Editors Comments by Derek
Brandon
 WOW! WHAT A 2 MONTHS it’s been. First I had
a stroke and went completely blind on the right in both eyes - it was really
frightening! When I went to wash I could see but when I finished I
couldn’t, so I ended up in hospital. Then the following morning Jeans
father died, though not entirely unexpectedly. In this period of stress the
September issue sat in the hall as 10 huge piles of paper but happily Pete
Mackie and Pete Massey came to collate and staple it, and see to all the
envelopes and posting - mega thanks to both. I’d been let loose by then
so sat and did the stapling. Our daughter got a few days off work and came
over from San Francisco, so that was terrific too. Thanks to all who phoned
and sent ‘Get Well’ cards - it must have worked because my sight
started returning slowly and now I can detect light over all the previously
‘black’ area! I’m happy to report that the many hospital tests
revealed nothing beyond the location of the blockage in my left visual cortex.
Everything else was disgustingly good, so the prognosis is good, too. Weird
watching your heart pumping with comments like “See - that’s your
mitral valve opening and closing!” But I have to lower my stress
level.So the September issue went out a little late - I like it to land through the Sponsors letter boxes on the first of the month, but that’s hard to keep up. It was late partly due to my stroke but also through ‘essential’ stuff arriving late. Well, I’ve concluded that nothing is essential; if things don’t just come the mag just gets thinner, but it needn’t. All we ask is that you do your bit for your magazine - don’t just leave it to someone else - and please do it in time. If you hear something that only might be of interest, send it in. If you go to a gig or concert or some other function, take some photos - they’re very hard to get. The other thing is to see if there’s something you can do production-wise, like (mainly) come and help with collating (making the piles of pages into books). A SUBJECT THAT FREQUENTLY re-surfaces is ‘how to popularise Bluegrass music in Britain’. All sorts of ideas are put forward, but most are based on copying what some other band has done to make itself popular. An oft-quoted example is AKUS (or Alison Kraus & Union Station , to the less trendy) (see NWBN, March 1997, page 10 ). Another proposal is to get British bands to make CDs - the BBMA did this and several bands paid their £100 levy to submit a track to be on the CD, the arguably not-entirely-aptly named The Best of British Bluegrass . I have strong feelings on the popularisation subject and can’t agree with many of the proposals. At the end of the day one has somehow to get the public interested not only in listening to but also in playing Bluegrass, and some of the examples might not actually be based on Bluegrass; for example, one of the best tracks on the BBMA CD is the old-time number Waterbound. You may well be wondering “Where’s he going?” I’ll tell you - I’ve seen what I think is possibly the way to popularise Bluegrass, but few if any of our bands could do it. It’s the SNACs method... see the Didmarton report ( this issue) for more details! You will find reports on festivals remote from our area - for example, Guildtown and Didmarton. Why? Because most Bluegrass afficionados rarely venture beyond their local festivals and we hope these reports might tempt them to travel to sample and support Plenty of goodies in this issue - apart from a lively mailbag, Arthur Robinson tells of his adventures in the Czech Republic. There’s more on the trans-Atlantic meanderings of guitarist extraordinaire Chris ‘Snowy-Top’ Wilson, a review of what could be ‘The CD of the Year’ and the conclusion of the interview with John Duffey - there won’t be any more of those! And lots more besides... enjoy!
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