Lyrico website - www.lyrico.co.uk - is 1 year old today!

Yes, believe it or not, the parent website of this Blog is actually celebrating its 1st birthday today! It was on June 16, 2005 that the "Live Build" took place on my Web Design course in Nottingham, and the first draft went across the Atlantic to a server in Atlanta to start demoing some of my co-writes to the world! Is it really a year?!

Since then, the site has been steadily upgraded: it's had at least three face lifts - pretty extreme, even by Hollywood standards! (And even more so for a 1-year-old!) New songs are being added to the site regularly, links updated, and then finally, four or five weeks ago, this Blog was added.

In fact, I'm really proud of the diversity of material that's demoed on the site now: there's some great potential singles there and a range of quality album tracks for the Industry to hear - basically, if you're in the music industry and looking for songs for either yourself, your band, or your artists to record, there's some crackers on the Lyrico site... And that's down to a really big thank you to all the co-writers I've been lucky enough to work with. (You all know who you are!)

Feel free to have a slice of the birthday cake with me... Hear Sample Co-Writes Here!

Alimentary, my dear Watson: Remixes that turn your stomach... Oh, and a Curry

Conversations, over a dupiaza and a couple of beers tonight with my work colleague and friend Peter Scholes, revolved initially around work and then, as the evening progressed, our talk, like the pickle trays, spun off in the direction of music. No strains of sitars and Bollywood here, but rather me having a rant about some complete pillock that the record company had hired to remix Summer Love. The curry will be gone in the morning, but the remix will be crap for all time!

There's an old saying that real producers use (as opposed to some of these talentless tw*ts that seem to infest the music industry nowadays!)... and it's this... "If the song is cr*p then all production does is gild a t*rd!" Well, there are morons out there nowadays that seem to be able to take a genuine gold bar and tear it to pieces (a bit like my Peshwari Naan earlier) and produce something that you really don't want hanging around in the house... certainly nowhere near the stereo! I am (still on this alimentary theme, here) utterly gutted! They've not remixed the track, but re-written it and removed every melodic hook and build-up, so the result is now musically flatter than a witch's proverbial! For all those people I was promising to let know about the imminent release of the single, I shall save my typing fingers... and your money!

Ending on a positive, this whole episode has (apart from making me quite angry) given me the resolve I need to seriously consider setting up my own label, publishing company and even, perhaps, production company. Basically, I just want to work with talented writer/producers like Paul Jeffery, Torgeir Bjordal and Sharon Sullivan and cut out the idiots from the mix!

Recently another shining star has emerged over the horizon. For the last couple of months, on and off, I have been working with Glenn Tollett, founder member of the Enid, co-writing a ballad/opera crossover song. Glenn has produced this with Nick Magnus (a real producer!) and it has been sung by Scott Davies who starred as The Phantom Of The Opera in the West End for three years. Two versions are now about to be unleashed as demos. The English version to my lyric "Love To Love Again" and the Italian version, "Fammi Innamorar'!" Now I have the highest hopes for both versions/mixes of this song... No one who has been out of their head on something (probably Ecstasy!) has been anywhere near it!

As always, feel free to check out the co-writes/songs at www.lyrico.co.uk and email me via the website!