Sunday, 28 December 2025

The 2025 Review - My year in music!

 2025 has been a difficult year for me in many ways. Having said that, it has been an absolute classic year for me as a musician, a festival organiser and a gig go'er. I can honestly say I've seen some of the best gigs and my band The False Dots have also played some absolute belters. The Mill Hill Music Festival was amazing, as was the East Barnet Festival, with some amazing performances. So here is my pick of the year!

January.

The year got off to a great start with Carroll Thompson, queen of Lovers Rock at Ronnie Scotts. I have always been rather partial to a bit of reggae and lovers Rock. Carroll is a regular customer at the studio and is a lovely lady. A great way to kick off the year!

February. 

In February, I went to see Bilk. From Essex, one of the best new rock and roll bands on the scene. Tom our trumpeter introduced me to Bilk and I am very glad he did. I saw them four times during the year, all of the shows were brilliant. Check them out if you like proper rock and roll.



Also on the 16th February - The False Dots celebrated our 46th birthday at The Dublin Castle- with Pete & The Lovehearts and  The Colours. It was a great way to start the gigging year. 

March.

In March there were a few brilliant gigs, this is my pick, Rockabilly/Rock and Roll legends The Delta's at The Boogaloo pub. I love the gospel lunches there. It's free as well, although if you want a table reserved, they charge £4. I'd recommend The Delta's to anyone. They had a hot back in the early 1980's and have lost none of their energy.


April.

The big highlight in April was the London International Ska Festival. My personal Favourite gig was Jah Wobble at the 100 club. I think Jah Wobble is one of the UK's most interesting and innovative artists.

Also on the 12th April the False Dots played at The Builders Arms, Barnet. It was the first of a couple of gigs. It was nice for us, as we could do two sets, giot paid decent money and could play two sets, so got to play some of the songs we don't usually play. It was a wonderful evening

May.

May saw a very special gig, The remaining Pogues got together for a show, for the first time since 2014. It was a brilliant night, lots of great guests. 



Also on  25th May the False Dots launched our 2025 single Groovetown at The Dublin Castle  with Dubvocaliza and Niall Logue in support. It was a great night and the single has been really well received, getting loads of radio coverage. It has been a central part of the set.


June

In June we had the Mill Hill Music Festival, which was amazing. Check out my festival diary here!  It would be hard to picka  personal favourite, it was all pretty brilliant. 

As for other gigs, it has to be John McKay's Reactor. John was the original guitarist of Souixsie and the Banshees. It was amazing to hear the tracks with him on guitar.

July.

The highlight of July was undoubtedly The East Barnet Festival, here is Dubvocaliza, one of the highlights

We also had some storming False Dots gigs.  5th July - Jester Festival - Fortune Green, West Hampstead and the 12th July at The Builders Arms, Barnet. 

 August

August saw a few good gigs of note, not least The Healthy Junkies at the Butchers Arms in Barnet. A cracking set from a great band, not bad fo free in a Barnet pub.


 On the 30th August, we had my Birthday party at Mill Hill Music Complex, where the False Dots put in a cracking set and we partied until the early hours.

September

September saw the rather good Crossroads festival in Cricklewood. It was great to be able to support the event and there was some amazing World music on display

October

Perhaps the highlight in October was something a bit different (for me) we went to see The Harder They Come at The Stratford Theatre,  a great show. 


For the band, we had some great fun at Maddies party on  10th October - Mill Hill Music Complex. A great night for all.

November

This was an easy one. The Saints at The Electric Ballroom. The first punk band I saw, back in 1977. The Aussie proto punks wewre back playing music from their first three albums. Ed Kuepper on guitar is IMHO a legend



And on  2nd  November  we were back at The Dublin Castle. We were previewing the tracks fromn our new album, it was a spiffing show. We got to play a bit longer at the Headliners failed to show up, which is always a laugh!

December

It was really stiff competition for the best gig in December. We had Madness, The Pogue Traders, The Deltas to name a few, but the one that will live with me was the Rock and Roll Rescue fundraiserfeaturing Knox of The Vibrators. The first punk album I ever bought was Puremania by The Vibrators and to hear the songs again was amazing. Knox has not been in best health, so to see him back on stage was a bit special.



And the False Dots did our final gig of the year on 21 December  at The Dublin Castle.  It was an absolute blast.


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Friday, 26 December 2025

The Boxing day blog - Why AI will never make truly great music

 People keep telling me that I am a dinosaur and AI is the future of music. Songwriters and performers such as me will caease to exist as AI Takes over. Unlike me, AI doesn't forget the lyrics, play the wrong notes (or the right notes but not necessarily in the right order), it won't have a cold and so sing songs a bit flat. It won't run out of breath half way through the chorus, because someone in the crowd did something silly and it has cracked up laughing. In ten years time there will just be an AI version of The False Dots, that does everything right all the time and people will watch holographic avatars of the band, performing our hits, such as We all Love a Party, The Burnt Oak Boogie and Groovetown. People will leave the shows marvelling at the wonders of such a scene. You will see a 20 year old Rog T, before I was fat and bits started falling off, singing notes I could never hit, handsome and doint triple somersaults without catching breath. What sane person would prefer to see a fat 63 year old forgetting the lyrics, mumbling, playing the wrong notes, when they can see such a fantastic show?

