...can anyone recommend SIMPLE (preferably free but not necessarily so) software for a PC which can split long slabs of audio into several bits, for exporting out as single tracks?

I've tried repeatedly with Audacity but my system just doesn't seem to get on with it, plus - having cut tracks - I never quite figured out an easy way to select bits and export them out individually.

You'll guess from this - correctly - that I'm an exasperated tech user, moderately capable but having no love of the stuff. So I've no interest in software with lots of effects/mixing bells and whistle: just something to cut tracks and export out.

Any suggestions?

As promised, following his recent video gauntlets thrown down to Jon Bon Jovi (over the purloining of the Skid Row name, as manager of the US 80s act 'Skid Row;), Brush Shiels - godfather of Irish rock and mainman in the original Skid Row - has uploaded the first in what he promises will be a series of video chats with guests on the history of Irish rock.

This one features his old Skid Row colleague Noel Bridgeman, talking about chucking Phil Lynott out of the band (benevolently), agreeing to "the worst record deal in history" with CBS (1/2% between the three of them) and landing in America in 1970 where Brush were immediately arrested over a confusion with America's most wanted man (a supreme irony given the band's position at the bottom end of the success ladder)...

Good on Brush for doing this - it really is an oral history project of value. And good for Noel for taking part. When I was writing a chapter on Skid Row for a book on Irish Music 7 or 8 years ago Noel politely declined to be interviewed (which I fully respected and understood) - sometimes the past can be painful for people, particularly if that past involves the record business of the late 60s/70s and its nefarious ways. Some scars take a long time to heal. Happily, he seems from this good-natured reminiscence-fest to have made his peace...

....and if so, would you be up for doing a handful of photocopies from specific issues for a decent fee? (There's also literally a couple of items each I need from specific issues of Melody Maker, Record Mirror and Disc from the same period, but the Sounds tranche - 17 items which I can't access currently from vintage mag dealers - is the biggest.)

I can send a list of the issues/items in question offlist if anyone thinks the could help.

Am I embarking on a foolhardy project involving the far shores of 70s popular music you ask?

To which 'yes' would be the answer...

Brush Shiels is one of great characters in rock - Irish rock, classic rock, progressive-rock, and just plain old rock - as well as being a left-field Irish TV light entertainment icon.

More than anything else, he's a great raconteur, a man of lightning fast repartee and joie de vivre and a man whose response to being knocked down repeatedly in the ebbs and flows of the music biz over the past 45 years is to get straight up again with even more positivity than he had before!

Over the past five or six years, Brush - who has toured and recorded primarily under his own name in recent decades - has taken to seeing his 1968-72 band Skid Row (which also featured Phil Lynott and Gary Moore in its line-ups) as something that he should more actively celebrate - recording the fabulous, but low-key, album 'Mad Dog Woman' in one day with just himself (voc/gtr/bs) and a drummer: typical original Skid Row ethos! Now it seems he has a new album under the Skid Row banner, featuring some of those incendiary 'Mad Dog Woman' CD tracks plus new recordings. It is, apparently, his most blistering record yet - I can't wait to hear it!

He's not a man given to bearing grudges, having chips on shoulders, dwelling on negativity.... but the launch of the US band 'Skid Row' fronted by Seb Bach and managed by Jon Bon Jovi in the 80s annoyed him then and has continued to annoy him under the surface since, it seems. As well it might. No one asked his permission... and, out of principle, he's decided 'What the hell?'... and put a request out via the internet. Apparently it's the first in a series of Brush-casts - and I say: good on him, and good luck to him!

I'm sure there'll be those out there who'll have negative views on his stance, his way of approaching it, whether he should even give a toss after several generations of horses have bolted. But that's all fine, in my experience the Brushmeister never shrinks from a conversation!

Here he is with his pitch to Jon B, followed by the 2012 version of 'Mad Dog Woman' to a montage of vintage Skid Row pics.

Long may he rock!

...This might be a new one even on Dave 'None More '80s' Amitri (though I'm hoping it won't be): Shadow Talk, a Northern Ireland quartet who toured the UK with Talk Talk (no relation) at the latter's commercial peak and had a single released on Magnet in 1984, 'People Watching People'. They slipped quietly away after a couple of years due to family commitments etc

Frontman Baz Tipping - happily, almost as much of a Mahavishnu Orchestra aficionado as myself (as, increasingly, it seems a lot of these 80s popsters were/are in a closet fashion) - told me a couple of weeks ago that Chris Blackwell offered them a deal on the spot after a show at the Marquee in '83... the very week after they'd committed to Magnet. Who knows what the extra magic and muscle of Island might have done for them? But they had a decent shot and retired fairly swiftly and honourably from the fray when the ammo ran out...

