Just before Christmas I got my act together and sent my Christmas note to all the record labels, PR companies and musicians I am involved with. One of the first responses I had was from Colin, and we swapped emails over the next couple of days – me taking the piss out of him being so cold, and him responding to my comments about the wonderful summer we were having by saying “Now I must go out and drive about in the snow a bit. Hotness is for losers! Ha ha”. The last email he sent me, received here on Christmas morning, was signed off “Colin from the North”. It was an incredible shock to hear that only four days later he had passed away from natural causes, and to be honest I still can’t believe it. Here I am listening to his brand-new album, and I have no way of telling him just how much I have enjoyed it, or how much more complete I feel it is from his debut. That it feels much more like a band, and the reduction in personnel has had a major positive impact, that the contribution from Peter Jones (Tiger Moth Tales, Camel, Red Bazar) is immense, or that I can totally see why he was so proud to tell me that Joe Vitale (Joe Walsh, Barnstorm, CSN) was a full member of the band because he believed in it so much, or that his guitar-playing is the best I have heard from him, and his use of acoustic guitars at the relevant times make a huge difference.
I can’t tell him any of that, nor that his mix of so many different styles, as his brain moved from one place to another, is so typically him. I also can’t work out if I have enjoyed this album so much because I wanted his final album to be worthwhile and memorable, or if it is my emotions that are mixed up with it that have caused me to hear more than is already there. I hope and believe that it is the former, but music is always subjective as opposed to objective, no matter how hard we work at it, so who is to say? Available on download already, and available on CD at the end of the month, you owe it to yourselves, and to the memory of someone who I have never heard a bad word said about, to give it a try.
Kevin from the South.
