Regeneration

Assuming you have visited here before, you may have noticed that I’ve implemented some of the changes in layout first hinted at just prior to Christmas.

We now have a homepage, a portfolio (of sorts), and this blog has shifted to its own parent page.

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Mentioned in the same breath as NME

It’s not often I find myself mentioned in the same breath as NME and Uncut (and to a lesser extent The Sunday Telegraph), but if one were to suck in a big gulp of air and read down this page on the ATIC Records website, it is just possible.

My psych and prog website, Head Full of Snow, gets quoted following a review of one of the label’s acts, The Witch and the Robot.

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“Looks like we’re shy of one horse…”

Assuming your browser allows images you’ll have noticed this site’s banner and may be wondering what its significance is. None at all really, other than my personal love for Spaghetti Westerns. It’s a still taken from the opening scene of Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, which I have photoshopped and performed various feats of jiggery-pokery upon. So long as Paramount doesn’t catch wind, it’ll remain pride of place.

The scene itself is one of the all-time classics of the genre – Jack Elam, Woody Strode, Al Mullock and Charles Bronson meet at a dusty, forsaken train station in the middle of a sunbaked nowhere – though the film itself is not my favourite.

That honour lies with The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, its threeway gundown at the climax being ten-or-so minutes of cinematic perfection, unsurpassed anywhere else in film history. There are other close contenders for the title spot too. An article I wrote for LateMag.com discussing a few of my favourite Spaghetti Westerns can be found here.

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Have Pen, Won’t Travel… reads the card of a man

Have Pen, Won’t Travel. Indeed so.

A curious title for a less than curious blog, no? Maybe not, but I had to call it something.

Anyways, my name is Nick James and I’m a writer (a published one at that). I have numerous bits and bobs scattered across the length and breadth of the internet, as well as in that tried and trusted old dog, print.

I am the author of Head Full of Snow, the psychedelic and progressive rock website that’s making ripples in certain corners of my imagination, and an occasional contributor to both LateMag.com and Little White Lies. But music and film aren’t my only vices.

Gadgetry, technology and ultimately useless stuff I can ill-afford also stokes the creative fires of @jeffman – as I’m known in web circles. Why Jeffman? Why not?

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