Edmund Lester

When I was a kid, somewhere about 9 years old, I heard music. I mean really heard. I know music must have been around me before then but I can't remember it making much of an impression. At nine though that changed. I heard The Who. Something about it excited me. Well I bought a Who album. Then having listened to that for a while I bought another. And not long after started wondering what else there was and a schoolfriends older brother played me (and him I guess) some Rolling Stones tracks. Band number two in my life. So I bought a Stones album. Maybe I didn't pick the best one (Got Live If You Want It) but I liked it enough. So much that I bought a second - Rolled Gold. That was the better choice. And it ended up with me and my music tastes having developed to what they are now - Dream Theater, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Rush, Tom Waits, Nick Cave. I could go on and on. But my purchase of Rolled Gold was way, way back in the days of vinyl. And since selling all my vinyl records ...

I'm going to show my age here - and possibly my terribly taste in music. Heck, I don't care about either. I am what I am, and I like what I like. And to be honest if you disagree with my choices then it's simple. You're wrong - at least from point of view. Well, hey - this is my blog I can be self-centred about it. Anyway enough rambling I'm here to blog about this evening's procrastination - and I'm already finding something else to type...hmmh I was reminded of an old band I saw in the 80s this evening - the Icicle Works. I was rather a fan of theirs. So I hit YouTube and went to check out a few vids. I could have just put a CD on - I'm sad enough to have bought them. But I didn't. End result after watching a couple whilst sorting a thing or two out I remembered another 80s band I liked and probably no one who might read this will have even heard of them. The band's called The Faith Brothers. Now I can't lean over and put one of their CDs o...

I've been a fan of heavy metal for - heck most of my life. He sang on some of my favourite albums (Black Sabbath's Heaven and Hell and Dio's Holy Diver spring to mind). I just read of his death from cancer on the BBC News website and I'm saddened. Okay as a heavy metal singer maybe other people had more of an effect on the world but his music made me happy - and I'm sure many others. It's a sad day.

...I just didn't expect it to be by Kiss. I've been a rock fan all of my life. When I was a akid and most of my friends were into Abba, I liked The Who and The Rolling Stones. Three decades later I still do, but in the years getting up to now I've found many, many more artists that I've liked. In my teenage years it was rock - straightforward, simple rock. Bands like Rainbow, Whitesnake, Kiss, Saxon etc were it for me. Okay in more recent times the progressive rock side (always a liking existed it just was dominated for a while) has taken over - with much veering into softer areas like Yusuf, Suzanne Vega, Van Morrison - and my listening has been dominated by Rush, Dream Theater, Yes, King Crimson and the like. But I still have a soft spot for bands like Kiss. So when their new album was released I thought it worth buying and giving it a listen. Well I've listened to it many time since then. I like it a great deal. It's a group of guys who know what they do best...

About two years ago we came up with the plan of selling this house and buying a new house with my wife's parents. Something decently sized for the four of us. So we emptied the house of a lot of our stuff - we are both mad collectors - and put it all in storage. The photographs were taken, the brochure created and house went on the market. And then the recession happened and virtually no one came to look. For over a year we waited, nearly two. And nothing happened at all. Not even close to a sale. Well one guy did decide to put in a silly offer. He wanted us to knock 40% off the price and this was after we'd already reduced it by 25%. So we decided not to move. We weren't moving to get somewhere new anyway. We like the village where we live. We just wanted more room. So we hired an architect, told him what we want and he drew up the plans. They were submitted and now we wait. Hopefully someday we will get the go ahead but that's up to the council's planning departme...

Ok - choice four moves away from fiction and gets more into a phase of nostalgia for me When I started listening to music all those years ago the very first band I fixated upon was The Who. I am still a fan. As I grew older and became a little more sophisticated I learned to distinguish those parts of the music I liked best. In terms of The Who (and many of the bands I like) it was the power of the bassline that did it for me. So John Entwistle became my first musical hero. So much so I bought a bass guitar and determined to give it a go. Problems was I had absolutely no talent for it. True to my nature, once I had discovered that I would never be that good at it, I returned to being a fan only. In the years that have followed I've listened to many, many other artists and bands I've added Bruce Springsteen (his latest album Working on a Dream is playing as I type), Rush, Yes, Rolling Stones, King Crimson, Tom Waits, Metallica, Dream Theater, Nick Cave, Jethro Tull, Frank Zappa,...

I've bought a few albums over the last three or four weeks - nothing surprising there with me being a big music fan I guess. Been listening through the new ones and have mixed feelings. I bought the new Queen+Paul Rogers album. It's nice enough but I just don't get why they did it - beyond the cynical let's make some more money reason. It just doesn't do much for me at all. It has Queen touches but no real Queen soul. It has bluesy Paul Rogers bits but not enough to really satisfy. It's a bit of a mish-mash and I can't see much point. Bought the new Metallica album too. After weeks of hearing commentaries about how this could be Metallica's last chance to show they can be the band that made Master of Puppets and the Black Album the CD finally arrived. I've played it - several times. I've considered it and then I read some reviews of it. I tried not to read all that many before hearing it myself. Well I'm not so sure. There are a couple of goo...

