Abubilla Music

*** The 500th’ Blog ***: Time for a Best of…

Written by The Saturday Morning Canasta Club

THIS IS THE 500TH BLOG.   500. Seems a good time to take a little ‘looksie’ at the best of our blogs and Moments… Stick to the end, because we show a lot of our videosSo, seems like a good time for a Top 10 list of Abubilla Music blogs.   A journey thru 3 albums, 3 Spanish Jams, 3 versions of the Website, 18 artists and 72 songs.  Oh, and 500 blogs.   Got a little distracted.   So the top 10:

10. Dead Flies:   Any retrospective must start with Lou’s (and her Mum’s) blog on dead fly art.   This led to a flurry of other blogs on Dead Flies  on Viagra and resulted in hours of lost time during our Spanish Jams as we gathered up Dead Flies for album covers, post cards, etc… So hats off to Louise.

9.  World Air Traffic:  We do a lot of you tube clips, but this one has been the highest rated.   It shows all the planes in the world that fly in a day and confirms how the US and Western Europe consume all the world’s resources.    We followed this one up with a fascinating video showing how fast they grounded plans on 9/11.

8. Puns and Pets:  We got a bit silly with puns for a while, including Christmas puns (including the classic Christian Prawn) and Sandwich Puns.   On reflection, you might want to skip the puns and go direct to Ed’s blog on What Dogs and Cats Write in their Diary.  Much better and reminds us of Sammy the Angry Cat.

7.  Martyn:   We did an essay on Martin, as Artist of the Moment.    We include it simply because his wife and two daughters e mailed our office separately to say that we captured him perfectly.   That is a bit alarming.

6.  Jimmy’s Fitness and Imogen’s Imagination:  It is a sad thing, but folks have sadly commented on the Jimmy Five Blogs on Richmond Park Running Part One, Richmond Park Part Two, Life at 4.23 in the Morning, ‘The Swiss Ball Thing‘   and his Magical Gym Bag.   His children no longer talk to him.    But Jimmy is just sad.  In contrast, Imogen is an inspiration, writing blog after blog of her thoughts as she stares out windows (of trains and of offices).  We’ve loved her take on:  Midweek Madness, Appeasement, Ed’s challenge, Starin’ Out Windows, and a Carriage Full of Zombies.

5.  The Very Short List:   We all subscribe to the Very Short List, and you should too… But we often pull together best of lists from them, and this is a very good list of on line games to play.  Our blogs are filled with this kind of thing – song, website and video recommendations… read them again.

4.  How To Guides:  We try to put on lots of ‘how to guides’.  Our favourite is How to Build a Recording Studio.  Andy will be doing a lot more here.    Of course,  that is an idiot’s guide.  if you want an experts guide, Andy delivers on ‘Time Bases.’

3. Song Development:  We care a lot about showing you how songs develop over time.   Andy wrote a great blog on Sat Out the 15th which is still worth a read and listen.   These complement well all our This Week’s in the Studios and report backs from Spanish Jams…

2. Our Artists, Scholars and Assistants:    We are a little music academy with lots of students and few teachers.  Nothing is more fun that the early reports of our scholars and assistants as they join us.  So click on their names, to hear the early experiences of all our artists:   Ed, Louise, Sophie, Andy, Imogen, Hannah and Charlotte.    And who can forget our Voices?   We love Winky and Eric, who send us the most blogs.

1. Our Music and Our Videos:   Our favourite blogs are about our Music, starting with our first Three Albums:  Six Months of Saturdays, Misery Marmalade and Other Spanish Jams and If I Were a Little Birdie.   But, we have also done some great videos that we hope you are enjoying.    We’ve put a little collection for you right here.  Enjoy:

a. Our First, The Knife Will Come: One of our favourite songs from the first album, with Louise in lead and Nataasha behind the camera.

b. Immovable Thing:   From the second album, with Louise again in front of the camera, joined by Ed and Sophie.   Greg behind the camera.

c. Mah Knees.   Second album. Martyn’s song, Gus’s vocal, Hunter’s video. Jimmy Behind the Camera. Abubilla Villa Hunter and friends in the front of the camera.

d. Monkey Space Camp: Second album. Featuring Mike and Gus and other Monkey friends. Hannah and Greg assembling the clips

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e. Fairytale: Second album. Gus, live at the Villa

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f. Box of Yellow Roses: Second album, Andy live at the villa.

g. If I Were a Little Birdie. Inspiration for the title of the third album. Gus in lead, Sophie on cello. Lou and Steph are birds.

h. Red Shoes. Stupid, but shows the Spanish Studio getting cleaned up. Looks easier than it was.

So there you go.  500 blogs.  We hope you’ve enjoyed the journey.   Thanks for the ride.

The Saturday Morning Canasta Club