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Rock Rarity Review: Steve Swindells: Fresh Blood (1980)

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A while ago, I revelled in the process of digital remastering old 1970s music , enjoying it crystal clear in 2024. And the album I used as an example was  Steve Swindells  (wiki link) and Fresh Blood, along with a smattering of links (also included here). This is such an obscure release that, especially in remastered form, I thought it deserved further treatment in the form of an actual review. Albeit 44 years after release! Being a huge  1970s Hawkwind  fan, I was aware of Steve as a member of the band from 1978-1979, and particularly his use of Hawkwind's  Simon King  (of whom I'm possibly the biggest fan on the planet) and Huw Lloyd-Langton (for whose web site I was webmaster for a decade circa 2010) as backing musicians for his own (second) solo album  Fresh Blood . Also playing on the album was Van de Graaf Generator's Nic Potter. Steve was hailed as 'the next Springsteen' in some quarters, thanks to his lyrical prowess - all the songs are lyric heavy - and son

Rock Rarity Review: Michael Moorcock and The Deep Fix: The New World's Fair

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The background to this rarity (officially still listed in remastered form here on Cherry Red but 'out of stock', so your mileage will vary - unofficial file sources may come to your rescue here) has been well covered in Brian Tawn's excellent book on Mike Moorcock 's music, Dude's Dream, which I've owned from the beginning, in 1997. It's hard to find second hand these days, but Brian has said that he can be contacted on Facebook and still has copies available - so contact him while you can!  I'll attempt to summarise the background to The New World's Fair in a paragraph or two here. Moorcock's literary prowess is his main skill, of course, with a lifetime's career in books and magazines, but that doesn't mean that his music is any the less interesting. Far more niche, but then that's what we're here for in 'Rarities'.  Having sung and played guitar in various pubs and clubs while getting his writing going, Michael Moorcoc

Problem: Apple Music Mac sync waits... forever. Solved!

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This had been bugging me for a year and I finally got music sync between my Mac and my iPhone working reliably in 2024... With a little 'dance' I have to do. Sadly. I don't think I'm alone in having problems, either, judging from reports online, yet the issues are not so widespread that Apple has actually, you know, FIXED them with a software patch. Sigh. The symptom is that, when plugging in to sync (I know, I know, old school), everything just grinds to a halt when it comes to the 'sync' step, i.e. where your music library syncs to what's on the phone. It will hang there forever. What's happening, under the hood, is that Apple's MDCrashReportTool (ironically) has errr... crashed, and, when queried by Finder's Music sync, can't respond to say that all is OK. So the latter just waits and waits...  The 'solution' (which works every time but is a bit of a hassle) is to go into Activity Monitor on your Mac (it's in the Utilities fold

Car musings: To switch from petrol-only to hybrid or full electric?

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I've been wrestling with this for several years now but I think at last I'm coming down to a decision, at least for the medium term. And I'm hoping that my deliberations might help others, readers, who may have been debating along similar lines. (This is in the UK, by the way, so some aspects of the breakdown below may/will be different in other countries.) I should start by saying that I've been driving a Ford C-Max 1.0l EcoBoost for the last five years and it has served me well. It's now 8 years old and (aside from a major clutch server failure, requiring a whole new flywheel and clutch) has never gone wrong in any way that has inconvenienced me. It drives very well, despite the capacity, thanks to a turbocharger, and I get 35mpg worst case, short journeys in winter, and 45mpg average the rest of the year, plus 55mpg on motorways.  It's also classed by the government as only needing to pay £36/year in road tax, and this will apply for the life of the car, as i

