The Knot unTies on iTunes

“Sketches For A Lost Summer” is now available on iTunes with individual tracks at £0.79 each.
Forget your apps, get yourself a fix of music…

The Untied Knot on Spotify

“Sketches For A Lost Summer” is now on Spotify so you lucky people can hear the whole of the album by clicking here…

For those who aren’t familiar with Spotify – it’s a huge free on-line music streaming resource, effectively a radio station where you select what you want to hear.  As well as big-shots like David Bowie, Neil Young and The Beach Boys you’ll find all sorts of more esoteric stuff including loads of my faves like The Durutti Column, Robbie Basho & Popol Vuh.

Memory of a free festival

At the turn of the 1990s I was living in the South West London district of Tooting on a street which contained a row of housing association houses/ flats now sadly demolished to make way for a car park. Every summer, the adjoining gardens of the residents made way for a stage and a day of music, booze and general good-mannered mayhem known as Maybury Fest (and subsequently Longley Fest).
Like the Field Farm Festival, this was a fantastic event that ran on community goodwill and enthusiasm. The police would usually show up and stick their heads round but cheers to ‘em, they never intervened.
I have particularly fond memories of the Maybury Fest as I made my debut musical performance there playing a mix of Stones, Velvet Underground and Doors numbers in a combo tragically (but also brilliantly) named, The Velvet Underpants. The following year The Fables (see review right) made their live debut to an appreciative late summer crowd. Read the rest of this entry »