All Bar One

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I'm trying to show a friend a few tips on playing rock guitar at the moment and he emailed me to ask about how bar chords worked. I decided it was easier to try and explain diagrammatically and put together a couple of A4 sheets so that he could refer to it when trying to work out chords for songs. Knowing that the song goes: D, Bminor, G, A isn't quite enough information for folk just picking up a guitar for the first time.

You can play a lot of rock songs with these few chords so once you've worked out these few shapes you're away. I thought I'd put them up here so any new guitarists may find them useful. Of course if anyone has spotted any mistakes please let me know.

We'll be covering Pentatonic Scales next week (only joking).

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Pier Git

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I thought I'd lost this postcard but it showed up during a clear out for a car boot sale (my first and last, hopefully).

One of my favourite Ralph Steadman images from the early 80's. On the back it's signed: 'Belated Birthday Greetings "old person". I hope it was good? See you soon...Michael.' (1982)

Thank you and good taste Mr Wright.

Images

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I was sifting through some old vinyl the other day and came across this gem. A collection of early David Bowie songs recorded in the mid to late Sixties. The release date on the cover is 1973 so it looks like Deram were trying to cash in on Mr Bowie's rise to fame during his Ziggy Stardust period. There are quite a few decent songs on here but embarrassingly, the one howler is 'The Laughing Gnome' which Deram decided to re-release right at the peak of Ziggy fever and just after 'Life on Mars' had hit the No. 3 slot in the charts.

I've seen these songs repackaged many times but this is my favourite vinyl sleeve with illustrations credited to 'Neon Park'. Featured are several caricatures of Ziggy and what appears to be Ringo Starr riding his bike as 'Uncle Arthur'. You wouldn't get artwork like this on CD sleeves these days. From a long-gone era when one would spend ages pondering artwork and sleeve notes whilst listening to the music. Great stuff.