My musical tastes are a little diverse. However I never thought I would ever find something on Desmond Carrington's show on BBC Radio 2. He plays oldies usually - fifties crooners and show tunes. I don't even listen to his show normally. Today though I did by mistake. I left work late (go live - different story) and switch on the radio. I listen to BBC Radio 4 a great deal. When I left work today I was listening to Front Row - the station's nightly culture show. Well I was briefly, as I switch on it finished and it was about to go into the nightly serial. That didn't sound interesting so I switched to Radio 2 wondering if tonight was the night they have a Blues show - that's usually quite good. It wasn't - I missed that by a day. It's on Mondays. However when I clicked over I heard some very pleasing Irish folk music with female vocals. I'm a long time Clannad and Maddy Prior fan so it instanly appealed. What he was playing was a song by American folkies...

I know tastes change as you age. I accept this - in many ways I look forward to it. I have always enjoyed new things - okay new to me might be a little more accurate, this can involve discovering musical artists I'd previously overlooked, old films, re-runs, classic novels and the like. But one thing I have noticed recently is that my tastes have edged darker and heavier. In many ways they've gone back to the type of things I used to watch and listen to when I was a kid. Musically my favourite bands at the moment are Metallica, Rush, Iron Maiden and Dream Theater. I still like The Who, Yes, Pink Floyd, Suzanne Vega and the like. It's just I prefer something a little heavier these days. When I feel like some music I'm more likely to put on Nick Cave, Disturbed or Stonesour than REM or U2. My reading tastes have darkened too - I'm reading horror as the norm, rather than sf. I'm watching horror films and crime and horror TV shows like Dexter and Bones and my old fa...

This is cathartic. It's a chance to remind myself that I want to be a writer. I've done. I've sold eighty pieces - heavily weighted though that number is in the direction of reviews. But I've not done any real writing for a little while. I've tried. I've half started a number of reviews - for Kevin Anderson's The Ashes of Worlds, for Thomas Disch's The Word of God, for Mike Resnick's Stalking the Vampire, for Nigel Suckling's The Book of the Vampire and for Tim Lebbon's The Reach of Children. I guess I can add Brian Keene's Ghost Walk to the list too as I finished reading it last night. They are all good. I need to get them all reviewed. It's just my mind's been out of sorts. When I finally came to the conclusion I had to leave my last job it was a jolt. It threw me off balance. When I received the job offer (from my now employer) I bucked up a little. I began writing again - polishing off a couple more comic horror tales (which h...

Back in the 1908s I watched, like many others, the mini-series "V". One of the characters (Robin) was played by a young actress called Blair Tefkin. That was that, so I thought. Well Tefkin is also a musician. Or rather these days she is mainly a musician -I don't think she has acted in years. And I have a copy of her CD Shocked and Devastated. I love it, reminds me a lot of The Throwing Muses - another of those bands I liked back in the 1908s. S+D sounds a little out of its time when you consider it was released in 2000. To me elements of it sound like 1960s early psychedelia era stuff, all jangly and upbeat. But more than this it sounds like the US-Indie stuff of the 1980s - hence the Throwing Muses reference. All the same I think it's great and I wish she would release a second album.

Talk about missing the boat (musically here). I have always been a passionate fan of music - and not afraid to pick my tastes purely on the grounds that I like things. In fact I will always consider any person's musical taste to be equally valid compared to mine. That is, if they have a defined musical taste and don't just sheepishly follow a trend. I accept some people like the current club-scene dance music stuff. I don't but if they have a passion then that's all to the good. It's not having musical taste that I don't get. Mine results in a core set of likes (NWOBHM, Prog-Metal, Prog-Rock, Folk, some rock - Springsteen end, etc) but it does mean I have odd bits thrown in to the mix. Most of this comes from my formative years being at the very end of the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s. As a result I quite like some bits of 1980s pop. I like Ultravox, The Jam, The Style Council, U2, Simple Minds, Suzanne Vega etc. Nothing to gain me odd looks at all. But...

I started this day on this blog... I decided to get back into the typing thing by blogging. I've not been all that much in the write frame of mind of late. Work pressures got to me. I admit it. I left my old job a week ago. The last few week's were fraught - after nine years it really became a wrench to the system. That and the last week I have been concerned about making a good impression at my new employers - hopefully not too obviously whilst I am actually there though. The evenings and this long weekend being the fraught time. So I have not been the most relaxed when trying to scrawl. I've been working on a short story - featuring demons and ghosts, zombies and werewolves. After a little over a week it is not half finished, and only about 800 words long. I've tried an article - got a great idea for a piece for Raving Dove, hoping lightning can strike twice - and I've tried reviews. Nothing doing. So I've watched an episode or two (Torchwood and Pushing Daisi...

