Birthday Co-incidence?

Yesterday was my old man’s 75th Birthday and on Sunday the extended family went out for Sunday lunch to mark the occasion.

Obviously with Fiona not there it was a difficult time for us all and you may now think I am mad but I had expected to “experience” some sign which can be put down to co-incidence or otherwise depending I suppose on what you want to believe.

Nothing untoward happened on Sunday and by the time i went to bed last night nothing had happened on the Monday.

I had gone to bed to watch Sportscene and switched the television on early thus catching the last 15min of the Graham Norton Show, something, I never watch, and discovered that two of the guests on the show were Katherine Jenkins and Harry Connick Jr both of whom Fiona liked.

Nothing really triggered in my thoughts at that moment and then Katherine Jenkins spoke about Catherine Zeta Jones and somehow got on to the subject of where she went to school….it turns out she went to “Dumbarton House School” in Swansea.

I was thus starting to twitch, next up was a silly article about dogs singing “opera” and I nearly fell out of bed when on the screen appeared “Amber” a Weimaraner the spitting image of Bonnie lying on a chair howling to opera!

Fuel was added to the fire when Katherine Jenkins in an attempt to get another dog to howl live on the television sang “O Mio Babbino Caro” which was of course one of the two pieces of music played at Fiona’s funeral.

Finally Harry Connick Jr capped it all by performing “All The Way” one of Fiona’s all time favourite songs.

“All The Way” – Frank Sinatra

When somebody loves you
It’s no good unless he loves you – all the way
Happy to be near you
When you need someone to cheer you – all the way

Taller than the tallest tree is
That’s how it’s got to feel
Deeper than the deep blue sea is
That’s how deep it goes – if it’s real

When somebody needs you
It’s no good unless he needs you – all the way
Through the good or lean years
And for all the in between years – come what may

Who knows where the road will lead us
Only a fool would say
But if you’ll let me love you
It’s for sure I’m gonna love you – all the way, all the way

 

To buy the music of Frank Sinatra click HERE

 

 

The never-before-available Live At The Meadowlands, recorded March 14, 1986, features 18 previously unreleased tracks. In this now-legendary hometown show, where Sinatra wooed a sold-out New Jersey crowd, Sinatra showcased songs from every phase of his stellar career, mixing the likes of “One For My Baby”, “You Make Me Feel So Young” and “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” with late-period classics such as “L.A. Is My Lady” and “Theme From New York, New York.” The long-anticipated release of Live At The Meadowlands holds special significance among Sinatra fans as it’s one of the most sought-after and hard-to-find concert recordings of his career. Hank Cattaneo, Sinatra’s long time production manager and confidante, wrote the set’s liner notes.

 

 

I know I am being daft…..but it helps

Ray Wilson – Genesis Klassic

Between solo and Stiltskin tours Ray Wilson will often revert back to Genesis mode and finally there will be a quality CD to document this side of his musical heritage.

The Genesis Klassik show is a collection of well known Genesis songs, performed by Ray, his band, and the Berlin Symphony Ensemble.

- Land of Confusion
- Jesus He Knows Me
- Carpet Crawlers
- Ripples
- Follow You Follow Me

are just some of the songs performed by the 10 musicians, during this 100 minute show.

A CD release is being released later this month and can now be ordered from his website by clicking HERE where you also can download this brilliant version of one of Fiona’s favourite Ray songs from the Genesis album “Calling All Stations”

“Not About Us” – Ray Wilson

 

To buy the music of Ray Wilson click HERE

 

To buy the music of Genesis click HERE

New Music – Michael Buble

Fiona loved the music of Michael Buble and a few years ago went to see him live at the SECC with her mum and my mum.

No doubt if she was still with us his new album “Crazy Love” would have been purchased in it’s entirity, for me this track will do just fine.

