Category: news

  • Bestsellers -Video

    About 10-15 years ago (time is elastic when you’re getting older) a phenomenon known as guilty pleasures appeared in music loving circles. People admitted they loved best selling pop songs by Hall and Oates, The Carpenters, Leo Sayer and the like. Prior to the internet, the NME music writers had some kind of Stalinist stranglehold…

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  • Enid Blyton – Video

    The author whose name came up most often in my Life of Books Project survey was Enid Blyton. Enid was a controversial figure all her writing life and even after her death she continued to divide opinion. The BBC in the 1950s refused to dramatise her books claiming them to be simplistic and well, childish,…

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  • 16 Tambourines Gig November 2019

    16 Tambourines 9/11/19 photo Simon O’Brien Oh how life flies on by. 30 years can happen and yet…you know it’s been that long , you can plot the turns you’ve made, the decisions good and bad, the teeth, the hair, the wrinkles you’ve lost and gained, the loved ones you find, make and miss. All…

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  • A Life of Books Project Update & Song

    I started working on this project in the Summer of 2019 with an end date of December 19. However, due to family illness and other crises, I asked the Arts Council if I could put the end date back to late spring/early Summer of this year and they were good enough to say yes. So…

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  • A Life of Books

    On the navigation menu for my website you should see the one titled Survey – A Life of Books and if you clicked on it, you’ll know something about the project and maybe you even filled in the survey (if so, thank you). I’m undertaking a song writing project, supported using public funding by the…

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  • The end of the Cold War

    ‘I feel it in my bones, I’m kicking at the stone, and the wall comes tumbling down…’ It’s almost 30 years since the ‘fall’ of the Berlin Wall, a hugely momentous event in recent history, the ramifications of which are with us today. The end of history it was not. The show I wrote inspired…

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  • Fings ain’t wot they used to be

    I’m playing a gig in Liverpool next month. Saturday 2nd March 2019. Nothing surprising there of course, but for me this gig is a bit like going back in time. I’m playing at Parr Street Studio 2 a venue I’ve never played but a place I know well through recording a lot of songs in…

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  • Win A Bookshop!

    Competition is now closed and song not available to download. Thanks everone. Okay a share in one but what a prize! I wrote this song to accompany a promotional video for George Street Community bookshop, a Community Benefit Society that is undertaking a Community Share Issue. Now you have the chance to win a share…

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  • Annie

    The Music Minds triple CD I’ve posted about in previous posts is now on Spotify and iTunes etc and here’s the Spotify link if you fancy hearing my version of Ronnie Lane’s Annie. Play Annie by Steve Roberts I recorded it in my home studio in bits and pieces. I first played a guide keyboard…

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  • Music Minds Charity Album

    Music Minds Mental Health Charity Album. I’m pleased to let you know that I’ve covered one of my favourite songs by one of my favourite songwriters and it’s included on a new triple CD album released this week on Fretsore Records in support of a number of mental health charities. The song is Annie by the beloved Ronnie Lane that…

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