Happy New Year! (better late than never)

Christmas and new year seem like a milllion light years ago now. Had a really nice and quiet time up north with the Bainbridges (Andy’s family) supplied with ridiculous amount of food and booze (what a hard life eh?).

Spending Christmas with Andy’s dad also felt like a crash course in retrospective music. Other than his love for the Sunderland football team, music is another vice of his. He loved playing us all his old records.....especially after one drink too many…(by this time the steel guitar would come out).

While we were there we were always listening to little gems by the likes of Tim Hardin and ZZ Top. My favourite moment was when we all sat in front of the telly after we'd stuffed ourselves with Christmas dinner and watched an old recording of Canned Heat playing live at the Montreaux Jazz Festival in 1973.

It was really cool to watch a band lashing out their creativity and expressing art purely for the sake of music. You can tell as well the audience were really into it and appreciating every groove. The whole thing felt honest. No pretense….just music.