I've only got to know know Baz recently; he's appeared out of nowhere, after decades out of music, with a wholly new sound and body of work akin, perhaps, to Bon Iver. Some kind of release is due in the next couple of months, I believe. There's a couple of impressionistic videos floating around of tracks from his new project, and I've posted one or other around here before.

But for the moment I'd be interested to see if anyone here recalls Shadow Talk, or saw their live shows.

Here they are, in a Very Eighties Video:

A few weeks back I asked on this blog if anyone proximate to the Peterborough area fancied a paid commission to write a piece on my old pal Paul Archer's Burning Codes project. Within hours, Twang had volunteered his musical and literary associate Hilary.

The piece is just out, available online here: http://www.themomentmagazine.com/entertainment/the-burning-codes/

Great job Hilary, and thank you Twang!

I've known Paul since he was wearing tie-dyed shirts and doing karate moves and thousand-yard stares on stages around Belfast 17 years ago. Then, he was fronting a blistering psychedelic band called Disreali Gears. I sleevenoted their sole album and whatever else I said, one line springs to mind: 'Without the Gears what is there in life?'

Hyperbole-for-effect aside, I can still say with heart and soul that - though I seem to plug in and out of what Paul's doing every few years (miss a year or two and there's likely to have been another album and another record label fiasco/saga) since he moved to first The Fens then Peterborough - Paul Archer is a true artist and an inspiration. He clings to, and proselytises, small S spirituality, capital I integrity and a general sense of goodwill and empathy.

For all of us who get jaded, me included, Paul Archer's company and music is a gentle balm that offers a glimmer of possibility in the drudge.

Here he is first with a beautiful track from the first (of, I think, three so far) Burning Codes album, 'For All Time', which was recorded entirely solo with Paul layering exquisite harmonies; and second, with a recent live version of an old Disreali Gears song 'Only Gone' (the only one from those days he still performs - sadly, without the karate moves):

For all you Massivistas in the Greater Peterborough area - or, indeed, for those who book 'Word In Your Ear' gigs! - check out Hilary's lovely piece on Paul and try and see a live show if you can. You won't regret it...

I have this notion that there are very few people - ever - who can truly be said to 'carry off' the double-necked guitar.

Partly it's down to physical size (of the person weilding such a thing) but partly, I think, its something less tangible. Some people are just 'right' with a double-neck, it completes their persona and adds to their musical armoury onstage in a meaningful way (be it switching from bass neck to 6 string or 6 string to 12-string). But some people just look like idiots who've walked out of a joke shop with the rock equivalent of a big foam hand, of the kind people wave around in baseball stadiums.

Mike Rutherford arguably gets away with his because he's tall, he's in a prog band and he had the good sense to poke fun at himself with Genesis' 'Land Of Confusion' puppet video (where the Mike puppet weilds an absurd 7 necked instrument).

Jimmy Page is an iconic image with his double-neck (though when was the last time he used it onstage? would he just look stupid with it nowadays? is it a young man's item, or rather a 70s-only item, never to be revisited?), and also needed it for musical reasons - switching between 12 and 6 strings mid song.

Ditto John McLaughlin - the necessity of utilising 12 and 6 strings in the same tunes - first with a Gibson double neck, from late 1971 (the first Mahavishnu LP was recorded with a black Les Paul), then a custom made Rex Bogue double neck from 1974-75, until it fell and broke (as the Gibson had done shortly before). John completed the late Mahavishnu Orchestra dates, I believe, with the black Les Paul he's started with. And after the MO he never used a double-neck again - and yet the image of a serene virtuoso playing strange arpeggios and lightning fast solos in odd modes, on this otherworldly looking device, was perfection itself. You could imagine him no other way.

So, Massive at large... who are the heroes, villains and delusional twerps of the double-neck world? And does ANYONE still play them onstage these days without looking like an idiot?

Here's a couple of examples. Firstly, Jim Rodford in Argent demonstrating why short men with gnome-ish appearance should never go onstage with a double-neck bigger than they are, and secondly, Mahavishnu John McLaughlin as an example of someone who just looks 'right' with such a thing:

Here's a little-known slab of Aussie psych-rock I thought a few people round here might enjoy.

