âAnd theyâve done it⦠Villa have won the Europen Cup. Peter Witheâs goal has brought the European Cup to England again.â

15 MP3 Songs
POP: Beatles-pop, ROCK: Acoustic



Details:
Back in 1982 Aston Villa were crowned Kings of Europe and eleven year old Julian Pugsley was allowed to stay up well beyond his bedtime to witness this remarkable achievement on TV. Of course, with school the next day the celebrations were short lived â in fact, none of Julianâs friends at school supported Villa, but the beating he received at the hands of the older Liverpool fans didnât seem to hurt as much. It was a golden moment â and one that Julian knew, deep down, would never be repeated in his lifetime.

Turn the clocks forward twenty-four years and 2006 sees the release of Julianâs first solo album â a CD dedicated to the Aston Villa 1982 European Cup Winning team (under the pseudonym of Blake): Rimmer (sub 10 Spink), Swain, Williams, Evans, McNaught, Mortimer, Bremner, Shaw, Withe, Cowans, Morley.

Note from Artist:
Please be aware, however, that you donât have to enjoy football (Americans read âsoccerâ) to enjoy the sounds within this sumptuous collection. Thereâs something for everyone â ballads, blues, funk, pop, folk, prog, psychedelia, acoustic, indie â very little modern jazz, admittedly, but thatâs not to say that modern jazz enthusiasts would gain nothing from it â they may enjoy the subtle key changes featured in âBlack Magicâ, or perhaps appreciate the unusual time signature employed in â¦erâ¦OK, none of the tracks to be honestâ¦look Iâm not a jazz drummer for heavenâs sake â and this is pop after all, you canât expect anyone to stray too far from 4/4! All right, unless youâre one of those pretentious people into âmodern jazzâ you will most probably enjoy this CD.

How did it come about? Well, I started a band four years ago called Karmatruffle with my good friends Magda McCaffrey (nee Singer) on bass and Amanda Ranson on drums. We were basically a Bevis Frond Tribute band â but we started writing our own material when we realised that very few people had ever heard of The Bevis Frond. After rehearsing to the point that we were ready to start performing live, Amanda bailed out (keen to avoid the limelight) and we found a replacement for her in fifteen year old school boy James Jordan. Looking back, this must have been pretty weird for Jamie considering I was the second youngest member of the band at thirty-two! Anyway, we started gigging and a few months later employed the services of one Paul Kench on lead guitar. Some time later Magda also jumped ship (having had enough of motorway service stations at 2.30 in the morning), to be replaced by Essex girl Sarah Anthony (whose father was best mates with Steve Marriott!) You can read more about the story of Karmatruffle and our spectacular rise and fall on the internet so I wonât go into all the messy details here. Suffice to say, we were signed to a London-based indie label, undertook a UK tour, headlined at the Cavern Club, released one single and one album, and then disappeared without trace.

Final Whistle is basically me mopping up the songs that Karmatruffle didnât record for one reason or another. I recorded the album in my house with a Tascam digital Portastudio. Thereâs some new tracks, too (Final Whistle, New Wave Kid, If This Is The End, Stackpole Reel and Lucky Man), but the others are ones that Karmatruffle originally attempted. I wrote well over a hundred songs between 2002 and 2006, so there is still a lot left in the cupboard. However, most of it is complete rubbish, and thankfully Iâve had the sense not to unleash it on an unsuspecting public. I suspect that if my creative juices have now dried up (like I fear they may well have), then I may be forced into sifting through this material at a later date, but for now, make a nice cup of tea, sit back, and relax in the knowledge that the 45 minutes of listening time you have purchased will, on the whole, be a pleasant and rewarding experience, for I have selected only the cream of Blake for your aural delight â the sour milk can wait for another dayâ¦