Thanks, Harald!

From previous research for my book I realised that Cosmic Jokers and Ashra drummer Harald Grosskopf is a person who enjoys celebrating and documenting his life with both the written word and photographs. Even so I was stunned by the interesting, insightful and entertaining answers he has provided to my recent interview questions. Thank you very much Harald for taking the time to provide a series of great recollections and anecdotes. When I see you I owe you and your musical friends a beer. Cheers!

Congratulations and thanks to Steve Baltes!

A big thank you to Mr. Steve Baltes for his highly interesting answers to my questions about his early experiences as a musician, how he came to meet Harald, how he joined Ashra and his involvement with both the Ashra tour dates of 1997 and their more recent return to Japan. What a nice chap and he's also recently become a Dad so congratulations are in order too!

A great honour

It was a great honour to have the opportunity to say hello to both Manuel Gottsching and Ilona Ziok in London this week. After meeting them at the hotel I had a fascinating chat with Manuel over a coffee. A chinese buffet lunch and another coffee later and I was heading for the train back to Newcastle with the posters they had very kindly given me. The last five hours had disappeared in a flash!

Perhaps it was all of that strong coffee, more likely the events of an extraordinary day but I have very few recollections of the journey home other than listening to E2-E4 Live in Japan on my MP3 player. I would like to thank both Manuel and Ilona for allowing me to meet them, for their interesting conversation and for being very kind to this writer. It was a day that I certainly won't be forgetting any time soon!