Doug Parkinson's a minor legend, and great vocal stylist in my view, on the Oz rock scene - best known, I think, for a local hit version of 'Dear Prudence' and still performing today (maybe our Aussie compadres can chip in some more details...?).

His 1970 band was the somewhat hubristically titled 'Doug Parkinson In Focus' - but there were a number of similarly self-referential/oddly monikered Oz rock bands around at that time (one, I believe, called 'Michael Turner In Session' - just imagine the confusion if they'd ever been booked for John Peel's radio show! or, indeed, the inherent problems if Doug, and not PJ Proby, had joined Dutch prog maestros Focus in 1977...).

His next band, Fanny Adams, produced one incredible LP c.1972, shamefully not yet on CD (though I have a dubbed from vinyl copy courtesy of a pal in Oz).

This 1970 B side, aside from being a classic of its type, sounds to me like Doug was pretty close to pre-empting U2's 'Vertigo' by a few decades. There's only so many chord changes in the world!

Anyway... people of The Word, enjoy the vocal titan that is... Doug Parkinson!

Even for a humourless old goat this is truly pathetic:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16525982

(Lou Reed suing Andy Warhol's Foundation 43 years after the event over their use of the banana design which he, Warhol, created for a VU album cover and which the VU do not own under any copyright.)

A while back one of our number, Twangathan (for it is he who must be held blamed), wondered aloud if I should start a Mahavishnu Orchestra thread. Tens of thousands of words later, we currently have a thread apiece for the MO Mk1 and Mk2 and sundry spin-off threads. A couple of days ago another of our number, Carl Parker, wondered aloud about my views on Shakti, the band which followed – nay, overlapped – with the MO Mk2. Collectively, the Massive must have put their heads in their hands and thought, ‘Oh, here we go again…’

Well, not wishing to disappoint, I thought I’d give it a go! I confess to having thought I might be a bit out of my depth here. After all, while MO Mk1 already had a strong basis of research and posthumous appreciation ‘out there’, the MO Mk2 has thus far been less well-documented (though it’s been surprising how much we’ve collectively pulled together on that subject thus far) and Shakti much less so again. I own all three original Shakti albums – two on CD, one on LP – but none of the Indian members’ subsequent recordings and none of the Remember Shakti recordings.

It’s clearly time to do something about that. Note to self: investigate Remember Shakti soon. Meanwhile, here (starting in the comments below) – with a particular debt to Peter Lavezzoli’s book ‘The Dawn Of Indian Music In The West’ (2006) – is the story of Shakti in brief, followed by what I’ve managed to pull together on the original Shakti’s tour and recording dates. I’m hoping the Massive will, as with the MO threads, chip in with recollections and more info…

I've no idea who these people are, but a whole concert of their Balkan-esque fusion fabulosity - Romanian/Bulgarian-sounding dance tunes along with tunes by Mozart, Erik Satie and Debussy - has just appeared on youtube.

I was - but of course - first attracted by this terrific cover of the Mahavishnu Orchestra's 'Meeting Of The Spirits/You Know, You Know', but I'm looking forward to hearing the rest of the set. The second tune (below) is great fun - a trad sounding Balkan tune with scat vocals and blistering guitar.

Imagine, this was apparently broadcast at Christmas last year and clearly it is a large concert hall full of people. Fusion never died: seemingly, it just bought a holiday home in Transylvania and never bothered coming back...

I mentioned elsewhere that I had some friends round a couple of nights back and we spent a fair amount of time, somehow, discussing Sham 69. One of the friends popped round again today and, sure enough, after a couple of beers and a bit of chat about other stuff, we came back to The Enigma That Is Jimmy Pursey.

I really only have a casual fascination with the fellow - as I do with, say, Rob Halford or Ginger Baker - but I thought it was about time I sought some informed opinion. Is he a chancer, a phony, a sell-out, an unfairly spat-out spokeman of a generation, a street-level philosopher, a working class hero, a rabble-rouser, a neglected musical genius? Or just some geezer who attracted the wrong crowd and barked out nursery-level ditties about going down the pub?

Personally, I've really no idea. He does seem to inspire very different views to judge from youtube comments - he certainly has lots of loyal believers for all the nay-sayers. And, as I posted a couple of months back, there does seem something almost heroic about the four 1978 members reuniting again for a Brixton Academy show (in Sept or Oct 2011) after the previous last-gasp version of the band, featuring only one original, fell out and split only 6 months previous.

And yet, on the other side of that coin, do Sham 69 have ANYTHING to offer anyone bar those fiercely loyal, middle-aged bovver-boys who packed out the Academy anyway? Is there great music there - or even great potential for new music there - that one might be missing?