“All I Do Is Dream Of You” – Michael Buble

All I do is dream of you
The whole night through
With the dawn I still go on
Dreamin’ of you

You’re every thought, you’re everything
You’re every song I ever sing
Summer, winter, autumn and spring

And were there more than twenty-four hours a day
They’d be spent in sweet content dreamin’ away

Sky’s are gray, sky’s are blue
Morning, noon and nighttime, too
All I do the whole day through is dream of you

It’s the cat’s meow

All I do the whole day through
Is dream of you

 

To buy the music of Michael Buble click HERE

 

 

For more information on Michael Buble click HERE

A High Fidelity Moment

As you can see from below I am currently undergoing somewhat of a High Fidelity moment with the first stage of an epic adventure taking place on the dining room table.

The overall reorganisation involves changing the three piece lounge suite, which is massive, to two two seater couches to release storage space for the top 1000 CD’s from my collection together with my favourite 200 LP’s and 100 books.

It is safe to say that none of the above was permissable when Mrs D ran the house after all she had some notion about the dining room table being for eating at and lounge being for entertaining!

Anyway it will release some cupboard space upstairs!

To buy High Fidelity click HERE

 

Until the project is complete, target date 31st October, Neil Young says it all.

“A Man Needs A Maid” – Neil Young

 

To buy the music of Neil Young click HERE

Fiona She’s Never Far Away

I have a random screen saver on my computer which picks photographs from my picture file which must have over a thousand pictures in it, this morning it chose the above picture which was taken EXACTLY a year ago today.

Maybe the title of the posting is not as far fetched after all.

“Every Picture Tells A Story” – Rod Stewart

To buy the music of Road Stewart click HERE

The Silencers

Ever wondered what the theme music to the current series of “Sportscene” is?

Well obviously the answer is above, “I Can Feel It” is taken from the The Silencers 1993 album “Seconds Of Pleasure”

“I Can Feel It” – The Silencers

The Silencers are one of my favourite groups and I came across them several times in the mid-late ’80’s when I worked at Tennents as they at that time their song “Answer Me” from the great album “A Blues For Buddha” was used in the lager television adverts.

“Answer Me” – The Silencers

History

Before forming The Silencers, vocalist Jimme O’Neill and guitarist Cha Burns were active in London’s new wave music scene. O’Neill wrote songs for Paul Young and Lene Lovich, while Burns played guitar in Adam and the Ants. O’Neill, who, in the mid 1970s, had worked for a time as a clerical assistant in the Department of Health and Social Security, released a single for Oval Records in 1975, “Achin’ in My Heart”/”Cold on Me”, under the name Jimme Shelter (a throwback to the song, “Gimme Shelter” by The Rolling Stones).

1980s

In 1979, they met and formed a post-punk/new wave project called Fingerprintz,^[1] and released three albums under that name: The Very Dab, Distinguishing Marks and Beat Noir. They earned some critical recognition and notable appearances on John Peel’s BBC Radio 1 show and the BBC’s In Concert radio series. The group split in 1985. Then O’Neill formed a duowith electropop singer Jacqui Brookes and they released two singles in 1983: “Haunted Cocktails” and “Lost Without Your Love”. When Brookes subsequently released solo album Sob Stories, O’Neill wrote or co-wrote a majority of the tracks and played guitar and other instruments on the album.

Soon O’Neill and Burns were playing music together again, this time joined by drummer Martin Hanlin and bass player Joseph Donnelly, a cousin of Simple Minds singer Jim Kerr. After considering band names like ‘My Granny’s Green Chair’ and ‘The Hot Dog From Hell’, they settled on ‘The Silencers’. In September 1986, they began to tour Europe and the United Kingdom. They demoed three new songs at Scarf Studios in London: “Painted Moon”, “I See Red” and “I Can’t Cry”. The demos earned them a recording contract with RCA Records, and their song “Painted Moon”, about O’Neill’s personal reaction to the Falklands War, was included on the soundtrack to the film The Home Front, and then released as their first single in April 1987. Their first album A Letter from St. Paul included re-recorded versions of all three demos. The Pretenders invited the band to support them on their European tour, and then the success of Painted Moon across the pond induced a tour of the United States on their own, and later with Squeeze.

