Sebastian Early Anthony Payne

When I get 'into' a band, I tend to explore their artiste's solo collections. Done this with Pink Floyd and now I'm doing the same with with The Eagles. Don Henley and Glenn Frey (drummer and guitarist, both lead songwriters) have had successful solo careers with Henley edging in front of Frey on sales and public exposure. Both of their music is full of hard, 80s guitar and synth driven rock which is awesome in my eyes and

The best place to begin for Don is Actual Miles, a greatest hits collection that includes a selection of songs from his first three albums, including such awesome tracks as Dirty Laundry, All She Wants To Do Is Dance, The Boys of Summer and The End of Innocence. His voice is instantly recognisable the same as Hotel California but the music is quite different - harder, funkier and certainly pop orientated. Pop is not something The Eagles ever aimed for.

On the Fray side, he hasn't released a collection of his hits which leaves you either buying several albums or getting individual songs for online sources. If it was this, I'd go for Smuggler's Blues, You Belong To The City, Sexy Girl and Brave New World. They are all different, enjoyable to listen and showcase a different side of 'the lone arranger'. The latter two hits are very pop orientated and both climbed their way up the Billboard 200 in the 80s but Sexy Girl is reminiscent of the Eagles with a soft moving, almost bouncing beat. Brave New World is idealistic to say the least.

Joe Walsh deserves a post of his own but that's for another day. If you ever listened to music radio, chances are high you will have heard of Rocky Mountain Way - a typical example of 70s rock. Out of the artists, either Walsh or Henley have experienced the most successful career and it's more up your individual tastes to decide which has the better songs. Thankfully for us all, the '14 year vacation' did them all good and they are back on top with Long Road Out Of Eden and UK tour coming soon. Long Live The Eagles...

Ever since I began fiddling around with Linux and 'all that shizzle' in 2004, I have mainly used WordPress for my site, with a few diversions into RapidWeaver, Tumblr, MovableType and Blogger along the way. I have enjoyed using it but I feel it is time for a change. Some great blogs use WordPress but I felt something simpler, cleaner and slicker was needed to reinvigorate myself. The administration interface needs sprucing up badly (and no, the 2.5 revamp isn't what I was meaning) and I find it dull, boring and not a good writing environment. MovableType was my first choice but it's huge (the codebase is around 5mb compared to that of 1.5mb of WordPress) and requires playing about with Perl and I really enjoy life too much to spend time doing this.

While reading a few articles about MovableType 4.1, I found a link to Habari and I think I've found a match made in heaven. Habari was started over a year ago by a few prominent WordPress contributors (for one reason and another) and it is now in a good enough shape to make a proper blog of it as I already have. Over the past few days, I've been adopting my Tumblr theme and it's now ready for you all to see. The Admin interface is pure bliss - no extra buttons, just a plain box that lets the words blow. Reminds me of WriteRoom in this aspect.

Habari isn't right for everyone - those who want a fancy blogging system that does everything best stick with Ol' WordPress with its millions of plugins but if you want something easy to theme, a growing and well organised community, a clean admin interface and very quick load times then you should take a look at Habari. My coding skills aren't up the point where I would want to fix bugs but documentation, screencasts, bug reporting and general evangelism is somewhere I could actually help and this is something I plan to do, if my contributions will be welcome of course!

This post was brought to you by Actual Miles, Henley's Greatest Hits, in particular The End on Innocence and All She Wants To Do Is Dance.

Artist - The Rolling Stones from Sticky Fingers (1971)

Many artists from this period experimented with long, less radio-friendly songs that often involved sonic experimentation. The Rolling Stones began this with Going Home (from Aftermath) which clocks in at around the 10 minute mark. Can't You Hear Me Knocking doesn't break this barrier but running at 7:16 isn't short but is neither amazingly long, when at Pink Floyd released Echoes that comes in at 23:28 in the same year.

Like the rest of Sticky Fingers, drugs are referenced in the song ("you got cocaine eyes") and it features the same guitar riff by Keith Richards over some playful lyrics by Jagger until 2:43 when playful meanderings between guitar and saxophone comes in. The horn section features quite heavily on the whole album and this song is a good example of how it works well and doesn't date too badly. At 4:41, lead guitarist Mick Taylor comes and his crowning moment of his Stones career begins until the end of the song. The smooth, blues influenced tone is influenced of both Clapton and B. B. King and is as powerful now as it ever was.

Luckily, the band have kept this in their live repertoire and I experienced this at the O2 Arena in August 2007. Obviously, the band is lacking Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor and am I sure you can guess which one is missed more. Ron Wood's guitar work is outstanding but different to that of Taylor. It lacks the subtlety and smoothness of his blues work but is made up for in energy and skill. The live version on Live Licks represents this to me (clocking in at a high 10:02!) with a new harmonic solo by Jagger added between the saxophone and guitar boogie.

All in all, quite an epic song. My favourite moment by the Stones? It is certainly up there - it combines all elements of the best elements of the band. Exquisite lyrics by Jagger/Richards, jazz style drumming by Watts and interlocking guitar work of Richards and Taylor. It hasn't become one of 'the classics' like Brown Sugar, Start Me Up and Paint It, Black has but it shows the Stones before their artistic peak, which would come a year later with Exile on Main Street. You can find it on YouTube in various forms if you haven't heard it yet. Rating - 4 out of 5.

Witch Woman - Eagles (1973). A fantastic video showcasing the skills, musical prowess, energy and hairstyles of the original Eagles. This lineup lasted their first two albums with Don Felder coming along for On The Border. The song appears on both the album Eagles and Their Greatest Hits '71 - '75 which is on constant rotation on my LP player. Rating - 5 out of 5

Durham is a very picturesque town that is just asking to be photographed, with many wonderful sights with the cathedral (a UNSEO world heritage sight too!) and castle being two fine examples of the architecture on offer. The walk along the river allows you to encompass all of these sights as well as providing good opportunities to photograph them.

Since the first week of arriving, I've been planning to do this but it has taken this long for some unknown reason. The summer will provide some amazing opportunities for more photos of these sights I am sure.