Well, Christmas 2025 is almost upon us and like the proverbial swan, yours truly has been gliding along with pleine de sérénité on the surface and kicking like hell under it… Good progress is being made on Time Demands at the moment, in terms of the tracks themselves and the instrumentation and production aspects.

What is starting to stack up though is the number of other projects behind it. I have recently been doing more work for the sizzle reels for the Dogs! Waiting To Be Loved! motion picture project that I have been very lucky to be involved in. But also, following a long conversation with an old friend who is a musician, actor and writer, have led me to hitch another couple of wagons to the horses. And one of them has been something that I should have done years ago.

Allow me to explain…. Back in 2005, as part of a dream, I ended up having a JK Rowling moment. A bunch of characters, events and a storyline just walked in completely fully formed. In so many cases, where people have these vivid dreams, it all gets lost the following morning when they wake up and go to work. I on the other hand, in the 1 bedroom flat that I was in, in Chesham Buckinghamshire at the time thought, at 3.30 in the morning, nooo, no way is that getting away, I have to write this down… so I picked up a pen and a civil service sourced A5 notebook and began scribbling down everything that I could remember; storyline, characters, strengths and weaknesses, the whole shebang.

Took me 45 minutes to write it all down, longer than it did to dream it in the first place. I then went back to sleep and thought when I woke up “jeeeez, what the hell am I supposed to do with this??” I had no idea as to how to write and complete a screenplay… so <<<long story very much cut short>>> I sought out someone to help me write it and within 18 months, the screenplay “Chasing A Rainbow” was completed.

My very dear old friend has long had a soft spot for this particular piece of work and despite it not yet being optioned, I do remain incredibly proud of it; having re-read the story again recently, I’m amazed that I actually did it, albeit nearly 20 years ago. But, the thing is this; I did have a notion back then of writing a soundtrack to it, like an Original Motion Picture Soundtrack album, like what we used to see in the 1980s; there were a couple of tracks that were being built up from midi loops, which got nowhere really – especially when one of the so called royalty free midi loops that I had used turned up in an incidental piece in the Inbetweeners movie in 2012, LOLZ. I didnt really follow up on it and it kinda went stale and grew moss.

My dear friend successfully planted the seed of “yes, but have you thought about writing either a soundtrack album or a concept album around this work?” And, once I’d spoken to him about the attempted soundtrack album, then the thought crept in of “hmmm…. concept album…. Tommy. Lifehouse. War Of The Worlds…. hmmmm…….tick tick tick tick…”... could I put something together where it would be a way of telling the story through a series of standalone tracks that are independent in their own way but also could be part of a longer story but without a narrator, with the incidental “glue” holding the scenes of the film together.

So.. with the assistance of Grok, which I used to keep tabs on possible cue points as to what should come in where (after all, I’ve never really properly written for a soundtrack before…not properly…) I dug out the screenplay and started breaking it down into scenes and possible cue points where some of the songs that I had already got some sort of skeletal music for (some even being Suno generated, off the back of old lyrics that never went anywhere, 14 years ago) and thinking where these tracks could go. I now pretty much have a fully fleshed out project plan about what songs should go with what scenes in the screenplay and production notes around them as well as to what parts come in at what point, etc… basically, once Time Demands is dealt with, then the Chasing A Rainbow Original Soundtrack Album is next into the blocks. That, I would expect will have its own timescales and is going to keep me busy for quite a while. Twelve songs/pieces of music including full songs and incidental tracks… pretty much all with just working titles at the moment. Titles like “Fickle Finger”, “Shattered Glass”, “Lively Strut”,”The Spark” and so on pepper the track list… Im feeling quite optimistic that it will get done this time, to a higher standard too.

And, there is another one in the wings after the Chasing A Rainbow soundtrack, specifically, another album called Sagittarius Rising. This album got its name from my astrological birth chart.

Now this might seem to be a bit of an odd left turn, that I have not historically shown any interest in and in all honesty, I dont really have a deep interest in it per se… I am intrigued though by other musicians and writers who do put some credence on it – two very diverse characters such as George Alan O’Dowd and Roland Orzabal; both have been influential on my life and my works and I took the opportunity to do some research into the matter to see what would flesh out and if there were any explanations or clues as to how or why music has always had such a hold on me. My main interests were as they were euphemistically called “current transits”, particularly how the coming year might change things for myself, my friends, my family and so on. Also, what the hell was it that got me musically to this point, LOLZ. Especially Time Demands.

