Long Gone

It's been two months to the day. This is basically a dead blog by most bloggers' definitions, but I will try to resucitate this blog anyway. It remains to be seen if I succeed or not.

I have been meaning to write about a lot of things: Joe Zawinul and his gang of merry men; Dave Holland's gentelmanly troupe; Zappa Plays Zappa; Daniel Lanois; fatherhood; student concerts; teaching a summer course; Isildurs Bane's goings-on etc. So much to blog about, so little time!

Instead, I will just leave things as they are and start anew. Any interaction is encouraged!

Today, I had one long and two short conversations with Mats regarding the imminent future of IB and a number of concert offers. Unfortunately, we have to decline most of them due to economic reasons which is a pity. Sadly, the fact is this: it costs money to put IB on the road. We either have to fly in and trust the arranging part to provide us with a backline or rent a van, get our equipment in and head off. Either way, it will cost a certain amount of money, money that is not necessarily recouperable. We would love to go all over the world to play, but we are not in a position to pay to play.

On a more positive note, IB Expo is coming along nicely and I am really looking forward to hearing Pat Mastelotto and Markus Reuter play and interact with IB and the Metamorfosi Trio musicians. More on this later.

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Long Gone is a great track by British rockers UFO, taken from their 1981 album The Wild, The Willing and the Innocent. Written by then lead guitarist Paul Chapman and vocalist Phil Mogg, this is a great dramatic track by a frequently overlooked band, especially the Chapman years. Filling Michael Schenker's shoes was a hard task, but I think Paul Chapman coped incredibly well and he did it in a very mature way, i e by contributing to UFO's songwriting and thereby bringing his own compositional and playing voice into the band. As he did on this track. Having said that, this album has more than it's share of filler material. But in all honesty, so did most of the Schenker-era UFO albums.