When one's master music library is purely digital - and totally unique

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Having a hobby of 'collecting music' used to involve shelves and shelves of vinyl LPs (yes, yes, wonderful cover sleeves, and all), then this evolved for many into cases and cases of cassettes (much smaller but just as fragile, but it's all we had in the 1980s). Then, in terms of physical media, eventually into CDs from the mid-1980's onwards, so most of us had 'towers' of CDs scattered around our house. Or perhaps packed tightly into living room shelves. Life was good in terms of the hobby itself, but at some point in most people's lives physical space becomes a premium - perhaps when starting a family or down-sizing for whatever reason. And, with the advent of truly digital music from about 2000 onwards, in theory one can collect music with no space requirement other than the equipment required to play it. But there's more to it than this, especially in 2024. After all, if what you want to listen to is popular music then it's trivial to stream it v

The curse of the click track

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Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not averse to technology, even within music - I'm a fan of electronica, think Klaus Schulze, think Jean Michel Jarre, even think modern trance. So I'm not against sequenced, synchronised music per se.  However, when it comes to rock music - you know, guitar, bass, and drums, I contend that it was the advent of the click track that heralded 'the end' of real music. With feeling, with excitement, with a sense that everything could go horribly wrong. Or right. Which is partly why so much of the best rock music in history was recorded in the 1960s and - especially - the 1970s, with click tracks that drummers had to stick closely to coming in at the start of the 1980s.  The idea was that by playing along to click tracks (in headphones), the dummer would be forced to stick to a specific tempo and cadence, stopping any unwanted speeding up or slowing down, and - mostly - ensuring that keyboard parts and sequencers could be overlaid and stil

Don't forget... my YouTube Shorts!

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I realise that we're in the twilight of my tech career here, but in addition to writing missives in this blog, I'm continuing to produce videos, albeit in Shorts form, mostly on the subject of smartphone tech.  Worth a watch hopefully, even if limited by YouTube's insane compression and time constraints.  For example, extolling the surprising usefulness of Apple's Dynamic Island: And looking at the new features in Google's latest Feature Drop for the Pixel Fold: And then explaining my love for stereo in phone speakers: Plus a load of review content. Here's my three part Fairphone 5 review: Staying topical, will Apple ever release a folding iPhone? I think not: And finally, for now, how to put a skin on a phone, smoothly and successfully(!): That's just the last few months, there's a full two year set of Shorts videos for you to browse through, all listed here . Enjoy!

The iPhone and Western World Domination? 12 Reasons why it's Inevitable...

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I'd been swimming against the tide for well over a decade. Making my name writing about Symbian OS on the Nokia phones, then the Apple iPhone appeared in 2007 in fledgling but notable form and Android phones started appearing a year or two later. Symbian was dominant for a while still and then the American juggernauts took over, with Symbian being relegated to irrelevance by 2013.  Not to worry, I had Nokia's new love, Windows Phone, to play with and write about, eh? This was something of a flash in the pan, disappearing after just a few years thanks to Nokia's lack of investment in the high end and the industry's indifference to the platform in general.  Android seemed the obvious choice for me, because of its tech credentials, and I went through several Samsungs and Pixels, until in 2019 a friend (literally) bought me an iPhone 11 Pro because he'd been so impressed by it and thought I would too - he wanted me to cover iOS more in my videos and podcasts. And he was

Power banks? Flashlights? Long life hand warmers? Oh yes!

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I have to say that I wasn't expecting much from these, the Boiros 4-in-one rechargeable hand warmers , not least because the packaging was Chinese-generic and Boiros name was implemented in a couple of cheap stickers. However, the actual product is well made and works rather splendidly. Not least because of the potential for being tiny emergency power banks as well. Note that in all the photos here, the refresh rate of the LCD displays is too slow for the camera shutter speed, so not all segments are shown in the images. But they're fine to the eye! The units are charged (both at once via a single 'Y' cable, unusually) by USB Type C at 10W and a full charge takes 90 minutes or so from any Type C source you happen to have around. Output, if you want to use them as power banks, is via USB-A and also at 10W. But that's OK for emergency use, I suspect, especially with this lowest common denominator port. The idea with these warmers is to use a couple of meaty power bank