Live Music Plug

I have been to see a couple of bands recently, one for the first time and one for the.......I've lost count time! Anyway, the latter I am always pleased to shout about. Nick Harper is an awesome musician and an inspiration to me and many other people who make seeing him play a regular feature in their lives. In addition he has an awesome musician father, Roy, who also features heavily in my gigging calendar however, Nick is my generation and sometimes it feels like we have been going through parts of life together. It's the first time I have had that kind of connection with an artist who I like so much. When we turned up to see him the other night and I looked up to the stage it was like looking at the face of an old friend.

The other band are something of a new musical interest for me. Someone I worked with gave me a couple of their cd's which have been growing on me over the past year or so. They are a British rock band called Porcupine Tree and I went to see them a couple of weeks back. It was an interesting turn out with people of all ages there singing along, I think they have struck a chord with many rock fans who have been waiting for a band like this to surface, and none of us were disappointed at the gig.

When I listen to the likes of these artists it really makes me notice how much effort they put into their music. There are so many bands out there that have one good lyric or riff which they make the focus of their song with no more effort put in. Each and every song composed by Nick Harper and Porcupine Tree is given the utmost consideration from conception to final production. I think Kate Bush recently commented that people do not put the time in to write a really good song anymore, and her album Aeriel was worth the wait, although I hope it does not always take her a decade to bring out a new album! (I think there was some family time mixed in there too!)

Anyway I am off to try and find Nick Harper and Porcupine Tree clips to post. If you are a rock fan I strongly recommend you check out Porcupine Tree. If you like music then Nick Harper is your man! (You can listen to some of Nicks stuff here at his My Space page, including Blue Sky Thinking, the single from his new album Miracles for Beginners.)