About: MaFt

Here’s me playing and ‘singing’ a song with one of my previous bands, seventyseventimes (or 77x for short) that was recorded back in 2008. It’s a cover of a great song by an American ska-punk band, The O.C. Supertones. You can’t really see me, but I’m the one in the red that’s behind the big pole in the middle… Two fun facts about this gig: 1) The tent we were […]

I’m not a particularly morbid person but there have been some special people in my life, both family and friends, who have either lived a long life and died or have been taken from us tragically young. This post isn’t for anyone in particular, it’s just a song that I like for both the lyrics and the musical style. It’s called “Eulogy” and it’s by a band called The Flatliners […]

All of my guitars (two electrics and one acoustic) use strings – six on each to be precise. That’s why they’re called stringed instruments; clever that, isn’t it? For as long as I can remember I’ve used D’Addario strings and have found them to be excellent quality. I rarely break strings (I do strum very hard at times too) and I see this as a testimony to the quality of […]

In 1995, just before my 15th birthday, I was on a school exchange trip in France. I hated the guy I was paired up with and I spent all my time there playing on his pinball machine, listening to Therapy?’s Troublegum album and dossing off to drink Kronenburg at the local bar. The pinball machine took Francs and so my host probably didn’t mind me being antisocial as he thought […]

I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret of mine. Not many people know this about me, only a few close friends. It’s quite embarrassing but I like to believe everyone goes through phases like it… Whispers: *I used to like techno/dance music* There, I said it and I’m glad that’s out in the open now! Top acts such as 2-Unlimited, Corona and other 90’s artists used to live […]

The first band I saw live was Terrorvision, back in 1995 at St George’s Hall in Bradford. They opened with the song “Alice, What’s The Matter?” – the opening track from their 1994 album “How To Make Friends and Influence People”. It’s a really catchy song and holds a special place in my life – Terrorvision were the first band I’d seen live and they’re also local lads. So, A […]

I decided to start up a new ‘series’ of blogs to get me back into doing some semi-regular blogging. I spend most of my time on Twitter or Facebook so haven’t really blogged for quite some time. I thought it’d be good to work through the alphabet and pick something musical to write about for each letter – whether that’s a song, a band, a genre, an album, an artist […]

Mini-MaFt, like me, loves watching films; and he, like me, loves going to the cinema. The social ‘norms’ of the cinema, however, don’t really fit with his autism. Things we take for granted like sitting still, not talking, not telling the whole auditorium what just happened (three times a minute… for 10 minutes) are generally frowned upon during cinematic outings. This certainly doesn’t stop us from going to the cinema, […]

It’s been almost 6 months to the day since my last call. Today’s call involved tiny people, turds and lies! Here ya go:

I used to view Apple as a company that cared about the finer details but today’s update to iOS6.1 is making me change that view. Before I go on, let me just say that yes, I know how trivial this will seem when you read it, but it’s just one of those little things that is going to annoy the crap out of me now that I have noticed it! […]