The voting for selections on the next record “Nice Cuts” is complete. Thanks to everyone who voted. I dunno if it’s right to call it a ‘greatest hits’ record, but that seems to be the common term of art, so for those of you not clued in? It’s a ‘Greatest Hits!’ record. Actually, if it didn’t sound so bloody pretentious, I’d have called it a ‘Retrospective’. But to do that I’d have to hang with the kind of people who refer to movies as ‘the cinema’.

And the winnahs are:

You Are Loved (Positive) 6:00
Why Don’t You Come In? (Positive) 4:08
On My Way Home (Positive) 2:51
Paul’s Story (Positive) 5:56
What A Wonderful World (Superpower) 4:44
Shy (Superpower) 3:39
Hey Johnny! (Superpower)  2:55
Open Your Eyes (Part II)  (Compartments)  7:30
Too Far (Balance) 3:39
Money (Balance) 3:47
Matters Of The Heart (Balance) 6:25
Teflon (Home) 3:57
Suicide In A Hurry […]

As fans tend to know, I utilize quite a number of musical instruments and varied recording techniques on my albums. But at the same time, I’ve made no secret of my disdain of ‘gear sluts’ constantly in search of the next great gizmo that will propel them to stardom. I’d like to address both these topics here in a way that answers some commonly asked questions and hopefully dispels my image as ‘complete hypocrite.’

Some background. We had basically one radio station to listen to in Galway. It alternated constantly between The Carpenters (‘Close To You’) or Don’t Walk Away Renee or Andy Williams (‘Moon River’) or Elvis or ‘Popcorn’ (my introduction to the synthesizer.) And so on. Ironically, there was very little ‘Irish’ music played. There was no such thing as ‘formatted radio’. Every song would give today’s programmer a severe case of whiplash.

My earliest memories of hearing this sort of diversity in one group came in listening to my sister’s Moody Blues records. I was amazed, not only by […]

A lot of my songs have these little characters. The most current examples I hear about are Dino in ‘No Drive’ and the two soldiers near the end of ‘It’s A Racket’ on Beautiful Sounds. But they’re on every record.

Sometimes they are an integral part of the story as in the above or  ‘Ralf’ your German waiter from ‘The Party’ on Compartments and Mr. Parker and that sad guy in Oceans Below on Positive.

And sometimes they are little non-sequitir cameos like the intro to ‘Hey Girl’ on Home.

Some people love ’em. Many hate ’em (including my closest relations, but that’s another story.)

I don’t know why I started doing these. Perhaps because I always loved ‘acting’. One myth I want to dispel is that they are borrowed from Frank Zappa. Not true. I’ve addressed this before; I was never really that big an FZ fan. Only recently, I saw him in an old interview talk about this. Apparently he felt that voiceovers were […]

The official (and my first) video from my new album Beautiful Sounds.

What’s It All About, JC?
A few people have had the audacity to ask about the ‘plot’ of the video. Having seen the dawn of MTV (you know… back when they actually played ‘videos’) this puzzles me. Plot? We don’t need to show you no steenkin’ plot. We need chicks wearing only enough clothing to cause a massive yeast infection. And maybe some cars. Or leather jackets. And mousse. Lots o’ mousse.

The storyboard (such as it is) — is concerned with the hypocrisy of the war; as well as various other things in our culture. While the war goes on (the battle footage) one guy just sits and calmly reads his paper; another guy barbecues; and still another dances because, well the beat is pretty groovy. Two guys with guitars play in the background — they’re ‘the band’.

The guy dancing just appreciates the groove. This is like so many […]

Have you checked out Pandora? This is the web site that lets you create your own radio station in the style of your favourite artists! For example, if you like, say, Aretha Franklin, you can create an ‘Aretha’ radio station that will play songs by ‘The Queen Of Soul’ as well as those of artists which fall into the same genre… such as other great Stax Artists from the 60’s right up to Amy Winehouse today. As each song plays, you get links to learn more about them and purchase their music. Their catalog of supported artists is expanding every day and currently encompasses everything from Altan to Frank Zappa. Virtually every style of music is represented—from 20th Century Atonal Classical to Zydeco.  Best of all, Pandora is completely free.

Actually, from our point of view, what’s best about Pandora is that now, Pandora is hosting music from all five of our records. Create your own JCHMusic station!