May We All Live Well This New Year

Well, here we are, alive and breathing at the end of another year – a particularly insane year of stupid wars and narcissistic politicians arguing in their eternal political games – and perhaps we’re wondering (like me) when the bickering will stop so we can deal with the impending catastrophe of global warming. 

But somehow I’m strangely optimistic – there’s been so much that’s been so surreally bizarre and horrifying this year, I am, perhaps misguidedly, sure that next year will be the beginning of a wonderful new world.

So anyway, I’d like to thank you all for reading my sporadic posts this year – and may we all live well.
Following is my New Year gift for you all.

It’s a song I wrote a long time ago, called ‘The New Year Song’. I wrote it while I was working in China in 2005. It was New Years eve in Huai’an, and I was alone in my apartment with only a couple of bottles of Tsingtao beer for company, so I wrote the a song to send to my family and friends.
It’s a rough recording – I made it the moment I’d finished writing the song. You see, I can’t write music, so I immediately record whatever song I’ve just finished on whatever I’ve got to hand – in this case, my laptop.
Funny thing is, though many of those songs have subsequently been re-recorded in studios with various bands, for me it’s always been these rough demo recordings made on the spot that have remained most precious to me.
So here is is, my last word on the year.

I hope you enjoy it (and please forgive the roughness of the recording and the bad harmonies I dubbed on later) ….. so … happy new year to you all.

THE NEW YEAR SONG