Okay, moving on. Choice nine is an album that has been in the 6-CD rack in my car for the past four years - Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run. It's title track aside (stunning though it is) the album is just packed with wonderful, wonderful songs. The opening track Thunder Road is one of my favourite songs - although I do believe I never mentioned it when listing favourite songs - and includes one of the greatest lyrics I've ever heard in "You ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright" - Bruce certainly knows how to woo the women. Each of the tracks on this album is a classic. They'd be stand out tracks on most other artists albums .Thunder Road, Tenth Avenue Freeze Out, Night, Backstreets, Born to Run, She's the One, Meeting across the River and Jungeland. They are all truly great. I have to admit I love Springsteen's music (no sorry, most of Springsteen's music - The ghost of Tom Joad went a little too country for me, and the Seeger Sessions s...

Okay two down (Metallica's Master of Puppets and U2's The Joshua Tree) down - guess that means I need to find another eight albums for my list. I have to move onto one of my favourite bands - King Crimson. I pondered this one for a while. I like this band immensely but which album above all others. I know I never said I was only going to pick one album per band but somehow it seems right to. Listing ten albums by the same band (say Dream Theater, more on them later) wouldn't really say much about me - except look at the sad Dream Theater fan. So I thought about their debut album - In the Court of the Crimson King. It's an absolute classic, but is it their best? To be honest it is a bit floaty at times. The opening track - 21st Century Schizoid Man is inspired. I have no idea what effect this would have had in 1969 when the album was originally released. It was good and fresh sounding when I first heard it more than a decade later, but in 1969 that track must have been t...

A little while ago I listened in to a conversation about the best albums ever made. Annoying thing is I cannot remember where it took place. It could have been on TV, on the radio (but I only listen to Radio 4 so that's not all that likely) , in the pub, on a train or pretty much anywhere. I blame an aging brain for not remembering the exact details of when and where... However my half-formed memory did leave me pondering the idea. Not original I know. I guess just about eveyone has done this over the years but it has bugged me. I have listened and relistened to a number of albums trying to work out which I considered best. I've been trying to leave aside personal feelings towards certain albums for associative reasons. I like Rush's 2112 (the first of their albums I listened to) and Hold Your Fire (as it was the album that confirmed me in 1987 as a die-hard Rush fan - guess it came along at the right moment) but I wouldn't put either down as their best - even if 2112 i...

I like music - a great deal. I like live music a great deal and over the years I have been to a number of concerts. More recently though the regularity has diminished somewhat. Most of the bands I like either no longer exist, are dead or just far below their best. Recently though the chance to see a couple of concerts did come up - although for bands that are more my wife's taste than mine, so... Last week we went to see Whitesnake / Def Leppard at the Birmingham N.E.C. Arena, and last night was Bon Jovi at Coventry's Ricoh Arena. (I can't complain, I have dragged her to see Dream Theater and Yes over the years. And although she doesn't mind either band I believe her opinion of them is akin to mine of the bands we have seen in the last week.) Well they were good, enjoyable even for a non-fan. Whitesnake are not the same band they were once. Literally! Only Coverdale remains from the classic line-ups of the 1980s. But they were pretty good, even superb on "Here I Go...

This last few weeks have been crazy. They've seen me working days often longer than 12 hours and weekends. And by this I mean the day . The result of this is that I have written almost nothing. To compound my gloom most of the pieces I had sent out in the weeks before the MADNESS started were coming back during this period with rejections, or in one or two cases kind passes (book reviews where the book was not considered what they wanted to cover, although they did say the review itself was fine on both occasions). Add to this spending great deals of time emptying the house so it looks more appealing to anyone coming to view it - we are hoping to sell it and move a little further north - somewhere up near the Peak District would be nice. time consuming work but also depressing. My books are no longer on shelves, but all boxed up and in a storage unit about 12 miles away. I'd guess only about a tenth of them are still here and most of those will be going too. And in the middle o...

A few years I cam across a new generation progressive rock band called Spock's Beard and took and instant liking to them. Independently and oddly at exactly the same moment (literally the same day) I came across Transatlantic - one of the many side project bands that seem to spring up in prog circles. (Transatlantic BTW I bought because the Dream Theater drummer was also the Transatlantic drummer.) The guiding light of both these bands was an American multi-instrumenalist called Neal Morse. I was instantly hooked and then instantly disappointed to discover he had left both . Spock's Beard decided to continue without him although diminished a great deal in my opinion although I've liked a couple of the tracks from the three albums they've released without him. Transatlantic being a side project just folded - with only two albums and a couple of live albums ever produced. Neal is a Christian, and by that I mean mega-Christian. He felt, as is his right, that he neede...