clivemurray.com

Some time back, perhaps December or so, I happened across a link to NME magazine’s top 100 albums of the decade, spanning release dates from January 2000 to December 2009. Unsurprisingly if you know me, I found little to cheer about in this list. My taste in music is not what you would call particularly NME-friendly. But seeing it made me start to think about what my top 100 albums would be from that period. The earlier years were when hard rock started to re-emerge from it’s dormant post-grunge state, and though unbeknownst to me at the time, the mid-00s bore a whole new genre – one that has since captured my imagination in a way that no genre has before – Folk Metal.

I don’t claim to have a wide musical taste. No, really. It’s about 60% hard rock, 25% metal (folk and otherwise), 5% acoustic, 5% ambient/chillout, and 5% classical, according to a recent poll I just took of myself.

So I have spent the last 6 weeks or so compiling my own list. And you know what? I’m going to post it, 10 at a time, with very tiny reviews. Why? It’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to.

Only 6 albums appear on both my list and NME’s, and those are:

• Muse – Black Holes and Revelations
• Green Day – American Idiot
• Muse – Absolution
• The Coral – The Coral
• Queens of the Stone Age – Songs for the Deaf
• Radiohead – In Rainbows

But where do they appear? And what do I think of them? And what will be in the top 10? Well the answers to all these questions and less are on their way soon for whoever gives a monkey’s.

–c.

Well, Rocktober was intended to try and get me blogging again, but it just turned into a chore by the end of it. I hope some of you enjoyed it and maybe even checked out some new music. But what it’s pointed out to me is that perhaps I just don’t need a blog any more.

I’ve been doing this since 1997 or so. Since before the word “blog” was coined – it was an “online journal” then. But now I have less free time, more to do offline, and more forms of entertainment jostling for my attention. Also Twitter has moved in and taken up at least a small part of that need to self-publish, even if it is just announcing what I had for lunch or what so-and-so said in the pub.

I’ve been compiling my top 100 albums of the 2000s ready for another post, or series of posts, and have come to the conclusion that there’s really very little point. I’ll probably still post it – I bothered to compile it after all – but after that I may well wrap this whole thing up. My archive goes back to 2003 here at cm.com, purely because before that I was doing it manually, and from that point on I was using a blog engine which let me move my archive from place to place. I hope it’s been enjoyable to some, perhaps even occasionally informative or amusing.

But I think it may be time to hang up the keyboard officially.

Yell if this displeases you – I do still read the comments – but unless life changes wildly in the coming months I can’t see me feeling like updating this thing very much more.

One thing I can say – my top 100 albums of the 00s will feature a lot less Jack White than NME’s chart.

–c.

Yeah yeah, I know. No embloggenising for ages, and even when there was some I was just trying to flog a car. That’s not the kind of service you’ve come to expect, and for this I’m sorry.

Usual caveat – busy busy busy, and all that. A few quick bullets on life in general at the moment:

• BAND: The covers band Thunderhead has its first gig this Friday, at The Fountain in Hastings. This will be the first time I’ve played live in two and a half years, and it’s going to be a blast. On stage at 9:30pm, get there if you can.
• OTHER MUSIC: Work on the second solo album will recommence very soon, since all spare time has been consumed recently with rehearsing for Thunderhead.There is also a brand new originals rock music project waiting in the wings featuring myself and fellow ex-Little Monkey, Jon, which will blow the bloody doors off when it happens. Keep ‘em peeled, as Shaw Taylor used to say.
• CAR: The Honda Civic mentioned below is sold. After all that it went to a guy I work with.
• WORK: It’s all still ticking over here at Profero. Busy busy busy, which is a good thing in these troubled times.
• WEDDING: Still on course for 21/6/2010, though we probably should have done more for it by now. Still, since it’s on a Monday, we reckon we’ll be OK with things like reception venues. Again, we’ll soon have free weekends, so that kind of thing will get sorted out shortly.

And that’s about it really. Trevor the cat is fine, Saffron is well and keeping busy, and life continues on its merry way. There is one more piece of big news I’m hoping comes together shortly, but that must remain under my ample headgear for now, I fear.

Yourself?

–c.

It may be noticed by some that I haven’t posted a damn thing here in a while.

In actual fact, I had to delete the previous post that was here (I can’t actually recall what it was about now, either) because something went hugely wrong with it, causing Google Chrome to refuse to show my site at all, claiming it was infected with malware, and when I tried to view it in Firefox my entire PC shut down. I took that as a sign and deleted it.

But also, as some of you closer to me will know, I have had a bad month with regard to my anxiety problems. Looking back – and I have now felt pretty good for three or four days in a row, so I’m hoping I’m out of it – I can see that a lot of factors all contributed to the problem which overwhelmed me so.

Firstly my Dad got ill. He’s 83 this year, and while still very fit for his age, he is starting to get on a bit, so when he got the shingles it was never going to be pleasant. During this there were complications that hospitalised him, and I worried about him, as you would. Additionally work was super-crazy for a period, and the stress levels involved there climbed higher than usual. Hayfever made its presence felt. I developed a stiff neck which (according to my fiancée, who is a therapist and masseuse) triggered twinges and tingles all down my left arm, which my now anxious brain decided to interpret as heart problems. I decided to get round this on at least two occasions by drinking alcohol to make me relax, and then ended up feeling worse the next day because of it.