In short: it's time we talked about Jimmy.

Here's a good starting point: a short LWT doc from 1979, featuring clips from their 'final' gig (ahem...) and lots of Pursey talking.

"I don't want to be a leader," he says, "just a spokesman..." Er...?

Elsewhere he says something about 'If...', 'A Clockwork Orange' and 'O, Lucky Man' which I didn't understand and... well, in truth, I don't quite understand a lot of what he's saying - and yet he's clearly eloquent and intelligent. I just don't grasp what he's talking about!

Still, here it is (in two parts):

Some kind and discerning soul over at youtube has compiled this fabulous 35 minute / 8 year montage of Billy Cobham drum solos (okay, not even Billy's solos ACTUALLY last eight years!) - from his work with the Horace Silver Quintet in Denmark 1968 through the Mahavishnu Orchestra in Germany, France and England and on to his solo band at the Rainbow and a duo with George Duke in Switzerland 1976.

It's mesmerising. For those only familiar with the double bass drum/multi tom-rattling behemoth of the Mahavishnu era, his small kit musicality with Horace Silver will astound and delight. For MO buffs, the extract from 'One Word' in Germany is a delight - as it's an extract from that show that's only recently begun to circulate (I myself - yes, even I! - haven't yet acquired a DVD of the extended, though still incomplete, version of that broadcast).

Enjoy!

I know what you're thinking: 'Blimey, there hasn't been any mention of the Mahavishnu Orchestra around here for ages. WHEN OH WHEN is SOMEONE going to fill that void?'

Well, fear not, let us redress the balance with a bit of latterday appreciation and discussion on the lesser-known, yet still brilliant, MARK 2 Mahavishnu Orchestra.

The Mk 1 MO featured, of course, John McLaughlin (gtr), Jan Hammer (kbd), Jerry Goodman (vn), Rick Laird (bs) and Billy Cobham (dr). They spanned July 1971 - December 1973, playing 535 gigs (mostly in the USA) before collapsing in a heap.

In early 1974 John McLaughlin assembled a whole new band, adding a string quartet and brass section to the main rock/jazz band format - which featured Jean Luc Ponty (electric violin), Gayle Moran (kbd), Ralphe Armstrong (bs), Michael Walden (dr).

That 11 piece line-up recorded 'Apocalypse' (1974 - with producer George Martin and the LSO (as if an 11 piece band wasn't enough!) - and 'Visions Of The Emerald Beyond' (1975).

There's nearly 3 hours of film circulating around of the 1974 11-piece line-up (from Montreux Festival and the Antibes Jazz Festival in France), primarily playing the 'Apocalypse' material and a couple of MO Mk 1 pieces, some of which is on youtube. Alas, there doesn't seem to be ANY film of the 9-piece version of the band which toured the 'Visions...' material - with appearances in Britain and Europe (eg Reading Festival 1975) but most especially a two month US tour with Jeff Beck.

(A 4-piece last-gasp version of the band recorded one final MO LP in 1976, 'Inner Worlds', and played some shows. So, yes, strictly speaking there was a Mk2, 3 and 4 of the MO - but we'll call them all 'Mk 2' for clarity.)

MO/Beck soundman Dinky Dawson recorded all those shows and hopefully some will start appearing via wolfgangsvault.com in 2012 (there's already a terrific Beck show from the tour up there, with JMcL jamming with the Beckmeister on one piece).

In the meantime, here's JMcL introducing that 9-piece band from a decent audience recording of a show from that 1975 Beck tour over a suitably funky groove.

Jean Luc Ponty (vn) and Gayle Moran (kbd) had left the band, with string quartet leader Steven Kindler taking over on electric violin and Stu Goldberg on keyboards. The others are:

Ralphe Armstrong (bs), Michael Walden (dr), Carol Shive (vn), Norma Jean Bell (sax), Russell Tubbs (sax), Philip Hirschi (cello).

No idea what happened to the viola player...

Intros/funky groove - 0:00 - 4:35

Eternity's Breath - 4:35 - 11:11

You Know, You Know - 11.11 - end (the high-speed version)

Let's funk!

...er, no, sorry - as you were... it was all a dream...

(shuffles off to darkened room for bit of a lie-down, with visions of Noddy Holder hollering 'It's Chriiiiiiiiiiiiiissssssssssssttmaaaaaaassssssssssssssss!' over a deafening yet deleriously brilliant racket made by a spiritual looking man with a double-necked guitar)