February 2014, all may seem quiet but there’s plenty of things going on. Bathed In Lightning: John McLaughlin, the 60s and the Emerald Beyond is published by Jawbone Press in the UK and USA on March 1. A 3,700 word extract is in the current issue of Record Collector …
Hopefully, as I type, webmaster to the stars (certainly those of the jazz pantheon in Norway) ‘Excitable’ Dave Mullan will be working on the architecture of a forthcoming website dedicated to the similarly forthcoming Bathed In Lightning: John McLaughlin, the 60s and the Emerald Beyond. The textual content of the …
My book Bathed In Lightning: John McLaughlin, the ’60s and the Emerald Beyond is now completed. Huge sigh of relief… I’ve been proof-reading and making a few last-minute tweaks in recent days – though inevitably the odd typographical error will escape no matter how many times one scrutinises. Eleventh hour …