It all mounted up, and got on top of me, is what I’m basically saying. I know I’m basically jumping at shadows, but that’s anxiety disorder for you. Even though I know I have it, it doesn’t make the worry any less real, or the symptoms any less frightening.

Of course, it helps to talk about it. My fiancée, my boss, my friends, the people on Twitter, everyone has been really supportive and helpful, and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your support and your helpful words, comments and tweets.

Love,
–c.

It’s been nearly 5 years in the making, just this one song. I dread to think about the number of times I scrapped melody lines and almost deleted the whole thing from the hard drive, but something kept me going.

Anyway, if you’re a regular reader you probably know most of the saga behind this track. It’s inspired by the Stephen King “Dark Tower” series, and in particular the lead character, Roland of Gilead – the last Gunslinger. It’s 200bpm, the rhythm guitars are played on a drop-A tuned 7-string, and I did all the lead parts on my fixed bridge Blackmachine B2. All guitar tones by my the Behringer V-Amp2. Drum programmed in Cubase drum editor, sounds from a soundfont called Gold Drums that I use for literally everything.

Guest solo in the middle section by Dan Ranger – thanks for playing, man. Nice one.

Caveat: I’m not an engineer, and I’m still not 100% happy with the mix, but I have to just get this out the door now so I can move on. Perhaps I can come back and remix at a later date.

No further ado, here it is: Gunslinger. [MP3, 5m05s, 192kbps, 7Mb]

Enjoy.
–c.

PS: The title of this post is pretty self-aggrandising, I know. The “wait” referred to is me waiting to get time to finally finish this track and get it out the door. I’m not implying that hundreds of adoring fans are awaiting every note from my guitar with baited breath…

…and by “here”, I mean on Twitter. The recent surge in popularity of the ubiquitous micro-blogging site has meant a massive influx of users. I joined the thing years ago, though I can’t find a quick way of seeing on the site exactly when I joined.

Anyhow, the reason I mention it is that I’m going to implement one of those weeky digest Twitter posts – all the Tweets I’ve crapped out in a week, rolled up into a blog post and automatically fired up here in lieu of writing actual content. Hoorah. When would be best? I’m thinking Friday morning at the moment. I’ll do it and we’ll see.

In other news, the Xbox360 continues to dominate free time, with Fable II now completed and Fallout 3 getting a proper coat of looking at. Bioshock, Half-Life 2 and Halo 3 all sit waiting in the wings, and there is talk of a belated birthday present featuring a plastic guitar.

Musically, though, things are still gathering momentum despite this gaming frenzy. “Gunslinger” is almost finished, and is likely to enter the mixing stage some time in the next fortnight. The bassline is in from Germany for “Wonko’s Asylum”, and another bassline has been contracted out to deepest Essex.

So there you are. And there you have it. And why not?
–c.

It will have been noticed that since I got my xbox there has been a distinct lack of updates here at cm.com. Hey, what can I say? I’m a gamer at heart.

One side-effect of this has been a mildly alarming ache in the centre of my right wrist, running about halfway up to the elbow. Now I type and use a mouse continuously on my work, and my two hobbies are gaming and guitar, and all three of these activities are pretty intensive on the wrists and hands, but this is a new development, so I’m blaming the xbox controller at this time.

In a bid to ascertain whether this is in fact the case, I’m laying off the games for a few days, and that has led to a very interesting development, namely time and inspiration to work on my instrumental music. Wowsers!

So it came to pass that last night I finally cracked the complete block I’ve had on a certain song for almost 4 years. The first new song I started seriously putting together towards a second album was – and is – entitled “Gunslinger”, inspired by Stephen King’s “Dark Tower” series of books, and the backing for it came together easily back in 2004 or so. It was a heavy fast song (200 bpm in fact, I kid you not), with the main riff down low on the 7-string. But got the life of me I just could not find or hear a melody I liked… until last night.

I think my main problem was the key. The intro riff, which is also the chorus riff, dictated a key of D# minor, which as any fule kno, has 6 sharps. Not a comfortable key for me at all. However at some point last year I had a brainwave about this – I tuned the 7-string to Drop A tuning (AEADGBE) and redid all the backing guitars a whole tone lower. Voilà! The key dropped to C# minor, the relative of E major, only 4 sharps and a much more natural key to play in.

Nothing sprang forth, however, until I programmed the riff into Guitar Pro and started writing in there without even a guitar on my hands. I suddenly found myself much more able to come up with genuine new melodies rather than trotting out the same old clichés that habitually fall from my fingers.

Just goes to show… something.

Probably.
–c.

So yeah, my wonderful, splendid, utterly gorgeous angel of a fiancée got me an Xbox360 for Christmas, so pretty much every waking moment – and even some unwaking ones – have been spent in the worlds of Fallout 3 and Fable II. Even here at work a little part of my brian is turning over what stats to work on and which perks to get next.

Some of you out there have Xboxen too, I know that much. Please feel free to add me to your friends list – my GamerTag is Tommi Starr.

See you in there,
–c.