Why me? Why now do I feel the call to make an album like that, with all these common themes?

And the answers that came back were fascinating:

“Your birth chart is a fiery, passionate powerhouse with deep emotional waters and a restless, philosophical spirit. It’s no accident that “Time Demands” — and this entire album — emerged now, at age 60. Your chart is practically screaming “midlife creative renaissance” with themes of legacy, loss, friendship, and making meaning from time’s relentless march.”

Why “Time Demands” and This Album Emerged Now:

“Your chart is a creative transformer — Leo Sun for expression, Scorpio Moon for depth, Sag rising for philosophy. The album’s themes (time, loss, heroes, friendship, legacy) are your chart’s core curriculum:

“Saturn retrograde = late-blooming wisdom about time’s demands.
8th house Sun = death/rebirth cycles fueling art (your wife’s passing → music as healing).
11th house Scorpio Moon = intense friendships as emotional anchor“

So, TL:DR… Taking this and a sideways glance at the Tears For Fears B-sides album from 1996, Saturnine Martial and Lunatic, (which also makes an oblique reference to Orzabal’s chart), the title “Sagittarius Rising” came to mind. Put in its simplest form, what this particular album will major on is the following question:

“After the reflection comes the adventure. After the grief comes the quest. After the looking back comes the ‘where do I go now?’”

Thematically, what we will be looking at is this:

Wisdom as a compass, not a cage

Forks in the road revisited with humor

The joy of not knowing

New horizons after grief.

Time Demands closes the door on the past. Sagittarius Rising opens the window to whatever comes next.

I have no material written for it as yet and that will all come once Time Demands and the Chasing A Rainbow soundtrack are done.

Oh and before I forget, at 01:20 in the morning as I write this, one other thing my dear friend talked me into was writing my memoirs. Now, granted usually only famous people write memoirs, but hear me out on that. I dont have many hangups about much of anything these days, but one that I do have is being forgotten. Ultimately, you are only remembered for as long as those who loved you still remember you and tell your story to others. My father is lucky in that sense in that he touched so many lives during his 74 years on this planet that along with his achievements, the musical legacy he left, the personal one will remain alive in the hearts of others whose lives he touched and who he left a positive mark on. As I am very much his son, it is something that I am conscious of that while I’ve spent 60.5 years on this lump of rock, I have seen, heard, experienced and learned a lot. Its not only arguably good for me to get it out of my head and down onto disk/paper/whatever so that I dont forget it all, but also, as my friend suggested, there may well be others out there who may need or may find useful to hear/observe the lessons that I have learned, that may inspire them too, in the same way that life has inspired me.

So, as you can tell, I didnt take an awful lot of arm twisting, LOLZ. And then I started doing some basic chapter mapping… and I’m upto the age of about 40 so far and even on thumbnail notes, I’m ten pages deep into it. There is so much to do, to get this thing down. I might do it as part of a Substack or I might just do it as a whopping big 500 page pdf, I’m not quite sure. I’ll almost certainly need an editor as well at some point as, as you all know better than anyone, I do have a tendency to digress.… So… A Life In Music is likely to see the light of day, hopefully some time in late 2026/early 2027.

I’m going to be a particularly busy bear over the next 12 months and I’m quite grateful that I dont at the moment have to fit a full time job around it all. It is going to keep me active for some considerable time, but I find the prospect of chewing my way through this and producing something tangible to the best standard that I can a very positive one.

The tracks on Time Demands are all coming along quite nicely, especially Say Nothing and Strange Love, which is probably the funkiest thing I’ve ever done… yet. I’m lucky to be able to devote about 3-4 hours per day to the album, so a bit like Monochrome and the other preceding albums, it is very much an incremental process, but we do seem to be moving along at a canter, if not a gallop. This is likely to abate over Christmas, but there is going to be a lot going on under the hood.

I’ll continue to do the best I can to keep you all abreast of progress. Til then, Seasons Greetings and my best wishes to you and yours.

S M-H