Well this is what people tell me. The Abba show is the shape of things to come. We are all doomed. Or maybe we are not. Last Sunday, the 21st December, The False Dots played our final show of 2025. It was an absolute blast. We had several guests join us for various numbers. The crowd were doing conga's around the hall. After we came off, several people who'd never seen us before came up and said that it was a brilliant show. You see one of the biggest lessons I've learned is that what makes a live show special is that it is unique. Every show is an event that will never be repeated. We are a very organic band. When guests join us, we often discover new ideas, melodies and harmonies that were not previously there. Whilst AI can easily work out melodies etc, its biggest weakness in creative art is its greatest strength as a tool. Often the best music comes out of mistakes, misunderstandings and off the cuff stupidity that just happens organically. When I present new ideas to the band, often they completely misinterpret my brief. Usually most of the time what comes out is far superior to what I had in mind. The songs develop as we play them. No song by The False Dots is ever truly finished. There is always the room for improvement. Our new album will feature reinventions of two songs that we wrote in 1978/9. Since Trumpet Tom joined the band, we have discovered a new energy, but Tom has a different way of looking at music, so new life is breathed into old ideas.

Until AI can get things wrong, make mistakes, play bum notes that shouldn't fit, but do, AI will never make truly great music. Of course you could feed the entire recorded catalgoue of The False Dots into an AI and ask it to make "The best False Dots track ever" and it may well come up with a tune that is better than all of the inputs, but what it won't ever come up with is the next single we are going to record. The band always are looking to do new things and mix things up. The lyrics to most of our songs are not just constructs based around riffs that sort of fit in. The lyrics are all based on experiences I've had in my life, or my friends have recounted to me.

Our next single, called it's behind you, is based on a terrible nightmare I had, after I learned that a girl I had the hots for had a pet tarantula. I used to read American horror comics at the time. There was a particularly disturbing story about a spider, which clearly fed into the terror. I speak to a lot of songwriters. I can recall discussing Embarrassment by Madness with writer Lee Thompson. It was about his parents reaction to the birth of his neice. Lee had something important to say. I am really not sure that an AI could ever orchestrate such a backing track as the Madness boys came up with. The best songs (for me) are ones where raw emotion comes through. The Abba show, to me, demonstrates all of the strengths and weaknesses of the AI version of the future. I've not seen it, but I am sure it is a great spectacle. It gives you the chance to see a show where you hear a bunch of songs you like in a most spectacular setting. But once you have seen the show a few times, will there be any real creative surprises? Once the magnificience of the production has been processed by your brain, will you see anything new and exciting?

I am someone who far prefers small intimate gigs, where things go wrong, but also sometimes this makes them go spectacularly right. I've been at gigs where someone has randomly been in the audience and been invited up onstage, and an impromptu change to the programme has been brilliant. For our Xmas gig, Tom suggested we do a cover of Feliz Navidad by Julio Englasias in a rather False Dots style. After the gig, Tom told me that when he suggested it, he had something completely different in mind. As it was, not only was it a massive highlight of the gig, we were all still singing it after Xmas dinner yesterday. 

Why? Well this is another reason why AI will never make truly great music. The best things about the best music and the best performances are that it is intangible. When you see a performer with Charisma, you just know it. Why do some people have Charisma and what is it? I don't know. I am a rotten singer, but people tell me that I have a bit of Charisma and I am good at engaging with an audience. When I play, I am constantly scanning the audience and looking for ways to get them to engage. In one of our most popular songs, I always have a dilemma at the chorus. I can play the guitar part or I can use my hands to beckon the audience to join in. I always go for the latter, the song soungs worse, but the audience experience is better. I often ad lib bits in at the time to further encourage participation. To me, that is what live performances are all about. 

When we record songs, often elements of this are fed back in. As we know things go down well with audiences, we actually dynamically change arrangements. Of course, a lot of songwriters and musicians will be made redundant by AI, as people such as film producers use cheap AI produced incidental music. Will audiences notice? Well I suspect that in ten years time, the very best films will still, by and large have scores written by proper composers, who can visualise. I rather hope they still use orchestras to play the music and I rather hope that proper soundtracks still sell. There are plenty of uses for AI, but for me these are best when they are complimentary. I myself use AI mastering tools. Just as we no longer record to tape, you have to make best use of technology, but for me this means it is part of the craftsmans toolbox, not the craftsman.

Have a great boing day.

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