In 1988, The Silencers toured Europe with The Alarm and Painted Moon became a radio hit in the UK. The band moved back to Scotland and recorded a second album A Blues for Buddha at CaVa Studios in Glasgow, with Flood producing. The standout tracks were “Scottish Rain”, about love and fallout from Chernobyl, and “The Real McCoy” which became a fan favourite. The band then toured Europe with Simple Minds for four months, culminating with a stadium show at Wembley in front of 80,000.

1990s

After the tour, the band began work on third album Dance to the Holy Man, but personal conflict derailed the process. Donnelly and Hanlin left the band, and were replaced by Tony Soave on drums and Lewis Rankine on bass. The album, a departure from the band’s “guitar-based atmosphere pop”,^[1] was recorded during the summer of 1990. It included funk, blues, and Celtic strains. The single “Bulletproof Heart” became a big hit in Spain and France, where the band had success at that time, but album sales lagged back in the United Kingdom. Coatbridge-born JJ Gilmour joined the band as a second male vocalist before another tour of Europe, and Stevie Kane joined the band, replacing Rankine during the tour due to personality conflict.

Deeply in debt to RCA and not having the expected success in the UK, The Silencers were in danger of being dropped by their record label despite their success throughout Europe. However, after label representatives saw an impressive live show they allowed the band to begin work on fourth album Seconds of Pleasure. ^[2] “I Can Feel It” (the video for which featured a cameo role from Frances Corrigan, O’Neill’s daughter’s friend from Coatbridge) is, true to form, a hit in Europe and ignored in the UK. Without tour support from RCA, the band financed its own tour to Switzerland, France and Scotland.

In 1994, The Silencers signed to new labels: Permanent for Britain and BMG for France. That summer they recorded the song “Wild Mountain Thyme”, featuring O’Neill’s daughter Aura on vocals. It became a hit in Scotland after featuring in a tourism board advertising campaign. Soon after, they completed fifth album So Be It.

After a mid-1996 tour of Europe, Gilmour and Soave left the band. After several years of writing with other artists, Gilmour^[3] released his first solo album, Sunnyside P.A.L.in 2002 for ic-music/Edel Records. The album was recorded in New York and produced by Dan Wise (who also produced Joan Osborne).

Sunnyside P.A.L. was dedicated to the memory of a childhood friend, Paul Anthony Lennon, who had recently succumbed to cancer. Lennon and Gilmour had shared much of their childhood exploring the Sunnyside area of their native Coatbridge, and the first single from the album “Me and You” was heavily play-listed by the French radio station Europe 2.

Despite the album’s substantial critical success, it suffered from lack of promotion and distribution, as Edel closed down its Paris office later in the year. For the next few years, Gilmour concentrated on touring, supporting Bob Geldof and Ocean Colour Scene, among others.

In 2006, Gilmour was approached by Miles Copeland, who secured a contract for his second solo album. The Boy Who Didn’t Fallwas recorded in Scotland in late 2007, and released on adn/Universal Records in France and adn/BMG Records in Italy and Belgium in February 2008. The first single from thealbum, “If You Don’t Give Me Love”, was released in December 2007.

Jim McDermott of the Kevin McDermott Orchestra joined on drums and Aura O’Neill became a permanent member of the band. The year 1996 brought the release of singles compilation Blood & Rain, and The Silencers took several years off from recording.

In 1999, the band worked on seventh album Receiving, which was financed by money from festival appearances in Europe. Speaking of the new record, O’Neill said, “Some of the new tracks were recorded as if this was a different band. I wanted to forget about everything we’d done before and some of what came out reminded me of Fingerprintz – new wave for the nineties!”^[4] The experimental nature of the songs, he said, was inspired by the influence of Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Charles Bukowski.

2000s

In 2001, the band released their first live album, A Night of Electric Silence, recorded in Glasgow in 2000, with McDermott on drums, Kane on bass, Phil Kane on keyboards, O’Neill on guitar and vocals, Milla on violin and Aura O’Neill on vocals.

