Claire Waller

Not quite sure where this was going, but it felt good to respond to a prompt for the first time in ages… Also not sure why only a bit of the text unbolded when I was aiming for the lot! Ah well…

“In a yellow rectangle, in the black facade of a house, a woman is laying a table.”

He could have picked any window, of any house, in any str…[Read more]

My, you have been doing your research, haven’t you?

I never for one moment thought you were attacking him.  I assumed that you were thinking what I think, that he’s an admirably level-headed bloke with both feet firmly on the ground. No regrets, move on, ‘that was then and this is now,’ to quote one of the songs. I would have said that he comes…[Read more]

Don’t get me wrong though, I’m not attacking him. I think it’s great that he doesn’t measure his success the way that some singer/songwriters do. And I do like his songs. He’s also a pretty accomplished guitarist. He seems to have been very successful indeed in other areas he’s chosen to work, pursuing a big career in Radio as a senior producer…[Read more]

I wouldn’t describe it as tiny, but neither is it very huge, and you do have to scroll down a way before you see it. So yes, not exactly a blaze of publicity.

To augment that line in Wikipedia, here are Pete Atkin’s own words on the subject: ‘I’ve never ever spent much time trying to figure out why the songs Clive and I wrote in the seventies –…[Read more]

Wow, you mean I’ve turned somebody on to Pete Atkin? Result!

Yes, he is good live, preferably in an intimate setting. There are actually three gigs in very unusually quick succession lined up for next month – in the King’s Road, Ambleside and Middlesborough – plus one in October in Whitby. One 200 miles from me (and I’m reluctant to go back to…[Read more]

I have had a good listen. I have a feeling he’s somebody to hear live. Perhaps we’ll meet up at his next gig – if he has one.

She seems pretty English to me – although her mother is French and her father’s Maltese. But yes, it’s the French connection that hooked me on Renaud.

I don’t know, but put the speculation aside. Pete Atkin has a smooth confident voice and he holds a note very well. And that’s true right from the first album to the last. The songs hold your…[Read more]

Ah, Ath, your wife is French, n’est-ce-pas?

I don’t find it particularly surprising that a folk music lover should like Pete Atkin. Folk audiences, right from the start of the revival sixty and more years ago, have always been receptive to more serious subject matter in what used to be called ‘contemporary folk’ – though it’s often been with a l…[Read more]

The only writer who I enjoy and where I can see similarities in style with my own, is Kurt Vonnegut. That’s not to say we write in similar ways. Vonnegut was a master of prose and I’m not drawing a comparison. However, he made an effort to keep his writing plain and clear and advised others to do the same. Certainly there are subtleties in…[Read more]