Entries by Norman Warwick

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A DANGLING CONVERSATION

It began with Larry telling me he had been watching a music documentary series on Sky Arts about how so many black musicians and writers were paid only a pittance for their catlogues, because of signing contracts that they didn´t realise were offering royalties that were less than one per cent of what recording companies were offering to white musicans.

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QUESTIONS & ANSWERS & MUTUAL PRAISE

When Liz and Dee realised that Larry and I would be neither deterred or detoured on our musical pilgrimage of a chat, they decided to hitch their wagons to our star, and made their own contributions. Dee talked Motown, in the shape of Diana Ross & The Supremes, while Liz, to my amazement spoke of Canadian artist Robin Thicke and his huge, but controversial hit with Blurred Lines.

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WHEN WAS NOW AND THEN?

photo book She is just such an artist. I grew up in the same generation as Linda Ronstadt did and I love her rock and roll and country-rock songs and in an early middle age I loved her harmonies with Emmylou and Dolly Parton on the Trio releases. Then there were a couple of soul classic singles with Aaron Neville before she moved into Spanish language recordings, stage musicals and Opera.

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LIVE FOLK LORE MUSIC at Spanish Artisan Fair

have mentioned before on these pages that I find it remarkable that Lanzarote, its people and its government and its churches and its social services try, and succeed in doing so, to create a powerful unity of politics and religion and the arts and the artisans into almost every public event. I am sure that is what puts the smiles on the faces of those partaking and those in the audience.

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Meet AMY ALLEN: Singer-Songwriter Starlet

Allen approaches songwriting—and co-writing—holistically. She prefers to come up with the melody, lyrics and chords all at the same time, rather than try writing to somebody else’s track. “It feels like the emotion has been taken out of it,” she admits. “For me, in some way, I know people that are great at doing that, and they can write great, great songs that way, but my entry point to writing a song is finding the emotion in it from the very beginning. I have to story-tell from the early seed and then build everything around it.” Allen cites someone like John Prine as a guiding songwriting force, given how his stories are so concise and “each line needs to be there for the next one to make sense.” “And if one line was taken out, the story wouldn’t be conveyed,” she continues. “That’s how important each one is. Each part of it is so important to me that I like to be on the ground floor of it.”