Now I’ve taken to cycling to work, I’ve cut my last link with popular culture: listening to Radio 1 in the car  on the way to work.  Though really that only introduced me to the narrow range of tunes that they happen to think is suitable for the drive-time slots; personally I always preferred the stuff I’d catch in the evenings on the way to/from rehearsals, particularly the slot on Wednesday night (now shifted to some ungodly hour on wednesday mornings) hosted by Bobby Friction and  Nihal from the Asian network.  (That’s me admitting to a secret love of bhangra).  Other than occasionally finding something that I was interested in on the radio, my other source was keeping an eye on the We’re All Neighbours board, which has introduced me to Regina Spektor amongst others.  However, now I find that a chap I know is writing for a few record review sites, and he also keeps a blog, Cambridge Sucks in the SummerUPDATE: now at The Line of Best Fit, which should help me keep up with the indie kids… now I need to find a good source for electro and house stuff, and I might be sorted.  At least with the existence of Myspace  I can now check out random bands easily, hopefully reducing the amount of “Bought the album on the strength of the single but then find it’s shit” I have to put up with; for instance I narrowly avoided buying The Feeling’s album after discovering there was a bad vein of Supertramp in them.  A close shave.

It’s been quiet here because life’s been very busy recently, so I haven’t had the time to do much playing (plus I knackered my thumb in a bike + beer accident, so playing has actually been painful).  So let’s point the finger of publicity at someone else’s hard work: Adrian’s new venture, bluesjamtracks.com.  I particularly enjoyed watching the videos of Guthrie Govan in the VIP Suite section; his name was familiar to me, but I’m not sure I’d ever heard him play.  I think the phrase “Jesus Fucking Christ” sprung to mind after watching them; he’s as talented as he is hairy.  I particularly like the “Suhrphisticated” one, probably because just before the busy-ness invaded my life, I’d been working my way through Robben Ford - The Blues and Beyond, and I think I hear some of the same scale use.  Actually the main thing I’m trying to integrate into my playing at the moment came from that DVD: using the half-whole diminished scale as a linker between the I and IV chord of a blues progression.