16th June 2019

16th June 2019

I was given an Amazon gift voucher of £10 as a birthday present at the beginning of the month. I've spent a couple of weeks every night on the internet trawling through the vast amount of digital music on the Amazon website trying to decide which songs to purchase with the money. At one point I remembered two fantastic songs recorded by Denny Laine in the late 1960's that were on an album of obscure tracks on Decca records called Lost and Found. I spent quite a bit of time trying to find them and at one point my hopes were raised only to quickly realise it wasn't an original recording I had found from 1967 but a much newer version with boring modern keyboard sounds on it. Just to make sure I wasn't imagining it I found the 1960's versions on you tube, lovely acoustic guitar playing and orchestration. As far as I'm aware you can't buy the songs as mp3 downloads from you tube.

About 10 years ago I sold most of my records because they were taking up so much space and I didn't have a record player. I kept some of my most treasured ones like my Quicksilver Messenger Service LPs and from the money I got from the ones I sold I used the funds to buy CDs or purchase mp3 downloads. There were some songs that I particularly liked which were on obscure B sides that I owned ( 'Shame' by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky Mick and Tich is one of them ) and so I borrowed a record player from my stepson and connected it to my computer and digitised the songs into mp3 format. Remembering that I had done this and the fact that my stepdaughter bought me a record player a few years ago I thought that there was a chance that I might still have the precious Lost and Found Decca album which included those rare Denny Laine songs. So I went through the few remaining albums that I still own, that are located in various places in my house but unfortunately I can't find it. I can't believe that I could have been so stupid to not keep that album without at least checking to see if I could get those 2 songs on CD or on the internet. Surely not? What is so annoying is that the recordings of these songs do not deserve to be so obscure. The songs were on a single, 'Say you don't mind' was the brilliant A side and on the B side was the equally catchy and memorable 'Ask the people'. How on earth was this not a hit single? Probably due to the complete incompetence of the record label I would imagine. It's such a shame that you can't easily purchase these fantastic recordings on CD and the Denny Laine version is much better than the one recorded by Colin Blunstone. To cheer myself up here are the links to the songs on you tube:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1wDvhnMnck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQDX6DRXaS4

Also found a very interesting interview with Denny Laine here:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45luNBpBO1s

If anyone reading this can help me get the 1960's mp3 recordings of these songs by Denny Laine then I would love to hear from you.

Having got that whinge out of my system I am very pleased to announce that Georgie Harman of Red Fox Illustrations has finished the album cover for the Devon Roses album 

and we've also finished recording the songs! So now we move onto the recording of History Book Part Two, Lord Z has got my latest offering called 'Gallants Bower' and he says he likes it. I've written lots of other songs that we haven't finished recording and I just hope he like these other ones as well

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