At the end of next week I’m heading off to the US for a couple of weeks. This was all planned well in advance of the launch of Johnny’s so I didn’t really have it mind to be listening to a lot of music while I was over there. The trip was just a return to see friends and catch up, my first visit since I stopped living there in 2005. Now, though, that might change a bit. If I get a chance to see a gig or two, I will, and I’ll write it up, along with any other music-related stuff that happens across my path.

One thing I will be doing is using Twitter to flag such pieces and chatter about anything else that’s happening along the way, so to that end, I’ve added my Twitter feed to the sidebar here.

If you want to follow more directly, my Twitter user name is timdunlop and you are more than welcome to click the Follow button and, well, follow.
While I’m here, I thought I’d flag a few things that I’ve got planned to write about.

As mentioned elsewhere, I’ve got a multi-part piece in the works that is an account of how people’s interest in music develops (or flags) as they get older. Looking around amongst my friends, people for whom, I know, music was the air that they breathed, I find it interesting to see where that obsession has ended up as the pressures of living an adult life kick in. What really gets me is how many of them have, independently, moved in the same direction. It’s almost like those stories of twins separated at birth who meet 50 years later only to discover that they have the same job as each other, wear the same clothes and have both married a woman called Gwen. I’ve had a similar experience with friends and music.  With no apparent collusion, many of them ended up discovering the same new stuff. So Part One of that’s on the way.

Also coming is a review of Don Walker’s memoir, Shots, which I’ve just about finished.  After that I’ll do the new biography of Tom Waits called Low Side of the Road.  Other books that might get a guernsey are Born in Flames by Howard Hampton, and this pretty neat (and fairly old) collection of music writing by Lester Bangs called Mainlines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader.  Just because I happen to be reading them.

On DVD I picked up copies of Rock N’ Roll Nerd: The Tim Minchin Story; Leonard Cohen’s  Live in London; a dirt cheap copy of the doco on Rock School; and a totally indulgent (for me) doco on Yes billed as “their definitive fully authorised story”.  We’ll see about that.

Albums I’ve been listening to include those by Tinariwen, Rodney Crowell, and T-Bone Burnett.  I’ve also got an interview with Chris Parkinson, guitarist from the Yearlings, lined up, and I’ll right that up once it’s done.

So it’ll be business as usual, one way or another.

For now, consider this an open post and maybe throw in some other ideas of albums to listen to, docos to see, or just give us a run down on what you are listening to at the moment.

PS: For all you iPhone and iPod Touch users out there, let me recommend the Wolfgang’s Vault music app. Amazing line-up of gigs streamed to that little device in your pocket.