Contemplation...

I don't know what's worse, sitting here all bunged up, suffering from 'Man Flu' or the thought of Bruce Springsteen playing at the Emirates Stadium next May (tickets already on pre-sale to Arse*@| members!)? Sigh. I will of course end up going, despite the venue being the home of the Gooners. Seeing Bruce and the E Street Band so close to home, on what may be their last tour together, is something I can't miss.

Still, here's something to make me feel better, a shot in the arm courtesy of Bill Nelson over in sunny Dreamsville...


You can now download two new tracks for FREE - the first is Contemplation (2007), a great re-recording of a classic Nelson song that originally appeared as a lo-fi demo/session track on the BBC Radio 1 'Kid Jenson' show in the early eighties. The song was subsequently re-worked and became a 10 minute epic that was released on the Getting The Holy Ghost Across album in 1986. The new 2007 incarnation of Contemplation was designed initially as a backing track guide for the song's performance at Nelsonica 07 last month, however Bill has now made it available as a full studio version with added guitars and vocal. For free! And as if that wasn't cool enough, there's also...

The Dreamsville Poetry Experiment - An interesting experiment involving an artist and his fans! Bill has set to music a 69 line 'found' poem, with each random, unconnected, line contributed by a different Dreamsville forum member*. When I first heard about this a few months ago I thought that it would end up being a load of incoherent pretentious claptrap, with fans providing awful lines of poetry that would make a spotty 14 year old blush. Well I've got to say that the end result of the experiment is actually pretty neat, thanks to Bill sprinkling his magic music dust over the often bizarre collection of words and phrases. Bill recites the 'poem' over an amazingly atmospheric musical piece, it's like a transmission across space and time. The Dreamsville Poetry Experiment has spawned a strange and dissonant baby. * (Personally, I like line 38 the best ;-))

As mentioned above, both tracks are FREE! Download page