Those of you wondering why Mr. Chris Weaver and I were forced to cancel our recently-mooted ‘Ghosts Of Bush Live’ extravaganza please take note:
During four days of frenetic scrubbing and spooling, our equipment came to the attention of Chris’ cat ‘Missy’, who appears to consider herself something of an expert in tape manipulation. Sadly, even her finest efforts (documented above) were not enough to get the machines match-fit in time for our planned show on the 21st, and so to our great regret we were forced to cancel and spend several hours sulking. I mean, honestly: of the eleven reel-to-reels we had managed to accumulate, including two from Bush House; not a single machine was found to be in a state coherent enough to guarantee a decent performance. What are the chances of that, I wonder? The four that simply refused to work from the outset were at least reliably consistent in that fact, but the remainder teasingly kept us guessing throughout with an annoying game of try-and-guess-if-we’re-still-working-cat-and-mouse (no pun intended). Thoroughly tiresome. However, a spot of internet trawling has turned up a chap somewhere in Sussex who reputedly services elderly machines while demonstrating their mechanics and serving tea, which certainly sounds like my idea of a day out. Let’s hope he can be of some assistance before our next proposed gig in February. Fingers and paws crossed…
On a more definitive note I can confirm that the third pressing of ‘The Ghosts Of Bush’ is now available and looking better than ever, with a spine sleeve and gorgeously appropriate white vinyl, the colour of ghosts, snow and all things wintry. It’s available now from Boomkat.com and indeed has made their much-admired end-of-year charts and their best-sellers list! I’m also flattered to reveal they’ve asked me to supply an end-of-year chart of my own. 2012 having being such an amazing year for music (though not, it must be said, for the universe at large), I was delighted to oblige and you can peruse my top ten here. It was a real effort to compile and I was forced to leave a lot of great records out, but I can assure you that everything here is an instant classic. And I promise I didn’t just put Chips For The Poor in at number two because I remixed them, although that was one of the more pleasurable activities I engaged in over the past twelve months.
Anyway, I’m writing this up north ensconced in the bosom of the family pile and using an increasingly temperamental internet connection, so this will probably be my last post of the year, and before we all give ourselves up to excessive seasonal festivity I wanted to thank you all so much for the huge amount of support I’ve received in 2012, from crate-diggers, sound fanatics, DJs, writers and bloggers as well as friends new and old. It’s been an embarrassment of riches and I’d like to wish every single man-jack of you a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Hopefully see you for more fun and games in 2013, where I’m looking forward to unleashing a recently-completed new series for Resonance FM, and a second Howlround album, provided the cat can get our spools up and running in time. Get cracking, Missy….
Seasons Greetings,
RTF x
Robin The Fog 