 By Derek Brandon
WE’VE HAD MANY NICE COMMENTS about the wide range of topics normally
found in NWBN. We always try to feature as many NW personalities as possible
to raise their profile both at home (i.e. the NW) and abroad (i.e. everywhere
else). So this time you’ll find human interest with North West personalities
Jack & Mavis Lee, who celebrate 35 years in semi-pro music this year;
an offerings from top American banjo personalities Pete Wernick and Janet
Davis, and pure technicality from Nottinham’s Eric Kwiatkowski as he
analyses guitar breaks. As well as the usual Readers Letters and ’Grass
Cuttings pages, we got enough feedback on previous issues to feature a whole
page of “Feedback”. So we hope we’re still heading in the
right direction - anyone with any comments to make please write in; don’t
just moan.
I’d like to point out that we put out a special text-only version of
this mag on disk. Why? Because computer-owning blind people have “Text
Readers” that speak the words to them. So if you know anyone who could
benefit from this service please let
Peter
Mackie know and he’ll send one.
YOU MIGHT HAVE NOTICED that email (electronic mail) addresses and things
starting “http://” crop up ever more frequently in articles, addresses
and “by-lines”. Maybe you wonder “What use is this to me?
I’m not interested in computers!” Please believe me that these
things are very useful to people who are “Internet-enabled”. Without
our Internet facilities it wouldn’t be possible to produce the NWBN
- many articles and photos arrive by Write to, and the proofs are sent back
the same way. But as a sideline the Internet allows this mag to be read in
any country in the world (with colour photos, and more of them) and printed
out. And it costs very little to do it.
SPEAKING OF COMPUTERS, I’ve just been reading my latest Computing Mag
(PC-Plus) and realised that the Scanner I paid £300 for (my own money)
16 months ago, to do photos in the NWBN, now costs only £100... I had
to buy a new PC recently - my old one, though powerful, was just too slow
to manipulate the photos for the mag. It was a hard decision because the
old stuff is always too out-of-date to be worth anything. “But wait!”,
I hear you cry “What’s all this about manipulating photos and
images?”. Well, the camera can and does lie! Please check out the photo
of Tom Travis and band (Jan 1998, page
14). Chris Lee was giving a “one-finger salute” and I had clicked
at an unfortunate moment when Tom was scowling. Happily, I had another photo
of Tom with the nice head on it... And check out The “Lou Reid &
Carolina” workshop piccy (July ’97,
p.6) - Gina Britt was another 2 yards to the right and the photo would
have been too wide! What would you have thought of the front cover on the
May 1997 issue if I hadn’t removed the guitar neck growing out of Chris
Wilson’s head? Also compare the young lady dancer
(NWBN Jan ’98 p.13) with the Internet
version, which has a microphone removed - I’ll bet she prefers the
latter!
Updated 23rd Jan 1999
|