lemonstar

Well of course - can't argue with that but I was really thinking of the kitchen and bedroom level "never gonna make it" songwriters - not your "already made it" Jagger & Richards level. I've done it a only a couple of times doing FAWM but I've never managed to set up a semi regular thing with anyone else - to sit around with a pad and a couple of guitars - I've been open to it for years but my main musician friend was never open to any kind of input - I'd share 30s fragments or 2min demos- he only sent me finished songs where there was no point in commenting on anything as it was already too late - I don't think he wanted to expose himself to a situation where you'd see what he was made of creatively - I just thought he was too uptight and precious yet he was a great musician, singer and songwriter - he just didn't want to do it while anyone was watching... and I'm totally different in so many ways... I just wondered if it was even worth hunting the mythical song writing yeti but - it seems a few people here have had some experience of it.

For years I've limped along, increasingly less productively - working on my own as most people do and looking back I'm pretty pleased/positively amazed at some of the songs that have either materialised quickly or I've managed to work them out like removing a splinter. I've often thought it would be great to have someone to collaborate with - someone who "gets it" (the desire to write well)/"gives a sh!t" (understand why the writing well matters so much) - but how many people actually find that - I wonder if it's a bit of yeti hunt looking for someone to write with. Even Lennon/McCartney wrote a lot separately but even getting someone else to cast an eye over something and give a seal of approval might make a difference worth having. What's your experience - that it's actually hard to put half a song into the hat and give someone else free reign - or that too many disagreements arise?

Peter Gabriel Plays Live from 1983 - on a trip into the distant past - I'd forgot what a great range he has and the tones and colour in his voice. What started me off was a friend's tittle-tattle about Gabriels ex-wife sending a letter into some Genesis/Gabriel fan site or magazine - saying how upsetting she found seeing him in the video with Kate Bush for Don't Give Up and that there might have been a bit more going on between the two of them - I'd never heard of this before or about that letter but I have Spencer Bright's authorised biography of PG which is pretty old now - came out in 2000 and there is a bit about her being upset about the video but I don't think it was anything more than that - what does get mentioned is the chemistry he had with Sinead O'Connor which I also didn't know about. I also have Kate Bush's biography by Rob Jovanovic - also quite dated - from 2005 where very little is mentioned about PG... anyway - this is what sent me off listening to all the PG solo stuff I have. I remember thinking that the live version of Shock The Monkey off this Plays Live album was better than the studio version.

Probably one of my favourite and most listened to jazz musicians Chet Baker - jazz is a broad church and he played in so many different styles, band contexts and eras.

Bonny Light Horseman - the first eponymous album - even though the new one is also great

Slowdive - 2017 self titled album - after a 22 year hiatus

I'll be back on this soon - I didn't mean to leave this dangling - been away, got ill, life-crap etc. Thanks for the responses and ideas - I'm going to reply.

Just listened to the track Molchat Doma have released in advance of a new album (6th Sep - why do they notify fans so far in advance?) https://www.brooklynvegan.com/molchat-doma-announce-new-album-share-son-video/ Details of tour which starts not long after the album is released Sun. Oct. 20 – Glasgow, UK @ SWG3 Galvanizers Tue. Oct. 22 – Manchester, UK @ New Century Wed. Oct. 23 – Bristol, UK @ SWX Thu. Oct. 24 – London, UK @ Roundhouse

Is it an age thing - does it just dry up and never return? I'm 62 - my ability to create anything - string a few chords together and write some lyrics has evaporated since lockdown - ~May 2020 and I'm not a person who has the "writers block" or "muse" mindset - I know (or the way I've always looked at it) is that it's application - keep shaking the tree and see what falls down - I just don't seems to have much mental energy or mental agility to conjure something up and keep working on, feeding in new ideas, it until I've fashioned it into something - I don't expect to do all of that in a day or a week or a month but I'm about 4 years down the line nad have one half finished song I no longer have the passion for and no other ideas. I've got my guitar tuned to DADGAD for a change - desperate times, desperate measures - how does this pan out? What can you do? Did this happen to you? What did you? I'm not someone who buys gear thinking it will push me along - that's never a route I go down. I prefer to sit with my guitar - which admittedly I'm not doing as much - because I have no new ideas - and sit with a pad... I'm going nowhere. I read a lot - upped my reading since lockdown and listen to a lot of podcast - not much of a TV watcher - Uni Challenge that's it generally. I listen back to songs I have completed and feel quite amazed at some of the creativity - I find it hard to understand how I did it in the past and don't seem to be able to do it now. Maybe it's just an age thing. I'm just talking out loud. My enthusiasm for discovering new music is as strong as ever but sometimes I think it's all a distraction - looking for inspiration - listening to music, reading. I have some money saved and was going to buy another guitar but given the way I'm going ATM I've put that off - there seems to be no point.

@Leonard Smalls Evan! The reason I started playing a guitar and writing my own songs! He's a one man lost generation now - apparently (we've been saying this for about 20 years now) - there's a new album in the pipeline.

I'm a big fan of Juliana, partly because she works at the job of songwriting, works at it like a regular job. This live album, The White Broken Line, wasn't easy to get hold of - it's one if my favourite albums from her.

Where would you look? I’m thinking there might be some Black Friday deals on the horizon.

I read they had recorded 23 tracks so there is more to come and there's another with Paul. I also read that Ringo might also be involved in some way.

@nekomatic I've got a couple of albums with her playing alongside the great saxophonist Andy Sheppard.

I'm not going to draw any firm conclusions about the new Blur album after only a couple of days listening. Most of the tracks feel to me like tracks at the back end of an album AFTER you've heard the best 5-6 tracks - more like the embers of a late night camp fire on a beach... no graffiti aerosol cans exploding in the fire. Like new shoes - takes a while to wear them in.

Orwell's 1984 audiobook read by Peter Capaldi - he's a good choice what with his great diction, gravitas and a mix of panic, menace and barely contained resentment in his voice.

@Frank Blank - well that's debate to be had - in a pub one night myself and a mate were trying to decide on the best opening 4 bars of any piece of music - Beethoven's 5th tied with Ticket To Ride I think. I still rate Complete Control as one of the best singles of all time - I used to slap it on almost every Friday after finishing lectures at uni.

That is an interesting album - a rich complex sound - not that I was expecting Billy Bragg or anything. Glad you mentioned it.

Out takes with Elvis invariably cracking up laughing - from an era when almost everything was done in one take. I have the vinyl packed away in a box in the garage but was nice to finally find it again.

This is right up my Straße! I had no idea he had died!

I stuck some pennies in fwiw.

I use the free Bitwarden - to generate, store and automatically paste in passwords - it works across Windows, Android, iOs. I have changed mine just for the sheer hell of it. As @velvetkevorkian suggested - it's worth checking https://haveibeenpwned.com/ - it's very possible the same username and password have been harvested from another site that he was using. The question that has to be asked is - has BC been hacked (unlikely as only one incident [so far]) - this is why maintaining sites (as I've found) can be a PITA - you have to keep on top of security updates and sometimes the updates don't always work out. Worse than that - depending on how extensive the site security patch is - any hand crafted changes to the code have to be redone - it's not always simple and problem free.

Who do these guys think they are? This is who - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.E.O._(band) and pretty damn good imho.