Singer/Songwriter John Lee

These are the records which are inspiring me so far this year and my favourite songs off each album.
1) June Tabor – Apples(dancing)
2) Home Service – Alright Jack (rose of allendale)
3) Tom Morello – the nightwatchman – worldwide rebel songs (whirlwind)
4) Burning Spear – Marcus Garvey/Garveys ghost(slavery days)
5)Oysterband – Here I Stand (after rain)
6) Pearl Jam – Backspacer (force of nature)
7)Fairport convention – A history of (who knows where the time goes)
8) Ramones – anthology ( I wanna be sedated)
9)Grateful Dead – Live dead (dark star)
10) The Doors – LA woman (LA woman)

• Peace and love
• a covert war
• against a generation
• ufo’s hover above
• conscious war
• it’s no hallucination
• project walrus
• chao’s surrounds
• it’s another assassination
• shining ones
• the watchers
• waiting for illumination
• it’s a control
• frequencies fly
• throw away the television
• tension , on the edge
• no common sense
• it’s the interpretation
• peace and love
• no hippies anymore
• just character assassination
• it’s across the land
• from the left to the right
• it’s an illusion
• a mirage in the eye
• a universe infinite
• is it drakes equation
• someday soon they will arrive
• to find every nation
• seperated and lost
• in fear
• waiting for emancipation
• no more war
• no more greed
• just need….
• unification

• The days are empty now
• the sunset is fading away
• the dawn chorus sings in harmony
• of memories which will forever stay
• I cannot find the words
• or rhyme of which to say
• that we’ll miss you forever
• each and everyday
• I pause to remember your presence
• hope it never fades away
• it seems the past is alive
• in a quiet refrain
• hope your at rest now
• it was hard to watch you slip away
• the sprit will now travel into the star filled endless space

Books I’m reading this summer.

1. Cider with rosie – Laurie Lee
2. The epic of gilgamesh
3. Chronicler of the winds – Henning Mankell
4. 2012 – the crystal skull – Manda Scott
5. A thousand splendid suns – Khaled Hosseini

Snow drifts to the ground
the robin sings a winter song
snowdrops appear underneath the beech
the days are short , the nights are long
the moon glistens in a winter haze
the sparrows fly from tree to tree
the buzzard lurks and the wren calls
the woodlands ancient, river to sea
crows congregate, the starlings swirl
the squirrels search, a memory x-ray
blue tit, goldfinch and sparrowhawk to
natures resilience, in a remote view
a lesson learned, recycle and rebirth
the leaves, the soil a circle in time
the seasons a philosophy for which no words can explain
for winter is the hardest for the world outside
sleeping, sleeping waiting for the sun to rise
spring will someday soon arrive
winter a season where nature survives
from setting sun to sunrise

I’ve been practicing songs for the new album now called Hegelian Dialectic, an orwellian term meaning , problem, reaction, solution. The tracklisting is as follows – 1) Tradition 2) duality 3) the hive 4) conspiracy 5) diary 6) afterglow 7) imagination 8) running scared 9) the fifth sun 10) grail 11) riddles and metaphors 12) entangled 13) servants 14) broken promises. I will record towards the end of 2013. Meanwhile I’ll be releasing songs from my e.p. Top Secret with the first download available in a couple of weeks. Thanks.

1) Lord of the rings trilogy – JRR Tolkien ….classic, my all time favourite book..a show of defiance and love by the most unlikeliest of heroes (frodo and particularly Sam)
2) Magicians of the gods – Graham Hancock(history is not what it seems…open mind required).
3) The woodlanders – Thomas Hardy (classic literature…poetic and profound)
4) The collected poems – Robert Frost
‘stars’
And yet with neither love nor hate
Those stars like some Snow White
Minerva’s Snow White marble eyes
Without the gift of sight…..
5) musical truth – Mark Devlin(revealing book about the dark and sinister forces in the music industry…must read)
6)A vision of fire:book one of the earth end saga – Gillian Anderson
7)poems of William Blake
‘The human Abstract’
The gods of the earth and sea
Sought through nature to find this tree
But their search was all in vain
There grows one in the human brain……
8) The Magician – Michael Scott (from a great series of books)
9) Spook Country – William Gibson
10) Syd Barrett :A very irregular head – Rob Chapman( well written book about ex pink floyd member and influential legacy).

I’ve started a new project with a working title, ‘Give Way’, I’ve composed about 5 songs , with ten more ready to go. The album , 13 , which I was going to record will be done later. Give way refelcts my frustrations of the modern world and has a rockier feel than previous albums. With titles such as The Hive, Imagination and The Fifth Sun they encompass internal journeys which I’ve taken in the past year and I am excited about the upbeat nature of the songs. Will record later this year.

• Four seasons
• a cycle of re-birth
• from spring to winter
• the changing earth
• from swallows to swifts
• the ancient word
• unspoken and unheard
• orbiting to comply and then to serve
• the spaces inbetween
• the dial turns
• to a sunrise where the blackbird sings
• to where the falcon hovers in the sky
• the violet blossoms, the chorus sings
• the god of nature will always fly
• the cuckoo will call, the battle is on
• to save what we can before it is gone
• the polar bear, the whale, the whole cycle of life
• the innocence of nature, the dark and the light
• stand tall we must resist the change
• for love is the anwser, love will remain.

In the United Kingdom people will vote, including myself, in the 2010 election, its going to be a close run election between the three main parties, Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrats. The right to vote (or suffrage) went through many stages, in universal suffrage the right to vote is not restricted by race, gender, belief, wealth or social status, the first country to use this was France in 1792, although women were not allowed to vote until 1944.