The Week In Review(s)

It has been another wild week in the world of reviewing. Last Friday I received two boxes of 'stuff', and I am still trying to dig my way out of this hole!

I started off with Rick Wakemans latest creation Amazing Grace, I have been a fan of Rick's for many years. Who is Rick Wakeman? Well if you are old, like I am, and grew up in England in the 70's, there were two bands that ruled the Prog Rock scene, The Strawbs, and YES. Rick was the wild keyboard player for both of these bands. His signature was the number of keyboards this guy would have set up, six was not unusual! In Amazing Grace, he dumps all of his Moog's and Meletrons in favour of a Grand Piano. This is a great album, and I am hoping to interview Rick next week.

In the 70's Rick was very much a session musician, and in an amazing co-incidence he played on two Al Stewart albums, Orange, and Past present and Future. Well, I interviewed Al this week about his long and industrious career. What a great segway eh? Al Stewart has just had 13 of his albums put back in print, and I had the opportunity to talk to Al. He is a great performer, and he is just as charismatic one on one. I have to admit that this was one of the all time high spots in my reviewing career. I was amazed at how candid he was in his answers.

On the TV front I have started doing some work with the 'Sundance Channel', they have a great weekly series 'Big Ideas For A Small Planet', my review of the last program 'Create' was picked up for syndication. So everyone involved was pretty happy. I have an interview scheduled with the CEO of one of the companies that going to be featured in two weeks.

I also reviewed a whole schwack of music DVD's that quite honestly I can't even remember the titles of.

On the book front I finished Funny Business, which is a very funny book. I enjoyed it a lot. While the author may not be a name that you have heard of Allen Rosenshine, he is a very powerful name in the advertising world. Unless you have been living under a rock for the past 50 years, you have seen this mans work. BBDO is the worlds largest Ad agency, and Allen Rosenshine was the guy driving the car. I am sure you remember the famous Pepsi ad that has Michael Jackson in it, maybe even more famous, the fact that Michael's hair got set on fire, well Allen was the guy on the 'Hot Seat', as opposed to the hot hair! This is a great read, and I laughed a lot.

Right now I am almost finished 'Infernal Machine - a history of terrorism' by Matthew Carr, and as the title suggests, it it all about terrorism. Matthew has created a really fine book, and he argues very convincingly that it is not a new phenomenon, the names may change, the locale may change, even the goals may change, but there is a constant theme behind it. In fact, what is one mans terrorist, is another mans freedom fighter! It has a lot to do with how you view it, and how the government of whatever country involved spins it.