In November 2004, Comewas released, featuring the tracks “Siddharta”, “Let It Happen” and “Head”. However, by this time most of the band’s albums were out of print. In July 2006, Baptiste Brondy, a 20 year-old French drummer, replaced McDermott. Burns died on 26 March 2007, in Prestatyn, Wales, of lung cancer. He was 50.

You can pick up on my tribute to guitarist Cha Burns who passed away after suffering from cancer from an earlier version of my blog :-

http://theendlessnote.blogspot.com/2007/04/cha-burns-rip.html

This being an all time favourite of Fiona’

 

To buy the music of The Silencers click HERE

Rain Man

Just finished watching Rain Man, first time I have watched it for several years yet it still hits home and must surely have been one of Dustin Hoffman’s finest performances.

To buy the DVD of Rain Man click HERE

What I never realised before is that during the dance lesson scene the music used is  “At Last” performed by the great Etta James

This was one of our key wedding songs and was an all time favourite of Fiona’s.

I have posted the MP3 of the song before so here is Beyonceseeking to replicate the magic in the film “Cadillac Records”

To buy the music of Etta James click HERE

To buy Cadillac Records on DVD click HERE

Simon Townshend

Simon Townshend, younger brother of The Who’s Pete, is back with some new music of his own, the first in a long time.

Fiona and I had the privilege of meeting Simon a couple of times, we had built up a good relationship with him via exchanged e-mail in the early days of web blogging and once received an unmarked CD through the post with a hand written note of some track information followed by an e-mail asking us what we thought of his new demos.

The last time we met him was when he informed us he would be bringing his new band “The Casbah Club” north to play at The Ferry in Glasgow. The Casbah Club was basically him and a couple of friends, Bruce Foxton from The Jam and Mark Brzezicki, known for his work with Big Country, but really a world renowned session drummer with fellow ex-Big Country guitarist Bruce Watson as a special guest.

As usual we met up for a couple of drinks after the show and as always Fiona received a kiss on each cheek from Simon who she always refered to in jest as her “boyfriend”

In between his commitments to The Who, Simon with the rest of the Casbah’s finally released an album in 2006 titled “Venustraphobia”, a fear of beautiful women, from which the track below is taken.

“When She Sleeps” – The Casbah Club

The track “Any Way She Moves” included tributes to The Jam (actually The Beatles ‘Taxman’) and Big Country as you can hear from this home made video.

Here are The Casbah Club live with “Sex Change” with Simon’s big brother’s influence plain to see.

Whenever we saw The Who or watched a DVD, when Simon was part of the extended band, she would take great pleasure in saying there’s my “boyfriend”. We last saw him in Liverpool in 2006 when he was touring with The Who, here from the same tour in Germany is one of Fiona’s favourites “Love Reign O’er Me”

When not working o his own material he has often helped Roger Daltrey out on his side projects one of which was “The British Rock Symphony” here is Si (as he was known) with his take on “Blackbird”

Simon is once again about to head out on tour with Roger Daltrey.

Simon has never been out in the cold for long, so here he is performing a song from his solo catalogue “The Way It Is” from the album “Among Us”

All Simon’s solo music can still be bought via his webpage www.simontownshend.com buy some now!

Here is his latest track posted on the 18th September 2009 titled “Bed Of Roses”

“Bed Of Roses” – Simon Townshend

“Hi Fans, Friends and Family. I’ve been testing out my new studio (recently built in our flat’s unused loft space) by recording one of my new songs, Bed Of Roses. I’m really happy with the end result, considering it only took 2 days to complete – lead vocal and basic prep work, mandolins, etc. I did myself in advance over a 2 day period. Working with my son Ben on drums / backing vocals and Tony Lowe on electric guitar / bass is a breeze. We flew through it. Tony also helps with production – together we have a great formula that always works. I’m off on tour with Roger Daltrey soon but I intend to get straight back into it with the lads in December, hopefully to have a whole new album of material ready for release next spring. I’m back! – Love Si”

Drown In My Own Tears

I was a year ago today that my beloved Fiona received the news that she was suffering from cancer both in her lung plus a secondary spread to her brain.

