SONGS AND SCRIPTS AND DUNKING BISCUITS

Every day tales of a winging-it creative

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about

I’ve written bits and pieces on BBC Radio 2, 4 and 5 comedy shows, worked in the script team for two series of Channel 4’s comedy-drama ‘Shameless’ and am currently working with The Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool as part of their script development programme. I am also a songwriter with songs on all major platforms.

Category: Rock Music

  • FROM THIS SMALL ROOM TO A THRILLING,WAITING WORLD

    This coming Friday I will be moving out of the house that I have lived in since I was eight years old. The biggest part of my lifetime has been spent within these walls and I am the only one of my family still living here. It feels like the right time; I of course…

  • TRYING HARD TO RECOGNISE THE AMERICA OF MY DREAMS

    My grandfather Gordon Ariss from Birmingham UK, boarded the ship HMT Rohna on the 25th November 1943, along with 1,981 American soldiers. The next day the ship was attacked by a wave of German aircraft. They appeared to have weathered the attack until they were hit by a recently devised radio controlled bomb. It proved…

  • HOW SONGS STUMBLE SLOWLY AND NERVOUSLY INTO THE WORLD

    Any creative process can be a question of trial and error, and that includes blogs. Not many of us write a piece in one flow, make a little tweak before considering it good enough to go and excitedly click ‘publish’. Well some may, but they have clearly made a pact with the devil. Or they…

  • MY 3 SECRET AND TOTALLY UN-COOL MUSICAL PLEASURES

    All of us, myself included, to some level like to cultivate a musical identity that is eclectic, knowledgeable and a little edgy. Oh we’re in sync with what is happening right now. Too right we are. We may not like it, we may not get it, but we like people to know we are aware…

  • WHO NEEDS CREDIBILITY AND COOL WHEN YOU HAVE PASSION?

    I have just finished reading the enlightening and entertaining autobiography ‘Lightening Seeds, Football and Cosmic Post-Punk’ by Ian Broadie, the songwriter, lead singer, producer and beating heart behind Liverpool based band The Lightening Seeds. The Lightening Seeds had several excellent and memorable hits, mainly in the 1990’s, such as ‘Life of Riley’ and ‘Pure’. Broadies…

  • THE SONGWRITING SHARKS WAITING TO EAT ME ALIVE

    Down in the overcrowded shallow water of songwriting, which is where I exist, no-one really takes any notice. On any given day, between 60,000 and 100,000 songs get uploaded onto Spotify alone. That’s a lot of songs, and your own, no matter how much you believe in it, can easily be swamped and forgotten almost…

  • ELTON AND THE FIRST CONCERT COVERING FIRST LOSS

    Today I saw that Elton John has just turned 77. Wow. Elton was the first live act I ever saw, at the Liverpool Empire theatre on the 4th May 1976 on the ‘Louder Than Concorde But Not Quite As Pretty’ tour that was essentially the tour to support the Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt…

  • AN OPTICIANS CHAIR AND SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION FROM THE BOSS

    Paul McGuiness was the legendary manager of rock band U2 from 1978 to 2013. He managed them from seeing them in an arts centre in Dublin when they were known as The Hype, to become the biggest rock band in the world. He negotiated record and publishing deals that would stagger the rest of the…

  • JOURNEYS WITH OLD MEN AND YOUNG HEARTS

    In his early 60’s my father, who had lived most of his adult life working as a lorry driver driving the length and breadth of Great Britain, discovered the blues. The blues of the deep south, people like Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker (below), BB King and Muddy Waters. Having spent most of his life…

  • HELLO YELLOW BRICK ROAD, GOODBYE FEAR AND PANIC

    On Wednesday of this week, October 4th, the rail workers in the UK decided to have a ‘day of action’, an ironic term of phrase for a national strike. Pretty much all the trains in the country didn’t run at all. This post isn’t about the strike, although I do broadly support their issues to…