I’ve got a new PC (Nhaaah to Flowers for Algernon!). Most of the weekend has been taken up with buying the bits, assembling them (or rather gazing in awe as Plague assembled them for me with casual skill) and copying software and settings from my old hard drive to the new one. And it’s all gone (so far) splendidly well. A dual boot system so that music software is kept in golden isolation away from the cut and thrust of everyday computing, masses of memory and masses of storage space. Of course it’ll feel sluggish and outmoded in a year or two, but I’m pretty good at getting the most out of these things.
Last night, went to see Jackie Leven at the Bein Inn, Glenfarg. Tiny room, about 60 crammed in, he didn’t even need a mic. If pushed I’d say I enjoyed his stories more than the songs (although they were good) – he’s a superb raconteur and has an amazing lot of connections for substantial stories, not just name-dropping – how about Laurence Olivier and Princess Di for example? I was intrigued by his guitar tuning and asked him about it afterwards – I’m now trying it: E G# B E G# B If you ever get the chance to see Jackie Leven take it.