It was the latter that developed the symptoms whch were at first diagnosed as a minor stroke. She had been referred a day earlier to the hospital by our GP and the hospital confirmed his stroke diagnosis.

A routine chest x-ray the next day revealed the dreaded news and a brain scan confirmed the spread.

I constantly relive those 48hrs and will never be able to forget receiving the call at home to come as soon as is possible to the hospital and on getting there seeing Fiona and a nurse in her room, she was sitting on the edge of the bed and was showing such bravery in holding herself together to enable her to tell me the news herself…………..her words echo in my mind everyday “Darling I’m so sorry I have cancer I don’t want to leave you this soon”

Throughout the next few days once you take in the news and the spirit clings to hope and positivity and right up to the end 106 days later on the 31st December she was and always will be “the bravest of the brave”

As for me and the rest of the family we continue to drown in our own tears, face the world the best we can and try to be as brave as she was.

Here is Ray Charles with “Drown In My Own Tears”

It brings a tear,
Into my eyes,
When I begin,
To realize,
I’ve cried so much,
Since you’ve been gone,
I guess I’m drowning in my own tears,

I sit and cry,
Just like a child
My pouring tears
Are runnin’ wild
If you don’t think
You’ll be home soon
I guess I’ll drown in my own tears

I know it’s true
Into each life
Some rain, rain must pour
I’m so blue
Here without you
It keeps raining
More and more

Why don’t you
Come on home
Oh yes so I won’t
Be all alone
If you don’t think
You’ll be home soon

I guess I’ll
(drown in my own tears)
Ooh, don’t let me
(drown in my own tears)
When I’m in trouble, baby
(drown in my own tears)
Oh, yeah, baby don’t let me
(drown in my own tears)
I guess I’ll drown in my own tears
Oh, mmmmm.

“You know life can be long
And you got to be so strong
And the world is so tough
Sometimes I feel I’ve had enough”      John Lennon  1971

You can shine your shoes and wear a suit
You can comb your hair and look quite cute
You can hide your face behind a smile
One thing you can’t hide
Is when you’re crippled inside

You can wear a mask and paint your face
You can call yourself the human race
You can wear a collar and a tie
One thing you can’t hide
Is when you’re crippled inside

Well now you know that your
Cat has nine lives
Nine lives to itself
But you only got one
And a dog’s life ain’t fun
Mamma take a look outside

You can go to church and sing a hymn
You can judge me by the color of my skin
You can live a lie until you die
One thing you can’t hide
Is when you’re crippled inside

Well now you know that your
Cat has nine lives
Nine lives to itself
But you only got one
And a dog’s life ain’t fun
Mamma take a look outside

You can go to church and sing a hymn
You can judge me by the color of my skin
You can live a lie until you die
One thing you can’t hide
Is when you’re crippled inside

One thing you can’t hide
Is when you’re crippled inside
One thing you can’t hide
Is when you’re crippled inside

Fi,

God Bless

Love always and forever

Gilbey   xxx

Morning Has Broken

Fiona and her sister Jane

Fiona and her sister Jane had much in common, though the picture above is a rare example which illustrates a sister likeness, in addition to Frank Sinatra they both loved Cat Stevens aka Yusuf.

Here is a video of him performing “Morning Has Broken” and I know my hair can get a bit wild at times but checkout the keyboard player!!

Here from the “Matthew & Son” album is “I Love My Dog”

“I Love My Dog” – Cat Stevens

I love my dog as much as I love you
But you may fade, my dog will always come through.

All he asks from me is the food to give him strength
All he ever needs is love and that he knows hell get

So, I love my dog as much as I love you
But you may fade, my dog will always come through.

All the pay I need comes shining through his eyes
I dont need no cold water to make me realize that

I love my dog as much as I love you
But you may fade, my dog will always come through.

Na, na, na, na, na, na, nana…

I love my dog as much as I love you
But you may fade, my dog will always come through.

Na, na, na, na, na, na, nana…

I love my dog, baby, I love my dog. na, na, na…
I love my dog, baby, I love my dog. na, na, na…

To buy the music of Cat Stevens/Yusuf click HERE